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Hi all, I'd originally was posting this to chbare's email but then thought, first, he probably has better things to do than answer my stupid physics questions, and second, that maybe others are curious about such things too. My physics education is about 30 years stale now, but it's something that interestes me so I kind of play with it on the very basic, very layman level. In that spirit I was reading "The search for Schrodinger's cat." In there the author talks about the "two hole experiment" (stop it, friggin' pervs...). I'd been familiar with the three slit (Really! Stop it!) experiement, and thought that I'd understood it, but I guess that I didn't. You can gain much more information on either experiment with Google and/or ChrisB than I can explain here, so I'm just going to state my understandings of the possible conclusions. I'm going to state things as fact, just so that I don't have to write "as I understand it" or "seems to be" in every sentence. They should be assumed to belong there however. So basically the two hole experiment seems to show that particles are aware of being observed and in fact change their behavior based on the expectations of the observer. No, I didn't make that up! This is a preliminary conclusion that a lot of really, really smart people have come to. That a particle can/does change it's behavior based on observer expectations. I can see this two ways. That it can change it's behavior passively, like electricity following an open channel. That an observer's intentions create a physical change that the particle reacts to, but we've just not discovered the link yet. Or more active, with the particle, or something controlling the particle being aware of the observers intentions and therefore making a logical, "aware" decision on it's path. As you might imagine, though this idea is fun to follow, it freaks me out too. Likely there are many other options that I just can't see now. If individual particles can/do change their behavior based on the expectations of the observer, does this then seem to imply that the particle is 'aware?' And if so, does it then possibly imply an 'aware' universe(s)? (If so, DFIB is so going to kick my ass all over this thread...) I'm not asking anyone to teach me physics, but I thought that it might make for an interesting discussion... I look forward to your thoughts...
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