Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality

by Anil Ananthaswamy

measurement problem.

“Any serious consideration of a physical theory must take into account the distinction between the objective reality, which is independent of any theory, and the physical concepts with which the theory operates. These concepts are intended to correspond with the objective reality, and by means of these concepts we picture this reality to ourselves.”

The only thing, he reasoned, that could be responsible for the collapse of the wavefunction was consciousness.

The debate over the status of the wavefunction has been at the heart of all the interpretations we have seen thus far. It can be broadly thought of in two ways: either that the wavefunction represents our knowledge of the quantum system, so it is epistemic, and theories that take this stance are called psi-epistemic; or that the wavefunction is part of reality itself, and theories of this persuasion are called psi-ontic (for ontology).