I have a question...

Recently I came across this article (which mentions Rene, hello!):
"Connecting all the Dots"

Enjoyable read, until I got to this part:

The Imaginary Foundation states: "This movement of things from the realm of potential, the "original medium" of Tesla to the manifesting patterns of Whitehead through the act of conscious volition, finds support in the so-called "Copenhagen Interpretation" of the recent quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

The mere act of observation seems to interact with a system. This would point to the potential that our expectations, our imaginations, help give rise to what occurs."

A few years ago I would've been all over that. It's the favorite stuff of new-age self-help writers.
However, recently I've grown more skeptical which led to reading tons of material written by actual scientists who talk about subjects like "the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation" first hand. Murray Gell-Mann invested some portion of his "Quark and Jaguar" to address what it means to make an observation within a system.

Syntax is a problem. To make an observation means to literally interact with a system being watched. A system is able to observe itself; I recall one example of this record being a radioactive decay trail in an organic sample.
What observation means to a scientist vs a "layman" is different; we need to be sure that we're speaking the same language before we can say we understand and begin to make fantastic statements that eventually result in the confusion of a populace who receives second(+)hand information and believes that to be valid.

At once, scientists and technically-minded people have been known to lag behind the intuitions of free-thinkers. In terms of the original subject, we now know that thoughts are quantifiable. All events happen in the physical realm; there are motions for everything that we name aesthetically.

Wildcat just tumblr'd this video:
Thought Controlled Computing Ariel Garten, CEO, Interaxon


The influencing of events with one's mind is a top concern of New Age thinking. One of the arguments against that, made by skeptics & scientists, is that these writers' understanding of the way physical systems work in inconclusive & misguided; that the Copenhagen Interpretation indicates no such thing. One of the counters to that is that "most people" are unable (or not open minded enough) to access their "mental power" sufficiently for this to be immediately seen as valid, or that this kind of event is too complicated to test... etc. — somewhat valid, as it does get more difficult to predict complex systems, but dangerously "magical" and thus regressive.

Back to my question; I wonder if anyone here will be able to answer it: if it's correct to consider our universe as a synergistic system in which nothing is isolated (unlike the Newtonian view which allows for separate objects) then we are, in effect, the system observing itself... is it possible that we don't need the aid of tech tools to be "connected" and have influence, like the New Age writers claim?

I would think not; problems with "locality" arise (influence must be local), Heisenberg's uncertainty principle would seem to disallow for it, the energy required would seem too great...
But seeing what we can do with mental-computing brought up these questions again, mostly because I don't actually know how it works, nor do I feel well enough versed in physics to answer myself with a No, neither is our scope of knowledge so complete that answers from either side of the argument are doubtless.

What do you guys think?