Re: Quantum Probability and Decision Theory

[Tim May]

First, I sent this in error to the CP list...it was intended for another list. (My mailer has command completion and I am so used to typing "cy" in the To: box and having it expand to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" that I sent it to CP by accident. As to why type list addresses rather than "Reply to All," this is to get the list in the To: and not the Cc: and not have misc. other lists or persons getting copied--as in this reply, where TD is initially in the To: and CP is in the Cc:, in OS X Mail.)

Next, Tyler Durden uses "you" below to refer to the words of someone who is not me in all cases. Another person wrote much of what he quotes...I wish he would figure out how to include the "blah blah wrote" before quoting someone else's words.

On Tuesday, December 24, 2002, at 08:25 AM, Tyler Durden wrote:

    Yes. I strongly suspect that "minds" are quantum mechanical.

Penrose also believes this, and has actually identified Aharanov-Bohm-like structures in certain simple organisms used to probe their immediate environment.

Max Tegmark fairly conclusively demonstrated that decoherence occurs far too rapidly in proteins and other biological structures for QM to be an actor. As for Stuart Hameroff's nanotubules idea, I've been a skeptic of this ever since meeting him at the A-LIFE Conference in 1987.

Penrose's arguments for the human brain, however, are also fairly hand-waving as far as I'm concerned, when they can be understood. I found several other practicing physicists who had a hard time understanding Penrose. But then again, it IS Penrose, so there may be a lot there we simply aren't prepared to understand.

I don't think so. Plenty of physicists (and others) who did great work in one area have had weird theories. Examples abound.

The no cloning theoren of QM seems to have the "right flavor" to explain
how it is that we can not have first person experience of each other's
minds, whereas the UTM model seems to strongly imply that I should be able
to know exactly what you are thinking. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, this
is a "the dog did not bark" scenario.

I just can't see any basis for invoking quantum mechanics and "no cloning" for why I am not you, or why I cannot plausibly experience being you, and vice versa, and so on.

This is the subject of David Deutch's book "The Fabric of Reality", and its worth a look (Deutch is a noted figure in the field of quantum computation).

Aside from his arguments, I too see no essential reason for invoking quantum mechanics in this context. And as for a "No cloning" theorem in quantum mechanics...never heard of it.

Google should be your friend. Or any of the recent books on quantum computing.

Here's one Web introduction:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem

But perhaps you are referring to some of the EPR-type wierdness.

Who is the "you" here? The original poster or me, saying I was skeptical of his beliefs?

In any case, I'm sorry I accidentally posted this. On the bright side, my accident rate for these articles has been a couple over the past several months. About a millichoate.


--Tim May
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche