"The situation cannot declare itself until you've asked your question. But the asking of one question prevents and excludes the asking of another.”
~ John Archibald Wheeler
Is quantum mechanics weird if no one is paying attention to it? Lots of people are paying attention to it now, and they seem to agree it’s weird.
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The most widely accepted explanation of the “meaning” of quantum mechanics was the so-called orthodox, interpretation (although “orthodox” seems an odd descriptor for such a radical worldview).
Also called the Copenhagen interpretation, because Bohr lectured on it in Copenhagen in the late 1920s, it holds that we cannot specify the nature of fundamental reality. Subatomic entities exist in a probabilistic limbo of many possible “superposed” states until they are brought into focus by the act of measurement.
"Quantum mechanics is everywhere."
Quantum Mechanics is the cornerstone of physical theories dealing with the most fundamental issues of nature [Source]. Quantum mechanics is everywhere. Nowadays, physicists and philosophers took their efforts to make sense of it and focused on reinterpreting its mathematics, hoping that things will click into place eventually.
Because of quantum mechanics, we have computers, digital cameras and touch screens. We have lasers, semiconductors and transistors. We have magnetic resonance, electron tunnel microscopes and atomic clocks. And would have other countless applications based on all these technologies.
Without a quantum mechanic, we would have virtually no WiFi, no artificial intelligence, no LEDs, and modern medicine. Because most imaging tools and analysis methods rely on quantum mechanics. Last but not least, no one has heard of quantum computers in the current context.
So clearly we can say that quantum mechanics is enormously relevant to society.
But for this reason, there is no doubt that we can gain a lot from it if we understand it well.
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