Wigner's Friend Experiment

[Simon Adams]

Hi all

What are your thoughts on this experiment -> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/quantum-paradox-points-shaky-foundations-reality ?

I know Bernardo posted to it as further evidence that realism is unsustainable.  However to me it seems far stronger than that.  What it seems to show, is that what is observed as the physical world, is a unique combination of the observer and the observed.  In other words, you have a subject and an object, and what appears as matter is purely the result of these two interacting.  The physical measurement looks different if there is a different subject.

Taking this further, you could easily say that there are three subjects, rather than one object and two observers.  When one part of any subject interacts with any part of another subject, you have matter.  There is something real in the background (described by the wave function), but it only becomes something 'solid' and measurable when it interacts with another subject.

I can't see any ontology in which this makes sense other than idealism, and yet I have not seen much discussion on this...

[Eugene I]

Yeah, that is a confirmation of a similar experiment published earlier here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080

<<It also indicates that one of the four assumptions has to give. Few physicists believe superdeterminism could be to blame. Some see locality as the weak point, but its failure would be stark: One observer’s actions would affect another’s results even across great distances—a stronger kind of nonlocality than the type quantum theorists often consider.>>

Within the framework of physicalism, it's again pointing to non-locality, just more strongly that in the entanglement experiments.  

In idealism, you are right, that would be a good model that would make sense. 

[Helio Solaris]

Sounds more like solipsism to me. But then it would have to answer of who is watching you, etc etc. It's infinite regress. 

[Simon Adams]

" Sounds more like solipsism to me. But then it would have to answer of who is watching you, etc etc. It's infinite regress"

I don't understand this.  Where is the infinite regress ?  To beep it simple and avoid your solipsism confusion, let's just stick to saying that the cosmos is a mind, and living creatures are separate minds.  These are then represented across a boundary, so that the surface of the boundary is the the image of these minds presented to the other minds.  The interaction - say measurement or observation - is where you get matter.  Where is the infinite regress?