According to the article, this can (and will be) tested experimentally. I really wish they'd gone into what kind of experiments could (in)validate these ideas and why; as-is I think the article reads too high-level for such out-there ideas and I have no idea whether this is actually science or not.
“observers — you, me, and anyone else — live in a quantum gravitational universe and come up with "a globally agreed-upon cognitive model" of reality by exchanging information about the properties of spacetime”
Seems ripe for a sci fi concept: if the coherent conscious model of observers was able to shape the universe (rather than merely observe some “objective” truth about it), conceivably a society that believed in the daily intervention of gods could actually see that happen (not merely interpret it as such) in a way we might consider inconsistent with our understanding of physics. You just need faith as they say.
In retrospect, that concept has perhaps already been executed in Gaiman’s American Gods.
There was a short story where children were put behind a wall and brought up to believe that magic was real; at some point it started to work for them.
I think the concept has been explored quite widely.
Indicators might be that groups of physicists believe in new tiny particles and then discover them.
Depending on how powerful the effect is; it might have interesting implications.
Consider that despite all the odds we are still here as a species.
For example I sometimes imagine that the world was destroyed by a global atomic war in the 1980s but since we all rejected that bleak reality - we have this current reality instead.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] threadSeems ripe for a sci fi concept: if the coherent conscious model of observers was able to shape the universe (rather than merely observe some “objective” truth about it), conceivably a society that believed in the daily intervention of gods could actually see that happen (not merely interpret it as such) in a way we might consider inconsistent with our understanding of physics. You just need faith as they say.
In retrospect, that concept has perhaps already been executed in Gaiman’s American Gods.
Indicators might be that groups of physicists believe in new tiny particles and then discover them.
Depending on how powerful the effect is; it might have interesting implications.
Consider that despite all the odds we are still here as a species. For example I sometimes imagine that the world was destroyed by a global atomic war in the 1980s but since we all rejected that bleak reality - we have this current reality instead.