B The Virtue of Individual Perception RE: Wavefunction Collapse

[Denselight93]

TL;DR Summary

Our physical brains produce a physical model representative of 'consensual reality' using electromagnetic impulses. These electromagnetic impulses are the product of our sensory organs interacting directly with 'consensual reality'. Might the construction of our electromagnetic individual reality models be intertwined with physical reality and potentially the 'collapsing of the wave function'?

Hey guys!

New to the forums so unsure if this is exactly the right place to present this idea I have. I hope that you will find it interesting.

I am all too familiar with claims of quantum consciousness woo. I am also aware that the role of 'wave function collapse', if such a thing even exists, is a popular item of debate within the quantum world.

My idea is essentially:

Our physical brains produce a physical model representative of 'consensual reality' using electromagnetic impulses. These electromagnetic impulses are the product of our sensory organs interacting directly with 'physical consensual reality'. Might the construction of our electromagnetic individual reality models be intertwined with physical reality and potentially the 'collapsing of the wave function'?

Note that this model of reality that our physical brains produce is related to our consciousness - seeing as we are aware of our own immersive reality representations. However, I do not assume or even predict that consciousness has a ton to do with how this model is produced. I believe that the interpretive gestalt that is automatically produced as our sensory organs react to our environmental stimuli probably has more to do with the unconscious mind. Our brain has to reduce the practically infinite amount of detail to a manageable experience, so it makes shortcuts or assumptions - an internal logic of some sort. My thinking is that the process that our physical brain is involved with to collapse this practically infinite (superpositioned?) 'physical consensual reality' into a working model may be inexorably tied to the manner in which 'physical consensual reality' continues to unfold - in some kind of subtle way. Of course, all physical brains (at least) would play a part in this collective process, so the idea would be tricky to test I imagine.

Thank you very much for listening to my weird idea!

 

[fresh_42]

I'm afraid your question is more philosophical in nature than physical.

Might the construction of our electromagnetic individual reality models be intertwined with physical reality and potentially the 'collapsing of the wave function'?

This is highly speculative and in the end undecidable, as it uses too many terms which don't have a clear physical meaning, hence philosophy. A subject we do not discuss here, mainly as it leads nowhere and in the end is undecidable.

However, we have a forum which deals with the interpretations of quantum physics, e.g. with the collapse of the wave function. I suggest to read it first, but be warned it is huge and often requires the understanding of the mathematical part of quantum physics.

https://www.physicsforums.com/forums/quantum-interpretations-and-foundations.292/

You can also do a forum search for collapse and you will probably find a lot, and likely a discussion of your question, too.

 

[Nugatory]

Might the construction of our electromagnetic individual reality models be intertwined with physical reality and potentially the 'collapsing of the wave function'?

It is possible - hard to prove a negative - but consider two other things:
1) The wave function can be collapsed by interaction with systems much less complex than a human brain, and indeed that’s how most observations are done. For example, when the double-slit experiment is done with a single-particle source, it’s the interaction with a single grain of photosensitive material that collapses the superposition of positions down to a single position where a dot on the film appears.
2) Although not discovered until years after the idea that consciousness might be involved in collapse, it turns out that a fairly non-controversial application of the basic math of quantum mechanics predicts that just about any interaction with the environment will lead to the effects of collapse. This is why experiments demonstrating superposition effects so often require cryogenics and vacuum to isolate the system under study. For more, google for “quantum decoherence” or give David Lindley’s layman-friendly book “Where does the weirdness go?” a try.

Thus, your conjecture may not be refutable, but there’s a pretty good case that it is unnecessary - it explains nothing that’s not already explained.