Quantum-reality, consciousness, Giordano Bruno and the structures of the multiverse
10/11/08 18:36 Filed in: Free Thinking
(1) Indeterminism, (2) Non-locality and (3) Holism.
Indeterminism tells us that even if you know the current state and location of very small particles, you can't tell, from the laws you have, where those small particles will be or what their states will be in the future with certainty. Their momentum and position are indeterminate.
Non-locality is the fact that you can have a pair of small particles that interact with each other, later separate or “split” and go to different places.
One difficulty with this proposal is that it is not exactly clear what constitutes a `real split'.
Any quantum state can be analysed in terms of a momentum (or angular-momentum) distribution, for example, but is not clear whether that is a sufficient for an actual splitting of the worlds.
According to standard quantum mechanics, there is always some possibility (however remote it may be in practice) that two alternatives can be brought back together into some coherent combination.
This means that in the “many-worlds/multiverse” interpretation, we never really have many worlds, but really one `world set' which contains all the different `split worlds'.
We can therefore wonder whether all the split-off branches should be regarded not as `equally actual', but as `equally potential', and still capable of remerging, in which case it becomes much less clear what actually exists in a many-worlds or multiverse (Michael Moorcock) interpretation.
However, by interacting with one of these particles, you can affect the other even though there is a sizable distance between them.
It was found that in the quantum description of two objects, when those objects briefly interact and you pull them apart, in the description at least, they never come apart!
There's a kind of stickiness that connects them together, so they're bound together forever in the theory.
They never separate again, even though they're not interacting anymore. It was thought that this was just a theoretical artefact and that it was nothing that existed in the “real” world.
This peculiar feature in quantum theory called quantum interconnectedness, and it was discovered when quantum theory was discovered. Physicists noted it, said this is very strange, and then they promptly forgot about it for about fifty years. But recently, due to something called Bell’s Theorem, new interest has been discovered in this interconnectedness.
"This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature (entropy? But that wasn’t invented yet!), from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the centre of things."
Giordano Bruno wrote this around 1582…quantum-reality avant-la-lettre, before the jargon took over and made it “sound” more modern than it is. As such he became a symbol to represent the forward- looking freethinking type of philosopher, a truant, a philosophical tramp, a poetic vagrant and vague scientist and has become a symbol of scientific martyrdom.
Almost four centuries later Bell's theorem (1964) proves that this connection is not a theoretical artefact, but actually exists in the real world.
Holism is the negation of the idea that even if you know all properties of quanta that make up a complex object, the complex object has some properties that you can't infer from the properties of the quanta, referring to the fact that the “whole” will always be bigger than the sum of it’s parts.
Quantum theoretical terms such as entanglement, superposition, collapse, and complementarity are used without specific reference to how they are defined precisely and how they are applicable to specific situations.
For instance, conscious acts are just postulated to be interpretable somehow analogously to physical acts of measurement, or correlations in psychological systems are just postulated to be interpretable somehow analogously to physical entanglement.
Such accounts may provide fascinating science fiction, and they may even be important to inspire nuclei of ideas to be worked out in detail.
Reality is fuzzy, is crumbling, and it is ambiguous!
Somehow there's a basic ambiguity at the centre of the world -- the centre of the inanimate world, the unconscious world.
There are some formal resemblances between quantum theory and what I think the mind looks like from the inside! Or should look like! Or could look like!
Physicists are running out of problems because with the help of the increasing computing power they're too successful.
All the problems that are within our grasp are not solved entirely, but solved in principle.
So we're reaching for more and more things to capture within our net of understanding, our web of knowledge. People are now trying to explain the very creation event itself by using quantum physics, and running the particle quantum-trip down to the limit.
Now it's only a matter of money -- bigger and bigger accelerators, faster computers, more worker-ants, to fill in the remaining blanks.
But already now so many physicists, turning philosophers again, are looking for new questions to ask.
We're all connected in a sense, but in another sense we're not connected, totally individual quantum-events. There's a certain balance in nature.
In fact, that's one of the things that draw me to physics, even when I do not understand any of the mathematics involved.
Is this is the crossroads where physics, metaphysics, poetry and ancient religion connects? A crossroads called G.U.T. ?
Is this the quantum-point of origin?
We learn that the world is put together in such a strange way that it's like reading science fiction or reading religious scriptures.
You don't know what's going to happen next.
And this is certainly a strange way to make a universe.
All the patterns are perfectly ordinary; they preserve space and time, and they're separated at light speed.
Yet the building-stones that make up these patterns are not that way at all. They don't know anything about space and time, are in fact outside space and time, or beyond them. And yet they are connected instantaneously and stay interconnected ever after, even after splitting up again.
Now, why make a universe that way? And who would make a universe that way?
I would never make a universe that way.
To make a local universe, I would use local parts, from the local quantum-reality.
But whoever made this universe, or if it made itself, she (or he or they) did it with parts that were better than the whole, in some sense.
Consciousness is really a luxury, so for whatever reason, I believe that somehow quantum theory has to do with consciousness. It certainly is in my quantum-reality.
This makes me believe that somewhere within quantum mechanics we the basis for our consciousness and that somehow the reason we are conscious is not because we are really good computers!
Because actually we're not very good computers at all, because our consciousness pretty much impedes in some senses our computational faculties.
So any quantum system would do, but it needs to be coupled to a level of simplicity, elegance that we can understand.
The elegance and simplicity described in the evolution of the genuine propensiton die.
This would have to be conceived in following terms.
The propensiton die is tossed.
As the die flies through the air it is gradually split, exploded, into six potential, virtual, ghostly dice, each with a different face uppermost, each with a different probability density.
When the six potential dice hit the table top, five vanish into five different quantum realities) and one solid die remains in this actual experience/quantum-reality.
If the die is tossed repeatedly, the statistical outcome is determined by the probability densities of the six virtual dice just before contact with the table top.
( Maxwell [1988]:…. quantum substances are discrete propensitons. These `only evolve probabilistically intermittently in time, when relevant physical conditions arise, the values of propensities (or the states of propensitons) otherwise evolving deterministically')
Let’s get our feet back on the quantumrealistic ground!
As my colleague said at dinner today:” That means that somewhere, in some quantum reality I just won the lotto! I’m rich, I’m rich….THERE!
Indeterminism tells us that even if you know the current state and location of very small particles, you can't tell, from the laws you have, where those small particles will be or what their states will be in the future with certainty. Their momentum and position are indeterminate.
Non-locality is the fact that you can have a pair of small particles that interact with each other, later separate or “split” and go to different places.
One difficulty with this proposal is that it is not exactly clear what constitutes a `real split'.
Any quantum state can be analysed in terms of a momentum (or angular-momentum) distribution, for example, but is not clear whether that is a sufficient for an actual splitting of the worlds.
According to standard quantum mechanics, there is always some possibility (however remote it may be in practice) that two alternatives can be brought back together into some coherent combination.
This means that in the “many-worlds/multiverse” interpretation, we never really have many worlds, but really one `world set' which contains all the different `split worlds'.
We can therefore wonder whether all the split-off branches should be regarded not as `equally actual', but as `equally potential', and still capable of remerging, in which case it becomes much less clear what actually exists in a many-worlds or multiverse (Michael Moorcock) interpretation.
However, by interacting with one of these particles, you can affect the other even though there is a sizable distance between them.
It was found that in the quantum description of two objects, when those objects briefly interact and you pull them apart, in the description at least, they never come apart!
There's a kind of stickiness that connects them together, so they're bound together forever in the theory.
They never separate again, even though they're not interacting anymore. It was thought that this was just a theoretical artefact and that it was nothing that existed in the “real” world.
This peculiar feature in quantum theory called quantum interconnectedness, and it was discovered when quantum theory was discovered. Physicists noted it, said this is very strange, and then they promptly forgot about it for about fifty years. But recently, due to something called Bell’s Theorem, new interest has been discovered in this interconnectedness.
"This entire globe, this star, not being subject to death, and dissolution and annihilation being impossible anywhere in Nature (entropy? But that wasn’t invented yet!), from time to time renews itself by changing and altering all its parts. There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the centre of things."
Giordano Bruno wrote this around 1582…quantum-reality avant-la-lettre, before the jargon took over and made it “sound” more modern than it is. As such he became a symbol to represent the forward- looking freethinking type of philosopher, a truant, a philosophical tramp, a poetic vagrant and vague scientist and has become a symbol of scientific martyrdom.
Almost four centuries later Bell's theorem (1964) proves that this connection is not a theoretical artefact, but actually exists in the real world.
Holism is the negation of the idea that even if you know all properties of quanta that make up a complex object, the complex object has some properties that you can't infer from the properties of the quanta, referring to the fact that the “whole” will always be bigger than the sum of it’s parts.
Quantum theoretical terms such as entanglement, superposition, collapse, and complementarity are used without specific reference to how they are defined precisely and how they are applicable to specific situations.
For instance, conscious acts are just postulated to be interpretable somehow analogously to physical acts of measurement, or correlations in psychological systems are just postulated to be interpretable somehow analogously to physical entanglement.
Such accounts may provide fascinating science fiction, and they may even be important to inspire nuclei of ideas to be worked out in detail.
Reality is fuzzy, is crumbling, and it is ambiguous!
Somehow there's a basic ambiguity at the centre of the world -- the centre of the inanimate world, the unconscious world.
There are some formal resemblances between quantum theory and what I think the mind looks like from the inside! Or should look like! Or could look like!
Physicists are running out of problems because with the help of the increasing computing power they're too successful.
All the problems that are within our grasp are not solved entirely, but solved in principle.
So we're reaching for more and more things to capture within our net of understanding, our web of knowledge. People are now trying to explain the very creation event itself by using quantum physics, and running the particle quantum-trip down to the limit.
Now it's only a matter of money -- bigger and bigger accelerators, faster computers, more worker-ants, to fill in the remaining blanks.
But already now so many physicists, turning philosophers again, are looking for new questions to ask.
We're all connected in a sense, but in another sense we're not connected, totally individual quantum-events. There's a certain balance in nature.
In fact, that's one of the things that draw me to physics, even when I do not understand any of the mathematics involved.
Is this is the crossroads where physics, metaphysics, poetry and ancient religion connects? A crossroads called G.U.T. ?
Is this the quantum-point of origin?
We learn that the world is put together in such a strange way that it's like reading science fiction or reading religious scriptures.
You don't know what's going to happen next.
And this is certainly a strange way to make a universe.
All the patterns are perfectly ordinary; they preserve space and time, and they're separated at light speed.
Yet the building-stones that make up these patterns are not that way at all. They don't know anything about space and time, are in fact outside space and time, or beyond them. And yet they are connected instantaneously and stay interconnected ever after, even after splitting up again.
Now, why make a universe that way? And who would make a universe that way?
I would never make a universe that way.
To make a local universe, I would use local parts, from the local quantum-reality.
But whoever made this universe, or if it made itself, she (or he or they) did it with parts that were better than the whole, in some sense.
Consciousness is really a luxury, so for whatever reason, I believe that somehow quantum theory has to do with consciousness. It certainly is in my quantum-reality.
This makes me believe that somewhere within quantum mechanics we the basis for our consciousness and that somehow the reason we are conscious is not because we are really good computers!
Because actually we're not very good computers at all, because our consciousness pretty much impedes in some senses our computational faculties.
So any quantum system would do, but it needs to be coupled to a level of simplicity, elegance that we can understand.
The elegance and simplicity described in the evolution of the genuine propensiton die.
This would have to be conceived in following terms.
The propensiton die is tossed.
As the die flies through the air it is gradually split, exploded, into six potential, virtual, ghostly dice, each with a different face uppermost, each with a different probability density.
When the six potential dice hit the table top, five vanish into five different quantum realities) and one solid die remains in this actual experience/quantum-reality.
If the die is tossed repeatedly, the statistical outcome is determined by the probability densities of the six virtual dice just before contact with the table top.
( Maxwell [1988]:…. quantum substances are discrete propensitons. These `only evolve probabilistically intermittently in time, when relevant physical conditions arise, the values of propensities (or the states of propensitons) otherwise evolving deterministically')
Let’s get our feet back on the quantumrealistic ground!
As my colleague said at dinner today:” That means that somewhere, in some quantum reality I just won the lotto! I’m rich, I’m rich….THERE!