Tag: Measurement Problem
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ESSAY 3 — THE WITNESS
What remains when the observer cannot be found as an object Something has gone unnoticed in the course of the last two essays. Not a concept. Not an argument. Something closer to home than either. Essay 1 tracked the observer problem through a century of physics — from Young’s darkened room to Bell’s theorem —…
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Seven Notes on The Observer
Argument 1: The Question Physics Cannot Answer From Inside Physics, Why? Every experiment in quantum mechanics requires a specification of measurement — which introduces the question of the observer. Not metaphorically. Not as a poetic flourish. The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics — the Schrödinger equation, the Born rule, the measurement problem — cannot be…
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Essay 2 — What is The Observer?
The structure of experience and the question physics left open The problem is no longer how the world is observed. The problem is what is doing the observing. Essay 1 arrived at a precise boundary. Quantum mechanics — the most empirically successful theory in the history of science — cannot be formulated without reference to…
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Essay 1 — The Observer Problem
What quantum mechanics uncovered — and could not explain In 1801, Thomas Young darkened a room, positioned a card with two narrow slits cut into it, and allowed a beam of light to pass through. What appeared on the screen behind it was not two bands of light — the result a common-sense particle theory…