Stop Talking About “Quantum Weirdness”!

Philosophical Shorts (1) Short philosophical pieces.

The science journalists and writer Michael Brooks kinda gives the game away when he says that

“[quantum] theory allows for quantum particles [] to exist in more than one state at any one time”.

Brooks doesn’t say that quantum particles do “exist in more than one state at any one time”. He says that quantum theory “allows” for such a thing.

It will therefore turn out that this is nearly all down to measurements, probabilities, what-ifs, predictions, interpretations, etc., and not about what actually is. In other words, this is nothing like a cat or even a sand particle existing in more than one state at any one time.

And everything just said equally also applies to Brooks’ other words about an electron “spin[ning] clockwise and anticlockwise at the same”, and a photon being both “here and there” at the same time. Finally, it also applies to an atom “hold[ing] two different energies”.

So, apart from our experimental arrangements and interpretations, there’s also no reason at all to be surprised that things at the quantum scale have different things said about them than things at the “classical” scale.