The Observer Strikes Back

Abstract

In the modern quantum mechanics of cosmology observers are physical systems within the universe. They have no preferred role in the formulation of the theory nor in its predictions of third person probabilities of what occurs. However, observers return to importance for the prediction of first person probabilities for what we observe of the universe: What is most probable to be observed is not necessarily what is most probable to occur. This essay reviews the basic framework for the computation of first person probabilities in quantum cosmology starting with an analysis of very simple models. It is shown that anthropic selection is automatic in this framework, because there is no probability for us to observe what is where we cannot exist. First person probabilities generally favor larger universes resulting from inflation where there are more places for us to be. In very large universes it is probable that our observational situation is duplicated elsewhere. The calculation of first person probabilities then requires a specification of whether our particular situation is assumed to be typical of all the others. It is the combination of the model of the observational situation, including this typicality assumption, and the third person theory which is tested by observation. We conclude with a discussion of the first person predictions of cosmological observables such as the cosmological constant and features of the primordial density fluctuations, in the no-boundary quantum state of the universe and a dynamical theory in which these are allowed to vary.