[ExI] Is the wave function real?

[Mike Dougherty]

On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 9:07 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> How would you differentiate between them? You have 2 helium atoms Alice and
> Bob, you can tell there are 2 because Alice is here and Bob is over there.
> But now you cool them both down to almost absolute zero and they become
> quantum entangled and form a Bose–Einstein Condensate. The 2 atoms are now
> in the same quantum state, so there are no longer 2 things but only one
> thing. Now warm things up and the entanglement is destroyed and there are 2
> things again, but there is now no way for you to tell, even in theory, which
> atom is Alice and which atom is Bob. And it's not just you, even Alice and
> Bob don't know which one they are.

> Well yes, change one thing and not the other and 2 identical things are no
> longer identical. But it works both ways, rearranging the territory would
> not affect the map. It seems to me that they both behave the same way to
> perturbations, so what's the difference between them?
>

You've made this point consistently for a long time.  Is this the same
idea as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_of_indiscernibles?

I feel like this question is a leading to an answer that nobody ever
gives.  What is the answer?

Seriously.  I don't want to propose some nonsense that illustrates how
little I understand, can you pretend another smart person has
presented you this challenge and advance this discussion to its next
logical step?

... and in case it comes across that I'm being flippant or sarcastic
or any of the other "tone" problems people seem to have with the way I
speak (and write) - i'm really just trying to ask you to continue this
story you've been telling for the years we've been listening.

:)