clipka wrote:
> Patrick Elliott schrieb:
>>>   That may be only true if the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum 
>>> mechanics
>>> is true, which is not an accepted fact.
>>>
>> Isn't that a bit like saying that its not an accepted fact that the 
>> sky is green due to large amounts of trees floating in the clouds? Its 
>> not even "not accepted", its flat out wrong.
> 
> Quote from Wikipedia:
> 
> "According to a poll at a Quantum Mechanics workshop in 1997[7], the 
> Copenhagen interpretation is the most widely-accepted specific 
> interpretation of quantum mechanics"
> 
> So leaving aside that it /is/ apparently quite accepted (if only as a 
> theory instead of a fact), what makes you so sure that it is "flat out 
> wrong"?

The problem isn't the Copenhagen interpretation, its how it gets 
misused. Observer, in the context of quantum physics, means, "What ever 
happens to nudge the particle, causing it to change states." This 
**can't** be a person, unless you can honestly think of some means to 
invent an experiment where a particle(s) is held in a quantum state, and 
you could get some fool to walk through the middle of them. So, no.. A 
quantum instrument doesn't need someone "listening" to it to do 
something. First off, such a thing doesn't exists *as* a device, unless 
you have some mechanism by which you can change states *in* the device. 
If you can do that, then the "observer" is already in the room, and you 
don't need any conscious mind to be there for it to do anything. If it 
lacks this capacity, then you could have one, 50, of 50 million, people 
in the room, and its going to just sit their, doing nothing, because 
"observers", as is commonly used to mean, "Something sufficiently 
conscious to notice, and be aware of noticing, something else.", are not 
even part of the equation. When the quantum tree falls in the forest, if 
still makes a noise, because it hit something, not because something 
where there to see hear it hit, same as a normal tree.

So, no, I am not griping about the Copenhagen interpretation, I am 
griping about the inability of people to grasp that it doesn't mean what 
*most* people interpret the interpretation to imply, vis a vie 
consciousness. That isn't simply not implied by it, its outright 
contradicted by it.

That said, sorry for the confusion. I had assumed that the term being 
used applied to the poor reasoning derived from quantum theory and 
people's misunderstanding of what "observer" meant, not the basic 
principles of quantum physics, which invariably result in people 
thinking that a "person" needs to be in the room for anything to happen.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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