[gloriousduke]

I need to get caught up on new developments regarding Wheeler's "Participatory Universe" to find out if anyone else is thinking along these lines, but if observation does result in existence becoming--wave function(s) collapsing into the truly concrete--then essentially the history of the Universe occurred instantly when the first observation of it was made? I don't know where that conscious observer would have been located. Earth? A planet like it? Perhaps on every world (simultaneously of course) where the retrocausal positioning of conscious entities made sense?

[vorg]

> the history of the Universe occurred instantly when the first observation of it was made

Perhaps that history could still collapse into existence in stages, as subsequent observations of it became more detailed. The first observer would see far-off galaxies as small white dots in the sky, but not the composition and interaction of each, so perhaps those aspects don't decohere until later observers see more using telescopes.

And not only history but also laws of physics could come into existence in this way. If earthlings are the only observers in the Universe, perhaps dark matter holding galaxies in a circular shape is a law of physics which only came into existence when observers on Earth could start seeing inside other galaxies.