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The wave function collapses when observed by consciousness. Until that point, matter does not resemble matter as we understand it in the slightest.

Side note, the math actually suggests when the wave function collapses, new “timelines” or “universes” are created in which every possible outcome exists in its own universe.

What does observed by consciousness mean?

Also math does not reflect reality... (ever)... it is a tool to understand something/make sense of it. It's a language.

As I understand, sensors and cameras were used to detect the collapse as it was not detectable by human eyes.

What the double slit experiment shows is that all matter behaves as a wave, until it is observed. In order to do that, single atoms have to be in multiple places at one time.

Until it is observed. The sensors are just other pieces of matter, and so are humans. I used the word conscious as an adjective for humans specifically, but after thinking about your question and how they used sensors it seems it is just other matter/energy, regardless of any type of apparent “sentience”.

Bottom line, matter knows when it is being observed by other matter and changes it’s behavior when it is.

Matter is not the physical material we perceive it to be.

But we know that already. The color of an object we see is the color that is being reflected off the matter. The object is absorbing all other visible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum being emitted near it and reflecting what we perceive. It is actually the colors we don’t see.

But then again, colors are not real. Our cones (photoreceptor cells in the retina) detect red, blue, and green. Any other color is made up by our brain.

Magenta does not even exist. Magenta is a mix of red and violet. That would suggest the wavelength of magenta comes in between red and violet, which would be on either side of it. Thing is, red is on one end of the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and violet is on the other.

There is no electromagnetic wavelength for magenta. Our brains make it up.

Could you imagine what a god damned nightmare it would be to actually see another human after being so accustomed to these images that hardly resemble a silhouette?

If you are curious about this and not familiar with the double slit experiment, you should google it.

Quantum Mechanics is cray man. Really interesting.


Yeah but love is not heat.

so sensors or cameras are consiousness?

the rest of your post references colors and stuff which are also perceptive/captured by cameras.

these are human defined things based on our eye biology, or numerically approximated by cameras/telescopes for what the 'normal' human would agree on

what have you posted that is not at all subjective here?

the answer to your question is in the post you quoted man.
The results of the double slit experiment, are as objective as a piece of information can be.

particles "knowing" stuff is a scary prospect

fortunately.... no evidence of such. sorry, the slit experiment proves nothing.

everything we do decided about the things you mention are based on the technology we endeavored to create

it is all conditional

for example, we don't know what happens when we try to interact with a single electron in a supposed controlled environment. how many things could possibly go wrong when "watching" it. if you don't know, you can't just conclude that "oooh they're sentient"

A particle of matter in a superposition of states is not the same as energy that somehow converts to matter. It's not as if it is energy distributed or something. It is fully stored as an actual particle, just in a superposition. It quite literally is a superposition of states. Saying it is "in two places at once" is a misstatement, depending on your interpretation of QM. If you think the wavefunction is not physical, then there is nothing truly existing in two places at once. There is simply an observable interference pattern generated. You might losely infer that the wave went through two places and interfered with itself, but all you really know is the wavefunction is in a superposition until collapse.

The math doesn't suggest that. It's one of many interpretations and not the one people usually use.

Saying wavefunction is collapsed by consciousness, that's Wigner's friend interpretation and that's fallen out of favour.


IMO it's accurate to say that observation collapses the wavefunction, but observation isn't equivalent to consciousness. That's too anthropomorphic. I think decoherence has been accepted as the better explanation of collapse of the wavefunction but the question of an observer is still open-ended. It isn't necessarily something conscious, and the debate is stymied by a lack of clarity of the different grades of cognition, of which consciousness is a late-emerging and highly sophisticated version of.

It was a large thrust of my thesis to obtain some much needed conceptual clarity about biology, evolution and minimal cognition/intelligence. In b4 trolls demanding the transcript.

Wigner's friend is just the thought experiment. It's still valid. It's entirely consistent to claim consciousness causes the collapse. It just doesn't get you anywhere. There are several different interpretations of QM, all of which give the same result.

One thing you can conclude though is that if we are capable of making choices independent of the past and call this "free will", fundamental particles must have this ability as well.

It's definitely not my area of expertise, but I was looking in detail at the metaphysical and physical basis of complexity and systems theory that underlie the 4E cog and situated cognition paradigms. Since I think consciousness is a legitimately emergent phenomenon and a very sophisticated and scaled up version of basic sense-making, I don't believe it's omnipresent or is the sole guarantor of physical reality.


I think it could be one way to collapse a wavefunction, but not the one and only thing which could. Consciousness is a form of observation, but not the be all and end all of observation. I was looking at decoherence interpretations of QM and I think they're a better approach, which don't rely on consciousness but rather that the emergence of classical world from the quantum is how a system exchanges information with the environment.

I didn't reach some New Agey spiritual conclusion. I concluded that something even more strange and interesting is happening, that the observer and the environment are just one self-organizing system exchanging information between its constituents about how to perpetuate its own existence.


I even emailed Donald Hoffman and had a conversation about it, he said my understanding was pretty solid.

Man this turned into a productive conversation lol.

Legit input guys.

The decoherence approach is perfectly fine. I'm just saying the other views haven't been ruled out per se. There are also more subtle issues with the measurement problem that haven't been solved.

Here are some recent results (highly controversial) that actually vindicate Wigner's view.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-0990-x

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw9832

I would take all philosophical interpretations of QM with a grain of salt as "the reality". QM is useful as a model for making predictions. Beyond that, who knows?

Gun to my head, I'd take the position that there is a privileged position to you, the conscious observer of your own universe. It's a kind of solipsism. But it's valid, and there is a fundamental way to distinguish between facts you knew a priori simply by being conscious and facts other observers think they know. You know you exist simply by observing anything. But you never really know for sure about anything else. That makes you a bit special.