Making better sense of quantum mechanics

Understand

We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics.

• There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so well.
• Because it has no practical consequences for how we each use quantum mechanics to deal with physical problems, this cognitive dissonance has managed to coexist with the quantum theory from the very beginning.
• The absence of conceptual clarity for almost a century suggests that the problem might lie in some implicit misconceptions about the nature of scientific explanation that are deeply held by virtually all physicists, but are rarely explicitly acknowledged.