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Life exists so that the universe can observe itself

Bucklecroft Rudy said:
Quantum physics is relevant to - sub atomic particles seem to demonstrate self awareness when observed
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in what sense?

all that happens when they're measured is that in the frame of reference of that particle, they no longer undergo standard quanutm (unitary) evolution. however, if you incorporate the measurement apparatus into the system, and treat measurement apparatus + particle, the evolution is still purely quantum, so 'wave function collapse' is just a relic of an overly reductionistic treatment of the system. its not realy observation per se that makes the difference, but interaction, which does not require consciousness.
 
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My understanding was that wave function colllapse ocurred at the moment of observation but turns out the teacher was wrong lol the act of measuring involves external interaction. If so then the whole thing is a myth
 
its an easy mistake to make- unless you take things way past introductory courses or study the philoophy of QM, you're pretty much given the copenhagen interpretation as fact- which is a pretty unsound interpretation and makes measurement far more mysterious than it ought to be. there are still philosophically interesting aspects to it.
 
But isn't the fact that we can't separate observer from the observed an interesting phenomenon? Overly reductionist? Isn't the whole point of the sciences to break down the systems around us into their most basic constituent parts? We have the whole "atomic" theory of matter in the first place because of reductionism.

Also what's your opinion on Planck limit? Do you think there exists a plane of resolution to our universe on the other side of this seemingly impenetrable boundary?

I think my question correlates with the subject of nothingness at hand because there is either nothing smaller than the planck limit, or a whole world of possibility beyond which our best devices haven't been able to perceive. Are there theories that have yielded anything plausible?
 
yes, it is a very interesting phenomenon, that applies to all types of observation.

i think (roughly) the point of science is to explain past phenomena and predict future phenomena. reductionism has indeed helped science a lot, but it can also hinder it. we cannot explain a healthy heartbeat by looking only at a heart- a healthy heartbeat will react to signals from the body rather than using just its internal clock. without referring to the entire body, how can we explain the difference between a healthy heartbeat and an unhealthy hearbeat (i.e. an overly regular one)? really we need pragmatism, the less we include in a theory, the easier it is to develop, but if we include too little, we risk not being able to explain how things work.

as for the planck limit.... i really don't know. i don't think we can know until we have at least a decent candidate for quantum space-time, i.e. a theory of quantum gravity. time in QM is a sticky subject, and often misrepresented, worst of all in undergrad versions of Heisenbergs uncertainty principle- the proof of which is based on the fact that certain observables can be represented by mathematical objects called operators. time is not an operator. we have no idea what it is.

if there is such a limit for some quantities, then anything beyond the limit is certainly unattainable according to popular theories, i did a quick search on the arXiv and it didn't reveal anything. its something that confuses me greatly tbh, the position operator is treated as if it gives rise to a continuous space, rather than a discrete, quantised space-time. so space is not treated as quantised, at least in nonrelativistic QM, for the relativistic case, which is needed for these considerations, i have no idea. i did just find this which suggests experimentally that the limit, if there is one, is far smaller than predicted.

if the limit exists, then i think you're right, beyond it there may be a world of possibilities which cannot be probed with current methods. that would be really exiting so i hope you're right!
 
life cycles arent bound by biological life, but life is a word and words have different layers of meaning
the universe has different layers and life is one of them but in a infinity of possibility its just one of them
i dont see the universe as being limited to what we are limited to due to our specific bio-chemical make up that we identified as a "living" organism
the universe can observe itself by recording data into itself which it does inevitably by being "alive", by moving around on a time frame
thats why we know about the big band, thats how we can understand about evolution, if you see a apple fall you can determine that it comes from a tree, its a cause and effect word where one thing lead to another, so what is happening now is building from what was happening then, so it always entertain the past, the way things are is related to the way things where, and if you are the whole universe including time then you are recording yourself by being yourself
if you look at the similarity between these :

neuron2.jpg


could you tell me which one comes from your brain and which one comes from the sky ?

what if when we are looking into the sky at night we are looking inside the brain of "the" universe (there may be a infinity of them)
what if we are like bacteria inside your gut, so small and so unevolved compare to this giant universe head, but then what if we have little people inside our head too
and this huge universal brain is again the size of a bacteria inside a even huger brain
what if that never stops ? "as above so bellow"
or you can say that this universe brain is thinking yourself ( as much as you are thinking it)
but do you need your bones to be conscious or alive to be able to feel them, do you need a rock to be alive to be able to feel it ?
why would the universe need a minuscule human on planet earth to "observe" itself
but then why not, the universe might be thinking right now why is it self-conscious and whats the meaning of it all, but i would be doing so using equation a infinity more complex than we can do and we are all participating as little pieces of that equation by thinking and farting and moving around as part of the process
the way we feel and what we do might in some infinity small way influence the universe and what the universe is doing and thinking and feeling, and that is in return influencing us in some infinity small way because we are infinity small in the bigger scheme of things, or infinity big on a smaller scale
 
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