In the early 1800s, experiments that later became known as the Double-slit experiment revealed something strange about the world. Electrons don’t always behave like solid little particles. Sometimes they behave like waves — spread out, probabilistic, not clearly in one place.

And then something interesting happens: when you measure them, the ambiguity disappears. Suddenly the electron is here and materializes as wave or particle, depending on the environment or other factors. But in the end, the act of observation forces a definite outcome. This later became a milestone of Quantum Mechanics, an entire new branch of physics.

How is this ambiguity about electrons connected to our thoughts?

Most of the time, thoughts in our head are vague. They feel real, but they’re actually quite fuzzy. You might think you have a clear opinion about something, but when someone asks you to explain it, you suddenly realize you don’t or it take you a long time to explain and in the end, you are not always fully happy with what you have said.

Because the thought hasn’t really materialized yet. Only when you say it out loud — or write it down — does it become something concrete. A sentence forces structure. You have to choose words, connect ideas, and suddenly you see whether the thought actually makes sense and what this thought actually is.

In that sense, speaking or writing is a way of measuring thoughts.

Before that, they’re more like possibilities floating around in your head. Once you express them, they take a definite shape. That’s probably one of the reasons writing is so useful. Not because it stores thoughts, but because it forces them to exist in the first place. Also, when going into events where you speak a lot like an interview or important discussions, it makes sense to talk your words through first to see where you stand. This makes you more confident that what you say actually represents what you thought you think.

Another interesting example that are on some meta-level connected to the double-slit experiment are market prices. They only exist or materialize once they are traded. Before they are some sort of vague value that is calibrated and anticipated somewhere between its variables of offer and demand.

The point isn’t that everything follows quantum physics like in the Double-slit experiment. But the pattern is familiar: many things exist first as possibilities and only become concrete once we interact with them. Thoughts become clearer when we write them down, ideas when we commit to them. Sometimes the act of expressing something is exactly what makes it real.