For the honor of truth, I must admit that in quantum mechanics, the physical meaning of the wave function is a bit hard to pin down. If it were easy, there wouldn't be so much disagreement among very smart characters. Follow the link for discussion.
I'm not fond of "shut up and calculate", and I hanker for a clearer theory (although quantum mechanics works extremely well), but possibly the world is a bit stranger than my mind. If an electron slung out of Alpha Centauri interacts with an apparatus in Earth orbit designed to react differently if the electron's spin is + or -, is that apparatus part of the boundary conditions for the electron's wave function and if so, what does that mean for it's state however many years ago when it was created?
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For myself, I only wanted to do that thing that philosophers love to do: raise the problem, and then not solve it. Just enjoying the problems, and the attendant mystery of the world, is a good part of the pleasure of philosophy.
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