John Carlos Baez on Nostr: Indeed some physicists have argued that consciousness is involved in the so-called ...

Indeed some physicists have argued that consciousness is involved in the so-called 'collapse of the wavefunction' - which is itself quite a murky phrase, by the way. One of the first to argue this was Wigner and one of the more recent was Penrose.

But there's no evidence that consciousness does anything to 'collapse' anything more than an unconscious measuring apparatus does. What we people do, which most measuring apparati don't yet, is talk for hours on end about how what we've measured is really really real. I think that's the main thing going on here. We are complex enough to talk about our internal model of reality, which we call 'reality', and we say something has REALLY happened when it gets incorporated into that model.

Jumping from this to GOD, and hoping that in turn will increase the number of people who join various specific religious organizations, is actually a sign of desperation. "Consciousness collapses the wavefunction, so you should go back to church". Oookay... 🤔

Here is the Pew Research Center's analysis of their polling data:

• Has the rise of religious ‘nones’ come to an end in the U.S.?, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/01/24/has-the-rise-of-religious-nones-come-to-an-end-in-the-us/

Here is a free link to Ross Douthat's article:

• Is the world ready for a religious comeback?, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/opinion/religion-atheism-books.html

Try not to fight with each other in the comments. Be nice.

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