Double Slit Experiment & Consciousness: Nobel Laureates on Whether Mind Shapes Reality
Can the act of observing reality actually change it? That’s not New Age wishful thinking — it’s a question that has divided physicists for nearly a century. Nobel Prize winners like Eugene Wigner, Max Planck, and Roger Penrose have weighed in, and their answers might surprise you.
I put this page together for anyone who heard me reference the Double Slit experiment and consciousness in my Octalysis Prime content and wanted to dig deeper. I’ve organized the evidence for two types of readers: those who want the highlights and those who want the full scientific trail.
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
The Evidence Highlights (Nobel Laureates & Cambridge Physicists)
Here I offer some higher-level items, mostly in the form of social proof. This shows the credibility of people who believe in this consciousness concept.
This is not “widely accepted” or “proven” in any way, but it is a legitimate theory that accomplished scientists support.
“When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.“
— Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize Winner and leading Physicist of the Twentieth Century
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.“
— Max Planck, Nobel Prize Winner
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
— Also Max Planck
Here is an article by BBC Earth that explores this topic (archived, original link no longer active):
“It turns out that, just as Bohr confidently predicted, it makes no difference whether we delay the measurement or not. As long as we measure the photon’s path before its arrival at a detector is finally registered, we lose all interference. It is as if nature ‘knows’ not just if we are looking, but if we are planning to look.”
“Beginning in the 1980s, the British physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the link might work in the other direction. Whether or not consciousness can affect quantum mechanics, he said, perhaps quantum mechanics is involved in consciousness.”
Roger Penrose’s Credentials:
Penrose is known for his contributions to general relativity and cosmology. He received the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics (shared with Stephen Hawking for the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems) and the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of general relativity.
Adrian Kent’s take:
“We could make some progress on understanding the problem of the evolution of consciousness if we supposed that consciousness alters (albeit perhaps very slightly and subtly) quantum probabilities.“
The BBC article adds: “In other words, the mind could genuinely affect the outcomes of measurements.”
Adrian Kent’s Credentials:
- Professor of Quantum Physics, DAMTP, University of Cambridge
- Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge
- Director of Studies in Mathematics at Darwin College, Cambridge
- Affiliate at the Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo
- Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford
The Deep Scientific Evidence (Experiments & Papers)
For those who are more serious doubters, here is some deeper scientific backup to investigate.
The Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment
The best and most convincing is the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment.
The video below is the second part of the intro video above (this here is the original). The 3:06 mark is a good place to start. I didn’t fully understand the experiment from a bunch of other videos, but this one I finally understood it in roughly 5 minutes.
This explains how the human mind is what determines the results, not the measuring device.
Tom Campbell Workshop: “There Is No Objective Reality”
This is a long workshop by Thomas W. Campbell explaining the experiments. His conclusion: “There is no objective reality.”
You can start at the 44-minute mark if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.
Thomas Campbell’s Credentials:
Campbell received a B.S. and M.S. in Physics, with Ph.D. work specializing in Experimental Nuclear Physics. He spent over 30 years working within the U.S. missile defense community as a contractor to the Department of Defense. He most recently worked for NASA within the Ares I program (follow-on to the Space Shuttle), assessing and solving problems of risk and vulnerability to ensure mission and crew survivability and success.
Some people doubt his credibility, but I dug deeper. I found his credentials verified on the NASA Technical Reports Server:
“THOMAS W. CAMPBELL is currently consulting in the field of Probabilistic Design Analysis for NASA. He has over 36 years of experience working with the Department of Defense in several fields, including systems engineering; technology development; physics based modeling and simulation; algorithm and software development; intelligence analysis; and engineering management.”
Since his work with NASA involves assessing risk and vulnerability to ensure crew survivability on the Ares mission, there needs to be a lot of precision in his work — as opposed to being an idealistic philosopher.
The Scientific Paper
If you want to investigate the actual scientific paper behind these ideas, check out this longer and denser reading:
The Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics — Chapter 2
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity
- Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling
- Lifestyle Gamification: Become Successful Without Looking Impressive
- White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification
- Books by Yu-kai Chou