Tag: QM

As David Deutsch pointed out in “The Fabric of Reality”, factorization of large numbers via quantum computing would harness computation from a very large number of universes. He gave 10^500 as a very rough suggestion of scale.

Absolutely no time lag can be tolerated when dealing with numbers like that. The mechanism for coordinating that number of parallel processors must be instantaneous, or the answer would take far longer to reach than the lifetime of the universe.

This seems like an insoluble problem, but fortunately the mechanism is quantum interference, which is just another name for “spooky action at a distance”.

Which, as we all know, is instantaneous.

So that’s one of its practical uses. I think there are others…

Continuing from the previous post, what are some of the implications of the hypothesis that life is of a higher order than the material world, metaphysical rather than physical?

If this hypothesis is true, then that means that life bears the same relationship to the apparent physical universe as a chess player does to a game of chess that he is playing.

What happens to the chess player when he finishes the game he is playing? Does he “die”?

No. He goes onto another pursuit, perhaps another game of chess, or perhaps something else quite different.

What does this mean about the apparent “death” that all humans face, most of them knowingly?

It means “death” is an illusion. When you finish with this lifetime, you are finishing a game, not finishing your entire existence.

Of course exactly what might happen after “death” is something that has been speculated about since time began, and will undoubtedly be a subject of much thought and discussion for the rest of the apparent flow of time in this universe.

But now there is a rational reason to conclude that “death” is a sham. No belief in anything contradictory to reality is necessary. It is reality itself that points to this conclusion.

Einstein famously said that quantum mechanics is trying to tell us something important and we should try to figure out what it is.

This is it.

My hypothesis is that “life” is a metaphysical quality that allows its possessors (via some currently unexplained mechanism) to modify the results of quantum mechanical operations that lead to different static frames as described in the previous parts of this series.

When I say that it is a metaphysical quality, I mean that it is literally higher than physics, as all movement and change in the apparent world around us depend on this ability of life. Physics cannot explain the passage of time because it is a metaphysical operation, not a physical one.

Different living creatures have different amounts of control over their environment, but they all effect that control by this method.

Human beings are different qualitatively from other known living creatures because they exhibit purposeful action, that is, action intended to produce a more desirable state of affairs (“end”) via a conscious selection of means; this is what is referred to as “free will”.  This is a subset of the general ability of living creatures to affect the course of events, although of course a very important one to humans.

Since you have free will, you can do a very simple experiment that will show you how radical this idea is.

Lift your hand, then put it back down.

What could be simpler? Actually, it’s not simple at all.

If you ask the most learned scientists in the world how you did that, the answer (although perhaps not in so many words) is: We don’t know.

Yes, they can explain nerve conduction, firing potentials, and the like, but what they cannot explain is how the whole process begins. That is, how does your intention to hold out your hand start the chain of events that leads to the nerve signals and muscular contractions?

It’s not that no one has a good explanation. It’s that no one has had any explanation. Until now.

I believe I have solved the “quantum enigma”, which suggests very strongly that consciousness has an effect on the universe. The enigma is how it is possible that you can get an answer to a question you ask that seems contradictory to the answer you would have gotten if you had asked another question that you could have asked but didn’t. An example is the fact that you can perform an experiment that shows that particles have no specific location, and another experiment that shows they do have a specific location, but the answer you get depends on the experiment you do on the specific particles in question. For a more complete description of this problem, see https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Consciousness/dp/0199753814/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491429953&sr=8-1&keywords=quantum+enigma.

The very unsatisfactory answer to this in the standard “Copenhagen” interpretation of quantum mechanics is that free will is an illusion.

I have found another answer.

But before I tell you that answer, let me bring in another issue that is plaguing physics: time.

One of the greatest mysteries in physics is the appearance that time passes. Of course many equations include t as a variable. But the picture of the universe painted by relativity is a static one. Time is “just” another dimension, albeit one with a different role in the equation from the space dimensions. As a result, you can view the entire history of the universe as a 4-dimensional solid. Yes, there is a beginning and an end (probably). But these are like the left and right sides of a solid object, with no place for our experience of “past”, “present” or “future”.

What is the cause of our conviction that “time passes”? The “passage of time” corresponds to nothing in the equations of physics. Of course many physics equations contain a variable named t, but Einsteinian relativity leads to a static view of a four-dimensional universe. Every so often there is an article or two in Scientific American suggesting that time is an illusion, which is about as (un)satisfactory as the Copenhagen interpretation of free will as an illusion.

I have found another answer.

That answer is: Life creates time.

Let us imagine what a multiverse uninhabited by life would look like.

Assuming the multiverse is infinite, then every possible arrangement of nucleons (and anything else necessary to make a unique universe) occurs an infinite number of times.

But there is no time. Without time, there can be no motion, so these universes are static.

Life arrives.

As suggested in my previous post, the “passage of time” may be the effect of living beings’ ability to switch from one of these static frames to another in which the particles have positions and velocities representing a slightly “future time”. The sequence of frames experienced by each being is affected by laws that we don’t yet know in detail to the extent that they are not predictable by classical physics. But this sequence is affected to some extent by the being’s desires; this latter is what is known as “free will”.  If we were to be able to learn at least some of the rules for how each successive static frame is selected via quantum effects, that knowledge might look astoundingly like magic to the uninitiated, as it could be used to predict (or even possibly affect) what might otherwise look like random outcomes.

How is this related to quantum physics?

If this interpretation is correct, life is what causes time’s arrow by constantly switching to a different static frame that is “advanced in time”. This same effect is also responsible for the otherwise mysterious “collapse of the wavefunction”, when one outcome is selected out of all of the possibilities represented by the wavefunction.

Thus, this interpretation accounts for time, life, the collapse of the wavefunction, free will, and a possible use for the otherwise seemingly senseless “random spooky action at a distance”.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that this interpretation is correct. But it does seem to make sense of a number of otherwise puzzling facts of physics and life.

I have recently invented a new interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is synthesized from various sources, along with a few observations of my own. I would welcome any comments or discussion.

Here are the “sections” of this theory, numbered I through IV, followed by the conclusion:

I. There are an infinite number of parallel earths

The cover article in the May 2003 edition of Scientific American is entitled “Infinite Earths in Parallel Universes Really Exist”. The article begins:

“Is there a copy of you reading this article? A person who is not you but who lives on a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. But perhaps he or she now decides to put down this article without finishing it, while you read on.

The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausible, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it is supported by astronomical observations.”

The article continues by explaining that not only is there an exact replica of you or me, but “infinitely many other inhabited planets, including not just one but infinitely many that people with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutation of your life choices.”

And, of course, given that quantum mechanics describes only the probability of an event’s occurring, not whether it actually does occur, any conceivable series of events must be taking place somewhere at this instant, in fact in infinitely many places.

This means that there is no such thing as fiction. Any story, dream, vision, or idea of how things might be is in fact being played out “right now” (in a sense that I will describe shortly), has been played out infinitely many times before, and will be played out infinitely many times again.

II. The entire universe is connected by an “instantaneous telephone line”

There is a famous “paradox” called the “Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect” (EPR), colloquially referred to by physicists as “spooky action at a distance” (see http://www.counterbalance.net/ghc-obs/epr-body.html for a more-or-less intelligible English description of this effect). Here is a case where Einstein was wrong: he believed that the extreme weirdness of this effect indicated that quantum mechanics (which predicts its existence) must be incorrect. In fact, experiments have indicated that this effect actually exists.

To vastly oversimplify, EPR says that when two particles are “entangled” and then separated to any distance whatsoever, measurements made on one of the particles will instantaneously affect the results of measurements made on the other particle.

A special issue of Scientific American (“The edge of physics” issue, available spring 2003) explains this in a fair amount of detail, including the standard disclaimer that (paraphrasing, because I do not have that issue at hand) “we cannot use nature’s instantaneous telephone to transmit information faster than light”.

However, even though we cannot use that “telephone”, its very existence means that it is possible for influences from any part of the universe to affect events anywhere else in the universe, without any time delay or attenuation whatsoever.

III. The reason for the randomness of quantum mechanical effects

I am a computer programmer by trade, and am interested in a couple of topics that may seem unrelated to the above discussion, but in fact aren’t.

These topics are randomness and compression. Random data can be defined as data that cannot be compressed. That is, the most compact way to represent the data is by simply giving the data itself, rather than some means of generating it such as a computer program. This has the interesting implication that perfectly compressed data cannot be distinguished from random data by any test (other than finding the decompression algorithm and successfully decompressing it, of course).

How are these related to the nature of the universe? Well, quantum mechanical calculations are couched in terms of probabilities, not certain outcomes. Which actual outcomes occur in any given case cannot be predicted, according to current theories; only the likelihood of any given occurrence can be determined in advance.

Let us suppose that the “instantaneous telephone” is actually being used by some entity, which we will call “God” for convenience, to transmit information from one place to another in the universe. If that information is ideally compressed, it will appear to be, by any test known to man, perfectly random.

IV. The nature of time, free will, and causality

Every possible organization of matter actually exists somewhere in the universe, including the organization that follows one millisecond “after” any existing organization, given the decisions, actions, purposes, and behaviors of sentient beings. This provides an explanation for the “paradox of time’s arrow” (why does time seem to flow from past to future irrevocably, given that there is no physical theory as to why this should occur?): namely, we’re not in fact moving from past to future, but from one universe to another, according to the decisions that we make.

This also finally reconciles the paradox of free will vs. determinism that has been puzzling mankind for thousands of years. If the universe follows laws (whether Newtonian, Einsteinian, or those of quantum mechanics), how can our decisions, intentions, and thoughts affect the future? Clearly, in a Newtonian universe, given sufficient information about the starting positions and momenta of all particles, one could predict (in theory, at least) the entire future evolution of the universe in detail. This leaves no room for free will at all.

However, the situation is not much improved by including the randomness caused by quantum mechanics. If quantum mechanical events are truly random, then they cannot be affected by free will either. This would mean that, although it would be impossible to predict the future in complete detail, it would also be impossible for sentient beings (or anything else) to cause certain events to occur by exercise of will.

If my hypothesis is true however, each individual universe that we pass through can indeed obey the laws of quantum mechanics (and therefore be deterministic, with the exception of the quantum mechanical randomness effects), but our path through those universes can still be determined by our behavior, thoughts, and decisions. Thus, the universes that we see are in fact influenced by our will.

V. Conclusion

The simplest hypothesis that accounts for all of these facts is that the apparently purposeless “instantaneous telephone” is in fact essential to the existence and functioning of the universe. It is the mechanism by which our decisions and actions allow us to “switch” from one potential universe to another instantaneously.

This implies that our decisions and actions are much more important than we realize. We are actively creating the universe in which we live by the way we treat others and ourselves.