I believe I have solved the “quantum enigma”, which suggests very strongly that consciousness has an effect on the universe. The enigma is how it is possible that you can get an answer to a question you ask that seems contradictory to the answer you would have gotten if you had asked another question that you could have asked but didn’t. An example is the fact that you can perform an experiment that shows that particles have no specific location, and another experiment that shows they do have a specific location, but the answer you get depends on the experiment you do on the specific particles in question. For a more complete description of this problem, see https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Consciousness/dp/0199753814/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491429953&sr=8-1&keywords=quantum+enigma.
The very unsatisfactory answer to this in the standard “Copenhagen” interpretation of quantum mechanics is that free will is an illusion.
I have found another answer.
But before I tell you that answer, let me bring in another issue that is plaguing physics: time.
One of the greatest mysteries in physics is the appearance that time passes. Of course many equations include t as a variable. But the picture of the universe painted by relativity is a static one. Time is “just” another dimension, albeit one with a different role in the equation from the space dimensions. As a result, you can view the entire history of the universe as a 4-dimensional solid. Yes, there is a beginning and an end (probably). But these are like the left and right sides of a solid object, with no place for our experience of “past”, “present” or “future”.
What is the cause of our conviction that “time passes”? The “passage of time” corresponds to nothing in the equations of physics. Of course many physics equations contain a variable named t, but Einsteinian relativity leads to a static view of a four-dimensional universe. Every so often there is an article or two in Scientific American suggesting that time is an illusion, which is about as (un)satisfactory as the Copenhagen interpretation of free will as an illusion.
I have found another answer.
That answer is: Life creates time.
Let us imagine what a multiverse uninhabited by life would look like.
Assuming the multiverse is infinite, then every possible arrangement of nucleons (and anything else necessary to make a unique universe) occurs an infinite number of times.
But there is no time. Without time, there can be no motion, so these universes are static.
Life arrives.
As suggested in my previous post, the “passage of time” may be the effect of living beings’ ability to switch from one of these static frames to another in which the particles have positions and velocities representing a slightly “future time”. The sequence of frames experienced by each being is affected by laws that we don’t yet know in detail to the extent that they are not predictable by classical physics. But this sequence is affected to some extent by the being’s desires; this latter is what is known as “free will”. If we were to be able to learn at least some of the rules for how each successive static frame is selected via quantum effects, that knowledge might look astoundingly like magic to the uninitiated, as it could be used to predict (or even possibly affect) what might otherwise look like random outcomes.
How is this related to quantum physics?
If this interpretation is correct, life is what causes time’s arrow by constantly switching to a different static frame that is “advanced in time”. This same effect is also responsible for the otherwise mysterious “collapse of the wavefunction”, when one outcome is selected out of all of the possibilities represented by the wavefunction.
Thus, this interpretation accounts for time, life, the collapse of the wavefunction, free will, and a possible use for the otherwise seemingly senseless “random spooky action at a distance”.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that this interpretation is correct. But it does seem to make sense of a number of otherwise puzzling facts of physics and life.