|||

February 8, 2025 Link Blog

Why even physicists still don’t understand quantum theory 100 years on

Quantum mechanics depicts a counter-intuitive reality in which the act of observation influences what is observed — and few can agree on what that means.

Everyone has their favourite example of a trick that reliably gets a certain job done, even if they don’t really understand why. Back in the day, it might have been slapping the top of your television set when the picture went fuzzy. Today, it might be turning your computer off and on again.

Quantum mechanics — the most successful and important theory in modern physics — is like that. It works wonderfully, explaining things from lasers and chemistry to the Higgs boson and the stability of matter. But physicists don’t know why. Or at least, if some of us think we know why, most others don’t agree.

By way of Nature

Up next How I use LLMs as a staff engineer Sean Goedecke wrote an interesting article on using LLMs as a staff engineer. I struggle with LLMs myself and find myself generally agreeing with With generative AI, MIT chemists quickly calculate 3D genomic structures A new approach, which takes minutes rather than days, predicts how a specific DNA sequence will arrange itself in the cell nucleus. By way of MIT

Latest posts Humane’s showing how not to treat early adopters. The best #tor distribution setup nowadays FBI Says Backup Now—Confirms Dangerous Attacks Underway The continuing enshitification of everything.. healthcare edition Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders From 900 miles away, the US government recorded audio of the Titan sub implosion Thousands of people protest across the U.S. on Presidents Day Scientists capture extremely rare footage of a black seadevil The Anthropic Economic Index ICED COFFEE FOREVER The Anti-SNARF Manifesto Extremely rare ‘Einstein ring’ discovered close to Earth Why 2,000 Ancient PCs Mysteriously Appeared on eBay DOGE’s .gov site lampooned as coders quickly realize it can be edited by anyone You are using Cursor AI incorrectly… Trump administration suspends $5bn electric vehicle charging program You can’t fix this level of stupid.. How to Disable Disable Apple Intelligence in macOS Squoia 15.3 Apple just built an adorable robot lamp, a sneak peek into robotics work The future belongs to idea guys who can just do things With generative AI, MIT chemists quickly calculate 3D genomic structures Why even physicists still don’t understand quantum theory 100 years on How I use LLMs as a staff engineer World of Warcraft finally tackles the housing crisis We don’t need to bring back religion, we need to bring back education Scientists Produced a Particle of Light That Simultaneously Accessed 37 Different Dimensions Should We Sing the Praises of Agile, or Bury It? How to have a career even when OpenAI’s o3 drops FDA approves new class of painkiller — the first in more than 20 years Apple launches Invites, a new app for creating custom invitations