Geoff Dann

Yes. So people who actually understand why it is a real problem are likely to be interested in the solution, but people who still haven't even understood the problem will dismiss it without understanding what they are dismissing. I am 100% not interested in trying to get die-hard materialist dogmatists to acknowledge the reality of the hard problem. They will eventually catch up, but they are not going to be among the first wave of people who understand the new paradigm. They will be the ones who resist it, just as you are resisting it now. You aren't my target audience. I'm after the deep thinkers. So you believe it is OK to have 30 incompatible, competing answers to a major foundational problem, with no hope of ever agreeing on answer? I don't. I think there has to be a correct answer, and that when it arrives people will eventually recognise it. It has arrived. You haven't recognised it, yet. This theory fits the existing empirical evidence far better than any other theory anybody has ever proposed. What do you think "evidence" is, if that isn't evidence?

Firstly it is not an argument from incredulity, because I am not arguing that MWI must be wrong on the grounds that not many people find it believable. I am merely pointing out that this is itself an empirical fact: not many people find it believable. This is part of the general problematic of the measurement problem: none of the current interpretations are able to command a consenus. This establishes as an undeniable fact that the measurement problem is a real problem, and cannot simply be dismissed. Secondly, my model incorporates MWI has Phase 1. I am saying it becomes unbelievable only after the point the where consciousness exists. I am offering you an alternative model which provides a unified, integrated solution to 15+ major foundational problems. Why would you instead choose a model with only solves one of them (the measurement problem) and only does that at the cost of claiming our minds continually split? Which has the most explanatory power? Answer: my model by several orders of magnitude. So why choose a model with minimal explanatory power instead one which overflows with it?

This is pointless. I am not responsible for your inability to understand what I am saying. I will not be engaging with any more of your posts, I am responding to everybody else. Have a nice life. :-)

As already explained, I did not come here to argue about whether the Measurement Problem in QM or the Hard Problem of Consciousness are actually real problems. My theory is aimed at people who accept that these are real problems, and also who accept that the other 13 widely-recognised problems are real problems. Sure, if you want to go through all 15 and provide 15 different explanations as to why you don't think the problems are real then I can't stop you doing that. All I can do is point out that these are indeed widely understood to be problems, that they are usually considered as 15 different problems, and that I have a new proposal which makes sense of all 15 of them at the same time. Which leaves people with a choice between 15 incompatible solutions to 15 different problems or ONE integrated solution to all 15. You are implicitly arguing that it is better to have the 15 incompatible the answers than the single solution to all 15. That is your choice, but it ain't me who is suffering from cognitive dissonance here. >>>If some octonionic construction maps well onto those observations, then you might have something. Like this, you mean?: The Zero Point Hypersphere Framework and the Two Phase Model - The Ecocivilisation Diaries QUOTE: "A bold new approach to cosmology and quantum gravity has emerged from the work of Stéphane L’Heureux-Blouin, culminating in his formalization of the Zero Point Hypersphere Framework (ZPHF). This suite of interrelated papers (written in March and April 2025) attempts nothing less than a first-principles derivation of quantum spacetime, dark matter behaviour, and cosmological structure from the postulate that the true ground of reality is a perfectly balanced Void composed of algebraic hypersphere nodes. L’Heureux-Blouin’s work is mathematically sophisticated, invoking octonion flux dynamics, topology, and a network of pre-geometric nodes known as void dots (“D_i”). It attempts to reconcile quantum field behaviour, holography, and gravity as emergent from a non-material substratum." Stephane's unpublished octonion dynamics papers attached. merged_file.pdf And you are still trying to argue about semantics. I don't care what you call it. It doesn't matter.

It is mainstream philosophy. Saying that these are two massive unsolved paradoxes is not even controversial in philosophy. Most philosophers would agree with those statements. I know you won't believe this is, but in fact it is true, which says far more about extremism in your belief system than it does about extremism in mine.

OK, if you are just point blank denying the existence of both the measurement problem and the hard problem then this discussion has nowhere to go. My theory is aimed at people who understand exactly why those aren't just minor problems but massive unsolved paradoxes. Accepting these are real problems is pre-requisite to understanding why my theory works, and why it is so important.

That is an attempted reverse argument from authority. We are talking about a major paradigm shift here -- of course this is dismissed by the mainstream. That is how paradigm shifts work. But if scientists always reject things that aren't mainstream then paradigm shifts would not happen at all. What is needed (and what always does happen) is that a small number of deep thinkers are the first to realise the new paradigm is correct, and eventually everybody else catches up (though usually there is a lot of resistance first). The point is that what you were saying isn't true. Consciousness causes collapse remains one of a large number of interpretations which are still defended by at least some physicists and philosophers. It therefore cannot simply be dismissed for no other reason than it isn't mainstream -- not when we're talking about the biggest unsolved mystery in quantum theory. There is no agreed mainstream answer -- all the answers are fringe. Maybe that's because they're all wrong? You think the scientific community is so stupid and closed-minded that nobody within it is capable of understanding why a new proposal which solves 15+ major foundational problems with one solution should be taken seriously? I don't. I think maybe 95% of them fall into this category -- that's how powerful the materialistic dogma is. But I also believe there must be academics out there who have seen this paper in the last 3 weeks and do understand its importance. In that whole time -- during which the paper has had 600 views and downloads -- not one single person has found anything wrong with it. I either get no response, or I get excuses for not properly engaging ("it isn't peer reviewed", "it looks like AI generated it", "you're not an academic", "it's too radical", etc....) Maybe 10 or 15 people have actually attempted to understand it, and every single one of them thinks it is of major importance. I am therefore not remotely worried about the initial reaction of the bulk of the scientific community. All I care about is the ones who are smart enough to think for themselves and realise that this is, in fact, a long overdue paradigm shift of world-changing importance. I only need a handful of them to "get it" and the snowball will start rolling. Rovelli's interpretation is interesting, but does it provide an integrated solution to 15 other problems as well as the MP? No. Why would anybody who understands my system continue to believe in something which only solves one problem when an alternative is available which solves 15? You do understand why it solves 15 of them, right? Yes. But as described above, Rovelli's idea only solves the measurement problem. That isn't enough to make it stand out from the 30+ other proposed solutions to the MP, which is exactly why it does not represent a major paradigm shift and cannot command a consensus. My proposal is very different to this. I'm not just solving one problem. I'm not even just offering an integrated, coherent set of 15 solutions to 15 problems. I am offering ONE new answer (2PC+QCT) to FIFTEEN massive unanswered questions, each one of which is almost as significant as the MP on its own. If it is correct, then describing it as the most important theoretical advance since the discovery of QM itself might actually be an understatement. It's even bigger than that. I find it quite astonishing how few people are capable of processing this, cognitively. I've had several people reject the idea on the grounds that "it solves too much" -- they actually told me it cannot possibly be correct, because we should be trying to solve one problem at a time and not fifteen in one go. The biggest problem is the widespread failure in the scientific community to understand the Hard Problem of Consciousness. That's exactly why Thomas Nagel's 2012 book Mind and Cosmos was so viciously attacked. But Nagel is right. Materialism really is incoherent, and once that has been accepted then my new theory becomes a very strong contender for the biggest paradigm shift for a century. Think of it like this -- do you really believe there is another way to fit all these problems together -- to make this jigsaw fit together? Could there be another single solution to all 15 of these problems? I personally would say the probability of this is tending towards zero. Why should I have anything but total confidence that it is correct given that nobody can I actually find anything wrong with it? It is being rejected out of incredulity: people cannot believe what their own eyes are telling them. It's "too good to be true". The correct term is quantum metaphysics, or the metaphysics of quantum theory.

Really? In which case, how come I can post a clear, detailed explanation of my position while you are reduced to "You are really floundering"? You asked me a question. I answered it. What didn't you understand about the answer? I have already suggested we stop discussing this, because your posts were increasingly contentless. I am now going to suggest it again. The problem is explaining what, exactly, "interaction" means. Or "observation" or "measurement".... Somehow we have to get from a range of probable but unmanifested outcomes, to a single manifested outcome. The problem is that neither scientists nor philosophers are able to agree on the answer.

The question is meaningless. According to the interpretation I'm proposing, reality "as it is in itself" (i.e. free from our observations or experiences of it) is purely informational. If it is "made of" anything at all then it is made of mathematics. It is a realm of pure mathematical information which exists without time, space, decisions or memory, the foundation of which is a the paradoxical ground of reality I refer to as 0|∞. You can think of it as the whole of mathematics, but with zero placed with something with is a paradoxical combination of absolute nothingness and pure infinity. This doesn't need to "be quantised", because it is already "quantised". In other words, it is "digital" rather than "analog". It is neither physical nor mental, which is why this is ultimately a form of neutral monism. The above is "phase 1" reality, both in terms of cosmic history and in terms of the uncollapsed wavefunction (reality as it is in itself) during phase 2. Phase 2 reality contains both consciousness and classical spacetime. So we could say that the noumenal neutral-mathematical realm "collapses into" the phenomenal realm of consciousness and space-time. BTW this is why Greg's theory fits so cleanly with my own. When he met me he believed and claimed to be a materialist, but his own theory is neutral monist -- he actually thinks of reality (as it is in itself) as being made of pure information, not matter. Note: I am using the Kantian term "noumenal" to mean something slightly different to Kant himself. For Kant, "noumemon" is reality as it is in itself, but he claimed it was completely unknowable. I am saying it is knowable, but only in the way we can know what is inside Schrodinger's sealed box. It is in a superposition, but it is not an unimaginable mystery.

I repeat: this has got absolutely nothing to do with mathematics. If it was possible to find a solution to measurement problem with mathematics then John von Neumann would probably have found it in 1932, and if he had somehow failed (and he never failed at anything that was possible) then mathematicians would have converged on an answer. This has conspicuously not happened. What has happened is an ever-increasing proliferation of different attempts to solve the MP, none of which (so far) have shown any sign of commanding a consensus. The problem is not mathematical. It is logical, but no mathematics is required. By that I mean that, assuming reality is intelligible then there must be an intelligible solution to the MP. Until now, nobody has proposed one. I have proposed one. In the three weeks since I went public with it, nobody has raised a serious objection. And no, "where's the maths?" is not a serious objection. The only maths required is to explain how to bridge MWI and CCC (or phase 1 and phase 2), and Greg Capanda has provided that with QCT.

It may well seem like that to you. If you mentioned this earlier and I did not respond to it then I must have missed it. Indeed I have just scrolled up and I missed your post entirely, for which I apologise. I will respond to it now. QUOTE "But returning to your idea, it seems to me a basic difficulty with it is that nobody nowadays (apart from quantum woo specialists of the Deepak Chopra type) suggests wave function collapse is anything to do with consciousness on the part of an "observer". The language of QM used by its founders in the 1920s indeed spoke of "observables" and "observations", but that was to distinguish what could be determined about the system from any further assumptions that might classically be made about it having other properties. Even at the time they were at pains to explain they were not attributing any magical influence to consciousness on the part of the observer. " This isn't true. My work is directly based on the work of quantum physicist Henry Stapp, especially his 2007 book called Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. Stapp is not a mystic -- he's a well-respected physicist in the traditional of von Neumann, Heisenberg and Wigner. His book was largely met by silence though -- not many people were expecting it, or had much to say in response. The whole issue of what "the observer" means, or what "measurement" means has never been resolved. That is why the Measurement Problem (MP) is still very much alive. Nobody welcomed this problem -- we've spent the last century (to the month) trying to resolve it, but no resolution has been forthcoming. Instead there has just been an ever-increasing proliferation of proposed solutions, and the more of them there are, the less it looks like there is a path to a consensus. My own position starts by trying to get to grips with this range of proposed solutions to the MP, and I conclude that, at the top level, we're faced with a fundamental "trilemma". (1) Most solutions try to solve it physically -- they propose some sort of physical mechanism to bridge the gap between uncollapsed "wave" of superpositions and observed "particle" (the singular world we actually experience). Until now all of them have been both arbitrary and empirically untestable. I call these "physical collapse" theories (PC). (2) Von Neumann / Wigner / Stapp solve it by removing the agent of collapse from the physical system entirely, by saying consciousness (which they presume to require a non-physical observer of some sort) collapses it from outside. But this leads to the question "What collapsed the wave function before consciousness evolved?", to which there is either no answer (Stapp doesn't answer it) or the answer is usually "consciousness has always existed" (i.e. idealism or panpsychism), which implies consciousness can exist without brains (which is also a major problem, because it seems very clear that consciousness does indeed depend on brains, even if brains are not enough). I call these CCC (consciousness causes collapse). Stapp's theory uses the Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE) as the metaphysical end of the explanation of how selection actually occurs, but doesn't provide the physical end of the mechanism -- he just assumes there must be one. (3) MWI denies collapse needs to happen at all, but as a result it has to claim what our minds are continually splitting into different timelines (which makes no more intuitive sense than CCC). There are a few others (weak values, QBism, Bohm) which seem to avoid the trilemma, but if your drill down into the details they are all incomplete or incoherent as a result. The trilemma seems like a logical inevitability, because either collapse happens or it doesn't, and if it does happen then the cause must either be inside the quantum/physical system, or outside it. My new proposal is revolutionary because instead of forcing a choice between these three options, it combines them. I am saying that we can get rid of the major drawbacks of both CCC and MWI by joining them together sequentially (in terms of cosmic history) and as phenomenal and noumenal worlds in phase 2 (our reality now). And I use a new version of PC (Greg's QCT) as the mathematical means of connecting them -- this is a PC theory which explains in a non-arbitrary and testable way why collapse is mathematically necessary, but doesn't provide an ontological context. So QCT fits perfectly with Henry Stapp's QZE -- you need both of them to provide a complete explanation of how collapse works. Heisenberg's personal views don't change any of this. That was 100 years ago. QUOTE: "So your idea, at least as I understand it, that QM should be interpreted differently before and after the advent of conscious beings, able to perceive the measurements, does not seem to be a fruitful approach." This approach provides an integrated, novel solution to fifteen major outstanding problems in physics and philosophy. If that's correct then it is easily the most "fruitful" theoretical advance since the 1920s. Among these is an explanation for the evolution of consciousness which builds on Thomas Nagel's suggestions in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos: Why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false. Nagel argued that materialism cannot account for consciousness, and if we accept this then the only remaining rational naturalistic explanation for the evolution of consciousness was that it was somehow teleological -- destined to happen. Nagel says we therefore need to look for teleological laws, but my proposal makes that unnecessary, because it provides a structural explanation for the apparent teleology (once consciousness appears in one branch of the phase 1 MWI multiverse it collapses the primordial wavefunction and selects that branch as reality, getting rid of all the others). And in fact I am not actually saying QM should be interpreted differently before and after the emergence of consciousness (I call this "psychegenesis"). My new interpretation applies consistently -- it says consciousness is required to collapse the wavefunction, but because it also rejects panpsychism and idealism (because it accepts that brains are necessary for consciousness) it must also say that before psychegenesis there was no collapse, because the thing required for collapse doesn't exist yet. Do you understand what I am proposing now? If so, do you understand how it provides one radical new answer to 15+ major problems? I can explain if you like. Regarding fruitfulness, see this for example. (link to AI material removed) And before you dismiss it without reading it, read the prompt -- because it is directly related to everything I described in the post above.

I realise that. I have made it abundantly clear that in this thread we are not purely talking about science. This is not a scientific theory. Rather, it is a philosophical theory which has direct and very large implications for science. So if a philosophical argument has major implications for science, you have no interest? I did not say "it has no impact on the science". It has massive implications for several areas of science, because if it is correct then it turns out our current understanding of the correct boundary between science and philosophy needs to change. So if clarity is what we're aiming for then this needs to be properly understood. This theory (or hypothesis, or interpretation...the word doesn't matter) radically reframes the entire context in which mainstream science is understood. In effect it takes the whole whole corpus of scientific knowledge (not just physics but all of it) from its current philosophical foundation (materialism/physicalism) and puts it on a new one (non-panpsychist neutral monism). This does have an impact on certain very specific bits of science (most notably cosmology, evolutionary biology and cognitive science). Most of this impact involves changing what currently appear to be really intractable scientific problems/paradoxes and showing that when moved to the new foundation the problems cease to be problems and the paradoxes are resolved by revealing what set them up in the first place.

That is an irrelevant semantic distinction. Nothing important rests on it. It is an argument about words, not substance. "Interpretation" in this case just means "metaphysics" -- it means it is a philosophical theory rather than a scientific theory. The difference between scientific and metaphysical is of crucial importance. The difference between "theory" and "interpretation" is irrelevant fluff. This is also irrelevant. None of the interpretations make any difference to that. That's not their purpose. Their purpose is to explain how the maths is related to everything else we know. Especially their purpose is to explain what "measurement" means in quantum theory. This is about non-mathematical concepts. The differences between all of the existing interpretations is non-mathematical. The new one I'm proposing is no different. This discussion isn't going very far. I came here to discuss this new theory, not to have a very basic discussion about what the interpretations of QM actually are (ie why they are metaphysical rather than scientific, and not maths-dependent). I don't mind doing that once, but there's really no point in me repeating the same boring point over and over again. You aren't engaging with the substance of what I've posted. You are talking about stuff which does not matter.

With respect, you do not seem to understand what the interpretations of QM actually are. All of them are, by definition, metaphysical. That is what makes them "interpretations". This new interpretation is a novel combination of three parts. One of these is Greg Capanda's QCT, which does involve some mathematics. The first of the other is Stapp's adaptation of von Neumann's, and von Neumann's is where the metaphysical status is most clear. These conciousness-causes-collapse (CCC) theories originated from the von Neumann's 1932 book The mathematical foundations of quantum theory. When he was formalising the mathematics of QM, there was no clear scientific definition of what "measurement" meant, which left him with a major problem: how can you model the mathematics if you don't know what you are modelling? He was therefore forced to say that the "collapse" could happen anywhere from the system being measured to the consciousness of the observer, and pointed out that the only "special" location in this chain was consciousness itself. So this interpretation was only created by removing wave function collapse from the mathematics. So that is the first theory I am naming which "doesn't have maths" and the reason it doesn't have it is because it isn't physics at all. It's philosophy. Similarly, when Hugh Everett invented MWI in 1957 he did not add any new mathematics -- he just made a conceptual tweak, by positing that the wavefunction may not collapse at all. So there is the second theory that doesn't have maths. It is a philosophical interpretation of what the maths actually means. My new theory is also just a conceptual shift -- I am combining MWI and CCC sequentially and using QCT as the mechanism which bridges them mathematically. In this thread we are discussing the philosophical-conceptual framework in which physics and the rest of science operates, not just science. Physics doesn't operate in an intellectual vacuum. It is not a completed theory of everything. It needs philosophy, and the existing philosophy is not good enough. This is exactly why quantum mechanics still seems so strange exactly 100 years after its was discovered. I am saying that all of the existing philosophical interpretations of QM are incorrect, and explaining why the new one I am suggesting has major implications for both philosophy and science. These implications include a recognition that many problems currently considered to be really difficult problems for physics, cognitive science and evolutionary biology aren't actually scientific problems at all, but the result of bad philosophy. Why can't we quantise gravity? If I am correct then it turns out it was a philosophical mistake to ever think gravity should be quantised. Is that science or philosophy? Answer: it redefines the boundary between them. Does it matter if there is no new maths? Not in the slightest. In cases where that was in doubt I found them and ate them. Or at least I attempted to, and in most cases I succeeded. The book is the most comprehensive book on European fungi foraging ever published. One specific example was the bracket fungus chicken of the woods. For decades there has been a myth going around that this species is poisonous if picked from yew. I tested this by eating as much yew-grown COTW as I could, and when I suffered no ill-effects I then held a dinner party for 20 people and served copious amounts of it to them too. Nobody suffered any ill effect. The book was published in 2016, and that myth has now been pretty much eradicated. No maths involved. EDIT: Note that it is not possible to determine that a fungus is safe to eat by running toxicology tests on it. Those can only determine whether the fungus contains any known mycotoxins. In many cases where toxicity is in doubt, nobody knows what the possible toxin is, so there is no way to test for it. This is why the only fungi which we can be sure are safe are ones that have been traditionally consumed for centuries. And even in those cases we can't be absolutely sure -- sometimes it turns out they are only toxic if you eat them for 40 years, or in certain specific growing conditions and you happen to have weak kidneys... There is also one species that has only recently been discovered (Agrocybe rivulosa), but is already common on woodchip, and has good edible relatives. These I test-ate, a little at first, then more, until I became reasonably confident they weren't poisoning me. Since then other people have been experimenting with eating them. Is this science? Not really, but it it certainly qualifies as experimentation. Also note that toxicology tests typically don't involve any maths... Swansont.,.. Just to expand a bit more that last post. It is worth explaining why Greg changed his mind about my own theories. Greg set out to finally fix the measurement problem by coming up with a physical collapse theory that actually works, thereby getting rid of both CCC and MWI once and for all. And in fact I believe he has done something nobody else has previously done, which is provide a convincing physical explanation of why collapse needs to happen. His key insight is that this is not the result of physical causality as we normally understand it, but because the physical system has reached a critical informational threshold. The physical system effectively runs into the quantum equivalent of what is known as "the frame problem" in AI. In both cases we have an entity (a brain in the case of QCT, or a computational process in AI) which has to cope with an infinitely expanding set of calculations in order to make a decision about how to act. In the case of the AI, it just gets stuck or has to make a random guess when to stop computing and make a decision -- and frequently does it very badly. Humans have no such difficulty, but currently nobody understands why. QCT explains exactly why -- it says that consciousness only exists as a sort of cut-off point to stop that processing when it becomes unsustainable. QCT provides the mathematical theory to determine when that threshold is crossed, but does not explain how it is determined which of the possible outcomes actually occurs, and does not explain what is going on in the system to make this happen in the first place. So...what Greg has done (I believe) is to finally come up with a physical theory to explain why collapse is necessary. Thus MWI is shown to be false, and the physics is completed -- there's no conceptual space left in physics to explain how the selection is made, or to say what collapses into what. It seems to involve brains, but doesn't mention consciousness. In other words, he's completed the physics but is left with fundamental questions which remain unanswered. It was when he realised this was the case that he finally gave up on materialism and accepted the need for my cosmology/ontology/metaphysics. The message he sent me on this realisation was "Holy blue balls Batman. YOU'RE RIGHT!" It took him about three weeks to accept/understand all this.

Well, it isn't. I'm not arguing that MWI must be false because it is unbelievable in this way. I am merely pointing out that most people do indeed find it unbelievable, and that is one of the main reasons that it has remained a fringe theory instead of commanding a consensus. At the end of the day I am offering an alternative model which makes intuitive sense, and hoping people will just abandon MWI because they've finally been offered something better. At the moment people who believe MWI tend to do so not because it is particularly believable, but because they consider all of the alternatives to be even worse. I am afraid I cannot find your rules. If you've really got a rule which says nobody is allowed to suggest somebody else privately uses AI to do research then that is rather a silly rule, IMO. I am guessing the actual rule doesn't say that at all. I have a model, and it is all about probability -- considerably more than Darwin's is. What is your actual objection? I can't see one. OK. With the greatest respect I don't think there's much point in me continuing to discuss this with you. Have a nice day.