I got huge problem with QM because i know little math.
Bit more complicated algebraic equation and I don't even try to read it.
QM seems to go deep in laws that differ from ones that our minds evolved for.
Example - if we learn Newtonian physics, we learn maybe one new concept at a time. Few individual concepts don't make good insight but because it explains phenomena of everyday movement we can map it on previous knowledge, fill gaps with intuition. That is nice and natural way to learn.
Then history takes a turn and we have to learn laws that need lot more work to fit in our intuitive world view.
R.Feynman explained this very nicely in one of his interviews.
Maybe only reason QM is hard is that it is too new and too different mind model from anything before.
How did pioneers got so far so quick, when huge masses of people do way worse on already obtained and explained laws of quantum physics? Even Einstein had much more problem with it than bit more involved researchers.
That is good question to answer not only for benefit of QM research but for understanding of ourselves. What does it mean to learn something most unrelated to your basic knowledge.
For me answer to that comes almost easy. Critical thinking has been slowly developed for millennia, marginalized as useless overthinking or simply philosophy.
To truly know something at its full depth you have to be able to investigate in steps like these:
- What what is it that makes something different from similar things.
- Is that sufficient to make it essentially different or does it only change the name
- How is it, in a way, essentially the same as other different things with different names and functions
It can be hard time consuming work to understand everything like that. We probably do that only with most important things in our lives (hopefully). We can get thru everyday life with recognition of general situations we are in and what premade optimized thought should be used. Deeper investigation of things naturally is left for very stressful or curiously playful situations.
For QM pioneers there were two factors that made it exceptionally easy to learn:
- Deeper knowledge. As it was top cutting edge science, They had to find and check everything new by themselves. It was impossible for them to do easy thing and use pre-made concepts.
- As it was their life work with real possibility of gaining global recognition, they were strongly motivated to the strongest research possible.
After few loudest discoveries everyone's motivation diminished. Not only because there was less to discover but because fame got harder to attain. Disagreement between interpretations indicates that depth of understanding differs widely even up to this day.
It's interesting because when it becomes clear that even entitled persons cannot understand each others interpretations, maybe it can turn out to be transformative to culture of teaching and learning, you know, the one that is in a very sad state. Maybe education can move away from role of social conditioning and take a good hard look of what learning really is about. Or maybe we need more important and harder discoveries for that to happen.
What a long rant :D tnx if you read it
As for my previous question, what makes one believe that there is state transfer instead of hidden variable, I was able to imagine right after I defined it as a clear question. Just after I clicked submit button. And I must say ability to imagine in somewhat familiar form makes it so much easier to understand.
I imagine that 2 entangled particles are like 2 solid spheres. They are opaque and look the same. Whenever you cut one in half you see the cutting angle against inner structure and imprint of the cutting tool let's say knife. At the same time knife gets imprinted from inner structure of this first sphere
You can read information about spheres insides but somewhat masked with information about knife. Same with knife, you can read information that you didn't know but it is limited by the process. You can never get much better deal of information because all knifes and spheres come in similar sizes.. and too big knife just doesn't cut it
You still have other solid whole mystery sphere left and whenever and wherever and with whatever you cut it. It will cut in same angle and it will give that same information only this time what's missing is the part that you already have from first ball. You may use different knife but even that by its specific imprint won't take missing information away.
From two pieces of matter you get information that describes whole.
Imagine like this and you can draw intuitive conclusions.
Example:
Things on quantum scale has unseen properties. Does it mean Q scale is somewhat different? Looks like physical law acts increasingly different on another scale. That is simple statement that goes against intuition. Why does it go against intuition? Probably because evolution perfected our mind like that. There is even stronger intuition that laws should be consistent against distances. We evolved like that because on our scale things happen consistently. Do we know this intuition is right about scaled or far away physics? I don't think so. Evidence is against. Warped space, stretched time. Universal speed limit, density limit. Ofc there is reason why our scale is consistent its not only illusion of mind we are biased by it because its there. If laws are scale relevant there might be change in laws on larger scales, that goes well with fact that we have limits that prevent us from moving out in structures of large scale or moving down in structures beyond small. The fact that we are fundamentally limited could be mistaken for notion that there is nothing there beyond our reach. Not evidence based. Intuition based. Imagine that evolution would have made us with strong intuition that not every place is acting the same, not every size acts as in the same place. If it was so, how would it change our way of doing research, looking for evidence, discarding data that feels useless. We would have totally different evidence based models. We would imagine unreachable beyond in different way.
These may be superficial and irrelevant conclusions for current research, yet still, for personal understanding that is so much better than learning from abstract descriptions about things that you don't know in detail. Without intuition to fill missing spaces, i cannot think of a way to build whole coherent mental framework.
That leads to questions about intuition.
- How does intuition work
- What does it work with
- Why does it work like that
- What is it similar to and what are critical points that make it work better
- How did it came to be
- Can we engineer it? Maybe quicker, better and more optimal for our needs, keep it up to date
- What would it take
- If we can do it what could be the consequences
- How is it going to be used
- is it worth the risk
There can be more or better questions of course :)