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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Think Like Reality - Less Wrong
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Well, the main lesson I learned today is:
Never use quantum mechanics as an example of anything.
I could have talked about relativity, the counterintuitive mixing of space and time, and non-flat spacetime metrics, but noooo, I had to say "quantum".
I haven't learned any general relativity yet, but from what I know of special relativity, it actually makes perfect sense. You start with the assumption that no observation can allow you to deduce where you are or how fast you are moving, and then follow that premise to its logical extremes.
There are things, if you look at them hard enough, you can understand it intuitively, and they cease to be weird.
Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, is one of those things that even if you look at it really, really hard, you still can't understand it. So no, I think quantum mechanics is the only example you could have used here.
Relativity of simultaneity makes perfect sense to you?
I'm prepared to accept that my intuitions are defective and the world really does operate this way... but I can't seem to actually adjust my intuitions accordingly. There's still this little voice in the back of my mind saying, "But which one is the real now?"
You also need to know that there's something that travels at a finite speed in vacuum, otherwise Galilean relativity is consistent with that assumption too.
But if you hadn't used that example I would have never read this Wikipedia edit summary, and never heard about you or LessWrong!