h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I happy with the weirdness of quantum effects - I go along with the Feynman pov that it's not really UNDERSTANDABLE - but nevertheless observable etc. It's a bit like my approach to playing solos. I don't really know what the chords are doing. My problem is that I don't know how much I don't know and I've seen so many bad arguments by people who know a little and get the wrong end of the stick!

People do make bad arguments using QM a lot. A common one is: you always disturb the experiment by observing. It is only really true for tiny elmentary particle sized stuff. I suppose it is also true for badly designed macro experiments but it doesn't need to be.

Need to think a bit more before i say anything about QM. Might risk talking c**p.

liked the analogy with solo playing ... I think that's closer to what is going on when we play ball games without solving differential equations on trajectories

Ah yes. - but then to carry on the analogy - it might be like describing the trajectory of a ball by relating it to only one partially grasped aspect.

The observer effect on quantum events has irritated me for a while now. Some people seriously believe that the outcome is truly uncertain (or rather in different states at the same time) until observed. This begs questions of the nature of the observer/observation. Does it matter if it is a human/goat/machine? What happened before there was the means to observe? Clearly it's ludicrous.

erm ...

I think .... it doesn't matter if it is actually a goat or cat or inanimate observing device

Actually I'm going to check with a better brain (namely Brian Greene where i think I read a good explanation of collapsing wave function etc recently) and I'll get back to you

Your last sentence is plainly what we would think. But that doesn't stop the QM actually being the way the world is on a microscopic level. That's the wierdness.

I think I meant the analogy to be with soloing not with talking about QM. (I.e. in soloing or playing eg tennis you do it right without computing explicitly or consciously. In talking about QM we don't "experience" and do it right, we (I anyway) waffle confusingly around the subject without understanding/remembering the essential detail (ie the mathematical description). Will try to do better.