
Is Quantum Intuition Possible? - jonbaer
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/07/quantum-intuition/
======
teekert
The same goes for relativity. I think you will develop such intuition over
time. As a biologist I have a firm grasp on what a nanometer is, how big a
protein is, what to expect when I "glue" two of them together or what happens
when I pour formalin over a cell.

It is extremely hard for me to talk about work to a layman who does not even
know what DNA is. Try explaining that every base pairs is about 0.3 nm apart
and we have about two meters of DNA, spread over 30.000 genes. What does it
mean for promotor accessibility related to transcription factors? It would
take some time to calculate these things but I have a pretty nice picture in
my head of vibrating proteins and the chaos it is down there (Movies such as
this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-
UY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-UY) are extremely misleading!)

I had a colleague who got the molecular structure of optically active
molecules in his head when he saw the absorption and fluorescence spectra of
molecules.

But try getting that into the mind of an infant who learns by doing. Would it
make sense? It reminds me of a piece from the book of Woz, where he explains
how significant it was for his development that his father explained the
workings of a transistor by explaining the flows of electrons. It made
understanding much easier for him.

I guess, when a kid is ready I won't hurt to feed her/him such information but
I wouldn't teach my son that he could in theory tunnel through the wall and
end up in the neighbors kitchen...

Nice topic by the way, I remember watching the quantum mechanics movies (and
the relativity movies) on my Encarta CDrom (I was 12 I think) over and over
and just enjoy that feeling of uneasiness, the feeling that there is another
world down there.

~~~
Strilanc
> _I have a pretty nice picture in my head of vibrating proteins and the chaos
> it is down there (Movies such as this
> one:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-
> UY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKW4F0Nu-UY) are extremely misleading!)_

That's really interesting, actually. In what ways are they misleading? Just...
things not shaking around enough? How about this one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmeDPqYUMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RmeDPqYUMI)
?

~~~
teekert
That one looks closer to reality because the molecular movement is realistic
for the (extremely short) time scale. However the system is simplified almost
beyond recognition.

The movie I posted suggests a nice roomy cytoplasm while in reality it is an
extremely crowded soup of insanely fast vibrating molecules. Some (many?)
proteins do not even have a solid structure or attain it only when they bind
something. It also suggests molecules are attracted towards each other when in
fact then rely almost completely on things like concentration and Brownian
motion for the interaction dynamics.

The movie does give a nice overview of processes but it is important to
realize it is not the way it looks (as far as you can speak of "looking" at
the molecular scale where photons interact with matter not in a way we "see"
it normally, I mean, a protein is not a set of spheres, a carbon ring can
absorb a photon or not, it can not bounce it back to reveal to your eye what
it looks like.) So we are dealing with models here. Models of a reality we can
not really imagine. Like Quantum Mechanics.

~~~
undersuit
>extremely crowded soup

>realize it is not the way it looks

Can you blame them? I mean adding even just the free water molecules to the
first video would result in two color static music video.

------
wahrsagevogel
Yes it is. And it is called mathematical reasoning. You don't need to have
some childish intuition to grasp the tunnel effect. It is enough to understand
the concept of an exponential function of complex arguments.

Complicated problems need abstract reasoning not handwavy explanations.
"Imagine two rivers which merge at some point and two boats floating down
these rivers. Which one will be first? Think about it and solve your race
condition problem." Pure nonsense. We have powerful ways to think about
programs with programming languages. For physics this language is mathematics.
If you want to understand something study the language.

And bits like "Babies also intuitively grasp that objects exist even when
you’re not looking at them, a concept called “object permanence” that goes
against the classic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics [...]" are
just sad. An observation in the physical sense and the observation of a
newborn are not the same concept. Babies have a memory. Computers have memory.
Therefore babies are computers.

~~~
calibraxis
You might be interested in Chomsky's view which he mentions often
([http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060301.htm](http://www.chomsky.info/debates/20060301.htm)):

 _" Newton disproved them. He showed that the world is not intelligible to us.
Newton demonstrated that there are no machines, that there’s nothing
mechanical in the sense in which it was assumed that the world was mechanical.
He didn’t believe it — in fact he felt his work was an absurdity — but he
proved it, and he spent the rest of his life trying to disprove it. And other
scientists did later on. I mean, it’s often said that Newton got rid of the
ghost in the machine, but it’s quite the opposite. Newton exorcised the
machine. He left the ghost._

 _" And by the time that sank in, which was quite some time, it just changed
the conception of science. Instead of trying to show that the world is
intelligible to us, we recognized that it’s not intelligible to us. But we
just say, ‘Well, you know, unfortunately that’s the way it works. I can’t
understand it but that’s the way it works.’ And then the aim of science is
reduced from trying to show that the world is intelligible to us, which it is
not, to trying to show that there are theories of the world which are
intelligible to us. That’s what science is: It’s the study of intelligible
theories which give an explanation of some aspect of reality."_

I think this basically agrees with your point on mathematics; the theory
itself may be intelligible.

------
chopin
The work of Couder et al. on oil droplets might show a way for more of a
"quantum intuition". It's a pity that the article does not mention this work.

See eg. [http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4356](http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4356)

~~~
GregBuchholz
Here's another more layman presentation with a great video, and its previous
discussion at HN.

[http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140624-fluid-
tests-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140624-fluid-tests-hint-
at-concrete-quantum-reality/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7964848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7964848)

------
TuringTest
Vibrating porridge, that's how I envision quantum phenomena; particles would
be the lumps in the purée.

I find that it helps thinking about liquid rather than solid media as it
provides better insight for things like "spooky action at a distance",
"uncertainty principle" or "probabilistic nature of the waveform", as it
dispels the learned intuitions about position and speed of solids that the
article speaks about.

There are "particle properties" also that need to be accounted for, and I
think of those as "recognizable patterns" measured around an area of interest
located where the particle position would be, rather than physical "things" or
individual objects.

------
Strilanc
I think that quantum physicists _do_ get an (imperfect) intuition for it, but
they can't communicate it to laypeople because the inferential distance is too
high.

I also think that it takes awhile for societies to internalize these things,
and to find what works pedagogically, so it's hard to say how intuitive it
will end up being. For example, starting teaching with quantum computer
science might be really beneficial because qubits bypass some of the
difficulties (differential equations, waves vs particles, tunneling) while
keeping most of the weird (superposition, entanglement, measurement,
interference, counterfactuals).

------
hyp0
idea: a quantum fps. By interacting within a world governed by quantum
principles, you might develop an intuition. Similar to muscle memory, or
training in mathematical notation.

Especially, taking a leaf out of Ender's Game, for children. The average human
needs years of training for fluent reading, writing and arithmetic.

Though, might be computationally infeasible to do with adequate accuracy;
would necessarily be extraordinarily bizarre and counter-intuitive; and...
might not be much fun.

~~~
SanderMak
Somewhat related: Google released a Quantum Playground that includes
visualization of quantum states. Pretty nifty:
[http://qcplayground.withgoogle.com/#/home](http://qcplayground.withgoogle.com/#/home)

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rbanffy
As an exercise, in college, a couple colleagues and me started to play 4D Tic
Tac Toe. We started with a 4x4x4x4 cube on the assumption that, when the game
became too easy, we'd have grasped the idea and would move to a 5x5x5x5 cube.
It took us many hours of play, explanations and headaches before we could move
on, but we did it.

Its a lot of work to represent it, even ias a series of 3d projections

------
playthis1234
This is a great idea and is the thinking behind Meqanic, which is designed to
build (some) intuition about quantum physics as you go. Check it out:
[http://appstore.com/meqanic](http://appstore.com/meqanic) or
[http://meqanic.com/](http://meqanic.com/)

------
pingou
"this physical intuition kicks in as early as two and a half months, and
vanMarle and her colleagues think that it is probably present from birth.".

Does someone has any idea why they believe it is innate?

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hcarvalhoalves
Isn't this intuition math?

E.g., the uncertainty principle is intuitive once you understand the math
behind waves.

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Datsundere
why can't one look at the creation of CPUs. It can be used to show how quantum
mechanics are affecting objects that we're trying to make.

