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bhobba
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craigi said:I was actually referring to a human conscious observer, but that isn't to say that the conscious observer is the only entity that can make a record of a quantum observation. They must interact as part of a classical system with the quantum system on the terms of quantum mechanics.
Then I don't understand why you wish to introduce consciousness at all.
One of the first books on QM I studied was Von Neumann's classic because my background is math and not physics - I mathematically couldn't quite grasp Dirac's treatment, however being grounded in the Hilbert space formalism I learned in my undergrad studies I cottoned onto Von Neumann fairly well. I know why he introduced consciousness - the Von Neumann cut could be placed anywhere and if you trace it back the only place different was consciousness. But things have moved on considerably since then and we now understand decoherence a lot better - and that looks the best place to put the cut - in fact it gives the APPEARANCE of collapse. Von Neumann didn't live long enough for this development, but the other high priest of it, Wigner, did. When he learned of some early work on decoherence by Zurek he did a complete 180% turn and believed collapse was an actual physical process that occurred out there.
Now I don't necessarily agree with that because for me the appearance of collapse is good enough - and decoherence explains that - but for the life of me I can't see why anyone these days wants to introduce consciousnesses into it at all.
Thanks
Bill