The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters repeatedly recommend it as the talk that finally made quantum mechanics click, especially for programmers.
What it is
Ron Garret's Google Tech Talk argues that quantum mechanics is no harder to understand than relativity and that popular accounts wrongly rely on the Copenhagen interpretation. He presents measurement as entanglement and explains phenomena like the quantum eraser.
Recommended by 11 HN commenters across 15 different months, 2012 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec lisper · 2013-01 · on “Quantum physics made relatively simple: Three lectures by Hans Bethe”
Before you invest three hours to watch these lectures you should know that the title is terribly misleading. These lectures are not about QM at all, they are about the history of QM, albeit told by someone who was actually part of it. But the coolness of hearing the history of QM firsthand is undermined by the fact that Bethe is clearly well past his prime, and he's not particularly good at telling stories. If you want a video that is true to this title I'd recommend this: [LINK] EDIT: And if you want to really understand QM, there's this: [this video] :-)
Strong rec cromwellian · 2014-04 · on “Quantum Entanglement Drives the Arrow of Time”
This Google Talk [this video] uses entanglement and quantum information theory in a clear and understandable way to explain 'spooky' quantum phenomena, like the quantum eraser, de-coherence, the aspect experiment, and the measurement problem. Even if you don't know any QM, just basic algebra and calculus, it's really approachable. I used to be a fan of the Many Worlds interpretation, but after seeing this, I'm now a big fan of the Quantum Information Theory explanation. Starting about 43 minutes in, he goes into the QM Information Theory explanation, but I'd recommend watching the entire prezo. Link to my original post on the subject: [LINK]
Strong rec oceanghost · 2019-11 · on “How Quantum Teleportation Works”
If I may recommend a lecture given at Google Tech Talks-- "The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know", It really clarified some things for me. [this video]
Strong rec raphlinus · 2022-03 · on “A wave function does not collapse upon detection?”
This is the video that finally made it click for me[1]. Despite the somewhat click-baity title ("What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know") it actually goes into quite a bit of detail of what is and isn't a measurement, in the sense of interactions in a quantum mechanical system that strongly resemble classical behavior (it can be said that the quantum mechanical world is a simulator that can run classical mechanics). [1]: [this video]
Recommends replax · 2012-02 · on “A Schrödinger cat with eight lives: quantum entanglement of eight photons”
In fact, the Copenhagen interpretation has been proven wrong by fellow lisper Ron Garret. You can read his paper here: www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf and watch his google talk about it [this video] . The problem is, that most people (not scientists, mind you) do not really care anyway, and the Copenhagen interpretation gives you a nice story to tell, which is fairly "strange", yet somewhat understandable. I hate the fact that even science magazines still 100% subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation, just to attract a greater readership and to be able to use catchier headlines.
Recommends mtrimpe · 2012-10 · on “Quantum entanglement shows that reality can't be local”
This Google Talk from last year provides an argument and interpretation of this that's fairly understandable with a programmer's mindset: [this video]
Recommends dools · 2015-04 · on “Is the Universe a Hologram?”
Anyone interested in this can find an excellent lecture here [this video] and of course by looking up leonard susskind's stuff on the black hole wars and universe as a hologram
Recommends lisper · 2016-08 · on “There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)”
> (whatever that means) That (implied) question has an answer: measurement is the mutual entanglement of a number of degrees of freedom. See: [LINK] Or the movie version: [this video]