Making Measurement a Success — A Primer

Abstract

“The answer is 42” is the popular statement around which Douglas Adams wrote a series of thought-provoking and insightful science fiction books [Adam79, Adam95]. “42” was supposedly “the answer to life, the universe, and everything” in the world, the end to all questions and the final answer that would explain all the rules and logic that make our world move. A huge computer specifically constructed to this endeavor was working for centuries to derive that answer. There was only one difficulty with that answer 42, namely that the question was unknown. The computer seemingly was only asked to provide the answer but not to explain the logic behind and what question it did really address. Therefore, another even bigger computer was built and some books later, it would come back with the question behind that answer. Well, the question was surprising and confused rather than explained anything. Yet it helped to reveal that “there is something fundamentally wrong with the universe”. But that is another story.