Who? What? Huh?

As far as I can see every article, of the 15, that has cited Nikolic since this paper suggests the opposite. I refer you to a more recent example (Guerrer, 2017):

Motivated by a series of reported experiments and their controversial results, the present work investigated if volunteers could causally affect an optical double-slit system through mental efforts alone. The participants task alternated between intending the increase of the (real-time feedback informed) amount of light diffracted through a specific single slit and relaxing any intention effort. The 160 data sessions contributed by 127 volunteers revealed a statistically significant 6.37 sigma difference between the measurements performed in the intention versus the relax conditions (p = 1.89×10−10, es = 0.50± 0.08), while the 160 control sessions conducted without any present observer resulted in statistically equivalent samples (z = −0.04, p = 0.97, es = 0.00±0.08). The results couldn’t be simply explained by environmental factors, hence supporting the previously claimed existence of a not yet mapped form of interaction between a conscious agent and a physical system.

Another one citing Nikolic and providing a more recent overview of the field (Sanchez-Canizares, 2014):

In recent decades, progress in the field of neurosciences has triggered an interest in understanding mind-brain relationships. Quantum Mechanics (QM) has been present in the debate from its beginnings through the well-known measurement paradox. The standard interpretation of QM considers two basic, fundamentally irreducible, processes: the deterministic evolution of the wave-function according to the Schrödinger equation, once the initial conditions have been settled; and the indeterministic wave-function collapse into one of the possible outcomes, after performing a specific measurement. So, QM would point to the limits of a purely deterministic view of nature and, in particular, of brains. Nevertheless, QM’s relevance for the brain’s physics is still to be proven. Detractors of the QM influence are confident of the role of decoherent processes at different physical scales in order to ensure a classical deterministic behavior of the brain. However, little attention is paid to the epistemic implications of invoking decoherence for the mind-brain problem. In this paper, (i) we present lasting QM models stating a specific view of human consciousness and make explicit their position regarding the relationship between the physical activity of neurons and/or networks of neurons and the phenomenal conscious experience; (ii) we review the main criticisms of the relevance of QM in the brain and, most importantly, we bring out the philosophical implications behind the usual recourse to decoherence in the transition from the quantum to the classical world, explaining why the mind-brain problem and the measurement paradox should not be disentangled.

Instrumentalists about QM tend to be inconsistent. They often believe that validated scientific theories, such as atomic theory, the germ theory of disease and natural selection are not only useful to us, but they also describe reality. But then when it comes to QM, which happens to be one of the most well-evidenced and scrutinized bodies of literature, they believe it doesn't describe reality and is merely just useful for specific tasks.



Keep up the sophistry.

Nothing like this (psychokinesis) has ever been confirmed.

What's psychokinesis got to do with any of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychokinesis
The article claims people could affect a physical system without physical interaction (directing light through a specific slit by thinking alone, "intending" vs "relaxing")

The "observer effect" is random at most, not like you can choose how a collapse a wave function, having it go your way of choice by just thinking. That would be psychokinesis, for which there is no evidence so far.

You can't choose how to collapse a wave function, but which property to measure - e.g., position or momentum or spin - you can. Thus collapsing the particle to a particular position, momentum or spin upon making that choice. The particle does not have any position, momentum or spin until you choose one of these to measure. Until you make that choice, it is just a wave function.

Telekinesis or psychokinesis is not mentioned anywhere in the article.

Going by that definition, I can also affect a physical system without physical interaction. I do it every time tell someone to do something.

You think this is the first ESP/psychokinesis work? There are plenty of studies on this effect, with high statistical significance:

An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning:
One particular study which made a buzz was a long running project at a well regarded university where people tried to influence the outcome of a particular computer decision. I think they got six sigma significance for ESP/telekinesis if memory serves.

If you had more science and less brain rot, you'd appreciate why these results are meaningless, and how error prone science is.

The sophistry is yours. You've created elaborate religious beliefs and attempted to validate them with junk science, because you're afraid of various things and lack the courage to live without crutches.

That's all well and good, but here you are proselytizing as if science supports your wacky religious delusions, which it doesn't.

It's only the strong implication and the very thing being studied.
Sounds waves aren't physical interaction? lol dude

To be fair, on closer reading that top article is ridiculous. Plucking them out at random is not ideal.

But I'm stingy with my time.

And correct.

If you believe that consciousness affects outcomes, then telekinesis follows quite reasonably. I'm not sure why you'd find the second ridiculous but not the first. And there are excellent, high quality, peer-reviewed papers "proving" ESP to six sigma, by very reputable people. So it's not like there isn't literature for this stuff.

But you have to understand this in the context of the very low reliability of science and publishing. Most things published in science are bull****, but even our mod Zeno can't accept this scientific truth, so I'm not sure why you would. You get higher levels of truth from a drunkard down the pub.

Just note you and you alone have introduced that word to the discussion.

Sent via indirect telepathy

Like choices on a shelf which collapses when one or more decisions are made. Does the shelf collapse or just the choices not made?

Which garbage journals are publishing this bull****?

abovetopsecret.com (where this is from) is a high quality journal. I won't have its reputation impugned.

I believe most physicists don't regard the complex wave function as representing anything physical. Instead, it is a mathematical construction from which can be derived certain probabilities. I don't think they have any idea for what might be going on physically to explain why it works.


PairTheBoard

Apology accepted.

Localised necessity

Speculating on the "derail" itt. Vee accidentally posted (the one I quoted) with a categorically "new" thing: psychokinesis (or at least ESP). It's an example of how the quantum thingy can be misused. But not everything goes.

What I was thinking about is ho long it would take to get a categorically new thing into mainstream science? Say ESP exists, God exists (or maybe the returning Jesus proving who he is), time travel, afterlife etc. Proving any of these would of course give the Nobel Prize in physics, with honors. The guy coming up with it would be the one succeeding Einstein. But even Einstein didn't get the Prize for relativity. Wonder when he would have got it had he "only" discovered relativity? At least a few years later, but how long?

Einstein became world famous after the curving of light was confirmed - having been predicted by General Relativity - during an eclipse in 1919. So a short while after that.

Are you sure it would have been enough? There maybe could have been other explanations. We are talking about a single event. When would the next chance have come? A different one?

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_pri...aureates/1921/

1921 was apparently too early. On the other hand I've not known it was also "for his services to Theoretical Physics", not only the photoelectric effect. Anyhow the pressure on the Nobel Committee got too strong, but they didn't feel they had the evidence to give it for the big thing.

There was still a chance relativity would have ended up on the scrap-heap of physics.

I read somewhere that Einstein was awarded the prize for the photoelectric effect bec relativity was too controversial at the time. But he became like a world-wide rock star after the, what? outlandish?, amazing? unreal? light bending prediction was confirmed.

Yeah, giving him the award for the photoelectric effect was a halfassed way to recognize his work on relativity.

....some scientific shockers in this thread....
Einstein got the noble prize for the photoelectric effect because it was a massive leap forward in our understanding of the world....it is was the first experimental evidence of quantified light...His work on relativity was what propelled him to stardom, alongside his stance on nuclear power, because ot essentially spelled the end of Newtonian mechanics as anything other than an approximation that works with relatively small things close to earth.....

In terms of the wave function collapse....the wave function not only collapses when it is observed by a conscious mind, but it actually collapses when you observe it.
Take for example the fabled schrodingers cat experiment:
The cat is both alive and dead simultaneously, I.e: the wave function of the cats life is split into two very discret possibilities, it is either alive or dead. We can think of this as two separate wave functions, but in reality are two seperate sections of the same wave function..... Only one of the possibilities will exist when the box is opened, and we discover if the cat is alive or dead...the other section of the wave function will collapse, and only the observed probability exists....
If we take this a step further though and you ask a colleague to go and observe the cat, the wave function still hasn't collapsed because for you both possibilities still exist....in fact further possibilities exist because the college could or could not be lieing....at any junction a device measuring any quantity has a proportionate chance of doing so inaccurately....and only when you as a person yourself observe something will the wave function finally break down, because there are no other possibilities.....
Of course you can look at what you actually observe, wheb we see something it is just photons, that could or could not be from what we think we are seeing...on TV you see a person of film or whatever, but it isn't actually there, but the photons you observe are real, so when you wourself observe you only break down the wave function of the particular photon you observe, and nothing more....so large scale wave function break down is somewhat meaningless to talk about....wave functions never really break down, they just get continually larger and more complex....in fact a reasonable model of the big bang theory is of an ever expanding perpetually more complex wave function....

Physics bruv

I am a wave function.

You need to post more!

The cat is always dead or alive and never both. The cat is a macroscopic system and it is observed by the walls of the stupid box already!

The chance the cat in fact has not interacted with anything around her to detect its condition is 10^-whatever big you want put here. An electron however is not a cat and not 3 atoms either. But somewhere along the way to the 10^26 that the cat is say you get the picture. Basically the moon is always there and the electron maybe.

The observer is universe itself. An interaction is a detection in a way.

Geometry is born out of the act of observation.