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Warrigal comments on Open Thread: June 2010 - Less Wrong
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The surprising (or confusing, mysterious, what have you) thing is that quantum theory doesn't talk about a 30% probability of LEFT and a 70% probability of RIGHT; what it talks about is how LEFT ends up with an "amplitude" of 0.548 and RIGHT with an "amplitude" of 0.837. We know that the observed probability ends up being the square of the absolute value of the amplitude, but we don't know why, or how this even makes sense as a law of physics.
Ah. So it's not the idea that it's weighted so much as the specific act of squaring the amplitude. "Why squaring the amplitude, why not something else?".
I suppose the way I had been reading, I thought that the problem came from expecting a different result given the squared amplitude probability thing, not from the thing itself.
That is helpful, many thanks.
That's one issue, but as Warrigal said, the other issue is "how this even makes sense." it seems to say that the amplitude is a measure of how real the configuration is.
Yes, precisely.