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Was the human conscious part ever a serious belief among actual physicists historically? I'm no physicist but it seemed obvious to me immediately that that coul
by spywaregorilla 5y ago
Was the human conscious part ever a serious belief among actual physicists historically? I'm no physicist but it seemed obvious to me immediately that that could not possibly be the case.
- dekhn 5y agoYes. Through grad school the physics PhDs kept bringing it up. I believe Wigner was the only Wise One who actually pursued it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend) Since Wigner was a Wise One (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_theorem) people took the idea seriously, but these days, most physicists will simply ask you to show them a comprehensible and reproducible experiment that demonstrates the requirement of a human observer and reject your belief based on the absence of data and occam's razor.
- codethief 5y agoNot a belief I would say, but it was seriously considered. Many physicists, including some of the founding fathers of QM, thought about it, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_int...
- simiones 5y agoAs the sibling comments are pointing out, yes, it actually was seriously considered for a while. Even today there are people like Roger Penrose who believe there is some link between consciousness and the measurement problem. Even more, there are many interpretations of QM where the classical world is only an illusion of the observer essentially.