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Not dumb at all! Is a discussion that can be a little misleading, so be wary and don't blindly trust some random guy on a forum. In the video they relate this randomness to the fact that qubits live in a superposition of states, in contrast to bits, which can be either 1 or 0, but not both. This means that when you measure a qubit, you would still obtain 1 OR 0, but you will obtain each with certain probability. So, how is this different to just picking a random bit and then measuring it? You could fabricate a way of picking those classical bit that yield the same distribution than the qubit. We find a difference in one of the very first experiments that highlighted the quantum nature of the microscopic world; the double slit experiment: you have two screens, one with 2 small holes and the other is placed behind that. Then you send a bunch of classical particles through the punctured screen and you receive the counts on the screen behind it. Then you have a distribution of places where those particles hit. Then you do the same with quantum particles this time. You obtain a different pattern (this is important, is different to the classical pattern). This pattern is called "diffraction" pattern and means there was a wave like interaction between the particles. So now you try to do the same experiment with quantum particles, but sending them one by one, so no classical-like interaction could exist. Amazingly, you find the same diffraction pattern. This means one particle can "interact" with itself. The way physicists explain this is by allowing quantum states to exists on this superposition states which induces intrinsic randomness due to the fact that when measured, each particle could only have travelled through one of the slits, or each qubit (after measurement) can only be 1 OR 0, but not both. This difference between classical and quantum description of nature goes deeper, and makes mechanisms as entanglement and teleportation possible. "Bell inequalities" are a great example of of some other, related ways in which both differ. |