> Just to clear up a couple things:
>
> Ken Pantheists wrote:
[CLIP]
> > > As far as (1) is concerned, I'm not sure I understand the critique at all.
> > > I think the term "privileged" observer needs to be defined before I can
> > > begin to respond. As for point (2), which was made by XYZ, I
>
> For those who've been using Heisenberg to suggest that consciousness
> affects the outcome of experiments, the scientist looks askance at them
> and asks what priviliges them in terms of observation. As I said
> before, HUT says nothing about /consciousness/ collapsing the wave
> function simply that the act of detection changes it.
This reminds me of a calculation Von Neumann attempted: "WHEN does a wave
function collapse occur?" His result: it was when the event reached the
observer, not when the event supposedly occured.
> > > light is simultaneously a particle and a wave. However, the moment that a
> > > measurement is taken to detect which slit a given photon is passing through,
> > > the diffraction pattern vanishes.
>
> This is either willfully wrong or naively wrong, I can't tell. The
> reason that the diffraction pattern vanishes is that the only way to
> detect the location of the photon is to fire just one at the slit and
> try and see what happens. One electron does not a diffraction pattern
> make. Moreover, the act of detecting its location can and often does
> cause the absorbtion of the photon in question.
It's clumsily stated. The diffraction pattern *does* vanish. *When* it
vanishes is a slipperier question.
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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