Entropymancer wrote:If by pure chance (without any conscious intervention) a photon-sensing device were to fall next to one of a set of slits (also there completely by chance) in front of a coherent light source, I see no reason to expect that it would not disrupt the interference pattern.
That would have to be tested to prove it one way or the other. Until it is, both our views are just speculation. Unfortunately, this particular scenario is by nature impossible to test...
UNLESS, the device recorded which slit the electron passed through and then erased the data automatically moments later without any method for a human to ever know the recorded data. That would satisfy me.
Entropymancer wrote:It is a fact that the detecting device interacts with the photon.
Is it? I admit I have no knowledge of the nature of the detecting device. I assume, though, that it is a recording device that in some way works like an eye or camera or video recorder, receiving information from reflected light but not emitting any sort of force. Do you have a reference that shows otherwise? To me, a recording device is nothing like a stick. A video camera or voice recorder both do not act in the same way as the stick in your example. They do not affect the item they record. The item they record affects them.
He led a double life. Did that make him a liar? He did not feel a liar. He was a man of two truths. - Murdoch, Dame [Jean] Iris
Kartikay is a character role that I play when I feel like escaping reality. Nothing I say under the pseudonym "Kartikay" reflects any of my actual life or personal history.