During the recent presidential election, I dreamt that two of the candidates had concluded from interviews with focus groups that there might be some anxiety among the American public over the foundations of quantum mechanics. Concerned that by homing in on so esoteric a topic they could lose the attention of the people, the two men had made a direct assessment of public interest by quietly employing their rhetorical skills in unpublicized lectures at local events such as church barbecues, farmers’ markets, or demolition derbies. I could never learn soon enough about these performances, always arriving just as a lecture ended. By conducting exit interviews, however, I managed to put together fragmentary transcripts of what took place, which were so vivid that I was able to jot them down in the morning.

In a subsequent dream I read these texts back to my interviewees, who agreed that although I had failed to capture the full brilliance of the argumentation, I had at least succeeded in conveying the flavor of the insight these remarkable men brought to the problems that have puzzled and delighted physicists for so many years.

The candidates’ experiments were not a success. Both men concluded that the time was not ripe to bring these great issues before the public. Indeed, in my third and final dream I was forced to endure an interminable postelection analysis on public TV, in which the panelists concluded that by distracting the two candidates from more pressing issues, their love of quantum mechanics had contributed significantly to their defeat. I'm sure there are lessons for physicists from this cautionary tale, but I offer here only the texts of the lectures themselves, which I believe form an important chapter in the intellectual history of our times.

The first lecture

Now it's really very simple, OK? Over here's an electron, moving toward this wall, kind of like a cur dog slinking toward his kennel. Only there are two doors to the kennel, like the two doors in the wall here in Figure 1.

Now, over here on the other side of the wall's a screen. Now then, the point is, the electron ends up making a mark on the screen, kind of like a fly makes a speck on a kitchen window?