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KimLuster on Aug. 21, 2016

The ‘Observer Effect’ (google it if you're interested - fascinating stuff, with profound implications). The basics is that a photon (or electron, or any other sub-atomic particle) behaves as a wave (think wave of water) UNLESS a conscious observation ‘causes’ it to behave as a particle (think tiny billiard ball). This is most easily seen with the double-slit experiment. If you direct a photon at a panel with two slits in it, it will form an interference pattern (which you would expect if it were a wave), but if you try to record which of the slits the photon is traveling through, the very act of trying to find that out causes the photon to ‘collapse’ to a tiny point, and the interference pattern disappears…


The implications are profound (and a little disturbing). How does a conscious observer have such an effect on reality? What is a conscious observer (you, I, a cat, an AI)? Most scientists these days believe that consciousness is ultimately based on physical reality (you don't have a soul or mind separate from your brain, which is made of matter, and ultimately sub-atomic particles). A dilemma is posed - how does physical reality (your ‘consciousness’) affect physical reality from a distance without physically interacting with it (cause a photon to collapse)…?

As the ‘Godstrain Manifestation’ says, it's seems an illogical loop (there's our circle motif). ‘She’ proposes that, in its timeless existence, a photon actually did it all, behaved as both a particle and as a wave (and many other things besides), Being ‘timeless’, it had all the time in the world to do it…!! Our ‘collapse-causing observation’, in one particular moment in time, is really only noticing one out of the infinite paths the photon took… El Cid sorta hit on thoughts in that same neighborhood a few pages back!

Taking all this to its logical conclusion, it seems the universe really is a ‘determined’ universe. Everything, from the photon's point-of-view, including future events, have already happened; reality, past, present, future, is just one single ‘thing’. And if that includes our future decisions and choices, then… well, we don't really have consciousness and freewill… That implications makes some of us scream with frustration and angry denial into the void!

But if it is true, that has implications of its own, as Kimber Lee has just latched on to…

I've also noticed the Godstrain Manifestation's nipples have gotten more detailed… Hrmmmm

Note and Disclaimer: many scientists will point out (rightly so) that it isn’t some sort mental power that’s causing wave collapsing, but rather, it is the actual measuring instruments (which are large and cumbersome on the quantum level). I’m not arguing otherwise… I just know that, by whatever method we ‘observers’ use to glean information about the quantum world, it changes it… And I don’t fully get how an Instrument can affect an entangled particle’s pair on the other side of the room (or the other side of the universe)… Efforts to explain that in a totally materialistic way always sound sort of ‘airy’ to me, almost hopeful in their attempt to remove consciousness from the equation… Anyhow…

Thanks for Reading Everyone!