BeauBard said:
I've long been of the theory that the rest of the universe doesn't exist unless I observe it. I'm not looking outside my window right now so there is nothing there. When I'm not on this site, it doesn't exist. When I do choose to observe something it's history comes into existence as well as it's current self. Because I am observing this site, the site was created. And now because the site was created, when I stop observing it, it will cease to exist. But of course I will come back to observe again and then the site will come into existence once again.
I think it's a nice theory. Someone can write an article about it now.
I have the SAME THEORY. Obviously we must be the same person. Or something.
Well, you can't both be right.
They aren't. They're both beings whom you've observed saying those things, and they exist only because you observed them.
Does anyone else get the urge to smack them around a little and say "Stop observing me hitting yourself! Stop observing me hitting yourself!"
Sick said:
As an aside, I think it's great when people take a formal mathematical description of a phenomenon and think that the phenomenon actually, physically exists as described.
The entire point of quantum theory is that nothing really exists as described.
String theory aside.
Behotches.
That doesn't stop people from thinking otherwise.
For instance, the typical person who hears about that damned cat likely believes quantum theory states that before we open the box, it really exists in some physical dead-alive zombie state.
It doesn't (unless you're one of those MWI people). It only exists as such in our abstract, formal, mathematical theory.
It's a problem of taking an abstraction and trying to make it concrete. Quantum mechanics stops being quite so bizarre when all this is kept in mind.
Admiral_Pants
Austin, TX
May 2004
NOV 26, 2007 10:27 PM