Role of consciousness in quantum interpretations

[Fredrik]

Hello everybody, I am new to these forums, and am curious to hear from people who know QP what in their opinion, is the best interpretation?

The best "interpretation" is to just view quantum mechanics as a generalization of probability theory. Classical probability theories assign sizes to elements of a sigma algebra. Sigma algebras are lattices. Quantum theories assign sizes to elements of a lattice that isn't a sigma algebra. Because of this, QM isn't probability theory in the classical sense, but a generalization of it.

I put "interpretation" in quotes, because this isn't an interpretation in the usual sense. It's not an attempt to explain "what's really happening". It's just the realization that we don't need to do that, and that even if there is such an explanation, there's no reason to think that it's present inside QM.

For example, is it a possibility that the conscious observer is indeed crucial to reality, and is the missing link in QP??

Consciousness isn't crucial to reality, but is crucial to science. A statement about the real world must be falsifiable to be considered a theory. To be falsifiable, it must make predictions about results of experiments. A result is one of several possible final states (of an indicator component of a measuring device) that can be easily distinguished by a conscious human. This is why you can't completely eliminate consciousness from discussions of QM. It's not because consciousness requires special physics. It's because QM is science, and science involves consciousness.