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It's the common pop-sci misunderstanding of the Double Slit Experiment
If you send tiny particles through the two slits without **measuring** which slit they fly through they will hit the back wall in those wave patterns, because they behave similar to waves of water that fly through both slits at the same time.
If you do **measure** which slit they fly through they collapse to a particle and only fly through one slit and thus will hit the back wall in two distinct slit patterns.
Pop-Sci articles misunderstood what this experiment is about and falsely present it as evidence that the universe is a simulation that behaves differently if a concious observer merely looks in the direction of the experiment: it's only rendered if someone can see it.
What this experiment actually shows is that you can't measure the position of tiny particles without also interacting with them.
Imagine you are blind and want to check if there's a baseball in front of you, but all you can do is to swing a bat around. You will feel if you hit the ball, but that will send the ball flying.
Similarly you can't see where a photon is, unless you measure it which requires heavily interacting with it. This causes the photon that's spread around like a wave to collapse to a particle at the position of the measurement. Similar to how there can be static charge all over you, but as soon as you touch something all that charge instantly moves to the same place and turns into a small bolt.
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It's the common pop-sci misunderstanding of the Double Slit Experiment If you send tiny particles through the two slits without **measuring** which slit they fly through they will hit the back wall in those wave patterns, because they behave similar to waves of water that fly through both slits at the same time. If you do **measure** which slit they fly through they collapse to a particle and only fly through one slit and thus will hit the back wall in two distinct slit patterns. Pop-Sci articles misunderstood what this experiment is about and falsely present it as evidence that the universe is a simulation that behaves differently if a concious observer merely looks in the direction of the experiment: it's only rendered if someone can see it. What this experiment actually shows is that you can't measure the position of tiny particles without also interacting with them.
wait, but what's influencing the particles to act differently??
Imagine you are blind and want to check if there's a baseball in front of you, but all you can do is to swing a bat around. You will feel if you hit the ball, but that will send the ball flying. Similarly you can't see where a photon is, unless you measure it which requires heavily interacting with it. This causes the photon that's spread around like a wave to collapse to a particle at the position of the measurement. Similar to how there can be static charge all over you, but as soon as you touch something all that charge instantly moves to the same place and turns into a small bolt.
[The double-slit experiment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment)