this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I've wondered if mental state actually affects reality around us. Like some people who see paranormal shit are just more open to it or something while the presence of a skeptic prevents it from happening

And people who just don't have confidence that tech will work can cause random issues just by being present, but sometimes when a tech confident person comes to assist them, their confidence gets it to work properly.

Maybe it has to do with particle/wave duality and the observer effect, and the simulation approximates things more when people aren't paying as much attention or won't likely investigate an issue closely after the fact, so the simulation gets sloppy because it's approximating. But then when someone who will pay closer attention comes (or will come), the waves collapse into particles and it behaves as expected.

Maybe those cases where a user claims something usually works when they do it a way that is clearly wrong to the more experienced observer, the approximation works out in their favour, but the collapse to particles makes it break like it was supposed to the whole time.

Maybe Pauli understood some things about the technical equipment (and ropes?) that the others didn't or was better at calibration and collapsed the wave more than usual.

Though my guess for the chandelier is that someone first thought of the dropping it when he entered joke but then realized that saying they tried to do that and it failed would be even funnier plus save them a chandelier and be much easier and safer to pull off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Having worked in tech support for a system that I knew very well, I often saw problems vanish when users attempted to demonstrate them with me present

People would say my tech aura made it work

Really though people just take more care when an expert is present, and so avoid whatever error their earlier carelessness caused

I wonder if people who experience the opposite encourage less care among those around them

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Particle don't have anything todo with a person observing it, it collapses if you try to observe it because the only way to observe a particle is launching another particle to it, and that changes the particle state

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

You might be on to something