Yeah, it’s pretty unlikely that “a portion of stellar motion is volitional”, but it’s impressive that the guy got a publication out of it. And Olaf Stapledon does remain awesome.
BUT
You didn’t give enough weight to the serious problem of quantum entanglement. Here’s a favorite line about Bell’s Theorem (before Scientific American got remodeled to be more pop):
The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment
– Scientific American, “The Quantum Theory and Reality”, November 1979, p. 158
OK, we already knew that some people were saying that. Now we know that one of the people who was saying that managed to get his words into a layman’s science magazine. Big deal. Does he give any reasons why we ought to agree with him? Are those reasons any good?
It’s arguably worse than that, since the specific quotation is actually the text below the title that was surely penned by a sub-editor. But the article itself was by d’Espagnat, who was undoubtedly one of the leading players in interpreting QM at the time. He only uses the word “consciousness” exactly once in the article itself.
The Universe thinks, therefore it is.
But could the Universe think before it became? And did the Universe think, therefore it became?
Can the thought precede the thinker? Does the thought make the thinker?
This is some heave stuff, youse guys.