Talk:3134: Wavefunction Collapse
For crying out loud, the wavefunction collapse has never been observed. 38.70.240.202 02:23, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
The term professor actually can also mean "a person who affirms a faith in or allegiance to something." which continues the religious aspect of having a soul. 147.161.213.89 02:30, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
Actually, I am a god explaining their reality to my comrades, so only when we observe it does the wavefunction collapse. It will not collapse for mere characters in a false reality we created. --DollarStoreBa'alconverse 02:34, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
So many people misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation. It is only the most basic theory that could be made based on all our experiments, which is why it says the wavefunction collapse when we measure it in an experiment. It doesnt mean it hasnt collapsed earlier, only that we know it has collapsed when we measure it.2A02:3103:4C:2400:84BF:B101:8E7D:F4C6 06:24, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
is it just me, or is this one similar to 660: Sympathy & 803: Airfoil? —Winter1760 (talk) 06:59, 28 August 2025 (UTC).
- Yes there is the similarity with three option where the first two are identical but the very wrong has been canged to Chaotic in this comic. We could a mention of it at the bottom. I'll try to put it in. --Kynde (talk) 07:40, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
I think "Good", "Bad" and "Chaotic" are references to role playing games, probably Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but perhaps others as well. Characters in such games have an "alignment", which indicates whether a character tends to do good, or tends to be destructive/evil, or can flip (chaotic). The word "alignment" also has meaning in the world of quantum physics. So this may be a deliberate conflation of worlds. I also like the double meaning of "professor" above in this context. Gjanssens (talk) 08:17, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
- Randall has previously used the famous "Good/Neutral/Evil" vs "Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic" array, and subsets of it, so it's something we already know he has already used. And "Good/Bad/Chaotic" is a strange path (<any>-Good, <any>-Evil then Chaotic-<any>), and distortion of the gaming 'spectrum', if it was an intended reference. In various ways, I think it just shares the tripartite of the (Good)/(Bad)/Cursed type of sequence that some the Category:Unsolved Problems display. It's basically just a comedic triad, the shortest possible 'off the deep end' list, and I don't think the exact words matter (except being normal->normal->weird). 82.132.244.136 14:59, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
Randall pokes fun at a severe philosophic problem of all subjectivist interpretations of QM: If a "soul" is needed for wave collapse, or maybe only a being with consciousness - where shall we draw the line? Can Schrödingers cat herself collapse the wavefunction? A cockroach? A bacterium? (Mind you, they rely on a working QM as we.) Or, in the other direction as in this comic, maybe an undergrad doesn't suffice. (Add to explanation?) 2A02:2455:1960:4000:4DF1:8E5D:B4E1:C184 08:58, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
- That is a NON-problem, because it isnt believed by anyone the measurement is what collapses the function, it is the conditions that are necessary to measure properties that collapses it. Which is also why the schrödingers cat is more of a joke than a real physics thought experiment. The wave functions would already have collapse d before you open the box. The only reason the copenhagen interpretation is so vague is specifically to avoid determining when wave functions collapse, so it just says they have collapsed when we make a measurement.2A02:3103:4C:2400:84BF:B101:8E7D:F4C6 12:57, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
学部生でよかった (Translation: I’m glad I’m undergraduate) 《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 12:56, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
Does this mean that a red-headed professor taking a measurement won't collapse the function? 204.113.92.35 15:18, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
Seems like there's a secondary joke here implying (accurately, unfortunately) that the significance of a study is often dependent on the academic status of the person conducting it. And thus, yes, a full professor's observation of the same phenomenon "counts" more, regardless of the means of measurement. 24.53.184.90 17:31, 28 August 2025 (UTC)
