Comment on double slit

• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Use a computer? I guess you could say it all collapses when an actual consciousness checks what state things are at, but that’d be a rediculous claim to make. This is where Occam’s Razor is useful. Why introduce a concept of a consciousness being required when it would function identically but be significantly stranger and more complex?

  What is consciousness to the universe anyway? It’s nothing but a system of electrical impulses, and there no reason to think there’s anything physically special about it. It’s just an interesting phenomenon that happened, but fundamentally it isn’t anything special.

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  • K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Sure I agree it could be that as well but there is no actual way to prove that. Since we don’t actually understand what it is or how it works we can’t remove it, therefore with materialism it’s not provable either way. it’s also another theory and why I started my original comment with maybe. It’s better to explore that data in my opinion then outright deny it without any actual evidence proving it’s not. Occams razor is a cop out here

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s no reason to prove that any god(s) exist or not either. It doesn’t mean we should waste our time with their explanations. The hand of God could be reaching down to set things up just in time for us to see them and that’s exactly as reasonable of an explanation as the universe is aware we’re conscious so sets things up just in time for us to see them. The explanation that requires adding the least number of new things is that interactions for a collapse of the waveform and it happens then, not waiting for a “conscious” observer.

      If the conscious observer thing were true, what would it decide is consciousness? Would it require sapience? Sentience? Does it happen for dolphins? Apes? Monkeys? Mice? Tardigrades? What level of synapse connections is it waiting for to decide that’s enough? What about humans born without a brain? Can they not see anything? This hypothesis requires so many weird assumptions that it’s less than useless. A god existing makes more sense.

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      • K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If the conscious observer thing were true, what would it decide is consciousness? Would it require sapience? Sentience? Does it happen for dolphins? Apes? Monkeys? Mice? Tardigrades? What level of synapse connections is it waiting for to decide that’s enough? What about humans born without a brain? Can they not see anything? This hypothesis requires so many weird assumptions that it’s less than useless. A god existing makes more sense.

        Idk why that is so hard for you to even ponder

        Science requires testable and verifiable hypothesis. If they can’t be falsified they aren’t a part of science. They’re a belief system. That’s fine to have, but don’t mix it with science. All you’ll do is end up not accepting more data as we learn it because you’re filtering it through faith.

        So string theory isn’t science either show me where strong theory has been proven in any sort of fashion

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      • K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        philosophynow.org/…/The_Case_For_Panpsychism
        There is a case for even the most fundamental particles having a basic form of consciousness. And there is studies and theories being created this is just new science and extremely hard for materialists to wrap their heads around I understand that. here are some other sources you can check out for data that I posted on another comment as well Donald Hoffman Ted talk Papers from bernardo

        And I want to finish off I do not fully believe these theories. They are that just theories just like most things in science start off and still are today.

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      • space_comrade@hexbear.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If the conscious observer thing were true, what would it decide is consciousness? Would it require sapience? Sentience? Does it happen for dolphins? Apes? Monkeys? Mice? Tardigrades? What level of synapse connections is it waiting for to decide that’s enough? What about humans born without a brain? Can they not see anything? This hypothesis requires so many weird assumptions that it’s less than useless.

        What’s so weird about any of those questions/assumptions? A consciousness-based interpretation of quantum mechanics would need any conscious observer, that would include dolphins since we’re pretty sure they’re having conscious experiences.

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  • space_comrade@hexbear.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I guess you could say it all collapses when an actual consciousness checks what state things are at, but that’d be a rediculous claim to make.

    Would it? We now know with the recent experiments with Bell’s inequality that quantum mechanics can’t be reduced to a local hidden-variable theory, doesn’t that at least in theory leave space for consciousness? Sure you could go with superdeterminism but currently that seems equally unfalsifiable as a consciousness-based theory.

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Sure, it leaves space for anything. It leaves space for (any) God. It doesn’t make it useful to consider it though. There are literally an infinite number of things we could make up to explain it, but that doesn’t make them equally likely. The most likely is the one that doesn’t require strange assumptions, like the universe caring about consciousness, or that particles are conscious like another person said, or the hand of God literally reaching in to set the states exactly himself. Some hypotheses shouldn’t be entertained because they require so many strange assumptions they’re essentially useless and just a waste of time.

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      • space_comrade@hexbear.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It doesn’t make it useful to consider it though.

        Why not? My own consciousness is literally the one and only thing I have direct, ineffable evidence of existing. Unlike God, you actually have proof of your own consciousness existing, the same consciousness that doesn’t really fit anywhere in our purely quantitative descriptions of the universe. I think that’s reason enough to give the idea some credence.

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  • lolcatnip@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m totally in agreement that the observer effect is not caused by consciousness, but…

    What is consciousness to the universe anyway? It’s nothing but a system of electrical impulses,

    This is a claim unsupported by evidence. I submit to you that just as we can explain the observer effect without invoking consciousness, we can also explain cognition without it. We can’t even prove consciousness exists at all! I know I’m conscious because I directly experience it, but I can’t prove to another person that I experience anything, nor can I prove to myself that anyone else experiences anything.

    I know my consciousness, memory, and the brain are intimately connected. I know that what people describe as a loss of consciousness on my part is strongly correlated with gaps in my memory. I know those gaps correspond to time periods when period tell me I’m unresponsive to stimuli. I even know other people become unresponsive in connection to same kinds of things that cause gaps in my memory, and they likewise describe similar experiences to mine when, say, they ingest substances that I’ve found to alter my behavior, and which feel like they alter the quality of my consciousness.

    All of that is to say that we have very good reasons to suppose that consciousness (if it exists) interacts with the world of measurable phenomena all the time, and that other people experience consciousness. But what we can’t do is measure the difference between a conscious being and a p-zombie. There’s plenty of correlation, but correlation is famously not causation, and we don’t have a testable theory that would explain the causal link, or allow us to test whether, say, a cat, a tree, or an LLM is conscious.

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