I'm guessing you're referring to my HN comment here (and the resulting discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696559 https://news.ycombinator.com/i

I'm guessing you're referring to my HN comment here (and the resulting discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41696559 Well... not all hypotheses are equal! I'm not necessarily a fan of Wheeler's "participatory universe" either, but I would note a few important differences: - Orch-Or claims to explain the origins of consciousness and free will. This overlaps with philosophy, which is concerned with what it means to explain consciousness. And philosophers generally have responded with serious criticisms. - Orch-Or relies on specific biological assumptions e.g. about the robustness of quantum coherence in brain matter. In fact it is not merely metaphysical but is in principle falsifiable, which is a good thing! However, physicists and neuroscientists have found a lot of these assumptions to be unreliable. - Orch-Or appears to be based on a misunderstanding of Godel's Theorem and computationalism, as has been pointed out by mathematicians and computer scientists. - The Participatory Universe is effectively an interpretation of quantum theory. It just guides us in understanding the ontological statuses of the object in the theory. In this it is similar to Everettian (many worlds) type hypotheses. Orch-or goes much further and I would regard it as a modification of quantum theory. In this it is similar to objective collapse type hypoetheses.