Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand about quantum physics is why doesn't everything just become a statistical smudge after a couple iterations? Why is reality so coherent?

My takeaway is that this is the reason some physicists claim 'everything is information' because there is some underlying form that gives the statistical quantum physics a consistent pattern instead of devolving into randomness.

View on HN

Information theory defines information starting from probabilities, so there is no much escaping from that.

I think the physicists mean something like mutual information, i.e. some underlying reality describes the global probability distribution better than the individual probabilities themselves. It is this underlying reality that is 'really real' and the quantum fluctuations illustrate it like a flickering TV screen shows a globally consistent picture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com