This always bugs me. Quantum Mechanics isn’t actually that difficult. It has some nasty maths, yes, but that’s mostly slog work, rather than an impossibility. 90% of it is the Schroedinger’s equation + boundary conditions.
The main issue is that you have to abandon the particle model of reality. This is deeply engrained into our brains. If you try and understand it as “Particles + extras”, you will fail. You have to think of it as “Waves + extras”. It then, suddenly makes logical sense.
It does have some interesting implications, however, about deeper reality however. E.g. what exactly IS decoherence, from a physical point of view. Also, what is physically happening, dimensionally, when a wave is complex, or even pure imaginary. These are beyond the scope of QM however.
The big problem isn’t that the math is hard, or that’s often impossible to visualise. The problem is that a whole bunch of charlatans intentionally misinterpret what “observing” is in QM, to make money off of gullible victims.
To elaborate on this, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of a single particle, is a wave equation and hence a lot of classical intuition from e.g. electrodynamics can be applied.
It is many-body systems, i.e. systems composed of many interacting particles, which is not only mathematically complex but can also defy classical expectations due to emerging phenomena, etc.
This always bugs me. Quantum Mechanics isn’t actually that difficult. It has some nasty maths, yes, but that’s mostly slog work, rather than an impossibility. 90% of it is the Schroedinger’s equation + boundary conditions.
The main issue is that you have to abandon the particle model of reality. This is deeply engrained into our brains. If you try and understand it as “Particles + extras”, you will fail. You have to think of it as “Waves + extras”. It then, suddenly makes logical sense.
It does have some interesting implications, however, about deeper reality however. E.g. what exactly IS decoherence, from a physical point of view. Also, what is physically happening, dimensionally, when a wave is complex, or even pure imaginary. These are beyond the scope of QM however.
The big problem isn’t that the math is hard, or that’s often impossible to visualise. The problem is that a whole bunch of charlatans intentionally misinterpret what “observing” is in QM, to make money off of gullible victims.
To elaborate on this, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of a single particle, is a wave equation and hence a lot of classical intuition from e.g. electrodynamics can be applied. It is many-body systems, i.e. systems composed of many interacting particles, which is not only mathematically complex but can also defy classical expectations due to emerging phenomena, etc.
Unless you observe the double slit experiment, and then suddenly it’s particles again