3 ms·

Hmmm… citation needed?

jiggawatts 4y ago
I know it's not exactly Nature, but I like this one for the approachable and intuitive explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDtAh9IwG-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDtAh9IwG-I Fundamentally, you have to believe in nonsense such as kilometer-sized particles that are also infinitesimal if your point of view is that photons are particles. Many of the "mysteries" of Quantum Mechanics vanish if keep in the back of your mind that QM is just a bag of mathematical tricks that "work" in specific scenarios to solve practical problems, but aren't a model of "what actually occurs". Practically all of it is restricted to statistical predictions related to matter. Remove matter or remove statistics and then the models are no longer valid. I'm not making this up. Go dig up any of the original QM papers and these assumptions and/or constraints are called out in the first few paragraphs.
- wbl 4y ago
  The existence of objects is merely a model of sense data.
- messe 4y ago
  > Many of the "mysteries" of Quantum Mechanics vanish if keep in the back of your mind that QM is just a bag of mathematical tricks that "work" in specific scenarios to solve practical problems, but aren't a model of "what actually occurs". They also tend to start vanishing once you get to studying Quantum Field Theory, which based on your comments I'm not convinced you have. Field Quanta very much "exist" (not getting into a debate on platonism here), and the debate between paticle/wave doesn't. > I'm not making this up. No, somebody else is, and you're buying it.
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
    Yes, some crazy YouTube video logger named Schrödinger. I wouldn't trust him either. What does he know? You're basically arguing that the assumptions of QM theory that is in many of the older papers for some reason stopped mattering. That they've been invalidated... somehow, instead of simply being dropped for brevity in newer papers, assuming that everyone knows them already. All I'm saying is that if you go back to the original version of the theory, they were quite clear about the scope: a statistical theory that applies to ensembles of atoms. In theoretical Physics, especially when dealing with phenomena outside of normal human experience, you have to be very careful with your assumptions otherwise you can make yourself believe all sorts of nonsense. Such as wave function collapse. Or spooky action at a distance. Both of which stem from a misunderstanding of the limits of the scope of a statistical theory that only applies to some types of physical objects.
- tom-thistime 4y ago
  This point of view is interesting. It's also inconsistent with the actual physics. (I'm calling the mainstream view of basic QM 'actual physics' because it has been checked obsessively against experiment for 100 years, not because mainstreamy ideas are automagically correct.)

I know it's not exactly Nature, but I like this one for the approachable and intuitive explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDtAh9IwG-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDtAh9IwG-I Fundamentally, you have to believe in nonsense such as kilometer-sized particles that are also infinitesimal if your point of view is that photons are particles. Many of the "mysteries" of Quantum Mechanics vanish if keep in the back of your mind that QM is just a bag of mathematical tricks that "work" in specific scenarios to solve practical problems, but aren't a model of "what actually occurs". Practically all of it is restricted to statistical predictions related to matter. Remove matter or remove statistics and then the models are no longer valid. I'm not making this up. Go dig up any of the original QM papers and these assumptions and/or constraints are called out in the first few paragraphs.

wbl 4y ago
The existence of objects is merely a model of sense data.
messe 4y ago
> Many of the "mysteries" of Quantum Mechanics vanish if keep in the back of your mind that QM is just a bag of mathematical tricks that "work" in specific scenarios to solve practical problems, but aren't a model of "what actually occurs". They also tend to start vanishing once you get to studying Quantum Field Theory, which based on your comments I'm not convinced you have. Field Quanta very much "exist" (not getting into a debate on platonism here), and the debate between paticle/wave doesn't. > I'm not making this up. No, somebody else is, and you're buying it.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  Yes, some crazy YouTube video logger named Schrödinger. I wouldn't trust him either. What does he know? You're basically arguing that the assumptions of QM theory that is in many of the older papers for some reason stopped mattering. That they've been invalidated... somehow, instead of simply being dropped for brevity in newer papers, assuming that everyone knows them already. All I'm saying is that if you go back to the original version of the theory, they were quite clear about the scope: a statistical theory that applies to ensembles of atoms. In theoretical Physics, especially when dealing with phenomena outside of normal human experience, you have to be very careful with your assumptions otherwise you can make yourself believe all sorts of nonsense. Such as wave function collapse. Or spooky action at a distance. Both of which stem from a misunderstanding of the limits of the scope of a statistical theory that only applies to some types of physical objects.
tom-thistime 4y ago
This point of view is interesting. It's also inconsistent with the actual physics. (I'm calling the mainstream view of basic QM 'actual physics' because it has been checked obsessively against experiment for 100 years, not because mainstreamy ideas are automagically correct.)