My current physics acumen is probably in the lower half of the average HN reader.
I enjoyed AP physics in high school. Took the test, got a 4. I’ve been helping my wife back in school with half life decay (as much chemistry as physics) and relished that. As a Mechanical Engineering student, I got A’s in my three required physics class. In short, I really liked physics. It helped me make sense of the world.
I’m old enough, that quantum mechanics was not the public fascination it is now. Cold fusion was the big topic those days.
Despite all of this early formative appreciation for physics, I have yet to really appreciate QM.
It just has never helped me explain the world around me. And unlike many of the transcendental changes that occurred in the industrialized world as we got better and better at physics, whatever QM is supposed to do for me (it’s supposed to have bigger application than the double slit thing, right?), isn’t apparently obvious to me.
The brief parts where Sabine is referring to QM particulars in the video, and when I skim the other articles and such I see on QM, always include a lot of phunky math, amusing names and symbols, and a sort of talk that sounds like convoluted philosophy, or an attempt to explain transubstantiation or the “mystery of the trinity.”
I was amused at the end of the video. There’s a “keep your cake and eat it too” thrust. She clearly states a sort of collegiate/professional “you do you” support. At the same time she tells the viewer they don’t need to pay attention or care about it. But if we the lay masses don’t care, the PR that exists for the sake of securing funding to go on with these papers dries up. So in a round about way, she’s saying “I support my colleagues wishes to continue to pursue these studies, but you my reader shouldn’t bother to support them in any way, direct or indirect.”