Neil
New
If it is the secretary's awareness which represents the collapse, then she has that awareness in either case (if she knows about the experiment). But now that there has been an admission that it is supposedly only awareness of the experiment which causes collapse, then scenarios which build conscious organisms into them (like a secretary), but which fail to collapse unless there has been a non-conscious collapse, do look like good candidates to demonstrate that consciousness is not necessary (so I take back what I said).
Or we have to be willing to believe that we are in a state of superposition, even now.
Linda
I don't see how that would indicate that consciousness was not necessary. Someone or something conscious has to be involved at some point otherwise we have no evidence of anything ever occurring at all and therefore have evidence of nothing.