Think Like Reality

49 Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 May 2007 06:36AM

Whenever I hear someone describe quantum physics as "weird" - whenever I hear someone bewailing the mysterious effects of observation on the observed, or the bizarre existence of nonlocal correlations, or the incredible impossibility of knowing position and momentum at the same time - then I think to myself:  This person will never understand physics no matter how many books they read.

Reality has been around since long before you showed up.  Don't go calling it nasty names like "bizarre" or "incredible".  The universe was propagating complex amplitudes through configuration space for ten billion years before life ever emerged on Earth.  Quantum physics is not "weird".  You are weird.  You have the absolutely bizarre idea that reality ought to consist of little billiard balls bopping around, when in fact reality is a perfectly normal cloud of complex amplitude in configuration space.  This is your problem, not reality's, and you are the one who needs to change.

continue reading »