[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Unfortunately the elephant doesn't exist, unless observed. Neither do the blind men.

What a dreary world that would be. No surprises!

And that is the preferred interpretation by physicists such as Werner Heisenberg, Eugene Wigner, Amit Goswami, Fred Alan Wolf, William Tiller etc. Please refer to the Heisenberg quote I provided earlier.

There are other interpretations, of course.

of course. I followed your link and found this when I scrolled down:

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Most physicists regard this theory as a non-scientific concept, claiming that it is experimentally unfalsifiable, and that it introduces unnecessary elements into physics, rather than simplifying.

Wim De Muynck comments that

The human observer is as dispensable in quantum mechanics as he (short for `he or she') is in classical mechanics. He sees only the macroscopic parts of his measuring instruments. In present-day practice of the physical science of the microscopic domain human observation is largely restricted to the tables and graphs that have been printed on the basis of data obtained by the scientists computer from a measuring instrument of which the measurement results are sent to the computer without any human interference.
An influence like the reduction (collapse) of the wave packet, allegedly exerted by a human observer on a microscopic object by means of observation, would be equally miraculous as killing a fly by just looking at ones fly swatter. [5]
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You may prefer, for instance, Hugh Everitt's many-worlds theory, which, as of the 1990s, was the most popular interpretation among physicists. According to this theory, the reality in which you and your elephant exists is constantly splitting into more realities, and therefore you and your elephant currently exist in many different realities. It might be consistent with Everitt's theory to say that these are ALL objective realities, but somehow I suspect that you won't be very happy with the idea that there could be an infinite number of Mrs Cogans in an infinite number of different objective realities.

It would have the same problem of unfalsifiability. In science that's really important. The problem with QM is that it is about how particles behave on the subatomic level. We don't live on the subatomic level. We live in "middle world."

The interpretation which comes closest to your belief in a single objective reality, dear Mrs Cogan, is probably the Bohm interpretation. This interpretation is formulated by David Bohm, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, this interpretation, breaching the principle of locality and coupled with quantum entanglement, means that your elephant, by twitching its nose or thinking a few elephantine thoughts in its brain, can instantaneously affect the behavior of subatomic particles millions of miles away on the other side of the galaxy.

I don't remember saying there was a single objective reality. I said there is an objective reality outside ourselves. How it twists, turns, splits and warps is up to us to discover.

By now, you may begin to realize that there is no objective reality, or that if there is, it is certainly not quite what you had imagined it to be.

it will be whatever it is. It is my job to learn as much about it as I can.

Einstein certainly felt that way. In a letter to Schrodinger in the 1950s (yes, Schrodinger of the notorious Schrodinger's cat), Einstein wrote:

"You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality—if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established."

Let me paraphrase that for you, dear Mrs Cogan. Einstein is saying that if you are an honest scientist, you will not deny that you are merely assuming that an objective reality exists. It is a risky assumption, because there is absolutely no proof, scientifically speaking, that such an objective reality does exist.

let me paraphrase for you. Einstein was arguing the exact opposite. You must assume an objective reality and you ignore objective reality at your peril. If you create your own reality, then there is no particular reason to learn how the world actually works (since your magic mind can make it work however you can imagine it) and that is very, very bad. It will get you into more trouble than you can possibly imagine. Objective reality can and will reach up and bite you in the ass.

Well, maybe by now, dear Mrs Cogan, you will begin to dislike Einstein, Heisenberg, Everitt, Bohm and all the others. To you, they might now even seem remarkably like fairies and demons.

if they have no objective reality and are merely fragments of our imagination, then there would be no point in liking or disliking them. But of course, we would have to ask ourselves "Who's doing the imagining? And does the imaginer have an objective reality?"

And also remember this, Mrs Cogan, what you don't understand isn't therefore false. Your earlier comment that in physics, like repels like, and opposites attract, is true merely of, say, magnets. Certainly it isn't true of gravity, or resonance, or sympathetic vibration etc. That much should have been covered, even in your high school physics syllabus, Mrs Cogan.

I accept your correction about the magnets. I was an English major.

What I don't understand is to be studied and understood. I have studied new age claptrap and I understand it is wishful thinking with a lot of bad pitfalls that Einstein warned about in his quote above. You will find out what kind of pitfalls if an elephant ever steps on you when you aren't looking.