3134: Wavefunction Collapse

Wavefunction Collapse

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Title text: Wavefunction collapse is only one interpretation. Under some interpretations, graduate students also have souls.

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Explanation

This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: This page was created BY A SOUlFUl PARTICLE DETECTOR. Should the reference to unsolved problem be removed? Those comics are very different to this and the other two mentioned as it is three different things not three replies to one question. And cursed is not the same a wrong or chaotic! If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic presents three possible responses to a common question posed by undergraduates upon confronting the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics - does the apparently privileged role of subjective or conscious observers in wavefunction collapse imply that human consciousness itself impacts physics? This question is sometimes phrased as: does the observation effect or quantum collapse prove humans have souls? These questions stem from a misunderstanding of what an "observer" in physics really is, a misunderstanding the comic depicts with a college student asking his professor about human consciousness.

The 'Bad' option shows Cueball telling his student that everybody has a soul, and their individual consciousness affects reality in some way. The 'good' option shows Cueball telling his student that consciousness doesn't play a role at all, and that it is 'just a physical measurement'. The 'chaotic' option shows Cueball apparently observing that the wave function collapses only when he looks at it, because he is special in some way (in this case, Cueball is a professor while Hairy is the undergraduate student).

That quantum states exist as probability density distributions, but are only ever observed in definite states, raises the question of how the quantum world transitions into the classical world. The (historically) most popular interpretation posits that wave function collapse occurs upon the measurement of a quantum state, in which the multiple mathematically possible states resolve into a definite state, without explicitly defining precisely when this "collapse" occurs, or what defines "measurement;" in fact, when measuring, say, an electron in a superposition of two states, wavefunction collapse could occur at any stage from the electron interacting with the detector, to the detector recording the measurement, to the scientist observing the recording. A famous though experiment, Schrödinger's cat, takes this to the extreme: if a cat is placed a box with a decaying radioisotope that upon decay triggers a gas bomb that kills the cat, shouldn't this place the cat-bomb-isotope-box system into a mixed state that only undergoes wavefunction collapse upon opening and observing whether the cat is alive or dead? The Copenhagen interpretation is agnostic to this question, only confirming that the cat will have resolved into its alive or dead state at or before observation. The Consciousness causes collapse postulate endorsed by the "bad" panel -- unfashionable now, but taken seriously historically -- posits that the conscious observation is indeed what triggers wave-function collapse. The 'good' panel, rather flippantly, seems to endorse a more modern decoherence-based interpretation - that every interaction inside the cat-box system is a "measurement" that destroys the superposition well before the human observer enters the picture. Finally, the `chaotic` option is far more radical and sollipsistic than the `bad` - it's not merely conscious observation that causes collapse, but PhD-holding and tenured consciousness.

Good, bad, and chaotic may be taken as references to the alignment system in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. In D&D, roles are characterized by their morality (good/neutral/evil) and their views about order (lawful/neutral/chaotic). However, this allows a single alignment to be both chaotic and either good or 'bad'/evil, so is perhaps just more a matter of two extremes followed up by something completely different, to set up a Template:tvtrope of joke format.

The title text continues the chaotic option. Graduate students are intermediate between undergraduate and professors. It is unclear whether graduate students can cause waveform collapse, and therefore have souls.

Transcript

[Hairy is sitting behind a desk with one a hand on the desktop and the other in his lap. He is looking up at Cueball, who is standing in front of the desk. Hairy is asking a question:]

Hairy: If the wavefunction only collapses when I observe it, does that mean my consciousness affects the universe?

[Three panels follows showing three possible responses from Cueball. Each panel has a label above, written inside a small rectangle that is overlaid on the top left of each panel. Each panel shows the same zoom in on the top half of Cueball.]

[Panel 1]

Bad:

Cueball: Yes. Quantum entanglement proves that we all have souls.

[Panel 2]

Good:

Cueball: No. Consciousness plays no role here. Its just physical measurement.

[Panel 3]

Chaotic:

Cueball: No. The wave function collapses when I look at it because I'm a full professor.

Cueball: It won't collapse for an undergraduate.

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Discussion

For crying out loud, the wavefunction collapse has never been observed. 38.70.240.202 02:23, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

The term professor actually can also mean "a person who affirms a faith in or allegiance to something." which continues the religious aspect of having a soul. 147.161.213.89 02:30, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Actually, I am a god explaining their reality to my comrades, so only when we observe it does the wavefunction collapse. It will not collapse for mere characters in a false reality we created. --DollarStoreBa'al^converse 02:34, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

So many people misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation. It is only the most basic theory that could be made based on all our experiments, which is why it says the wavefunction collapse when we measure it in an experiment. It doesnt mean it hasnt collapsed earlier, only that we know it has collapsed when we measure it.2A02:3103:4C:2400:84BF:B101:8E7D:F4C6 06:24, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

is it just me, or is this one similar to 660: Sympathy & 803: Airfoil? —Winter1760 (talk) 06:59, 28 August 2025 (UTC).

Yes there is the similarity with three option where the first two are identical but the very wrong has been canged to Chaotic in this comic. We could a mention of it at the bottom. I'll try to put it in. --Kynde (talk) 07:40, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

I think "Good", "Bad" and "Chaotic" are references to role playing games, probably Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but perhaps others as well. Characters in such games have an "alignment", which indicates whether a character tends to do good, or tends to be destructive/evil, or can flip (chaotic). The word "alignment" also has meaning in the world of quantum physics. So this may be a deliberate conflation of worlds. I also like the double meaning of "professor" above in this context. Gjanssens (talk) 08:17, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Randall has previously used the famous "Good/Neutral/Evil" vs "Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic" array, and subsets of it, so it's something we already know he has already used. And "Good/Bad/Chaotic" is a strange path (<any>-Good, <any>-Evil then Chaotic-<any>), and distortion of the gaming 'spectrum', if it was an intended reference. In various ways, I think it just shares the tripartite of the (Good)/(Bad)/Cursed type of sequence that some the Category:Unsolved Problems display. It's basically just a comedic triad, the shortest possible 'off the deep end' list, and I don't think the exact words matter (except being normal->normal->weird). 82.132.244.136 14:59, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Randall pokes fun at a severe philosophic problem of all subjectivist interpretations of QM: If a "soul" is needed for wave collapse, or maybe only a being with consciousness - where shall we draw the line? Can Schrödingers cat herself collapse the wavefunction? A cockroach? A bacterium? (Mind you, they rely on a working QM as we.) Or, in the other direction as in this comic, maybe an undergrad doesn't suffice. (Add to explanation?) 2A02:2455:1960:4000:4DF1:8E5D:B4E1:C184 08:58, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

That is a NON-problem, because it isnt believed by anyone the measurement is what collapses the function, it is the conditions that are necessary to measure properties that collapses it. Which is also why the schrödingers cat is more of a joke than a real physics thought experiment. The wave functions would already have collapse d before you open the box. The only reason the copenhagen interpretation is so vague is specifically to avoid determining when wave functions collapse, so it just says they have collapsed when we make a measurement.2A02:3103:4C:2400:84BF:B101:8E7D:F4C6 12:57, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

学部生でよかった (Translation: I’m glad I’m undergraduate) 《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 12:56, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Does this mean that a red-headed professor taking a measurement won't collapse the function? 204.113.92.35 15:18, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Seems like there's a secondary joke here implying (accurately, unfortunately) that the significance of a study is often dependent on the academic status of the person conducting it. And thus, yes, a full professor's observation of the same phenomenon "counts" more, regardless of the means of measurement. 24.53.184.90 17:31, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

we should make a category for the good-bad-weird format. seems like it's seen enough use. 152.86.78.100 00:08, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

I would not consider the Category:Unsolved Problems as being similar to this setup or the other two mentioned. And those other two do not use the same last word as this one, I think those three are a bit few. If you can find a few more along similar lines I would consider it as a category. But if so, what should we call it? --Kynde (talk) 19:37, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

As a 'super-category', yes, I would consider that all these things come under the same large umbrella. As mentioned by another, it's basically a "rule of three" punchline. It's all a lot closer together than "there are good electricians, bad electricians and dead electricians" are from "I came, I saw, I conquered". They aren't the exact same 'rule of three' format, and perhaps some sub-categorisation can group together "good/bad", "bad/good" and "other", in one case and completely different rhetoric triplets in other cases.

I also disagree about it being a 'likely' D&D reference, because it isn't (for example) any of the single rows/columns in that grid, nor "Lawful Good"/"True Neutral"/"Chaotic Evil" or "Chaotic Evil"/"True Neutral"/"Lawful God" (both the 'diagonals'), nor even something like "Neutral Good", "Chaotic Neutral", "Lawful Evil", Even assuming Bad==Evil, 'Chaotic' isn't a third item in that list, and we know that Randall could have easily written a far more 'accurate' D&D allusion than this. And Chaoticity itself isn't an obvious reference to D&D, merely something that is part of D&D, much as many other things are, what with the Chaos being a concept used long before/after the mid-'70s creation of D&D, or perhaps whenever after then that this particular alignment system got added. But that's just my own understanding. Maybe 5thEd D&D says things different from the 1st/2nd edition material that was always 'my' experience, in which case I'd appreciate a link onward to whatever states this more modern take. 92.17.62.87 01:11, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

In all editions except for the number who shall not be named (before 5th but after 3.5) D&D uses the two axis alignment system where good/evil and chaotic/lawful are unrelated to each other. 4th edition had a one dimensional LG->G->N->E->CE alignment that *maaay* fit with this Good->Bad->Chaotic[_Bad], but I doubt it since the smushing of the alignments was one of the most disliked parts of that ruleset and a lot of people who were already familiar with the two axis system just used it in 4th anyway.57.140.28.26 15:04, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

not-necessarily-exhaustive list of comics that use a similar format: 660 (right/wrong/very wrong), 803 (right/wrong/very wrong), 2529 (weirdly abstract/weirdly concrete/cursed), 3115 (vague/precise/cursed), and of course this one (bad/good/chaotic). i think that's enough for a category; is "comedic triad" a good name? 64.189.140.33 06:45, 18 September 2025 (UTC)
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