Originally Posted by drgoodtrips

Tell you what. I'll explain what's going on here, and you can tell me that you don't agree or that you've read such and such book by such and such physicist or whatever occurs to you to say by way of "saving face". However, it is my hope that if I explain this in simple terms, you may learn something. I say this not to be condescending, but because I value people taking interest in academic matters - particularly in the understanding of mathematical and physics constructs. Not a lot of people are even interested, so it makes me happy when someone is, regardless of the motivations. But, interested or not, you're delving into territory that requires familiarity with rather sophisticated principles of calculus and formal mathematical language to understand.

There are three "formalisms" that describe what is most famously regarded as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and they are all more or less equivalent, differing in mathematical semantics only. Two of them are bing discussed here (Heisenberg's and Feynman's lesser known one that came later and is, some would argue, needlessly convoluted) and the third one is credited to Schrödinger (which ironically, is the most commonly used). So let's be clear here - the symbols on the papers and the order of operations of the formalisms are different, but the end result is the same.

To put it another way, your argument here is akin to this:

We know that there are 5 green bags containing 1 marble each and that there are 3 red bags containing 2 marbles each. Heisenberg comes along and says that the best way to count the marbles is with the equation (5*1) + (4*2). At the same time, Schrödinger is working on the problem and says, "no, no, that's silly - the best way is with the equation (1*5) + (2*4)". After a decade or so, Feynman dusts off someone's old work, has an epiphany and decides that "both of you are wrong - we should use the formula (2*4) + (1*5) - 6 + 12 - 12 + 6."

What you've really got is three competing salesmen offering you an identical product underneath that looks different on the outside. So of course he would talk about his competitor's formalism being "not needed" - because you should do it his way. Skynet, they're talking about different ways to do the same thing - semantics and mathematical procedure. They're not talking about building on, modifying, or replacing knowledge. Whoever you want to give credit for it is irrelevant - it remains the bedrock of quantum theory regardless and you're calling it "unnecessary" to quantum theory.

Just something to file away for a rainy day.