I Layperson's Question -- The wave function requires observation to collapse?

Se7enthSon
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If wave function requires observation to collapse, who or what may have been the observer during the billions of years before the emergence of life?
If wave function requires observation to collapse, who or what may have been the observer during the billions of years before the emergence of life?
 
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Answer: The observation does not require a conscious observer to have the collapse.
 
Moderator's note: Thread level changed to "I".
 
It depends in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In some interpretations there is not even a collapse.
 
Se7enthSon said:
TL;DR Summary: If wave function requires observation to collapse, who or what may have been the observer during the billions of years before the emergence of life?

If wave function requires observation to collapse, who or what may have been the observer during the billions of years before the emergence of life?
You might want to try David Lindley's layman-friendly book "Where does the weirdness go?". It won't quite answer your question, but it will explain more about how we think about wave function collapse these days.

You might also google for "quantum decoherence", but most of what you find will be less layman-friendly.
 
I understand that the world of interpretations of quantum mechanics is very complex, as experimental data hasn't completely falsified the main deterministic interpretations (such as Everett), vs non-deterministc ones, however, I read in online sources that Objective Collapse theories are being increasingly challenged. Does this mean that deterministic interpretations are more likely to be true? I always understood that the "collapse" or "measurement problem" was how we phrased the fact that...
I keep reading throughout this forum from many members that the general motivation for finding a deeper explanation within QM, specifically with regards to quantum entanglement, is due to an inability to grasp reality based off of classical intuitions. On the other hand, if QM was truly incomplete, and there was a deeper explanation that we haven't grasped yet that would explain why particles tend to be correlated to each other seemingly instantly despite vast separated distances, then that...
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