Talk:Copenhagen interpretation

The flamewar is going out of control, so let's just stop. See Wikipedia:Wikipetiquette, particularly the section "How to avoid abuse of /Talk pages".

In summary, it has been suggested that the current article does not serve the layman well. An overhaul of the article was thought to have removed too much information, and was reverted. The best thing to do now w.r.t. the article is probably to merge the overhaul into the current article, avoiding any unnecessary deletion. The consensus seems to be that deleting the entire article is unnecessary deletion. To avoid controversy, it would be good to be extra meticulous. Before making a claim in the article, quote reputable sources, and document the references in a "references" section. Thanks. -- CYD

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I lay that accusation against all the physics articles. You people need to find a layman who'll tell you what's comprehensible, what isn't, what's of no interest, what's irrelevant and what gratuitously creates confusion. And when you find that person, you should declare them Tyrant over all of the physics section. And if you're really smart, you'll also find a historian, a historian of physics if you're extremely lucky, to do the same job. Then you need to distinguish ontology, mathematics and history strictly.

So sayonara suckers and may a place be reserved for you in Gehenna.

--Ark, Friday, June 7, 2002

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I don't have any objection to rewriting the physics pages to be comprehensible to the layman. My objection is that in the process of doing so, one absolutely, positively must not sacrifice correctness, and that the changes that Ark suggested did so.

Nobody understands quantum mechanics and no one is not confused by quantum mechanics. Much of the confusion arises from experiments that don't make any sense at all. The goal as I see it is to "present the confusion clearly" and explain clearly why it doesn't make any sense. -- RoadRunner

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I removed the sentence:

The results of this experiment are particularly preplexing when one considers that this is not a thought experiment, but an actual real experiment that can be quite easily performed with photons, electrons, atoms, molecules, and even small viruses.

Firstly, regardless of whether or not this experiment in the form noted is "quite easily performed", it wasn't in fact performed until 1989 (using electrons; see double-slit experiment). Thus, for the greatest part of its life, it was indeed a thought experiment; just as Schrodinger's cat experiment was (although the latter has now finally been performed, I think in 2000 - no cats were injured in the process of the experiment :) ).

Secondly, to perform the experiment with "... atoms, molecules, and even small viruses" would require a coherent source of these objects - something none too easily acheived. Certainly we can imagine that the results would be the same; but that again is the domain of a thought experiment. -- Chas 18 Oct 2001 19:10 UTC