I thought all downvotes were permanent. Do they expire after a period of time if you don’t mark them as permanent?

I remember a Star Trek TNG episode where it was 60 on some planet.

When you think about it, it’s not much weirder than plugging a GPU into a PC. It has a more powerful processor and requires it’s own power supply. Imagine having to plug in your SNES cartridge.

Except GPUs dont have game ROMs on them. Maybe someday they will.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. No real arguments from me. It was a mistake on my part to equate what I had in my mind with the meme above. It is really is two different things.

I just spontaneously remembered the FTL drive from the novel “Variable Star” by Spider Robinson and Robert Heinlein. The operator of the drive must hold multiple mutually contradictory thoughts in their mind at once, for hours at a time, in shifts with the other operators. Usually two at a time for redundancy. A failure to have at least one operator holding the required mental state would stall the drive and restarting it was very difficult.

It was never really explained how it works, but it’s taken totally seriously. It’s not like flying in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” where you fall and forget to hit the ground. I thought it was a clever idea. To make consciousness an explicit part of FTL travel by basically holding your mind in a superposition of thought.

What is that even supposed to mean? Did they make a typo?

Not exactly. At least I don’t think. Einstein didn’t believe in quantum mechanics at all, or that it was inherently random until measured. Bohr said it was, but I don’t think he necessarily equated conscious observation with measurement. Einstein believed there must be hidden variables, but if there are, they’re non-local.

it’s a moot point because it’s the sensor is the “observer”, and it’s not “being observed” that affects the outcome.

Thing is, that’s an assumption. You dont know that for sure. Just like you can’t prove the speed of light isn’t different in different directions. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be free to believe that, but you must admit it’s an assumption.

I’m not a really mystical person, but I don’t discount the possibility. That would be arrogant. Simply being conscious is rather bizarre. How does the universe even support that? What is it? Is there a consciousness field? Why does a blob of fat, protein, and sodium ions give rise to consciousness? Surely, life could have evolved and thrived without experiencing life. I can easily imagine mindless, robotic life just doing it’s thing.

Since no one can currently explain any of that, and no one can know for sure a wavefunction has collapsed until you’ve lookef at the results, I also don’t discount that consciousness might play a role. I remain agnostic about it.

imply that there’s something special, different about consciousness.

If you don’t think there’s something special and unusual about consciousness, I don’t know what to say. 😄 I don’t believe in a soul, but at least I admit that consciousness is special, and that the universe is weird because of that.

Well, if you look at the plate, then you’ve collapsed the wave function, and the data on the hard drive is then determine, and can’t contradict the result on the plate.

Damn, that’s quite the write-up! I actually haven’t watched any of her videos in over a year, but I used to watch them a lot, so I figured I’d give her credit for part of my education. Her takes did seem a little odd at times, but it was refreshing to watch a science curmudgeon sometimes. I simply got sick of her schtick after a while, and did read a little controversy about her. I had no idea about the trans stuff.

The context of what each speaker is saying matters. Words don’t have much meaning in isolation except for simple ones like “no”. You could have a degree in the Philosophy of Science and still struggle to define “theory” accurately and succinctly.

One speaker is using the word as a positive thing (accurately). After all, a theory is the best we can say about how the world works. The second speaker is using the word pejoratively. In that sense it actually doesn’t mean the same thing, and any scientist would argue that the second person doesn’t understand what they mean when scientists say “theory”.

Note: I said when scientists say theory. Words don’t have inherent meaning, so the speaker matters. The speaker can only hope their audience takes their words the way they’re intended. There’s no guarantee that they will.

The second speaker is trying to refute science by quoting scientists, yet using the word in a way that scientists don’t. That’s obviously dumb. But it is the way that most non-scientists use the word, so you could say the second speaker is just confused about what scientists have been saying when they use the word. The scientists’ goal should be to correct the second speaker’s understanding of what scientists mean when they use the word. The word itself is not actually important. You can get across the meaning without ever using the word itself.

So who’s right and who’s wrong? Neither. It’s a simple misunderstanding of how scientists uses the word when they speak. Unless, of course, the second speaker knows the scientific definition, and is pretending to not know in order to pander to an audience.

I “literally” don’t care if you use “literally” to make an obviously facetious joke like OP did.

Stop philosophizing over a joke. We are in “science memes”.

I mentioned my sources of science news specifically because you accused me of being misled by… somebody. So fuck off with your mockery of me for trying to disuade you of that notion.

This started as a joke, and you’re just being an ass.

I guess I was hoping for something more. This video is indistinguishable from water vapor condensing into a droplet.

A reply to your edit: You need to work on your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.

I’m KFC Double Downing on the double slits being doubly doubtful until you’ve observed the result.

We were talking about colloquial use of a word like “literally”, and not entire bodies of science being replaced with religious terms. Those two things are not even remotely similar.

You have a stick up your butt. I observed it.

Well, no. Not if you put a detector in one of the slits. It collapses the wave function, and the interference pattern disappears. The meme is a joke that your eyeballs are the detector, which is not true.

I was making a bit of a joke myself to get people to think about when the collapse actually happens. It could occur as late as when you look at the screen, and you can’t prove otherwise. You know… like, “is the moon still there when you’re not looking at it?” Except for real.

Yes, communication works best when people agree on what words mean, and a great, great many people have agreed that “literally” means things other than “literally”. It’s not gibberish to use it as such.

It’s not a dishonest argument at all. Language is not prescriptive. It’s constantly evolving. New words are invented all the time, and old words take on new meanings all the time.

Do you ever use “awesome” to mean “super cool”? Congratulations, you’re misusing the word! How about “egregious” as in a bad error? Wrong! How about “fantastic” as meaning “wonderful” or “great”? Also wrong.

Even when words do have specific meaning, if you don’t know the meaning they are useless to you, so it might as well be gibberish. Can you speak Swahili? Does that mean it’s gibberish? Of course not.

I don’t understand. How can they “get” a wave pattern if they didn’t look at the data?

Haha, no I haven’t. I don’t believe in magic. I watch mainstream YouTube science channels, and not any “mystical” ones. PBS Spacetime, Dr Ben Miles, Quanta Magazine, Sabine Hossenfelder, etc.

So, I ask you: please design an experiment that proves the outcome is determined precisely when the detector detects the particle going through the slit, and not when a person observes the screen or a recording the detector made. You can’t. You can’t prove that the detector detected something until you look at the result, and until you do, for all you know, it’s in a superposition. That’s all I’m saying. You know, shorting your scat. Everyone knows the shorting your scat experiement.