“The idea that they [measurement outcomes] be not alternatives but *all* really 
happen simultaneously seems lunatic to him [to the quantum theorist], just 
*impossible*. He thinks that if the laws of nature took *this* form for, let me 
say, a quarter of an hour, we should find our surroundings rapidly turning into 
a quagmire, or sort of a featureless jelly or plasma, all contours becoming 
blurred, we ourselves probably becoming jelly fish. It is strange that he 
should believe this. For I understand he grants that unobserved nature does 
behave this way – namely according to the wave equation. The aforesaid 
*alternatives* come into play only when we make an observation - which need, of 
course, not be a scientific observation. Still it would seem that, according to 
the quantum theorist, nature is prevented from rapid jellification only by our 
perceiving or observing it. [........] The compulsion to replace the 
"simultaneous* happenings, as indicated directly by the theory, by 
*alternatives*, of which the theory is supposed to indicate the respective 
*probabilities*, arises from the conviction that what we really observe are 
particles - that actual events always concern particles, not waves." -Erwin 
Schroedinger, The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Dublin Seminars 
(1949-1955) and Other Unpublished Essays (Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, 
Connecticut, 1995), pages 19-20.


AG:  As your original quotation indicates, this was written pre-Everett who 
published his thesis in 1957. Who first got the idea that every outcome that's 
possible, must occur.  This is the person who led us astray. Unlikely that such 
a dumb idea would take hold. 


S:  Schroedinger wrote that (see above) in 1952 (July), well before H. Everett 
III. But the question might be: Schroedinger did not believe in *particles*, 
only in waves. Frankly I do not think that Everett - at least in his original 
"relative state" interpretation - had problems with *particles*. He usually 
reasoned in terms of 'wavefunction of particle'. "However, it seems to us to be 
much easier to understand particle aspects from a wave picture (concentrated 
wave packets) than it is to understand wave aspects (diffraction, interference, 
etc.) from a particle picture." "Even though the apparatus does not indicate 
any definite system value (since there are no independent system or apparatus 
states), one can nevertheless look upon the total wave function  as a 
superposition of pairs of subsystem states, each element of which has a 
definite q value and a correspondingly displaced apparatus state."

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