Quantum magic: A skeptical perspective

TL;DR

This paper argues that many quantum paradoxes arise from misunderstandings of formalism versus physics, and that a proper mathematical perspective reveals quantum mechanics to be less conceptually problematic than popularly believed.

Contribution

It clarifies how different formalisms resolve quantum paradoxes and highlights overlooked modern developments that simplify the conceptual understanding of quantum mechanics.

Findings

Quantum paradoxes often result from formalism-physics confusion.

Alternative formalisms can eliminate perceived paradoxes.

Modern developments make QM less conceptually problematic.

Abstract

Quantum mechanics (QM) has attracted a considerable amount of mysticism, in public opinion and even among academic researches, due to some of its conceptually puzzling features, such as the modification of reality by the observer and entanglement. We argue that many popular "quantum paradoxes" stem from a confusion between mathematical formalism and physics; We demonstrate this by explaining how the paradoxes go away once a different formalism, usually inconvenient to perform calculations, is used. we argue that some modern developments, well-studied in the research literature but generally overlooked by both popular science and teaching-level literature, make quantum mechanics (that is, "canonical" QM, not extensions of it) less conceptually problematic than it looks at first sight. When all this is looked at together, most "conceptual puzzles" of QM are not much different from the well-known paradoxes from probability theory. Consequently, "explanations of QM" involving physical action of consciouses or an infinity of universes are conceptually unnecessary