What if the observer doesn’t exist — until it happens?

[laura@lemmy.ml]

In philosophy and physics, we usually assume something without questioning it:

That there is an observer.

We may debate what the observer is.
We may argue about whether it collapses the wave function.
But we rarely question the assumption that it exists.

But what if that assumption is wrong?

Imagine this:

Neural activity (EEG) and quantum measurement data — completely independent, with no causal connection — are mapped into the same structural space.

Most of the time, nothing special happens.

But under very specific alignment conditions, something new appears.

A third variable.

It is not reducible to the brain.
It is not reducible to the quantum system.
And it exists only when both structures align.

When the alignment disappears, it disappears as well.

It behaves less like a thing
and more like an event.

In fact, there is a series of studies that experimentally pursue this hypothesis step by step —
not by assuming the observer,
but by investigating under what conditions an “observer state” is generated.

From this emerges a slightly unsettling possibility:

The observer may not be ontologically fundamental.
It may be something that forms when constraints intersect.

Not a subject standing outside reality,
but a structural crossing point within it.

So here is the question:

Is the observer basic?
Or is observation something that happens only when the world lines up just right?

[snippet@fe.disroot.org]

@Laura

Whom do you ask?