Norman Allan
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I am inclined to believe that in the famous double slit experiment, with electrons, where, if the wavecicles are not "observed", they go through both slits in a probabilistic "wave-like" manner and generate an interference pattern, but if they are observed they can be seen to go through one slit or the other and the probability wave function collapses, and one sees two discrete bands... that this might be a matter of whether or not something discrete had occured, rather then that something discrete had been observed to occur... so if...  

A Thought Experiment: Probability Wave Collapse

In the double slit experiment, if one beamed electrons through the slits at a screen, shining light at the slits and recording which slit the electrons came through, and, before looking at that data, look to see if the result shows two discrete bands or an interference pattern… then…

If the result is an interference pattern, you might infer that "observing" with a mechanism will not collapse the probability waves… and that it takes a conscious knowing (not just a potentially conscious observation) to collapse the waves.

If the results show two discrete bands (showing that the wave probabilities did indeed collapse), and one then erased the data… that would indicate that conscious observation/knowing is not intrinsic to the phenomenon of probability wave collapse… and might suggest that the wave/particles are waves until something specific happens, but discrete particles once something discrete has happened.

Has this been done?

 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

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