The Barandes side-quest

Context

Why this curriculum exists. In 2023 Jacob Barandes — a Harvard physicist and philosopher of science — began publishing a claim with real reach: quantum mechanics is mathematically equivalent to a theory of "indivisible" stochastic processes — ordinary probabilistic dynamics, but non-Markovian, without the wave function as fundamental furniture. Curt Jaimungal's seven-episode Theories of Everything series on this work is the proximate reason this entire curriculum was built: the episodes are compelling, and evaluating them honestly turned out to require most of the spine above.

The lineage, honestly told. The idea has an ancestor: Edward Nelson's stochastic mechanics (1966), which derived the Schrödinger equation from a diffusion process and is widely considered to have failed on multi-time correlations — Nelson himself conceded the problem (though Derakhshani & Bacciagaluppi 2022 argue the failure was overstated). Barandes claims his non-Markovian formulation does precisely what Nelson's couldn't. This is real, contested, published science — not settled physics, not crankery — and the field's verdict is genuinely still out.

How to watch. After the landscape unit you have the tools to watch critically rather than devotionally: score Barandes on the same four questions as every interpretation (wave function real? collapse? hidden variables? locality?), notice what the formulation cleanly addresses, what it sidesteps, and where it sits in the interpretations table. The point of the side-quest is not to decide whether he's right — it's to experience what it feels like to evaluate a live proposal with your own instruments.

How to read it

Anchor. The seven Theories of Everything Barandes episodes, roughly in order — the intro, the two "There Is No Quantum Multiverse" parts, the indivisible-stochastic deep dive, then the joint episodes: with Scott Aaronson (pushes back hard — the most valuable), with Emily Adlam (balanced), and the Kellis salon (lightest).

Companion (essential counterweight). Sean Carroll's Mindscape episode 323 (July 2025) with Barandes — Carroll is skeptical and presses exactly the right points.

Companion (background). A brief read on Nelson's stochastic mechanics and the Derakhshani–Bacciagaluppi 2022 paper — context for what Barandes has to not-fail-at.

Red flags to watch for (none mean he's wrong; all mean watch critically): does he address the PBR theorem or sidestep it? Does he engage the Deutsch–Wallace derivation when dismissing MWI's "probability problem"? Does he clearly distinguish his proposal from Nelson's? Does he offer empirical predictions that differ from textbook QM? (As of 2026: no — which makes this an interpretation, not a new theory.)