* * * * *
                                        
                       The twilight of quantum mechanics
                                        
> Quantum mechanics is weird only because we don't learn statistics in high
> school (well I didn't anyway), and we can't come up with good real- life
> analogies for quantum interactions.
> 
> For example, the twin-slit experiment used to illustrate collapsing the
> wave function (a single electron fired through 2 slits will show a wave
> interference pattern on the wall, but the pattern disappears if you find
> out which slit the electron passed through) is portrayed by physicists as
> obscure, weird, arcane, or even as indecipherable devil magic which us mere
> mortals can never strive to intuitively understand beyond pulling out a PDE
> (Partial Differential Equation).
> 
> This flat-out isn't true, and here is my analogy for the 2x slit experiment
> in real life (using trashy fiction):
> 
> The electron is an young impressionable female, slit A is the handsome
> vampire, and slit B is the wild werewolf. Until absolutely forced to pick
> one of the slits, the electron sort of strings both slits along (and the
> result is a lot of interference which, in the literary world, we call
> plot). But, when the reader looks at the end, she (the electron) inevitable
> picks one of the slits. Summed over all the trashy romance fiction out
> there, one gets the feeling it's the same damn electron and two slits
> everywhere, yet she is clearly making different decisions each time.
> 

“Quantum mechanics is weird only because we don't learn statistics in high
school… | Hacker News [1]”

I really have nothing else to add.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086685

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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