4 ms·

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I think quantum mechanics needs either a paradigm shift or another Feynmann who can come along and make this stuff more grokkable. Ever

by umvi 7y ago

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I think quantum mechanics needs either a paradigm shift or another Feynmann who can come along and make this stuff more grokkable. Every explanation I read about entanglement or teleportation or whatever is always amazingly long and complex, no matter what. I'm able to understand other physics concepts like relativity, but quantum mechanics seems too entrenched in mathematics at this point in time. I have a very hard time visualizing what is going on.

reubens 7y ago
I'm visualising a collaboration between Michael Nielsen and 3b1b... mmm
airstrike 7y ago
I found this pretty interesting for my layman's brain, from the same website: https://quantum.country/qcvc https://quantum.country/qcvc
polynomial 7y ago
"If you don't talk to your kids about quantum computing, someone else will." http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3?fbclid=IwAR3vAxIj7atRE1l7ebMgflFYPKZIPA49z0LMXVlQO316zH9UpNZS4CwEFIM http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3?fbclid=IwAR3vAxI...
AcerbicZero 7y ago
I agree. I read this 2 or 3 times, and while I've read about the concept before and I'd like to think I have at least somewhat of an understanding of the "idea" at least, this was a total loss for me. If something can't be explained without resorting to actual Greek characters and irrational numbers, it might be worth trying again. I don't know if I was just grumpy from the struggles of trying to parse this, but having the author interrupt every other paragraph with a tangent about how I shouldn't feel bad for not understanding this immediately didn't particularly help matters.
- klank 7y ago
  > If something can't be explained without resorting to actual Greek characters and irrational numbers, it might be worth trying again. Can you expound on this thought a bit? It's not entirely obvious to my why using math, or mathematical concepts, to explain something necessarily invalidates the explanation.
tel 7y ago
I've been really enjoying Picturing Quantum Processes by Coecke and Kissinger. It approaches QM by exploring Quantum Processes in terms of a sort of formalized flow diagram. Notions like entanglement and teleportation are pretty simple in these terms and occur in the first couple chapters. They're natural consequences of the formalization being described and are explained as physical or visual consequences of moving different elements of the diagram around. This is pretty fascinating because the analysis feels informal given how fluent and visual it is, but it can be completely formalized through a logic of graph transformations which let you translate these graphs into algebraic equations. I haven't finished the book yet, but building from this formalism they begin to demonstrate how this formalism appropriately describes Hilbert spaces (it's an abstract theory to the more concrete model of Hilbert spaces) which then get us very close to standard Quantum formalisms. You can already begin discussing qubits, various standard quantum bases, and basic computational reasoning based on these systems. It's a really excellent!
oceanghost 7y ago
If I may recommend a lecture given at Google Tech Talks-- "The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know", It really clarified some things for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
krapp 7y ago
It's possible that reality at the scale of quantum mechanics is unintuitive enough to our ape brains that math is the simplest way to describe it.
lisper 7y ago
Try this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/quantum-teleportation-demystified.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/quantum-teleportation-de...
kirrent 7y ago
Honestly, it could be at least partially that you don't understand relativity as well as you think you do. In many ways even special relativity is far more complex and at times counter-intuitive than is generally understood by people who have had a popular introduction to the subject and know the Lorentz transformations. That's to say nothing of general relativity which falls prey to oversimplified and disappointing analogy unless you are following the maths. Quantum mechanics is not very amenable to learning by analogy. Especially in an example like this where you're following the evolution of a state vector back and forth and the trick is in how that state is manipulated. In some ways that's a plus. You can't oversimplify important details away. I personally thought this was one of the best pieces for teaching a QC subject that I've ever read. It's clear, it flows, and it's as simple as possible and no simpler.
IIAOPSW 7y ago
The universe is not obliged to be grokkable. You have to accept the reality that QM is just plain weird. The only people who sort of grok QM are the ones who have 'artificially machine learned' it after years of working with it. Arguably that's also true of the people who grok classical physics.

by umvi 7y ago

reubens 7y ago

I'm visualising a collaboration between Michael Nielsen and 3b1b... mmm

airstrike 7y ago

I found this pretty interesting for my layman's brain, from the same website: https://quantum.country/qcvc https://quantum.country/qcvc

polynomial 7y ago

"If you don't talk to your kids about quantum computing, someone else will." http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3?fbclid=IwAR3vAxIj7atRE1l7ebMgflFYPKZIPA49z0LMXVlQO316zH9UpNZS4CwEFIM http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3?fbclid=IwAR3vAxI...

AcerbicZero 7y ago

I agree. I read this 2 or 3 times, and while I've read about the concept before and I'd like to think I have at least somewhat of an understanding of the "idea" at least, this was a total loss for me. If something can't be explained without resorting to actual Greek characters and irrational numbers, it might be worth trying again. I don't know if I was just grumpy from the struggles of trying to parse this, but having the author interrupt every other paragraph with a tangent about how I shouldn't feel bad for not understanding this immediately didn't particularly help matters.

klank 7y ago
> If something can't be explained without resorting to actual Greek characters and irrational numbers, it might be worth trying again. Can you expound on this thought a bit? It's not entirely obvious to my why using math, or mathematical concepts, to explain something necessarily invalidates the explanation.

tel 7y ago

I've been really enjoying Picturing Quantum Processes by Coecke and Kissinger. It approaches QM by exploring Quantum Processes in terms of a sort of formalized flow diagram. Notions like entanglement and teleportation are pretty simple in these terms and occur in the first couple chapters. They're natural consequences of the formalization being described and are explained as physical or visual consequences of moving different elements of the diagram around. This is pretty fascinating because the analysis feels informal given how fluent and visual it is, but it can be completely formalized through a logic of graph transformations which let you translate these graphs into algebraic equations. I haven't finished the book yet, but building from this formalism they begin to demonstrate how this formalism appropriately describes Hilbert spaces (it's an abstract theory to the more concrete model of Hilbert spaces) which then get us very close to standard Quantum formalisms. You can already begin discussing qubits, various standard quantum bases, and basic computational reasoning based on these systems. It's a really excellent!

oceanghost 7y ago

If I may recommend a lecture given at Google Tech Talks-- "The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know", It really clarified some things for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

krapp 7y ago

It's possible that reality at the scale of quantum mechanics is unintuitive enough to our ape brains that math is the simplest way to describe it.

lisper 7y ago

Try this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/quantum-teleportation-demystified.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2014/12/quantum-teleportation-de...

kirrent 7y ago

Honestly, it could be at least partially that you don't understand relativity as well as you think you do. In many ways even special relativity is far more complex and at times counter-intuitive than is generally understood by people who have had a popular introduction to the subject and know the Lorentz transformations. That's to say nothing of general relativity which falls prey to oversimplified and disappointing analogy unless you are following the maths. Quantum mechanics is not very amenable to learning by analogy. Especially in an example like this where you're following the evolution of a state vector back and forth and the trick is in how that state is manipulated. In some ways that's a plus. You can't oversimplify important details away. I personally thought this was one of the best pieces for teaching a QC subject that I've ever read. It's clear, it flows, and it's as simple as possible and no simpler.

IIAOPSW 7y ago

The universe is not obliged to be grokkable. You have to accept the reality that QM is just plain weird. The only people who sort of grok QM are the ones who have 'artificially machine learned' it after years of working with it. Arguably that's also true of the people who grok classical physics.