this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2025
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I've been reading about this for over a decade and I still don't understand it
oh boy, here I go banging this drum again:
When physicists say “observe”, they actually mean “measure”. And to measure a photon of light, you have to interact with it somehow, there is no passive way to do so.
The post’s header image implies that the interference pattern goes away just by looking at it. If that were the case, we would never see the interference pattern, never know it was there in the first place! In the actual experiment, they put a sensor at one or both of the slits. But to “sense” a single photon, you have to interact with it in some way. Otherwise you wouldn’t know it was there.
Again, this is where the language trips us up. Rather than “sensor”, would really be more accurate to say they put a photon-touch-er at the slits.
So, what we actually get is “Touching the photon changes the photon’s behavior.” The universe doesn’t magically infer when we happen to be looking at it, there is no spooky action-at-a-distance!
But then what is the significance of this experiment? Why is it so popular if it's that simple and why is it usually associated with quantum physics?
If not touched the photon goes through both slits and interacts with itself, which is still super weird. Basically, it's a wave if not touched, but a particle if touched.
Photons exist at the edge of our dimension, not really a part of it, but skimming the borderlands between dimensions. Like a bug on the surface of a lake, it influences the lake and the atmosphere simultaneously, can be inferred by its effect on the lake, but it cannot be observed (eaten) by a fish without also fully entering the lake dimension. In this borderland state the photon has the theoretical potential to influence many dimensions, but doesn't belong to any one of them. Measuring, or touching the photon turns that potential into causative certainty where the photon is now part of our dimensions' event chain, pulling it fully into our dimension to the exclusion of all others and converting it from a probabilistic multidimensional potential into a deterministic unidimensional particle.
I just made all that up but it sounds pretty good IMO.
That checks out.
Source: am photon.
Which suspiciously reminds optimization. Like computer game with infinite procedural world, where map chunks only generated where player interacts with world, being just formula (algorithm) everywhere else.
Well yes'nt I say a vertasium video and he explained it a bit differently. However I still didn't understand it. But they show the effect in different ways so it is easier to understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJZ1Ez28C-A
I have actually seen that video. But my simplification is still correct, except that I should've used the word "behaves". Because for the purposes of how it will behave the simplification shows the effects clearly.