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[Physicist Henry Stapp of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.]
“How does the mid/brain cause one particular line of thought, or decision, to be sustained over another? Stapp offers an intriguing speculation based on the Quantum Zeno Effect. This refers to a prediction (since confirmed by experiments) that the act of rapidly observing a quantum system forces that system to remain in its wavelike, indeterminate state, rather than to collapse into a particular, determined state. As Stapp says,
‘Taken to the extreme, observing continuously whether an atom is in a certain state keeps it in that state forever. For this reason, the Quantum Zeno Effect is also known as the watched pot effect. The mere act of rapidly asking questions of a quantum system freezes it in a particular state, preventing it from evolving as it would if we weren’t peeking. Simply observing a quantum system suppresses certain of its transitions to other states.’”
