> Arkani-Hamed, a leader of the effort, called quantum fields “a convenient fiction.” “In physics very often we slip into a mistake of reifying a formalism,” he said. “We start slipping into the language of saying that it’s the quantum fields that are real, and particles are excitations. We talk about virtual particles, all this stuff — but it doesn’t go click, click, click in anyone’s detector.”

There you go. Anytime someone insists on HN that virtual particles are real, you can just tell them that Arkani-Hamed disagrees with you and that he is also smarter than you.