When modeling electromagnetic waves, the notion of left versus right circular polarization is quite clear and fully integrated in the mathematical treatment. In contrast, quantum math sticks to the very conventional idea that the imaginary unit (i) is – always! – a counter-clockwise rotation by 90 degrees. We all know that –i would do just as an imaginary unit as i, because the definition of the imaginary unit says the only requirement is that its square has to be equal to –1, and (–i)2 is also equal to –1.
So we actually have two imaginary units: i and –i. However, physicists stubbornly think there is only one direction for measuring angles, and that is counter-clockwise. That’s a mathematical convention, Professor: it’s something in your head only. It is not real. Nature doesn’t care about our conventions and, therefore, I feel the spin ‘up’ versus spin ‘down’ should correspond to the two mathematical possibilities: if the ‘up’ state is represented by some complex function, then the ‘down’ state should be represented by its complex conjugate.
This ‘additional’ rule wouldn’t change the basic quantum-mechanical rules – which are written in terms of state vectors in a Hilbert space (and, yes, a Hilbert space is an unreal as it sounds: its rules just say you should separate cats and dogs while adding them – which is very sensible advice, of course). However, they would, most probably (just my intuition – I need to prove it), avoid these crazy 720 degree symmetries which inspire the likes of Penrose to say there is no physical interpretation on the wavefunction.
Oh… As for the title of my post… I think it would be a great title for a book – because I’ll need some space to work it all out. 🙂
Reading Feynman 