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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
Many chapters in this book are followed by problems (see page 10) that pertain specifically to that chapter. This appendix contains questions of a more general character. These questions are designed either to consolidate your understanding or to extend your knowledge. The latter sort of question will require further study, such as through reading books listed in the references. But answering the questions will generally require considerable analytic thought and not just parroting a book from the library.
D.1 Is God a deceiver? A central element of René Descartes's philosophy is that we can usually trust our sensual perceptions because God is not a deceiver. The macroscopic world seems to obey the deterministic laws of Newton, yet quantum mechanics maintains that this is just an appearance: the actual laws of physics are probabilistic not deterministic. Does this mean that Descartes was wrong and that God is a deceiver?
D.2 Is quantum mechanics really strange? Throughout this account (beginning with its title) I have emphasized that I find quantum mechanics to be strange. My question here: Is quantum mechanics intrinsically weird, or do I find it weird only because of the way I was brought up? For example, in the Middle Ages most people were brought up believing the earth to be flat. The round earth model must have seemed extraordinarily strange to them when it was first broached. (For example, it must have seemed paradoxical that you could travel always due east and yet eventually arrive back at your starting point.) Yet today even children find nothing unnatural about the round earth because they have heard about it from infancy.
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