this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] 342345@feddit.de 159 points 7 months ago (3 children)
[–] Miphera@lemmy.world 73 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Seeing your comment inspired me to make this

[–] thrawn@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago (2 children)

This is a really high quality edit, I’m genuinely impressed. Probably not too much work mechanically but the attention to detail is great and someone who’s never seen it would probably think it was original. If I were a meme edit rater it would rank very high on my list. I don’t know how to make this comment not sound sarcastic or boomer-y but I actually really love this edit and will send it to people. They won’t understand it but that’s fine.

[–] Thassodar@lemm.ee 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If they don't understand it, it's their loss.

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[–] Miphera@lemmy.world 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Thank you so much, that's such a nice comment!! It took me about 20-30 minutes with paint.net :)

[–] Thassodar@lemm.ee 20 points 7 months ago
[–] Ashen@sh.itjust.works 16 points 7 months ago

Holy shit, that's incredible.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 44 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

This makes me irrationally angry

[–] kebabslob@lemmy.blahaj.zone 37 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] blanketswithsmallpox@lemmy.world 22 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Now I'm just more angry...

[–] Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

But then they wouldn't be angry right? Or would they be both angry and happy?

[–] Hexagon@feddit.it 5 points 7 months ago

I just imagined someone who's smiling only while being looked at, and making an angry face otherwise. Perfect nightmare fuel

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[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Then just round your anger. You don't need that much precision.

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[–] IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

Im not going to explain this again... OK!... its not looking, its measure that changes the result of the experiment. To measure implies interaction.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 96 points 7 months ago (18 children)

I think the meme is just poking fun at the physics behind the whole thing, but in case anyone doesn’t know:

It’s called the observer effect, and it happens because:

This is often the result of utilizing instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.

And particularly in the double-slit experiment:

Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the measured results of this experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

So for anyone who wants to have a surface understanding of the observer effect, the wiki does a fair job of the basic explanation.

[–] IlIllIIIllIlIlIIlI@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago

Yep, the observer it is not only observing, it is interacting in order to measure.

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[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 15 points 7 months ago

In short

😐 = Electron if you look

= Electron if you don't look

[–] K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

Maybe consciousness is fundamental and matter and spacetime are derived from it

edit: this comment is a bit controversial to people just want to say why not explore this idea we spent over 50 years on string theory where has that gotten us

Donald Hoffman Ted talk on consciousness

Papers by Bernardo Kastrup

Please just take the time to learn more before you come at me lol

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 27 points 7 months ago (45 children)

Consciousness has literally nothing to do with it. In fact, the experiment as demonstrated in this emem would not replicate the double slit results. What has to happen is something along the path has to interfere with the photon (aka observe, which has nothing to do with consciousness, rather just an interaction), which causes the waveform to collapse. Basically, if something needs to know the state, the state collapses into one result. It doesn't matter what that thing is.

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[–] DefinitelyNotAPhone@hexbear.net 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Consciousness is not part of the observer effect (which is itself named in the most infuriating way possible, specifically because it makes people think that the universe is somehow aware of when something sentient is looking at it). "Observing" a particle requires interacting with it in such a way that you meaningfully affect its current state of being, whether that be deflecting it in a different direction than it was going or changing its velocity, and therefore it is impossible at a quantum level to be a passive observer that does not influence the outcome.

In the case of the double slit experiment, if unobserved light will act as a wave with interference and if observed then it acts like a particle. The reason for this is both complicated and simple: light behaves as a wave due to probability. There's no way of observing a photon without influencing it, so therefore the best we can do is say it has a certain probability of being in this collection of spaces, which in the case of photons is a wave (because it can travel in any of a number of directions outwards from the photon emitter in the experiment, but all going away from the emitter and towards the wall the slits are cut into). For the purposes of this probability wave, the start position is the emitter and the end position is the wall behind the slits, so averaging out a large number of photons will recreate the interference pattern on the wall.

However, if you observe the photons at the slits to try and figure out which slits they're going through you have influenced the photons and thus collapsed that probability wave into a particle, and in the process created a new probability wave from that moment onwards which has the same end position as the original wave, but now starts at the individual slit. From its perspective, there is no second slit, so now the wave acts as if it is in the single slit setup because from its perspective it is, hence the loss of interference.

Nothing here has anything to do with consciousness. You can recreate this experiment with no one in the room and it will behave exactly the same, and has a sound (if very confusing conventionally) mathematical cause.

On a side note, string theory is effectively unfalsifiable and therefore completely useless as a scientific theory.

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[–] nifty@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (4 children)

You need to qualify that statement somehow, or maybe give a citation or source that supports such an idea

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[–] ARk@lemm.ee 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Please keep cooking until we unlock magical abilities

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[–] DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago
[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I'd read a piece that even just having a camera present has the same effect.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 58 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

That's not really it. You need something that measures the state of the electron. Merely looking in the direction is not enough. It has to be something that interacts with the electron.

A camera alone isn't enough. But light (eg photons) with enough energy should be enough. But then that energy will manipulate the electron. If you had a completely dark room and pointed a camera at the experiment it wouldn't change anything.

It's kind of like having your cake and eating it too.

[–] OpenStars@startrek.website 23 points 7 months ago

Yeah, it turns out that slapping the electron around like with a big stick or whatever causes it to change its behavior, go figure! :-P

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago

Dammit Jim, I'm a psychologist, not a physicist!

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[–] sudoreboot@slrpnk.net 33 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It isn't "looking" that is meant by "observation". "Observation" is meant to convey the idea that something (not necessarily sentient) is in some way interacting with an object in question such that the state(s) of the object affects the state(s) of the "observer" (and vice versa).

The word is rather misleading in that it might give the impression of a unidirectional type of interaction when it really is the establishment of a bidirectional relationship. The reason one says "I observe the electron" rather than "I am observed by the electron" is that we don't typically attribute agency to electrons the way we do humans (for good reasons), but they are equally true.

Edit: a way of putting it is that the electron can only be said to be in a particular state if it matters in any way to the state of whomever says it. If I want to know what state an electon is in, it must appear to me in some state in order for me to get an answer. If I never interact with it, I can't possibly get such an answer and the electron then behaves as if it was actually in more than one state at once, and all those states interfere with each other, and that looks like wavelike patterns in certain measurements.

Edit 2: just to be clear, I used an electron as an example, but it's exactly the same for anything else we know of. Photons, bicycles, protons, and elephants are all like this, too. It's just that the more fundamental particles you involve and the more you already know about many of them, the fewer the possible answers are for any measurement you could make.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So you're telling me the people from The Secret lied to me?!

[–] sudoreboot@slrpnk.net 12 points 7 months ago

I have no idea what that is so I'll just go with yes, probably!

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

No, the electron only understands sentient thoughts, if a camera or an animal looks at it, it won't work.

[–] kuhore@lemmy.world 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well that's not right

Physicists have found that observation of quantum phenomena by a detector or an instrument can change the measured results of this experiment. Despite the "observer effect" in the double-slit experiment being caused by the presence of an electronic detector, the experiment's results have been interpreted by some to suggest that a conscious mind can directly affect reality.[3] However, the need for the "observer" to be conscious (versus merely existent, as in a unicellular microorganism) is not supported by scientific research, and has been pointed out as a misconception rooted in a poor understanding of the quantum wave function ψ and the quantum measurement process.[4][5][6]>

Source

[–] sudoreboot@slrpnk.net 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I suspect it was a joke. Can't be sure though.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 months ago

I'm pretty confident it's a joke, but clearly from other comments people may actually believe something like that. It's best someone corrects it, even if not for the sake of the poster.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Not just sentient, but intelligent thought. I proved it in university. When I setup the lab, I got no interference pattern. When my more intelligent labmate did the setup there were fringes.

Wait! That means I was the sentient one! I was cheated! (Or maybe I just sucked at lab.)

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