This is a layman's question. The only thing I know about quantum physics is from casual reading and documentaries. I can imagine electrons being probabilistic waves. Their position is an infinite number of weighted points and only upon observing the actual position do we know which of those points was it's actual position.

I program in Haskell so I imagine the concept as lazyness. Only upon actually needing the information, we get it.

But what does observing actually mean? In Haskell I can treat a lazy value as if it were already there and manipulate it as such. One way of starting the actual evaluation is by printing some value, this then causes all the values that are depended on to also evaluate, then all the ones those depended one and so on.

I figure the universe isn't that human centric and "observing" means something other than actually seeing something, but the quotes like "I like to imagine the Moon being there even when I'm not looking at it" make me wonder.

This is a layman's question. The only thing I know about quantum physics is from casual reading and documentaries. I can imagine electrons being probabilistic waves. Their position is an infinite number of weighted points and only upon observing the actual position do we know which of those points was its actual position.

I program in Haskell so I imagine the concept as laziness. Only upon actually needing the information, we get it.

But what does observing actually mean? In Haskell I can treat a lazy value as if it were already there and manipulate it as such. One way of starting the actual evaluation is by printing some value, this then causes all the values that are depended on to also evaluate, then all the ones those depended one and so on.

I figure the universe isn't that human centric and "observing" means something other than actually seeing something, but the quotes like "I like to imagine the Moon being there even when I'm not looking at it" make me wonder.