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Requests for arbitration

Quantum mysticism article

Initiated by ☯Lightbound☯ at 20:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Lightbound (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), filing party
• Likebox (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• OMCV (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Peterdjones (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• William_M._Connolley (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• RHaworth (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Mbilitatu (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Simonm223 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Vsmith (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Ronhjones (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Count Iblis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Likebox, .
• OMCV, .
• Peterdjones, .
• William M. Connolley, .
• Admin, RHaworth, .
• Mbilitatu, .
• Simonm223, .
• Admin, Vsmith, .
• Ronhjones, .
• Count Iblis

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Third opinion request.
• A diff from user OMCV, asking administrator assistance:
• Another admin intervention on edit warring notice board:

Statement by Lightbound

The Quantum mysticism page has a history of edit wars and conflicts. I responded to a request from OMCV on a help page. Edits resulted in User:Likebox being blocked.. I interpreted the name of the article to dictionary sources and dozens of books on the subject as per WP:NAME and WP:POV. The debates continued despite talk page discussion before and after, blocks, other editors, and assistance. Request arbitration to end the reverts, edits, and conflicts. Article has long history of problems.

Response to Arbitrator request from filing party (Lightbound)

Due to the history of the page, I strongly recommend that outside force be used to set some standing issues with the page. Every other feasible attempt has been made, including administrator intervention, to solve the conflicting issues on this page. Below I will list some of the fundamental issues. Please note that no side was willing to relent until arbitration was filed. I did not file arbitration for any other purpose than to have an outside party, with authority, address the specific fundamentals of the article, so that all parties concerned could continue in a unified way. I value the healthy rationlism, of which I subscribe, of those parties educated in physics. It is my strong opinion that if arbitration is denied, that debates will continue, unnecessarily, which may end up taking more administrative time and effort, or worse, that those editors concerned will simply give up and the quality of the article will suffer for it. I realize it is a potentially murky subject, but if arbitration goes forward, I am prepared to provide objective evidence, related to policy, as to address the issues on the page. Here are a few of the issues, of which few can agree on, and that future individuals are likely to also bring up in a debate.

• What should the subject matter of an article named "quantum mysticism" be?
• How to interpret WP:POV and WP:NPOV in light of the grey areas between the science, metaphysics, and philosophcial concepts of the subject.
• Can the scientific criticism be exluded, if and only if, the subject of mysticism, based on the quantum of the natural world, is presented in a completley netural and disinterested voice?
• The developing issue of redirects pointing to Quantum mysticism, such as Consciousness causes collapse, which has now spurred more debate and brought other editors into the above issues.

Lastly, I want to officially state that my goal for filing was to have someone make concrete and final decisions on some of these issues. Splitting the article does not solve all of its problems; it only solves a problem between two editors. There are multiple views, debates, and issues going on. The split is also questionable, as there is already a mind body duality article on Misplaced Pages. I also want to officially state that it was not my intention at any time, nor to I cite the need, to block anyone. It is clear that blocking Likebox will not stop him. As that has already not worked. Despite his interpretation that I am "new," I have been editing Misplaced Pages for nearly five years. I did not formally make this user name until recently, as I got more involved. --☯Lightbound☯ 19:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Simonm223

I came to Quantum Mysticism a few days before Lightbound because of this notice on the fringe theories noticeboard and found it a mess. There were two editors who had been competing over two versions of the page and neither struck me as neutral, properly designed or particularly legible. I tried to suggest a third option, a rewrite, but since I'm not a physicist I could only approach the article through my background in philosophy and theology. Although the article was approximating a position between religion, philosophy and science this still left me cautious to start making edits because I wasn't entirely expert in the material.

However Lightbound came to the article and had a vision for the article which made it coherent, clear, concise and much more encyclopaedic. I have strongly supported these edits, which I feel improved the article.

Lightbound has been meticulous documenting changes and proposed changes on talk and discussing the issues however when one of the other editors who had been involved prior to either of our arrival at the page was blocked there was little debate so changes progressed quickly.

That editor returned, found the page substantially changed and wasn't pleased.

However I stand by that Lightbound's edits have created an article better than what either of the original to editors had created and better than I could have created. Simonm223 (talk) 21:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Likebox

The topic of "quantum mysticism" appears in the literature in two distinct forms. From 1927-1975 it appears sporadically in the physics literature as a pejorative description of the Copenhagen interpretation by Einstein and others. It also appears in the correspondence of Wolfgang Pauli, describing the nature of quantum mechanics, but Pauli didn't use the term pejoratively. He admired the mystical aspects of quantum mechanics. In 1961, the separation of observer and observed was codified by Wigner into a quantum mind/body problem, and this article marks the rebirth of the debate in the postwar American-centered literature (the early scientific literature was European).

In the 1970s, Heisenberg encouraged Fritjof Capra to write "The dancing Wu-Li Masters" to popularize the topic. Starting with this book, and through the 1980's, "quantum mysticism" was turned into a new-age topic, with the publication of some popular books and self-help books. This is a second more recent focus of the term.

The original article, before lightbound's recent edits, discussed the physics aspects of quantum measurement, the subject of "quantum mysticism" in the years 1927-1975, and the relation to the mind/body problem. The recent edits have made the focus entirely the modern new-age/self-help literature. This is not a problem by itself, but the old material on the debate was not moved to other articles, it was just deleted.

Lightbound has suggested that the scientific material be separated into an article on quantum mechanics, and this suggestion seems sensible, considering that the two kinds of literature are entirely different. The basic outline that lightbound has provided is reasonable for a "quantum mysticism" article on the new topic, while the old material can be moved to the appropriate quantum mechanics page.

There used to be a free-standing article called "Consciousness Causes Collapse" (CCC), which focused on Wigner's 1961 paper. This article was deleted, and merged with "quantum mysticism". The new "quantum mysticism" article no longer reflects the contents of Wigner's article, so I recreated the CCC article as Wigner's interpretation of quantum mechanics. That article can serve as a home for the general discussion of interpretations of quantum mechanics which were previously on the quantum mysticism page.

Because the discussions on how to split the material are still ongoing, I believe that this arbitration request is premature. The material can be split and keep the quantum mysticism article mostly faithful to lightbound's version.

However, lightbound has also erased sourced material from critics of the modern new-age kind of quantum mysticism, which is inappropriate. That material should be restored to the article. This issue of excluding criticism is important. Lightbound's article must be expanded to include the sourced criticisms of quantum mysticism by prominent authors, which make the claim that this type of quantum mysticism is pseudoscience.Likebox (talk) 22:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe that arbitration is unnecessary, since we seem to be converging on the split idea. Lightbound is relatively new to Misplaced Pages, and might not realize when arbitration is appropriate.Likebox (talk) 23:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Since OMCV has considered my contributions inappropriate, I would like to describe the events from my perspective. The page on quantum mysticism was a standard skeptical article until consciousness causes collapse was merged into it. When I saw that this had happened, I added material which talked about the 1961 Wigner article, which is interesting and famous within physics. In order to respect the science, which is very serious (Wigner is a nobel lauriate, and a founder of quantum mechanics) I wrote a context for the material, spending many hours in the library to find the appropriate citations. This material was unchallenged for over a year.

OMCV came to the page, and did not believe that the material was properly sources. In particular, he was concerned that the material from Dennett did not accurately reflect Dennett's position. He also was concerned about the idea that quantum mechanics is being used as a model of reality in the article, as opposed to a strictly empirical recipe for calculating the probabilities for results of observations.

We debated this topic for a long time, and eventually, I changed the wording to be "Dennett says X" and "Dennett says Y" to attribute the material properly. At this point, OMCV did not respond any longer, and lightbound began to delete all the science content from the page.

I have been contributing to Misplaced Pages for many years, and I have written dozens of articles on scientific topics sometimes from scratch. The opinions of OMCV were debated honestly, the section in question became better sourced, and while OMCV did not like my opinions, they were supported by other scientifically minded editors, in particular 1Z and Count Iblis. The article on quantum mysticism has been split, the science moved to another article, and there is no reason why this should not satisfy all parties.Likebox (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Count Iblis

There isn't anything more that this arbitration can achieve that the involved editors can't do themselves on the talk page, other than imposing sanctions. But if this arbitration were to move in the direction of imposing sanctions, you can be sure that the existing tensions will be amplified and that will likely make collaboration impossible. Count Iblis (talk) 23:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Statement by OMCV

I came to Quantum mysticism after noting a misrepresentation of classical mechanics and making an attempt to correct the problem. My efforts to correct this material was reverted by Likebox. I then tagged which sections needed sourcing and that was reverted. I then demanded on what source the section was based multiple times and was eventually told on my talk page. I read the source (where am i) and become more familiar with it than Likebox. The contested text was clearly an example of Synth. The discussion developed into specious arguments and etiquette issues. The most frustrating part is that Likebox would conveniently forget or not understand things and often his talk page activities did not match his behavior on the article itself. His veiled personal comments, familiar tone ("dude"), and repeated requests to "go away" were a minor annoyance in comparison. Likebox has since admitted that he his material is synth and described his personal opinions (first few added paragraphs) which correlates with the synth. Lightbound reworked all of Quantum mysticism considerably improving it by moving to a more encyclopedic voice and in the process removing the synth and the text I added in an attempt to comprise. After attempting to revert Lightbound's work Likebox was blocked (near bottom). Likebox responded to this setback by moving his WP:OWNed essay material to quantum mind/body problem including the synth quantum mind/body problem#Classical mind/body problem which originally brought me to the Quantum mysticism page. During this time I did my best to follow WP:Dispute Resolution. I responded to the situation with a NO OR Board (no response), WP:3O request (conflicting responses), WP:Wikiquette alerts (here), I reported both of us for edit waring (3RR noticeboard), and a couple of RfC. I understand that this page might concern a content issue but should that be the content of Quantum mysticism or quantum mind/body problem? The reason a content discussion has not been viable is the active disruptions of Likebox in an attempt to wp:own his essay. I think Likebox is a detriment to Misplaced Pages given his current behavior and it would be best to implement a long term block.--OMCV (talk) 03:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

If any further citations are requested I can readily supply them.--OMCV (talk) 03:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Statement by 2over0

Part of this material is covered by Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Discretionary sanctions, about which at least Likebox (I did not check any of the other editors) does not seem to have received a formal notification. Quantum mind/body problem has serious problems as a fork and partial recreation of a deleted article, but I think this can be cleared up through normal discussion. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Statement by Michael C. Price

The (re)creation of Quantum mind/body problem seems to remove the need for arbitration. This article is evolving productively with input from many of the involved editors. Conflict over. Resolved. --Michael C. Price 07:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/5/1/0)

• Could the filing party please address whether arbitration is necessary here or whether other means could be used to try to resolve these disputes, in light of the other parties' comments. Thanks. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Leaning toward decline based on the most recent statements, but allowing a couple more days in case of developments. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Decline. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:47, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
• Recuse. Vassyana (talk) 10:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
• Decline Other methods of dispute resolution are helping so no involvement needed by ArbCom. I think the Community can resolve the issues so no need to escalate to ArbCom. FloNight♥♥♥ 11:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
• Decline; it appears as though this can still be handled by the community with reasonable odds of success. — Coren  11:01, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• Decline - appears to be heading towards resolution without the need for arbitration. Would urge that some over-arching guideline be established for how to handle articles where science and philosophy overlap like this (which is rather a lot of articles, I know), and whether to keep the differing science and philosophy interpretations separate (to a degree) or to have a well-written summary of the history somewhere (including the evolution of the terminology). In particular, how to handle mystical and new age interpretations should be amenable to a guideline approach. As long as the differing interpretations are accurately sourced, and not synthesised, and are carefully weighted, it should be possible to cover these topics in Misplaced Pages articles. Carcharoth (talk) 14:39, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
• Decline per the above comments, it's largely content, and DR seems to be working. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:15, 11 October 2009 (UTC)