Double-slit experiment observed by split brain

[Bojan Keevill]

Hello all,

Does anybody here know whether the double-slit experiment has been conducted with a split brain patient as observer?

 

[entropy1]

Why is that relevant?

 

[Nugatory]

Does anybody here know whether the double-slit experiment has been conducted with a split brain patient as observer?

The idea that a conscious observer is required to collapse the wave function was abandoned many decades ago. In the modern formulation of the quantum mechanics, it is completely irrelevant whether someone ever looks at the experimental results.

 

[hilbert2]

The laws of physics, including those affecting biological systems, are local. This means that there's no immediate faster-than-light communication between the parts of one's brain even if no connections have been cut off. So you can't think of the brain as an undivided entity, anyway. How would the brain cells resolve the conflict between the different collapsed states they initially decide to observe, if there were a difference?

 

[entropy1]

Does anybody here know whether the double-slit experiment has been conducted with a split brain patient as observer?

In fact, because a complete brain only perceives one particular unambiguous outcome, two halves of that brain separated should agree on what the outcome is, right? This is what we see in the world, where all brains see the same outcome of the same experiment.

 

[rootone]

There is no accepted theory, not even a reasonable hypothesis, that quantum events are in any way determined by biological entities.

 

[Bojan Keevill]

Thank you all for your valuable thoughts, insights and inductive theories.

As it is empiricism (science) that I am interested in, I shall simply assume that nobody here (so far) knows whether the double-slit experiment has been conducted with a split brain patient as observer.

All the best,
Bojan

 

[rootone]

As far as I know that assumption is correct, but how would this be different to simply having two or more observers?
Most often that is the case, and you don't get situations like where somebody says:
'Gamma radiation was detected, so fission must have occurred, then somebody else says 'what gamma radiation?'
Specifically for double slit experiment, everyone sees the same wavelike interference pattern.

 

[UsableThought]

As it is empiricism (science) that I am interested in, I shall simply assume that nobody here (so far) knows whether the double-slit experiment has been conducted with a split brain patient as observer.

If you really care about your question, you ought to at least explain why you think the experiment is worth doing in the first place, as @entropy1 requested of you in his comment #2. Keeping your ideas to yourself will be self-defeating.

 

[Nugatory]

I shall simply assume that nobody here (so far) knows whether the double-slit experiment has been conducted with a split brain patient as observer.

Actually, it's unlikely that the quantum mechanical experiment (don't confuse this with Young's classical experiment in which light forms a visible interference pattern on a screen - that has little to do quantum mechanics) has ever been conducted with any human, whether a split brain patient or not, as a direct observer.

A person only gets involved when it comes time to look at a piece of photographic film after it's removed from the developing bath (or more recently we use equivalent electronic processes). There's no earthly reason to think that a developed photograph might change if a different person were looking at it, and neither classical nor quantum mechanics suggest that such a thing is possible.