Re:A Twist on Schrödinger's Cat Paradox
by pdonis on Monday August 17, 2020 @02:25PM
(#24190168)
> I find the concept of consciousness applied here a bit disturbing
It's not just disturbing, it's going way, way beyond what the actual experiment tested. Articles like this (and even the underlying papers describing experiments like this) talk as if we are doing Wigner's friend type experiments involving actual humans. In fact the systems being experimented on are qubits, and the detectors are very simple detectors. The technical achievements involved in these experiments are certainly impressive, and experimenters should certainly continue pursuing these things, but the philosophical implications being claimed are IMO vastly overstated.
It's not just disturbing, it's going way, way beyond what the actual experiment tested. Articles like this (and even the underlying papers describing experiments like this) talk as if we are doing Wigner's friend type experiments involving actual humans. In fact the systems being experimented on are qubits, and the detectors are very simple detectors. The technical achievements involved in these experiments are certainly impressive, and experimenters should certainly continue pursuing these things, but the philosophical implications being claimed are IMO vastly overstated.