This almost went in the science section; however, I believe it is actually a philosophical point. Some of my friends who know me as a monist and naturalist will send me things they come across that they think challenge some of the basic tenets of my position, for example this article, "Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It".

I think this is misleading and actually completely false. Reality exists independent of the observer: however, observations at the quantum level may indicate that it is affected by the observer, or may just indicate that we have no idea how to explain what we are seeing.

Yes, broadly speaking it is, although it seems to me, we usually are not referring to all possible universes when we use the word.


Yes, observers exist and are part of this reality; however, the existence of reality is not dependent on them.

It is somewhat appropriate, as well.

Part of the cognitive dissonance, you should excuse the expression, between "common sense" and quantum theory is the hoary old platitude, "as above, so below." That might be a convenient expectation, yet it is not reasonable to expect different results under different contexts.

How would your knowledge of its existence, or lack thereof, affect it? And if it was never there, how would you know that is was never there?

What you are referring to is known as the "measurement problem". The two main views about it are the classical Copenhagen interpretation, which bothered Einstein, and Hugh Everett's "many worlds" hypothesis.

It's allied to a rehash of that old existential saw about the tree in the quad(rangle). Does existence of a phenomenon require a conscious observer to be awaren of it? Human logic says no, prima facie, but our POV makes that a shaky construct too.
The role of the observer in "the double slit experiment" (q.v.) raises a number of questions, along the lines of mere observation possibly altering conditions.
I think such an assertion falls over, but I know it'll be argued about for a long while yet. If one holds to the Big Bang, clearly aeons of matter existed without any conscious beings around.I won't go into deities!
But if you hold to panpsychism (q.v.), you may step away from the idea that a conscious observer must be a discrete living organism in a frame of reference, so perhaps we might ask, is the whole shebang (the universe) conscious in some way? And we have no way to test that yet.