alt Hacker News> This is a weird sort of hubris. “I’m not qualified to do this job but I can certainly tell you how it needs to be done.”
A quantum state is a mathematical entity that represents a physical system. Since waves are not physical can you see where I can assume that the math needs to start from a different place? If it is even useful at all?
> it’s known that these particles exhibit quantum behavior. Many measures are in fact quantized.
To measure is to quantize, so this is circular reasoning. If particles are always waves we would still see the quantum behavior.
> Second, existing as a wave does not mean no discrete quantities.
Where is the precise point a standing wave ends and begins? The best we can do is guess with calculus and differential equations. Again, yoiu are quantifying things that in and of themselves are not quantized outside of our conception.
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Either you understand this stuff at a level so much deeper than me that I can’t comprehend what you’re getting at or you are way out of your depth because none of this makes any sense to me.
Waves aren’t physical but everything is waves? We can’t measure standing waves but have to “guess” with calculus and differential equations?
> To measure is to quantize, so this is circular reasoning.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Measurement (which is a precisely defined mathematical concept) is not the same thing as quantization. For a very basic example, in all known physics theories, including QFT, SR, and GR, space and time can be measured, and they are not quantized. In fact, there is no theory compatible with SR in which space and time can be quantized, given the nature of the Lorenz transform: SR predicts continuous length contraction from the PoV of observers moving at any velocity relative to each other; for any distance of length 1, some other observer can exist for which the length would be 1/x, with x as a real number.