this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

Maybe consciousness is fundamental and matter and spacetime are derived from it

edit: this comment is a bit controversial to people just want to say why not explore this idea we spent over 50 years on string theory where has that gotten us

Donald Hoffman Ted talk on consciousness

Papers by Bernardo Kastrup

Please just take the time to learn more before you come at me lol

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (45 children)

Consciousness has literally nothing to do with it. In fact, the experiment as demonstrated in this emem would not replicate the double slit results. What has to happen is something along the path has to interfere with the photon (aka observe, which has nothing to do with consciousness, rather just an interaction), which causes the waveform to collapse. Basically, if something needs to know the state, the state collapses into one result. It doesn't matter what that thing is.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Consciousness is not part of the observer effect (which is itself named in the most infuriating way possible, specifically because it makes people think that the universe is somehow aware of when something sentient is looking at it). "Observing" a particle requires interacting with it in such a way that you meaningfully affect its current state of being, whether that be deflecting it in a different direction than it was going or changing its velocity, and therefore it is impossible at a quantum level to be a passive observer that does not influence the outcome.

In the case of the double slit experiment, if unobserved light will act as a wave with interference and if observed then it acts like a particle. The reason for this is both complicated and simple: light behaves as a wave due to probability. There's no way of observing a photon without influencing it, so therefore the best we can do is say it has a certain probability of being in this collection of spaces, which in the case of photons is a wave (because it can travel in any of a number of directions outwards from the photon emitter in the experiment, but all going away from the emitter and towards the wall the slits are cut into). For the purposes of this probability wave, the start position is the emitter and the end position is the wall behind the slits, so averaging out a large number of photons will recreate the interference pattern on the wall.

However, if you observe the photons at the slits to try and figure out which slits they're going through you have influenced the photons and thus collapsed that probability wave into a particle, and in the process created a new probability wave from that moment onwards which has the same end position as the original wave, but now starts at the individual slit. From its perspective, there is no second slit, so now the wave acts as if it is in the single slit setup because from its perspective it is, hence the loss of interference.

Nothing here has anything to do with consciousness. You can recreate this experiment with no one in the room and it will behave exactly the same, and has a sound (if very confusing conventionally) mathematical cause.

On a side note, string theory is effectively unfalsifiable and therefore completely useless as a scientific theory.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Nothing here has anything to do with consciousness. You can recreate this experiment with no one in the room and it will behave exactly the same, and has a sound (if very confusing conventionally) mathematical cause.

First I was commenting on a meme wasn't expecting these comments lol. but we are active in the experiment that is the point to show that it changes states because we observe Why does that happen and why don't we don't know it's position til observed. It doesn't matter if we are in the room or not we could be 1000 miles away watching on webcam and the same thing happens because we observed it and my side note QM is fucking magic dude

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You need to qualify that statement somehow, or maybe give a citation or source that supports such an idea

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Sure firstly id like to say these are theories just as anything in science starts as. I am not saying this is fact by any means and could be totally wrong. here are some sources:

Donald Hoffman Ted talk

Papers by Bernardo Kastrup

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing, I’ll take a look when I get a chance!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Thanks for being open minded and at least looking at the data before you draw your conclusion

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Both these figures are embarrassingly bad.

Hoffman confuses function for perception and constantly uses arguments demonstrating things can interpret reality incorrectly (which is purely a question of function) in order to argue they cannot perceive reality "as it is.," which is a huge non-sequitur. He keeps going around promoting his "theorem" which supposedly "proves" this yet if you read his book where he explains his theorem it is again clearly about function as his theorem only shows that limitations in cognitive and sensory capabilities can lead something to interpret reality incorrectly yet he draws a wild conclusion which he never justifies that this means they do not perceive reality "as it is" at all.

Kastrup is also just incredibly boring because he never reads books so he is convinced the only two philosophical schools in the universe are his personal idealism and metaphysical realism, which the latter he constantly incorrectly calls "materialism" when not all materialist schools of thought are even metaphysically realist. Unless you are yourself a metaphysical realist, nothing Kastrup has ever written is interesting at all, because he just pretends you don't exist.

Metaphysical realism is just a popular worldview in the west that most Laymen tend to naturally take on unwittingly. If you're a person who has ever read books in your life, then you'd quickly notice that attacking metaphysical realism doesn't get you to idealism, at best it gets you to metaphysical realism being not a coherent worldview... which that is the only thing I agree with Kastrup with.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Please keep cooking until we unlock magical abilities

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago