December 9, 2025
Schrödinger’s catfight goes viral
Why I don’t root for the Many Worlds team
Fans pick Team Denmark vs Team Multiverse; comments go nuclear
TLDR: A writer defends Copenhagen over Many Worlds, arguing observers matter and multiverse fans sneak them back anyway. Commenters split between calling it emotional and misinformed, offering nuanced corrections, and roasting Nautilus for ads—proof that quantum debates are as much fandom drama as physics.
Quantum fandom just went full soap opera. The article’s author read physicist Vlatko Vedral’s book and basically yelled at the page, then planted their flag for Team Copenhagen—the camp that says observers matter when you measure things—over Team Many Worlds, which treats measurement as “just stuff interacting with stuff.” Cue the comments. ImHereToVote swung first: “This article is secretly about emotivism.” MarkusQ called it “almost incoherent,” accusing the writer of turning physics into a jersey swap instead of science. DeathArrow piled on: the author sounds out of their depth and mocking.
But not everyone came to jeer. Antibabelic tried to set the record straight: Copenhagen doesn’t say nothing exists without an observer; it says quantum theory doesn’t make claims about hidden, observer‑free stuff. In plain talk: the math tells us about measurements, not the secret life of particles. Meanwhile, meta‑drama erupted as mellosouls lamented Nautilus going “tatfest” with paywalls and ads. The thread meme’d the author’s Bohr bravado—“say it to Niels’ face!”—and joked about “packing your many suitcases back to Denmark.” Scoreboards appeared: Team Denmark vs Team Multiverse. Verdict? The physics stayed complicated; the fandom went feral.
Key Points
- •The article critiques Vlatko Vedral’s claims that Copenhagen is misconceived and that quantum physics does not need observers.
- •It contrasts Many Worlds (all outcomes occur, measurement is ordinary interaction) with Copenhagen (measurement context and observers are fundamental).
- •Copenhagen is explained as starting from interactions: system and apparatus become entangled and cannot be uniquely decomposed into independent parts.
- •The finite value of Planck’s constant introduces granularity that prevents a clear, preferred partition of interactions.
- •An analogy to relativity highlights that, like spacetime’s non-preferred split, quantum interactions lack a preferred decomposition, making outcomes context-dependent.