Sean Carroll explains why our intuitions about the world are wrong. We can't see atoms or cells directly, but science gives us tools to understand what's actually there. Our brains evolved to navigate a middle-sized world, not to grasp reality at every scale.
So one interesting philosophical point that quantum mechanics bring up is the, that you talk about the distinction between the world as it is and the world as we observe it. So staying at the human level for a second, how big is the gap between what our perception system allows us to see and the world as it is outside our mind's eye? Sort of, sort of not at the quantum mechanical level, but as just are these particular tools we have, which is the few senses and cognitive abilities to process those senses.
Well, that last phrase, having the cognitive abilities to process them carries a lot, right? I mean there is our sort of intuitive understanding of the world. You don't need to teach people about gravity for them to know that apples fall from trees, right? That's something that we figure out pretty quickly. Object permanence, things like that, the three dimensionality of space. Even if we don't have the mathematical language to say that, we kind of know that it's true. On the other hand, no one opens their eyes and sees atoms, right? Or molecules or cells for that matter. Forget about quantum mechanics. But we got there, we got to understanding that there are atoms and cells using the combination of our senses and our cognitive capacity. So adding the ability of our cognitive capacities to our senses is adding an enormous amount. And I don't think it is a hard and fast boundary. You know, if you believe in cells, if you believe that we understand those, then there's no reason you believe we can't believe in quantum mechanics just as well.
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