I am reading two books both by one of the scientists in that video (Adam Becker). It is a pretty interesting book:
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/grand-delusion/
Waves are certainly visualizable, but the world we live in, the world of laboratory experiments, does not present itself as made of waves. It presents itself, if anything, as made of particles. How do we get from waves to recognizable everyday stuff?
This, in a nutshell, is the central conundrum of quantum mechanics: how does the mathematical formalism used to represent a quantum system make contact with the world as given in experience? This is commonly called the measurement problem, although the name is misleading. It might better be called the where-in-the-theory-is-the-world-we-live-in problem.
For Bohr and Heisenberg, the measurement problem is how the unvisualizable can influence the observable (and hence visualizable). For Schrödinger it is how waves can constitute solid objects such as cats. In wave mechanics, the little planetary electron of the old quantum theory gets smeared out into a cloud surrounding the nucleus. If quantum mechanics provides a complete description of the electron—as Bohr insisted—this diffuseness is not merely a reflection of our ignorance about where the electron is, it is a characteristic of the electron itself. As Schrödinger memorably wrote to Albert Einstein, “There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” This unexpected (but perfectly visualizable) mistiness of the electron was fine by Schrödinger: after all, we have no direct experience of electrons to contradict it. But the dynamics of the theory could not confine the smeariness to microscopic scale. In certain experimental situations, the haziness of the electron would get amplified up to everyday scales. The electron that is nowhere-in-particular gives birth to a cat that is no-state-of-health-in-particular. Schrödinger found this result manifestly absurd: something must have gone wrong somewhere in the physics.
It is certainly a good place to restart..
I first found Becker via the rare good journalist - a fellow traveller ;-/, Chris Ketcham..he is one of us…far left radical blah blah..so I was pleased to see a scientist on his site:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-mad-religion-of-technological-salvation/
I felt a bit less lonely after I saw that. Because I wanted to be a scientist at some point, but science got more Googlized/Facebookified/Musky and militarized, and turns into whatever this is:
https://www.ted.com/talks/frances_s_chance_are_insect_brains_the_secret_to_great_ai
https://www.ted.com/talks/gautam_shah_can_the_metaverse_bring_us_closer_to_wildlife
I am fairly sure the Metaverse can bring you closer to a draconian lawsuit filed by Nimby homeowners like me. It is one thing to take over science and society. It is another to try someone’s home or street. I grimly thought of Ketcham again. Nandita Bajaj is another fellow traveller in this bleak wasteland of general unspeakable awfulness:
https://www.populationbalance.org/essays/eat-pray-pollute
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