Knowing = the known + the knower

Interesting "truth" perspective/ thought experiment having momentous implications for our cosmic situation:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2387140072099571

Self-bias--as the subjectivity of our perspective--as a sort of filtering out of the superfluous and the hum drum. The "knowing" as the finely-tuned in resonance between what is is knowable beyond us and what knows inside us. "What happens to us is typical of us."--Jung "The medium is the message."--McLuhan

It is possible the universe didn't exist before there were humans to observe it .. there's a problem in that .. without a universe to appear in .. how did humans appear? Mostly I suspect most (sensible?) people are of the opinion that the universe carried on perfectly well without humans and will continue when we are gone. We are of less significance than a dog's fart in a hurricane.

(Oct 13, 2026 11:11 AM)confused2 Wrote: It is possible the universe didn't exist before there were humans to observe it .. there's a problem in that .. without a universe to appear in .. how did humans appear? Mostly I suspect most (sensible?) people are of the opinion that the universe carried on perfectly well without humans and will continue when we are gone. We are of less significance than a dog's fart in a hurricane.

A loop method of using a future point in time to interface with a previous point through the use of many universes being staggered incrementally backwards (it's just changing the taxis on which a parallel resides).

That would allow for the manipulation of a past universal reference from a future external universal reference, however there is potential for a paradox where the manipulation of the past would wipe out the frame of reference in the future, leading to the paradox of not knowing where the universe came from.

, or less soya in your dog food.

(Oct 13, 2026 11:11 AM)confused2 Wrote: It is possible the universe didn't exist before there were humans to observe it .. there's a problem in that .. without a universe to appear in .. how did humans appear? Mostly I suspect most (sensible?) people are of the opinion that the universe carried on perfectly well without humans and will continue when we are gone. We are of less significance than a dog's fart in a hurricane.

Wheeler's "participatory universe" still seems dependent upon spacetime for its claims, so all eras would co-exist and observers billions of years after the Big Bang (in his account) are simply the internal reason for the overall superposition collapse into the particular history of the world they find themselves in. Vaguely akin to characters in a book claiming that there is a chain of prior causes (including their own actions) that brought about the circumstances or plot that they find themselves in. But that's merely the coherence of the storyline. External to that narrative is the book and its contents simply existing (not a page magically appearing and then disappearing in constant succession). QM and its oddities are just part of the internal logic that the figurative book's applicable events adhere to.

John Wheeler’s Participatory Universe: In the final decades of his life, the question that intrigued Wheeler most was: “Are life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe, or are they central to it?” He suggested that the nature of reality was revealed by the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics. According to the quantum theory, before the observation is made, a subatomic particle exists in several states, called a superposition (or, as Wheeler called it, a ‘smoky dragon’). Once the particle is observed, it instantaneously collapses into a single position.

Wheeler suggested that reality is created by observers and that: “no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” He coined the term “Participatory Anthropic Principle” (PAP) from the Greek “anthropos”, or human. He went further to suggest that “we are participants in bringing into being not only the near and here, but the far away and long ago.”

This claim was considered rather outlandish until his thought experiment, known as the “delayed-choice experiment,” was tested in a laboratory in 1984. This experiment was a variation on the famous “double-slit experiment” in which the dual nature of light was exposed (depending on how the experiment was measured and observed, the light behaved like a particle (a photon) or like a wave).

Unlike the original “double-slit experiment”, in Wheeler’s version, the method of detection was changed AFTER a photon had passed the double slit. The experiment showed that the path of the photon was not fixed until the physicists made their measurements. The results of this experiment, as well as another conducted in 2007, proved what Wheeler had always suspected – observers’ consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence. This means that a pre-life Earth would have existed in an undetermined state, and a pre-life universe could only exist retroactively.

Quote:We are of less significance than a dog's fart in a hurricane.

Quote for the day! lol

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Conception objectifies, or "thingifies", even as observation presences. Reality, which is purportedly a kind of happening going on without being presently observed, is thus only a conceptual construct and not any kind of actual state in itself. Which is to simply say that the unobserved past was real in itself but only as a present conception that makes our experience more intelligible and liveable.. A residual vestige perhaps of that well-ingrained common sense realism that also makes us conceive of color as a property of objects instead of as a property of light itself. I personally feel like the whole idea of the real past is suspect. Of some supposed succession of unbservable "has-beens" each frozen in time and so totally disrelated and discrete from each other.

Bonus question: if an observer sees something happen, and no one observed him doing it, did it really happen?

Synchronistically as usual, this observation by channeled extraterrestrial Bashar just came up on my FB newsfeed. It treads the thin line between solipsism and..uh.."holography"?

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1433902878712239

One of (the first?) actual quantum eraser experiments is here:
Just looking at the diagrams is enough to convince or not convince.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9903047
Our own Sabine criticizes the interpretation .. the choice of detector selects the result but doesn't influence it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQv5CVELG3U&t=710s

My thoughts..
Unfortunately BBO are wildly inefficient at producing entangled photons .. the only way to 'see' interference (or not) is by coincidence detector which matches the (delayed) time of arrival of the main photon at the (notional) screen to the time its pair is detected by the magic detectors.
Looking at Fig 3 in https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9903047

The D3 detector is after a beam splitter so a theoretical maximum 50% detection efficiency .. there would still be an interference pattern at the (notional) screen though D3 wouldn't see it. D1 and D2 are seeing only photons without path information .. and they see an interference pattern. I'm not sure how magical this really is.
Edit .. It would be interesting to know whether turning off D3 detector makes any difference (I suspect not) maybe a later experiment will shed light on this. For now .. I have my list of chores for the day..