Callender, who wrote the NYT piece, already alluded to the "real" resolution of the "who counts as an observer" pseudo-paradox: What happens when you observe a system is that you are now *part of* the system. To someone outside, who has not yet observed, you yourself are in a state of quantum superposition based on what observation you made. --Michael On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 10:37 AM, David Makin <makinmagic@tiscali.co.uk>wrote:
In this context doesn't "observer" really mean "anything that would allow observation if someone looked" rather than someone actually looking....though without actually looking how you'd tell if there was still an effect I have no idea.
On 26 Jul 2013, at 15:23, Bernie Cosell wrote:
On 26 Jul 2013 at 6:17, Henry Baker wrote:
Quite a discussion going on here:
By "here" I guess you mean in the NYTimes.. Thanks for the pointer.. I've always wondered this same thing. I don't understand QM, really, but I've wondered things like if the "first observer" collapses the wave, can you tell if you're a 'second observer" or not and you only *think* you collapsed the wave...
"to quote the physicist J.S. Bell:
... Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system ... *** with a Ph.D.?
And if you're not earth-centric, perhaps the wave function for the whole universed was collapsed by a being a zillion light-years away a billion years ago...
Thanks for the ptr!! /bernie\
-- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
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