Misunderstanding Quantum Physics at a Deeper Level

It’s quite common in physics to hear that no one understands quantum mechanics and that the only possible way to teach it can be summed up by the phrase “shut up and calculate.” Among the general public, there are a number of misleading metaphors circulating, the best known of which is Schrödinger’s cat, but sometimes also the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg’s microscope, or Wigner’s friend. In this presentation, we will make a modest attempt to distinguish between what can be understood in quantum physics and what remains unknown. We will see that quantum mechanics occupies a very special…