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Mitchell_Porter comments on The things we know that we know ain't so - Less Wrong
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Let me see if I have this straight:
I devise a double-slit experiment where my electronowhazzit collapses the waveform for an hour-and-a-half, before shutting off; thus resulting in no diffraction pattern during the first portion of the experiment, and a propagated waveform during the second. I set it up to begin the experiment at midnight, and stop at 3AM; a computer automatically records all the data, which I then store on a CD for 1 year's time, without looking at it.
At the end of the year, I present this data to a group of these physicists. They declare that it's my conscious observation, going backwards in time, that creates the results; or that it's my conscious intent in setting up the aparatus, or something like that?
I wish I were feeling incredulous right now, but to be honest I'm just kind of depressed.
Very very few physicists have ever believed anything like that. Those who do are likely either New Agers, parapsychologists, or people whose private philosophical ruminations have landed them in an odd place.
Almost universally on this site, I see the presumption that the wavefunction exists. People should understand that for a significant fraction of physicists, wavefunctions are just like probability functions - they are regarded as calculational devices only.
I agree that that view is common (I am a grad student in quantum computation). But quantum mechanics admits nothing else besides the wave-function (or density operator). If there is anything "real", it pretty much has be the wave-function.