I’ll be more direct. You misused the word “observes.” It has both a colloquial meaning and a meaning as a piece of physics jargon. Only one of the definitions works when you apply it to physics. Although you succeeded in being wrong in the post, you in fact over-succeeded and were too wrong to be useful.
I’m sorry I was rude. I don’t understand this last comment of yours.
I think that what you call a misuse of the word observes, is the interpretation under which consciousness mysteriously interacts with the world. I expect, if I had to guess, that most people educated in the matter don’t believe that happens. But it’s still in the running, because the other viewpoint also leads to bizarre conclusions.
(Another way of saying this is: I am not convinced that the view that waveforms collapse, in a way that does not involve consciousness, doesn’t have a secret implied invocation of consciousness buried in it. I don’t know how a single-world interpretation can get away from requiring something like consciousness to do very selective collapsing of waveforms.)
So, using the word “observes” as it would be used under an interpretation that you disagree with, isn’t a “misuse”.
Hmm, it looks like wikipedia does give the “consciousness causes collapse” position more credence than I had expected. But that may just be the equal time fallacy, as its cited proponents have titles like “founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy.” I’ve never run into it in person among physicists.
EDIT: Of course, what you used in the article wasn’t the “consciousness causes collapse” position at all—not even those people, by and large, would agree that if you mistake a sleeping cat for a dead one, that kills it.
I’ll be more direct. You misused the word “observes.” It has both a colloquial meaning and a meaning as a piece of physics jargon. Only one of the definitions works when you apply it to physics. Although you succeeded in being wrong in the post, you in fact over-succeeded and were too wrong to be useful.
I’m sorry I was rude. I don’t understand this last comment of yours.
I think that what you call a misuse of the word observes, is the interpretation under which consciousness mysteriously interacts with the world. I expect, if I had to guess, that most people educated in the matter don’t believe that happens. But it’s still in the running, because the other viewpoint also leads to bizarre conclusions.
(Another way of saying this is: I am not convinced that the view that waveforms collapse, in a way that does not involve consciousness, doesn’t have a secret implied invocation of consciousness buried in it. I don’t know how a single-world interpretation can get away from requiring something like consciousness to do very selective collapsing of waveforms.)
So, using the word “observes” as it would be used under an interpretation that you disagree with, isn’t a “misuse”.
Hmm, it looks like wikipedia does give the “consciousness causes collapse” position more credence than I had expected. But that may just be the equal time fallacy, as its cited proponents have titles like “founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy.” I’ve never run into it in person among physicists.
EDIT: Of course, what you used in the article wasn’t the “consciousness causes collapse” position at all—not even those people, by and large, would agree that if you mistake a sleeping cat for a dead one, that kills it.