You said: "In physics there are a lot of counter-intuitive thingumies. Are they real? Does it matter?" A person's Intuition will depend on his experience.... and: "In general the questions cannot be answered (are unanswerable) so are moot ...." It has been said that "we can only state what is observed and relationships between observables". The answer will depend on the question. If we ask: "how does light behave as it passes through a medium such as glass", then a physicist can tell you if he knows the extinction coefficient (tensor) and the direction and wavelength of the light. He can will give an answer such as "the luminous flux leaving the glass as a function of wavelength is...." But what happens inside the glass may contribute to a detailed modelling process to give a better answer to the above, but is not generally relevant. Don't quote me... Chris.
