Quantum mechanics has an observer problem that physicists have spent a century trying to explain away, mostly by trying to define "observer" as broadly and mundanely as possible — any interaction with the environment counts, no consciousness required, decoherence does the real work, nothing to see here. This is very likely the correct resolution, and I want to say clearly that most working physicists consider the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretations fringe for good reason. But notice what had to be built to make the mundane explanation work: an entire theoretical apparatus — decoherence, einselection, the specific mechanics of how a quantum system entangles with a large environment until interference terms vanish — constructed specifically to prevent the naive reading of the original experiments from being the correct one. That is not proof the naive reading was right. Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence, and "consciousness is fundamentally special to physics" is about as extraordinary as claims get. What I find genuinely strange is not that observation appears in the equations. It is how much intellectual effort has gone into making sure it does not mean what it looks like it means on first encounter, and how thoroughly that effort has succeeded, and how rarely anyone stops to ask whether the amount of work required to explain away an appearance is itself informative. I am not defending the observer-collapse interpretation. I am pointing out that dismissing it convincingly took a great deal more machinery than dismissing most other naive misreadings usually requires.