[Quark2005]

If an electron is in two places, it doesn't mean that there's no independent reality.

Agreed. People tend to try to read too much philosophy into the science of quantum mechanics. Wave-particle duality means just what it says; no explicit or implicit statements about "independent reality" lie within it.

[Physicist]

People tend to try to read too much philosophy into the science of quantum mechanics. Wave-particle duality means just what it says; no explicit or implicit statements about "independent reality" lie within it.

Oh, there's plenty of philosophical red meat in quantum physics; it's just that most people get the philosophy wrong. Reality is weird, nonlocal, superposed, indeterminate, random, and even retroactive, but in the final analysis, everyone's measurements of this reality will agree.

[grey_whiskers]

Wave-particle duality means just what it says; no explicit or implicit statements about "independent reality" lie within it.

The reason they tend to think that is due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Anything you do to measure the system will interact with it. When you get down to atomic scales, your measurement will perturb the system from its original state and information about the system "as it was" gets lost.

Just remember. Schroedinger saved a fortune on kitty litter.

Cheers!