I'm a layman so please be gentle with me.
So what I understand is if you shoot electrons at the double slit, they'll be detected on the other side at random points by an experimental setup and if you try to fit a curve around these points the best possible one is given by wave mechanics. Am I correct until this point?
What I don't understand is why do physicists assume this wave is real and is a wave of probability. The wave itself feels like a mathematical artifact and treating it as probability density function a neat mathematically trick. Just cause you don't know at which random point on the wave is the electron detected before the measurement doesn't mean it only exists as a probability distribution of possible configurations before the measurement.

What do you mean by assume the wave is real, what makes the wave unreal to you? A wave can be described by mathematics and probability, are those not real?

What does it mean to you for an electron to exist before a measurement? Why isn't the wave probability distribution of an electron before a measurement not an accurate such description?

>>16685204 (OP)
You can shoot the electrons one at a time, they will still accumulate in a wave pattern. The first weird think you notice is when you cover one of the slits. The dark fringes and interference pattern disappears. So, by covering one of the fringes, the electron can reach places it couldn't before (those regions of destructive interference) . When you open the slit, the dark fringes reappear. You'd expect the opposite to happen. If you allow the electron more paths to travel trough, you'd expect it to reach more places, not less. But that's not what happens.

>>16685204 (OP)
>The wave itself feels like a mathematical artifact and treating it as probability density function a neat mathematically trick
this is true though and is what physicists understand: the wave function is a wave function in the abstract configuration space, not in the real 3d space itself.
only when it gets diluted to pop-sci, social media influencers promote quantum mysticism to farm views it becomes "the wave function is real".

>>16685207
How can a wave of probability exist irl?
Probability is a mathematical trick.
If we don't know from which fucking direction the enemy drones are gonna come, we don’t be like "it's a probability function". We just assume we don't know.

Even if we assume it is an ontological possibility, how do you explain the probability wave turning into a concrete electron detected at the measurement device?
>inb4 the measurement device is selecting a concrete possibility from the probability cloud
how? What even counts as measurement? This becomes infinite regress and retarded in general.

>>16685204 (OP)
although you can never re-wind time and "re-run" the same experiment again, the Bell Tests STRONGLY imply that if we COULD do so, the electron would be in a completely different place the second time around. and if you re-ran the same experiment thousands of times, you would reproduce the probability wave, with the electron being in a different place every time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test

>>16685217
>how? What even counts as measurement?
"measurement" never occurs. it's just an artifact of human perception. when "we" observe a particle in superposition, we think we see a particle in a definite position, but that's an illusion. "We" have simply entered superposition along with the particle. of course we "believe" that only one outcome and one timeline is possible, but again, that's an artifact of the reality that consciousness is an illusion and human memory is fallible.
this is called the "relational interpretation". it's not "many worlds" because there is only one world where all possibilities happen simultaneously.

>>16685204 (OP)
This is psychology more than physics.
We grew up in a world made of objects and waves like the one you see in water.
We insist to see an electron either like a small ball or a wave, just because that is what we are used to.

>>16685243
>this is called the "relational interpretation". it's not "many worlds" because there is only one world where all possibilities happen simultaneously.
Idk it just feels like many worlds repackaged. Same retardation.

>>16685250
Nah I don't think that explains the randomness and uncertainty of the measurement

>>16685251
Many Worlds still requires the wavefunction to "select" a correct outcome in each "world". The question of how each "outcome" is assigned to each "worldline" is never addressed.
in Relational Interpretation there is no correct outcome and no assignment. the wavefunction simply evolves in accordance with the rule of universality. it's the only interpretation that doesn't require adding pseudo-scientific concepts to the mathematical structure

>>16685253
>The question of how each "outcome" is assigned to each "worldline" is never addressed.
I think that issue is transformed into another issue. If two experimenters in a room "believe" they observe a particular outcome and agree on it, how is it that their brains communicate with each other to agree on "believing" the exact same definite outcome? Why don't they see and believe different things?

>>16685256
>how is it that their brains communicate with each other to agree on "believing" the exact same definite outcome?
Because of solipsism. If observer A observed outcome C, he will only observe versions of of observer B that also observed outcome C.
>Why don't they see and believe different things?
Same reason. If observer B observed outcome D, he will only observe versions of observer A that also observed outcome D.

>>16685259
>If observer A observed outcome C, he will only observe versions of of observer B that also observed outcome C.
See, here is where similarities with multiple world's interpretations start. In your metaphysics something is making sure observer A who has observed outcome X will only observe versions of observer B that has observed outcome X instead of Y. This also doesn't solve the problem of what counts as an observer? If a particle A interacts with particle B, are both considered observers?

Physicists have been ignoring the measurement setup in their theories for some reason. Measurement is pretty much an elaborately orchestrated particle interactions. I feel like we don't understand particle interactions fully and that's the source of this weirdness.

>>16685261

>>16685204 (OP)
If electrons were just little balls flying around with a random distribution, it would make no sense that you have regions where no electrons whatsoever land, that is, where the wave function destructively interferes with itself.

>>16685280
Well, the problem is you'll observe no detection even across the region where the wave function constructively interferes. Depending on the resolution of your setup it does appear on a very particular spot but not across the spectrum. That's why born interpreted the wave equation as probability function to the dismay of schrodinger.

These replies are so stupid, no wonder laypeople have completely misunderstood quantum mechanics

>>16685288
And what's the problem? You mean that electrons themselves are not smeared out continuously somehow? The point is that the wave function can't be seen as just some distribution that describes the movement of electrons in bulk; you would have to provide a mechanism of how little billiard balls going through slits fly *just so* that they don't land in the dark regions. There's no way to account for that with a classical particle path with Brownian motion or whatever, so we have to take the wave function as something real.

Also to correct OP, the wave function isn't the position probability, the square of its absolute value is. It's not the same.

Its carried by em wave. The carrier wave splits but the electron goes only from one slit. Nevertheless, the slit alters the carrier wave.

>>16685204 (OP)
It's basically nonsense made up by "scientists" to explain things that go against their traditional models.

>>16685369
>carrier wave
What's it made of? What is oscillating there?

>>16685312
>so we have to take the wave function as something real.
Dude we don't see wave function at all. All it is useful for is providing probability distribution. In the end we do detect electrons as particles.

>>16685388
it's made of black energy which doesn't interact with anything except black energy

>>16685204 (OP)
>why do physicists assume this wave is real
Because a physicist's job is to build and use accurate models of reality, not to actually understand the fundamental nature of reality (if that's even possible)

>>16687466
luminiferous aether is real?

>>16685204 (OP)
>What I don't understand is why do physicists assume this wave is real and is a wave of probability. The wave itself feels like a mathematical artifact and treating it as probability density function a neat mathematically trick.
We don’t assume it’s real, physicists aren’t running around imagining physical waves in some kind of probabilistic aether; the wave function is a useful construction for modeling the peculiar, wave-like behavior of the statistics of quantum mechanical systems and making accurate predictions for them.

>>16687616
well duh an oscillation must occur in a medium, you can't be moving nothing around

>>16685377
>>16685204 (OP)
When I was younger I was also under the impression that QM was something to "understand". Or more accurately that it was an advanced description of how the world actually works at that level. What it actually is is just another theory made by relatively dumb humans that is guaranteed to be wrong.

>>16687476
That may be true. But accurate models are contemptible (unless you need them for something that's not) because they introduce nonsense and lies. It's understanding the fundamental nature that concerns me.

>>16685204 (OP)
All of quantum mechanics is a 'neat mathematical trick'. Math only describes phenomena, it isn't the phenomena itself. Some would argue otherwise, so this is more personal opinion.
But basically, the electron doesn't exist. The electron is a fluctuation in an underlying quantum field(the electromagnetic field), the haziness of it's position and momentum is a product of the properties of the field itself, the double slit experiment is what proves this.
I get what you're saying, that just because we can't measure it during travel doesn't mean it didn't pass through one slit or the other before the final measurement, but this is a case where we simply can never know.
If an event fundamentally cannot be measured further, what happens in that event is of no consequence.

>>16689500
>fields
>existing
fields are just a mathematical construct as well, anon. we've got no fucking idea what's tangibly going on.

>>16689513
We likely never will. Like I was eluding in my post, there's things we just simply can't know and have to infer upon and model instead. Maybe one day there will be some ridiculous breakthrough that lets us find whatever underlying process there is to well... Everything. But personally I highly doubt it.
For OP's case though, it's better for him to think of particles in terms of fluctuations in their respective fields if he wants to better understand quantum mechanics.

>>16689500
The violation of the bell inequality really grinds my gears. It's almost easy enough to explain intuitively, but not quite.

>>16689641

>>16685204 (OP)
Start with the Stern-Gerlach.

>>16685204 (OP)
funny image mind if I save?
>picrel. me wondering if you mind if I save

It's called statistics.

>>16689641
Why is (x, x, x) always even? If one x is 1 then other two will be 0 right?

>>16689500
this would be all well and good if there were not such things as the Aharonov-Bohm effect, where a phase shift happens WITHOUT A MEDIATING FORCE
the unmeasurable vector potential has observable effects
put that in your pipe and smoke it

>>16685252
uncertainty only exists as a measure of your lack of knowledge
god does not play dice

>>16694688
>god does not play dice
maybe not, but he has enough of them that he loses track quite often.

>>16694692
absolutely never, not once, not even for an attosecond
you entangle the spins of two photons, measure them later, they will always be exactly opposed regardless of which basis you choose to measure them in
no fucking exceptions
no randomness whatsoever
ensembles of particles you do have to treat statistically because you have no way of knowing where they used to be