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> We already know that the observer effect is real. If you're talking about the quantum mechanics effect, then you're misunderstanding it. In QM 'observing' j
by kaibee 5y ago
> We already know that the observer effect is real.
If you're talking about the quantum mechanics effect, then you're misunderstanding it. In QM 'observing' just means measuring something about a system. The only way we know of measuring stuff on a quantum level is by poking it with light or other particles. On the scale of quantum interactions, poking something with light affects the thing you're trying to measure. The 'observer effect' has nothing to do with there being any sort of conscious or intelligent observer.
- musingsole 5y ago> The 'observer effect' has nothing to do with there being any sort of conscious or intelligent observer. If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one to hear it, does it make a sound? Science can't meaningfully separate any of its observations from a conscious observer. At present, that's the realm of philosophy.
- mypalmike 5y agoIf you rigorously define the term "make a sound", the tree in a forest question loses its apparent profundity.
- musingsole 5y agoThen please do so. Until you have conscious observer, you have no evidence that anything at all has happened and you might as well discuss angels on a pinhead.
- mypalmike 5y agoBetter than me defining it, you should choose a definition. Make it rigorous and unambiguously testable and your conundrum goes away. Furthermore, plenty of phenomena are detectable without a present conscious observer. If I accidentally drop a bread crumb as I bite into a crusty sandwich while walking in the forest and nobody notices, does it ever land on the ground? (Note that in this case, there's no linguistic ambiguity to insert a false profundity to the question. "Land on the ground" is pretty clearly defined.) We know the answer is yes because we understand gravity. And as evidence (rather than first principles), we might also find ants later in the spot where the breadcrumb landed.
- musingsole 5y agoSchroedinger's breadcrumb.
- brimble 5y agoNote for the confused: the "observer effect", as in modifying a system by poking it in order to measure it, is not the same thing as the uncertainty principal. Evidently, somehow, Heisenberg himself got the two confused (?!) which is why when I learned about it by fucking reading Heisenberg ("surely this will be accurate") I ended up thinking the two were basically the same thing.