Dear Michael,
It's very kind of you to read my essay and comment on it, thanks so much, as it has led me to your well crafted and most enjoyable essay, which I will give a very good rating.
As a practicing physicist measuring magnetic fields I deal with noise on a daily basis. As a hobbyist radio-astronomer noise is our bread and butter. As a retired EMC practitioner noise was mostly the enemy. And finally as an armchair philosopher noise is a most important facet of arguments against quantum misinterpretation.
I believe QM is an unreasonably effective mathematical tool of the physicist but I do not agree with the quote of Feynman "nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical" that you gave in your essay, for I truly believe that nature is classical, provided you are using the right physical ontology. I am not a nay-sayer of QM, just a free thinker who thinks it has been wrongly placed on a pedestal as the 'crown jewels'.
I have several areas where I feel QM needs revision:
1. I understand that there are Maxwellian explanations for the photoelectric effect, that gave birth to the notion of the photon as a particle.
2. HUP has been extended way too far past what Heisenberg originally developed. (I have made a few comments on this in posts to other essayists)
3. Wave/particle duality is a nonsense as presented by QM, as particles and their fields (and attendant waves) must always exist together, not seen as separate entities dependent on mode of observation.
4. The photon is not a particle, just purely a wave in the classical aether, and as such doesn't partake in the duality mentioned above. Young's slit experiments with particles need to be interpreted carefully as their fields and their Maxwellian radiation pass through both slits even if the particle does not.
5. The various interpretations of the collapse of the wave function truly require one to believe in magic, and put the 'observer' on a pedestal that is very misleading.
6. I believe in a certain type of entanglement that occurs during pair production and 'photon' splitting. I believe that from the moment of birth, noise in the environment cause degradation of the entanglement known as decoherence.
7. I do not think there is sound evidence for quantum superposition, and hence I do not think quantum computers will ever achieve their lofty claims. (See Alan Kadin's excellent essay notes regarding this).
8. I think that Bell's tests re EPR have been following an incorrect path of interpretation (see Barry Gilbert's challenging essay on EPR).
I realise that you work in the area of quantum optics and that I have made some big challenges. I say what I have said because I have developed a working preon theory (gimli theory) that reduces matter to a single particle, and thus gives structural insight to particle physics that is sadly lacking in the Standard Model of particle physics (a tapestry of quantum field theories, and a testament to the great mathematical ingenuity of particle physicists). The gimli model of the electron allows it to produce two distinct magnetic fields, one of which is interpreted to be the vector potential, thus explaining many electromagnetic phenomena.
For the record, I am not a believer in the Platonic realm, as you will have picked up from my essay. Another aside, in the realm of human endeavour bitcoin mining must be one of the most dissipative activities outside of exploding nuclear weapons!
All that aside, I agree with your overall conclusion and I certainly enjoyed reading and commenting on your fine essay.
Good luck with your ratings, as yours is an important essay,
Lockie Cresswell
(btw my brother is a Prof. at your Uni)