I've found that, at least for me personally, quantum mechanics is much less strange when you ignore the sensationalistic, new-age mysticism quips and focuses on

I've found that, at least for me personally, quantum mechanics is much less strange when you ignore the sensationalistic, new-age mysticism quips and focuses on the actual math itself. Let me give some examples: "A particle travels through all possible paths at once and only chooses one when you look at it". No, a particle's wavefunction is a vector in an abstract Hilbert space that can be expressed as a linear combination of basis state vectors (|Ψ> = Σ α_i|Φ_i>), and it collapses (decohers) upon measurement to one of them with probability |α_i|^2 when those basis vectors correspond to the observable's eigenstates. Or, if that's too complicated: a wavefunction of a particle is just a function that can be represented as the weighted sum of other functions, each representing a different path that the particle can traverse. When you measure the particle, the result corresponds to only one of those functions. Perhaps the first explanation requires you to Google a little bit or pick up a math textbook if you're not familiar with some of the terms, and perhaps the second explanation isn't quite accurate enough, but goodness, they both make a heck of a lot more sense to me than some kind of magical "everything at once" phrase! Another phrase, this one from the article: "The rules of quantum mechanics allow — actually, require — energy (and, by E=mc2, mass) to appear 'out of nowhere,' from nothing." No they don't. HΨ = EΨ is the time-independent Schrödinger equation. E is a constant -- a real number. It doesn't change. Furthermore, the article goes on to mention the energy-time uncertainty principle, and a lot of other articles mention that energy can be "borrowed" to create virtual particles out of nothing. This also isn't true, for two reasons. Firstly, there is no energy-time uncertainty principle, because time isn't an operator. You can derive a relationship between the two, but it's not the same kind as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. And secondly, virtual particles are a mathematical artifact of a technique called perturbation theory (a technique used in many fields, not just QM). Perturbation theory is just one means of solving an equation, and if you try to solve the equation with a different technique, you have no need for virtual particles. I'm really glad that so many articles on quantum physics are "popping into existence". It's a cool subject. But I'm worried that these inaccurate little catchphrases I hear all the time are causing more headaches, confusion, and sensationalism than quantum mechanics already causes by itself alone. (There are articles written by actual physicists and quantum information scientists that clarify physics concepts to non-scientists in an easily understandable, yet also accurate way. Scott Aaronson and Matt Strassler are two that come to mind.)