3 ms·

I prefer the quantum decoherence perspective where being 'observed' basically means interacting with a macroscopic object in a way that's similar to the notion

• aidenn0 8y ago
  "macroscopic object" is unsatisfying though because macroscopic objects are made out of objects that are describable under QM.
  • contravariant 8y ago
    Maybe so, but that's a problem shared by both thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. Both have macroscopic objects that exhibit phenomena like temperature, friction, wave function collapse, that simply don't exist on the smaller scale. The good news is that macroscopic objects exhibit behaviours that are predictable. The bad news is that. while those behaviours are related to the behaviour of the microscopic scale, a full description of systems involving that many particles will likely remain out of our reach forever. Although I could see it happening that we might be able to simulate systems of a sufficient scale to convincingly demonstrate wave function collapse.