And yet, the quantum mechanical world behaves exactly this way. Observations DO change exactly what happens. So, apparently at the quantum mechanical level, nature does have some way of knowing.
I’m not sure what effect that this has upon your argument, but it’s something that I think that you’re missing.
I’m familiar with this: entanglement between the environment and the quantum system affects the outcome, but nature doesn’t have a special law that distinguishes human entanglement from non-human entanglement (as far as we know, given Occam’s Razor, etc.), which the alternate hypothesis would require.
The error that early quantum scientists made was in failing to recognize that it was the entanglement with their measuring devices that affected the outcome, not their immaterial “conscious knowledge”. As EY wrote somewhere, they asked,
“The outcome changes when I know something about system—what difference should that make?”
when they should have asked,
“The outcome changes when I establish more mutual information with the system—what different should that make?”
In any case, detection of vibration does not require sensitivity to quantum-specific effects.
And yet, the quantum mechanical world behaves exactly this way. Observations DO change exactly what happens. So, apparently at the quantum mechanical level, nature does have some way of knowing.
Not really. This is only the case for certain interpretations of what is going on such as in certain forms of the Copenhagen interpretation. Even then, observation in this context doesn’t really mean observe in the colloquial sense but something closer to interact with another particle in a certain class of conditions. The notion that you seem to be conflating this with is the idea that consciousness causes collapse. Not many physicists take that idea at all seriously. In most version of the Many-Worlds interpretation, one doesn’t need to say anything about observations triggering anything (or at least can talk about everything without talking about observations).
Disclaimer: My knowledge of QM is very poor. If someone here who knows more spots anything wrong above please correct me.
And yet, the quantum mechanical world behaves exactly this way. Observations DO change exactly what happens. So, apparently at the quantum mechanical level, nature does have some way of knowing.
I’m not sure what effect that this has upon your argument, but it’s something that I think that you’re missing.
I’m familiar with this: entanglement between the environment and the quantum system affects the outcome, but nature doesn’t have a special law that distinguishes human entanglement from non-human entanglement (as far as we know, given Occam’s Razor, etc.), which the alternate hypothesis would require.
The error that early quantum scientists made was in failing to recognize that it was the entanglement with their measuring devices that affected the outcome, not their immaterial “conscious knowledge”. As EY wrote somewhere, they asked,
“The outcome changes when I know something about system—what difference should that make?”
when they should have asked,
“The outcome changes when I establish more mutual information with the system—what different should that make?”
In any case, detection of vibration does not require sensitivity to quantum-specific effects.
Not really. This is only the case for certain interpretations of what is going on such as in certain forms of the Copenhagen interpretation. Even then, observation in this context doesn’t really mean observe in the colloquial sense but something closer to interact with another particle in a certain class of conditions. The notion that you seem to be conflating this with is the idea that consciousness causes collapse. Not many physicists take that idea at all seriously. In most version of the Many-Worlds interpretation, one doesn’t need to say anything about observations triggering anything (or at least can talk about everything without talking about observations).
Disclaimer: My knowledge of QM is very poor. If someone here who knows more spots anything wrong above please correct me.