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Quantum Leap

Craig4

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Craig4
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I was listening to a proposal requesting that my office purchase some new project management software and the guy told us that adopting his stuff would provide a "quantum leap" in capabilities. In my purely social scientist (psychology and conflict analysis) mind, quantum physics relates to the very, very small and very, very unpredictable. Was I correct in saying that a quantum leap would be a very small jump in any direction, possibly at the same time? I said I wasn't very interested in a quantum leap.
 
Craig4 said:
I was listening to a proposal requesting that my office purchase some new project management software and the guy told us that adopting his stuff would provide a "quantum leap" in capabilities. In my purely social scientist (psychology and conflict analysis) mind, quantum physics relates to the very, very small and very, very unpredictable. Was I correct in saying that a quantum leap would be a very small jump in any direction, possibly at the same time? I said I wasn't very interested in a quantum leap.
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I have heard people complain about this before. A quantum leap IIRC refers to an electron jumping from one energy level to another in an atom, and is indeed very small.

It's significant, I guess, but small.
 
It is the smallest change possible, without being no change.
 
The metaphor isn't about the size of the change - it's that the change happens without passing through any intermediate points.
 
I assume this phrase came from the time when folks were first struggling with the discontinuity of positions. "How does an electron move from state x to state x+1 without ever being in an intermediate state?"

So rather than talking about something physically tiny, it's attempting to express the idea that without there being a path from here to there, you got to your destination instantaneously and perhaps unexpectedly.
 
LarianLeQuella said:
What percentage did Ziggy give that this was the right choice?
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Someone called?

(yes, I know, you meant someone else)

The colloquial meaning doesn't mean the opposite of the technical meaning, it's more like an orthogonal meaning. The colloquial meaning in a huge change. The technical meaning is a discrete, abrupt change. That change may be big or small, depending on circumstances and context (which usually determines what "big" and "small" mean).
 
As a point of reference, what I wanted was a concrete explanation of what the capabilities were and get him off his use of superlatives. I'm just curious if my critique of quantum leaps was close.
 
He should have used the much more appropriate and far more poetic expression "a sea change".
 
Craig4 said:
As a point of reference, what I wanted was a concrete explanation of what the capabilities were and get him off his use of superlatives. I'm just curious if my critique of quantum leaps was close.
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Your critique was not close at all. The "quantum leap" as a figure of speech, refers to a fundamental change in the nature of a thing.

It's the idea that things are profoundly different, now vs then. The automobile vs. the horse-drawn carriage. The digital computer vs. the human kind. Email vs. snail-mail.

If your interlocutor says his proposal is a quantum leap, you should expect it to change everything. It will be so much faster that its users' productivity will increase not slightly, but significantly. The accuracy of its information will prompt you to revise your entire business model to accommodate previously-unavailable opportunities for profit. The cost-savings of its implementation will have your accountants tearing their hair out, as all the deductibles they'd planned on vanish into thin air. Etc.

That's what a quantum leap means. Not an incremental improvement on the status quo, but an entirely new world of opportunity and benefit.
 
theprestige said:
Your critique was not close at all. The "quantum leap" as a figure of speech, refers to a fundamental change in the nature of a thing.

It's the idea that things are profoundly different, now vs then. The automobile vs. the horse-drawn carriage. The digital computer vs. the human kind. Email vs. snail-mail.

If your interlocutor says his proposal is a quantum leap, you should expect it to change everything. It will be so much faster that its users' productivity will increase not slightly, but significantly. The accuracy of its information will prompt you to revise your entire business model to accommodate previously-unavailable opportunities for profit. The cost-savings of its implementation will have your accountants tearing their hair out, as all the deductibles they'd planned on vanish into thin air. Etc.

That's what a quantum leap means. Not an incremental improvement on the status quo, but an entirely new world of opportunity and benefit.
Click to expand...

I get what it means as a figure of speech. It's the scientific meaning I was going for. That and I found this guy off putting.
 
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