this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Not necessarily. There was a dude who was studying some plant and was measuring their leaves, and discovered that touching them to measure them stunted their growth. It confused him a lot at first.
I think the plant was mimosa pudica, but I will double check the story when I have had some sleep. I just wanted to add this briefly because it's a very funny story. The dude was super confused when it happened, because I think that science didn't realise the extent to which plants could detect and respond to touch at that time
This has absolutely nothing to do with the meme apart from similar wording. The underlying mechanisms are completely different though
Judging from the name of the plant alone, it's just one of these plants where the leaves somehow retract in reaction to some stimuli, right ?
It's in the same genus as species who show this behavior, yes. Not sure if this specific species does it though. In any case, even with non-retracting species the interaction is between plant and observing human. In the meme it is just between particles and their environment in general, not related to an observer.
To clarify, "observer" in the double slit experiment has nothing to do with humans, or consciousness, or anything like that. It has to do with it interacting with something on the other side of the slit. This thing, that creates (or "observes") an interaction, collapses the waveform. A human can watch or not. It doesn't change the results of the experiment.
Yes, I tried to communicate this difference, but didn't know how to