I’m late to the party here but have been trying to get less confused about quantum physics by reading Sean Carrolls math-heavy pop sci book quanta and fields. I wanted to ask you about the statement that electrons “cannot be only waves”. In his telling, smooth fields are the more complete description of reality—particle like behavior emerges from the fact that the fields are harmonic oscillators and thus have discrete modes they can vibrate at—which is what gives us quantization. So he would say it’s only waves—particles are just a very useful abstraction.
Do you guys meaningfully disagree on something (I know he’s a many worlds guy) or is it just semantics about the word ‘wave’ (I realize e.g. a sound wave is meaningfully different from a wave in the electron field).
I’m late to the party here but have been trying to get less confused about quantum physics by reading Sean Carrolls math-heavy pop sci book quanta and fields. I wanted to ask you about the statement that electrons “cannot be only waves”. In his telling, smooth fields are the more complete description of reality—particle like behavior emerges from the fact that the fields are harmonic oscillators and thus have discrete modes they can vibrate at—which is what gives us quantization. So he would say it’s only waves—particles are just a very useful abstraction.
Do you guys meaningfully disagree on something (I know he’s a many worlds guy) or is it just semantics about the word ‘wave’ (I realize e.g. a sound wave is meaningfully different from a wave in the electron field).