TH> RM>  GN>> I do not seek "truth", I seek "reality independent of the
TH> RM>  GN>> observer".
TH> RM> Are you saying that because I am not looking at my wife right at
TH> RM> this moment she does not exist?
TH> DB> No, I am saying that when you do look at something, in this case
TH> DB> your wife, that that *observation* affects the observed. Thus,
TH> DB> you cannot have 'reality independent of the observer'.
I think we may be getting into a category error here.
One level is that everything we can know about 'independent reality'
is not the thing itself but our brains' reconstruction, or modelm
of that event.
The other level is that in the subatomic realm, the things you
use to 'see' an event are big enough to affect the thing you are
trying to see.
Seems to me that it's a mistake to confuse the two levels.
Your paragraph below illustrates that:
TH>Funny, quantum experiments have absolutely never demonstrated that.
TH>QM experiments have demonstrated that "observations" affect the observed
TH>because in the process of measuring/observing, the device must interact
TH>with the observed, such as by bouncing a photon off of an observed 
particle.
TH>This collision changes the photon and the returning photon now gives us 
info
TH>about the particle, but it has also altered the state of the particle. 
his
TH>type of observation is what QM has taught us.
I'm not an expert on this, but I think your paragraph illustrates
the difference between Einstein's view and the view of the
'Copenhagenists' in the QM crowd.  Einstein believed that this was
the usual technical problem of measurement error, whereas the
Copenhagenists made it out to be an aspect of reality.  I don't know
whether there has been any resolution of this question.
TH>In the case of your wife, you are a passive observer, not an active one.
TH>You do not send out any photons that bounce off her and return to you - 
your
TH>eyes merely receive the photons that have already bounced off her, so 
whateve
TH>changes were made to her molecules were already done by the light bouncing
TH>off her, before you ever laid eyes on her. Whether or not you look at 
hose
TH>photons has no effect - the effect has been made. In no way has QM showed
TH>that you can telepathically alter the color of a laser beam just by 
thinking,
TH>or any other kind of alterations on matter/energy, which is exactly what 
your
TH>conclusions lead to.
Again, I'm a dilletante here, but you may have uncovered yet another
category error here.  It seems to me that QM is saying that energy
and matter are very different things, and when a piece of energy,
say a photon, is cruising along, it isn't exactly a particle or a
wave, and only acts like one when it encounters the physical matter
of an experiment.  That is a very different thing from saying that
the observer affects the outcome of the experiment.
Like many human arguments, this one seems to be an argument about the
definition of some words.
It seems obvious to anyone who has gone beyond the level of sophomore
philosophy that there is a reality independent of the observer.
Whether at the subatomic level or the level of 'common sense,'
we can never have _absolute_ knowledge of that reality.  But we
can make models, and like an infant learning to crawl, we can test
those models against reality, and we can attain whatever level of
_relative_ knowledge we are willing to work for.  We will never
know what a quark _is_, in any absolute sense, but if we study
the hell out of them in particle accelerators, we can constrain
our _models_ to the point where they are very _accurate models_
of real quarks.  And you don't do this by applying beliefs
that a priori must be true, but by studying what reality
really does.
At the subatomic level, the very instruments we use to measure
that reality tend to affect what we're measuring.
And at the common-sense level, since we are always seeing a 'movie'
of reality rather than the thing itself, we are obliged to wonder
how the a priori perceptual processes of our own brains have colored
what we see.  That, I would guess, is Day's point.  (Is it, Day?)
But it's important to keep those two categories separate.
 * SLMR 2.1a *   Dammit Jim, I'm a writer, not a morning person!
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