We might come up with clever metaphor and analogy to visualize what is happening but it will be Plato’s shadows on the cave wall.

We are already at that point… quantum mechanics is too far removed from our notions of reality our brains are wired for… humans to their credit have powered through in understanding the rules, and exploiting them. There are brilliant minds that have profound grasp of the rules and intuition about what those rules imply… but I doubt any of those minds would have the conceit to claim they ‘understand’ QM.

Yet the weird thing is that no one actually understands quantum theory. The quote popularly attributed to physicist Richard Feynman is probably apocryphal, but still true: if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t. That point was proved by a poll among 33 leading thinkers at a conference in Austria in 2011. This group of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers was given 16 multiple-choice questions about the meaning of the theory, and their answers displayed little consensus.

We use QM in nearly every aspect of our lives, we know the rules well…
But what does it mean?

If humanity survives a few more millennia I think we will learn the rules… but understanding them will require us to become something other than human….

That’s just my opinion of course…

Human beings can do remarkable things with their minds and bodies, we are capable of interacting with physical reality to produce things of great beauty and complexity, but most of our talent appears to be subconscious, automatic, muscle memory rather than logic or intelligence. Think of a dancer or an athlete, the exquisite partnership of a man on horseback, a pilot in a plane, or a rider on a motorcycle, or a sailor on small boat. We can interact with reality and accomplish phenomenal feats, but we can’t really understand how we do it, we can’t even explain to anyone else how we do it.

I spent this afternoon listening to Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue”, by the Emerson String Quartet.
I’m not a musician, and I understand no music theory at all, but I can see what was inside JSB’s head 400 years ago when he wrote those notes. I can see it, but I can’t do it, I can’t explain it. I can’t even understand it.

“A source of Bach’s power is that the meaning of his work is not abstract but inherent in the sounding music, much as Gothic cathedrals embody divine order in their use of stone and space (counterpoint was, after all, a Gothic invention). The patterns seem to suggest natural forms, the growths of cells or crystals, or the deep structures of psychology.”

–Paul Epstein, in the liner notes.

I can’t duplicate or even fully understand what Bach did, but I can somehow grasp it emotionally, at some deep fundamental level. I can’t do that with modern physics, and that breaks my heart.