Warp wrote:
>   However, when there are two slits, the electron passes through and starts
> interfering with itself, as if it has passed through both and changed
> direction in different ways.
> 
>   How else can this be explained? How does the electron "know" that there's
> another slit so that it "knows" to start interfering with itself, other than
> actually going through the other slit as well?

	Your questions are interesting, but the conclusions do not necessarily 
follow. If you actually attempt to detect the electron passing through a 
slit, you'll detect it passing through only one slit (and you won't get 
an interference pattern). When you don't try to detect it, you get an 
interference pattern.

	You're concluding it passed through two slits when you don't try to 
detect it? It knows before passing through the slit that you're trying 
to detect it? Such a suggestion is about as weird as an electron 
interfering with itself. It may be true, or it may not be. I don't 
presume to know.

	As you yourself stated elsewhere, you get an interference pattern even 
when only one electron is shot at a time. However, the electron strikes 
the screen in only one place at a time. Looking at where they struck 
individually gives no evidence of any interference - it doesn't "weakly" 
strike two places at once. Looking at the whole set of locations the 
electron struck, though, does. One could simply explain this by saying 
that the presence of two slits causes the electron to act in a 
probabilistic manner - resulting in an interference pattern.

	And, AFAIK, that's the best explanation there is. I have a formalism 
that describes experimental results, and I don't have to resort to 
thinking about electrons interfering with themselves.

	The reason I don't want to declare self-interference is that there is 
no way I can test it (or as Darren would say - any attempt to show this 
fails). I can have two slits and put detectors at each slit. When you 
detect an electron passing through a slit, interference ceases. Why? If 
the electron can pass through both slits, why can't you actually detect 
this?

>>>   If there's "no evidence", what do you call the interference pattern?
>>> "Non-evidence"?
> 
>> Interference.
> 
>   The interference can be explained with the electron passing through both
> slits at the same time. Ergo the interference is evidence of that happening.
> (Note that "evidence" is not the same thing as "proof".)

	And detecting which slit an electron passes through is also evidence 
that it isn't passing through both slits.

-- 
The next war will determine not what is right, but what is left.


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