What is ironic about this posting is your indignation. Offhand it sounds like you are as guilty as those you criticize.
There is nothing weird about people finding a theory to be weird that does not correspond with their everyday surface perceptions, even when they are able to comprehend it intellectually. Also, and others have noted this more or less, there are a lot of different interpretations out there of what quantum physics “really means,” and some are a lot weirder than others. Is it ontological that Schrodinger’s Cat does not either exist or not exist until actually observed being one (or not) being the other?
And again, I remind all that we do not have the definite answer on how to put quantum mechanics and general relativity together, leaving some doubt about some fundamental aspects of both. Some of the proposed resolutions are perceived by many as even weirder than either, e.g. string theory, but given that it has neither been proven nor disproven, should we all get on a big high horse about people who find string theory to be “weird”? There have just been some pretty intelligent books out criticizing it, with some of their arguments in some sense coming down to how weird it is, although that is not the terminology used.
Maybe when we finally figure all this out, if we do, quantum physics might be redone in a way that makes it seem “less weird” than it does now (and again, some of its most extreme apparent “weirdness” comes from some interpretations of it that are not universally accepted).
Eliezer,
What is ironic about this posting is your indignation. Offhand it sounds like you are as guilty as those you criticize.
There is nothing weird about people finding a theory to be weird that does not correspond with their everyday surface perceptions, even when they are able to comprehend it intellectually. Also, and others have noted this more or less, there are a lot of different interpretations out there of what quantum physics “really means,” and some are a lot weirder than others. Is it ontological that Schrodinger’s Cat does not either exist or not exist until actually observed being one (or not) being the other?
And again, I remind all that we do not have the definite answer on how to put quantum mechanics and general relativity together, leaving some doubt about some fundamental aspects of both. Some of the proposed resolutions are perceived by many as even weirder than either, e.g. string theory, but given that it has neither been proven nor disproven, should we all get on a big high horse about people who find string theory to be “weird”? There have just been some pretty intelligent books out criticizing it, with some of their arguments in some sense coming down to how weird it is, although that is not the terminology used.
Maybe when we finally figure all this out, if we do, quantum physics might be redone in a way that makes it seem “less weird” than it does now (and again, some of its most extreme apparent “weirdness” comes from some interpretations of it that are not universally accepted).