Hi,
Thanks for your reply and I enjoy your musings...
I see it more as a purely psychological urge, fuelled by the evolution of our brains. We have a burning desire to remain consistent, as it is consistency that has allowed us in large parts to form such huge societies.
This can be proved by calling as many people as you can unreliable, flaky, inconsistent. You will see that 99% of the time people will not be happy with that tag.
Ergo focusing on a thought or wish, especially by writing it down is a way of speaking to our subconscious and saying this is who I am. Thus the burning desire of consistency takes over.
As with a lot of cognitive functions, it is easy to mistake this for something mystical. Indeed the way the multitudinous parts of our brains are constantly talking to each other, in my mind, gives rise to "spirituality". I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with interpreting cognitive function this way, I'm simply calling a spade a spade.
we know consciousness (observation - the focus of attention) is what collapses the wave function and gives rise to a single observed position for the quantum particle,
Actually even when observing single particles in the double slit experiment take one path or another. We see that the pattern left on the photographic plate is still that of a wave function. Indicating that there is something going on at the quantum level which is beyond our technological capabilities, to observe.
Don't forget that at some point we didn't know that stars were other suns and galaxies until our observational equipment got better :-)
Regardless of the reasons, in a lot of cases, a dedicated following of the LOA will produce results, and that is the best thing of all :-)
Cg
Ha absolutely, you went at lengths explaining this and I'm in full agreement with your take on it, makes perfect sense. I merely went for the more mystical/spiritual/demi-scientitic musing, which still is cool. So yeah thanks for the whole analysis.
As for the double-slit experiment, unless my understanding is not perfect, I think when observing the particles before (and actually even after) entering the slit, the wave function collapses and it only goes through one slit. What you are referring to I think is when multiple beams of particles are launched, and it was observed that although each (observed) particle goes through a single slit (instead of both) as a particle and not as a wave, they all land at different positions that, nonetheless, collectively altogether form the pattern that resembles the entire wave function (like each individual dot collectively paintining the pattern at the other side when landing on the plate). At any rate, super powerful and buffling experiment, truly amazing.
Looking forward to more such posts from you :)
I think I'm going to have to look up the experiment again, I'm going purely from memory, and it has been a while! Thanks for your comments and this mini debate :-)
Cg