159 points

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73 points

Seeing your comment inspired me to make this

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24 points

This is a really high quality edit, I’m genuinely impressed. Probably not too much work mechanically but the attention to detail is great and someone who’s never seen it would probably think it was original. If I were a meme edit rater it would rank very high on my list. I don’t know how to make this comment not sound sarcastic or boomer-y but I actually really love this edit and will send it to people. They won’t understand it but that’s fine.

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20 points

If they don’t understand it, it’s their loss.

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9 points
*

Thank you so much, that’s such a nice comment!! It took me about 20-30 minutes with paint.net :)

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20 points

I lost it.

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16 points

Holy shit, that’s incredible.

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44 points
*

This makes me irrationally angry

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37 points

Then don’t look at it

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22 points

Now I’m just more angry…

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15 points

Then just round your anger. You don’t need that much precision.

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2 points

Fuck, it’s too early for jokes of this caliber

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3 points

is this what loss feels like?

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6 points

I collapsed at the sight.

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6 points

Im not going to explain this again… OK!.. its not looking, its measure that changes the result of the experiment. To measure implies interaction.

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96 points

I think the meme is just poking fun at the physics behind the whole thing, but in case anyone doesn’t know:

It’s called the observer effect, and it happens because:

This is often the result of utilizing instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.

And particularly in the double-slit experiment:

Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the measured results of this experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

So for anyone who wants to have a surface understanding of the observer effect, the wiki does a fair job of the basic explanation.

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12 points

Yep, the observer it is not only observing, it is interacting in order to measure.

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-52 points

The meme is not about the observer effect or wavefunction collapse

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23 points

Yeah it is. From that wiki article:

A notable example of the observer effect occurs in quantum mechanics, as demonstrated by the double-slit experiment"

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-31 points

The meme is not about the double slit experiment

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18 points

Super curious, and promise not to argue. What, in your summation, is the meme about?

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8 points

Petulant electrons, I guess.

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-17 points

This meme is about the difference in scales. When your electron’s delocalization is much greater than other scales in your system, the electron behaves like a wave. Otherwise if the electron’s delocalization is the smallest scale, it behaves like a particle.

If you can look at the setup of an experiment with your bare eyes, the electron behaves like a particle. If you cannot - it may behave like a wave.

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14 points

In short

😐 = Electron if you look

= Electron if you don’t look

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9 points
*

Maybe consciousness is fundamental and matter and spacetime are derived from it

edit: this comment is a bit controversial to people just want to say why not explore this idea we spent over 50 years on string theory where has that gotten us

Donald Hoffman Ted talk on consciousness

Papers by Bernardo Kastrup

Please just take the time to learn more before you come at me lol

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27 points

Consciousness has literally nothing to do with it. In fact, the experiment as demonstrated in this emem would not replicate the double slit results. What has to happen is something along the path has to interfere with the photon (aka observe, which has nothing to do with consciousness, rather just an interaction), which causes the waveform to collapse. Basically, if something needs to know the state, the state collapses into one result. It doesn’t matter what that thing is.

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-6 points
*

Idk that would depend on what you believe is fundamental Fringe science baby!

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18 points

Yeah, except we can do this experiment without ant consciousness aware of it even and it gets the same results. The only thing that matters is if the particle has to interact with something, because when it does it becomes a specific particle rather than a waveform. What that interaction is with does not effect the experiment in the slightest. A consciousness does not have any effect on the results of the experiment so there’s no reason to expect that the universe cares about consciousness. To the universe, consciousness is yet just another series of interaction of things that behave the same as anything else, except it happens in a pattern that we think of as thought.

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-3 points

One day Materialism will be rightfully recognized as cringe

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11 points

Consciousness is not part of the observer effect (which is itself named in the most infuriating way possible, specifically because it makes people think that the universe is somehow aware of when something sentient is looking at it). “Observing” a particle requires interacting with it in such a way that you meaningfully affect its current state of being, whether that be deflecting it in a different direction than it was going or changing its velocity, and therefore it is impossible at a quantum level to be a passive observer that does not influence the outcome.

In the case of the double slit experiment, if unobserved light will act as a wave with interference and if observed then it acts like a particle. The reason for this is both complicated and simple: light behaves as a wave due to probability. There’s no way of observing a photon without influencing it, so therefore the best we can do is say it has a certain probability of being in this collection of spaces, which in the case of photons is a wave (because it can travel in any of a number of directions outwards from the photon emitter in the experiment, but all going away from the emitter and towards the wall the slits are cut into). For the purposes of this probability wave, the start position is the emitter and the end position is the wall behind the slits, so averaging out a large number of photons will recreate the interference pattern on the wall.

However, if you observe the photons at the slits to try and figure out which slits they’re going through you have influenced the photons and thus collapsed that probability wave into a particle, and in the process created a new probability wave from that moment onwards which has the same end position as the original wave, but now starts at the individual slit. From its perspective, there is no second slit, so now the wave acts as if it is in the single slit setup because from its perspective it is, hence the loss of interference.

Nothing here has anything to do with consciousness. You can recreate this experiment with no one in the room and it will behave exactly the same, and has a sound (if very confusing conventionally) mathematical cause.

On a side note, string theory is effectively unfalsifiable and therefore completely useless as a scientific theory.

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1 point

Nothing here has anything to do with consciousness. You can recreate this experiment with no one in the room and it will behave exactly the same, and has a sound (if very confusing conventionally) mathematical cause.

First I was commenting on a meme wasn’t expecting these comments lol. but we are active in the experiment that is the point to show that it changes states because we observe Why does that happen and why don’t we don’t know it’s position til observed. It doesn’t matter if we are in the room or not we could be 1000 miles away watching on webcam and the same thing happens because we observed it and my side note QM is fucking magic dude

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7 points

You need to qualify that statement somehow, or maybe give a citation or source that supports such an idea

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1 point

Sure firstly id like to say these are theories just as anything in science starts as. I am not saying this is fact by any means and could be totally wrong. here are some sources:

Donald Hoffman Ted talk

Papers by Bernardo Kastrup

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2 points

Thanks for sharing, I’ll take a look when I get a chance!

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6 points

Please keep cooking until we unlock magical abilities

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1 point

What is magic dude Fucking biobots man

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6 points

*Photon

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