Ouch. Okay, I admit it, it seemed clever at the time but in hindsight it may have been a bit mean-spirited.

Thanks, I had to read it a couple times, but that clarifies things (well, that plus remembering a few other items from my QED readings.)

Just to re-state it for my own edification, the gist of it is basically: There are ways to take a measurement on the object that, just going by classical physics, should return result A if the object has 1 quanta of energy, and result B if it has 0 quanta. However, instead the measurement returns result C, which shouldn't even be an option unless you describe the entire thing in quantum mechanics terms and A and B are interfering with one another.

A somewhat inaccurate metaphor would be hitting a cue ball on a pool table into one of three pockets. You're *only* hitting it from either the right or the left, so it should only sink into the right or left pocket, but under the right conditions, we instead see that it ends up in the middle pocket as if the right and left options had both happened and canceled each other out into a third option.

Regarding MWI, you've gone a bit out of my depth, but my understanding is that consciousness (as purely a process embedded within physics) has nothing to do with it any more than a collapsing building does.

Really? That seems unlikely to me... You can't see an object unless it's emitting photons, which automatically means it's being interfered with and thus decohering, right?

The preferred term is "going to heaven."

I have a question that I assume has a reasonable answer, just one I've never actually gotten confirmation on.

Once they've placed this object in a quantum state, how do they verify that it's "occupying two states at once?" Do they just measure it and repeat the process several times, and note that it's occasionally at 1 quanta, occasionally at 0, and from that infer that it was in a quantum state up until they measured it?

Second question, while I'm here - am I right in saying that according to the many-worlds interpretation, the universe branches when this object enters a quantum state, and we end up in one of two universes, one where the object has 1 quanta of energy and one where it has 0?

Trying to grok all this "quantum mechanics" stuff :)

The closest thing I recall hearing was the suggestion that if, a few decades from now, the LHC has still yet to be successfully turned on, we should assume that Many Worlds is true, we're in one of the lucky universes, and we'd better stop trying right away. :)