Talk:Henry Stapp

guest
LBL's webpages lists Stapp has a "guest", not a professor. Source: http://www.lbl.gov/cgi-bin/ds/ds.cgi?include=n&peopleName=Stapp&deptName=&submit=SEARCH. Therefore I edited the article to reflect this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.79.190 (talk) 16:46, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * However, LBL's web pages also list him as being on their scientific staff (see https://commons.lbl.gov/display/lbldiv/Physics+Scientific+Staff). I have edited the article to reflect this as I think it is relevant. I think, by the way, that these two staff references don't deserve to be in the reference list itself, but if I just use the ref tag a mysterious lock appears (does this just mean it is an https URL?) so I used the same method as for the retirement list. --Brian Josephson (talk) 21:44, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know much about Stapp, but the summary of his work in the article appears to relate solely to consciousness, which AFAIK is part but by no means all of what he has worked on. The article needs attention by someone who knows more. Ben Finn 19:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I second this. Google Scholar lists numerous articles by him, but I'm not expert enough in these other areas to be able to add content in myself. --Brian Josephson (talk) 21:44, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Dubious references to Schrödinger's equation as "deterministic"
The section Consciousness of the main article contains phrases like
 * "deterministic evolution of mathematical properties in accordance with a deterministic equation Schrödinger's equation"
 * "mathematically determined evolution via Schrödinger's equation"

Schrödinger certainly preferred a deterministic interpretation of his equation and of the wavefunction ψ, and "always opposed a statistical or probabilistic approach, with its associated discontinuities" but ...

In consideration of the above, I will temporarily: If no comment on the above is forthcoming, I will proceed to edit directly the section Consciousness of the main article, removing all references to a deterministic interpretation of Schrödinger's equation. Miguel de Servet (talk) 16:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Append a totally-disputed-section template at the top of the section Consciousness
 * Append inline templates in correspondence of the above disputed phrases.

Comment: Schrödinger's equation itself is completely deterministic, regardless of how its results are interpreted. This is not remotely controversial, at least from anything I've read. The controversy arises when one interprets the particle / interaction / "collapse" process, which is a separate process from that of the wave equation, as von Neumann noted. How can you say that the Born interpretation makes the wave equation itself non deterministic, and how do we know that your view is that of Dr. Stapp? It sounds as though you are pushing your own point of view here in an article where it is not an important issue either way. Anonymous Nov. 23, 2008

Comment: This is how Stapp himself puts it: "The Schrödinger equation, like Newton's or Maxwell's equations, is deterministic: given the motion of the quantum state for all times prior to the present, the motion for all future time is fixed, insofar as the Schrödinger equation is satisfied for all times." ("Attention, Intention and Will in Quantum Physics", p 153 in The Volitional Brain) Jakub Dec. 9, 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.48.249.133 (talk) 06:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The only thing deterministic concerning Schrodinger's equation is demonstrated in the cat thought-experiment i.e. particle or waves probabilities until it's observed. So, yes, it is controversial because it implies a classical mechanics interpretation. Nor are they separate processes because to 'interpret' is to observe and this observation causes the state vector collapse. These principles also answer Mr. Stapp's assertions above concerning the deterministic equations.

"How can you say that the Born interpretation makes the wave equation itself non deterministic" Because it, as the linked (http://www.spaceandmotion.com/physics-quantum-mechanics-max-born.htm) source, says:

"Since it was impossible for both the waves and the particles to be real entities, it became customary to regard the waves as unreal probability waves and to maintain the belief in the 'real' particle. Unfortunately (profoundly) this maintained the belief in the particle/wave duality, in a new form where the 'quantum' scalar standing waves had become 'probability waves' for the 'real' particle."

Born's interpretation unnecessarily reinvents the wheel; it's non-deterministic. Any attempt at modeling (or deterministic) the quantum world will lead to failure, which is why Mr. Heisenberg tossed it out the window 50+ years ago.

Also, to the editor of the page, the parenthesis' of "(although the existence of immaterial determining factors remains speculative)" is rather arbitrarily placed; the existence of anything immaterial or material is irrelevant when nonlocality is taken into account. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.105.184.93 (talk) 08:06, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Quantum Darwinism
There's a small paragraph at the end of this article dealing with "Quantum Darwinism". Stapp never worked on QD nor, as far as I know, is his work applied in QD. I think it would be more appropriate to include a link to the wiki page on QD rather than include it in the text, as it is irrelevant. This paragraph seems to be a brazen advertisement for a far-out theory attempting to link it to a renowned and bona fide physicist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.3.113.232 (talk) 13:49, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * You are right. I removed the paragraph.-- Belsazar (talk) 21:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Notability
Google Scholar (use author search) shows that Stapp's book Mind, Matter and QM has been cited 502 times in scientific articles. This is surely enough to establish notability, and I therefore suggest that the box at the top of the article saying 'The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline' be removed. --Brian Josephson (talk) 21:50, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. SlimVirgin  TALK |  CONTRIBS 22:12, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

More references?
A search revealed a useful mini-biography (in the references list, no. 3 I believe) and used it to expand the article. It lists quite a number of fields Stapp has worked in, and it would be good if some diligent person could use Google Scholar to add some of these to the references or external links (Google shows the number of citations, which may be useful to decide which ones to include). --Brian Josephson (talk) 09:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Several voices have called out in this talk for a more knowledgeable voice to come along and commit to telling Stapp's story. My name is Brian Wachter and I'm a journalist who have spent much time both in the presence and in the study of Dr. Stapp. I am taking on the role discussed, within the next few weeks. --talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:0:981:588A:D150:650A:4DFE:5128 (talk) 02:39, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Date of birth etc.
Stapp seems to have been born in about 1930. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.42.37 (talk) 16:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Stapp's place of birth is not in the article, either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.42.37 (talk) 16:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Stapp's name seems to be Henry P. Stapp. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.124.253 (talk) 12:35, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 2 external links on Henry Stapp. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141210095150/http://www.henrystapp.org/cv.html to http://www.henrystapp.org/cv.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141207222733/http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~streater/stapp.html to http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~streater/stapp.html

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Age error
The article page gives Stapp's date of birth as March 23, 1928, but his age as 92. Today's date is March 24, 2021, so if the DoB is correct his current age is 93. What has gone wrong? It isn't that the age has been entered wrongly; the age is not included on the source page that you see if you click on edit. So it must have been generated by an algorithm, but it clearly isn't workng now. No doubt this connected with what appears to be a major update, so major indeed that the editing tools seem to be invisible! However, that was using Firefox as the browser and now that I've switched to Safari editing appears as normal.--Brian Josephson (talk) 18:35, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I've solved the problem and it is now showing the right age. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Birth_date_and_age for details.--Brian Josephson (talk) 19:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
 * This is really weird! I checked this morning and saw that Stapp's age had gone back to 92.  Perhaps some bot had noticed that the text hadn't changed and somehow reverted?  I've had another go now, with two edits, the first one adding a spurious character and the second one removing it but without using revert.  Hopefully it is now really fixed! --Brian Josephson (talk) 08:33, 25 March 2021 (UTC)