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necrovore

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I just read this and I don't know whether to laugh or cry: apparently quantum physicists are now saying that man is destroying the universe by observing it.

Is this the climax of Kant's philosophy? Apparently it's not bad enough that a means of awareness forever cuts us off from reality -- a means of awareness also has to degrade and destroy reality, besides.

I would laugh at the sheer absurdity of this idea, but what a horror it will be if it is taken seriously! ...

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I just read this and I don't know whether to laugh or cry: apparently quantum physicists are now saying that man is destroying the universe by observing it.

Is this the climax of Kant's philosophy? Apparently it's not bad enough that a means of awareness forever cuts us off from reality -- a means of awareness also has to degrade and destroy reality, besides.

I would laugh at the sheer absurdity of this idea, but what a horror it will be if it is taken seriously! ...

Truthfully, I don't really understand it.

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Truthfully, I don't really understand it.

It's easy to understand. Some astronomers have unwittingly "hurt" the Universe by making some observations. So how do we avoid hurting the Universe in the future? By banning astronomy. One less science for the man-haters to worry about.

Don't bother to examine a folly--ask yourself only what it accomplishes.
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What CF said. It is really a logical progression from the Multiple Universe theories which in effect said "Oh there are no answers". But this time it is "Well there might be - but you better not bother looking".

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If I didn't know Dr. Krauss better, I'd say he was pulling a Schroedinger's Cat on us. (Schroedinger devised the cat-in-a-box thought experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen Interpretation.) Alas, having spoken with the man on several occasions, I can only presume that he is serious about this.

~Q

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Is this the climax of Kant's philosophy? Apparently it's not bad enough that a means of awareness forever cuts us off from reality -- a means of awareness also has to degrade and destroy reality, besides.

No, the climax would be if they started smashing telescopes, clawed their own eyes out and demanded international action to darken the sky and end all space travel except for dead cats.

Well, if that's the case, just try and stop me. :) Such power!

:devil:

Soon there will be a tax for looking in the sky to help third world universes upon which the people, who dared to look at the stars, brought havoc and destruction.

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Speaking in terms of natural science, destruction is a form of creation. The 'observation' of a system does perturb it, but those perturbations, including the ones introduced by us, are also a part of the system. We do change/destroy systems that we observe, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't observe them, it's just a non-meaningful by-product of science.

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