More Quantum entanglement mind fuckery

[polymath257]

Mmm. . . I'm not sure that "explained" and "enumerated" are the same thing.  An explanation of a physical change in state should describe process.

That seems like you are making an assumption that there *is* a process. That seems to be a false assumption in the case of many quantum systems.

One aspect of this is what it means to 'explain' something. Typically, it means detailing why more fundamental things or processes lead to the phenomenon in question.

Typically, an explanation carries with it an assumption that classical notions are appropriate: we can 'explain' by seeing how things collide, or affect each other in some mechanical way.

But the classical ideas are *wrong*. That is one of the big lessons of quantum mechanics. The idea of classical particles colliding and producing observed effects just isn't how the universe works.

Instead, there are *quantum* particles that operate via probabilities and that don't have well-defined properties at all times. So, classical realism is simply false.

That means that we have explanations involving the properties of quantum particles: these explanations involve how the probabilities are changed in various situations and how we can use these intuitions on probabilities to understand what we observe.

But, just like collisions in the classical explanations are seen as basic, the probabilities in the quantum world are seen as basic. That means that *quantum* explanations don't have some of the characteristics that *classical* explanations do.

Also, there is the issue that *fundamental* properties cannot, by definition *have* a deeper explanation. If they did, they would not be fundamental.

So, to explain what a car engine works, we can rely on mechanics and chemistry to explain why the gas, air, etc are brought to the cylinder, ignited and how that leads to an expansion of the gas, etc.

But, to go to the next level would be to explain why the chemistry works the way it does, or why the forces produce the motions. The chemistry is explained in terms of the motion of atoms and the motions in terms of forces.

But, at some point, you get to a *lowest* level of explanation: a fundamental level that *isn't* dependent on a lower level of explanation. Things at that level can *only* be enumerated. We can observe how things are interconnected but only enumerate those interconnections. if it is truly a fundamental level, there can be no more fundamental level and so no 'deeper' explanation.

So, yes, quantum mechanics *does* explain what we observe. It shows how to calculate, in any given situation, the probabilities for different outcomes, it shows how to find what the possible outcomes can be, and it uses those calculations to show why we observe what we do.

How is that *not* an explanation, as opposed to simply an enumeration?