RE: A paper by Bas C. van Fraassen
Good article and, as I see it, a barely-concealed challenge to actually come up with an experiment that will prove or disprove MWI. I’ve seen a few on the Los Alamos site from time to time, but nothing that wraps it up. And Young’s experiment shouldn’t count. From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Colin Hales Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:37 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: A paper by Bas C. van Fraassen I am pretty sure that there is a profound misinterpretation and/or unrecognized presupposition deeply embedded in the kinds of discussion of which Van F and your reply and Bruno's fits. It's so embedded that there appears to be no way that respondents can type words from a perspective in which the offered view may be wrong or a sidebar in a bigger but unrecognised picture. It's very hard to write anything to combat view X when the only words which ever get written are those presuming X, and X is assuming a position of explaining everything, yet doesn't. In the long run I predict that: 1) The 'many worlds' do not exist and are a product of presuppositions about scientific description not yet understood by the proponents of MWI. 2) QM will be recognized as merely an appearance of the world, not the world as it is. 3) The universe that exists now is.the only universe that exists at the moment. Despite this, the many worlds are explorable, physically by 'virtual matter' behaving as if they existed (by an appropriate entity made of the stuff of our single universe) 4) The MWI has arisen as a result of a human need to make certain mathematics right, not the need to explain the natural world. This, in the longer term will be recognised as a form of religiosity which will be seen to imbue the physicists of this era, who are preselected by the education system for prowess in manupulating symbols. The difference between this behaviour and explaining the natural world is not understood by the physicists/mathematicians of this era. (In contrast, I regard myself as a scientist an explainer of things-natural ...which I claim as different to being a physicists/mathematician in this strange era we inhabit) 5) COMP is false a computer instantiation of rules of how a world appears to be, and a world are not the same thing. 6) COMP is false a computer instantiation of rules of how a brain appears to be is not a brain. 7) Corollary: scientific description of how the world appears and what the world is made of are not the same description _and_ computer instantiations of either set is not a world. 8) The issue that causes scientific descriptions (like QM) to be confused with actual reality is a cultural problem in science, not a technical problem with what science has/has not discovered. 9) That most of the readers of this list will stare at this list of statements and be as mystified about how I can possibly think they are right as I am about those readers' view that they can't be right. BTW I have a paper coming out in Jan 2011 in 'Journal of Machine Consciousness' in which I think I may have proved COMP false as a 'law of nature' ... here in this universe, (or any _actual_ universe, really). At the least I think the argument is very closeand I have provided the toolkit for its final demise, which someone else might use to clinch the deal. This leads to my final observation: 10) I think the realization of the difference between 'wild-type' computation (actual natural entities interacting) and 'artificial computation' (a computer made of the actual entities interacting, waving its components around in accordance with rules /symbols defined by a third party) will become mainstream in the long run. - It's quite possible that the COMP of the Bruno kind is actually right , but presented into the wrong epistemic domain and not understood as such. Time will tell. The way the Bruno-style' COMP can be right is for it to make testable predictions of the outward appearance of the mechanism for delivery of phenomenal consciousness in brain material NC (natural computation) and AC (artificial computation) is the crucial distinction. I don't think the QM/MWI proponent can conceive of that distinction. Perhaps it might be helpful if those readers try and conceive of such a situation, just as an exercise.. cheers colin hales Bruno Marchal wrote: HI Stephen, Just a short reply to your post to Colin, and indirectly to your last posts. On 22 Oct 2010, at 10:53, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Colin, Let me put you are ease, van Fraassen has sympathies with the frustrations that you have mentioned here and I share them as well, but let's look closely at the point that you make here as I think that it does to the heart of several problems related to the notion of an observer. OTOH, it seems to me that you are suggesting that the objective view is just a form of consensus
RE: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
-Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Charles Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 2:20 PM To: Everything List Subject: Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds On Feb 22, 8:12 pm, rmiller rmil...@legis.com wrote: From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jason Resch Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 11:38 PM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds Huw Price suggests that our view of causality is strongly influenced by the way we're embedded / oriented in space-time. He points out in Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point that the laws of physics are almost entirely time-symmetric, with the result that (for example) you can't tell which way up a Feynman diagram is - either time-orientation is equally valid. Perhaps, but it seems to me that thermodynamics and entropy are the critical factors. If we accept what the laws of physics appear to say, that nature is for the most part indifferent to the direction of time, this implies that quite a few things are a lot less strange than we think. Delayed-choice and ERP experiments become trivial to explain, for example, once we stop thinking of the particles involved as similar to macroscopic objects with a clear arrow of time, and assume their state is equally constrained by past and future boundary conditions (e.g. the emitter and detector). This view is similar to Cramer's Transactional Interpretation and Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory, but makes them both look unnecessarily complicated, since it doesn't require any new physics, it merely suggests we take the existing physics at face value (as Hugh Everett III once did, with similarly interesting results). Agree in part. It seems as though the same processes that result in the laws of thermodynamics/entropy may operate similarly across MW. Price's view allows us to focus on the real mystery of time, which is not why it appears to flow in one direction, but why the region of space-time near the Big Bang was in a state of very low entropy. I have a suspicion that the answer is something to do with the shape of space-time (but I haven't yet been able to get my head around how this connects with breaking eggs and melting ice...) Admittedly that only pushes the why back a step but that is still progress: rather than attempting to explain a non-existent preference for one time direction that we thought was embedded somehow in the laws of physics, we now need to explain why the universe has a particular boundary condition. (Possibly Tegmark's MUH comes in here?) Max Tegmark is one of the big names in this--for good reason. But the guys who may have first opened the hatch were Univ. of Ariz astronomer Bill Tifft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Tifft who discovered evidence for redshift quantization, and Helsinki physicist Ari Lehto who first proposed the concept of 3D time. I think we'll look back on their work as seminal and as far-reaching as the Hunter College guy who (in 1972) first proposed that Big Bang started from a vacuum fluctuation zero event. Helmut Schmidt's experiments appear to (purportedly) involve psychokinesis; I have a feeling that I've read various attempts to debunk these claims in the Skeptical Enquirer but unfortunately my subscription lapsed some years ago, and I can't recall the details. Schmidt took a lot of heat for his tendency to frame the experiment in the worst possible terms. But unlike many others, his experiments can--and have-- been replicated. Problem is, no one is sure what it means to influence the outcome of an experiment after the fact. It does sound like an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence to back it up. The website I looked at was a mass of statistics that I didn't really follow, unfortunately. My own rules of thumb: 1. Follow Fischer: if it's p0.05 (chance of random is 1 in 20) then it's good. And. 2. Avoid meta-analysis. As for the role of consciousness in all of this, I believe some answers have already been found-back in 1978 when Stanford Clinical Psychologist Ernest R. Hilgard discovered the Hidden Observer phenomenon. Seems there's an executive function in each of us that comes to the fore only under extremely deep (60+) hypnosis. His book on the subject, Divided Consciousness is fascinating reading. Someone familiar with Many Worlds theory will come away with the impression that there evolved as a mechanism to keep track of the local many-world space we inhabit. This is a facinating idea, although Hidden Observer theory is still contraversial (since the experiments involved deep hypnosis, presumably the results may have been the result of suggestion by the experimenters?). There's always that possibility, but much of this apparently has been double-blinded. If you can find a Finnish translator, I suggest you look into the work by the (rather
RE: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
-Original Message- From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Charles Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 11:43 PM To: Everything List Subject: Re: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds Good point, but among the many fates there is always the optimal path. Perhaps evolution resulted in a mechanism able to visualize all of the possible (MW) paths and choose the most advantageous one? There's certainly enough evidence to suggest that in moments of crisis, some of us are afforded advice from an elevated perspective. Maybe what some describe as guardian angels are merely our hidden observers, directing us in a path through the multiworlds? Unfortunately, given the walls between physics, philosophy and psychology--it's unlikely that we're going to see any unifying theories any time soon. This is something I'd really like to believe! (I'm trying to write a story which is based on this sort of premise, as it happens :-) A colleague of mine in a previous job believed he'd had experiences that illustrated this principle, and he certainly sounded convincing, although only anecdotal of course. I certainly think we still have a lot to learn about the mind and consciousness (always assuming it's possible to do so). I think there is the possibility that one can experimentally test whether consciousness includes links between the real world and the possible parallel ones: set up a double-blind experiment where 100 subjects are given 5 tries to predict the appearance of any of 20 possible figures. However, the machine is rigged to show only (say) ten--the rest are actually impossible to show (and there's no repeat.) Run the test, then score how many predicted the possible figures vs how many predicted those figures that weren't possible. The hypothesis: the predicted possible: scores will dominate over the impossible ones--thus suggesting that knowledge a knowledge of worlds where the potential objects showed up on the screen. RM -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
RE: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds
To me, the Many-Minds interpretation requires significant changes in frames of reference. Suppose you view a particular world out of many as a 2-dimensional surface. Layers of surfaces comprise the local environment of a particular section of Many Worlds. Now think of a behavior pattern as a set of elements and interactions between elements. Each of the many-worlds is associated with a snapshot of your individual behavior pattern unique to that world. But suppose there are similarities between your behavior patterns in worlds A B and C-that set of similar configurations forms what can be described as a fibre bundle through multiple surfaces. If so, this may suggest that at some level consciousness experiences more than one world surface at a time. If the ratio of interactions to elements decreases (you enter a darkened room) then the similarities in the behavior system config should result in an increase in the depth of the many world surfaces. Increase the ratio of interactions to elements and the complexity of your behavior set increases-linking you to a particular world surface. It would seem that, like relativity, the frame of reference is not absolute-and in fact changes as rapidly as perception changes. From others inhabiting the single world surface, it would appear that the behavior system is changing without cause; but if we could somehow view the entire group of world surfaces associated with the core group of a particular behavioral system configuration, then we would be more likely to understand the reasons for the behavior. Unfortunately, any single nervous system has any number of configurations associated with multiple world layers---and anyone attempting to perceive it has their own particular sets of configurations (and world layers.) The best we can do is arrive at a general consensus of what is perceived and agree to label that the local shared reality. The Copenhagen theorists infamously suggested that nothing exists unless it is perceived (measured)-and as far as it goes, that would be absolutely true. One cannot perceive what doesn't exist in that world layer. But if the perception process naturally involved multiple world layers, then the Copenhagen Interpretation would be true, but trivially so (as Hawking said about Many Worlds.) David Deutsch claims we all inhabit multiple worlds, but can't communicate between the worlds. I think Many Minds, Fibre Bundle topology, and Neodissociationist (Hilgardian) psychology will prove him wrong. RM From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-l...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jason Resch Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 6:28 PM To: Everything List Subject: Many-worlds vs. Many-Minds On the many-worlds FAQ: http://www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/manyworlds.html It states that many-worlds implies that worlds split rather than multiple, identical, pre-existing worlds differentiate: Q19 Do worlds differentiate or split? - Can we regard the separate worlds that result from a measurement-like interaction (See What is a measurement?) as having previous existed distinctly and merely differentiated, rather than the interaction as having split one world into many? This is definitely not permissable in many-worlds or any theory of quantum theory consistent with experiment. Worlds do not exist in a quantum superposition independently of each other before they decohere or split. The splitting is a physical process, grounded in the dynamical evolution of the wave vector, not a matter of philosophical, linguistic or mental convenience (see Why do worlds split? and When do worlds split?) If you try to treat the worlds as pre-existing and separate then the maths and probabilistic behaviour all comes out wrong. However, just below, in the Many-minds question: Q20 What is many-minds? -- Many-minds proposes, as an extra fundamental axiom, that an infinity of separate minds or mental states be associated with each single brain state. When the single physical brain state is split into a quantum superposition by a measurement (See What is a measurement?) the associated infinity of minds are thought of as differentiating rather than splitting. The motivation for this brain-mind dichotomy seems purely to avoid talk of minds splitting and talk instead about the differentiation of pre-existing separate mental states. Based on the answers provided in this FAQ, it sounds as though many-minds permits differentiation of pre-existing observers whereas many-worlds does not permit differentiation. The many-minds interpretation also sounds much more similar to computationalism as described by Bruno. Computationalism + arithmetical realism supposes that all possible computations exist, and yield all possible observers. Therefore, the consciousness of these observers would differentiate, rather than split, since they all existed beforehand. What are others thoughts on
RE: Why I am I?
From: John Mikes [mailto:jami...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:00 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Why I am I? I admire this list. Somebody asks a silly question and 'we' write hourlong wisdom(s) upon it. After my deep liking of Stathis's what difference does it make? (or something to that meaning) - my question went a step deeped: for: How do I know I am I? - (rather: How (Why?) do I think I am I?) I ask: DO I? (then comes Stathis). * Bruno's 'firmly knowable' arithmetic truth is a true exception: WE (=the ways humans think) made up what we call 'arithmetic' - the way that WE may accept it as 'truth'. (I am still with David Bohm's numbers are human invention - did not read acceptable (for me) arguments on the numbers-originated everything - in the wider sense. But this is not this thread). John Mikes PS now - it seems - I joined the choir. JM All. . . Good quote on hourlong wisdoms. But it's also starting to look like a lead-in to a documentary on pop songs with a philosophic bent. The who am I thing probably applies to a good number of teen songs today, and to a few of them back in the 70's. Matter of fact, there seems to be a 30-40-year cycle to who am I? and philosophycentered songs, with a few of them turning up in the thirties. What a difference a day makes, night and day, Days of Future Passed, etc. and etc. No WONDER John joined the choir. Heh. R. Miller On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 05 Dec 2009, at 01:30, Brent Meeker wrote: It is also infinitely ignorant and so long as it remains that way it's nothing to me. We are all infinitely ignorant (if only with respect to arithmetical truth). The universal machine or numbers are not nothing. This is just another form of the everything universal acid. Just postulate an everything and then we know the something we're interested in must be in there somewhere. The everything of comp is just elementary arithmetic. It predicts the existence of a a level (of isolation or independence, really) such that many computations interferes, as QM confirms (retrospectively). It predicts symmetry and a quantum logic of conditionals, etc. And a cute arithmetical, and testable, interpretation of Phytagoras-Plato-Plotinus, + a vast range of mystics and free thinkers. I ditinctly and clearly not follow Tegmark or Bayesian Anthropism on this point. The physical *laws* have a reason, and we can find them from the digital hypothesis. Frankly, Monsieur est difficile ;-) It is not necessary for the reasoning, but there are sequence of thought experiences which can help you to figure out what is it like losing all memories. I wasn't talking about losing all memories, but about not having memory, i.e. not only losing old memories, but also not forming any new memories. A computer without memory can't compute. The computer, or the relative universal machine (relative to another probable universal machine) makes only higher the relative probabilty that the internal consciousness flux will makes itself manifest relatively to that probable universal machine/number. It makes possible for a universal machine to say hello to itself, or to another universal machine. Some would say that the point consists in losing, for a short period, that human kind of consciousness. But without memory how would one know it had been lost or not? That is again the point. There we don't know that. But with salvia divinorum, when you control well the dosage and timing, or smoke only the leaves, you don't need to do the amnesia, you can just dissociate that universal you from your contingent terrestrial you, like taking a big distance from the contingencies. It is a desappropriation. To judge the presence of consciousness is difficult. Recently, in France, after having been considered as being in a unconscious comatose state for 23 years, a woman, with the help of her family, has succeed to convince its doctors that she was as conscious than you and me. She was just highly paralyzed. You mean Rom Houben (a man)? http://article.wn.com/view/2009/11/25/Is_coma_man_Rom_Houben_REALLY_talking_ Mystery_as_critics_sla/ Well, not really. It was a french woman. In Belgium they have considered her as fully conscious, and it has been confirmed in the USA. I heard this on a radio, and a friend confirms. I will try to find the information. In any case I allude to the case, by decision, where the consciousness is not considered as controversial. Like the Ingberg case in France. Usually, it means, I think, that the patient can communicate through different speech therapists. From the video, I would say Houben seems fully conscious to me. Experts are casting doubt on claims that a man http://everyman.com/ who doctors
Re: language, cloning and thought experiments
At 07:31 AM 3/6/2009, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: 2009/3/6 Jack Mallah jackmal...@yahoo.com wrote: If you're not worried about the fair trade, then to be consistent you shouldn't be worried about the unfair trade either. In the fair trade, one version of you A disappears overnight, and a new version of you B is created elsewhere in the morning. The unfair trade is the same, except that there is an extra version of you A' which disappears overnight. Now why should the *addition* of another version make you nervous when you wouldn't have been nervous otherwise? It's not the addition of the other copy that's the problem; it's the loss of it. Â Losing people is bad. How would the addition then loss of the extra copy be bad for the original, or for that matter for the disappearing extra copy, given that neither copy has any greater claim to being resurrected in the morning as B? That Riker's measure increased is not the important thing here: it is that the two Rikers differentiated. Killing one of them after they had differentiated would be wrong, but killing one of them before they had differentiated would be OK. That would be equivalent to U = Sum_i Q_i in which no changes in the wavefunction matter at all, since M_i 0 for all i no matter what. Â I don't think you thought that one through. I don't agree with the way you calculate utility at all. If I got $5 every time I pressed a button which decreased my absolute measure in the multiverse a millionfold I would happily press the button all day. It would be easy money and I'd feel exactly the same afterwards, just $5 richer. On the other hand, if pressing the button decreased the measure of those versions of me having good experiences by 1% relative to the versions of me having bad experiences, then I wouldn't press it, and certainly not repeatedly. -- Stathis Papaioannou I've been following this discussion and have a comment re absolute measure in the multiverse. The assumption is the same one David Deutsch has expressed: other than the interference observed in the Young's experiment, there can be no contact between the multiverses. However, suppose our consciousness was essentially a topological object---a fibre bundle through a manifold of similar universes? The universes where things are remarkably different would be ignored by the observer in favor of the probabilistic picture of reality associated with the median experience bundle. Focusing on the volume section of such a distribution might be the function of an entity such as Hilgard's hidden observer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hilgard. In this model, the platform for consciousness is simply a manifold formed by equivalent behavioral elements across the multiverse (no pun intended.) Eliminating them one by one would result in a commensurate decrease in overall consciousness. Richard Miller --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Probability
At 10:54 AM 11/6/2008, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 06 Nov 2008, at 02:37, Thomas Laursen wrote: Hi everyone, I am a complete layman but still got the illusion that maybe one day I would be able to understand the probability part of MW if explained in a simple way. I know it's the most controversal part of MW and that there are several competing understandings of probability in MW, but still: none of them make sense to me! If every line of history is realized then how can any line of history be more probable than any other? Wolf's answer is probably correct, but certainly incomplete. If you take QM (without collapse) norma distribution and measure can be extracted from Gleason theorem. Born rule can be deduce from first person indeterminacy or more politically correct variant through decison theory (like Deutsch and Wallace). It is a whole field. My point in this list consists to show that if you assume the mechanist thesis (like Everett) then even if Deutsch proposal works it is not enough to justify the probabilities. There is a big work which remains to be done, but it has the advantage of taking into account the non communicable part of the experiments (usually known as the experience). But there are more abherant histories to evacuate (like infinities in field theories). Anna Wolf's answer can be wrong in case physics is eventually purely discrete, in which case probabilties should arise from pure relative proportion based on dircrete relative partitioning of the multiverse. I think the comp hyp excludes this though, like I think M theory, as far as I grasp something there, too. Loop gravity, if literally true, could lead to such ultimate discretization or provide models. For each position of an electron in your brain there is a (quantum) computational history going through that state, and probabilities are eventually all related self-indiscernibility relations (if it is english). Bruno Marchal http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ First of all, Bruno, that answer seemed Palenesque in the extreme, even for someone whose job it is to know this stuff. The correspondent indicated his was a layman's perspective. How about another go at it without shortcut references to Born, David Deutsch, Wallace (who?) et al. As a firm believer in the adage that one who really knows the subject should be able to explain it in such a way that a bright ten-year-old can understand the concept. R Miller --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Technical paper on 3-dimensional time
At 01:23 PM 1/23/2006, Johnathan Corgan wrote: Marc Geddes wrote: This is very recent (late 2005): http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0510010 I've read this and the author's prior two papers on multi-dimensional time. (snip) All, Finnish physicist Ari Lehto wrote about 3D time way back in 1990. Used it while researching my sci fi novel Dreamer. You can download Ari's paper here---http://psroc.phys.ntu.edu.tw/cjp/v28/215.pdf. If memory serves, it was also published in a Spanish physics journal (Madrid). R. Miller
Re: Lobian Machine
At 10:33 PM 12/29/2005, George Levy wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: Godel's result, known as Godel's second incompleteness theorem, is that no consistent machine can prove its own consistency: IF M is consistent then M cannot prove its consistency Bruno, After I read your email, we had a gathering of family and friends, and my head being full of the subject of this post. I wanted to test the idea of Godel's second incompleteness theorem on the average people just to see how they would respond. I found the right place in the discussion to insert the paraphrase: If I am sane, it is impossible to know for sure that I am sane. This povoked some hilarity, especially with my kids (young adults) who probably view me as some kind of nutty professor. While this statement is mathematically true, it was not considered serious by the people I was talking with. I guess that the average human has no doubt about his own sanity.(But my kids had some doubts about mine) One way to prove that you are crazy is to assert that you are sane. This means that the average human is crazy! :-) George Hm. . . Godel was discussing sharply defined mathematical constructs, specifically, proof of N requires knowledge of non-N. As I'm sure you know, sanity is a *legal*, rather than a mathematical term. While this sort of logical fuzziness is probably in keeping with these times, I doubt if it really applies to Godel's theorem. RMiller
Re: contention: theories are incompatible
At 10:14 PM 11/16/2005, James N Rose wrote: An open hypothesis to list members: Conservation as a 'fundamental rule of condition' is incompatible and antithetical with any notions of many worlds. Either explicitly excludes and precludes the other; can't have both and retain a consistent existentialism. J Rose I haven't kept up with this thread or that idea, but there is no logical reason that a particular attribute such as conservation should be universal across a many-world manifold. First of all, conservation is ill-defined, but if precisely defined assumes a standard, which implies a teleological approach. And that is one step away from scholasticism. Before you know it, you're quoting Plato. Mathematically, conservation could be defined in terms of least-distance between points, but if the individual worlds are constructed with their own unique space-time topology (sort of by definition--otherwise each world would be the same as the next one) then the term conservation would apply only locally. So, strike two. In fact, one could describe each world as a unique slice intersecting and *forming* the surface of the many-world manifold---and each slice could be characterized by its own unique matrix. Postulating the individual world matrix as a set of elements and interactions between elements, one could arrive at an ideal (Plato again!) in which each individual world is confined to a minimum number of elements/interactions. Fine. But it would result in each world being congruent (homologous) to every other world. The result would be no difference between worlds, but there is not a shred of evidence that the configuration works that way at all levels. For example, you coffee may have cooled according to the observations setting forth the laws of thermodynamics---and thus predictable, but you sir, probably drove your automobile in a very inefficient manner today, going places that you shouldn't have gone (you didn't know the queue would be so long, or the store would be closed, etc). Now, if you had known that the store would be closed, etc, you would have been a little more efficient, but that would require a prescience that you presumably don't have. Maybe that's why, we can never precisely predict where the electron will be, because to do so would identify it's proper place---and from there we could then define it's ideal position. That we cannot (as yet) do that suggests that this inability to do so is an inherent part of a dynamic system---and is present within all intersects of the many world manifold. Short answer: Conservatism is a procedure that produces mental constructs of what we thing the world is trying to become. It allows us to fit our observations against the image in our minds, but it has its limitations. There is no perfect river. Or snowstorm. Or politician. It's all in our minds.
3D Time
All, You may find this interesting.http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:eVk8dYC9J44J:psroc.phys.ntu.edu.tw/cjp/v28/215.pdf+Lehto+physics+timehl=en Back in the early 1990s I corresponded with astronomer William Tifft at the U of Ariz. (Flagstaff). Seems he had possibly found evidence of quantization of the red shift. He put me in touch with physicist Ari Lehto who had proposed a theory of dimensional-binding which included the concept of 3D time. I may even still have a copy of his paper. At time time, he was with the Univ of Oulu in Finland, but later transferred to a state university somewhere. Bill Tifft is now Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the U of A. http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1997/March/Sa16142.htm. If anyone is truly interested in experimental observations that suggest 3D time, Ari Lehto and Bill Tifft are the guys to go to. R. Miller
Re: 3D Time
At 10:04 PM 7/18/2005, rmiller wrote: All, You may find this interesting.http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:eVk8dYC9J44J:psroc.phys.ntu.edu.tw/cjp/v28/215.pdf+Lehto+physics+timehl=en Back in the early 1990s I corresponded with astronomer William Tifft at the U of Ariz. (Flagstaff). Seems he had possibly found evidence of quantization of the red shift. He put me in touch with physicist Ari Lehto who had proposed a theory of dimensional-binding which included the concept of 3D time. I may even still have a copy of his paper. At the time, he was with the Univ of Oulu in Finland, but later transferred to a state university somewhere. Bill Tifft is now Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the U of A. http://www.worldandi.com/specialreport/1997/March/Sa16142.htm. If anyone is truly interested in experimental observations that suggest 3D time, Ari Lehto and Bill Tifft are the guys to go to. R. Miller little edit work there. . .it should have been at THE time not at time time. Just washed my hands and I can't do a thing with 'em. . . RM
Re: Witnesses, Observer Moments and Memories of a Past
At 10:31 PM 6/28/2005, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Lee, Are you familiar with any of the experiments that have been performed regarding quantum counterfactuals or null measurements? It turns out that the fact that some particular measure *was not made* counts just as much, and thus affects the results of a measurement, of an actual measurement that was made. Thus information of any occurrence or non-occurrence of a measure of a QM system, coded in an OM, will make a difference that can not be hand waved away. This is why I am introducing the notion of a witness. Interleaving... RM: I assume this is not associated with Feynman's all possible histories approach?
Re: Have all possible events occurred?
At 10:22 AM 6/26/2005, Norman Samish wrote: Stathis Papaioannou writes: Of course you are right: there is no way to distinguish the original from the copy, given that the copying process works as intended. And if you believe that everything possible exists, then there will always be at least one version of you who will definitely experience whatever outcome you are leaving to chance. Probability is just a first person experience of a universe which is in fact completely deterministic, because we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live, and because even if we could, we can only experience being one person at a time. RM Comments: (1) I'll have to disagree with Stathis' (apparent) statement that probability is just a first person experience of a universe. No proper foundation. (2) Additionally, Stathis assumes that we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live. Since no one can even define consciousness, or isolate precisely where memory is located (or even what it is), there is no way we can preclude simultaneous experience. The best we can say is, we simply don't know. And, (3), for the same reasons, we cannot say that we experience being one person at a time. There are numerous psychological models---neodissociationism being just one---that posit a personality made up of multiple modules, all interacting (somewhat) under the guidance of an executive, Hilgard's hidden observer. Unless and until we fully understand how consciousness is linked to personality, we probably shouldn't preclude multiple or simultaneous experience.
Re: Hilgard's hidden observer
At 03:44 PM 6/26/2005, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear Richard, Let me follow up on your suggestion: Assuming a personality is made up of multiple modules,does it necessarily follow that a hidden observer exist as a seperate entiry, or could it be that the usual single personality results from an entrainment (the modules become like oscillators that couple to each other) over the many modules? Hilgard asked the entity that question more than a few times. The hidden observer came across as quite normal-sounding. reasonable and real. A Finnish psychologist by the name of Reima Kampmann made an extensive study of the phenomenon, but unfortunately published little--and what he did publish was never translated to any languages other than Finnish. Bottom line: The hidden observer seems to be as real as such entities can be--or perhaps as real as some of the better business CEOs. Certainly better than some of the former CEOs in the news lately. Otherwise, it appears that the hidden observer phenom has not been studied in depth. I haven't seen much published research. This idea predicts that if this entrainment mode is unstable and there are other possible metastale entrainment modes possible, then the personality that emerges is unstable; we get the symptons of multiple-personality disorder that makes personalities analogous to the metastable (phase space) orbits of a chaotic system. If no stable or metastable entrainments between the multiple modules obtain, we have the symptoms of autism. No? Autism supposedly has been associated with structural changes based upon CT cans. Beyond that I don't know enough about autism to comment. Ornstein suggests that multiple-personalities are rather normal. On the other hand, there are some great books out there about this complex and weird phenom. For those who think the brain is just a complex radio set, multiple personality disorder can be thought of as merely having a crummy tuner (coil?) or a bad antenna. Melvin Morse, a Seattle pediatrician suggested that there is an antenna of a sort--and it's located in the right temporal sulcus. According to his books, this area also serves as some sort of ejection seat for the soul. I wrote a novel a few years ago that hypothesized a specific EEG signal emanating from this area (resolved using a standard Fast Fourier Transform circuit.) By monitoring the wavelet coming from this area, one could determine the time of exit for an OOBE. Rich M Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: rmiller [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Norman Samish [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 3:58 PM Subject: Re: Have all possible events occurred? At 10:22 AM 6/26/2005, Norman Samish wrote: Stathis Papaioannou writes: Of course you are right: there is no way to distinguish the original from the copy, given that the copying process works as intended. And if you believe that everything possible exists, then there will always be at least one version of you who will definitely experience whatever outcome you are leaving to chance. Probability is just a first person experience of a universe which is in fact completely deterministic, because we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live, and because even if we could, we can only experience being one person at a time. RM Comments: (1) I'll have to disagree with Stathis' (apparent) statement that probability is just a first person experience of a universe. No proper foundation. (2) Additionally, Stathis assumes that we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live. Since no one can even define consciousness, or isolate precisely where memory is located (or even what it is), there is no way we can preclude simultaneous experience. The best we can say is, we simply don't know. And, (3), for the same reasons, we cannot say that we experience being one person at a time. There are numerous psychological models---neodissociationism being just one---that posit a personality made up of multiple modules, all interacting (somewhat) under the guidance of an executive, Hilgard's hidden observer. Unless and until we fully understand how consciousness is linked to personality, we probably shouldn't preclude multiple or simultaneous experience.
Re: Have all possible events occurred?
At 11:07 PM 6/26/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: R. Miller writes: Stathis Papaioannou writes: Of course you are right: there is no way to distinguish the original from the copy, given that the copying process works as intended. And if you believe that everything possible exists, then there will always be at least one version of you who will definitely experience whatever outcome you are leaving to chance. Probability is just a first person experience of a universe which is in fact completely deterministic, because we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live, and because even if we could, we can only experience being one person at a time. RM Comments: (1) I'll have to disagree with Stathis' (apparent) statement that probability is just a first person experience of a universe. No proper foundation. (2) Additionally, Stathis assumes that we cannot access the parallel worlds where our copies live. Since no one can even define consciousness, or isolate precisely where memory is located (or even what it is), there is no way we can preclude simultaneous experience. The best we can say is, we simply don't know. And, (3), for the same reasons, we cannot say that we experience being one person at a time. There are numerous psychological models---neodissociationism being just one---that posit a personality made up of multiple modules, all interacting (somewhat) under the guidance of an executive, Hilgard's hidden observer. Unless and until we fully understand how consciousness is linked to personality, we probably shouldn't preclude multiple or simultaneous experience. 1. I'm not saying that definitely there are all these other universes out there, but if there are, then like the copying experiments, it will seem probabilistic from a first person perspective because you don't know which copy you are going to be. It *does* look probabilistic, doesn't it? When you toss a coin, you only see one result. This could be explained equally well by saying there is only one universe, or multiple universes which do not interact at the level of people and coins. RM: Okay. I see what you mean. Thanks for the clarification. 2. 3. I can only experience being one person at a time. At least, it seems that way: when I toss a coin, I have never observed both heads and tails simultaneously. This tells me there is only one of me, or if there are many versions of me, I can't experience what the other versions are experiencing. Maybe under very unusual circumstances someone can peer into one or more of the parallel universes, but it has never happened to me! Only if you assume personality is defined (remains cohesive?) as a function of the input amplitude---which seems to be a limited definition that doesn't take such things as sensory deprivation (float tanks, ganzfeld stimulation, sleep) into account. Shut down the outside stimulus and we dream, but the personality--or the group of modules that represent the personality cluster--seems to be the same throughout. As for the coin flip---there's no reason to suggest that a single outcome has any impact on our sense of self--it may be that we react simply because a single outcome is considered normal and expected. On a larger scale, we experience events that are often contradictory and we tend to accommodate as well as any video gamer might---with no loss of self. At worse, it comes down to the old joke: Q. Can you make up your mind? A. Well, yes and no. RM
New Scientist
All, New Scientist has a very interesting article this week about free will, reality and entanglement. Worth a look. Additionally, for the trivia fans among you, it seems one of the researchers quoted has clocked similarity effects associated with entanglement at something like (minimum) 10,000 x the speed of light. R.Miller
Re: another puzzzle
Jesse wrote In reality the molecules in your brain are constantly being recycled--if you believe that the changes that make up memories happen at the synapses, the article at http://www.sci-con.org/articles/20040601.html suggests all the molecules at the synapses are replaced in only 24 hours or so, and also that the entire brain is probably replaced every other month or so. So do you think the Eric Cavalcanti of six months ago is dead, and that your memories of having been him are false? Jesse All, Jesse, IMHO, has pointed out the elephant in the room. Is Sheldrake right about morphic fields guiding our path through the world-line? Or is our concept of reality out of whack? While I respect Sheldrake, for pointing out some obvious quirks in real world perceptions, I think the concept of morphic field is merely descriptive rather than explanatory. But if he's right, is anyone willing to blurt out for the record that consciousness may have its own pilot wave? R Miller
RE: singular versus plural
At 06:44 AM 6/24/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: (snip) So although it's not impossible that minds can somehow act as a group, that is something in need of *real* experimental evidence. Stacking a controversial theory on a weird idea balancing on an impossible situation is asking for trouble! --Stathis Papaioannou Actually, the experiments of Schmidt et al, and the evidence cited in Wisdom of Crowds suggest a QM model. Of course, anyone can--and will!--deride an experiment as not being real---after all, that's how the science game is played, ;-), but prediction is one of the gold standards for an experimental model, and Schmidt's work, though not explanatory (neither is QM) it *is* predictive. And if there's a difference between singular experience and plural experiences, then maybe it may be worthwhile to apply it to the thought problems here. RM _ Single? Start dating at Lavalife. Try our 7 day FREE trial! http://lavalife9.ninemsn.com.au/clickthru/clickthru.act?context=an99locale=en_AUa=19179
Re: death
At 10:55 AM 6/18/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: (snip) The above mechanism would still work even if, as in my thought experiment, there were 10^100 exact copies running in lockstep and all but one died. Each one of the 10^100-1 copies would experience continuity of consciousness through the remaining copy, so none would really die. RM: None would really die only if the behavioral configurations were uniform and equal (thus equivalent) *and* only if their environment was in an equivalent state. However, that is not the case here. The environment and behavioral configurations of those who died are not commensurate with the one who lived. No equivalence means differing results---and differing paths. Let's look at it this way: take two boxes, perfectly equivalent in every way and place inside each two similar marbles. Assume that both systems are equivalent configurations and are, in effect, copies of one another. When you remove one marble from its box, the other marble doesn't follow suit---it stays put.
copy method important?
All, Though we're not discussing entanglement per se, some of these examples surely meet the criteria. So, my thought question for the day: is the method of copying important? Example #1: we start with a single marble, A. Then, we magically create a copy, marble B--perfectly like marble B in every way. . .that is, the atoms are configured similarly, the interaction environment is the same--and they are indistinguishable from one another. Example #2: we start with a single marble A. Then, instead of magically creating a copy, we search the universe, Tegmarkian-style, and locate a second marble, B that is perfectly equivalent to our original marble A. All tests both magically avoid QM decoherence problems and show that our newfound marble is, in fact, indistinguishable in every way from our original. Here's the question: Are the properties of the *relationship* between Marbles A and B in Example #1 perfectly equivalent to those in Example #2? If the criteria involves simply analysis of configurations at a precise point in time, it would seem the answer must be yes. On the other hand, if the method by which the marbles were created is crucial to the present configuration, then the answer would be no. R. Miller
Re: another puzzzle
At 09:12 AM 6/16/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. The room is sparsely furnished: a chair, a desk, pen and paper, and in one corner a light. RM: You've just described me at work in my office. The light is currently red, but in the time you have been in the room you have observed that it alternates between red and green every 10 minutes. Other than the coloured light, nothing in the room seems to change. RM. . .at my annual New Years' party. Opening one of the desk drawers, you find a piece of paper with incredibly neat handwriting. It turns out to be a letter from God, revealing that you have been placed in the room as part of a philosophical experiment. Every 10 minutes, the system alternates between two states. One state consists of you alone in your room. The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. Your task is to guess which colour of the light corresponds with which state and write it down. Then God will send you home. Having absorbed this information, you reason as follows. Suppose that right now you are one of the copies sampled randomly from all the copies that you could possibly be. If you guess that you are one of the 10^100 group, you will be right with probability (10^100)/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals one). If you guess that you are the sole copy, you will be right with probability 1/(10^100+1) (which your calculator tells you equals zero). Therefore, you would be foolish indeed if you don't guess that you in the 10^100 group. And since the light right now is red, red must correspond with the 10^100 copy state and green with the single copy state. But just as you are about to write down your conclusion, the light changes to green... What's wrong with the reasoning here? RM: Nothing wrong with the premise or the reasoning IMHO. Happens to me every day---while sitting at a traffic light alone in my car(s) all 10^100 of me come up with a great idea---I try to write it down and the light changes to green. --Stathis Papaioannou _ REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
Re: another puzzzle
At 09:12 AM 6/16/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: You find yourself in a locked room with no windows, and no memory of how you got there. \ (snip) The other state consists of 10^100 exact copies of you, their minds perfectly synchronised with your mind, each copy isolated from all the others in a room just like yours. Whenever the light changes colour, it means that God is either instantaneously creating (10^100 - 1) copies, or instantaneously destroying all but one randomly chosen copy. RM's two cents worth: If all the 10^100 copies have exactly the same sensory input, exactly the same past, exactly the same environment and have exactly the same behavior systems, then there would be no overall increase in complexity (no additional links between nodes), but there would overall be a multiplication of intensity (10^100). Would this result in a more clarified perception during the time period when one is represented (magnified?) by 10^100? It's an open switch (i.e. who knows???) However, the increase in intensity would *not* result in greater perception; that would involve linking additional nodes---i.e. getting more neurons or elements of the behavior system involved---and the number of links over the 10^100 copies would remain static. If Stathis includes the possibility of chaos into the system at the node level (corresponding to random fluctuations among interactions at the node level) then these differences among the 10^100 copies would amount to 10^100 specific layers of the individual all linked by the equivalence of the similarly-configured behavior systems. If one could see this from the perspective of (say) Hilbert space, it may look like a deck of perfectly similar individuals with minor variations or fuzziness. These links as well as the fuzziness over many worlds may be what corresponds to consciousness.
RE: more torture
At 11:03 AM 6/15/2005, Jesse Mazer wrote: I wrote: No, I don't think they don't all have to have the same volume, Whoops, weird double negative here...that should read I don't think they all have to have the same volume. Jesse must have should have are required to have RM
Re: more torture
At 06:00 AM 6/13/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: I have been arguing in recent posts that the absolute measure of an observer moment (or observer, if you prefer) makes no possible difference at the first person level. A counterargument has been that, even if an observer cannot know how many instantiations of him are being run, it is still important in principle to take the absolute measure into account, for example when considering the total amount of suffering in the world. The following thought experiment shows how, counterintuitively, sticking to this principle may actually be doing the victims a disservice: You are one of 10 copies who are being tortured. The copies are all being run in lockstep with each other, as would occur if 10 identical computers were running 10 identical sentient programs. Assume that the torture is so bad that death is preferable, and so bad that escaping it with your life is only marginally preferable to escaping it by dying (eg., given the option of a 50% chance of dying or a 49% chance of escaping the torture and living, you would take the 50%). The torture will continue for a year, but you are allowed one of 3 choices as to how things will proceed: (a) 9 of the 10 copies will be chosen at random and painlessly killed, while the remaining copy will continue to be tortured. (b) For one minute, the torture will cease and the number of copies will increase to 10^100. Once the minute is up, the number of copies will be reduced to 10 again and the torture will resume as before. (c) the torture will be stopped for 8 randomly chosen copies, and continue for the other 2. Which would you choose? To me, it seems clear that there is an 80% chance of escaping the torture if you pick (c), while with (a) it is certain that the torture will continue, and with (b) it is certain that the torture will continue with only one minute of respite. RM writes. . . Here is my criteria: There are those who suggest that there is only one electron in the universe, but that it travels forward and backward in time, thus making multiple copies of itself. If the individual percipient would eventually have to experience the pain and suffering of all whom he had affected--or caused to experience pain and suffering, then the most selfish, altruistic *and* sensible choice would be (c). Rich Miller
RE: Many Pasts? Not according to QM...
At 12:43 PM 6/11/2005, Hal Finney wrote: Here's a little tongue-in-cheek rant... (snip) Yet how many philosophers are willing to seriously consider abandoning this arbitrary conditioning in deciding what is right and wrong? How many of us here are willing to take the logical path to its ultimate conclusion when considering how observer-moments fit together? It goes against the deepest instincts which have been burned into us since the origin of life. I would not be quick disparage evolutionarily based reasoning. We are creatures of evolution, and it is almost impossible to escape the bounds that it has put around our ways of thought. Hal Finney If you consider the matrix of all observer-moments (possibly under the eye of something like Hilgard's Hidden Observer), then it would be impossible to cut the links any more than trying to wear a shirt with all the threads cut. The shirt would disintegrate off your back (like my Izod's did recently.) Or possibly, it could be like a Photoshop image with a 100 subtle layers---remove the layers and the entire image changes slightly---but after awhile you're down to one monochromatic layer. Rich Miller
Re: Another tedious hypothetical
At 11:08 PM 6/8/2005, Jesse Mazer wrote: (snip) You should instead calculate the probability that a story would contain *any* combination of meaningful words associated with the Manhattan project. This is exactly analogous to the fact that in my example, you should have been calculating the probability that *any* combination of words from the list of 100 would appear in a book title, not the probability that the particular word combination sun, also, and rises would appear. RM: Are you suggesting that a fair analysis would be to wait until Google Print has the requisite number of books available, download the text, then sic Mathematica onto them to look for word associations linked with a target? What limits would you place on this (if any?) Or would this be a useless (though certainly do-able) exercise? (snip) . . . Would it be fair to test for ESP. . . We're not testing for ESP--only out-of-causal-order gestalts in popular literature that are associated with similar gestalts in literature (or national) events taking place at some future time. There might be a fine--though humdrum and unpredictable---explanation for this sort of business. Or it might be explained by some of the more offbeat analytical procedures---say, involving exponential or Poisson probabilities as applied to delayed choice events. Who knows? While I wouldn't rule it out, I personally don't think the eventual answer--if there is one---will involve anything as humdrum as ESP. And if this sort of thing is to be expected in the course of publishing events, then there should be a mathematical formula that can predict it, given the input variables (which is why I think exponential or Poisson might be involved.) Again, my concern is that scientists are too willing to prejudge something before diving into it. OK, but this is a tangent that has nothing to do with the issue I raised in my posts about the wrongness of selecting the target (whose probability of guessing you want to calculate) using hindsight knowledge of what was actually guessed. As a former fed, I would wholeheartedly disagree. There is a grand tradition of avoiding analysis by whatever means are available, including hindsight knowledge invalidating the correlation. In other words, you shouldn't ever mine for data. Thankfully, that admonition is routinely ignored by many biostatisticians. If you don't want to discuss this specific issue then say so--I am not really interested in discussing the larger issue of what the correct way to calculate the probability of the Heinlein coincidences would be, I only wanted to talk about this specific way in which *your* method is obviously wrong. Thank you. (Finally!!!) Whew! That sentence has validated the entire horrid exercise. May I quote you??? Like I said before, any method that could be invented by someone who didn't know in advance about Heinlein's story would avoid this particular mistake. . . . . .another money quote. . . *although it might suffer from other flaws*. This one too!!! Regards and Thanks Again! Rich M.
The tedious hypothesis and the reason for it. . .
All, My tedious complaint about scientists prejudging issues prior to analysis (the facts don't warrant. . .etc) extends beyond the superficially weird (Heinlein's story) to the comparatively normal. While I'm not suggesting anyone who does this routinely is anything other than merely disinterested in the subject (a perfectly good reason to avoid time-consuming research), the inescapable fact is that this sort of technique has long been used as a means of avoiding good scientific work. Example #1. Here is an excerpt from correspondence by Dr. Paul Thomkins, director of the FRC in his letter to the Atomic Energy Commission dated September 25, 1952: The basic approach to the report would be to start with a simple, straightforward statement of conclusions. We would then identify the major questions that could be expected to be asked in connection with these conclusions. It would then be a straightforward matter to select the key scientific consultants whose opinions should be sought in order to substantiate the validity of those conclusions or recommended appropriate modifications. Example #2: Dr. Dade W. Moeller, in his 1971 speech as he accepted the presidency of the Health Physics Society admonished the members: Let's all put our mouth where our money is. Source: Overhead projector slide by Dr. Karl Morgan, speaking at a conference on radiation at the University of Utah circa early 1980s. Title: Fundamental Reasons Why Standards-Setting Bodies and Health Physics Do Not Serve Persons with Radiation Injury. Prejudging difficult evidence is a grand tradition that is not without it's occasional monetary perks. . .especially in governmental affairs. RM
Re: Another tedious hypothetical
At 02:45 PM 6/7/2005, Jesse Mazer wrote: (snip) Of course in this example Feynman did not anticipate in advance what licence plate he'd see, but the kind of hindsight bias you are engaging in can be shown with another example. Suppose you pick 100 random words out of a dictionary, and then notice that the list contains the words sun, also, and rises...as it so happens, that particular 3-word gestalt is also part of the title of a famous book, the sun also rises by Hemingway. Is this evidence that Hemingway was able to anticipate the results of your word-selection through ESP? Would it be fair to test for ESP by calculating the probability that someone would title a book with the exact 3-word gestalt sun, also, rises? No, because this would be tailoring the choice of gestalt to Hemingway's book in order to make it seem more unlikely, in fact there are 970,200 possible 3-word gestalts you could pick out of a list of 100 possible words, so the probability that a book published earlier would contain *any* of these gestalts is a lot higher than the probability it would contain the precise gestalt sun, also, rises. Selecting a precise target gestalt on the basis of the fact that you already know there's a book/story containing that gestalt is an example of hindsight bias--in the Heinlein example, you wouldn't have chosen the precise gestalt of Szilard/lens/beryllium/uranium/bomb from a long list of words associated with the Manhattan Project if you didn't already know about Heinlein's story. RM wrote: In two words: Conclusions first. Can you really offer no scientific procedure to evaluate Heinlein's story? At the cookie jar level, can you at least grudgingly admit that the word Szilard sure looks like Silard? Sounds like it too. Or is that a coincidence as well? What are the odds. Should be calculable--how many stories written in 1939 include the names of Los Alamos scientists in conjunction with the words bomb , uranium. . . You're shaking your head. This, I assume is already a done deal, for you. And that, in my view, is the heart of the problem. Rather than swallow hard and look at this in a non-biased fashion, you seem to be glued to the proposition that (1) it's intractable or (2) it's not worth analyzing because the answer is obvious. If your answer is (1), then fine. Let others worry about it. But if your answer is (2), then congratulations---you've likely committed a Type II error. In all of your posts, you seem to present reasons why the Heinlein story should not be investigated because (I'm paraphrasing, of course) it's obviously not worthy of investigation. You exclude ALL the evidence---even the Bonferroni doesn't do that. Logically, if you exclude all the evidence, then the probability that you might miss something go to. . .1. One hundred percent. When one chooses to use, say Spearman Correlation Coefficients to evaluate multiple pairs, the usual protocol involves using the Bonferroni correction--in which the alpha (often at 0.05) is divided by some multiple of the number of pairs evaluated--usually simply the number of pairs. A thousand pairs? then, the alpha should be divided by a thousand and the resultant p value accepted as similar to a single p value of 0.05. Problem is, this sort of trick will cost you statistical power. You may not decide something is significant when it is not, but you may also throw out a value that truly is important. As the type I error risk goes down, the Type II error risk goes up. (Reducing alpha increases beta (the probability of making a Type II error.) There are reputable statisticians who suggest not using the Bonferroni at all. In my work, I evaluate cancer rates against radioisotopes in nuclear fallout---but I require a very high Z score for significance. I've yet to see a good protocol defined here to evaluate the Heinlein story, most prefer to fall back onto the soft couch of bias and prejudgment. But in doing so, your beta goes out the roof--and you guarantee yourself that you'll never recognize *anything* as significant. It would seem that it would be far easier and more scientifically sound to just admit that you are aware of no tools that can properly evaluate it. PS: Note I haven't mentioned anything about proof or causation---merely the ability to apply the scientific method--properly free of bias---to a set of circumstances. So far (as with the Thompkins quote)--it looks like conclusions first, justification later. Hope your drug company doesn't use the same protocol. Because *that* wouldn't be right, would it?;-) RM
RE: Hypotheses
At 12:50 AM 6/6/2005, you wrote: A couple of hours ago, I was speaking to a young man who informed me that he can predict the future: he has visions or dreams, and they turn out to be true. I asked him for an example of this ability. He thought for a moment, explaining that there were really far too many examples to choose from, then settled on this one. During the recent war in Iraq, he had a dream about a buried train containing weapons. Two days later - you guessed it - he saw on the news that a buried train containing WMD's was discovered in Iraq! And if that doesn't convince you that I'm psychic, my patient said (for that is what he was), I don't know what will! My question to the list: should I have stopped this man's antipsychotic medication? --Stathis Papaioannou No. Unless it was Disulfiram elixer. . .(sorry, couldn't resist.) But were the antipsychotic meds *causing* the dreams or was it due to an insufficiently low dose? In the early 1970s ketamine Hcl was the anesthetic of choice on kids for minor surgical procedures---it was good for 25 minutes, it preserved the laryngeal reflex--and you could always tell when they were coming out---they would elicit this gripping motion. But in some cases it gave the kids OBEs. Typical doc response: Yipes! Let's use something else! Now, they use ketamine ONLY on Rover and Fluffy. Gives 'em big pupils for a couple of hours, and you don't really *care* what sensitive places they visited while they were under. As for precognition. . while doing research for a book I authored in the mid-eighties, I first tracked nuclear clouds across the US--then went to the libraries in the paths of the debris clouds to see what was taking place as the radioactive material passed overhead. There were some strange coincidences, but that's probably all they were. However, there was one thing that impressed me---those in the creative professions occasionally conjure up artwork that, in retrospect, appears to be a precognitive shadow of an event taking place days or weeks later. The day before the worlds' first nuclear test, the NY Times had a couple of sly articles in the editorial section that alluded to the nuke,test. One article, for example, was titled, A Gadget Long Needed. There was a book review about three stories: Two were titled, A Fiery Lake and Solano. Now, of course, the NYT also had a reporter present at Los Alamos, so they probably wanted to scoop everyone else. Precognition score: probably zero. But then there was the weird little cartoon called Flyin' Jenny which was found in the secondary papers---in places like Mason City, Iowa and Houston, TX. on July 15, 1945 the main character (Flyin' Jenny) picked up her microphone and said: Is there fire at the end of that gadget? To me, that's pushing the coincidence envelope. RM
Re: Another tedious hypothetical
At 03:01 PM 6/6/2005, Pete Carlton wrote: (snip) The point is, there are enough stories published in any year that it would be a trivial matter to find a few superficial resemblances between any event and a story that came before it. my second comment. . .if it's such a trivial matter, then perhaps you can find and produce another publication that includes the gestalt found in Heinlein's story. Anything before 1945 that is. You may want to go to Google Print---that should be helpful. RM
Re: Another tedious hypothetical
At 03:58 PM 6/6/2005, you wrote: rmiller wrote: At 03:01 PM 6/6/2005, Pete Carlton wrote: (snip) The point is, there are enough stories published in any year that it would be a trivial matter to find a few superficial resemblances between any event and a story that came before it. Let's look a little closer at the story in terms of gestalts. On one side we have published author Robert Heinlein writing a story in 1939 about a guy named Silard who works with a uranium bomb, a beryllium target and a fellow named lenz. We'll leave Korzybski out of this one (I suspect Heinlein borrowed the name from A. Korzybski, a sematicist of some renown back in the 1930s.) To me the interesting nodes involve the words Silard lenz beryllium, uranium and bomb. So let's agree that here is a story that includes a gestalt of the words Silard, lenz, beryllium, uranium and bomb. But you can't use that particular gestalt when talking about the probability that a coincidence like this would occur, because you never would have predicted that precise gestalt in advance even if you were specifically looking for stories that anticipated aspects of the Manhatten project. Where on earth did *that* gestalt rule come from??? ;-) It would make more sense to look at the probability of a story that includes *any* combination of words that somehow anticipate aspects of the Manhatten project. Let's say there were about 10^10 possible such gestalts we could come up with, and if you scanned trillions of parallel universes you'd see the proportion of universes where a story echoed at least one such gestalt was fairly high--1 in 15, say. This means that in 1 in 15 universes, there will be a person like you who notices this anticipation and, if he uses your method of only estimating the probability of that *particular* gestalt, will say there's only a 1 in 10^9 probability that something like this could have happened by chance! Obviously something is wrong with any logic that leads you to see a 1 in 10^9 probability coincidence happening in 1 in 15 possible universes, and in this hypothetical example it's clear the problem is that these parallel coincidence-spotters are using too narrow a notion of something like this, one which is too much biased by hindsight knowledge of what actually happened in their universe, rather than something they plausibly might have specifically thought to look for before they actually knew about the existence of such a story. Sounds like you're invoking rules of causation here--post hoc rather than ad hoc, hindsight bias, etc. Certainly I am not suggesting Heinlein's story caused Szilard to be hired (interesting thought, though!) And unless I want to invoke Cramer's transactional approach, I would not really want to think that the Manhattan Project caused Heinlein to write his story. That would require reverse causation, and we know that doesn't happen. This is very simple: we have instances in which Heinlein includes key words (definable as being essential to the story---without them, different story) that form a gestalt of. . .well, key words. These words are equivalent to those describing the Manhattan Project and not many other things. To show that there are not many other things these key word gestalts describe, one can wait a year and use Google Print to call up all the books and stories associated with these key words. Then we will have a probability to work with. Since the gestalts are separated by four years (or thereabouts) then we shouldn't have to invoke causation. How is this potentially valuable? Suppose we use Google Print again and find all the instances of key word gestalts in sci fi matching key word gestalts in scientific non-fiction---at a later date. What if we found that there seems to be a four-year gap between the two--no more, no less. That piece of information may be valuable later on down the road in trying to piece the puzzle together. But just to say that we shouldn't investigate it because it's all a coincidence, or that the hypothesis was improperly framed, or that it violates some of Hill's Rules of Causation--- is just reinforcing the notion that math and logic are not up to the task of investigating some things in the real world. RM
Re: Another tedious hypothetical
At 06:56 PM 6/6/2005, you wrote: Jesse has it right on here, and one can go even further in this vein. You are impressed by the relationship between one particular story and one particular event - but you hand-picked both the story and the event for discussion here because of their superficial similarities. You challenged me to find another example of a story with the same resemblances that the Heinlein story has to the atomic bomb project. But resemblances between any written story and any similar event that happens after the story's publication would be in the same class. I'm not saying that Heinlein was plugged into anything particular. As a sociologist, my interest is the inability of some branches of science to address many common-sense events. Any scientist worth his degree can conjure up logic in order to drop a complicated issue and move on to something else: improperly framed question, no prior data, no model, post hoc cherry-picking, etc and etc. I once had a phone chat with Ray Hyams about this---his response was telling---basically skeptics don't investigate---they debunk. That isn't the scientific method; that's a belief system. That, and economical considerations, of course, is why it took 10 years before medicine figured out the importance of helicobacter pylori. My own working definition of a science skeptic is the last guy on the cul-de-sac who hasn't been told (by everyone else) how to find his water lines using two clotheshangers. The reason of course, is that everyone knows it wouldn't work for him anyway. ;-) I'm not saying that the resemblances between the story and the bomb are trivial - they do make an impression. It also makes an impression when someone dreams of a relative dying and the next day they receive news that that relative did in fact die that night; or when you're in a foreign city and you look up the number of the taxi company and it turns out to be your home phone number, or when exactly 100 years separate (1) the election to Congress (2) the election to the presidency (3) the birth of the assassins of and (4) the birth of the successors of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. If the Heinlein story failed to impress, then may I ask what went missing in it that--had it been there--would have suggested further study? Twenty key words and phrases including Oppenheimer, Trinity plutonium Neddermeyer mushroom cloud Teller Light and shake? Or would that again be just classified as a rather unusual coincidence? I hear a lot of qualifiers (such as the one below) but nothing substantial regarding your criteria. It seems all very vague--except of course, for the conclusion. If you have a criteria or model for evaluating some of these events (such as Heinleins example) I'd like to hear it. Then, as good scientists, we can begin to evaluate how appropriate it may be for the examination of these unusual events. Until we have that protocol defined, I'm sorry, you're just expressing a belief (that nothing that can't be explained by a model is exceptional or even should be evaluated.) These coincidences all make an impression on one. But nothing special needs to be invoked to explain the occurrence of these events -- what needs to be explained is the facet of human psychology that makes people think something strange is going on when in fact nothing is. Yet, without knowing the facts you immediately assume the facts when in fact nothing is. It's a common position taken by the lazy scientist---and it doesn't have to do with strange things, either. It's why the EPA never bothered to determine the density of the WTC surge cloud. Nothing to worry about, because, well, *in fact* there is nothing to worry about. The citizens of New York *do* appreciate that position. (hey, Pete, you're a fed---why haven't they come up with the density?) Many people have taken stabs at it, and evolutionary explanations seem to work well -- seriously, you should get the Dawkins book and read the chapter to see where we're coming from; Carl Sagan also addressed this issue very well. And of course, I encourage you to consider coming up with an appropriate protocol that doesn't include prejudging the data, or assuming facts not in evidence---and tell us what the density of that surge cloud was in milligrams per cubic meter. Is that in a book somewhere also? ;-) --Also, you still have not explained how you get 1 in 10e-9. I used it as an example of a p value that is dreadfully easy to obtain when applying standard probabilities to any of these events. My concern is that for many scientists, 1x10^-9, though ridiculously small---is, for some things, still not small enough. Which is why scientists have willfully ceded important areas of research to the likes of the Midnight Examiner, the Star, The Washington Times and Fox News. Cheers, RM Pete, if you need some numbers to call at the EPA's RTP facility, I'll be glad to give em to you.
Another Tedious Hypothetical
All, Another hypothetical. In 1939, let's say, a writer comes up with a sci-fi story, which is published the next year. It involves (let's say) a uranium bomb and a beryllium target in the Arizona desert that might blow up and cause problems for everyone. His main character is a fellow he decides to name Silard. Two other characters he names Korzybski and Lenz. Two cities are named in the story: Manhattan and Chicago. Along about the same time, in 1939 an out-of-work scientist named Leo Szilard is crossing a street in London (no, he doesn't know the sci fi writer.) Four years later Leo Szilard will be working with a guy named George Kistiakowski---whose job it is to fashion a lens configuration for the explosives surrounding a nuclear core for the first atomic bomb---code named, the Manhattan Project. Some of the other scientists, Enrico Fermi, for example, are from Chicago (where the first man-made nuclear pile was constructed---under the ampitheater.) Now, pick one: 1. All a Big Coincidence Proving Nothing (ABCPN) 2. The writer obviously was privy to state secrets and should have been arrested. 3. Suggests precognition of a very strange and weird sort. 4. Might fit a QM many worlds model and should be investigated further. 5. I have no clue how to even address something like this. Any takers? RM
Another tedious hypothetical
All, Another hypothetical. In 1939, let's say, a writer comes up with a sci-fi story, which is published the next year. It involves (let's say) a uranium bomb and a beryllium target in the Arizona desert that might blow up and cause problems for everyone. His main character is a fellow he decides to name Silard. Two other characters he names Korzybski and Lenz. Two cities are named in the story: Manhattan and Chicago. Along about the same time, in 1939 an out-of-work scientist named Leo Szilard is crossing a street in London (no, he doesn't know the sci fi writer.) Four years later Leo Szilard will be working with a guy named George Kistiakowski---whose job it is to fashion a lens configuration for the explosives surrounding a nuclear core for the first atomic bomb---code named, the Manhattan Project. Some of the other scientists, Enrico Fermi, for example, are from Chicago (where the first man-made nuclear pile was constructed---under the ampitheater.) Now, pick one: 1. All a Big Coincidence Proving Nothing (ABCPN) 2. The writer obviously was privy to state secrets and should have been arrested. 3. Suggests precognition of a very strange and weird sort. 4. Might fit a QM many worlds model and should be investigated further. 5. I have no clue how to even address something like this. Any takers? RM
Re: Another Tedious Hypothetical
At 12:31 PM 6/5/2005, rmiller wrote: A correction---the first nuclear test, was named, of course, Trinity, not The Manhattan Project. And the core of the device, which Oppenheimer called the gadget was about the size of a grapefruit. RM
RE: Another Tedious Hypothetical
At 09:01 PM 6/5/2005, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: In order: 2,1,5,3,4. --Stathis Papaioannou Thanks to Lee and Stathis-- Anyone else? R.
Hypotheses
Re the hypotheses---Social scientists, astronomers and CSI agents are the only ones I'm aware of who routinely evaluate events after the fact. The best, IMHO, such as the historian Toynbee, fit facts to a model. At it's worst, the model becomes the event and before long we're deep in reification (the Achilles heel of Structural Functionalism) or that favorite of lazy reporters, *abduction* (this is our favorite explanation, so that must be what happened.) Mathematicians, philosophers and those with a good math and logic background prefer their battles timeless and relatively absent of worldly references. Great theater, but as Scott Berkun noted in his excellent articlehttp://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay40.htm just because the logic holds together, doesn't mean it's true. Or correct. Or anything--other than consistent. But logic is an inestimable tool if used to evaluate models such as those proposed, developed and ridden into the dirt by many prominent social scientists. It is always refreshing to see a lumbering behemoth like structural functionalism (a sociological model) dismantled by a skilled logician who knows reification when he sees it (saw a little of that with Lee Corbins' excellent rant.) But it would be even better to see these tools applied to truly strange events that take place in the real world---things that Sheldrake writes about, for example. Things that *happen* to us all. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen. It's the knee-jerk reaction of most mathematicians and logicians to deride real world events as coincidence, when in fact, they are comparing the event to mathematical certainty, and logical clarity. They might say, Why evaluate Sheldrake's precognitive dogs in terms of a physics model, because Sheldrake's dogs are not really precognitive. That protocol (if you can call it that) doesn't even rise to the level of *bad* abduction. It's a protocol that closes doors rather than opens them, is not designed to divine new information, and is neither analytic *nor* synthetic. Worst of all, it claims to be science when it fact, it is preordained belief. In other words, it's okay to bend the rules and prejudge a variable as long as you first call it rubbish. Slip-ups aside, I would like to see a rigorous application of the powerful tools of philosophy, logic and mathematics applied to the study areas of social science, i.e. the real world. Physicists are great at telling us why the rings of Saturn have braids, but terrible (or worse than that, dismissive) of events that occur involving consciousness. (Social scientists are no better---they fall back on things like structural functionalism). I suggest its time for the social scientists to let the logicians and mathematicians have a look at the data, and it's time for the logicians and mathematicians to enter the real world and make an honest attempt at trying to explain some strange phenomena. That asking too much? RM
RE: Down with Scientism
At 12:16 AM 6/6/2005, you wrote: I sometimes get into arguments with anti-science associates, who are into wholism, mysticism, spiritualism and so forth. They think that scientists are an elite with their own brand of 'ism (scientism, perhaps), which is no more valid than these other 'isms. I point out to these people that if they have figured out they have to open their mouth in order to put food in it, turn a handle to open a door, vibrate their vocal cords to make a sound, then they have performed a scientific experiment and abstracted a theory from it. If science is an 'ism, it's the most basic one in the world. Rant follows from RM: I agree. But even the best scientists won't take a look at the data unless it's properly ordered (an Excel or Statistica spreadsheet would be nice.) AND there has to be a chunk of *serious* money attached. Personally, I'd like to see some of the bright scientific lights (such as found in this group, IMHO) tackle the basic problems the professionals can't seem to find the time to address. Did you know for example, that Homeland Security spent untold millions of dollars and two years trying to detect Marburg (and other) virus particles (0.9 u diameter) using only the great tools of C and S band radar? (5 and 10 cm wavelength respectively)? Without promising any money, can anyone here see a very basic flaw in that design As Stevie in Malcolm in the Middle might say. . . Two. . .years? RM
RE: Another tedious hypothetical
At 03:40 PM 6/5/2005, you wrote: RM writes (snip) Now, pick one: 1. All a Big Coincidence Proving Nothing (ABCPN) 2. The writer obviously was privy to state secrets and should have been arrested. 3. Suggests precognition of a very strange and weird sort. 4. Might fit a QM many worlds model and should be investigated further. 5. I have no clue how to even address something like this. Any takers? LC: I'll go for 1, all a big coincidence. Firstly, it should be taken as the default hypothesis. Second, in my opinion no reliable evidence has ever surfaced that points to precognition, or points to a science theory that is an elaboration of QM/GR. In fact, numerous claims of something new are regularly debunked by skeptics, and have picked up the name (rightly, in my opinion) of pseudo-science. RM: Given a set of events that are impossible to reproduce (how can the writer re-create the basis for his story a second time?) we can only examine them after the fact in terms of probabilities. Even if we didn't go to a phonebook and look up the relative number of Silards or Lenzes vs the more common names, it's fairly obvious that the probabilities of this being a chance occurrence are on the order of one in tens of millions. Yet we write this kind of thing off as coincidence. The example I gave, (of course) is a real story titled Blowups Happen written by a real sci fi author--Robert Heinlein. Heinlein was asked about the coincidence, and he said he had no idea where he got the names or the idea. The story itself was *was* written in 1939---many years before the Manhattan District Project was even considered by anyone--and before Szilard began work on nukes and before Kistiakowski began work on his lenses. Most who have written about this focus on the fact that the story is about a uranium bomb at a site in the Arizona desert. But when one gets into the minutiae is where it gets truly weird. Neither Heinlein in 1939-- nor most journalists who wrote about the coincidences since then--- were aware of the explosive lens issue, nor were they aware that most fission nukes have beryllium neutron reflectors. I'll suspect Heinlein chose the name Korzybski from a semi-famous semanticist from the 1920s and 30s named Alfred Korzybski. But to me, the other coincidences are just too weird to ignore. LC writes: In world war II, the FBI did question one man who published a story involving atomic theory or atomic bombs that had some eerie similarities to what was top secret. But they determined that it was just coincidence. I'd be lying if I claimed to be unaffected by that report. RM replies: That would be the Clive Cartmill story Deadline which appeared in a 1944 issue of Astounding magazine. Actually, atomic bombs were accepted as a possibility since HG Wells' 1914 story The World Set Free. INMO, the Cartmill story *is* coincidence. The Heinlein story is *truly* weird. RM
RE: Functionalism and People as Programs
At 12:36 PM 6/4/2005, Lee Corbin wrote: R. Miller writes Lee Corbin wrote: Exposure to a nuclear detonation at 4000 yds typically kills about 1 in a million cells. When that happens, you die. I would suggest that is a bad metaphor. Well, my numbers, above, are *entirely* different from yours. One in a million cells is a *terrible* loss. But one atom? There are 10^14 atoms per cell. (And 10^14 cells in a typical human.) I would stick with my numbers. But in case you are somehow right, and that each cell would be wrecked by the loss of a single atom, my point can be made by relaxing the numbers: replace what I've written by I'll be happy to teleport even if 100 trillion atoms are destroyed: a whole cell, gone. Lee, As I indicated earlier, I was out to lunch on that one-in-a-million cells/atoms deal. As I understand it, one cell killed out of a million is lethal, however. R.
Hypothetical shaman's dilemma
Here's a hypothetical situation. Your plane goes down in the wilds and you're rescued by a tribe indigenous to the area. You're wearing the latest clothes from the GAP, so the tribe elders decide you're a candidate for shaman apprentice--a position that comes with nice lodging and pays well indeed. The chief shaman likes you and decides to let you in on a secret: shamans exploit a brand of multiverse QM theory in that they do their magic by scanning various future branches of the tribe's world line in order to predict what will take place (rain, good weather, winning tickets at the lottery, etc.) Getting the branch right is a bit difficult, but with practice one can get within a few worlds of the path on the world line the tribe eventually takes. You discover that each branch is very deterministic and causal-based---and once on a path, one thing reliably leads to another. You discover that your job as shaman is to keep everyone's attention, and once you've done that, to direct them down a reliable path. You decide it's not too different from the corporate world, so you're eager to have a go at it. You learn quickly and after a month or so, you can generally intuit (no pun intended) what the possibilities (paths) are for the tribe, and you're able to steer them as a unit down that path. With that, the shaman retires and you take his place. Then, the chief takes ill. You saw it coming but you thought it would be on another path---but you were wrong. Now you look ahead and all the paths forward are deterministic and end with the death of the chief. But, the tribe is relying on you to make the chief well. So you go to the retired shaman and ask him what to do. He replies that you *can't* make the chief well---especially if all the paths forward are deterministic and all end in death for the chief. But as a shaman there are things you can do that will shake things up that will result in placing the entire tribe---and you included---on a completely new track---that might save the chief's life. The downside: both you and tribe will be on an entirely different path--determined by completely unknown histories. You might save the chief's life, but on that new path, an errant virus (from a different history) could hit the tribe, wiping it out. Worse, to save the chief's life, you as a shaman would (for a few weeks or months) have no access to the future. By performing a miracle you'd be placing the entire tribe--as well as yourself--onto a completely different path, with different histories and thus different rules (though the history would *seem* the same). Would you take the chance and shake things up? Or would you keep the tribe on the familiar world line and end up losing the chief (and everyone's confidence.) RM
Re: Equivalence
At 10:23 AM 6/3/2005, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear R., You make a very good point, one that I was hoping to communicate but failed. The notion of making copies is only coherent if and when we can compare the copied produce to each other. Failing to be able to do this, what remains? Your suggestion seems to imply that precognition, coincidence and synchronicity are some form resonance between decohered QM systems. Could it be that decoherence is not an all or nothing process; could it be that some 'parts' of a QM system decohere with respect to each other while others do not and/or that decoherence might occur at differing rates within a QM system? Stephen Yes, that's what I am suggesting. The rates may remain constant---i.e. less than a few milliseconds (as Patrick L. earlier noted) however, I suspect there is a topology where regions of decoherence coexist and border regions of coherence. An optics experiment might be able to test this (if it hasn't been done already), and it might be experimentally testable as a psychology experiment. RM - Original Message - From: rmiller [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 1:07 AM Subject: Equivalence Equivalence If the individual exists simultaneously across a many-world manifold, then how can one even define a copy? If the words match at some points and differ at others, then the personality would at a maximum, do likewise---though this is not necessary---or, for some perhaps, not even likely. It's been long established that the inner world we navigate is an abstraction of the real thing---even if the real world only consists of one version. If it consists of several versions, blended into one another, then how can we differentiate between them? From a mathematical POV, 200 worlds that are absolute copies of themselves, are equivalent to one world. If these worlds differ minutely in areas *not encountered or interacted with by the percipient (individual), then again we have one percipient, one world-equivalent. I suspect it's not as though we're all run through a Xerox and distributed to countless (infinite!) places that differ broadly from one another. I rather think the various worlds we inhabit are equivalent--and those that differ from one another do by small--though perceptible---degrees. Some parts of the many-world spectrum are likely equivalent and others are not. In essence, there are probably zones of equivalence (your room where there are no outside interferences) and zones of difference. Even if we did manage to make the copies, then there would still be areas on the various prints that would be equivalent, i.e. the same. Those that are different, we would notice and possibly tag these differences with a term: decoherence. Perhaps that is all there is to it. If this is the case, it would certainly explain a few things: i.e. precognition, coincidence and synchronicity. R. Miller
Re: Equivalence
At 11:27 AM 6/3/2005, rmiller wrote: At 10:23 AM 6/3/2005, Stephen Paul King wrote: Dear R., You make a very good point, one that I was hoping to communicate but failed. The notion of making copies is only coherent if and when we can compare the copied produce to each other. Failing to be able to do this, what remains? Your suggestion seems to imply that precognition, coincidence and synchronicity are some form resonance between decohered QM systems. Could it be that decoherence is not an all or nothing process; could it be that some 'parts' of a QM system decohere with respect to each other while others do not and/or that decoherence might occur at differing rates within a QM system? Stephen Yes, that's what I am suggesting. The rates may remain constant---i.e. less than a few milliseconds (as Patrick L. earlier noted) however, I suspect there is a topology where regions of decoherence coexist and border regions of coherence. An optics experiment might be able to test this (if it hasn't been done already), and it might be experimentally testable as a psychology experiment.\\ More to the point---Optical experiments in QM often return counterintuitive results, but they support the QM math (of course). No one has satisfactorily resolved the issue of measurement to everyone's liking, but most would agree that in some brands of QM consciousness plays a role. On one side we have Fred Alan Wolf and Sarfatti who seem to take the qualia approach, while on the other side we have those like Roger Penrose who (I think) take a mechanical view (microtubules in the brain harbor Bose-Einstein condensates.) All this model-building (and discussion) is fine, of course, but there are a number of psychological experiments out there that consistently return counterintuitive and heretofore unexplainable results. Among them, is Helmut Schmidt's retro pk experiment which consistently returns odd results. The PEAR lab at Princeton has some startling remote viewing results, and of course, there's Rupert Sheldrake's work. As far as I know, Sheldrake is the only one who has tried to create a model (morphic resonance), and most QM folks typically avoid discussing the experiments--except to deride them as nonscientific. I think it may be time to revisit some of these ESP experiments to see if the results are telling us something in terms of QM, i.e. decoherence. Changing our assumptions about decoherence, then applying the model to those strange experiments may clarify things. RM RM - Original Message - From: rmiller [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 1:07 AM Subject: Equivalence Equivalence If the individual exists simultaneously across a many-world manifold, then how can one even define a copy? If the words match at some points and differ at others, then the personality would at a maximum, do likewise---though this is not necessary---or, for some perhaps, not even likely. It's been long established that the inner world we navigate is an abstraction of the real thing---even if the real world only consists of one version. If it consists of several versions, blended into one another, then how can we differentiate between them? From a mathematical POV, 200 worlds that are absolute copies of themselves, are equivalent to one world. If these worlds differ minutely in areas *not encountered or interacted with by the percipient (individual), then again we have one percipient, one world-equivalent. I suspect it's not as though we're all run through a Xerox and distributed to countless (infinite!) places that differ broadly from one another. I rather think the various worlds we inhabit are equivalent--and those that differ from one another do by small--though perceptible---degrees. Some parts of the many-world spectrum are likely equivalent and others are not. In essence, there are probably zones of equivalence (your room where there are no outside interferences) and zones of difference. Even if we did manage to make the copies, then there would still be areas on the various prints that would be equivalent, i.e. the same. Those that are different, we would notice and possibly tag these differences with a term: decoherence. Perhaps that is all there is to it. If this is the case, it would certainly explain a few things: i.e. precognition, coincidence and synchronicity. R. Miller
Re: Equivalence
At 01:46 PM 6/3/2005, rmiller wrote: (snip) What do you mean by the qualia approach? Do you mean a sort of dualistic view of the relationship between mind and matter? From the discussion at http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/rhett.html it seems that Sarfatti suggests some combination of Bohm's interpretation of QM (where particles are guided by a 'pilot wave') with the idea of adding a nonlinear term to the Schrodinger equation (contradicting the existing 'QM math', which is entirely linear), and he identifies the pilot wave with the mind and has some hand-wavey notion that life involves some kind of self-organizing feedback loop between the pilot wave and the configuration of particles (normally Bohm's interpretation says the configuration of particles has no effect on the pilot wave, but that's where the nonlinear term comes in I guess). Since Bohm's interpretation is wholly deterministic, I'd think Sarfatti's altered version would be too, the nonlinear term shouldn't change this. Seems to me you've described the qualia approach pretty well. while on the other side we have those like Roger Penrose who (I think) take a mechanical view (microtubules in the brain harbor Bose-Einstein condensates.) Penrose's proposal has nothing to do with consciousness collapsing the wavefunction, he just proposes that when a system in superposition crosses a certain threshold of *mass* (probably the Planck mass), then it collapses automatically. The microtubule idea is more speculative, but he's just suggesting that the brain somehow takes advantage of not-yet-understood quantum gravity effects to go beyond what computers can do, but the collapse of superposed states in the brain would still be gravitationally-induced. Penrose has a *lot* of things to say about QM---and his new book has the best description of fibre bundles I've seen in quite a while---but no, I didn't mean to suggest his entire argument was based on BECs in the microtubules. I suggested Penrose because his approach seems diametrically opposed to the qualia guys. All this model-building (and discussion) is fine, of course, but there are a number of psychological experiments out there that consistently return counterintuitive and heretofore unexplainable results. Among them, is Helmut Schmidt's retro pk experiment which consistently returns odd results. The PEAR lab at Princeton has some startling remote viewing results, and of course, there's Rupert Sheldrake's work. As far as I know, Sheldrake is the only one who has tried to create a model (morphic resonance), and most QM folks typically avoid discussing the experiments--except to deride them as nonscientific. I think it may be time to revisit some of these ESP experiments to see if the results are telling us something in terms of QM, i.e. decoherence. Changing our assumptions about decoherence, then applying the model to those strange experiments may clarify things. RM Here's a skeptical evaluation of some of the ESP experiments you mention: http://web.archive.org/web/20040603153145/www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/webtwo_features_psi_two.htm Anyway, if it were possible for the mind to induce even a slight statistical bias in the probability of a bit flipping 1 or 0, then simply by picking a large enough number of trials it would be possible to very reliably insure that the majority would be the number the person was focusing on. So by doing multiple sets with some sufficiently large number N of trials in each set, it would be possible to actually send something like a 10-digit bit string (for example, if the majority of digits in the first N trials came up 1, you'd have the first digit of your 10-digit string be a 1), something which would not require a lot of tricky statistical analysis to see was very unlikely to occur by chance. If the retro-PK effect you mentioned was real, this could even be used to reliably send information into the past! I spoke with Schmidt in '96. He told me that it is very unlikely that causation can be reversed, but rather that the retropk results suggest many worlds. When these ESP researchers are able to do a straightforward demonstration like this, that's when I'll start taking these claims seriously, until then extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The extraordinary claims---evidence rule is good practical guidance, but it's crummy science. Why should new results require an astronomical Z score, when proven results need only a Z of 1.96? Think about the poor fellow who discovered that ulcers were caused by helicobacter pylori---took him ten years for science to take him seriously, and then only after he drank a vial of h.pylori broth himself. Then there's the fellow at U of I (Ames) who believed that Earth is being pummeled by snowballs--as big as houses--from space. He was thoroughly derided (some demanded he be fired) for ten years or so---until a UV
Re: Do things constantly get bigger?
At 01:28 PM 6/3/2005, Norman Samish wrote: Hal, Your phrase . . . constantly get bigger reminds me of Mark McCutcheon's The Final Theory where he revives a notion that gravity is caused by the expansion of atoms. Norman That's the excuse I use. RM - Original Message - From: Hal Finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 8:59 AM Subject: Re: Many Pasts? Not according to QM... Saibal Mitra writes: This is actualy another argument against QTI. There are only a finite number of different versions of observers. Suppose a 'subjective' time evolution on the set of all possible observers exists that is always well defined. Suppose we start with observer O1, and under time evolution it evolves to O2, which then evolves to O3 etc. Eventually an On will be mapped back to O1 (if this never happened that would contradict the fact that there are only a finite number of O's). But mapping back to the initial state doesn't conserve memory. You can thus only subjectively experience yourself evolving for a finite amount of time. Unless... you constantly get bigger! Then you could escape the limitations of the Bekenstein bound. Hal Finney
Re: Equivalence
At 04:40 PM 6/3/2005, rmiller wrote: At 03:25 PM 6/3/2005, you wrote: (snip) I spoke with Schmidt in '96. He told me that it is very unlikely that causation can be reversed, but rather that the retropk results suggest many worlds. But that is presumably just his personal intuition, not something that's based on any experimental data (like getting a message from a possible future or alternate world, for example). Actually, he couldn't say why the result came out the way it did. His primary detractor back then, was Henry Stapp---whom Schmidt invited to take part in the experiment. After which Stapp modified his views somewhat. When these ESP researchers are able to do a straightforward demonstration like this, that's when I'll start taking these claims seriously, until then extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (snip) The issue is not the Z score in isolation, it's 1) whether we trust that the correct statistical analysis has been done on the data to obtain that Z score (whether reporting bias has been eliminated, for example)--that's why I suggested the test of trying to transmit a 10-digit number using ESP, which would be a lot more transparent--and 2) whether we trust that the possibility of cheating has been kept small enough, which as the article I linked to suggested, may not have been met in the PEAR results: Suspicions have hardened as sceptics have looked more closely at the fine detail of Jahn's results. Attention has focused on the fact that one of the experimental subjects - believed actually to be a member of the PEAR lab staff - is almost single-handedly responsible for the significant results of the studies. It was noted as long ago as 1985, in a report to the US Army by a fellow parapsychologist, John Palmer of Durham University, North Carolina, that one subject - known as operator 10 - was by far the best performer. This trend has continued. On the most recently available figures, operator 10 has been involved in 15 percent of the 14 million trials yet contributed a full half of the total excess hits. If this person's figures are taken out of the data pool, scoring in the low intention condition falls to chance while high intention scoring drops close to the .05 boundary considered weakly significant in scientific results. First, you're right about that set of the PEAR results, but operator 10 was involved in the original anomalies experiments---she was not involved in the remote viewing (as I understand). But p0.05 is weakly significant? Hm. It was good enough for Fisher. . .it's good enough for the courts (Daubert). Sceptics like James Alcock and Ray Hyman say naturally it is a serious concern that PEAR lab staff have been acting as guinea pigs in their own experiments. But it becomes positively alarming if one of the staff - with intimate knowledge of the data recording and processing procedures - is getting most of the hits. I agree, but again, I don't think Operator 10 was involved in all the experiments. Have any of these skeptics tried to replicate? I believe Ray Hyman is an Oregon State English Prof, so he probably couldn't replicate some of the PEAR lab work, but surely there are others who could. Alcock says t(snip) . . . distort Jahn's results. If Hyman and Alcock believe Jahn et al were cheating, then they shouldn't mince words; instead, they should file a complaint with Princeton. Of course, both these concerns would be present in any statistical test, even one involving something like the causes of ulcers like in the quote you posted above, but here I would use a Bayesian approach and say that we should start out with some set of prior probabilities, then update them based on the data. Let's say that in both the tests for ulcer causes and the tests for ESP our estimate of the prior probability for either flawed statistical analysis or cheating on the part of the experimenters is about the same. But based on what we currently know about the way the world works, I'd say the prior probability of ESP existing should be far, far lower than the prior probability that ulcers are caused by bacteria. It would be extremely difficult to integrate ESP into what we currently know about the laws of physics and neurobiology. If someone can propose a reasonable theory of how it could work without throwing everything else we know out the window, then that could cause us to revise these priors and see ESP as less of an extraordinary claim, but I don't know of any good proposals (Sarfatti's seems totally vague on the precise nature of the feedback loop between the pilot wave and particles, for example, and on how this would relate to ESP phenomena...if he could provide a mathematical model or simulation showing how a simple brain-like system could influence the outcome of random quantum events in the context of his theory, then it'd be a different story). A couple
Re: Functionalism and People as Programs
At 10:58 PM 6/3/2005, you wrote: R. Miller writes (quoting Lee Corbin): If someone can teleport me back and forth from work to home, I'll be happy to go along even if 1 atom in every thousand cells of mine doesn't get copied. Exposure to a nuclear detonation at 4000 yds typically kills about 1 in a million cells. When that happens, you die. I would suggest that is a bad metaphor. Losing one atom in every thousand cells is not the same as losing the cell itself. Cells are a constant work in progress. Bits fall off, transcription errors occur in the process of making proteins, radiation or noxious chemicals damage subcellular components, and so on. The machinery of the cell is constantly at work repairing all this damage. It is like a building project where the builders only just manage to keep up with the wreckers. Eventually, errors accumulate or the blueprints are corrupted and the cell dies. Taking the organism as a whole, the effect of all this activity is like the ship of Theseus: over time, even though it looks like the same organism, almost all the matter in it has been replaced. That's correct, of course. I'm finishing up a book on nuclear fallout, and most of my selves were obviously immersed in radiation issues rather than simple mathematics. Sorry. RM
experience = sum over histories?
At 11:20 AM 6/2/2005, Hal Finney wrote: (snip) All these examples are meant to show that we act as though we care about giving good experiences even though we know they will be forgotten and not have lasting impact. If we extend that principle more generally, I think it follows that we should try to have good experiences on days when we have high measure. Hal Finney I've always thought that QM offered great tools for social scientists, and here's another example. Is it worthwhile to consider a life as the sum of experiences along a given track of the world line, or can we borrow from Feynman and view life as a sum over histories? If so, it might explain false memories, love at first sight and coincidence. Richard Miller
Equivalence
Equivalence If the individual exists simultaneously across a many-world manifold, then how can one even define a copy? If the words match at some points and differ at others, then the personality would at a maximum, do likewise---though this is not necessary---or, for some perhaps, not even likely. It's been long established that the inner world we navigate is an abstraction of the real thing---even if the real world only consists of one version. If it consists of several versions, blended into one another, then how can we differentiate between them? From a mathematical POV, 200 worlds that are absolute copies of themselves, are equivalent to one world. If these worlds differ minutely in areas *not encountered or interacted with by the percipient (individual), then again we have one percipient, one world-equivalent. I suspect it's not as though we're all run through a Xerox and distributed to countless (infinite!) places that differ broadly from one another. I rather think the various worlds we inhabit are equivalent--and those that differ from one another do by small--though perceptible---degrees. Some parts of the many-world spectrum are likely equivalent and others are not. In essence, there are probably zones of equivalence (your room where there are no outside interferences) and zones of difference. Even if we did manage to make the copies, then there would still be areas on the various prints that would be equivalent, i.e. the same. Those that are different, we would notice and possibly tag these differences with a term: decoherence. Perhaps that is all there is to it. If this is the case, it would certainly explain a few things: i.e. precognition, coincidence and synchronicity. R. Miller
Re: Functionalism and People as Programs
At 11:20 PM 6/2/2005, Lee Corbin wrote: Stephen writes I really do not want to be a stick-in-the-mud here, but what do we base the idea that copies could exist upon? It is a conjecture called functionalism (or one of its close variants). Functionalism, at least, in the social sciences refers to the proposition that everything exists because it has a function (use). When that notion came under attack in the 1960s, structural functionalists responded that some things have latent functions--uses that we have yet to divine. Functionalism follows Scholasticism which follows teleology. Not particularly good science---or at least, not *modern* science. What if I, or any one else's 1st person aspect, can not be copied? If the operation of copying is impossible, what is the status of all of these thought experiments? Still pretty robust. If you accept that a chronon has a dimension equal to about 10^-43 seconds, then you'd have to concede that we exist as a deck of copies through time. No big deal, but we ARE copies of the individual we were 1 x 10-^43 seconds ago. If not, where's the glue? I notice that many people seek refuge in the no-copying theorem of QM. Well, for them, I have that automobile travel also precludes survival. I can prove that to enter an automobile, drive it somewhere, and then exit the automobile invariably changes the quantum state of the person so reckless as to do it. If someone can teleport me back and forth from work to home, I'll be happy to go along even if 1 atom in every thousand cells of mine doesn't get copied. Exposure to a nuclear detonation at 4000 yds typically kills about 1 in a million cells. When that happens, you die. I would suggest that is a bad metaphor. Moreover---I am not really picky about the exact bound state of each atom, just so long as it is able to perform the role approximately expected of it. Structural functionalism. When physicists converse at a bar, they talk the language of sociology. (That is, go ahead and remove any carbon atom you like, and replace it by another carbon atom in a different state.) If, and this is a HUGE if, there is some thing irreducibly quantum mechanical to this 1st person aspect then it follows from QM that copying is not allowed. Neither a quantum state nor a qubit can be copied without destroying the original. What if there is *no* original copy? Those that are familiar with Photoshop would probably argue that each layer created is still an integral part of the image. If you accept Cramer's transactional model, then what *will* take place in the future will affect the state of the past. You don't suppose Julian Barbour is on to something? R. Miller
Re: Plaga
At 06:58 PM 5/24/2005, rmiller wrote: In a recent post (5/24) I wrote. . . I would suggest re Plaga or anyone else discussed here, it's not the time spent in a particular academic trench that makes the idea great, it's the quality of the insight. As luck, coincidence or a wide specious present would have it, we have this story in Wired re Peter Lynds: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/physics.html R.Miller *(and Elvis Costello was a computer programmer---the list goes on.)
RE: Sociological approach, luck, and the WTC surge cloud
Faculty Lounge over the old tritium storage pit behind the maintenance shed. RMiller
RE: Sociological approach
At 07:15 AM 5/24/2005, you wrote: Richard M writes I remember Plaga's original post on the Los Alamos archives way back when the server there was a 386. Most of the methods I've seen--Plaga's, Fred Alan Wolf's, and others involve tweaking the mortar, so to speak---prying apart the wallboard to obtain evidence of the next room over. Since all I'm interested in is whether behavior systems incorporate knowledge of clearly defined probabilities that may exist in the next lane over (so to speak)--I would like to make a modest proposal--- Assemble a hundred college students...in a double-blind experiment to determine their awareness of occult but clearly defined probabilities. Here's how: set up a random number generator that will return a value on a screen--say 1 through 50 (or whatever object set you'd like). Tell the students it's a random number generator that will return a perfectly random result, and you'd like to see how good they are at guessing a value just before it appears. Pay the student a nominal sum each time she gets the value correct. Debit the student a small amount each time she gets it incorrect--so they'll have something invested in the outcome. How, essentially, does this differ from the casino game of roulette? Because we don't have a finite set of probabilities to compare the responses against. Hypothetical: We watch a roulette player at Monte Carlo. Then, we reach down into our case and bring out our QM probability viewer and switch it on. Now, in addition to the central scene, we see ten versions of the same player (and roulette) each differing only in probability from the original. As a result, each scene shows a different number winning. Luckily, we have the newest model QM viewer, so with each version a number flashes on the screen that shows the probability of this win being the one we saw originally. Of the ten, some would likely have a lower probability of occurring and some would have a higher probability. Since we have no QM viewer, we have to stack the deck (so to speak) and limit the number of probabilities per run to a set quantity. Of course, it could be fairly argued that MW is far more resilient and pervasive and that some version of us (or the machine) would choose different values and sets--thus muddling the results. But on the off-chance that MW is somewhat more stable, I think we may see subjects that can accurately assess hidden probabilities. As before, if it is found that we routinely sample probability space this might involve brain processes that developed through evolution---but would also suggest that consciousness exists as an object in probability space. Hilgard's experiments can be interpreted to suggest that. His book, incidentally, is Divided Consciousness by Wiley Interscience. reprinted in '88, I believe. As for the latter, roulette has been played so very much that by now there would have been almost enough time to evolve people who were good at it. And there are people who are good at it. Everyone calls them lucky which really doesn't explain much. Some of us routinely choose the wrong queue, others get the correct one (queuing theory and probability offer good explanations for this sort of thing, but other factors may simply involve an ability to sample alternate worlds. Richard
Re: Plaga
All, In my recent post I noted that Plaga's article has been on the xxx site since their server was a 386. I want to be clear that my comment was not meant as a dig at Plaga, nor his paper--just that it has been around since '95 and I can't recall anyone commenting (constructively) on it. As for astute knowledge in the QM Codex being a requirement, I seem to recall that, before Ed Whitten took an interest in physics, his undergrad degree was in History. Einstein was a---well, we all know what Einstein was during his miracle year.* I would suggest re Plaga or anyone else discussed here, it's not the time spent in a particular academic trench that makes the idea great, it's the quality of the insight. R.Miller *(and Elvis Costello was a computer programmer---the list goes on.)
Re: Plaga
At 07:51 PM 5/24/2005, Hal Finney wrote: We discussed Plaga's paper back in June, 2002. I reported some skeptical analysis of the paper by John Baez of sci.physics fame, at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3686.html . I also gave some reasons of my own why arbitrary inter-universe quantum communication should be impossible. Hal Finney I don't recall that discussion; may not have been a list subscriber at that time. At any rate, thanks for the info. RMiller
Re: Sociological approach
Patrick-- At 05:04 AM 5/23/2005, you wrote: On Sun, 22 May 2005, rmiller wrote: I'm approaching this as a sociologist with some physics background so I'm focusing on what the behavior system perceives (measures). If all possible worlds exist in a superpositional state, then the behavior system should likewise exist in a superpositional state. First, it looks like you are confusing the multiverse of QM with the plenitude of all theories or all UTM programs (Level 3 with Level 4 multiverse in Tegmark's terminology). Different level 4 worlds do not superpose, they don't relate to each other in any way, by definition. (snip) Behaviour systems are complicated enough that it is a mathematical certainty that they fall in the second class. That depends on how one characterizes them. I'm describing a behavior system that is described as a snapshot of interactions between elements. It's an abstraction, of course, but not all that far removed from, say, a snapshot of a neural net. In which case there is no way to detect that the superposition is happening; for all practical purposes each world goes its own sweet way. No. Probabilities differ by a small degree across z space, but there are not necessarily discrete differences. It would be infinite in the sense that a continuum is infinite, or that a line contains an infinite number of infinitesimals. If there are say, 10 possible worlds available to the behavioral state (percipient) but each world differs from the other by elements that are not observed by the percipient, then the behavior system is under the assumption that interaction is taking place with a single, unified environment. Recalling the Copenhagen interpretation: does Chicago exist if you happen to be by yourself in a hotel room in Des Plaines, IL? The answer is irrelevant until the behavior system begins to experience some aspect of Chicago. The superposition properties depend on the information available in the whole system (e.g. your hotel room), not just the mind of the observer. That's a very basic assumption, of course---one that cannot be proven without measurement. Obviously the source material (whatever that is) is available for the behavior system to define as discrete bits of information, but the hard fact is, we're assuming we know the mathematical characteristics of this source material when we really don't. The world is constantly in close touch with itself. Yes it is. But we have characterized this matrix of information based upon interesting experiments that study the mortar between the bricks (as it were). Inferring much more gets us into great discussions of whether the universe is really a big computer and leads to films like, well, The Matrix. As Abraham Kaplan (1964) said, when we don't know something, we don't know it. And we really don't know much about the character of the information that constitutes the world. Let's take a look at the assumptions about Chicago, for example: For instance, if Chicago vanished in a large quantum fluctuation photons which would otherwise have been reflected from its streets to the clouds would be different. We're assuming that photons (rather than probabilities) exist independently of our observations and measurements of them. While obviously something is out there that when measured will fit the profile of a photon, it's a stretch to suggest that it can exist *as we know it* independently of our observation. We don't know the properties of out there very well, so perhaps we shouldn't assume that reflection and even distance are relevant. Our observations that lead us to the concept of entanglement lead us to assume the entangled objects are separated by distance when distance is, let's face it, an abstraction. (There was only one article that has ever called distance into question, and it appeared in Omni magazine a few months before it's demise. I'll say it before you: Maybe that was the reason it finally failed---it was heading in the direction of Hume with no Descartes to rescue it.) Hence photons leaving (assumption: separation) the clouds that land (assumption: separation) in fields 40 miles away (assumption: distance) would be different and so on. Very soon (within microseconds) the photons coming through your hotel window are affected, and you become 100% correlated with the state of Chicago (assumption: we know the phase state of Chicago---that it is commensurate with collapsed probabilities associated with a quantum fluctuation resulting in photons becoming separated with an object and impinging on another object, etc. Lots of collapsed probabilities here with no measurement in sight--and no proof that Chicago exists independent of individual measurement. It's not just a limitation, it's an assumption--and maybe an improper one. Broadly (I'm not talking about Copenhagen, here) we generally assume that because the object has
Re: Sociological approach
At 07:29 PM 5/23/2005, you wrote: I think I can answer to the whole message by saying no way isn't always the way. The EPR paradox was supposed to prove quantum theory was wrong because it supposedly violated relativity. Alain Aspect proved that EPR actually worked as advertised, however it does so without violating relativity. Likewise I think there are ways that information, and perhaps other things, may be able to tunnel between worlds, despite the decoherence problem, of which I am well aware. Besides, Plaga has an experiment that is waiting to be tried that would prove other universes - http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9510007 . Time will tell, but I think history is on my side. I remember Plaga's original post on the Los Alamos archives way back when the server there was a 386. Most of the methods I've seen--Plaga's, Fred Alan Wolf's, and others involve tweaking the mortar, so to speak---prying apart the wallboard to obtain evidence of the next room over. Since all I'm interested in is whether behavior systems incorporate knowledge of clearly defined probabilities that may exist in the next lane over (so to speak)--I would like to make a modest proposal--- Assemble a hundred college students (a hundred will return a respectable Z score) in a double-blind experiment to determine their awareness of occult but clearly defined probabilities. Here's how: set up a random number generator that will return a value on a screen--say 1 through 50 (or whatever object set you'd like). Tell the students it's a random number generator that will return a perfectly random result, and you'd like to see how good they are at guessing a value just before it appears. Pay the student a nominal sum each time she gets the value correct. Debit the student a small amount each time she gets it incorrect--so they'll have something invested in the outcome. There's always a catch and here's this one: the values aren't really random, but are chosen (double-blind) to result in TWO randomly-chosen sets. These sets are transferred to a disc and placed in the RNG which then randomly picks which set to show--and which to keep in a state of unrealized probability. Of course, the researcher won't know either--until after the fact. The experiment begins. One set of values gets shown to the student (immediately after they guess at the value). The other set remains as an unrealized probability. If the student do not probe probability space then the number of guessed values from the unrealized set should not be significant. On the other hand, if the students guess by actually probing nearby probabilities (i.e. the next lane over), then the number of guessed values in the unrealized set should be significant. Given the nature of this experiment, I'd support a minimum z of 1.96 as a criteria---p.05. And no meta-analysis allowed. It seems to be a relatively easy experiment to try--RNG software is available (though some algorithms, I hear, are not as random as they should be.) Comments welcome--- R Miller
Sociological approach
I'm approaching this as a sociologist with some physics background so I'm focusing on what the behavior system perceives (measures). If all possible worlds exist in a superpositional state, then the behavior system should likewise exist in a superpositional state. If there are say, 10 possible worlds available to the behavioral state (percipient) but each world differs from the other by elements that are not observed by the percipient, then the behavior system is under the assumption that interaction is taking place with a single, unified environment. Recalling the Copenhagen interpretation: does Chicago exist if you happen to be by yourself in a hotel room in Des Plaines, IL? The answer is irrelevant until the behavior system begins to experience some aspect of Chicago. What if Deutsch is incorrect about contact between the various worlds? Suppose the behavior system normally exists across a manifold of closely-linked probabilities, with the similarities forming a central tendency and the differences existing at each edge of the distribution? If the behavior system can perceive only a small chunk of information at a time, then it may be possible that each percipient really does live in his or her own little world---a small island of similar probabilities madereal from the larger cloud of probabilities. If we quantify a behavior system in terms of elements and interactions between elements, we arrive at a complex, but definable state. If that behavior system exists across multiple worlds that differ in minute details (i.e. a unobserved kitchen saucer moved an inch to the side) then the behavior systems would exist as identical entities (or, as my friend Giu P. would say, *shadows*) across the similar sections. Employing a little math, the behavior system could exist as an object in Z space--not too different than a fibre bundle in topology.Differences among the realized probabilities among these shadow worlds might show up at each end of the normal distribution, but may be still be perceived by the behavior system as guesses or hunches, depending upon where the primary centre of the behavioral bundle is at the time. Psychology experiments in the 1980s suggest (to me anyway) that a psychological mechanism has evolved that helps the behavioral system negotiate this territory. Bottom line, it may be useful to take a step back and challenge some of our primary assumptions---namely, that we exist in a discrete world in the multiverse and that we can never step into the one next door. That is, we may be wondering why we can't visit the next room, when in fact, we inhabit the entire neighborhood. RMiller
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
This is starting to sound like discussion Hume must have had with himself. RM
Re: Frank Flynn
It's a chatterbot. Considering the poor syntax and misspelled words, it was probably designed by a Russian teen. RMiller
Quantum accident survivor
It would seem that there are a finite number of ways to survive (or die in) any given car accident. It that's the case, the number of many world branches would be limited by this value. Taken longitudinally, it would seem that the architecture of the world lines of these and similar events would limit the number of worlds associated with the individual. That is, after such a life-threatening event, the number of multiple copies of the individual become limited. R. Miller
