Re: Non-locality and MWI

[Bruce Kellett]

On 4/05/2016 3:41 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 03 May 2016, at 00:32, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 3/05/2016 1:49 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 02 May 2016, at 07:54, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 2/05/2016 3:15 pm, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 12:13 AM, Bruce Kellett 
> wrote:



No, I disagree. The setting *b* has no effect on what happens
at a remote location is sufficiently precise to encapsulate
exactly what physicists mean by locality. In quantum field
theory, this is generalized to the notion of local causality,
which is the statement that the commutators of all spacelike
separate variables vanish -- as you mention below.



And if you used full quantum description of the measuring 
apparatus and experimenter, and didn't assume any collapse on 
measurement, then there would in general be no single "setting b" 
in the region of spacetime where one experimenter was choosing a 
setting, but rather a superposition of different settings. Do you 
think your preferred definition can be meaningfully applied to 
this case, and if so how?


I do not know what you here mean by "collapse on measurement"? It 
seems that you might be confusing a collapse to a single world 
after measurement with the projection postulate of standard quantum 
theory. The projection postulate is essential if one is to get 
stable physical results -- repeated openings of the box in 
Schrödinger's cat experiments would result in oscillations between 
dead and alive cats.


The projection postulate is replaced by the FPI in Everett, and as I 
explained yesterday, it is just self-entanglement, or what I call 
often the contagion of superposition:


Alice * (up + down) = Alice * up + Alice * down.

If Alice look, as many times as she want at the up/down state of the 
particle, she will find up (and always up) *and* down and always 
down. The reason is that once she find up, Alice becomes Alice-up, 
and that state does no more factor out the particle state (unless 
memory erasure).


That is just the projection postulate, it cannot be replaced if you 
want to agree with observation.


Well OK. If that is the projection postulate, then it is a theorem in 
QM-without collapse, through the direct use of the First Person 
Indeterminacy.


As I thought, you have confused this with the collapse of the wave 
function to a single world.


That is the confusion of the Copenhagen people, who believe 
(correctly) that a measurement select one world among many, but 
believe (incorrectly) that the other worlds, or wave suterms, have 
mysteriously disappear.


With Everett analysis of measurement, we have:

Alice * (up + down) = Alice * up + Alice * down. (linearity of tensor 
product),


and it becomes:

Alice-seeing-up * up + Alice-seeing-down * down  (linearity of time 
evolution)



With the copenhagen collapse of the wave, we have:

Alice * (up + down) = Alice * up + Alice * down. (linearity of tensor 
product),


and it becomes

Alice-seeing-up * up  (non-linearity of time evolution)

or

Alice-seeing-down * down (again with a non-linearity of time evolution)

The proportion of worlds, or the probability of results being given by 
the (square-root of 1/2)^2 (= 1/2), square root hidden above for 
reason of readability.


When it is boiled down, this is nothing more than a matter of taste. By 
concentrating on the individual worlds, so that


  A(|+>|-> - |->|+>) --> A(+)|+>|->   OR A(-)|->|+>

where A(+) means "Alice sees + as her result", and so on, the 
conventional understanding simply implements the insights coming from 
decoherence and wider entanglement with the environment, leading to the 
emergence of disjoint worlds: the original pure state reduces to a mixed 
state (represented by the use of 'OR' in the above equation) as a result 
of the partial trace over environmental degrees of freedom. The 
alternative formulation (where 'OR' is replaced by '+') simply retains 
the original pure state and does not represent the formation of disjoint 
worlds following environmental decoherence.


This is sometimes referred to (following Tegmark) as the difference 
between the 'frog' and 'bird' views. Nothing substantial hangs on this 
-- it is just a difference of perspective which adds nothing to the 
state. The 'frog' view is what you would call a result of FPI: I see it 
as a result of the formation of actual disjoint worlds that continue to 
evolve separately, never to influence one another again. The 'bird' view 
is an abstraction that never actually influences anyone or anything.


Unless you sort out this confusion you will never understand quantum 
mechanics.


You see a confusion, because sometimes I talk about the projection 
postulate in the copenhagen frame, where it is associated with the 
collapse during the corresponding measurement, and sometimes I talk 
about the projection postulate in the frame of the non-collapse 
formulation of QM 

Re: Cryonics punched cards and the brain

[John Clark]

On Tue, May 3, 2016  Bruno Marchal  wrote:


> ​> ​
>> If you don't want to play word games then DON'T ASK ME TO DEFINE "SENSES"!
>
>
> ​> ​
>  But "sense" is a contentious word. It has been the object of entire
> thread.


​It's not just you but I have found that whenever I back somebody into a
corner they demand a definition, and if I'm foolish enough to comply I can
only do so with words, and then of course they demand a further definition
of at least one of those words. And round and round we go.

And sense is not the object of this thread and I should know because I
started it. The object is memory and intelligent behavior although you keep
talking about consciousness, a soft subject because unlike intelligence
there is no way to prove a consciousness theory wrong.


> ​> ​
> If you are serious with the definition you gave
>

​In general I'm far FAR more serious about examples than definitions, a
child does not learn how the world works through definitions but through
examples, and a AI would do the same.

​> ​
> Robinson Arithmetic is Turing universal,
>

​Mr. Robinson was made of matter that obeys the laws of physics, and so was
Mr. Turing, and so were all the books you read to learn about what they
wrote​. And you are made of matter that obeys the laws of physics too.



>
>>> ​>>> ​
>>> this does not mean that primary matter is needed on that process.
>>
>>
> ​
>> ​>> ​
>> Prove it.
>
>
> ​> ​
> See most of my paper.
>

​My? Are you made of matter that obeys the laws of physics?​

​Is paper made out of pure numbers or out of ​
fibers of cellulose pulp
​?​


>
​>> ​
>> I don't ask that you do anything as grand as produce consciousness or
>> intelligent behavior, just add 2 and 2 and provide an answer without using
>> matter that obeys the laws of physics.
>
>
> ​> ​
> As material being talking to a material being, I cannot do that.
>

​Obviously you can't but if you're right there is no reason you couldn't.
If everything is made of numbers then why are you "material" but the number
42 is not?​

​You must have some property that the number 42 does not and I know what it
is.​


> ​> ​
> we make our hypotheses clear, you can see that number theory does not rely
> on any hypothesis of physics.
>

​Yes, and that's why number theory ​can't add 2+2 without the help of
matter that obeys the laws of physics.


​> ​
>> ​No universal machine can
>> ​ even exist without matter that obeys the laws of physics.​
>>
>
> ​> ​
> because you define "exist" by "exist physically", but that begs the
> question.
>

Alan Turing
​existed physically, Harry Potter did not. Is that begging the question
too?​


​> ​
> the meaning of Turing or Church definition of universal machine or
> universal lambda expression does not assume anything physical.
>

​And that's why non physical Turing machines are static and do nothing
unless the physical is thrown into the mix.​



> ​> ​
> Again that confusion of level or domain.
>

​
Then relieve my confusion by explaining why JK Rowling didn't confer
physicality onto Harry Potter. All of Rowling's books can be encoded as one
large integer so what's the problem? Was it that she wasn't good enough at
arithmetic or was it because matter has something that numbers alone can't
produce?

​
>> ​>>​
>> A non-material Turing machine can't calculate, or do anything else.
>
>
> ​> ​
> Can't calculate physically, but can calculate arithmetically or
> mathematically.
>

​Sounds like the same con game the Catholic Church pulled with
transubstantiation, yes it passes all physical tests for being ordinary run
of the mill bread and wine, but *REALLY* it's the body and blood of Jesus
Christ the Son of God. Yes a non-material Turing machine looks like it's
doing nothing, but *REALLY* it's calculating like mad. ​Just trust me,
would I lie to you?

> ​>
>>> ​>> ​
>>> What is the role of matter concerning the truth that 6 does not divide
>>> 67?
>>
>>
> ​
>> ​>>​
>> You (a thing made of matter) are unable to take a pile of 67 rocks
>> (things that are also made of matter) and form 6 equal but separate piles
>> of rocks from them. That's how mathematicians figured out that 6 does not
>> divide 67, although early mathematicians may have used physical fingers
>> more often than physical rocks.
>
> ​>​
> That is a consequence, not a preamble to figure out that 67 is not
> divisible by 6.
>

​I would maintain that if there was nothing, that is to say if there were
no physical thing, then neither 6 nor 67 nor any other number would exist
because there would be nothing to count and nobody
​around to count or even to
think about
​numbers.​
​


> ​> ​
> You seem to beg the question by pointing directly on physical
> implementation of mathematical notion, which does exist, but does not prove
> that the mathematical notions are necessarily physical.
>

​When the physical is removed ​
mathematical notions
​ *ALWAYS* become inert. What more more proof do you need? ​


> ​> ​
> We have defined the 

Re: Non-locality and MWI

[Bruno Marchal]

On 03 May 2016, at 00:32, Bruce Kellett wrote:


On 3/05/2016 1:49 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 02 May 2016, at 07:54, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On 2/05/2016 3:15 pm, Jesse Mazer wrote:
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 12:13 AM, Bruce Kellett  wrote:


No, I disagree. The setting b has no effect on what happens at a  
remote location is sufficiently precise to encapsulate exactly  
what physicists mean by locality. In quantum field theory, this  
is generalized to the notion of local causality, which is the  
statement that the commutators of all spacelike separate  
variables vanish -- as you mention below.



And if you used full quantum description of the measuring  
apparatus and experimenter, and didn't assume any collapse on  
measurement, then there would in general be no single "setting b"  
in the region of spacetime where one experimenter was choosing a  
setting, but rather a superposition of different settings. Do you  
think your preferred definition can be meaningfully applied to  
this case, and if so how?


I do not know what you here mean by "collapse on measurement"? It  
seems that you might be confusing a collapse to a single world  
after measurement with the projection postulate of standard  
quantum theory. The projection postulate is essential if one is to  
get stable physical results -- repeated openings of the box in  
Schrödinger's cat experiments would  result in oscillations  
between dead and alive cats.


The projection postulate is replaced by the FPI in Everett, and as  
I explained yesterday, it is just self-entanglement, or what I call  
often the contagion of superposition:


Alice * (up + down) = Alice * up + Alice * down.

If Alice look, as many times as she want at the up/down state of  
the particle, she will find up (and always up) *and* down and  
always down. The reason is that once she find up, Alice becomes  
Alice-up, and that state does no more factor out the particle state  
(unless memory erasure).


That is just the projection postulate, it cannot be replaced if you  
want to agree with observation.


Well OK. If that is the projection postulate, then it is a theorem in  
QM-without collapse, through the direct use of the First Person  
Indeterminacy.




As I thought, you have confused this with the collapse of the wave  
function to a single world.


That is the confusion of the Copenhagen people, who believe  
(correctly) that a measurement select one world among many, but  
believe (incorrectly) that the other worlds, or wave suterms, have  
mysteriously disappear.


With Everett analysis of measurement, we have:

Alice * (up + down) = Alice * up + Alice * down.   (linearity of  
tensor product),


and it becomes:

Alice-seeing-up * up + Alice-seeing-down * down  (linearity of time  
evolution)



With the copenhagen collapse of the wave, we have:

Alice * (up + down) = Alice * up + Alice * down.   (linearity of  
tensor product),


and it becomes

Alice-seeing-up * up  (non-linearity of time evolution)

or

Alice-seeing-down * down (again with a non-linearity of time evolution)

The proportion of worlds, or the probability of results being given by  
the (square-root of 1/2)^2 (= 1/2), square root hidden above for  
reason of readability.





Unless you sort out this confusion you will never understand quantum  
mechanics.



You see a confusion, because sometimes I talk about the projection  
postulate in the copenhagen frame, where it is associated with the  
collapse during the corresponding measurement, and sometimes I talk  
about the projection postulate in the frame of the non-collapse  
formulation of QM (Everett), in which case there is no collapse  
associated of course, but the differentiating or bifurcating realities/ 
computations (relative terms of the linear wave).


See Price for the analysis of the singlet state in those terms. Or  
Tipler, that you interpreted incorrectly apparently by avoiding the  
first person indeterminacy.


[Computationalist Aparte
And with Digital Mechanism, the mind-body problem is reduced with the  
problem of justifying the wave-matrix itself from an apparently larger  
one: all halting computations (equivalently, all true sigma_1  
arithmetical sentences).


For this we can define "bet on p = 1" by []p & p, with p sigma_, with  
two slight but important variants ([]p & <>p,  []p & <>p & p).


The three of them gives rise to a quantization obeying quantum logic,  
with semantics in term of differentiating neighborhood, or (at the G*  
level) a more complicated limiting proximity structure. The key  
advantage is that such logics appears at the G* level (in case you  
have read one of my papers) and this help to understand the (giant)  
difference between the qualia and the quanta, by the difference  
between G and G* (inherited by the variants above, except []p & p, a  
very interesting fact actually, but I will stop here on this for now).]



Hmm..., It looks like on this list, it is the 

Re: Cryonics punched cards and the brain

[Bruno Marchal]

On 02 May 2016, at 23:37, John Clark wrote:


On Mon, May 2, 2016  Bruno Marchal  wrote:

​>>​>>​ ​If it's physical then if it is of a large enough  
magnitude it can impact one of the senses without any intermediary.


​>​>>​ ​And how you define "senses"?



​​>> ​And ​now​ ​ladies and gentlemen ​it's time to  
play the definitions game​! ​Tell me how you define "define".  
Then tell me how you define "define "define"".


​> ​You said that you define physical.

​And I did.​

​> ​let us not enter word game.

​If you don't want to play word games then DON'T ASK ME TO DEFINE  
"SENSES"!​



But "sense" is a contentious word. It has been the object of entire  
thread.


If you are serious with the definition you gave, that's OK for me, it  
ease the reduction of physics to number, given that "sense", with  
computationalism is already defined in term of infinities of (true &  
provable) arithmetical relations.







​>>​ I don't want to play that game, instead I'll give you  
something much MUCH better than definitions, I will give you  
examples; sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.


So the physical reality is based on those animals abilities?

​Yep.​

​> ​What was physical reality before the apparition of life?

​Unlike the number 42 a photon can directly effect the senses and  
thus subjectivity today and could have done the same thing back  
before animals evolved if subjectivity existed back then, which it  
didn't. So by my definition a photon is physical and the number 42  
is not.



Robinson Arithmetic is Turing universal, and so does emulate the Milky  
Way including its self-aware entities, and the action of photon on  
retina.












I accept that generic matter and the laws of physics can be used to  
make a arbitrarily large number of copies of you that are  
indistinguishable from the original you both objectively and more  
importantly subjectively.


OK. Me too, but this does not mean that primary matter is needed on  
that process.


​Prove it.


See most of my paper. I proved something stronger, which is that  
primary matter cannot be used. Even if it existed, it cannot be used  
to single out a computation among the infinitely many which are  
emulated "out of time and space" in a tiny fragment of arithmetic.






I don't ask that you do anything as grand as produce consciousness  
or intelligent behavior, just add 2 and 2 and provide an answer  
without using matter that obeys the laws of physics.


As material being talking to a material being, I cannot do that. But  
that has nothing to do with the mathematical, and unphysical fact,  
that 2+2=4. Once we make our hypotheses clear, you can see that number  
theory does not rely on any hypothesis of physics. This has nothing to  
do with the fact that earthly mathematician needs to suppose the  
existence of trains, planes and physical space to go to a congress in  
mathematics. You confuse levels of reality. I have already give this  
explanation.







Do that any you've not only won the argument but I will be the first  
to invest in your new computer hardware startup in Silicon Valley. A  
hardware company that has zero manufacturing costs because it needs  
no hardware will soon be bigger than Google and Facebook  
combined.  ​


​> ​No universal machine can distinguish an arithmetical  
emulation of a physical reality emulating them, or a physical  
emulation of a physical reality emulating them,


​No universal machine can​ even exist without matter that obeys  
the laws of physics.​



because you define "exist" by "exist physically", but that begs the  
question.





And I remind you that Turing's paper on the subject was, as the name  
suggests, made of paper; and paper is composed of matter as is the  
brain that first thought it.



But the meaning of Turing or Church definition of universal machine or  
universal lambda expression does not assume anything physical. Again  
that confusion of level or domain.







​>> ​​A numbers can't process another number without a  
intermediary.


But that intermediary can be any Turing universal system, material  
or arithmetical


​A non-material Turing machine can't calculate, or do anything else.



Can't calculate physically, but can calculate arithmetically or  
mathematically.







​> ​What is the role of matter concerning the truth that 6 does  
not divide 67?


​You (a thing made of matter) are unable to take a pile of 67 rocks  
(things that are also made of matter) and form 6 equal but separate  
piles of rocks from them. That's how mathematicians figured out that  
6 does not divide 67, although early mathematicians may have used  
physical fingers more often than physical rocks.


That is a consequence, not a preamble to figure out that 67 is not  
divisible by 6.


Gievn the fact that we are interested in the mind-body problem, such a  
remark is important, and it would be nice if you could one day give  
all your hypotheses. You seem