In my previous post, I shared a paper that influenced how I frame the question of observation and reality.

I want to follow up with a more focused point, rather than a conclusion.

What struck me in this work is that it carefully avoids a strong causal claim. Observation is not treated as something that forces physical systems to behave in a certain way.

Instead, the data seem more consistent with the idea that observation marks an intersection— a point where observer-related information and physical processes become mutually constrained, allowing a particular reality to stabilize.

This shifts the question for me: not “Does observation create reality?” but “What kind of process allows a reality to become stable at the intersection of perspectives and physical systems?”

— a paper that slightly changed how I think

I’d like to share not a conclusion, but a shift in how I’m thinking.

Previously, I was asking whether questions or observation can create reality.

Recently, after reading a particular paper, I found myself reconsidering how that question should be framed.

In the paper, nonlocal correlations between observer-related data and physical systems are suggested, while causal relationships are carefully distinguished and not asserted.

Reading this led me to think that observation may be better understood not as a cause that produces reality, but as an event of intersection.

In quantum theory, the observer and the observed cannot be fully separated. However, this does not necessarily imply that observation issues commands to a physical system.

Rather, it may be that when perspectives intersect, a certain reality temporarily stabilizes.

If so, subjectivity may not be confined to the brain alone, but could be understood as something that appears relationally, within interaction.

From this view, a question is not merely a tool for extracting answers, but an act that creates a shared reference point — an intersection.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/398259486_Empirical_Subjectivity_Intersection_Observer-Quantum_Coherence_Beyond_Existing_Theories_Unifying_Relativity_Quantum_Mechanics_and_Cosmology

What do you think about this paper?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9650066

Another Astrum, another banger.

What to you think? Could we find another Earth-like planet within our lifetime? Or any life later at all? Maybe with in a far-off exoplanet or even within the Sol System (out solar system)? Well, we can only hope. I certainly have a feeling that we may.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9401581

Jupiter's core is a fuzzy core, not a solid core. It has a bizarre magnetic field and the NASA probe that was there or near there in 2017 confirmed that it has a core (as opposed to the theory that it has no core at all). But it's not solid (as was another possible scientific hypothesis). The discovery by the Juno spacecraft was ultimately an unexpected one and the spacecraft was able to help scientists dismiss or debunk several theories regarding the planet. Large regions of Jupiter are non-convective. And in addition, Saturn may have a fuzzy core too.

Just summarizing what I got from the video.

Your thoughts?

The turmoil surrounding Elon Musk’s handling of his Twitter takeover has renewed concern over the perils of a public good in private hands (Nature 613, 19–21 (2023); see also Nature 614, 602; 2023). Another form of scholarly public discourse is also owned by profit-driven entities — academic publishers. We propose an answer to both problems.

The most-discussed solution for Twitter is migration to Mastodon (see Science 378, 583–584; 2022), a social-technology platform that communicates over a distributed network of servers (‘instances’ in the ‘Fediverse’), akin to e-mail, and is immune to private takeover. Similarly federated solutions exist for journal articles (B. Brembs et al. Preprint at Zenodo https://doi.org/gn6jjc; 2021), but free social interaction is still hampered by inertia in scholarly organizations — in particular, resistance by scholarly societies that rely heavily on publication income.

There is now a golden opportunity for every scholarly society to implement a Mastodon instance for anyone interested in their field. If the academic community can create a public resource protected from private interests, it could become a model for bringing the remaining scholarly record — encompassing text, data and code — into the Fediverse.

Nature 614, 624 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00486-3

Hi, I'm currently working on an assignment regarding p-hacking. I want to make the point that p-hacking can have real-life consequences, as the data being put out there could be applied in the wrong way. I already have an example of how p-hacking led to the WHO canceling their distribution of malaria medication.

But, I need a specific example from psychology, and I can't find anything. I find plenty of papers explaining that p-hacking is common and why it's a problem, but no concrete examples of studies where p-hacking was discovered. Does anyone have an example in mind? Or maybe a study whose results have been questioned?

Thank you in advance!