I'm not sure I understand the question. Is it a flaw that we are trying to draw conclusions about things we can't observe, indirectly through things we can obs

I'm not sure I understand the question. Is it a flaw that we are trying to draw conclusions about things we can't observe, indirectly through things we can observe? No. I can think of no other way to do it. To put it into layman's terms (as much as I understand it, which is not really very much at all): You know how you can run up to a fence where the gaps in the fence are smaller than you are? And you know how when you run through the fence, there is a different chance that you ran through one gap or the other (which are smaller than you, I should reiterate)? And then if you look at it a different way, even though you went through one gap or the other (somehow), you know how it turns out that you went through both at once? It's totally, exactly like that. While I may have got that completely wrong, I think you see the point. We have no frame of reference for talking about quantum mechanics at the macro level. Quantum mechanics doesn't make sense at the macro level. This isn't as much of a problem as you might imagine. There are lots of things that don't make sense when you take them out of the context where they make sense. For example take a piece of paper and a pencil. Draw a small box. Beside it, draw a big box. Erase the small box. Beside your remaining box, draw a bigger box. Which box is small? Now erase the bigger box. Is the existing box big or small? Well, the question doesn't make any sense without the context. It was big originally. But then it was small. And now with nothing to compare it to, it is neither big nor small. I think people take quantum physics too literally. It's a wave. It's a particle. It hits the mirror. It doesn't hit the mirror. From a macro perspective, these concepts have meaning. I don't see why they have to have any meaning at all from another perspective. You only need to have a system that, when viewed from the macro perspective, allows the macro phenomena to exist. Apart from that, it could be anything at all. Do particles exist in an actual space, or do they just have some chance to react with each other in such a way that it is consistent with there being space when viewed in that way? Does a particle need to exist when it doesn't interact with anything? I don't really see why it does. Why can't the universe have lazy evaluation? And if all particles interact with other particles from their own context, I don't see why a particle can't exist for some contexts, but not exist for others -- just as long as there is eventual consistency. Hey, I'm a programmer. This stuff happens to me all the time :-) At least that's the way I think about it. I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing you were getting at.