QUIP

[LMNO]

Not to mention, the first thing to know about QM is that it isn't analagous to macro world events.

Sure, it makes it sound freakier, and it really confuses people, but it obscures what is really going on.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Not to mention, the first thing to know about QM is that it isn't analagous to macro world events.

Sure, it makes it sound freakier, and it really confuses people, but it obscures what is really going on.

Too late.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to try and forget everything in this thread for now, because everything I've taken in has made it seem like everything is contradicting everything everyone else is saying.

For example, these two entangled particles do spooky action at a distance with an instantaneous transfer of information but not really it's more like Newton's 3rd Law of Motion, and there really isn't any information transfer because you can't change the spin so nothing's really happening. Even though it's not happening faster than the speed of light and it's extremely interesting.

Sometime next week, I'll see if I can read up on QM independently, from a very basic sort of stand point, to grasp all the ground work. Becuase strangely the more that this gets explained to me the less I know about it.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Becuase strangely the more that this gets explained to me the less I know about it.

I think that's the way it works for the scientists too. What they seem to be dealing with is a predictable series of measurements which produce results but they've no idea what it is that's being measured or why the results behave the way they do. It's like putting a glass up against your living room wall at 3:00pm every day and listening and there's always a sound like a cow chainsaw raping a dolphin. You've no idea what the fuck is going on in there but 3:00pm on the dot, every day, there is is.

[LMNO]

As explained to me, science is like finding islands of truth in a sea of ignorance, and then trying to build bridges between the two.

They do experiments, or work out formulas, and they show evidence A.  They then look at whether this is supported by the current framework.  If it fits, great.  If it doesn't, we should either reject it (recent cold fusion claims) or we have to completely restructure the framework (relativity).

[Elder Iptuous]

STOP USING METAPHORS, MOTHERFUCKERS.

This.  Analogy has to be among the most facile forms of understanding.

What's wrong with that?
you need a cursory understanding before you can get into the nitty gritty, and i don't think the people on this thread really want more than that, anyways...
if it's impossible to draw any analogy to give an impression of what is going on, then just say, "no offense but you wouldn't understand unless you're willing to do the math and accept a model beyond what you have in the past (or possibly can) experience..."
furthermore, in the modern physics class that i took in university, they did, in fact, start out with analogy.  it's for good reason, i think.  it just becomes important to say where the analogy breaks down, and why...

also, aren't those similes being used, rather than metaphors? 

[Igor]

 

Quantum entanglement holds your DNA together!

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25375/

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Becuase strangely the more that this gets explained to me the less I know about it.

I think that's the way it works for the scientists too. What they seem to be dealing with is a predictable series of measurements which produce results but they've no idea what it is that's being measured or why the results behave the way they do. It's like putting a glass up against your living room wall at 3:00pm every day and listening and there's always a sound like a cow chainsaw raping a dolphin. You've no idea what the fuck is going on in there but 3:00pm on the dot, every day, there is is.

I believe it, but what I meant was, the phrase quantum entanglement is meaningless to me as a result. I thought I had a vague understanding of what it meant, but now, I haven't the foggiest of even what the definition of the phrase is. All I think of it now is, "weird stuff happens, but really it's not that weird, because what is described isn't what's really going on. Or maybe it's weirder. But believe me, it's interesting." I'd go into further detail but I'm giving my brain a break from it for now.

[Telarus]

"Entanglement is the weird quantum process in which a single wavefunction describes two separate objects. When this happens, these objects effectively share the same existence, no matter how far apart they might be."

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25375/

[Jasper]

Which says to me time and/or space and/or spacetime doesn't work anything like I think it does.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

"Entanglement is the weird quantum process in which a single wavefunction describes two separate objects. When this happens, these objects effectively share the same existence, no matter how far apart they might be."

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25375/

Not exactly what I was looking for when I said that the phrase was meaningless to me. It's the apparent details of it that are not getting across to me. Hence the this is what's happening but really that's not what's happening at all sort of thing.

So these two particles effectively share the same existence while entangled, per the definition you provide. Sounds to me like what happens to one happens to the other. But that's not the case because that would break the entanglement. So they're not really sharing an existence. The way it sounds to me at that point is then is, particle A goes through this thing and tells us it's spin up. Therefore particle B is spin down. Since they're complementary particles emitted off by something else, that doesn't sound very weird to me.

So how is "information" (which I'm not getting either unless it's this is spin up so that's spin down, which really isn't information transfer) is transferred between the two particles 10000 x speed of light (but that apparently also can't happen because of observation)?

See where I'm confused? Maybe I just won't be able to grasp the idea and the significance, but I would like to try.