The need for a "conscious observer"

[physika]

In a superposition of wave functions of the universe, one of them would contain a conscious observer that could cause collapse. Consciousness is therefore inevitable!

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observers before the Big Bang, how ?.

 

[Jehannum]

The wave function is a mixture of all possibilities, at least one of which would contain conscious observers.

Note: I was only kidding about this.

 

[edmund cavendish]

Bishop Berkeley claimed that "esse est percipe" to be is to be perceived. His view was that in the absence of a human observation, God 's perception sustained the universe This may come from a different angle but it takes the argument beyond the necessity of human observation. Arguably whatever does that validates the claim.

 

[atyy]

Bishop Berkeley claimed that "esse est percipe" to be is to be perceived. His view was that in the absence of a human observation, God 's perception sustained the universe This may come from a different angle but it takes the argument beyond the necessity of human observation. Arguably whatever does that validates the claim.

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072
p22 "The Existential Interpretation" has a picture that seems to mean the universe observing itself

 

[Sunil]

Actually, it's more subtle than that. Information exists only wrt minds. A computer is a collection of transistors which act as electrical gates. What you see on the monitor is photons emitted by diodes according to the momentary state of the gates in the microprocessor. You need a mind for this emitted light to become information. Otherwise, it's just light(photons). Like this sentence. It has meaning wrt to minds, but not wrt to photons with different wavelengths being emitted in a particular way.

No, that's wrong.

IIRC Feynman has explained that nicely in his lectures. Imagine a double slit, and use some photon to measure which slit is used. And then forget about the photon completely. So, that photon is not information for any mind, and plausibly will never become such information.

But it acts in exactly the same way as if it is information for some mind. The superposition will be destroyed, you will not see an interference picture.

 

[PeterDonis]

This thread has run its course and is now closed.