Adam Becker

But the standard way of using quantum physics says, okay, wave functions obey the Schrodinger equation, except when you look, when you actually look for the electron, the Schrodinger equation is temporarily suspended, at which point this entire other law of physics that is completely different and contradictory comes in.

It's called the Born Rule.

This is Jason Bourne.

And that says, oh, yeah, that wave function that moves smoothly, it stops moving smoothly.

It goes to zero everywhere except in the spot where you found the electron.

Yeah.

And so this leads to a couple of questions.

First of all, that's weird.

Why does that happen?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Weirdness, though, is fine.

The real problem, the contradiction, right, the gap in logic is, okay, we have these two rules.

They're not the same rule.

When do we apply one and when do we apply the other?

Right.

Because we need to know that because they're not the same rule.

The usual answer is, oh, we use the Schrodinger equation when we're not looking, when we're not making the measurement, and we use the Born rule when we do.

The problem is that the idea of measurement is really, really fucking vague.

Yeah.