Studying quantum mechanics often gives you an eerie feeling. I tend to feel that something very adhoc is happening. Reading about special relativity is different for example: you start with some reasonable axioms and then the maths kind of follows. But not so a case with quantum mechanics. I’ve tried to read many books to get sort of a big picture view of what the hell is happening to no avail.
One reason is that quantum mechanics is a probablistic theory at its heart and human minds are not cut out for getting gut feel of probablistic arguments. Despite this limitation though, I think there’s gotta be a better way to understand quantum mechanics.
Turns out their are many people and more importantly scientists who feel the same way. There are efforts underway to create a theory from simpler principles. The awesome quanta magazine covers some of the standout ones in this article. It also higlights that quantum theories are going to be more grounded in information theory. I read a quote somewhere, quantum mechanics is not theory of reality but theory of information about reality.
My next goal is to study the main paper (by Hardy) mentioned in the quanta article.