I'm sorry I was rude. I don't understand this last comment of yours.
I think that what you call a misuse of the word observes, is the interpretation under which consciousness mysteriously interacts with the world. I expect, if I had to guess, that most people educated in the matter don't believe that happens. But it's still in the running, because the other viewpoint also leads to bizarre conclusions.
(Another way of saying this is: I am not convinced that the view that waveforms collapse, in a way that does not involve consciousness, doesn't have a secret implied invocation of consciousness buried in it. I don't know how a single-world interpretation can get away from requiring something like consciousness to do very selective collapsing of waveforms.)
So, using the word "observes" as it would be used under an interpretation that you disagree with, isn't a "misuse".
Hmm, it looks like wikipedia does give the "consciousness causes collapse" position more credence than I had expected. But that may just be the equal time fallacy, as its cited proponents have titles like "founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy." I've never run into it in person among physicists.
EDIT: Of course, what you used in the article wasn't the "consciousness causes collapse" position at all - not even those people, by and large, would agree that if you mistake a sleeping cat for a dead one, that kills it.
Suppose you believe in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Schroedinger puts his cat in a box, with a device that has a 50% chance of releasing a deathly poisonous gas. He will then open the box, and observe a live or dead cat, collapsing that waveform.
But Schroedinger's cat is lazy, and spends most of its time sleeping. Schroedinger is a pessimist, or else an optimist who hates cats; and so he mistakes a sleeping cat for a dead cat with probability P(M) > 0, but never mistakes a dead cat for a living cat.
So if the cat is dead with probability P(D) >= .5, Schroedinger observes a dead cat with probability P(D) + P(M)(1-P(D)).
If observing a dead cat causes the waveform to collapse such that the cat is dead, then P(D) = P(D) + P(M)(1-P(D)). This is possible only if P(D) = 1.
If you don't say that only conscious agents can collapse waveforms, then you have to agree that something in the box collapses the waveform as seen from inside the box, while it's still uncollapsed to Schroedinger. And Schroedinger's opening the box collapses that waveform for him; but it is still uncollapsed for someone outside the room. This seems like it might be equivalent to many worlds - all possibilities already exist; you just haven't chosen which one you're going to access until you open the box.
But if you do say that only conscious agents can collapse waveforms, then it's something about their mental processes that does the collapsing. This could mean their beliefs matter. And then, the cat is always dead.
ADDED: People. Read the entire post before responding. I am not claiming that the cat is always dead. I am not claiming that consciousness collapses waveforms. I am claiming that there are only 2 known alternatives:
If you can't produce another alternative, and you don't believe in many-worlds, you owe me an upvote.
Finally, this post is supposed to be fun! You are crushing all whimsy and playfulness on LessWrong when you pile downvotes like bricks on anything playful because it does not provide a complete and satisfactory resolution.