Mental telepathy with animals

[jakelafortParticipant]

*i meant to indicate the video of the exchange is there.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Unseen wrote:

For example, how does the so-called “observer effect” not hint at something like a mental power or mental field or some such thing?

Observer Effect is a misnomer. One cannot just “see” an electron in flight, one has to measure it. As the twin slit experiment suggests, while in flight, an electron is acting as though it were a wave, a wave even larger in width than the distance between the slits, and a wave that diffracts around the edges of the slits.

The “observer” effect should be known as the “measurement” effect. Quite simply, measuring the wave requires an interaction with it, and as shown above, the wave itself is large before it can go through the slits. The interaction with the measuring device is what makes the wave-form electron collapse into its particle form. Sure, an observer may have put an instrument there, but it’s the instrument that caused the collapse. There are other, naturally (without humans) occurring interactions with waves that could also cause wave collapse. Each slit itself is causing a passing electron’s wave to collapse, unless something else caused the collapse beforehand.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure that with a measurement device at each slit, only the instrument that can be the first to measure the wave would register a hit. The other device would never see the electron’s wave or particle, because the “wave function” collapsed the instant the first device was able to measured it. (There is also a probability function here wrt which device will be the first to detect it.)

I’m disappointed that the video doesn’t explain this, or that the maker of the video didn’t look further into the observer effect myth.

[UnseenParticipant]

@PB

On one level, PB, you are right but on another maybe not so much.

First, you speak of consciousness as though consciousness is easy to define and widely agreed upon. Few things are less true. We only understand consciousness by being immersed in it. Consciousness is defined in terms of not having it, basically, like when under deep sedation for surgery or when one is dead.

Second, it’s been established that the observer effect happens without regard to whether the measurement is done on the front or back of the slit, so the supposed interference of the measurement itself is neither here nor there. The one element common to every case is that at some point the measurer (the person controlling and causing the measurement) observes the result. S/he could be observing it in real time (which doesn’t actually exist because consciousness is always at least a tiny bit behind worldly events) or could come back the following day to see what the result was.

The measuring device, too, like most tools, is an extension of the person doing the measuring. It is not just an extension of the body but also of the consciousness using it. Just as the consciousness via the body holds the hammer, making the hammer an extension of the conscious mind, the measuring device is also part of the conscious mind. Thus, if the measuring device affects the outcome of the experiment, then the experiment has been affected by consciousness.

The mystery, anomaly, weirdness—whatever you choose to call it—remains, and clearly consciousness figures into it somehow.

One thing that keeps popping up when you study this topic are the concepts of the collapse of a wave function and superposition. Wave functions exist in a state of superposition, which sounds mysterious, but Sabine Hossenfelder explains that superpositions are ubiquitous. You wake up feeling a little nauseous so you are considering whether or not to go to work/school. This is a state of superposition, and it only resolves when you decide. Viewed this way, there’s nothing weird at all about Schroedinger’s Cat.

There’s also a many worlds interpretation of superposition. For some, it means that every time something happens (some superposition collapses) reality branches out into a new world. Sean Carroll holds the many worlds theory but kind of in the inverse. When a superposition collapses, this world goes on and a potential other world does not. Thus, when you open up Schroedinger’s famous box to discover a dead cat, it does not mean that the cat lives on in another world.

But that’s a digression. I’m not sure how it relates to the possibility of telepathy.

Anyway, your observations on the slit experiment aside, and rejecting for the moment the sense of foreboding or premonition some people have regarding the fate of loved ones, which may be coincidental, we are left with the fairly well-established fact that some pets quite regularly seem somehow to know when their favorite human has left work or has returned from abroad and is heading home.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

This silly Divine Ditz didn’t even get her story straight. The only thing the Jesus of The Holy Bible ever gave to pigs was a big batch of demons from a man he healed of demon possession in Mark 5:11. Then the demons drove the 2000 pigs into the sea.

Desert legends aside, while I don’t advocate treating animals with undue cruelty and certainly think they should be hydrated, when it comes to epistemic and moral primacy, my motto is:

Sapient Pride Earth Wide

soon to be followed with:

Sapient Pride Universe Wide.

(Yeah, I know the first acronym spells “Spew,” but what better reply to the notion that pet ownership is equal to chattel slavery and killing livestock equals The Holocaust? And don’t get me started about “Spuw”-ing and it’s calming effects on hysterical activists,)

[Author]

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