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Originally Posted by MarieMarie
How would that relate to the persistence of life after death?
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Because the underlying assumption is that if consciousness is nothing more than instinct or whatever, then there's "nothing more" to a life form and therefore "you" die when your body dies. Penrose's ideas challenge this, and the results of the double slit experiment (taken on it's own terms as it was originally done) also challenge this because it should be impossible that observing something would change or effect any kind of outcome of a particle in a material sense. And yet the outcome does change depending on whether or not there is an observer present. The other interpretation involving the semantics of "weak measurements" is an attempt to repudiate the results, but I don't think it makes a strong case.
The interest in quantum mechanics, outside of how it challenges our perceptions of the principles that underpin reality, is that there are enough threads and inconsistencies from both experimentation and theory in this field to give rise to the idea that human beings are "more" than just instinct and that our thoughts and sense of self have "weight" beyond mere brain function.