I took your challenge to an actual quantum computer.
You proposed measuring an electron's spin, then measuring it a second way with a dial nobody reads, then measuring the first way again — predicting that if no conscious being looks at the middle dial, that measurement effectively didn't happen. I ran the quantum core of this on one of IBM's 156-qubit processors.
First, the interference pattern — the signature of a system genuinely in two states at once. On the hardware it came out crisp. The machine is doing real quantum mechanics.
Then I added your unread apparatus: a second quantum bit that couples to the first and records which path it took, but that nobody ever looks at. The interference pattern vanished completely. Flat line. The information being physically recorded somewhere — with no mind near it — was enough to destroy the quantum behavior. Your framework predicts an unread measurement leaves things undisturbed. The hardware says the opposite.
Then the interesting part. I erased that recorded information, again with nobody looking — one automatic operation. The interference pattern came back. No one observed, decided, or acted. A physical operation put the information beyond recovery, and coherence returned on its own.
So what controls collapse isn't whether a mind is watching. It's whether the which-path information is physically recoverable. Record it and you lose the pattern; erase it and you get it back — consciousness never enters either way.
The limit you flagged yourself still holds: the version where the experimenter looks and then acts in the world can't be tested by anyone, because every interpretation gives identical statistics. My run can't touch that. What it shows is that the measurable prediction — unobserved apparatus leaves the system uncollapsed — fails on real hardware.
Fun experiment, and your essay was the reason I ran it. Happy to share the code — it's a two-qubit circuit anyone with a free IBM account can reproduce.
I'm impressed with what you've done and genuinely grateful. The quantum computer reported what I understand to be the conventional answer. What I don't understand is how we know the quantum computer is predicting what would happen if we actually ran the experiment.
The quantum computer isn't predicting the experiment or simulating it in the sense a classical computer would — running equations to forecast an outcome. It's a physical quantum system doing the same thing your electron would do. The qubits are real two-state quantum objects; the "which-path marker" really does become entangled with the system qubit; the erasure really is a physical operation on that entanglement. When the interference vanishes and comes back, that's not a calculation of what would happen — it's the thing happening, in hardware, to actual quantum states.
That's the sense in which it's more than a prediction. A classical simulation would presuppose the rules and hand you back what you put in. Here the qubits obey quantum mechanics because they are quantum mechanical — nobody told them to collapse; they did it because a marker physically recorded the path. If the conventional account were wrong about coupling-without-observation causing collapse, the hardware would be free to show something else. It didn't.
One poinr: this is spin encoded in superconducting qubits, not a free electron in a Stern-Gerlach apparatus. The physical substrate is different. A committed skeptic can ask whether something about biological observation, or that specific apparatus, matters in a way transmons can't capture. That's fair, and no qubit experiment closes it — it's the same reason your consciousness-plus-action version stays untestable.
But for the specific prediction your protocol rests on — that an unread apparatus doesn't collapse — the qubits are a genuine instance of a quantum system meeting a which-path detector, and they collapse without anyone looking. Not a model of that situation. An occurrence of it.
Sid - I think I understand the relationship between the quantum computer simulation (I still want to call it a simulation) and the physical setup. What I don't understand is what plays the role of the human who either observers or doesn't observe the intermediate output, and takes action in the world accordingly. Did you personally do this? If so, what were the actions that you took and how many trials did you complete?
I didn't play that role, because the experiment I ran doesn't contain it. There was no point where I looked or didn't look at an intermediate result and acted accordingly. So I haven't tested your protocol as you actually posed it — the version with a person in the loop making a real-world choice.
What I tested is the layer underneath it. In your setup the intermediate "measurement" is a physical coupling — an apparatus interacting with the spin. My middle step is that coupling: one qubit records the other's path. The question I put to the hardware was narrow — does that coupling, with no one reading the result, destroy the interference? It does. That's the piece of your prediction that doesn't require a human, and it's the piece a quantum computer can settle.
I've shown the unobserved-apparatus half of your prediction fails. I have not shown anything about the observer-plus-action half — the part you actually care about. That part still needs a human, real trials, recorded choices. I ran zero of those. If that's the experiment worth doing, it's a different setup than mine, and mine doesn't stand in for it.
I agree. My prediction is that the unobserved intermediate spin will not completely erase memory of the original spin observation. If your setup tells us that that memory is completely erased, then the question of whether the human observer changes the output is moot.
Richard Lucido has done his own experiment which he claims is related to the question whether consciousness collapses the wave function. His is a psychological experiment more than a physics experiment. See if you understand and agree with his logic.
As measurements are being done and observed in both cases, the nature of time-delay enters the philosophical question.
I personally prefer the primacy of consciousness, one consciousness, "Dharmadatu", but that is just my preference. It seems more-elegant to me. I have not been harmed by holding this working hypothesis.
If your personal preference could actually be tested experimentally, then it might penetrate into our Western culture which has been so affected by science the last 150 years.
The whole point of my column here is that it is NOT impossible to test, and some scientists, including Richard Lucido, https://www.testingtheccc.com/ claim to have already tested it with positive results. I'm looking now for people willing to set up the experiment described above, or a variant suggested by Alter AI.
To me the fundamental question is the nature of conscious connection between sentient beings and of their sentient and subconscious minds to the world, particularly as in the workings of "prayer" and "karma", which I have been able to test and better understand in my own life.
In my personal experience they both work and are both broadly misunderstood, which confounds people who misunderstand them.
The Schrödinger line you quote is the one I keep returning to, that consciousness is a singular noun whose plural is unknown. Whatever the experiment finds at the dial, and I am no physicist, so I hold that verdict loosely, the intuition underneath your third option is very old and has a Hebrew word attached to it.
When the tradition wanted to say what a human being most deeply is, it did not reach for a mechanism. It reached for neshamah (נְשָׁמָה), breath, and specifically a breath conferred from beyond, blown in rather than assembled. The claim folded into that word is your affirmative answer stated in advance of the physics: consciousness is not produced by matter, it is given to it. The brain would then be less the factory of awareness than the place where a borrowed breath meets the world and takes a local shape.
Where I hold the thread a little differently, and I hold it as wonder rather than as an objection, is Schrödinger's one mind. The same tradition agrees the source is one, and still insists the one breath individuates into real and unrepeatable persons, not illusions to be dissolved back into the single sea. A whirlpool with a name, if you like. Fundamental and singular at the source, and yet genuinely someone here.
I have no wager on the dial. But I am glad someone is still willing to ask the question the reductive paradigm files under settled.
A most interesting post, Josh. I think I understand the experiment. For clarification, is there a reason why we would expect that subsequent measurements of spin around the X axis will tend to remain the same if no measurement is ever made about the y axis?
In my opinion, the mystics, including the towering figures whom you mention are obviously right. Consciousness is required to "collapse the wave function", as you physicists call it. Proving it is an interesting challenge and brings forth interesting conversations and ideas.
We can do a simple thought experiment without setting up a quantum system. Imagine a universe with material but no consciousness. Does it exist?
There's no way to "know" unless something is aware of it. Or another way of putting it, in order for stuff to exist, consciousness must be present. The wave function collapses.
On the flip side, let us say we have a universe devoid of stuff except for consciousness. Does anything exist? The answer must be yes. Consciousness must. That is how we set up the initial conditions.
In order for anything to exist there must be consciousness. If consciousness exists, then there must be existence.
The sanskirt phrase "Sat Chit Ananda" points to this foundation of ontology. Sat = existence. Chit = consciousness. The third term, Ananda, bliss, is added. The phrase isn't a list, it states that the three "occur" together.
We can choose to define "bliss" in many ways. What fascinates me is why this is a necessary and inseparable component. I don't think we can ever answer this with our minds. It is our heart which leads us to intuit that whatever creative force gave rise to phenomena and awareness of it is imbued with positivity.
Or to put it another way, why would a creative force choose to exist if its experience was fundamentally miserable?
Thank you for making a confusing array of circumstances easier to understand for a non-scientist like me. QM is an exciting puzzle with many pathways of understanding still unexplored.
"Who are we? What is real? Why are we here? These are amongst the biggest questions we can ask, and some of the oldest mysteries.
Tom Campbell’s My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) offers a radically new way of answering them, combining the findings of objective modern science and subjective consciousness exploration with concepts only known since the advent of virtual realities and multiplayer online games."
-
Once we are aware we are influencing reality, their plans are shaking.
I took your challenge to an actual quantum computer.
You proposed measuring an electron's spin, then measuring it a second way with a dial nobody reads, then measuring the first way again — predicting that if no conscious being looks at the middle dial, that measurement effectively didn't happen. I ran the quantum core of this on one of IBM's 156-qubit processors.
First, the interference pattern — the signature of a system genuinely in two states at once. On the hardware it came out crisp. The machine is doing real quantum mechanics.
Then I added your unread apparatus: a second quantum bit that couples to the first and records which path it took, but that nobody ever looks at. The interference pattern vanished completely. Flat line. The information being physically recorded somewhere — with no mind near it — was enough to destroy the quantum behavior. Your framework predicts an unread measurement leaves things undisturbed. The hardware says the opposite.
Then the interesting part. I erased that recorded information, again with nobody looking — one automatic operation. The interference pattern came back. No one observed, decided, or acted. A physical operation put the information beyond recovery, and coherence returned on its own.
So what controls collapse isn't whether a mind is watching. It's whether the which-path information is physically recoverable. Record it and you lose the pattern; erase it and you get it back — consciousness never enters either way.
The limit you flagged yourself still holds: the version where the experimenter looks and then acts in the world can't be tested by anyone, because every interpretation gives identical statistics. My run can't touch that. What it shows is that the measurable prediction — unobserved apparatus leaves the system uncollapsed — fails on real hardware.
Fun experiment, and your essay was the reason I ran it. Happy to share the code — it's a two-qubit circuit anyone with a free IBM account can reproduce.
Cheers,
Sid
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""Delayed-choice quantum eraser. LOCAL_TEST=True -> Aer; False -> ibm_fez.
Open-plan compatible: uses bare single-job mode (SamplerV2(mode=backend)),
no Session and no Batch, since the open plan forbids sessions (error 1352).
Each circuit is its own job; for a handful of 2-qubit circuits that is fine.
Four conditions vs swept phase phi:
A no marker -> full fringe (coherence present)
B marker, not erased -> flat, no fringe (which-path destroys it)
C erased, post m=0 -> fringe returns
D erased, post m=1 -> complementary fringe (pi shift)
The C/D anti-correlation is the eraser signature: an UNOBSERVED gate erases the
which-path info and the fringe reappears only after sorting on the marker bit.
No observer enters anywhere -- collapse tracks information, not looking.
"""
# ============================ CONFIG =========================================
LOCAL_TEST = False # True = Aer simulator, False = hardware
BACKEND_NAME = "ibm_fez"
INSTANCE_CRN = ("crn:v1:bluemix:public:quantum-computing:us-east:"
"Your ID"
"Your ID")
SHOTS = 4096
POINTS = 5 # phi samples over [0, 2pi]; 5 = cheap, 9 = smooth
CONDITIONS = ["B", "C", "D"] # A already collected on hardware.
# set to ["A","B","C","D"] for all four.
SAVE_JOB_IDS = "eraser_job_ids.txt" # job IDs are appended here as they submit
# =============================================================================
def build_circuit(phi, marker, erase):
from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
qc = QuantumCircuit(2, 2)
qc.h(0) # system into a superposition of two paths
qc.p(phi, 0) # tunable relative phase (the fringe axis)
if marker:
qc.cx(0, 1) # copy which-path info onto the marker
if erase:
qc.h(1) # unobserved physical erasure of the marker
qc.h(0) # recombine the paths
qc.measure(0, 0)
qc.measure(1, 1)
return qc
def fringe(counts, postselect=None):
"""P(system=0). Key order is c1 c0, so c0 is the last char."""
n0 = tot = 0
for key, c in counts.items():
b = key.replace(" ", "")
c0, c1 = b[-1], b[-2]
if postselect is not None and int(c1) != postselect:
continue
tot += c
if c0 == "0":
n0 += c
return (n0 / tot if tot else float("nan")), tot
def get_counts(executor, backend, qc, runtime, tag=""):
from qiskit import transpile
tqc = transpile(qc, backend=backend, optimization_level=1) \
if backend is not None else qc
if runtime:
job = executor.run([tqc], shots=SHOTS)
try:
jid = job.job_id()
with open(SAVE_JOB_IDS, "a") as f:
f.write(f"{tag}\t{jid}\n")
print(f" [{tag}] job {jid} submitted")
except Exception:
pass
res = job.result()
try:
return res[0].data.c.get_counts()
except AttributeError:
return list(res[0].data.values())[0].get_counts()
return executor.run(tqc, shots=SHOTS).result().get_counts()
def run(executor, backend, runtime):
import math
phis = [2 * math.pi * k / (POINTS - 1) for k in range(POINTS)]
spec = {
"A": (False, False, None, "no marker -> full fringe"),
"B": (True, False, None, "marked, not erased -> flat"),
"C": (True, True, 0, "erased, post m=0 -> fringe"),
"D": (True, True, 1, "erased, post m=1 -> fringe shifted pi"),
}
header = "cond | " + " | ".join(f"{p/math.pi:.2f}p" for p in phis) + " | contrast"
print(header)
print("-" * len(header))
results = {}
for label in CONDITIONS:
marker, erase, ps, desc = spec[label]
row = []
for i, phi in enumerate(phis):
counts = get_counts(executor, backend,
build_circuit(phi, marker, erase), runtime,
tag=f"{label}_phi{i}")
p0, _ = fringe(counts, postselect=ps)
row.append(p0)
results[label] = row
good = [p for p in row if p == p]
con = (max(good) - min(good)) if good else 0.0
cells = " | ".join(f"{p:.3f}" for p in row)
print(f" {label} | {cells} | {con:.3f} {desc}")
return results, phis
def readout(results, phis):
import statistics
def con(lbl):
if lbl not in results:
return None
g = [p for p in results[lbl] if p == p]
return (max(g) - min(g)) if g else 0.0
print("\n" + "=" * 58)
for lbl, note in [("A", "coherence present"),
("B", "should be ~0"),
("C", "fringe returns"),
("D", "complementary")]:
c = con(lbl)
if c is not None:
print(f" {lbl} contrast {c:.3f} {note}")
if "C" in results and "D" in results:
prod = [(results["C"][i] - 0.5) * (results["D"][i] - 0.5)
for i in range(len(phis))
if results["C"][i] == results["C"][i]
and results["D"][i] == results["D"][i]]
if prod:
print(f"\n C/D anti-correlation {statistics.mean(prod):+.4f} "
"(negative = complementary fringes: the eraser signature)")
def main():
if LOCAL_TEST:
from qiskit_aer import AerSimulator
print("[MODE] ideal Aer simulator")
results, phis = run(AerSimulator(), None, False)
else:
from qiskit_ibm_runtime import QiskitRuntimeService, SamplerV2
service = QiskitRuntimeService(instance=INSTANCE_CRN)
backend = service.backend(BACKEND_NAME)
print(f"[MODE] hardware {BACKEND_NAME} (open-plan single-job mode)")
print(f"[INSTANCE] ...{INSTANCE_CRN.split('/')[-1][:28]}")
# open plan: no Session, no Batch -- pass the backend as the mode
sampler = SamplerV2(mode=backend)
results, phis = run(sampler, backend, True)
readout(results, phis)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Terminal output
from qiskit_ibm_runtime import QiskitRuntimeService, SamplerV2
[MODE] hardware ibm_fez (open-plan single-job mode)
[INSTANCE] ...53be0b4019f9455da9e601f21b40
cond | 0.00p | 0.50p | 1.00p | 1.50p | 2.00p | contrast
-------------------------------------------------------
[B_phi0] job d9du9n9htsac739di3ng submitted
[B_phi1] job d9du9oqneu4c739novag submitted
[B_phi2] job d9du9q4jeosc73fi2tug submitted
[B_phi3] job d9du9rineu4c739noveg submitted
[B_phi4] job d9du9t1htsac739di40g submitted
B | 0.519 | 0.475 | 0.503 | 0.513 | 0.516 | 0.043 marked, not erased -> flat
[C_phi0] job d9dua34jeosc73fi2ub0 submitted
[C_phi1] job d9dua4kinv1c73apie30 submitted
[C_phi2] job d9dua64inv1c73apie50 submitted
[C_phi3] job d9dua7sinv1c73apie70 submitted
[C_phi4] job d9dua9cjeosc73fi2uj0 submitted
C | 0.957 | 0.541 | 0.049 | 0.474 | 0.966 | 0.918 erased, post m=0 -> fringe
[D_phi0] job d9duaaqneu4c739np01g submitted
[D_phi1] job d9duackinv1c73apiee0 submitted
[D_phi2] job d9duaecjeosc73fi2uog submitted
[D_phi3] job d9duafsinv1c73apiei0 submitted
[D_phi4] job d9duahaneu4c739np0b0 submitted
D | 0.043 | 0.459 | 0.968 | 0.615 | 0.042 | 0.926 erased, post m=1 -> fringe shifted pi
==========================================================
B contrast 0.043 should be ~0
C contrast 0.918 fringe returns
D contrast 0.926 complementary
C/D anti-correlation -0.1277 (negative = complementary fringes: the eraser signature)
Sid -
I'm impressed with what you've done and genuinely grateful. The quantum computer reported what I understand to be the conventional answer. What I don't understand is how we know the quantum computer is predicting what would happen if we actually ran the experiment.
- Josh
The quantum computer isn't predicting the experiment or simulating it in the sense a classical computer would — running equations to forecast an outcome. It's a physical quantum system doing the same thing your electron would do. The qubits are real two-state quantum objects; the "which-path marker" really does become entangled with the system qubit; the erasure really is a physical operation on that entanglement. When the interference vanishes and comes back, that's not a calculation of what would happen — it's the thing happening, in hardware, to actual quantum states.
That's the sense in which it's more than a prediction. A classical simulation would presuppose the rules and hand you back what you put in. Here the qubits obey quantum mechanics because they are quantum mechanical — nobody told them to collapse; they did it because a marker physically recorded the path. If the conventional account were wrong about coupling-without-observation causing collapse, the hardware would be free to show something else. It didn't.
One poinr: this is spin encoded in superconducting qubits, not a free electron in a Stern-Gerlach apparatus. The physical substrate is different. A committed skeptic can ask whether something about biological observation, or that specific apparatus, matters in a way transmons can't capture. That's fair, and no qubit experiment closes it — it's the same reason your consciousness-plus-action version stays untestable.
But for the specific prediction your protocol rests on — that an unread apparatus doesn't collapse — the qubits are a genuine instance of a quantum system meeting a which-path detector, and they collapse without anyone looking. Not a model of that situation. An occurrence of it.
Sid - I think I understand the relationship between the quantum computer simulation (I still want to call it a simulation) and the physical setup. What I don't understand is what plays the role of the human who either observers or doesn't observe the intermediate output, and takes action in the world accordingly. Did you personally do this? If so, what were the actions that you took and how many trials did you complete?
I didn't play that role, because the experiment I ran doesn't contain it. There was no point where I looked or didn't look at an intermediate result and acted accordingly. So I haven't tested your protocol as you actually posed it — the version with a person in the loop making a real-world choice.
What I tested is the layer underneath it. In your setup the intermediate "measurement" is a physical coupling — an apparatus interacting with the spin. My middle step is that coupling: one qubit records the other's path. The question I put to the hardware was narrow — does that coupling, with no one reading the result, destroy the interference? It does. That's the piece of your prediction that doesn't require a human, and it's the piece a quantum computer can settle.
I've shown the unobserved-apparatus half of your prediction fails. I have not shown anything about the observer-plus-action half — the part you actually care about. That part still needs a human, real trials, recorded choices. I ran zero of those. If that's the experiment worth doing, it's a different setup than mine, and mine doesn't stand in for it.
I agree. My prediction is that the unobserved intermediate spin will not completely erase memory of the original spin observation. If your setup tells us that that memory is completely erased, then the question of whether the human observer changes the output is moot.
Richard Lucido has done his own experiment which he claims is related to the question whether consciousness collapses the wave function. His is a psychological experiment more than a physics experiment. See if you understand and agree with his logic.
https://www.testingtheccc.com/
Here's another proposal for a parallel experiment from Yair Pinto, speaking at a recent conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5HfzsD8n_k
As measurements are being done and observed in both cases, the nature of time-delay enters the philosophical question.
I personally prefer the primacy of consciousness, one consciousness, "Dharmadatu", but that is just my preference. It seems more-elegant to me. I have not been harmed by holding this working hypothesis.
If your personal preference could actually be tested experimentally, then it might penetrate into our Western culture which has been so affected by science the last 150 years.
Since the difference is hard (impossible?) to test, it is odd that "science" chose a preference without a clear case for it, don'tcha think?
The whole point of my column here is that it is NOT impossible to test, and some scientists, including Richard Lucido, https://www.testingtheccc.com/ claim to have already tested it with positive results. I'm looking now for people willing to set up the experiment described above, or a variant suggested by Alter AI.
Thank You, Josh. I read that with interest.
To me the fundamental question is the nature of conscious connection between sentient beings and of their sentient and subconscious minds to the world, particularly as in the workings of "prayer" and "karma", which I have been able to test and better understand in my own life.
In my personal experience they both work and are both broadly misunderstood, which confounds people who misunderstand them.
Josh,
The Schrödinger line you quote is the one I keep returning to, that consciousness is a singular noun whose plural is unknown. Whatever the experiment finds at the dial, and I am no physicist, so I hold that verdict loosely, the intuition underneath your third option is very old and has a Hebrew word attached to it.
When the tradition wanted to say what a human being most deeply is, it did not reach for a mechanism. It reached for neshamah (נְשָׁמָה), breath, and specifically a breath conferred from beyond, blown in rather than assembled. The claim folded into that word is your affirmative answer stated in advance of the physics: consciousness is not produced by matter, it is given to it. The brain would then be less the factory of awareness than the place where a borrowed breath meets the world and takes a local shape.
Where I hold the thread a little differently, and I hold it as wonder rather than as an objection, is Schrödinger's one mind. The same tradition agrees the source is one, and still insists the one breath individuates into real and unrepeatable persons, not illusions to be dissolved back into the single sea. A whirlpool with a name, if you like. Fundamental and singular at the source, and yet genuinely someone here.
I have no wager on the dial. But I am glad someone is still willing to ask the question the reductive paradigm files under settled.
Ty
A most interesting post, Josh. I think I understand the experiment. For clarification, is there a reason why we would expect that subsequent measurements of spin around the X axis will tend to remain the same if no measurement is ever made about the y axis?
In my opinion, the mystics, including the towering figures whom you mention are obviously right. Consciousness is required to "collapse the wave function", as you physicists call it. Proving it is an interesting challenge and brings forth interesting conversations and ideas.
We can do a simple thought experiment without setting up a quantum system. Imagine a universe with material but no consciousness. Does it exist?
There's no way to "know" unless something is aware of it. Or another way of putting it, in order for stuff to exist, consciousness must be present. The wave function collapses.
On the flip side, let us say we have a universe devoid of stuff except for consciousness. Does anything exist? The answer must be yes. Consciousness must. That is how we set up the initial conditions.
In order for anything to exist there must be consciousness. If consciousness exists, then there must be existence.
The sanskirt phrase "Sat Chit Ananda" points to this foundation of ontology. Sat = existence. Chit = consciousness. The third term, Ananda, bliss, is added. The phrase isn't a list, it states that the three "occur" together.
We can choose to define "bliss" in many ways. What fascinates me is why this is a necessary and inseparable component. I don't think we can ever answer this with our minds. It is our heart which leads us to intuit that whatever creative force gave rise to phenomena and awareness of it is imbued with positivity.
Or to put it another way, why would a creative force choose to exist if its experience was fundamentally miserable?
Thank you for making a confusing array of circumstances easier to understand for a non-scientist like me. QM is an exciting puzzle with many pathways of understanding still unexplored.
Wow!
..., jump !
-
"Theory of Everything"
Overview of My Big TOE
https://www.my-big-toe.com/theory/overview-of-my-big-toe/
"Who are we? What is real? Why are we here? These are amongst the biggest questions we can ask, and some of the oldest mysteries.
Tom Campbell’s My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) offers a radically new way of answering them, combining the findings of objective modern science and subjective consciousness exploration with concepts only known since the advent of virtual realities and multiplayer online games."
-
Once we are aware we are influencing reality, their plans are shaking.
And "The Matrix" becomes undone.