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Yes, most physicists agree that human observers are not required to collapse a wave function. Even the QBists speak of “agents” that are abstract entities, not necessarily human beings. (An agent is something like a “point of view” or a “reference frame” in that it can be thought to exist independently of a living, breathing human who inhabits it.) However, n.b. that the great Nobelist Eugene Wigner did seriously think it had to be an actual human consciousness. (Or a dog, but not an insect.)

Full disclosure that I’ve never really been able to pin down the QBist notion of an agent myself and do not find QBism (or any such “instrumentalist” interpretations” of QM) appealing.



their use of the terminology of agent is wrong. agents have the ability to make their own decisions independently. Reference frames are just mathematical coordinate conversions, not agents.


> Even the QBists speak of “agents” that are abstract entities,

Do you have a reference for that?


A reference is points 17 and 18 in [https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13401]

Long story short, QBism inherits "agent" from Bayesian decision theory. In that context, we talk about gamblers making bets on the outcomes of dice rolls. In QBism, we talk about scientists making bets on the outcomes of measurements. What exactly can be a "gambler?" Can a dog gamble? What about a trained dog? Or a flea? The answer is: if the shoe fits, wear it. Same goes for QBism. If a dog walks into a lab, lights up a pipe, scribbles equations on the blackboard and starts aligning beamsplitters, then QBism regards him as an agent.


A dog is not something like a “point of view” or a “reference frame” in that it can be thought to exist independently of a living, breathing being.

A personalistic interpretation requires a "person". Would a rock or a cell phone qualify as a person? I'm not even sure the authors of that reference would accept a dog, despite saying the concept is extremely flexible (they discuss agents "social" agents but not "dumb" agents).

It's not clear to me that the mathematical description can exist independently of the agent that has some knowledge, for some definition of agent. Even if it can be make to work with no-one's "abstract knowledge" what would be the physical meaning of that? (Not that the physical meaning when agents are present is clear, to be fair.)




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