this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
602 points (97.2% liked)

Science Memes

20959 readers
1085 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Amir@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well our current model of superposition is what lets us do predictions on qubits that have turned out to be correct; just seeing "history" would not let our current quantum algorithms be developed. That's the beauty of scientific theories; good ones are simple but let us predict and test new ideas. Superposition is wildly successful in that sense.

[โ€“] bunchberry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You are fallaciously conflating a mathematical model with your own personal metaphysical interpretation of what the model represents. You are presupposing that a purely mathematical description in terms of a superposition of basis states literally represents, in ontological reality, particles being in multiple states at once, and then when I say I disagree with that metaphysical accounting, you accuse me of denying the physics.

But I am not. I am denying your philosophical accounting of the physics. Nothing about a superposition of basis states implies that particles are in multiple states at once. Do not conflate a mathematical description (superposition) with a specific metaphysical ontology, and don't accuse others of being science deniers because they disagree with your metaphysics. I do not appreciate that at all.

We also use superposition of basis states in classical statistics as well, and no one in their right mind interprets that as the particle being in multiple states at once. The only thing that makes quantum theory different is that we also have to keep track of a phase, but the phase is mathematically decomposable into a function over its statistical history, and is thus merely a sufficient statistic over the particle's historical statistical trajectory. The whole theory is mathematically equivalent to a statistical theory with history dependence.