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So do I agree with the scientists? No. I feel like the real world is more straight-out and honest with us. We are not living in a dream.
Also, what does this have to do with turtles?
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That would also be described as an idealist universe. An idealist view of the universe can mean that we can influence the universe itself, simply based on how we view the universe. An idealist universe can also mean that the universe is just a manifestation of our, or somebody's consciousness.
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Why did you name this debate what you did? I don't get it.
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Also, as I understand it, consciousness can only exist relative to something. For example, my consciousness exists relative to the Universe. Now, if the Universe itself is a consciousness, then relative to what is it such? That would require it to be a part of something bigger, and what could that something bigger be?
It seems to me that this proposed model of the Universe is more of a philosophical idea, than a physical one.
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@MayCaesar
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Are you referring to Henry Stapp and colleagues who argued, in this forum, that the double-slit experiment and its modern variants provide evidence that “a conscious observer may be indispensable” to make sense of the quantum realm and that a transpersonal mind underlies the material world?
But these experiments don’t constitute empirical evidence for such claims. In the double-slit experiment done with single photons, all one can do is verify the probabilistic predictions of the mathematics. If the probabilities are borne out over the course of sending tens of thousands of identical photons through the double slit, the theory claims that each photon’s wave function collapsed—thanks to an ill-defined process called measurement. That’s all.
Also, there are other ways of interpreting the double-slit experiment. Take the de Broglie-Bohm theory, which says that reality is both wave and particle. A photon heads towards the double slit with a definite position at all times and goes through one slit or the other; so each photon has a trajectory. It’s riding a pilot wave, which goes through both slits, interferes and then guides the photon to a location of constructive interference.
In 1979, Chris Dewdney and colleagues at Birkbeck College, London, simulated the theory’s prediction for the trajectories of particles going through the double slit. In the past decade, experimentalists have verified that such trajectories exist, albeit by using a controversial technique called weak measurements. The controversy notwithstanding, the experiments show that the de Broglie-Bohm theory remains in the running as an explanation for the behavior of the quantum world.
Crucially, the theory does not need observers or measurements or a non-material consciousness.
Neither do so-called collapse theories, which argue that wavefunctions collapse randomly: the more the number of particles in the quantum system, the more likely the collapse. Observers merely discover the outcome. Markus Arndt’s team at the University of Vienna in Austria has been testing these theories by sending larger and larger molecules through the double slit. Collapse theories predict that when particles of matter become more massive than some threshold, they cannot remain in a quantum superposition of going through both slits at once, and this will destroy the interference pattern. Arndt’s team has sent a molecule with more than 800 atoms through the double slit, and they still see interference. The search for the threshold continues.
Roger Penrose has his own version of a collapse theory, in which the more massive the mass of the object in superposition, the faster it’ll collapse to one state or the other, because of gravitational instabilities. Again, it’s an observer-independent theory. No consciousness needed. Dirk Bouwmeester at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is testing Penrose’s idea with a version of the double-slit experiment.
Conceptually, the idea is to not just put a photon into a superposition of going through two slits at once, but to also put one of the slits in a superposition of being in two locations at once. According to Penrose, the displaced slit will either stay in superposition or collapse while the photon is in flight, leading to different types of interference patterns. The collapse will depend on the mass of the slits. Bouwmeester has been at work on this experiment for a decade and may soon be able to verify or refute Penrose’s claims.
If nothing else, these experiments are showing that we cannot yet make any claims about the nature of reality, even if the claims are well-motivated mathematically or philosophically. And given that neuroscientists and philosophers of mind don’t agree on the nature of consciousness, claims that it collapses wave functions are premature at best and misleading and wrong at worst.
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It is a very intriguing proposition to think the entire universe might be as self-aware as we are. I think there's not really enough evidence for me to be convinced yet, but I certainly am not convinced it's impossible.
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