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(Although this transaction has the same title as [0042] in yum, it is not a cross-posting.) I am on my second (and hopefully, last) large dark chocolate frappe from Tosci's, and am waiting for suggestions on how I can get more (not quantity-wise, but intesity-wise.) First of all, I should make it clear that I am not a chocoholic; I can stop any time I want. I am not even a "social" chocolate user (I don't hang out in chocolate bars munching on chocolate bars after happy hour.) And you won't catch me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat craving for a Hershey's bar, nor will you read in the paper that I've been knocking over liquor stores or mugging people to "support my habit," because I don't have a habit. However, there are times in my life when I feel the only possible remedy for my ailments is the immediate and unrestricted consumption of an otherwise inordinate amount of chocolate. Besides---you can trust me on this---it's a lot safer some of the alternatives. Why this sudden need? Because I'm waiting. I'm waiting for something, or, more precisely, one or more of a number of things. I don't have to wait. I could take any of a number of actions which might determine an outcome, although I confess I am not in a good position to guess which actions correspond to which possible outcomes; I'm not even convinced that the system in question is deterministic. So why wait? Because this type of social situation is like a quantum-mechanical system: if you make a measurement, you get a result, a value. The catch is that in making the measurement, whatever complex superposition the original state might have started with is collapsed into an eigenstate (I won't bring up Copenhagen vs. Everett interpretations here; I don't care about my "alternate selves" except when I'm occasionally jealous of them.) By making an observation, I disturb the system. But I want to know the state of the system without observing it, because I'd rather not collapse it---I think the superposition is more interesting than any boring eigenstate (at least in this case.) Of course, if this were strict QM, I'd be out of luck---I have a single system, not an ensemble, and I only get one measurement. I lose. Fortunately, it's not like that, and I may still win. So I wait . . . for the system to measure me.
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