I disagree. Our notion of waves is no less an analogy to macroscopic phenomena than billiard balls. There’s no avoiding the dual nature, and there’s no problem with saying that the wave analogy works in some places, but the particle analogy works in others. The only real truth here is “neither.” A photon is a photon, and there is no macroscopic analogy it reduces to perfectly.

There's no problem reconciling the quantum with the Newtonian. Quantum mechanics recovers Newtonian mechanics in the appropriate limit. The problem is reconciling the quantum and the Einsteinian.

I think neither analogy is correct. We're using macro metaphors (real world things at human time and spatial scales) to explain microscopic phenomena that may not correspond to anything that we find familiar.

3Blue1Brown has a very good explanation of how light works as a wave And the barber pole effect shows how matter (sugar) rotates light https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCX62YJCmGk

There is also evidence that "photons" are just thresholds in the material that is used to detect light. The atoms vibrate with the EM-wave and at a certain threshold they switch to a higher vibration state that can release an electron. If the starting state is random, the release of an electron will often coincide with the light that is transmitted from just one atom.

This threshold means that one "photon" can cause zero or multiple detections. This was tested by Eric Reiter in many experiments and he saw that this variation indeed happens. Especially when the experiment is tuned to reveal this. By using high frequency light for example. It happens also in experiments done by others, but they disregarded the zero or multiple detections as noise. I think the double detection effect was discovered when he worked in the laboratory with ultraviolet light.

Here is a paper about Eric Reiter's work: https://progress-in-physics.com/2014/PP-37-06.PDF And here is his book. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BlY5IeTNdu1X6pRA5dnJvRq3ip6...

That we're just collections of wave interference is wild.

What a timely article and comment. I've been watching a lecture series over the last few days about quantum mechanics and the many worlds interpretation. And I have questions.

I may have missed it or didn't understand it when I heard it explained. What underpins the notion that when a particle transitions from a superposed to defined state, the other basis states continue to exist? If they have to continue to exist, then okay many worlds, but why do we think (or know?) they must continue to exist?

Just listen to Feynmann trying to explain why he can't explain magnetism in macro terms (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8)

I don't have the math, but doesn't quantum field theory say this?

Maybe think of it as binary(particles) vs analog(waves).

> But actually everything is merely waves and fields.

The two-slit experiment says otherwise.