Are you a special or a typical observer?

I assume that you are curious, and that you observe and then deduce; that you fit observed phenomena together, making sense of new correlations; that you puzzle over them, seeking out answers online and in books, and by asking the right questions of the right people.

Albert Einstein knew that his greatest driver was his curiosity. The urge to know. When coupled with intelligence, determination and focus - and luck - curiosity has the power to move humanity forward. But not all of us are gifted in the amount required to make a difference.

I wrote shortly after my father's death that the last words he wrote down, on two Post-It notes, were, respectively, 'Primitivo' and 'Quantum supremacy'. The latter has struck me, as I follow developments in the field of quantum computing, as proof of his unquenchable curiosity - right there, up to the last days of his life. I have posited that it will have been that curiosity that propels his consciousness into another incarnation. [I dreamt in May that he has indeed returned - as a boy born in the Warsaw suburb of Ursynów, to a mother with a high-flying career in banking, looked after mainly by a stay-at-home dad. By coincidence I saw a dad pushing in a pushchair a small boy just old enough to have been born around the time of my father's death, today in Ursynów; the scene was just like the dream, except the weather there was stormy, under dark clouds - today was sunny.]

My father's innate curiosity kept him going, gave him a reason to live. The explosion of the internet, towards the end of his days, in particular the existence of Wikipedia, suddenly gave him access to a scope of knowledge undreamt of in his pre-war youth or post-war middle age.

Along with his urge to understand how things worked, my father was also characterised by his powers of observation. He'd notice things around him to a high level of detail. Going for walks with him, he'd point out things to me that I hadn't noticed before, despite having walked past them many times. 

At the heart of quantum mechanics lies the role of the conscious observer, who is there to observe consciously whether or not the wave function collapses. Particle or wave? Without the conscious observer present, the outcome can only be a probability. Conscious observation is therefore crucial to understanding reality, what goes on at the micro- and macro levels.

And then there's the fact that the Universe seems equally dense whichever edge of it you look towards. This gives the impression that the earth is at the centre of it. We do know that our solar system is not at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way. But look beyond that and across billions of light-years, galaxies cluster evenly in all directions, everything looks the same, homogeneous, with small fluctuations, as far as we can observe.

You are far less than a grain of sand compared to the entire Universe. 

And yet the entire Universe was created just for you to observe.

Are you a typical observer, or a special observer?

This time last year:
Jabłkowizna

This time six years ago:
Low water level - Jeziorki lakes

This time seven years ago:
Around the Czachówek diamond, again

This time ten years ago:
Second line of the Metro runs into delays

This time 11 years ago
Army helicopters in action at Kielce defence show

This time 12 years ago:
World's largest helicopter over Jeziorki