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I recently came across a theory from Japan that tries to rethink physics from the standpoint of the observer.

Instead of treating reality as something fully given “out there,” it suggests that reality may emerge when certain structural conditions of the observer are satisfied.

What I found interesting is that it reframes the gap between relativity and quantum mechanics as a problem about how the observer is defined.

Philosophically, it feels closely related to the question of whether observation is passive or constitutive of reality.

It’s summarized in a short video, so if you’re interested, I’d really appreciate your thoughts: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/c714dc8c-eb93-4317-b369-8e57fac880fc?artifac

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[-] blackbrook@mander.xyz 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Does this person have any peer-reviewed papers? They all seem to be on ResearchGate or academia.edu. According to his profile on the former, his credentials are a bachelor of business administration, and being "founder of SIEL subjectivity intersection emergence lab". This is not super confidence inducing.

It seems the foundational evidence for his theories is his "Non local EEG-Quantum Experiment" which claims to find correlations between EEGs and the outputs of a distant cloud quantum computer. I haven't looked at the details but my concern would be that if you look broadly enough for some pattern in data you will certainly find one.

[-] bunchberry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I don't really buy any of these exotic approaches to QM because no one has ruled out the non-extraordinary explanation that it is just a statistical theory. People all pretend it was ruled out by Bell's theorem, but all Bell's theorem shows is that it cannot be a local statistical theory. Okay, then it is non-local. Nothing more needs to be said. All the "paradoxes" that these exotic interpretations try to "solve" arise from starting with the position that it is not just a statistical theory. I really have trouble entertaining exotic extraordinary viewpoints if we have a trivially simple, intuitive, and consistent viewpoint right on the table which has not been ruled out.

[-] BlueberryAlice@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago

@bunchberry@lemmy.world

Even if a nonlocal statistical theory can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics, that would still remain at the level of describing outcomes, wouldn’t it?

In reality, the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity has remained unresolved for over 150 years, and the deeper issue is that the framework itself does not define the structure of observation.

This theory, on the other hand, addresses that very point by defining the conditions under which outcomes are realized— that is, the structure of observation itself— and treats quantum mechanics and relativity as aspects of a single generative process.

In that sense, the question is not whether it can be described statistically, but whether the theory is structurally complete.

From that perspective, this framework provides a more consistent explanation.

[-] bunchberry@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Even if a nonlocal statistical theory

You are already misinterpreting what I am saying. I am saying quantum mechanics is a non-local statistical theory. I am not advocating some alternative theory to replace quantum mechanics. To my knowledge, this viewpoint was first put forward by Dmitry Blokhintsev in the early 1950s. Einstein defended both locality and the idea that quantum mechanics should be interpreted as a statistical theory. Blokhintsev strongly agreed that it should be interpreted as a statistical theory, but disagreed that it should be taken to be a local theory. This was long before Bell's theorem was ever published, which people treat as proof Einstein was wrong and therefore quantum mechanics cannot be interpreted as a statistical theory. But Bell's theorem is not in conflict with Blokhintsev's views. Blokhintsev was also critical of Einstein's commitment to determinism, advocating that nature should be understood to be fundamentally unpredictable.

that would still remain at the level of describing outcomes, wouldn’t it?

No, because a statistical theory admits that the system has a definite configuration at all times, it just evolves randomly so that you cannot track its definite values. We can imagine a perfectly classical universe where the laws of physics are still fundamentally random, but in a classical sense that cannot violate Bell inequalities, and this would prevent you from being able to track the definite states of particles at all times. But it does not then logically follow that the particles do not possess definite states at all times. The denial of this fact is where all the exotic views of quantum mechanics stem from, all the "quantum weirdness" and claims it is somehow in conflict with realism or requires a multiverse, or something absurd like that.

"The attempt to conceive the quantum-theoretical description as the complete description of the individual systems leads to unnatural theoretical interpretations, which become immediately unnecessary if one accepts the interpretation that the description refers to ensembles of systems and not to individual systems. In that case the whole “egg-walking” performed in order to avoid the 'physically real' becomes superfluous." — Albert Einstein, “Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist”

~

In reality, the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity has remained unresolved for over 150 years, and the deeper issue is that the framework itself does not define the structure of observation.

No, the issue between unifying GR and QM comes from renormalizability, although it is really only an "issue" at high energies. The reality is not that GR and QM are incompatible, but that we just don't know what happens at high energies because we've never built anything that can probe there. I'd recommend you look up John Donoghue's discussion on this topic; you can combine GR and QM just fine if you stick to the energy regimes we can actually probe. You can also combine GR and QFT just fine under an semi-classical gravity, which is correct for all fields we can meaningfully probe.

The issue is less that we cannot unify the two theories, but we cannot unify them under regimes we have not even probed yet, and any attempt to unify them will be speculative anyways since they would only have implications for things we cannot currently measure. The dire need to build a "theory of everything" at the moment is just overblown. It makes no sense to build a "theory of everything" unless you can probe everything, otherwise it will inherently be overly speculative.

If you think this speculation somehow solves the problem at high energies, then take it further and actually build a model of GR and QM that does not break down at high energies. Otherwise, I don't see this as particularly relevant, but it is trying to resolve pseudoproblems, like the measurement problem, which are self-imposed problems.

This theory, on the other hand, addresses that very point by defining the conditions under which outcomes are realized— that is, the structure of observation itself— and treats quantum mechanics and relativity as aspects of a single generative process.

If supposedly this fixes the renormallization issue then actually fix it. Construct a theory of quantum gravity. You won't be able to because this isn't going to help you out. It's "solving" a different "problem," and that is a pseudoproblem.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

How much work did you put into that video?

[-] BlueberryAlice@fedia.io 0 points 1 week ago

@paraphrand@lemmy.world

It’s based on a recent paper — I just summarized the key points and had an app help put it together, so it didn’t take that long.

But the theory itself is quite deep.

What did you think about the content?

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'm really distracted by the AI slop. Sorry. It harms the credibility of your post.

There is a long tradition of crackpot physics theories. And throwing AI into the mix like this isn't helping your surface level credibility. Nor is the fact this is one of your first posts after making a new account.

That’s just how it goes with such a thing online. Sorry.

[-] BlueberryAlice@fedia.io 0 points 1 week ago

@paraphrand@lemmy.world

I understand that concern—I’ve received similar comments about the lack of peer review.

However, I believe peer review is meaningful only when there are experts who are capable of evaluating the work in detail. In this case, the theory is quite new, and there are currently no researchers working within the same framework who could properly review it.

It’s true that the main empirical basis is the nonlocal EEG–quantum experiment. But according to the papers, what is observed goes beyond just finding “some correlation” in data—the correlations appear under specific structural conditions, which is what led to the development of the theory.

Also, instead of relying on peer review at this stage, the experimental methods and procedures are fully disclosed in detail. The author explicitly states that anyone can attempt to replicate the experiment.

So if there is skepticism, the idea is: rather than just debating it conceptually, it can actually be tested directly.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 1 week ago

Maths, quantum physics, medicine, ... are well-researched fields. There's no reason to believe this couldn't be peer-reviewed?!

[-] BlueberryAlice@fedia.io 1 points 5 days ago

@hendrik@palaver.p3x.de

There is a reason. This work proposes an entirely new theoretical framework, and as a result, there are currently no reviewers who are sufficiently familiar with its structure.

More importantly, what do you think about the content itself? A purely formal objection will be taken as a lack of understanding.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

But isn't that how science always works? You generally write papers about new things. Not just repeat what was said previously. You'd invent a new form of nuclear reactor that wasn't there yet. Or propose the existence of a previously unknown elementary particle and come up with an experiment to prove it.

And the way it goes is: Other scientists will have a look at your methodology. Check your maths... See if the experiment setup fits to prove the hypothesis. Maybe even repeat the experiment at a later stage. All of that is possible, since math and phsyics work. And they work out independent from what you're looking at. The scientific method works for all of that kind of gain of knowledge. And the scientific method is known and applied since the 17th century. There's enough experts around who can do math or check experiment setups. No matter if someone already did the same experiment before.

The purely formal objection means, it doesn't follow the scientific method. Or maybe it does?! We don't know since nobody checked it. So the content isn't science. It's words someone wrote and then they got mangled by NotebookLM, so I can't even properly read what's in there.

Ultimately, we know about the existence of quantum mechanics. And about it collapsing at a certain scale. That's nothing new. And science has done several approaches on the observer effect, try to make sense of it and explain why that is. And what even constitutes an observer. Maybe one day science will figure out a way to answer those questions. To this day it hasn't. And their conclusion is a bit weird IMO. Yeah, maybe we need to come up with new methods to prove something is related. Nobody said it was easy. In fact we know the underlying problem is quite hard, because we've been trying for a while. But I'm stuck at the very beginning. I'm not an expert in the field, I can't even tell if these two specific things should even relate in any way.

[-] BlueberryAlice@fedia.io -1 points 5 days ago

@hendrik@palaver.p3x.de

That’s a lot of standard talking points people repeat when they want to sound knowledgeable…

Did you actually watch the video?

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I think the video is pretty much garbage. "The correlation is 0.9"... Yeah, the correlation of WHAT? I'm pretty sure my brain is affected in exactly the same way by gravity as a quantum computer is a thousand miles away. It's subject to the same physics and quantum mechanics. The laws of physics are the same all across the universe. If I measure something which is subject to that, I could even get a correlation close to 1.0!

What I'm trying to say is: A brain and a quantum computer being part of the same universe isn't a mystery. The interesting question has to be deeper than what the video leads to believe. And then what's even with the geometric objects of manifolds of a brain EEG? And why is it important how it relates to another concept? The video doesn't explain any of that.

I mean we know about things like observer effect. And about quantum nonlocality. That being part of "the fabric of the universe" is a subject of science since Einstein's time?! It's not a "revolutionary" new idea. The video is phrased in a very sensational way. But it doesn't really say a lot.

And what's even with the second observer? The video entirely omits explaining the obvious connection via the observer.

So what's in the video more or less just reminds me of the "spurious relationship" effect. How we have higher drowning rates if ice-cream sales in the city are high. Or when a sports team predicted the presidential election results for decades. Sure. Once you do the methodology right, you can do some science on it. That's how science works. And maybe they're linked in a way. Maybe they're not. The video surely doesn't tell any of that.

this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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