The Paradox

I think it's supposed to be that the objective outcome of something is altered by an observation of it. This makes sense to me if it means that something is added to the experiment that wasn't there before (light, etc.); but I'm really confused if it's merely the act of observation itself that produces this change!

 

Allow me to fuel your confusion, then.

 

I agree DE, that if there's nothing but our perception, its solipsism, and Dante was just panicking by the end of his Meditations.

As for the wee teeny tiny things, their ways are very strange indeed. Maybe they just get coy when you look at them.

As for the observation of dark matter hastening the end of the universe. Bah humbug.

You're dead right when you say it is giving humans super-powers. Much of the theory about observation changing reality stinks of mythology, where humans loom large.

 

True; but would that hold if the balls, the tower, and the earth were twice their actual size? What about half? Planck size? Smaller than an atom?

It's Descartes' Meditations, not Dante's.

 

What I meant was that while experimental outcomes don't seem to be affected by measurement or observation at a macroscopic scale, they are affected at a microscopic one, which is seriously freaking me out!

 

Dur, I mean Descartes, some wanker sweating over invisible demons anyway.

I'll leave my error as a testament to your scholarship and to my apathy, sir.

 

Your mommy and daddy.

 

As I recall, a classic test is to measure the direction of spin of an electron. Before anything else you decide upon a zero direction from which to measure the angle.

Then, when you measure it, it is always zero. The electron apparently conforms to the idea you had before you measured it, quite seperately from the conditions of the test. Maybe it wants to be helpful. Can electrons be helpful? Can quarks be shy? I don't know, you'll have to ask them.

 

I know what you mean; I have the exact same skepticism, and I'm curious to see the explanation for this phenomenon.

 

Definitely. There is nothing there unless someone is looking at my pictures. It's a magickal arse.

 

My point is if you're not looking at something, it may as well not be there. In fact, there's a cat regarding this particular issue; Schrodinger's cat.
There's a cyanide capsule sitting next to a geiger counter in a box, with a cat. There's also a radioactive nucleus with a 50% chance of decay after 2 minutes. If the nucleus decays, the geiger counter will pick up on it, and break the cyanide capsule, killing the cat (all within two minutes). However, the box is closed. We cannot see the cat, and in fact don't know if it's alive or dead until we open the box. Is the cat dead or alive? It's actually in a state of living death until we look at it, superimposing both realities onto one possibility. However, this seems ludicrous; either the cat is alive or dead. We cannot rely on the cat to give us a sign, it's not the most talkative of felines, and must open the box to find our answer.
Suppose instead of a cat, there is a man (who can speak and hear). Now, we can actually ask the man a question (after two minutes) to determine whether or not he's dead. Funny thing is, because he's a standard observer, he'll know he's alive well before we ask anything, supposing the cyanide capsule didn't kill him, and therefore he's not in a state of living death ever.
If an observer can't see it, it may as well not exist. Therefore, Frigo, your arse is indeed magical. Since it cannot make its own observations, it relies on you to maintain its existence. Considering you can observe your own rear, you may very well say it exists. But really, how would you know if it's there, considering its always behind you? Oh, but now we get into the sensations of the body as observation. You indeed feel your own ass, and can verify for us that its there. No ifs, ands, or but(t)s.

 

No, that's just silly.
What I mean is - once you cease observation - that you're no longer aware of the thing to be observed, so it may as well not exist, to you. It's still there, but you don't know about it. The blind man driving may not see anything, but that's simply a fault in his observations, if you could call it that. Maybe something more PC would be natural unawareness of visual stimuli. Since there's something to visually stimulate and the blind man cannot see it, he may very well collide with it.

 

The cat isn't really in a state of living death, though, is it? We may not know whether it's alive or dead, but I think it's one or the other; not both or neither.

 

If the cat could tell you otherwise, it would. I have a cat that hates being put into boxes, so she'd actually stop vocalizing when she died, after two minutes (or not). The problem with cats is they're not people, and therefore, not adequate observers.
The live-dead state is apparent only to an outside observer. Really, the cat is dead or alive. Not both. But, the lack of knowing if it's dead or alive superimposes the live-dead state, regardless of what's going on inside the box.

 

Cats can observe the universe just fine.

If humans are collapsing quantum fields by looking at them, then so are all the other critters around the place.

By the way, in Schrodinger's thought experiment, he concluded that the cat would be simultaneously dead AND alive. Pure nonsense, especially from the cat's perspective.

This is what I mean when I say the theories stink of mythology. It's always about the humans, isn't it?