Novie questions about the double-slit experiment

[Drakkith]

1: This wording seems like a more coherent description although it again supposes a different set of apparatus to the one we were previously discussing. I would question whether a photon would rather 'choose' to go through the top of unmonitored slit 2 rather than monitored slit 1, as your interpretation seems to imply.

Photons do not choose anything. It is simple probability. The photon can go through the top of the monitored slit where it is detected by the detector and never makes it to the screen, through the top of the unmonitored slit where it continues through to the screen or detector behind the experiment, or through the bottom of the two slits where it interferes with itself, changing the probability of detecting it at a location on the screen to the pattern you see if you shoot many photons through two unmonitored slits.

3: My analogy took into account both particle & wave features (particle = whistle ball, wave = whistle pitch). I fail to see how trying to think logically is incompatible with a mathematical description like a wavefunction.
I also have no idea how to define a clear mental divide between whatever 'classical' & 'non-classical, contemporary(?)' modes of thinking are supposed to be, let alone accuse someone of thinking either way.

This has nothing to do with trying to think logically and more to do with your analogy simply being a bad one that doesn't make any sense. In a whistle the movement of the ball determines the changing sound that comes out. A photon has nothing to do with how the EM wave works. The EM wave is simply detected as one photon.

4: This is interesting. How many times can you 'sample' a collapsed path electron's (or other relevant wave/particle thing) position?

I'm not sure what you are asking.