I'm gonna be a bit obnoxious here and ask people to please consider before sharing Schrödinger memes, and for two reasons:
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@xgranade I’d add a link to https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/how-erwin-schrodinger-indulged-his-lolita-complex-in-ireland-1.4749204 for anyone who hasn’t seen that first point before now.
@acdha That one is paywalled for me? Anyway, Wikipedia has a good summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger#Sexual_abuse_allegations.
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The first is bad enough on its own, but the second gets to why Schrödinger memes do so much damage now, today.
There's no such thing as two places at once, there's no such thing as alive and dead at the same time, whatever. Those were Schrödinger mocking the idea that one might ever develop an intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics. Today, that same mystery-cult style of gatekeeping gives power to some of the worst people in the field.
It may seem odd that Schrödigner mocked intuitive understandings of his own work, but early on in the history of quantum mechanics, a lot of physicists saw it as a clever bit of math that would eventually be worked out in a way that recovered Newtonian ideas of determinism.
That somewhat misplaced hope has now metastasized into mystery-cult thinking, where the trick is to make the math sound more difficult than it is, to gatekeep actual understanding.
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@acdha That one is paywalled for me? Anyway, Wikipedia has a good summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger#Sexual_abuse_allegations.
@xgranade always a good choice. The Irish Times one had some original reporting which I wish was easier to see since this kind of stuff is uncomfortable but has a strong public interest argument.
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It may seem odd that Schrödigner mocked intuitive understandings of his own work, but early on in the history of quantum mechanics, a lot of physicists saw it as a clever bit of math that would eventually be worked out in a way that recovered Newtonian ideas of determinism.
That somewhat misplaced hope has now metastasized into mystery-cult thinking, where the trick is to make the math sound more difficult than it is, to gatekeep actual understanding.
@xgranade oh no. I liked it because of the cat.
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It may seem odd that Schrödigner mocked intuitive understandings of his own work, but early on in the history of quantum mechanics, a lot of physicists saw it as a clever bit of math that would eventually be worked out in a way that recovered Newtonian ideas of determinism.
That somewhat misplaced hope has now metastasized into mystery-cult thinking, where the trick is to make the math sound more difficult than it is, to gatekeep actual understanding.
@xgranade It's also become an ego thing for a lot of people - a sense of in-group superiority among certain physicists about 'understanding the ununderstandable' in a way that mirrors what you see in a lot of the more toxic occult and mysticism groups...
... and feeds the use of QM by occultists and mystics to try to make their not-scientific-at-all claims sound scientific... which leads to a lot of sketchy shit (eg. homeopathic 'medicine' comes to mind.) -
It may seem odd that Schrödigner mocked intuitive understandings of his own work, but early on in the history of quantum mechanics, a lot of physicists saw it as a clever bit of math that would eventually be worked out in a way that recovered Newtonian ideas of determinism.
That somewhat misplaced hope has now metastasized into mystery-cult thinking, where the trick is to make the math sound more difficult than it is, to gatekeep actual understanding.
Here's the trick, though: quantum mechanics isn't inherently more difficult to learn than other technical fields, such as computer graphics. The big conceptual shift is in thinking of states like "the electron is here" or "the electron is there" in the same way you might think about directions.
You can understand a map in terms of north and west, but then you also have directions like northwest that are distinct from "north and west at the same time!!1!."
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@xgranade It's also become an ego thing for a lot of people - a sense of in-group superiority among certain physicists about 'understanding the ununderstandable' in a way that mirrors what you see in a lot of the more toxic occult and mysticism groups...
... and feeds the use of QM by occultists and mystics to try to make their not-scientific-at-all claims sound scientific... which leads to a lot of sketchy shit (eg. homeopathic 'medicine' comes to mind.)@miss_rodent I mean, yeah. Scientists try and make their shit sound mystical, something I fought against in the 20 years I did quantum shit, and no surprise unscrupulous "mystic" are able to piggyback off that to make pseudoscience sound real.
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It may seem odd that Schrödigner mocked intuitive understandings of his own work, but early on in the history of quantum mechanics, a lot of physicists saw it as a clever bit of math that would eventually be worked out in a way that recovered Newtonian ideas of determinism.
That somewhat misplaced hope has now metastasized into mystery-cult thinking, where the trick is to make the math sound more difficult than it is, to gatekeep actual understanding.
@xgranade also the utter cancer that is 'quantum computing' where they claim 'ECC' will magically undo inherent fucking laws of *applied* physics. (But what do Heisenberg, Bohr, and Peres know, right?) Their potential is infinite! (Because they're too fucking stupid to understand much less fully read Wigner's friend.)
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Here's the trick, though: quantum mechanics isn't inherently more difficult to learn than other technical fields, such as computer graphics. The big conceptual shift is in thinking of states like "the electron is here" or "the electron is there" in the same way you might think about directions.
You can understand a map in terms of north and west, but then you also have directions like northwest that are distinct from "north and west at the same time!!1!."
@xgranade [nodding] okay got it quantum mechanics is all about moving from discrete states to continuous ones
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Here's the trick, though: quantum mechanics isn't inherently more difficult to learn than other technical fields, such as computer graphics. The big conceptual shift is in thinking of states like "the electron is here" or "the electron is there" in the same way you might think about directions.
You can understand a map in terms of north and west, but then you also have directions like northwest that are distinct from "north and west at the same time!!1!."
@xgranade I've also found it makes a lot of sense if you give up on the whole 'strict determinism' thing.
Almost all of the weirdness sorts itself out if there's just some inherent randomness to how the universe be. -
It may seem odd that Schrödigner mocked intuitive understandings of his own work, but early on in the history of quantum mechanics, a lot of physicists saw it as a clever bit of math that would eventually be worked out in a way that recovered Newtonian ideas of determinism.
That somewhat misplaced hope has now metastasized into mystery-cult thinking, where the trick is to make the math sound more difficult than it is, to gatekeep actual understanding.
@xgranade "some of y'all don't know about the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, and it shows"
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@miss_rodent I mean, yeah. Scientists try and make their shit sound mystical, something I fought against in the 20 years I did quantum shit, and no surprise unscrupulous "mystic" are able to piggyback off that to make pseudoscience sound real.
@xgranade Yeah, I have the... very odd perspective of having studied physics, and being involved in some witchy/neopagan/whatever communities, which ... is a perspective that makes the 'bad science communication to religious abuse' pipeline a... pretty common theme I end up yelling at people about
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Here's the trick, though: quantum mechanics isn't inherently more difficult to learn than other technical fields, such as computer graphics. The big conceptual shift is in thinking of states like "the electron is here" or "the electron is there" in the same way you might think about directions.
You can understand a map in terms of north and west, but then you also have directions like northwest that are distinct from "north and west at the same time!!1!."
You're not going to understand quantum mechanics without a little bit of work, sure, but that's not unique to quantum mechanics at all! That's kind of how learning works!
The learning required to understand quantum mechanics is not terribly out of line with other fields, but memes like Schrödinger's Cat prime us to believe that it's not understandable at *all*. Which I reject.
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@xgranade [nodding] okay got it quantum mechanics is all about moving from discrete states to continuous ones
@SnoopJ *takes psychic damage*
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@xgranade also the utter cancer that is 'quantum computing' where they claim 'ECC' will magically undo inherent fucking laws of *applied* physics. (But what do Heisenberg, Bohr, and Peres know, right?) Their potential is infinite! (Because they're too fucking stupid to understand much less fully read Wigner's friend.)
@rootwyrm I mean, that whole post is wrong? We have very good theorems that establish what conditions will allow for quantum computing, and it would take some very surprising new physics for those conditions to turn out to be impossible in practice.
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@SnoopJ *takes psychic damage*
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@SnoopJ I mean, I can't even say that that's wrong, but it sure as hell isn't *correct* either. Sigh.
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@SnoopJ I mean, I can't even say that that's wrong, but it sure as hell isn't *correct* either. Sigh.
@xgranade would you say it is both right and wrong at the same time
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@xgranade would you say it is both right and wrong at the same time
@SnoopJ god *damn* it why did I expand that cw
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@SnoopJ god *damn* it why did I expand that cw
@xgranade resisting the urge to make a sorry/not-sorry joke here
glad I didn't undercut the (extremely correct) point of the thread by stuffing my shitposting into CWs
