Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Consciousness causes collapse

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Merge to quantum mysticism or some-like article. I'm just redirecting it with the history preserved; that's not an invitation to restore the content, it's an invitation to merge. --Haemo (talk) 01:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Consciousness causes collapse

Consciousness causes collapse (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

As per discussion at Talk:Consciousness causes collapse#Questions about the phrase "consciousness causes collapse" the editors are generally in agreement that this particular topic probably does not deserve a separate article but can be woven into a sub-section of Copenhagen Interpretation or Interpretations of quantum mechanics, for example. It was suggested that we AfD this article to get greater input from the community. I believe that deleting the article for notability and even perhaps naming concerns might be appropriate (it isn't clear that this particular phrase is used all that much as an interpretation of QM outside of Wikipedia). ScienceApologist (talk) 23:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Delete with prejudice as nominator. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge to quantum mysticism. At first glance, I don't see any content that would be out of place there. Serpent's Choice (talk) 00:52, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
    • As a note, I'd oppose a merger to Copenhagen Interpretation or similar hard-science article. Per WP:FRINGE, there is enough mysticism/pseudoscience/fiction treatment of the "consciousness causes collapse" concept to warrant an article separate from the actual physics. Serpent's Choice (talk) 01:57, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge this and quantum mysticism to an article that actually explains the actual physics such as Copenhagen Interpretation or Interpretations of quantum mechanics. WAS 4.250 (talk) 01:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge CCC and quantum mysticism to an article that explains the physics such as Copenhagen Interpretation or Interpretations of quantum mechanics as WAS says. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 01:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge with quantum mysticism. Do NOT merge with any article that contains valid scientific content, as that would only lend credence to this claptrap. Dave Kielpinski (talk) 11:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge this and quantum mysticism to an article that actually explains the actual physics such as Copenhagen Interpretation or Interpretations of quantum mechanics, per WAS. TimidGuy (talk) 12:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Speedy Keep The AFD process is being abused to provide input on a matter of content editing which should be resolved on the article's talk page or by dispute resolution such as Third Opinion. The contention that this topic is not notable is absurd. See Google scholar for many thousands of sources. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
    • A quote-bounded Google Scholar search [1] reveals few fewer hits to this title phrase. Excluding the term papers and such, what remains is one journal article, one arxiv eprint, and a UChicgo Press paper whose only mention is to reject the theory. There is not the wide currency of this term to have an article under this name. Ideally, merger would be an editorial action, but in actual practice, mergers of contentious topics are often discussed here. Its not really what AFD is for, but its sometimes better than the alternative. Serpent's Choice (talk) 14:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
      • The exact phrasing of title of an article is unimportant when deciding whether to delete it. It's the topic that matters. The extent to which a conscious observer is required to collapse a quantum wave function has been extensively discussed by notable sources. They use various titles for the topic such as Does Consciousness Collapse the Wave Function?. There doesn't seem to be a standard form of words for this and so the current title is close enough to decide the matter of deletion. If another title seems better then the article can be moved without deletion. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Speedy keep I fully agree with Colonel Warden. Given the amount of discussion on the talk page, and the present AfD nomination, it does not seem wise to me to merge this into another article. Please discuss about the scientific (non)content on the talk page, instead of nominating for a merge. Kraaiennest (talk) 15:50, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep This topic is prevalent enough and large enough to merit its own page, however the title being used probably needs to be changed from 'Consciousness Causes Collapse' to a more universally used description of the topic. Lumping it with topics that include words like mysticism falsely sends the message that this concept was created to try to support mystic beliefs instead of created to try to better understand the phenomenon of phenomenal consciousness. Nhall0608 (talk) 16:12, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete This topic should not exist as a separate subject from QM. It makes no sense outside of QM. The fact that the article has references to topics that are completely within the realm of quantum mysticism should be proof enough that that is what this topic really is. The subject of this article deals with whether or not consciousness collapses wave functions not that quantum mechanics effects consciousness. That is a totally separate subject. Dr. Morbius (talk) 21:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge with quantum mysticism. Abecedare (talk) 23:02, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete Strongly agree with Dr. Morbius. I would place content (there's not that much) in a talk page somwhere and let interested editors put what they want where they want, to the extent that whatever is good is deemed good at those articles. This article was a POV fork when created in 2004. It has never been either a good article nor a well moderated discussion. Three years is enough. And yes, an explicit search query clearly shows (with only five hits in the Google Scholar index), that this article does not represent an independently notable topic, outside of the Copenhagen interpretation and the QM articles that already exist. So...seems really clear then that it's a POV fork -- we just didn't know it. ;-) WNDL42 (talk) 00:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Again your searching is too narrow. See Google books, which has hundreds of hits.
  • And the suggestion that this is a POV fork is silly. If we look at the article Interpretations of quantum mechanics, we see that there are many interpretations such as Many worlds and that each has their own main article. This case is no different. What seems to be happening here is that some POV-pushers are trying to censor an interpretation of which they disapprove. Since Eugene Wigner was a prominent scientist (Nobel prize), his interpretation deserves coverage along with the rest. Colonel Warden (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Thank you for being a voice of reason Colonel Warden. Nhall0608 (talk) 14:33, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Gents, the difference between an "explicit" query and the ones you keep citing (which yield nonsense) seems lost on you. Try again, comparing the erroneous non-explicit query you keep referencing, to this and this. The point is that "consciousness causes collapse" is a notable idea only in the context of either Copenhagen interpretation or Quantum mechanics. Treatments of the idea outside of the larger scientific contexts yield nonsense articles which never go anywhere, because they are POV forks and crank magnets, attracting only extreme POVs from both sides. Now, I think that consciousness in the context of quantum mechanics is important, see (for example) here, but my point is that the topic will never get a solid treatment at an article with the provocative and POV loaded title Consciousness causes collapse, because the article's very title is an assertion that is simultaneously (a) unprovable, (b) unfalsifiable. WNDL42 (talk) 23:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Folks making a case to keep this article need to explain (a) why it's been crap since it's creation in 2004, and (b) tell us what on earth is going to be different in the future to cause that to change. From what I have seen at the talk page, a better article title would be "Condescension causes collapse" (of the Wiki-function). WNDL42 (talk) 23:42, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

(a) It probably has been crap since 2004 because no one has taken initiative to clean it up. (b) This is what we need to do to make it better: (1) Either remove or condense the New Age and mysticism non-sense that has attached itself to this interpretation and explain where the interpretation ends, and the new age non-sense begins. (2) Add references to experiments being done to try to show evidence for this interpretation. (3) State the possible ramifications if this interpratation is correct, such as, if we are someday able to pin point the point where wave functions start to collapse, we could someday better know what exactly does have consciousness, such as, what animals can collapse a wave function, at what point from conception to birth can a fetus collapse a wave function. 162.18.76.206 (talk) 16:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.