Yes, quantum mechanics is weird. It violates my intuitions, and the intuitions of (nearly?) every human. No, we can’t rewrite our intuitions, and knowing quantum mechanics is weird is important because if it wasn’t weird we might think we didn’t have to shut up and integrate. I won’t simply accept that reality is weird just because a scientific theory like quantum mechanics implies it is. Especially since there is such a good chance of quantum mechanics being wrong—since it clashes with General Relativity. I can’t say that the successor to quantum-GR will be any less weird, but I sure hope so.
While many things have become less weird for me as a familiarize myself with them, I don’t see that happening with quantum mechanics*. It doesn’t help any that not only is the math difficult, but can’t actually be used directly for things larger than hydrogen without resorting to algorithmic computation of simplified approximations (and even hydrogen we couldn’t do without pretending all the quarks were one particle). Contrast all that nasty math with things we have built in systems for—addition is like linear distance, multiplication is like area or repeated addition—quantum is always going to stay at “shut up and integrate” intuitiveness level for me.
*barring a future where implantable brain enhancements give me access to intuitive/subconscious integration, trigonometric functions, and exponentiation with complex numbers; maybe also Taylor series approximations and other algorithms as well.
Yes, quantum mechanics is weird. It violates my intuitions, and the intuitions of (nearly?) every human. No, we can’t rewrite our intuitions, and knowing quantum mechanics is weird is important because if it wasn’t weird we might think we didn’t have to shut up and integrate. I won’t simply accept that reality is weird just because a scientific theory like quantum mechanics implies it is. Especially since there is such a good chance of quantum mechanics being wrong—since it clashes with General Relativity. I can’t say that the successor to quantum-GR will be any less weird, but I sure hope so.
While many things have become less weird for me as a familiarize myself with them, I don’t see that happening with quantum mechanics*. It doesn’t help any that not only is the math difficult, but can’t actually be used directly for things larger than hydrogen without resorting to algorithmic computation of simplified approximations (and even hydrogen we couldn’t do without pretending all the quarks were one particle). Contrast all that nasty math with things we have built in systems for—addition is like linear distance, multiplication is like area or repeated addition—quantum is always going to stay at “shut up and integrate” intuitiveness level for me.
*barring a future where implantable brain enhancements give me access to intuitive/subconscious integration, trigonometric functions, and exponentiation with complex numbers; maybe also Taylor series approximations and other algorithms as well.