Consciousness Interferes with the Born Rule of Quantum Measurement
It's not that outrageous
A number of people have suggested that consciousness intervenes in the physical world by interfering with the probabilities of outcomes in a quantum measurement. These probabilities are defined by the Born Rule for computing the chances of getting different results from a quantum wave function. In my preceding posts, I have argued that this is the mechanism for free will and reporting conscious experiences (and, surprisingly, for perception). But a lot of people are vehemently against it.
Every time I propose that consciousness intervenes in the physical world by tweaking the probability distribution in quantum measurements, people who know something of physics become agitated and start telling me that this is nonsense, that the quantum measurements are random and there is no way that a nonphysical mind - even if it existed - could do this. But to the best of my knowledge all the Born rule tells us is the statistical distribution of measurements. It does not say that the measurements are purely random apart from that distribution. (Indeed it’s hard to see how it could say that, as the concept of ‘purely random' is itself problematic.)
I’m not a physicist, so I figured that I should run this past someone more qualified. Sean Carroll is a working physicist with more than 200 published papers. He is one of the best authors and podcasters on the subject of quantum mechanics, as well as on science more generally. His podcast has a monthly slot entitled “Ask Me Anything” where subscribers can pose questions on physics, or anything else for that matter. So, in the September edition, I asked him:
Peter Lloyd: Is there any theoretical reason to believe that apart from the probability distribution that the Born Rule gives us, the outcome of a quantum measurement is purely random. I know that empirically it is reliably random. But does it have to be? Is there anything in quantum mechanics that actually precludes the possibility that a non physical conscious mind could reach into our world and mess with the measurements provided? Of course, it maintains the Born Rule in the long run. I know you don’t believe in non-physical consciousness, but do the equations of physics actually forbid it?
Sean Carroll: Well, the equations of physics forbid it in the sense that the equations of physics say what happens and they don’t include that. You could very easily imagine, just as you said, that a non-physical conscious mind does reach in and picks out one way for things to go rather than the other. That’s just not part of the equations of physics. It’s a different kind of theory, which you’re welcome to explore. It’s a very strange kind of theory because you’re saying you want to overall maintain the ordinary Born Rule distribution of weights of measurement outcomes, which means that if the non-physical consciousness says you’re gonna get spin up the next three times in a row, it has to sort of compensate for that later on by letting you get more spin downs or something like that. But as I very, very often say, if you wanna ask what is possible given everything we know about the universe, many, many, many things are possible.
In short: the laws of physics are silent on the matter. They don’t say consciousness can do this, and they don’t say it can’t do it, either.
Archimedean Probabilities
It’s not so difficult to imagine a natural process that re-balances the statistics after an intervention from consciousness. After all, it is conceptually the same thing that Archimedes found when he sat in his bathtub. The water rose by the same volume of his immersed body. Nature had no difficulty pushing up the correct volume of bathwater that has been displaced by Archimedes’ butt. So, why would nature have difficulty adjusting the quantum probabilities to allow for a conscious intervention?
Take a trivial example. Let’s say some macromolecule in the brain - a DNA molecule, whatever - repeatedly goes into superposition of two states, say A and B, with equal probability, and then the wave function collapses each time. The Born Rules says that as the sample size approaches infinity, the numbers of A and B outcomes are evenly balance. The larger the sample size, the smaller the expected discrepancy from a 50/50 ratio. A sample of 10 might yield 3 x A and 7 x B, a sample of 10,000 might 5,025 x A and 4,975 x B., and so on Now suppose that the conscious mind wants to send a coded message into that brain structure, which then affects motor action such as speaking or writing. So, let’s say it inserts a message of 100 bits and, inside that message the ratio of A and B happens to be 30 to 70. Well, that’s not impossible. But let’s say that these messages come often, many times a second, and they always happen to have more A than B. That’s going to be a detectable anomaly. So, we could hypothesise that after any such intervention, there is some mechanism - maybe arising from the domain of consciousness - that increases the probability of B for a while, so that after this refractory period, the balance of A and B will be restored.
There’s no positive evidence that that is what happens, and it’s not my preferred hypothesis. My point is merely that this is a conceivable hypothesis. Given that the conscious mind clearly can affect the body, there must be a mechanism for it, and this is a legitimate candidate hypothesis. I don’t think it’s an adequate response for physicists to roll their eyes and declare that this could not happen. It could. And maybe it does.
Observed anomalies
I didn’t know this at the time, but back in October 2024, someone else raised a very similar question. Carroll’s answer was roughly the same, but he added one rather contentious claim.
Matt Grinder says, «I listened to your interview with Philip Goff on panpsychism, and I agree with you that any theory of consciousness cannot contradict the laws of physics. So would the following be a way out for the panpsychist? Every time a particle changes state by wave function collapse, a calculation must be made for the particle to decide what to do next, and this calculation involves a qualia. Over time, the calculations via qualia would have to agree with the Born rule. This seems to me not to contradict any laws of physics. Is it just an add-on to physics?»
Sean Carroll: Yeah, this is something that is absolutely conceivable. People have conceived it. David Chalmers, former Mindscape guest, and his collaborator Kelvin McQueen wrote a paper that really looked at exactly this possible idea. I would say a few things.
Number one, it absolutely is a change in the laws of physics, because the laws of physics as we know them now don’t say that. I should say, I don’t say it’s a change in the laws of physics. We don’t know the laws of physics. I should say it’s a change in what we take the laws of physics right now to be. Okay, because right now we do not say that the probabilities depend on qualia in any way. If you say, yes, they do, you are suggesting that the laws of physics are different than what we think they are. It’s hard to make it work. It’s hard to make it work for whatever you’re saying precisely because, long story short, like you say, over time the calculation would have to agree with the Born rule. Well, what does that mean? Like if the qualia are pushing it all, you have a bunch of spins that are one over square root of two spin up and one over square root of two spin down, if somehow your qualia are making you get spin up every time, then there’s some catch up procedure later where you get a bunch of extra spin downs. Like, it’s hard to make work that way, number one.
Number two, zero evidence for anything like that in anything that we’ve ever seen in either physics or neuroscience.
And number three, it would be of zero help in solving the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem is specifically about experience, not behavior. And you’re saying, this theory is saying, things behave slightly differently than you would have predicted by conventional physics. So what? I mean, great. They’re behaving differently. That doesn’t help you explain this thing about consciousness that proponents of the hard problem say cannot possibly be reduced to behavior.
So this is why I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about this stuff other than answering AMA questions.
Carroll’s point number two is that there is no evidence for deviations from the Born Rule. That is factually incorrect. There are many reported experiments of micro-telekinesis with random-number generators that are based on quantum events. There is plentiful evidence that the a human mind can indeed affect the probability distribution that would be expected from the Born Rule.
Now, Carroll might object to those experiments. He might disagree with the experimental method. He might argue that there is selection bias in the non-reporting of negative results. And so on. But to say that there is zero evidence is just untrue. Carroll might dispute the credence to be given to the evidence, in which case he ought to have some rational basis for that credence, not just the fact that the results challenge his physicalist philosophy.
Dean Radin and Roger Nelson carried out meta-analysis of RNG telekinesis experiments, which should definitely increase the credence of the hypothesis that the conscious mind can modify the Born Rule probabilities to a measurable degree. Radin has suggested that there is a quantum entanglement between the RNG and the brain of the subject. There are several reasons why that is untenable. In my following post, I will discuss those reasons, and proposal an alternative theory. This will, I hope, be better than what Carroll dismisses as “dorm room bullshitting level of analysis”.
Dean Radin and Roger Nelson (2000), “Meta-Analysis of Mind-Matter Interaction Experiments: 1959 To 2000”
Text by human author. Quotes from Sean Carroll’s AMA (Ask Me Anything)