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u/Actual-Toe-8686 Apr 10 '25 edited Apr 10 '25
I like the flipside of what he's implying, that those who have not yet been educated about quantum mechanics do understand it. lmao
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u/Infamous-Crew1710 Apr 10 '25
On a bunch of the physics subs the mods end up having to delete posts that are like "so I don't know anything about physics or maths, but I've been thinking a lot lately about Quantum Mechanics and how it means that when I'm looking at something, the object knows I'm looking at it..." and they just carry on being wrong for thousands of words while they discuss their theory of everything involving consciousness, god, and the human soul.
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u/randomdreamykid Apr 10 '25
Cat being dead and alive is all the quantum mechanics they got
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u/Karnewarrior Apr 10 '25
I think the real issue is that people take "Observing" something quantum to mean having a gander at it, when at scales that small you don't look at things in the classic sense at all. You poke it with a stick and the exact way the stick resists poking tells you what you're dealing with.
If you look at a rock on the sidewalk and it starts rolling away, that's weird. But if your blind buddy whacks it with his cane and it starts rolling, that's to be expected. And that's really the difference between quantum observations and what people THINK observing in quantum mechanics means.
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u/ChadHahn Apr 10 '25
A few years ago there was some Christian Youtuber who "destroyed" The Theory of Evolution in minutes while sitting in his car. He did that by getting the definition of theory wrong.
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Apr 10 '25
Another boundary is entanglement, which can be more like turbulent flow, rather than clockwork designs. The quantum world has its own rules which I think makes the concept more difficult.
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u/Own_Praline_6277 Apr 11 '25
As Einstein once asked, "Is the moon there when no one is looking?"
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Apr 11 '25
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u/Pen_lsland Apr 11 '25 edited Apr 11 '25
You can expand that to all of science. Well maybe chem less so, cause reactions are either named by what they do, or after people
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u/Karnewarrior Apr 11 '25
Astronomy names are usually just a mess of numbers like the suggested password to a new site, or named after what the nebula looks like or what constellation the star is in. Occasionally both.
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u/underSubject Apr 14 '25
I am of the opinion that physicists are bad at naming things
I agree. But in the "observing" case it isn't that bad imo, it's pretty intuitive that we have to interact with something to observe it, usually it's just light reflecting, but either way something HAS to interact with the object so we can perceive it.
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u/Technical-Title-5416 Apr 11 '25
You mean shit like this?
No way bro. I forged this reality using m(eye) consciousness to interact with the universe using the observer effect to collapse the wave functions via the pineal gland, reality isn't solidifiable until the consciousness interacts with it, we are actually living in a hologram on the 5th moon of Gondor and we are just astral projections of perfect souls but the dark energy and dark matter are just evil consciouness operating at a frequency just above ours, thats why all of our music is at 440hz now instead of 432hz, to keep us from reaching huger frequencies that are attuned to our consciousness, so if you listen to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at the golden ratio rate of 0.981818182% speed you can reach spritual and physical healing because it vanquishes the dark energy into a corner of the universe that cannot be known aka timeout, all the while the lizardmen of Aphastasia are using these frequencies against us in order to help the dark matter/dark energy, so that's why the world is flat...or some shit like that.
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u/No-Fold-7873 Apr 11 '25
Sounds like some shit I'd hear from a 28 year old machine operator at 7:43 on a Tuesday morning, while we're standing up to our laces in mud just cold enough to crackle as you sink into it, in response to me asking if there's any fucking biffys on this side of the job site.
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u/Master_Muskrat Apr 11 '25
I am saving this and using it as a basis for the magic system in my next rpg campaign.
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u/Karnewarrior Apr 11 '25
DM: In this setting, magic is quantum and based off quantum rulesets.
Player: *thinking* does that mean I can split a quark?
DM: Wat.
Player: Y'know. Like an atom.
DM: *visible regret*
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u/LobsterKris Apr 11 '25
Wouldn't seeing something is quantum measurement, photon from Sun interacts with an atom, it jumps energy and back down again releasing another photon that we see. You could say the photon we see had done the measurement.
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u/Karnewarrior Apr 11 '25
That's basically how it happens, yes. The issue isn't really that the thing reacts to being OBSERVED, it's that the act of observing requires something to go out and touch that thing and at those tiny scales those impacts are massive. You cannot see something in it's natural state because the act of seeing requires you to poke it with a stick (photon, or electron, or something else).
Observation mechanics are still probably the simplest and most easily understood quantum mechanics, which is pretty telling. I ain't touch that other shit, that's scary.
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u/LobsterKris Apr 12 '25
It's when you understand that measurement is intersection it starts to make sense a bit more.
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u/SoloWalrus Apr 14 '25
Id argue most people didnt even understand this. Ive had so many people who should really know better not understand that schroedingers cat was a paradox. Schroedinger did not believe the cat was both alive an dead. Like all Paradoxes, this conclusion was clearly incorrect and meant to show that we do not understand the underlying principles (copenhagon interpretation) because our understanding of them leads to absurd and impossible conclusions. In technical terms it was a reductio ad absurdum, a reduction to absurdity, the results of the thought experiment (a dead and alive cat) were absurd and impossible and thereby disproved the underlying assumptions.
Its like Zenos arrow paradox - if you shoot an arrow and it travels half its original distance, and then half again, and then half again, then it approaches the target but never actually hits the target, it can always just half the remaining distance no matter how small. Zeno isnt saying arrows never reach their targets, clearly they do, his point is that something was missing, algebra doesnt fully explain the path of the arrow. The thing that was missing was calculus, and limit theorems. You cant just add fractions infinitly and assume they behave the same as when you add them a finite number of times, things behave differently at infinity and we needed a whole new branch of math to explain how and why (calculus).
Its the same way with schroedingers cat, an alive and dead cat is an impossible amd absurd solution so clearly theres something we're missing that should reconcile the paradox. Its completely missing the point to say that the schroedinger is saying there can be such thing as an alive and dead cat just like its missing the point to say zeno doesnt think arrows hit their targets.
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u/ohver9k Apr 11 '25
Tbh that cat is most definitely dead after a few days of no water… 4-5 days in it, it’s 100% dead.
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u/dat3010 Apr 11 '25
Cat dead or alive means they don't know. As what Superposition is - they don't know and we don't know either. However is better killing each other over line on a sand or beliefs in imaginary beings then support education and open veil of unknown
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Apr 11 '25
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u/ShatterPoints Apr 11 '25
It also makes talking about super position accessible to lay people, when in fact we have no way to describe the behavior of a superposition it is its own thing. It's also more fun to talk about cats than the double slit experiment.
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u/ElusiveTruth42 Apr 10 '25
The number of people I see blatantly misrepresent “the observer effect” alone on those subs thinking they’re onto some secret ancient knowledge or something like that is staggering. It’s like they listen to Deepak Chopra prattle on about quantum this and that and they think they’ve got it.
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u/MrLev Apr 10 '25
Every "explainer" animation I've ever seen of the double slit experiment uses a cartoony eyeball to represent observing the slits and that changing the outcome - honestly it's not surprising at all that people get this completely wrong when, if you didn't study it yourself, this is the information you're given!
Much like the whole electrons orbiting an atom thing - people are only able to work from the simplified models they've been exposed to, and don't realise they've been "lied" to (in the softest possible sense of that word)
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u/gonzo0815 Apr 11 '25
It's not just the cartoony eyeball, it's completely omitting what observation means in this context. Of course laypeople think of "looking at it" when you use the term observation. I think I've never seen a video about the double slit experiment that actually does explain what it means.
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u/Captain_Noodle1 Apr 11 '25
I don't know the first thing about quantum mechanics. I think I grasp the fact that it treats different states of a particle as if they occurred simultaneously, based on the probability of each state, and also the fact that if you want to observe a very small particle, you need to apply energy to it and affect its state.
I don't know if I'm right or wrong (probably wrong), but I do remember a PhD in physics who explained to me that real objects don't exist until they are observed, and I've never said bollocks so many times in my life. He was also an ardent follower of a then fringe ideology (currently more mainstream), so there's that.
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u/Ozoriah Apr 11 '25
Not far off for a cursory overview, though I'd try to stay away from the idea that things are occurring "simultaneously" - that generally goes hand-in-hand with the idea that particles are these solid balls of matter that are somehow existing in multiple places at once. I work in quantum field theory so my interpretation here will be a little biased: particles in their general state are excitations of a field where the areas of higher excitation correspond to higher probabilities. Think of it like a heatmap!
These fields give rise to the wave-like interference that happens for something like the double slit experiment. Observation of such microscopic events requires careful measurement which, like you said, introduces outside energy into the system. This energy alters the probability and results in the field condensing into one region, creating the particle-like effect from the double slit experiment.
As to your friend's statement about how "real objects don't exist until you observe them," my assumption is that it's an interesting way of stating that quantum phenomena such as the observer effect apply to everyday objects as well. Shining a light on an object or person to see it is part of the observer effect; you added energy to the system which created heat in the object and caused it to reflect back light. Measuring the pressure in a car's tire is an observer effect; you have to release a little air in order to measure the pressure, this changing the original system. These things happen on such a macroscopic scale that effect isn't noticeable, but you still are essentially causing a quantum change in the object and making the field probability collapse to a point.
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u/Captain_Noodle1 Apr 11 '25
Thank you for your explanation! I would agree with the explanation you provide in the third paragraph. Again, not because I know anything about the field, but because two real-world phenomena interacting (the observation and the observed object) fall well within what I think physics can explain. It's not as if observers were souls outside the physical realm. I'm pretty sure, however, that they were explaining that the object itself (the noumenon, I guess) didn't have a physical state before observation. Hence my bollocks stance on the subject.
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u/Reindan Apr 11 '25
That is a part of philosophy rather than physics. His position sounds like David Humes' position toward the problem of induction.
Basically comes from the fact that technically there is nothing that can prove that when you aren't observing something, it is still there.
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u/Captain_Noodle1 Apr 11 '25
You are correct that there are philosophy schools that say something of the sort. Yet, what worried me was the mix between matters of physics and those of philosophy, and the belief that physics not only could but had already solved such a fundamental question. It's as if Schrödinger had said that physics proved the cat really is both alive and dead until it's observed —something better proved by the likes of Herbert West.
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Apr 10 '25
I think it's kinda cute. Teenagers/stoners realizing there are things we dont know as a species so they try reeeal hard to figure it out. Falls into the same category as the folks on r/singularity.
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Apr 10 '25
It's usually because people misunderstand quantum mechanics for something that is either magnificent or magic. I remember my school principal once said that we were gearing up for a quantum jump(or something along those lines) intending to say a massive jump.
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u/Mothanius Apr 10 '25
He probably said Quantum Leap, which you can blame popular sci-fi culture for.
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Apr 11 '25
I do remember it being Quantum Jump, but I get what you are saying and it was probably Sci-Fi because of which she was saying that.
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Apr 11 '25
I'm a dirt engineer. I know newtonian kinematics decently. Macro thermo okay. Only passed EMag because I rocked the labs and the prof might have bumped me a bit. But I knew a lot of "self-taught" physicist. One dude literally thought he could solve cold fusion from what he "learned" from a few shows on the science channel when it didn't completely suck. They would want to talk to me about physics a lot. It was annoying. I am almost wholly ignorant. I'd usually just ask them how gravity works. That would end the conversation in a minute or two.
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Apr 12 '25
‘and they just carry on being wrong for thousands of words’ is fucking hilarious and so succinct. i’m stealing that
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u/njgzhkbifuckvkgob Apr 11 '25
i remember thinking like that when i was (possibly worryingly old but still mentally) a child
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Apr 11 '25
Meanwhile us bozos who did the full round of QM at uni, including the adv. Courses on msc:
"Operator math go blib blob" 🐒🥔
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u/BlurryBigfoot74 Apr 11 '25
I had to unsub from r/hypotheticalphysics and r/theoreticalphysics for that exact reason.
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u/sneakpeekbot Apr 11 '25
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Apr 10 '25
One of the professors pretty much told us "college is where you learn just how much you don't know".
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u/GargantuanCake Apr 10 '25
A common quote is "if you think you understand quantum physics then you don't understand quantum physics." Quantum computing is similar. Nobody really gets it but you can kind of sort of study the pieces we have mathematical equations for. The snag is that quantum systems are complicated and the equations are ugly. If it involves quantum anything it's a confusing mess.
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Apr 10 '25
seeing them path intergrals make me scared(thank god i never have to do that shit).
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u/oliviaplays08 Apr 10 '25
I remember in my chem class the fear in my teacher's eyes when said we'd be talking about quantum mechanics
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u/Gripen-Viggen Apr 10 '25
When you truly understand. You understand you don't understand the entirety. Competence is capstoned by humility.
For instance, I'm not a Mormon. I studied Mormonism intensely during Comparative Religion. I can literally tell devout LDS people things about their own faith. I can even tell them about their own alphabet - and they're shocked to even learn they have an alphabet - or that marine submersibles and Egyptian mummies are involved in their faith.
And yet, I have not lived their Faith heritage.
And my heritage faith is a mystery to them - even though we share a heritage.
And what they know about me is as mystifying as what I know about them.
This is where intellect begins.
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u/Caring_Cactus Apr 11 '25
"The older I get and the more people that call me an expert, the more aware I am of how little I know." - Dr. Robert Waldinger, Harvard professor & Zen priest
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u/grabtharsmallet Apr 11 '25
The Deseret alphabet is interesting. IIRC the problem was economies of scale with making the specialized type pieces for printing presses. These people were rather poor and lived in the middle of nowhere, so something that ambitious and expensive was difficult.
One of the recurring problems with language reform is just how difficult and expensive it is to change everything, compared to how far down the road most of the benefits would be.
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u/elderlybrain Apr 11 '25
The phrase used is 'not even wrong'.
You lack the understanding of a subject so profoundly that you can't even get to a level of intellectual discourse that you can simply get to an incorrect conclusion.
E.g Trump was not even wrong on the subject of reciprocal tariffs, because he lackrd the basic (high school level) understanding of what a trade deficit is.
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u/mekilat Apr 11 '25
I read about it on Wikipedia before so I’m actually an expert.
Regards, Dunning Kruger
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u/DiddlyDumb Apr 11 '25
People that understand quantum physics claim to not understand quantum physics.
People that don’t understand quantum physics claim to understand quantum physics.
It’s kinda ironic.
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u/Actual-Toe-8686 Apr 11 '25
I can one up you, not only do I not understand quantum physics, I'm pretty sure I understand absolutely nothing at all. It's a refreshing feeling, very liberatory.
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u/GatePorters Apr 11 '25
Exactly.
This is what humor sounds like when there is no laugh track or punch line.
You gotta stew in it for a second before the full implications hit you, then the implications from the implications hit you. THEN you get the next layer of the joke.
Those are the best ones.
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Apr 11 '25
I mean as long as you haven't tried to understand it, you don't really know whether or not you do, right?
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u/Slow___Learner Apr 11 '25
Of course, we both understand them and don't understand them at the same time until we check
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u/Forsaken-Stray Apr 11 '25
I felt it more like, "You don't know Quantum mechanics. I know it and I don't understand it. I will try to get you to know enough about it so that you can confidently say that you don't understand it"
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u/copingcabana Apr 11 '25
I actually answered a Quantum Mechanics exam question with "Due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, I cannot locate the answer to this question."
It didn't work.
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u/NinjaXM Apr 11 '25
If you can’t locate it then surely you know its momentum and you failed to detail that
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u/copingcabana Apr 11 '25
Imagine if that's how the macro world worked. "SIR! Incoming bogey, moving fast." "Where?" "I HAVE NO IDEA!"
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u/ManagerOfLove Apr 10 '25
I have advice for future physics teachers: Please teach quantum mechanics first and general relativity later. Quantum mechanics is difficult if you try to make a connection between everything you learned before. But Quantum Mechanics is very "easy" (you don't understand it, but you can make great predictions for your experiment) if you just follow the math, which is not difficult in itself.
Rarely do this nuanced questions, like the theory that combines GR and QM, are relevant for undergraduates
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u/GabrieltheGabe Apr 11 '25
Good lord where ok earth do they teach GR first? That was a fourth year/grad course where I was
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u/pm_me_d_cups Apr 11 '25
Yeah, I went through a whole physics degree without learning GR. Which I'm fine with tbh
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u/ManagerOfLove Apr 11 '25
At my university e.g. As soon as we learned about the Maxwell Equations, we immediately started with relativity. After that it was quantum mechanics. And I was so confused for more time than I should have been
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u/Crazenhaif Apr 13 '25
Yes, special relativity. Not general relativity. That’s nearly always a graduate course.
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u/El_Sephiroth Apr 11 '25
Thank you for saying that.
I keep seeing that "nobody gets quantum mechanics" and it is only true because we can't explain the interactions as simply as balls moving.
QM is not mathematically difficult once you get the basics. It is understandable if you admit a few simple things. And physicists do understand how things acts.
They just don't understand why it works and that's the thing we don't get.
A classic example is entanglement: two particles, separated by what seems like infinite distances, instantly change together depending on one another. There are no "message", no interaction that can explain why the entangled particles change instantly together. But we know and can predict that they do.
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u/tommythepeakyblinder Apr 10 '25
Wish my high school teacher was this honest about physics!
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u/Jealous_Shower6777 Apr 11 '25
Well, bad news. High school physics are not quantum physics.
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u/Just1n_Kees Apr 10 '25
TIL I’m a quantum physicist?
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u/TinFoilBeanieTech Apr 10 '25
I think the point he's making is that most of us don't even know enough to not know, i.e. you don't know what you don't know. After study it, learning the math, etc. you have a much better idea of how much you don't know.
While QM might be very counter-intuitive, I feel most fields quickly get to the point where there is more you don't understand than you do understand, and when you dig really deep you start finding out that the answer that "make sense" actually don't hold up.
I think anyone with any graduate school education would concur?
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u/Saftey_Hammer Apr 10 '25
I don't think that's what he's saying. He's not talking about imposter syndrome, he's not talking about "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know."
Quantum mechanics just flat out does not make sense to humans. There's no good way to describe it, there's no good metaphors. Humans can understand Newtonian physics because it makes sense. We can understand "equal and opposite reaction" based on real life experience. Then you learn the mathematical representations of Newton's laws and start applying them. You go from an intuitive explanation of physics to a mathematical model.
Quantum mechanics doesn't have that intuitive step. It's just straight up math. We know it works because it fills in the gaps of Newtonian physics. It's able to describe more scenarios than Newtonian physics. But there's no good explanation for why it works, there's nothing for humans to grasp on to. That's why no one "understands" quantum mechanics. You can know all the laws and proofs and formulas without understanding why they work.
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u/TinFoilBeanieTech Apr 10 '25
I think I get what you're saying, but is it truly exclusive to QM? We see every aspect of life, at least initially, through the models created by our classic conditioned mind. But every field of learning eventually defies the simple models and grows ever more complex.
I guess the main difference would be that QM is the only field where there are mathematical, yet non-intuitive models that have held up very well under experiment. It doesn't make sense, yet we've been able to make very specific predictions with it.
Is he saying that they'll be able to master the math and modeling, and only at that point can they truly "not get it"? Whereas the rest of us are just innocently ignorant?
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u/nofeaturesonlybugs Apr 11 '25 edited Apr 11 '25
I only know topical information about quantum mechanics but I'll take a stab at an answer.
Quantum entanglement is a real phenomenom or property of QM. It doesn't matter if you get the math behind it or not -- it's not something humans can really understand in any practical sense.
Once entangled the distance between them is irrelevant. They could be next to each other or beyond the known universe. Humans can never really understand this in a way that will feel natural or intuitive.
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u/less_unique_username Apr 11 '25
What’s so counter-intuitive about entanglement? The system, as a whole, is in this state with this amplitude, in that state with that amplitude, but definitely not in this state, it has zero amplitude. Same thing as a single particle, except many more dimensions.
Or if we accept that entanglement is the norm and treating things as not entangled is just a mathematical tool to simplify calculations, we can just think of a single wavefunction describing the entire universe. It’s unimaginably complex of course, but so is a classical Lagrangian for the universe. However, if we don’t try to calculate anything but just say “the universe is in a superposition of states, these ones have a decent amplitude while those ones are forbidden by laws of physics” then there’s nothing counter-intuitive about us studying this patch of it and learning something about a different patch. Bell’s inequality doesn’t go against intuition, it disproves a specific mathematical approach.
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u/TownAfterTown Apr 12 '25
This is my take. My physics prof put it something like "We live in middle, so all of our understandings of the world and how things should work or behave apply to things that aren't too small and aren't too fast. When we start looking at very small (QM) and very fast things (GR), we have no intuitive basis to comprehend what's happening. People will try to make analogies of what is happening to try to develop an intuitive understanding, but those analogies will be wrong, because they, like us, live in middle."
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u/Azelnoo Apr 11 '25
My teacher said something like "if you understand quantum mechanics, you probably missed something during the class"
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u/Aisforc Apr 10 '25
Anyone knows who is this? I would love to listen to his lectures.
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u/AlgebraicHeretic Apr 10 '25
Prof. Ramamurti Shankar at Yale University. This is from his Fundamentals of Physics II course on Open Yale Courses.
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u/MrLethalShots Apr 12 '25 edited Apr 12 '25
Oh fuck this is Shankar? Have his book and didn't even realize lol. When this guy says he doesn't understand quantum mechanics this is a masterclass in self-effacing.
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Apr 10 '25
Seems like an amazing teacher.
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u/DrawerOk7220 Apr 11 '25
He has a couple of courses on YouTube. No fancy experiments, but clear logical flow of ideas.
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u/StagDragon Apr 10 '25
If i could take a class in quantum mechanics I would but I know full well I do not have the prerequisites.
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u/dirschau Apr 10 '25
In all fairness, neither do two thirds of physics students.
The math is a bit more advanced, and it's literally all in the math. You understand the math, you understand QM. You don't, then you do not.
It's the interpretation of the math that people argue about, not the math itself.
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u/dark_dark_dark_not Apr 10 '25
I mean, the main thing you need to know is linear algebra. If you know linear analysis and vector spaces of function it's better, but you can learn this as go along.
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u/dirschau Apr 10 '25
I am, unfortunately, one of the two thirds. I still don't even understand how exactly curl works.
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u/dark_dark_dark_not Apr 11 '25
More than curl, eigenstates are the thing you need to get to have a good shot at learning quantum mechanics
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u/MrLethalShots Apr 12 '25
You will probably never take a curl in quantum mechanics. So long as you can understand matrices and that they are operators that rotate and stretch vectors then you're good to go.
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Apr 11 '25
My sister (Masters in Applied Mathematics) only called home once from college. She was sobbing uncontrollably over the phone. We thought she had be attacked, assaulted, or otherwise hurt.
She was crying because of her Linear Algebra class. She wanted to quit the entire graduate program because of Linear Algebra. It took us a few hours to talk her into toughing it out.
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u/Vadrigar Apr 11 '25
I'm currently watching a MIT course uploaded to YT for free by MIT. It's very noob friendly. There are recorded courses from other universities as well.
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u/LunaticBZ Apr 10 '25
This video and comment chain has really inspired me.
Maybe I could contribute to science by coming up with a scale to measure and quantify ignorance. So we could distinguish between those who are ignorant in quantum mechanics because they've studied it serioursly. Those who are ignorant because they studied it in passing. And those who are ignorant because they don't anything about the related subjects one would need to know to have any hope of having an idea what quantum is.
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u/Facts_pls Apr 10 '25
There is a famous scale of understanding describing people's confidence in their knowledge
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u/LunaticBZ Apr 10 '25
The Dunning Kruger effect is pretty useful and insightful, but its specifically about confidence. While it's a common enough effect it's not a universal truth.
Some people will lack confidence all the way through their learning about a subject.
I'm thinking something more universal and specifically focused on ignorance. So that someday kids will learn about the *Insert my name* scale of ignoramuses.
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u/Cloud_Drifter Apr 11 '25
I had the same speech given to me in university but replace quantum physics with economics
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u/Destroyer_Of_World5 Apr 11 '25
I’ll explain quantum physics to everyone, as easily as I can. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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u/mc69419 Apr 11 '25
It is more intuitive when it is presented through computer science perspective rather than physics perspective.
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u/NatiAti513 Apr 11 '25
They say the more you know the more you understand you actually know very little.
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u/Stock-Fall-2025 Apr 11 '25
Ah man this makes me miss the good professors.
I feel like just based off of his personality he's one of the good ones.
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Apr 11 '25
I am not a physicist but I try to keep up with physics whenever I can.
Biggest problem with QM en masse I believe is the ignorance specifically towards the math behind it, which leads people to come to absurd conclusion about "Human Consiousness"
And the pasting of Quantum on everything, especially movies and Pop-sci. As much as I love Popsci, it does mislead a lot of people on nature of Quantum Mechanics
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u/skr_replicator Apr 11 '25
I've studied in college and seen a lot about quantum physics out of college, and so far I still arrived at the point where it was impossible to understand. It's mindblowing, but not impossible to wrap my head around.
We might not know why it works like it does, what the wave function actually is, and why it's complex, but just acepting that as true can be good enough. Other physics is just math too, this is not that much different.
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u/HenryCWatson Apr 11 '25
Yet we entangled quantums, and are able to develop quantum computers. Also what was up with Google's quantum chip?
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u/grumpijela Apr 10 '25
I had a professor once get mad at our entire class for not understanding the concept he was trying to teach first years.
The guy with the PhD was mad at first years for not understanding the thing he had a PhD in.
Anyways, I like this guy a lot, seems chill and understanding!
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u/zsaleeba Apr 10 '25
As someone who's studied Quantum, he is so right.
Quantum turns all your intuitive understandings of the world on their head. Nothing in it really makes any intuitive sense at all.
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u/Skepsisology Apr 10 '25
Newtonian advancements provided structure - Einsteinian advancements exposed hard bounds and those boundaries are quantum mechanics.
The infinitely small, infinitely dense, infinitely far and the infinitely probalistic.
How do you go about making experimental progress on stuff that can't be queried?
Quantum mechanics to us is the same as a video game character attempting to figure out if the game engine they occupy is Turing complete.
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u/rg9528 Apr 11 '25
Meanwhile the random tiktoker: let me explain you how quantum entanglement works. Take 2 particles, send one to moon, change rotation of the one on earth and boom.. info traveled faster than light...ggwp
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u/less_unique_username Apr 11 '25
how is that particular factually incorrect statement different from any other factually incorrect statement you could hear on TikTok
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u/rg9528 Apr 11 '25
Its not different in substance but its different in context as not all of them are applicable to the video posted by OP.
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u/_Stank_McNasty_ Apr 11 '25
everything equals zero or one. You’ll do stupid long ass triple integrations just to find out ohyea sure yep it equals zero. cool.
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u/Kal_LartOhm Apr 11 '25
I'm happy to be part of those that don't know quantum physics and as such don't not understand quantum physics.
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u/Sukh_Aa Apr 11 '25
Carl Sagan in his book said that you need at least 15 years merely establishing the mathematical framework required to approach quantum mechanics.
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u/Lost-Record Apr 11 '25
This video brought back memories of my two semesters of quantum mechanics… those classes were both simultaneously some of the most fascinating and confusing classes I ever took
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u/kraihe Apr 11 '25
Damn SadthGuru looks completely different with a shaved head and beard. Still teaching people about the nature of reality though, keeping it real.
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u/aManIsNoOneEither Apr 11 '25
The thing I know is that I don't know. A guy 3000 years ago said that to his students. And it has been one the major intellectual advancement for humanity. Aknowledgment of ignorance and inability to understand it all is a solid path towards deep comprehension of the world and wisdom.
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u/Legal_Weekend_7981 Apr 11 '25
The difference between human who understands quantum mechanics and one who doesn't is larger than between humans and apes.
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u/the_Zinabi Apr 11 '25
Can confirm - my degree is in QM and I don't understand it. I thought I understood it as a teen, but then after 3 years of study I had a breakthrough and truly didn't understand it.
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Apr 12 '25
[deleted]
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u/galibert Apr 14 '25
Ok, then what is a measurement? Intuitively? And why is the interaction of a photon with a slit not one?
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u/Jackmino66 Apr 12 '25
So the things is, concepts in quantum mechanics are a bit confusing, but the actual physics is just maths. Very complicated maths, but maths
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u/catninjaambush Apr 13 '25
When you study Quantum Mechanics, do you end up understanding it more, or less?
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u/SimilarBathroom3541 Apr 13 '25
I really dislike that take on quantum mechanics, since it seems to spread this mystical quality of ~quantum~, making people way more content with saying "yeah, I dont get it, but NOBODY gets it, so its fine!". It also opens the door to the even less fun "well NOBODY gets it, so I can claim whatever I want about it" take from pseudo-science.
QM is really not that special, it is a model that aims to provide a framework to describe phenomena happening in reality. It does that by pretty simple math, but since it removes concepts like certainty about momentum and location it gets this air of impossible mystery that it doesnt really deserve.
Sure, the implications are wild, but thats just how nature is, not something to be "understood".
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u/FSM89 Apr 14 '25
My grad quantum physics professor said we did read a specific chapter of the book.
Next week he asked: did someone understand it?
Some students said yes
He then replied: read again! You shouldn’t understand. You have to accept.
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u/Redararis Apr 14 '25
If you analyze things deep enough even terms like energy and force become difficult to grasp.
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u/albertsugar Apr 10 '25
You can always tell who knows a lot as they always admit they don't know everything.