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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
On 18 September 1996 I received email that began
Dear Dr. Mermin,
I encountered your “Ithaca Interpretation” paper this morning on the quant-ph archive … and, I must say, I've been walking around with a nice feeling since. There are some things in it that I like very much!
Although I didn't really know my correspondent, it was clear from what followed that he had thought hard – probably harder than I had – about many of the matters I was trying to address. His scholarship and intelligence were so evident that I started walking around with a nice feeling myself at having received unsolicited praise from so thoughtful a source.
Little did I know that those heartwarming words of appreciation were just bait to lure me into a long critical exchange which, to my pleasure and enlightenment, has been going on ever since. A part of my subsequent education (there have also been several invariably instructive and delightful real-life meetings) can be found in Chapter 18 below.
If Chris Fuchs (rhymes with “books”) did not exist then God would have been remiss in not inventing him. Foundations of quantum mechanics is a unique blend of poetry and analysis. Without the poetic vision the analysis tends to chase its own tail into more and more convoluted realms of intricate triviality. Without the analysis the poetry easily degenerates into self-indulgent doggerel.
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