All cats aside, i believe it’s imprecise of the article to say a quantum particle is in two places or states at once. Rather, quantum mechanics says it cannot tell which place or state a particle is in until it’s measured. QM / schrodinger’s wave function doesn’t say a particle is distributed over two or more Locations or states. Rather, it gives us the range of locations or states where we can expect to find the particle — with probabilities we will find it at each location / state. In short, it says nothing about where the particle is now —it is not descriptive/ of the present—it instead gives us predictive information about the future — what we can expect of our measurements. You can say that the formula is a mathematical construct that tells us about the future of our measurements and nothing actually about the present status or location of the particle ———
re: “QM / schrodinger’s wave function doesn’t say a particle is distributed over two or more Locations or states. Rather, it gives us the range of locations or states where we can expect to find the particle “
QM is mistaken in that assumption. It assumes the electron is a particle, and this is flat-out wrong.
THAT’s what has put QM on the wrong track 100 yrs (or so) ago.
That’s true. The article is misleading at best.
Seems like in quantum mechanics every variable is a random variable with a distribution of values. For a particular particle you do not know it’s attributes until you measure them.
Sort of like the height of a particular person. We know the distribution of people’s height, so we can bracket a particular person’s height a priori, but you won’t know his actual height until you measure it.
In this sense QM is more a pragmatic theory than a realist theory.
In popular jargon people normally believe "pragmatic" and "realistic" to be synonyms, but they're not.
Scientists are supported by the public, I believe in part, because they claim to have discovered new and interesting things like electrons, quarks, black holes, etc. But all they've really been doing is coming up with mathematical formulas to predict what their future measurements will be.
“All cats aside, i believe it’s imprecise of the article to say a quantum particle is in two places or states at once. Rather, quantum mechanics says it cannot tell which place or state a particle is in until it’s measured.”
I always wonder to what extent these things are truly empirical truths or merely a result of the fact that we cannot measure anything beyond however it is that we have designed our means of taking that measure; which is based on assumptions we have had to make with our so far limited knowledge. Therefor our measurements are never any better than what I think are as yet our still kindergarten-grade understanding of the things being measured. Do the electrons truly change “state” or are they always at a core state we do not have the means to either identify or measure, because we only have measurement devices that can “see” one of two things about electrons, and no more.
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