h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

But the Copenhagen Interpretation basically states that the models and tools we devise to think about the universe are those which we need to be able to think about the universe - it is the ultimate statement of subjective reality. It is a meta theorem, almost - it doesn't matter whether Goedel holds, whether Einstein was right, or whether the hidden variable is actually information or quantum consciousness - at the end of the day Copenhagen can still be applied.

We are, after all, not observers in this universe, but participants.

The essence of the Copenhagen Interpretation is that we need not concern ourselves with anything that cannot be observed. If we have rules that explain our observations, we should just apply those rules and not try to explain why they work.

For example, we know that, when we pass an electron through a double slit apparatus, the probability of finding the electron at any point varies according to the interference pattern produced by a wave passing through both slits simultaneously. The actual path of the electron is unobservable and hence has no reality.

Niels Bohr (the architect of the Copenhagen Interpretation) once said "I don't know what is reality." In the famous case of Schrödinger's cat, he would have said that the state of the cat remains undefined until the box is opened and the cat is observed. I think this means that, while it is in the box, the cat's precise state has no objective reality.

Although I'm quite happy to accept the concept of an electron appearing to pass through two slits at once, I find the concept of a half-dead cat unsettling. Neither can I accept the idea that the human mind somehow controls the universe. (What happened before humans evolved?) For a more comfortable theory, see Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind".

I don't know if this is consistent with your view.

Dry.