
The ‘consciousness causes quantum collapse’ hypothesis (2017) - mathgenius
https://philosophynow.org/issues/121/Does_Consciousness_Cause_Quantum_Collapse
======
knzhou
This kind of thing has always seemed redundant to me. We already have a
perfectly good understanding of how decoherence causes _effective_ collapse,
by making branches of the wavefunction unable to interfere with each other.
This follows automatically from the basic rules of quantum mechanics, without
having to add any extra ingredients, and is absolutely necessary to get the
predictions to come out right (e.g. in cosmology, where there were no
conscious observers at all).

This article proposes to add an extra, ad hoc collapse mechanism determined by
a system's integrated information, but what's the point? At _best_ , it will
be a more complicated rephrasing of an effect that already happens
automatically, in which case it is unnecessary by Occam's razor.

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x0n
This all fell from Eugene Wigner's ideas,
[https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments...](https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments/wigners_friend/)
\-- and he was convinced (quite rightly in my opinion) that "consciousness"
causes wave function collapse. The only mistake there perhaps is thinking that
consciousness is unique to humans (or any "living" thing.) Consciousness
itself has traditionally been defined as a product of the brain; I think at
some point we'll figure out that the formation of the brain is more likely the
result of consciousness. This implies that everything is "conscious" (i.e. any
quanta), and that consciousness is better defined as something that is capable
of updating its state as a result of observation, rather than something
uniquely human. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory)
\- a more recent view on the nature of reality, moves in theses lines and is
something I myself subscribe to. Ultimately I believe that reality is
subjective from the ground up, that there is no such thing as objective
reality. This is hard to comprehend since we are hard wired to state things
objectively. It's a form of the "many worlds" view, except you must remember
that the idea that there "are" many worlds is an objective statement, and in a
universe that is entirely subjective from the observer's point of view, this
utterance is not compatible with that view. It's a form of solipsism, yes, but
a strict one nonetheless.

~~~
jackhack
I don't think it solves anything, it just "moves the cheese" by referencing
(requiring?) an undefinable "consciousness". In the spirit of Gestalt, let's
break this down a bit further to try to find the fine line.

A person is a conscious being. What if said person is asleep or intoxicated
and observes the The Double-Slit Experiment? What if person is sedated
("unconscious")? What if there is damage to the optic center of the brain
limiting perception? What about those who believe they can see but are quite
blind
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrome))
? And what about those who can see but falsely believe they
cannot?([https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-blindness-
is...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-blindness-is-in-the-
mind/)) Does this still impart consciousness upon the system?

What if one's optic nerve is severed but the eye is otherwise functional? Is a
dissected eyeball sufficient to cause wave collapse. If not, what additional
elements of the mind are required? How much additional processing is enough?

Must it be an advanced, self-aware mind with a complex eye as found in a
mammal or a cephalopod? What about a single-celled organelle in plankton which
can observe light and react? ([https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/plankton-s-
eye-made-up-of...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/plankton-s-eye-made-up-
of-organelles-study-suggests-1.3136018)) I think you're proposing that this is
sufficient.

And what is special about just the visible spectrum of energy? What about
radio waves? Does my Sony Walkman or a cat-whisker radio collapse the quanta?
What about Infrared? etc? Do the leaves of a houseplant perform this act? What
about physical vibration? Does a seismometer or accelerometer perform this
quantum task?

>>consciousness is better defined as something that is capable of updating its
state as a result of observation This is extraordinarily broad. The Heisenberg
uncertainty principle would then seem to illustrate that every subatomic
particle is conscious.

This seems a most unsatisfactory conclusion.

~~~
x0n
I'll not address your points individually, but instead deal with your final
notes. Yes, I believe that every quantum entity may observe and cause wave
function collapse _in their subjective view of the universe_. It's easy to
believe everything is objectively real whether observed or not because our
local views - when compared - are highly correlated/decohered.

If you find yourself talking about what it means to observe by breaking down
how the eye works, then you're aligned with Wigner's thoughts on it. I am not;
an observation in my world is akin to an interaction with. It does not mean
"awareness" in the sense that a brain might acknowledge something detected by
the eye.

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dropoutcoder
Seems to be a far cry from explaining the Hard Problem of consciousness.

As for the meat of the text (pardon the pun, I just re-read “they’re made out
of meat” yesterday), my amateur understanding is that there may be some degree
of quantum effects in the microtubules of the brain, but that decoherence is
very localized and limited, thus unlikely to have broader impact on physical
systems at large. To this end, it’s unclear how a shared physical reality such
as ours would allow for quantum effects from a measurement experiment, through
the non quantum systems to the brain. Can someone explain the basis of the
hypothesis presented by the paper in simple terms?

~~~
teilo
That's because he's not trying to explain it. The article is about quantum
determinism. He offers two explanations, depending on how one views the source
of consciousness, dualistically or physically. IIT doesn't explain
consciousness. It's merely a correlation.

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gdubs
Lee Smolin’s book, “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution” is largely about
particle/wave duality and an alternate theory that never caught on: the Pilot
Wave theory. It’s a Realist alternative to the Anti-Realist school of
Heisenberg, etc.

As Feynman used to say, “nobody understands quantum physics”. I really don’t
have a clue which theory is more “correct”. But the book’s interesting, and I
recommend it.

Also, an exploration of consciousness and quantum physics is central to the
Dalai Lama’s, “The universe in a single atom”. Another book I highly
recommend. He’s passionate about science, and it’s a thought provoking book.
In “The Profound Mind”, he goes further into various philosophies, and has
some really interesting things to say on consciousness, subjectivity, etc.

Quantum Mechanics attracts a lot of “woo”. I didn’t find the Dalai Lama’s
books to fall into that category — more philosophical than anything else. Just
worth mentioning.

It’s a shame, in general, how much pseudoscience surrounds Quantum Mechanics —
the reality of things is plenty interesting and confounding on its own! [Edit:
not at all meant as a judgement on this particular article; just following a
train of thought.]

~~~
ajuc
I thought pilot wave theory was disproved recently?

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-
pilot...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot-wave-
alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/)

~~~
szemet
Just skimmed over, but this is only about the oil droplets experiment - which
would have been a great macroscopic model/demonstration of pilot wave theory.

If it fails the double slit experiment - then simply it is not a good
macroscopic model/demonstration of the Broglie-Bohm quantum interpretation.
But AFAIK Broglie-Bohm has been already proven to be equivalent to all the
other popular quantum interpretations (if you give up locality), so it has not
been falsified at all (and actually can't be - as it gives the same
experimental forecasts as the other theories)

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ajuc
As far as I understand - we can make a random number generator decide if the
automated observation of the photons passing the slits happens or not and then
the pattern on the screen will change from one to the other randomly.

So we're pretty sure it's not consciousness that causes the collapse, right?
Unless the RNG or the camera is conscious :)

~~~
ericmay
Panpsychism to the rescue! :p

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism)

~~~
cultus
Panpsychism is really something that makes sense to me. It's a really
parsimonious way of solving the hard problem of consciousness without getting
into dualism or assuming anything special about matter that makes up sentient
beings. I really don't think that testing this could ever be in the realm of
physics, though.

~~~
ericmay
I certainly find it a compelling theory, and I agree that it’s probably not
testable. I lean toward consciousness being an illusion or simply non-
existent. It kind of seems like we, by nature, reject this notion because it
shatters our collective human psyche, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

On the other hand we have a hard time even defining consciousness.

~~~
program_whiz
Consciousness is probably the only thing that _cannot_ be an illusion.
Whatever you may think, the fact that you are having an experience is the only
thing you can know for sure (all the content of your experience could be
planted into your mind, but you at least know that you are experiencing it).
You really can't know if anyone else really exists and is having an
experience, or if its all a dream filled with impersonators created by your
own mind, but you know first hand that at least one experience is happening
(your conscious experience).

Perhaps "the self", or "the idea that I am a being with a consciousness
separate from all the universe" is an illusion.

~~~
ericmay
> Whatever you may think, the fact that you are having an experience is the
> only thing you can know for sure

It seems to me that you’re defining consciousness as having thought (please
correct me if I’m wrong). I’m ok with that, but I think at a minimum you’d
have to agree that any creature is capable of having thought and therefore
possessing of consciousness. If not, let’s say you’d argue that an ant is just
reacting to chemical signals, I’d just say the same is true of humans.

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sebringj
Sean Carroll mentions something to the effect that we are just part of the
measurement. I personally feel more comfortable with that explanation as it
seems detached from the human need to feel special.

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FreeFull
I just don't see why consciousness would require any sort of special physics.
We live in a world full of emergent phenomena, and consciousness seems like it
should just be another one of them.

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roywiggins
This is all neatly sidestepped by many-worlds: the wavefunction collapses that
you observe send you down one trouser of time. It may look like you're
influencing the world, but you're really just being dragged along by it. Non-
sentient things are doing the same thing in the same way.

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phkahler
There is no collapse. One can create pairs of entangled particles and send
streams of these in opposite directions - left and right for example. When
particles on the left are measured, it causes the so-called collapse of the
wave function and that of its paired particle that went to the right. This
means one can "collapse" the wave functions of one stream of particles (right)
by taking measurements of the other (left). The thing is, the particles on the
right behave exactly the same way regardless of weather their wave function
has been collapsed. In other words, no one can tell if this collapse has even
occurred. Why is it talked about as a discrete event?

~~~
gdubs
I’m not sure I follow. Aren’t entangled particles in superposition until
they’re measured? That would mean we have no way of saying they behaved the
same way, until we measure them — at which point the “spin” of the particles
will be random and opposite.

Also, “measurement” doesn’t have to mean “by a human”. Particles in effect
“measure” each other when they collide — which is one theory as to why we
don’t see quantum effects at a macro scale — there’s too much stuff colliding
into each other, collapsing the wave function.

A book that’s pretty fascinating in this regard is “Life at the Edge: The
Coming Age of Quantum Biology”. It explores how birds navigate the magnetic
field via quantum effects that we once thought couldn’t “survive” at a macro
scale. Fascinating.

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johnyzee
Cixin Liu's book Ball Lightning brilliantly incorporates this phenomenon into
the plot, for anyone interested in a sci-fi book recommendation.

(Of course, his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy is amazing too and
required reading.)

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AnimalMuppet
It seems to me that you can't think that consciousness causes quantum
collapse, and _also_ hold to a purely materialist idea of consciousness.
Because if consciousness is a purely material phenomenon, then it arises from
a bunch of interactions of quantum systems. Then "consciousness causes quantum
collapse" reduces to "a bunch of quantum interactions cause quantum collapse",
which is kind of unhelpful.

To put it a different way: For this to make any sense, consciousness has to be
something different. It can't be just material.

~~~
Analemma_
How many people believe in both CCC and materialism though? Virtually all
physicists, who tend toward materialism, have rejected CCC; the people who
believe in CCC tend to be panpsychists already. You're correct but kind of
aiming at a strawman.

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yters
Even if true, there must be at least one other parameter, since consciousness
does not determine the particular state the wave collapses.

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xtiansimon
It’s photography. (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Novel by Neal Stephenson and
Nicole Galland)

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asdfasgasdgasdg
The concept that consciousness might cause quantum collapse is untestable.
Quantum systems that have not been observed by conscious observers are
fundamentally unobservable, by definition. Let me put that another way. No
conscious mind will ever be able to observe anything about a quantum system
that has never been observed by a conscious mind.

~~~
TheFiend7
I mean, this is so far out of my wheel house I can't even claim to know
anything about this stuff. But why couldn't a form of an unconscious camera
exist? We could theoretically just look at pictures of the past from an
unconscious camera and therefore never collapse the system?

~~~
kadoban
I think the idea is that once you look at the picture, that's a mind observing
the event. The system "collapses" when it grows big enough that a consequence
of it affects you.

This should be similar to the idea explored by the Schrodinger's Cat thought
experiment.

~~~
TheFiend7
Though we observe the effects of the double slit experiment on the wall with
the interference pattern. Thereby not collapsing the system and taking a
screenshot of the un-collapsed system?

I would argue the wall is an unconscious camera in my example. Because when
observed during the experiment, the interference pattern disappears. But not
if it's observed after.

Secondly, the more and more I re-read the parent comment. The less and less
sense it makes.

>No conscious mind will ever be able to observe anything about a quantum
system that has never been observed by a conscious mind.

That isn't really true in concept though, as in my example, we observed a
quantum system at play that wasn't observed during its' "execution" so to
speak. We literally wouldn't be discussing quantum experiments and quantum
experimental phenomena if his statement was "completely" true.

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criddell
Does the question "can a computer cause quantum collapse?" have an answer?

~~~
ajuc
Room temperature causes wavefunction collapse :) That's the whole problem with
quantum computing :)

~~~
jbay808
But saying a system is at room temperature is actually just a way of
expressing your ignorance about a system's microstate. It's taking off your
glasses and saying "I don't have any idea what this system is doing in detail,
all I personally know is how much energy it has per degree of freedom in the
system".

~~~
ajuc
Wasn't it supposed to be conscious observation that collapses the wavefunction
and not uncertainty?

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odyssey7
Does the Earth or the apple cause the gravity?

~~~
soylentcola
Yes.

~~~
lostmsu
Not necessarily. All apparent casual connections are just an artifact of the
timeflow, which on its own might be nothing but a consequence of a particular
coordinate choice.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If I understand you correctly, the timeflow would be different with a
different coordinate choice. That can't be right - the physical results would
be different simply because of a coordinate choice.

~~~
lostmsu
The physical results might be the same. Imagine your universe is that of an
empty 2D plane with a single unit circle in it and you use euclidean metric,
but 1 of 2 coordinates you experience as time. From your perspective the life
of the matter in that universe starts at T0 as a point, then grows to a line
of length 2, then shrinks back to a point.

Now there might even be a "physical law", describing the evolution of that
line as "time" goes (and I am sure there is a simple one), that has "cause"
and "effect". But in the end no matter which direction you choose as "time",
the law is the same.

Now I leave the question of how can you exist in this universe open (or rather
obviously impossible in any meaningful sense), but there might be other more
complex constructs, that permit "intelligence" along a certain dimension, and
it is another question whether our universe is one of these.

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ngvrnd
Utter nonsense. Collapse is caused by interactions between particles, humans
got nothing to do with it.

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jagged-chisel
No.

"Observation" involves interacting with the system under test, thereby
necessarily changing the system. It is this interaction that results in
quantum collapse.

Yes.

With our consciousness, we become curious and ask questions. We devise
experiments that lead to quantum collapse.

Is "consciousness" the only cause of quantum collapse? I guess that depends on
the simulation we're in.

~~~
Xenograph
> With our consciousness, we become curious and ask questions. We devise
> experiments that lead to quantum collapse.

You are mixing up intelligence and consciousness.

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TimMurnaghan
By Betteridege's Law - no of course not.

For a slightly better answer we need physicists rather than philosphers - and
need to consider at what scale the quantum measures work - and what scale
they're observing at.

~~~
pmoriarty
What do physicists know about consciousness?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
At least as much as philosophers know about quantum mechanics.

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5cott0
This was brought up in the energy healing episode of Netflix’s Goop
docuseries.

The tools physics uses to measure elementary particles lacking the precision
to not disturb the system being observed is a failure of the tools and not
sufficient to reasonably imply that human consciousness has anything to do
with the fact that observing a system disturbs the system under observation.

Far more interesting and grounded along these lines is Penrose’s Orch OR;
consciousness is a fundamental physical structure or law of the universe
itself that our brains have evolved to access.

~~~
colecut
Goop being referenced on Hacker News in a conversation about quantum physics
will likely be the most unexpected thing I experience today.

~~~
5cott0
Point being is that the article posted is the same level of metaphysical woo
woo.

