The faithful must learn to respect those who question their beliefs

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62. The Modern Approach

"For describing the universe, a more general interpretation of quantum mechanics is clearly necessary, since no external experimenter or apparatus exists and there is no opportunity for repitition, for observing many copies of the universe. (In any case the universe presumably couldn't care less whether human beings have evolved on some obscure planet to study its history; it goes on obeying the quantum-mechanical laws of physics irrespective of observation by physicists.) That is one reaons why what I call the modern interpretation of quantum mechanics has been developed over the last few decades. The other principal reason is the need for a clearer understanding of the relationship between quantum mechanics and the approximate classical description of the world around us."

From Chapter 11, "A Contemporary View of Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics and the Classical Approximation", in THE QUARK AND THE JAGUAR, by Murray Gell-Mann