WE ARE ALL CREATIONIST:

Quantum mechanics accurately predicts the outcomes of measurements, but we don't know what to say about particles when we're not looking at them; all we know for sure is that our common sense gets it wrong. So, the interpretation of quantum mechanics remains a topic of speculation, controversy, equivocation, or indifference.

Some physicists argue that unobserved particles are simply none of our business; the business of physics is predicting observations. Let philosophers handle the unobserved particles. Physicists thus divest themselves of awkward questions and focus on what they do best. This viewpoint is admirably humble in its acknowledgment of the limitations of physics. Or is it just lazy?

Some physicists argue that every possible measurement outcome occurs simultaneously in parallel universes. Impassioned arguments are made for and against this "many worlds interpretation" . In its favor, the many worlds interpretation avoids the distinction between abrupt measurements and smooth evolution of probabilities. The laws of quantum mechanics provide probabilities of different outcomes. What, ultimately, determines which outcomes occur, and which don't? The many worlds interpretation circumvents this question entirely because all outcomes occur. The arguments against the many worlds interpretation are plentiful, and include the fact that we simply have no evidence of parallel universes.

Perhaps, instead, the error in our common sense is the belief in free will. Perhaps we are preprogrammed automatons, or the particles under observation diabolically influence our decisions. This possibility, though unpalatable and strange, is duly considered by physicists and philosophers.

Or, perhaps our error is the assumption that the measurement of one particle can't affect a distant particle. Quantum entanglement is a subtle connection undiminished by distance. Can we assert that the connection isn't so subtle, but that the measurement of one particle physically alters the distant particle? I believe this claim can be neither proven nor disproven. If we say that the measurement of one particle affects the other, we really mean that the first measurement, of either particle, affects both; subsequent results are determined by this first measurement.

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