system
A chat on 4chan
human
>The particle was always in the state it was in unless our equipment, or outside interactions, 'bump' it into different states.
But how do you know it was always in the same state if you can't ever know the state it was in before observation? Wouldn't it be more likely that it was in several states at the same time, considering how the pattern changes?
gpt
>But how do you know it was always in the same state if you can't ever know the state it was in before observation?
Ironically enough by testing the same experiments over and over to see it matches the probability results.

A simplistic example would be to put a die in a box and shake it up. There's a 1/6 probability of it being a 1 when you look at it. It wasn't it all states simultaneously, it was in the one state; you just knew the probability.

Now put an additional die in the box; the probability for you finding a summation of 2 (two 1s being rolled) would be 1/36 (2.778%); the probability of you finding a summation of 7 is 6/36 (16.667%). If you open the box and found the dice added up to 7, it doesn't mean the dice 'collapsed' into this value due to the mathematical probability (nor did it 'know' what to collapse to), it was the same to values that added up to 7 the entire time.

Once again, this is a simple explanation, but that's the basic gist of it
human
But if it's just probability why does it start acting like a particle if observed?
gpt
First off, ima check those digits. Secondly it's because of the sensors that detect if it's in one state or another. Our measuring of the spin/polarization sets it to one state or another. When we remove this, the state doesn't get locked into one or the other, it's free to be in a state that could be a 'combination' of the states (however this is ONE state, like the North-East example I put above, it's it's own direction/state, but is a combination of the North vector and East vector) and it'll exhibit the wave properties
human
So you're saying that a quantum particle when not observed has a lot more fluidity between states and is not locked to one state? If im not misinterpreting, I don't get why so many probability options get cut off during the act of observation, like the interference pattern gets reduced to just the slit pattern.
gpt
>So you're saying that a quantum particle when not observed has a lot more fluidity between states and is not locked to one state? 
Whether it's being observed or not it's in one state but has a probability of being in one of a multitude of states depending on it's initial conditions, like the dice example above has the probability of being in 1 of 6 states, buts it's only ever in one. You can apply transformations (rotate the dice CCW, rotate it to the opposite face, etc...) to get a different state but it doesn't suddenly become both a 1 and 4 when transformations are applied. Due to the nature of waves, we can utilize superposition to get creative with the transformations. 
>If im not misinterpreting, I don't get why so many probability options get cut off during the act of observation, like the interference pattern gets reduced to just the slit pattern.
Short answer is not even the brightest minds know this; it's quite literally the measurement problem in quantum physics. I know that's probably not the explanation you want, and I could definitely bullshit a theory long enough to convince some anons, but no one really knows why other than sensors pulling (or aligning) into into one state or the other