How could you be so naive and patronizing at the same time?.
I happen to agree completely with NuclearArchaeologist completely even though I *DID* take drugs, in quantity and variety, for ten whole years. Get this through your head: not all anti-drug points of view are due to ignorance? What ignorance to suppose that they are!
The most compelling reason not to take drugs is the knowledge - through experience - that their subjectively supposed benefits are NOT real, but their long term effects on health, wealth and what you managed to experience and achieve with your life ARE real. Oh yes, very real.
Ten years down the road I can tell you what you will have gained from taking drugs:
An empty bank account;
A stagnant career;
Health problems from the drugs themselves;
Health problems from not looking after yourself properly while taking drugs;
A circle of friends who care about nothing more than getting high (and would sell you down the river for the price of a fix if they could);
Ten years of your life gone forever, just like that, with nothing memorable or worthwhile to show for it;
A brain that doesn't work quite as sharply as it used to.
The difference between NuclearArchaeologist and you is simply that he's grown up and you haven't.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yeah, but do note that all this stuff quoted from the Dune novels is FANTASY. If you weren't on drugs you'd be able to tell the difference. <BR> <BR>Please note: I used to do drugs too (for a long time) before I finally wised up. <BR> <BR>Drugs do not enhance brain function; most of them interfere with it in a highly destructive manner. the reason you have a good feeling about doing drugs is that *all* those which are sold illegally for recreational purposes, directly or indirectly influence a certain group of dopamine receptors in the brain commonly referred by the lay public as the "pleasure centers". <BR> <BR>When you take drugs you are performing an act no more sophisticated or meaningful than masturbation. Meanwhile your brain malfunctions badly. Big deal.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yeah, but do note that all this stuff quoted from the Dune novels is FANTASY. If you weren't on drugs you'd be able to tell the difference.
Please note: I used to do drugs too (for a long time) before I finally wised up.
Drugs do not enhance brain function; most of them interfere with it in a highly destructive manner. the reason you have a good feeling about doing drugs is that *all* those which are sold illegally for recreational purposes, directly or indirectly influence a certain group of dopamine receptors in the brain commonly referred by the lay public as the "pleasure centers".
When you take drugs you are performing an act no more sophisticated or meaningful than masturbation. Meanwhile your brain malfunctions badly. Big deal.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
It's nothing to do with The Matrix or any other movie. Its an attempt to summarize a third-party theory of consciousness advanced by Daniel Dennett. We don't all get our philosophy from watching TV and the movies...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just want to make the point that A->B does not imply B->A; the possible existence of conscious quantum computers does not imply that other consciousnesses such as human brains use quantum computation of any kind.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Well, yeah but given that we've already survived as individuals what would we still be doing in the same universe as *all* the other beneficially mutated organisms? I mean, it seems to me that in MWI there'll be alternate realities comprising every possible combination of individual and mutation-outcome. Why would we only *ever* find ourselves inhabiting a history with a higher than expected incidence of good mutations across the board? My continued survival and therefore my observer status is not affected by the mutation rates of a bacterium in a physically remote laboratory - is it?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
How did quantum physics create matter out of nothing when there was no quantum physics if nothing existed?
That's the $64,000 dollar question, isn't it?
I know of two answers.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
First of all, there is a growing consensus among physicists that quantum theory is basically a theory of information and therefore absolute and fundamental - underpinning not only the laws governing spacetime, matter and energy in our universe but all phenomena in all possible universes; and even defining the behaviour of the abstract "metareality" which encompasses all. Everything that is has ultimately been created by/out of something abstract, no more substantial than information itself.
The first time I ever heard about the origin of the Big Bang itself was in a dumbed-down TV broadcast about inflationary theories. It talked about matter spontaneously springing intto existence from a timeless, dimensionless void. Naturally this spurred my curiosity so I went off and learned all I could about inflation. The details of inflation itself have been revised and revised over the years but I'm aware of only one explanation covering the origin itself.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
The "timeless dimensionless void" is of course the Nothing that you referred to. Now given that even Nothing is governed by quantum mechanics, anything that can happen must happen. Within a spacetime, improbable events are separated by large distances of time and space. But within a Nothing, there is no time and space so these events just Happen, Always Happened, Are Happening, Will Happen...you see the difficulty. It's probably best just to envisage all events that are possible in a Nothing as being integral to and co-existent with the Nothing.
And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
Anyway, one such improbable quantum event is the existence of a quantity of mass-energy...in our particular case, not much as it happens - just a few kilograms. Of course, existing only in Nothing this mass-energy is infinitely dense and hot and so is forced to expand spatially with time. The sudden expansion causes a phase change in spacetime at some later epoch which releases still more mass-energy out of the Higgs field to provide the vast bulk of the Universe's mass that we observe today and causing space to expand much faster until it cools suffiently to undergo another phase change. Meanwhile the fundamental constants of the universe are adjusted by the falling temperature and pressure, allowing the fundamental forces to separate out from each other ("symmetry breaking") and the laws of physics to assume their current form. This is "inflation". The rest is History as they say...quite literally in this case though.:o)
It's worth remembering for the sake of perspective that the Nothing is still there by the way. Or perhaps I should say still Not There. The most common perceptual mistake people make is thinking in terms of the void being somehow "before" the Big Bang, even right after they've been told that time began at the Big Bang itself and only refers to the contents of the universe created thereby. The only way I've ever managed to get my own head around this is to follow Stephen Hawking's analogy...that is, there isn't any point in time prior to the Big Bang any more than there is a point on the Earth that is further South than the South Pole.
So the first answer to your question is that spacetime and physics in general aren't necessary conditions for quantum events and in fact spacetime and physics are generated by, in, or during such quantum events (it seems to come free with the mass-energy). I'm sure you'll remember that space is continues to be generated today as the matter continues to spread outward. Whether it can be said that time is being generated in the same way as that matter moves into the future, I don't know. Probably. Of course, from an outside point of view (eg back in the Nothing) the origin, the whole lifetime and the ultimate fate of this universe are co-existent as there's no time there anyway.
That kind of brings me to the second answer to your question.
You may remember me saying that in Nothing, anything that can happen will happen. In other words, it's a logical consequence of this model that all possible Universes must get created out of the Nothing in a similar manner. And when I say "all possible universes" I mean an infinite number of universes representing all possible starting configurations - different values of total mass-energy, angular momentum and whatever other constants can apply to a Big Bang.
Worse than that, it may be possible for ready-expanded universes to spring into being already partly or fully formed since this might be viewed as just another starting configuration. I'm not going to go down this route though as I'd just be speculating (and I'm not qualified to do so).
But I think you get the picture. This model leads directly to a multiverse comprising an infinite number of possible universes, all of which exist from their own point of view, but from a point of view within one of those universes, the universe you're in is all that there is. It's not the Many Worlds Interpretation by itself, but it is part of it. From the point of view of the Nothing, all alternate histories within a given universe are just different aspects of the same thing.
So the second answer to your question is that when a universe is created out of Nothing, it's only happened at all insofar as its inhabitants believe that it has. There are no external observers, so it has no external consequences. Since it has no external consequences it can do whatever it damn well likes as far as the Nothing and the rest of the multiverse are concerned. That's what I meant when I teasingly said in my original post that no-one came looking for the borrowed mass-energy because no-one saw it being taken in the first place. Existence is only relative to the universe you inhabit. Do inhabitants of other universes exist? Yes and no. It doesn't ever matter. Does our universe exist? It doesn't matter to anyone but us.
Stephen Hawking has advanced the notion of a universal wave equation which contains within it the origin and all possible evolutions of our universe up to their respective ultimate conclusions. So you are already just a part of of one possible solution to that universal wave equation.
Please note that the multiverse can be expressed as a larger wave equation which is a superposition of all possible universal wave equations, and of which any given universe is itself just one possible solution.
And that's all there is. Except of course, God, who I'm told can be found at the Omega Point (...AKA "The Nothing", AKA "The Timeless Dimensionless Void").
PS. In speaking of a "point of view of the Nothing" I'm aware I'm taking liberties (by definition there can be no observer there as there is no "there") but I find it a useful method of gaining an objective perspective on the whole picture.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Copeland believes, like Penrose, that the mind is NOT a Turing machine!
I think (hope) that "believes" is too strong a word. I haven't read his book but I got the idea from the encyclopedia article that Copeland was simply expressing reservations about what is proven and what isn't.
Penrose on the other hand is so wrapped up in his own qmind theory that he's completely lost touch with reality:o(
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
I don't dispute what you claim for Quantum Computing, I was only asserting my view that Biology - as implemented on this planet up to now, at any rate - is explicable entirely in terms of classical physics.
With regard to David Deutsch, he made one elementary common error in his interpretation of the famous Church-Turing hypothesis about computability, undermining most of his subsequent conclusions about the computability of the human mind (that's unfortunate because I'm planning to get uploaded before I die...). The error is a common one apparently. You can read about it in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Someone who believes in a materialistic universe (deterministic or quantum, whatever) will tend to accept evolution because it's POSSIBLE for it to happen, and they see no more likely option. Those who believe in a spiritual/material world will accept that divine intervention could create the world, because it's POSSIBLE for it to happen, and they see no more likely option!
That's the similarity. But you forgot to mention the difference. Which is, the standards that each group applies to determine what is POSSIBLE.
Is God possible? The fact is, we have no evidence either way; we don't know for sure (the absence of any kind of physical theory which could accommodate His proposed existence kind of mitigates against it though).
Is evolution possible? Unequivocally, yes. It's been observed in the laboratory, most easily with fast-breeding organisms such as bacteria. In fact, evolution by human (rather than natural) selection has been practiced by humans upon plant and animal species for thousands of years, in the form of agriculture and animal husbandry. That's totally separate from the circumstantial and gap-ridden evidence provided by paleontology. BTW: about the gaps in the fossil record - with fossils, as with God, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You religious people would be a lot more credible if you came up with a better story. The one in the Bible was OK for uneducated, superstitious peasants hundreds of years ago but most of it just doesn't fit what we now know for certain.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Does anybody remember Nathan Spring's "Box" in the short-lived BBC Series "Star Cops"? Now that's a useful PDA.
I don't think a speech interface is going to be much use until these devices are capable of understanding a substantial proportion of possible spoken phrases. That would require incorporating a large chunk of the CYC database in a decent real-time (therefore probably analogue) neural net.
It'd be nice to think that demand for this type of feature on PDA's might fund and therefore speed up development of that kind of sophisticated AI.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics...predicts exactly the same things as the "orthodox" (aka Copenhagen) interpretation, which is simpler.
Within whichever universe is being observed, that is.
I think McFadden's theory results from a confusion on his part between Copenhagen and Many Worlds.
The key point is his claim that since deleterious mutations can't live, beneficial mutations get sort of "shaken out of the pepper pot" in a kind of stochastic process whenever cells get thermodynamically isolated. In other words, unviable elements of a quantum superposition die but if one possible element of a superposition is capable of observing itself into existence, out it pops.
This is a feature of Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation (and the reasoning behind Barrow and Tipler's Anthropic Principle which a few people have alluded to here today). But (according to MWI) on each occasion where this situation occurs, while one universe witnesses the happy event there are others where the death march is played instead. The selection of which universe gets the prize is essentially random in relation to similar universe selection games being played elsewhere.
Since all molecules - even DNA - should behave in a statistically correct fashion, the relative incidence of survival of such cells should be predictable according to ordinary physical chemistry. But I think he's asking us to believe that for any given isolated cell, the universe in which the best DNA configuration materialises...is going to be the one that we happen to observe rather more often that would be predicted by statistics (and Schroedinger's cats would emerge alive from their boxes more frequently than expected).
OK, that doesn't sound too implausible when stated like that and at least it's testable, right?
But if this is really happening, then cells all round the world are consistently choosing to survive in a common, unique reality.
And that would be a gross violation of current QM theory because MWI QM doesn't play favourites. The notion of choice and a single privileged reality belongs to the Copenhagen Interpretation, not to the MWI.
One has to ask, what benefit accrues to a paramecium that chooses to survive in the same reality as another paramecium somewhere else? Because that's what the theory seems to imply is happening. In actual fact, most individual organisms benefit if they survive to monopolise the food supply at the expense of others - the direct opposite of the consequences of McFadden's theory.
I don't think this is quite as daft as the QM consciousness theories, but given the massive distorting effect this ability would surely have on all statistics involving living systems, I'm sure we would have noticed by now if it were true. McFadden's theory is likely based upon a simple misunderstanding that a real QM Physicist would never have made.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
The problem I have with that, is that in order to invoke mysterious quantum effects you really should exhaust the classical possibilities first. The areas where this is going on (evolution, brain function) are already well-enough understood that the gaps which exist are not of the "...and then a miracle happens..." type. They're usually just waiting for someone to come up with the funds to pay someone to ask the right questions and do an experiment. Biology is a mundane subject these days. The basic mechanisms underpinning evolution, in particular, are well understood. From molecular biogenesis onwards. The rest is just a matter of details.
The only question which science shall never be able to answer with or without quantum is why it is that there is a subjective conscious experience associated with self-awareness. And the reason this question will never be answered is because it's a stupid question. See my.sig to find out why.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
What if I were to argue that ball lightning was caused by trillions of microscopic, invisible, ephemeral poodles that farted out the photons to produce the balls of light that are observed. It is obviously mindless to assume that this is true because there is no evidence to suggest that it is. However, is it also mindless to assume it is not true because it cannot be disproven? By your reasoning, the answer would be yes.
No, you have turned this back to front. In the absence of any evidence one way or the other it is impeccable to assume that the phenomenon does not exist. We have no evidence about either God or your poodle-farted ball lightning. Ergo we assume that neither exists.
Actually I do think there is a God of sorts but I'll readily admit that I don't know where or how, and that scientific evidence is of immeasurably more objective value than my personal faith. Where evidence shows that physics works by itself, faith must yield to science. After all, we're only guessing about faith on the basis of no evidence at all.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
You're right but only in a limited sense. You need to understand things more deeply when you don't yet have the whole picture, or else you can't use your imagination to help suggest new pieces to fill in the gaps. That's what theory is about.
The problem with QM isn't that it can't be understood; maybe it can. The problem is that it isn't properly understood now. We know how it works for limited cases (small simple systems) but we don't really know its true boundaries, and therefore what other ramifications it might have that are as yet undiscovered.
Hence the proliferation of interpretations, and the search for a Grand Unified Theory/Theory of Everything.
And also hence all the New Age nitwits claiming that life is because of quantum, consciousness is because of quantum, ghosts and fairies are because of quantum, and the Quantum Theory of Wire Coathanger Proliferation.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's perfectly correct in a way. God is (a manifestation of, an aspect of) the universe. It's the only interpretation that doesn't result in self-contradiction.
Big Bang cosmology says that time began when spacetime came into being at the initial singularity. "Always" can only refer back to that point because there is no "before". You can't go further South than the South Pole.
As to how the Big Bang could have happened without a prior cause, as to how the mass/energy could have appeared spontaneously from no place or time - it could so it did. Basic Quantum Physics. Matter and Energy are spontaneously created everywhere, all the time, on a small scale, by a sort of temporary "borrowing". Bigger events like that are rarer of course.
For those of you still wondering about conservation of mass/energy (when are we gonna get annihilated and where the fsck is all the antimatter) I guess that when the stuff to make the universe got borrowed...it didn't belong to anyone and no-one was watching at the time, so no-one ever bothered to claim it back;o)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
What you are proposing is yet another interpretation of QM but it's not nearly as widely held as the Copenhagen Interpretation which *does* insist that individual events do not resolve between potential states until observed.
As for Roger Penrose, this is the guy who rejected neurobiology in favour of a theory that our consciousness is based on orchestrated collapse of quantum wave functions...and that the basic computational unit of thought is the protein microtubules inside our cells. similar story to the guy in the article.
I always think it's sad when an eminent scientist steps outside of his own field and makes a complete ass of himself.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Current StrongARM processors of the appropriate format and power consumption for PDA's are about equivalent in processing power to a 200MHz Pentium IIRC.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:A sated man cannot understand a hungry man.
on
NASA Gets Smart
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· Score: 2
The West isn't propping up Moscow out of simple charitable feelings. The money is to stop the Russian Federation from collapsing. This is important because:
(i) If the government can't keep its people fed, there will be revolution. Remember that; they have a century-old tradition of it in that part of the world. In case the younger generation should forget (unlikely), there are still a number of Russians alive who remember 1917.
(ii) If there is revolution it might put Russia and its neighbours back in the hands of the Communists but judging from recent events I'd say it's far more likely that the Nationalists would take over. There's a lot of racism in Russia, particularly anti-Semitism; what with the need for scapegoats and economic collapse It wouldn't be much different from the Nazi Germany of the 1930's.
(iii) If Moscow loses it's grip, the Federation would break up. Russia would probably invade some of its neighbours to take back what they see as rightly belonging to them.
(iv) Not only Russia but several present members of that Federation are nuclear states. If basic necessities were scarce, and the people desperate enough, and those states were at war with each other, those weapons might well get used. Apart from the radioactive contamination of the rest of Europe, there is a significant risk that other powers would get involved and that the conflict could not be contained.
(v) Even if Russia managed to survive all of that without starting a local nuclear war, it would necessarily be a much tougher, more militant, fiercely Nationalist Russia than we see now. A Russia once again in total control of the region's resources, and just as much of a threat to the West as the old 1960's USSR if not much more so.
(vi) Apart from all of that, if Russia doesn't ally itself to the West in the long term then we always run the risk that they will ally themselves with China, with potentially disastrous results for the West.
If the only way to avoid these risks is to pump money into Russia until their democracy matures and they manage to get their economic act together, then so be it. We have no choice really. The Russians know it, too.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Duh! It was Windows' fault! It ate part of my cut and paste! Yes indeed, I meant OpenLaw like that. Please go there now and look up the Eldred v. Reno case. I previewed and checked that the links work this time...:o/
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Sorry, Slashdot's "extrans" comment format support is broken I see. Here's that link again: The OpenLaw site already has a forum where you can discuss legal issues pertaining to this particular case. And contribute to an open defense project!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is Thought exists only as an abstraction
Slashdot Mirror
How could you be so naive and patronizing at the same time?.
I happen to agree completely with NuclearArchaeologist completely even though I *DID* take drugs, in quantity and variety, for ten whole years. Get this through your head: not all anti-drug points of view are due to ignorance? What ignorance to suppose that they are!
The most compelling reason not to take drugs is the knowledge - through experience - that their subjectively supposed benefits are NOT real, but their long term effects on health, wealth and what you managed to experience and achieve with your life ARE real. Oh yes, very real.
Ten years down the road I can tell you what you will have gained from taking drugs:
An empty bank account;
A stagnant career;
Health problems from the drugs themselves;
Health problems from not looking after yourself properly while taking drugs;
A circle of friends who care about nothing more than getting high (and would sell you down the river for the price of a fix if they could);
Ten years of your life gone forever, just like that, with nothing memorable or worthwhile to show for it;
A brain that doesn't work quite as sharply as it used to.
The difference between NuclearArchaeologist and you is simply that he's grown up and you haven't.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yeah, but do note that all this stuff quoted from the Dune novels is FANTASY. If you weren't on drugs you'd be able to tell the difference.
<BR>
<BR>Please note: I used to do drugs too (for a long time) before I finally wised up.
<BR>
<BR>Drugs do not enhance brain function; most of them interfere with it in a highly destructive manner. the reason you have a good feeling about doing drugs is that *all* those which are sold illegally for recreational purposes, directly or indirectly influence a certain group of dopamine receptors in the brain commonly referred by the lay public as the "pleasure centers".
<BR>
<BR>When you take drugs you are performing an act no more sophisticated or meaningful than masturbation. Meanwhile your brain malfunctions badly. Big deal.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Yeah, but do note that all this stuff quoted from the Dune novels is FANTASY. If you weren't on drugs you'd be able to tell the difference.
Please note: I used to do drugs too (for a long time) before I finally wised up.
Drugs do not enhance brain function; most of them interfere with it in a highly destructive manner. the reason you have a good feeling about doing drugs is that *all* those which are sold illegally for recreational purposes, directly or indirectly influence a certain group of dopamine receptors in the brain commonly referred by the lay public as the "pleasure centers".
When you take drugs you are performing an act no more sophisticated or meaningful than masturbation. Meanwhile your brain malfunctions badly. Big deal.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
It's nothing to do with The Matrix or any other movie. Its an attempt to summarize a third-party theory of consciousness advanced by Daniel Dennett. We don't all get our philosophy from watching TV and the movies...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just want to make the point that A->B does not imply B->A; the possible existence of conscious quantum computers does not imply that other consciousnesses such as human brains use quantum computation of any kind.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Well, yeah but given that we've already survived as individuals what would we still be doing in the same universe as *all* the other beneficially mutated organisms? I mean, it seems to me that in MWI there'll be alternate realities comprising every possible combination of individual and mutation-outcome. Why would we only *ever* find ourselves inhabiting a history with a higher than expected incidence of good mutations across the board? My continued survival and therefore my observer status is not affected by the mutation rates of a bacterium in a physically remote laboratory - is it?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's the $64,000 dollar question, isn't it?
I know of two answers.
First of all, there is a growing consensus among physicists that quantum theory is basically a theory of information and therefore absolute and fundamental - underpinning not only the laws governing spacetime, matter and energy in our universe but all phenomena in all possible universes; and even defining the behaviour of the abstract "metareality" which encompasses all. Everything that is has ultimately been created by/out of something abstract, no more substantial than information itself.
The first time I ever heard about the origin of the Big Bang itself was in a dumbed-down TV broadcast about inflationary theories. It talked about matter spontaneously springing intto existence from a timeless, dimensionless void. Naturally this spurred my curiosity so I went off and learned all I could about inflation. The details of inflation itself have been revised and revised over the years but I'm aware of only one explanation covering the origin itself.
The "timeless dimensionless void" is of course the Nothing that you referred to. Now given that even Nothing is governed by quantum mechanics, anything that can happen must happen. Within a spacetime, improbable events are separated by large distances of time and space. But within a Nothing, there is no time and space so these events just Happen, Always Happened, Are Happening, Will Happen...you see the difficulty. It's probably best just to envisage all events that are possible in a Nothing as being integral to and co-existent with the Nothing.
Anyway, one such improbable quantum event is the existence of a quantity of mass-energy...in our particular case, not much as it happens - just a few kilograms. Of course, existing only in Nothing this mass-energy is infinitely dense and hot and so is forced to expand spatially with time. The sudden expansion causes a phase change in spacetime at some later epoch which releases still more mass-energy out of the Higgs field to provide the vast bulk of the Universe's mass that we observe today and causing space to expand much faster until it cools suffiently to undergo another phase change. Meanwhile the fundamental constants of the universe are adjusted by the falling temperature and pressure, allowing the fundamental forces to separate out from each other ("symmetry breaking") and the laws of physics to assume their current form. This is "inflation". The rest is History as they say...quite literally in this case though.
It's worth remembering for the sake of perspective that the Nothing is still there by the way. Or perhaps I should say still Not There. The most common perceptual mistake people make is thinking in terms of the void being somehow "before" the Big Bang, even right after they've been told that time began at the Big Bang itself and only refers to the contents of the universe created thereby. The only way I've ever managed to get my own head around this is to follow Stephen Hawking's analogy...that is, there isn't any point in time prior to the Big Bang any more than there is a point on the Earth that is further South than the South Pole.
So the first answer to your question is that spacetime and physics in general aren't necessary conditions for quantum events and in fact spacetime and physics are generated by, in, or during such quantum events (it seems to come free with the mass-energy). I'm sure you'll remember that space is continues to be generated today as the matter continues to spread outward. Whether it can be said that time is being generated in the same way as that matter moves into the future, I don't know. Probably. Of course, from an outside point of view (eg back in the Nothing) the origin, the whole lifetime and the ultimate fate of this universe are co-existent as there's no time there anyway.
That kind of brings me to the second answer to your question.
You may remember me saying that in Nothing, anything that can happen will happen. In other words, it's a logical consequence of this model that all possible Universes must get created out of the Nothing in a similar manner. And when I say "all possible universes" I mean an infinite number of universes representing all possible starting configurations - different values of total mass-energy, angular momentum and whatever other constants can apply to a Big Bang.
Worse than that, it may be possible for ready-expanded universes to spring into being already partly or fully formed since this might be viewed as just another starting configuration. I'm not going to go down this route though as I'd just be speculating (and I'm not qualified to do so).
But I think you get the picture. This model leads directly to a multiverse comprising an infinite number of possible universes, all of which exist from their own point of view, but from a point of view within one of those universes, the universe you're in is all that there is. It's not the Many Worlds Interpretation by itself, but it is part of it. From the point of view of the Nothing, all alternate histories within a given universe are just different aspects of the same thing.
So the second answer to your question is that when a universe is created out of Nothing, it's only happened at all insofar as its inhabitants believe that it has. There are no external observers, so it has no external consequences. Since it has no external consequences it can do whatever it damn well likes as far as the Nothing and the rest of the multiverse are concerned. That's what I meant when I teasingly said in my original post that no-one came looking for the borrowed mass-energy because no-one saw it being taken in the first place. Existence is only relative to the universe you inhabit. Do inhabitants of other universes exist? Yes and no. It doesn't ever matter. Does our universe exist? It doesn't matter to anyone but us.
Stephen Hawking has advanced the notion of a universal wave equation which contains within it the origin and all possible evolutions of our universe up to their respective ultimate conclusions. So you are already just a part of of one possible solution to that universal wave equation.
Please note that the multiverse can be expressed as a larger wave equation which is a superposition of all possible universal wave equations, and of which any given universe is itself just one possible solution.
And that's all there is. Except of course, God, who I'm told can be found at the Omega Point (...AKA "The Nothing", AKA "The Timeless Dimensionless Void").
PS. In speaking of a "point of view of the Nothing" I'm aware I'm taking liberties (by definition there can be no observer there as there is no "there") but I find it a useful method of gaining an objective perspective on the whole picture.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Copeland believes, like Penrose, that the mind is NOT a Turing machine!
:o(
I think (hope) that "believes" is too strong a word. I haven't read his book but I got the idea from the encyclopedia article that Copeland was simply expressing reservations about what is proven and what isn't.
Penrose on the other hand is so wrapped up in his own qmind theory that he's completely lost touch with reality
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I don't dispute what you claim for Quantum Computing, I was only asserting my view that Biology - as implemented on this planet up to now, at any rate - is explicable entirely in terms of classical physics.
With regard to David Deutsch, he made one elementary common error in his interpretation of the famous Church-Turing hypothesis about computability, undermining most of his subsequent conclusions about the computability of the human mind (that's unfortunate because I'm planning to get uploaded before I die...). The error is a common one apparently. You can read about it in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
but, ha ha ha ha, your reply *did* make me laugh out loud.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Someone who believes in a materialistic universe (deterministic or quantum, whatever) will tend to accept evolution because it's POSSIBLE for it to happen, and they see no more likely option. Those who believe in a spiritual/material world will accept that divine intervention could create the world, because it's POSSIBLE for it to happen, and they see no more likely option!
That's the similarity. But you forgot to mention the difference. Which is, the standards that each group applies to determine what is POSSIBLE.
Is God possible? The fact is, we have no evidence either way; we don't know for sure (the absence of any kind of physical theory which could accommodate His proposed existence kind of mitigates against it though).
Is evolution possible? Unequivocally, yes. It's been observed in the laboratory, most easily with fast-breeding organisms such as bacteria. In fact, evolution by human (rather than natural) selection has been practiced by humans upon plant and animal species for thousands of years, in the form of agriculture and animal husbandry. That's totally separate from the circumstantial and gap-ridden evidence provided by paleontology. BTW: about the gaps in the fossil record - with fossils, as with God, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You religious people would be a lot more credible if you came up with a better story. The one in the Bible was OK for uneducated, superstitious peasants hundreds of years ago but most of it just doesn't fit what we now know for certain.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
That's a fantastic piece, congratulations. You'd be doing us all a favour if you try to get it published in as many different places as you can.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Does anybody remember Nathan Spring's "Box" in the short-lived BBC Series "Star Cops"? Now that's a useful PDA.
I don't think a speech interface is going to be much use until these devices are capable of understanding a substantial proportion of possible spoken phrases. That would require incorporating a large chunk of the CYC database in a decent real-time (therefore probably analogue) neural net.
It'd be nice to think that demand for this type of feature on PDA's might fund and therefore speed up development of that kind of sophisticated AI.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics...predicts exactly the same things as the "orthodox" (aka Copenhagen) interpretation, which is simpler.
Within whichever universe is being observed, that is.
I think McFadden's theory results from a confusion on his part between Copenhagen and Many Worlds.
The key point is his claim that since deleterious mutations can't live, beneficial mutations get sort of "shaken out of the pepper pot" in a kind of stochastic process whenever cells get thermodynamically isolated. In other words, unviable elements of a quantum superposition die but if one possible element of a superposition is capable of observing itself into existence, out it pops.
This is a feature of Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation (and the reasoning behind Barrow and Tipler's Anthropic Principle which a few people have alluded to here today). But (according to MWI) on each occasion where this situation occurs, while one universe witnesses the happy event there are others where the death march is played instead. The selection of which universe gets the prize is essentially random in relation to similar universe selection games being played elsewhere.
Since all molecules - even DNA - should behave in a statistically correct fashion, the relative incidence of survival of such cells should be predictable according to ordinary physical chemistry. But I think he's asking us to believe that for any given isolated cell, the universe in which the best DNA configuration materialises...is going to be the one that we happen to observe rather more often that would be predicted by statistics (and Schroedinger's cats would emerge alive from their boxes more frequently than expected).
OK, that doesn't sound too implausible when stated like that and at least it's testable, right?
But if this is really happening, then cells all round the world are consistently choosing to survive in a common, unique reality.
And that would be a gross violation of current QM theory because MWI QM doesn't play favourites. The notion of choice and a single privileged reality belongs to the Copenhagen Interpretation, not to the MWI.
One has to ask, what benefit accrues to a paramecium that chooses to survive in the same reality as another paramecium somewhere else? Because that's what the theory seems to imply is happening. In actual fact, most individual organisms benefit if they survive to monopolise the food supply at the expense of others - the direct opposite of the consequences of McFadden's theory.
I don't think this is quite as daft as the QM consciousness theories, but given the massive distorting effect this ability would surely have on all statistics involving living systems, I'm sure we would have noticed by now if it were true. McFadden's theory is likely based upon a simple misunderstanding that a real QM Physicist would never have made.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The problem I have with that, is that in order to invoke mysterious quantum effects you really should exhaust the classical possibilities first. The areas where this is going on (evolution, brain function) are already well-enough understood that the gaps which exist are not of the "...and then a miracle happens..." type. They're usually just waiting for someone to come up with the funds to pay someone to ask the right questions and do an experiment. Biology is a mundane subject these days. The basic mechanisms underpinning evolution, in particular, are well understood. From molecular biogenesis onwards. The rest is just a matter of details.
.sig to find out why.
The only question which science shall never be able to answer with or without quantum is why it is that there is a subjective conscious experience associated with self-awareness. And the reason this question will never be answered is because it's a stupid question. See my
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What if I were to argue that ball lightning was caused by trillions of microscopic, invisible, ephemeral poodles that farted out the photons to produce the balls of light that are observed. It is obviously mindless to assume that this is true because there is no evidence to suggest that it is. However, is it also mindless to assume it is not true because it cannot be disproven? By your reasoning, the answer would be yes.
No, you have turned this back to front. In the absence of any evidence one way or the other it is impeccable to assume that the phenomenon does not exist. We have no evidence about either God or your poodle-farted ball lightning. Ergo we assume that neither exists.
Actually I do think there is a God of sorts but I'll readily admit that I don't know where or how, and that scientific evidence is of immeasurably more objective value than my personal faith. Where evidence shows that physics works by itself, faith must yield to science. After all, we're only guessing about faith on the basis of no evidence at all.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
It's "Ockham's" razor, as in the Bishop of Ockham. Not "Occam". Occam make light bulbs.
Sheesh. If I had a penny every time...
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
You're right but only in a limited sense. You need to understand things more deeply when you don't yet have the whole picture, or else you can't use your imagination to help suggest new pieces to fill in the gaps. That's what theory is about.
The problem with QM isn't that it can't be understood; maybe it can. The problem is that it isn't properly understood now. We know how it works for limited cases (small simple systems) but we don't really know its true boundaries, and therefore what other ramifications it might have that are as yet undiscovered.
Hence the proliferation of interpretations, and the search for a Grand Unified Theory/Theory of Everything.
And also hence all the New Age nitwits claiming that life is because of quantum, consciousness is because of quantum, ghosts and fairies are because of quantum, and the Quantum Theory of Wire Coathanger Proliferation.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
....just assume the universe was always around?
;o)
That's perfectly correct in a way. God is (a manifestation of, an aspect of) the universe. It's the only interpretation that doesn't result in self-contradiction.
Big Bang cosmology says that time began when spacetime came into being at the initial singularity. "Always" can only refer back to that point because there is no "before". You can't go further South than the South Pole.
As to how the Big Bang could have happened without a prior cause, as to how the mass/energy could have appeared spontaneously from no place or time - it could so it did. Basic Quantum Physics. Matter and Energy are spontaneously created everywhere, all the time, on a small scale, by a sort of temporary "borrowing". Bigger events like that are rarer of course.
For those of you still wondering about conservation of mass/energy (when are we gonna get annihilated and where the fsck is all the antimatter) I guess that when the stuff to make the universe got borrowed...it didn't belong to anyone and no-one was watching at the time, so no-one ever bothered to claim it back
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
What you are proposing is yet another interpretation of QM but it's not nearly as widely held as the Copenhagen Interpretation which *does* insist that individual events do not resolve between potential states until observed.
As for Roger Penrose, this is the guy who rejected neurobiology in favour of a theory that our consciousness is based on orchestrated collapse of quantum wave functions...and that the basic computational unit of thought is the protein microtubules inside our cells. similar story to the guy in the article.
I always think it's sad when an eminent scientist steps outside of his own field and makes a complete ass of himself.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Current StrongARM processors of the appropriate format and power consumption for PDA's are about equivalent in processing power to a 200MHz Pentium IIRC.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The West isn't propping up Moscow out of simple charitable feelings. The money is to stop the Russian Federation from collapsing. This is important because:
(i) If the government can't keep its people fed, there will be revolution. Remember that; they have a century-old tradition of it in that part of the world. In case the younger generation should forget (unlikely), there are still a number of Russians alive who remember 1917.
(ii) If there is revolution it might put Russia and its neighbours back in the hands of the Communists but judging from recent events I'd say it's far more likely that the Nationalists would take over. There's a lot of racism in Russia, particularly anti-Semitism; what with the need for scapegoats and economic collapse It wouldn't be much different from the Nazi Germany of the 1930's.
(iii) If Moscow loses it's grip, the Federation would break up. Russia would probably invade some of its neighbours to take back what they see as rightly belonging to them.
(iv) Not only Russia but several present members of that Federation are nuclear states. If basic necessities were scarce, and the people desperate enough, and those states were at war with each other, those weapons might well get used. Apart from the radioactive contamination of the rest of Europe, there is a significant risk that other powers would get involved and that the conflict could not be contained.
(v) Even if Russia managed to survive all of that without starting a local nuclear war, it would necessarily be a much tougher, more militant, fiercely Nationalist Russia than we see now. A Russia once again in total control of the region's resources, and just as much of a threat to the West as the old 1960's USSR if not much more so.
(vi) Apart from all of that, if Russia doesn't ally itself to the West in the long term then we always run the risk that they will ally themselves with China, with potentially disastrous results for the West.
If the only way to avoid these risks is to pump money into Russia until their democracy matures and they manage to get their economic act together, then so be it. We have no choice really. The Russians know it, too.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Duh! It was Windows' fault! It ate part of my cut and paste! Yes indeed, I meant OpenLaw like that. Please go there now and look up the Eldred v. Reno case. I previewed and checked that the links work this time...:o/
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Sorry, Slashdot's "extrans" comment format support is broken I see. Here's that link again: The OpenLaw site already has a forum where you can discuss legal issues pertaining to this particular case. And contribute to an open defense project!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
The OpenLaw site already has a forum where you can discuss legal issues pertaining to this particular case. And contribute to an open defense project!
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction