  Richard Feynman famously declared, "I think that I can safely say that nobody
really understands quantum mechanics." Sean Carroll lamented the persistence of
this sentiment in a recent opinion piece entitled, "Even Physicists Don't
Understand Quantum Mechanics. Worse, they don't seem to want to understand it."
Quantum mechanics is arguably the greatest achievement of modern science and by
and large we absolutely understand quantum theory. Rather, the "understanding"
to which these two statements evidently refer concerns the ontological status
of theoretical constructs. For example, "Do quantum wave functions accurately
depict physical reality?" The quantum measurement problems represents a
collection of such queries and the conundrums to which they lead. Most
physicists are content with foregoing such metaphysical issues, falling back on
Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, and then get on with the business of doing
physics. I suspect that Carroll would criticize these physicists as being too
dismissive of the wonderful mysteries of quantum mechanics by relegating its
role to that of an algorithm for making predictions. Quite to the contrary, I
maintain that those who still pursue a resolution to the measurement problem
are burdened with a classical view of reality and fail to truly embrace the
fundamental quantum aspects of nature.
