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DOES OBSERVING THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT
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DOES OBSERVING THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT? A new finding from information physics says yes … and it turns environmental protection on its head.
Look at this image carefully. Both sides receive the same input. Same wind. Same water. Same chemistry. Same energy. The universe’s processes are identical in both panels.
The only difference is the gate.
Top panel: no question was asked. The gate is unconfigured. The same processes that could have produced order instead produce disorder. Environmental damage. Not because the universe is hostile. Because nobody gave it a direction.
Bottom panel: a question was asked. One bit of information promoted to the epistemic boundary. The gate configures. The same processes … unchanged, unstoppable, free … now produce order.
The universe didn’t change. The observation changed which outcome the universe delivered.
We just published a paper proving this is not a metaphor. It is experimentally verified thermodynamics. The observation IS the actuation. The universe moves the molecules.
This has been hidden in the physics since Szilard proposed his engine in 1929. The full proof became possible in 2010. Nobody in the environmental field derived the consequence because the environmental field and information thermodynamics never met.
They just met.
The image is the entire paper in one frame. Two panels. Same universe. Only one variable: was a question asked?
Everything we call environmental protection reduces to that variable.
Paper in comments.
Onward. Upward.
Licensed CC-BY-4.0 .
Original source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jedanderson432/ (April 13, 2026)
Markdown source: https://jedanderson.org/posts/does-observing-the-environment-change-the-environment.md
Source on GitHub: /src/content/posts/does-observing-the-environment-change-the-environment.md
Cite this
@misc{anderson_2026_does_observing_the_environment_change_the_environment,
author = {Jed Anderson},
title = {DOES OBSERVING THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT},
year = {2026},
url = {https://jedanderson.org/posts/does-observing-the-environment-change-the-environment},
note = {Accessed: 2026-05-13}
} Anderson, J. (2026). DOES OBSERVING THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT. Retrieved from https://jedanderson.org/posts/does-observing-the-environment-change-the-environment
Anderson, Jed. "DOES OBSERVING THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGE THE ENVIRONMENT." Jed Anderson, May 13, 2026, https://jedanderson.org/posts/does-observing-the-environment-change-the-environment.