What am I doing? Recently I half-joked that I was "watching for signs of the Apocalypse." Subtract the kooky religious implications and that's kind of true. I don't mean the Christian Apocalypse literally, nor do I really believe in the more extreme descriptions of the geek Singularity, but I do have a strong feeling that interesting changes are either imminent or happening already. They'll have broad effects, they'll catch us by surprise, and we may not even know they've happened until we look back at them. While "expect the unexpected" usually receives a response of sarcasm these days, I'm going to say it anyway; I mean by it that we need to stretch our creative faculties if we want to have any hope of understanding, let alone predicting, the nature of the changes that are coming.
The people who have done this well in the past have been the writers of speculative fiction; that's probably why I identify myself as wishing to become a writer of speculative fiction. But it's not the "writer" part or the "fiction" part that I really have in my soul, it's the "speculative" part. I can't help it. I'm like a kid on the night before Christmas; I can't sleep, I'm so excited thinking about what I'll get tomorrow.
Showing posts with label The Bafflement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Bafflement. Show all posts
2010-03-02
2008-09-08
More Eschatology
The Bafflement is the period of history between the moment a civilization discovers the facts of quantum mechanics, and the moment that civilization understands the facts of quantum mechanics.
Few civilizations survive the End of the Bafflement.
Our civilization is in the Bafflement now.
The End is nigh.
Few civilizations survive the End of the Bafflement.
Our civilization is in the Bafflement now.
The End is nigh.
2008-04-09
The Attentiometer
The two-slit experiment. Schrödinger's cat. Heard of 'em? If not, go read up. I'll wait.
They're important concepts. They represent the greatest mystery about reality we currently face, and I just don't hear much about them. This bugs me. The two-slit experiment demonstrates that looking at the universe changes it. But it doesn't give us an adequate description of what "looking at it" means. Schrödinger's cat was an attempt by Schrödinger to make us see how bizarre were the implications of the "observation" aspect of quantum mechanics. Remember, he intended it as a reductio ad absurdum, that is, he meant to show how silly the superposition interpretation of quantum mechanics was, by showing that it led to a cat being both dead and alive at the same time, which is absurd. But nowadays lots of physicists are perfectly happy to use it as the metaphor by which they describe reality. "Yup," they say, "until you observe it, the cat's dead and alive at the same time."
Maybe if I'd taken one more term of physics before giving up, I'd know why what I'm about to suggest is just plain wrong. I hope somebody will explain it to me, and be gentle. Here's my thought:
Observing a quantum event can change its result. If you stick a photomultiplier on one of the slits, the pattern on the film changes. Can we turn that around, and use the pattern on the film as a way to tell whether an event was observed?
Could we send people randomly into a room where the output of the photomultiplier shows on a screen? And make sure that if there's no one there the information is irretrievably lost? Like, line the room in black velvet? Or something? Then later we compare the films with records of when there was someone in the room, and (here's my hypothesis) lo and behold we can tell when someone was watching.
I dunno. Maybe if you add it all up informationally, you're always observing or you're never observing. Maybe your act of looking at the results is causally downstream of the events, and so always counts as an observation. We know already that the observation's collapse of the quantum state is extratemporal. Or maybe something like Penrose's "one graviton effect" rule holds true, and it's purely a matter of how much stuff gets bumped by the event.
But, dammit, we can see the difference in the films. Can't we? Isn't there an epistemic asymmetry there? A handle to grab on to?
Maybe there's a catch-22 guaranteeing that you can never gain utility from decoherence. They say that you can't use entanglement to make an ansible; maybe it's a similar kind of situation to that. I don't grok it; I didn't study hard enough in Differential Equations. But, if so, is there any way to rigorously prove that that's the case?
And could somebody please convince this layman, so I can stop dreaming?
Please, can we settle this question?
They're important concepts. They represent the greatest mystery about reality we currently face, and I just don't hear much about them. This bugs me. The two-slit experiment demonstrates that looking at the universe changes it. But it doesn't give us an adequate description of what "looking at it" means. Schrödinger's cat was an attempt by Schrödinger to make us see how bizarre were the implications of the "observation" aspect of quantum mechanics. Remember, he intended it as a reductio ad absurdum, that is, he meant to show how silly the superposition interpretation of quantum mechanics was, by showing that it led to a cat being both dead and alive at the same time, which is absurd. But nowadays lots of physicists are perfectly happy to use it as the metaphor by which they describe reality. "Yup," they say, "until you observe it, the cat's dead and alive at the same time."
Maybe if I'd taken one more term of physics before giving up, I'd know why what I'm about to suggest is just plain wrong. I hope somebody will explain it to me, and be gentle. Here's my thought:
Observing a quantum event can change its result. If you stick a photomultiplier on one of the slits, the pattern on the film changes. Can we turn that around, and use the pattern on the film as a way to tell whether an event was observed?
Could we send people randomly into a room where the output of the photomultiplier shows on a screen? And make sure that if there's no one there the information is irretrievably lost? Like, line the room in black velvet? Or something? Then later we compare the films with records of when there was someone in the room, and (here's my hypothesis) lo and behold we can tell when someone was watching.
I dunno. Maybe if you add it all up informationally, you're always observing or you're never observing. Maybe your act of looking at the results is causally downstream of the events, and so always counts as an observation. We know already that the observation's collapse of the quantum state is extratemporal. Or maybe something like Penrose's "one graviton effect" rule holds true, and it's purely a matter of how much stuff gets bumped by the event.
But, dammit, we can see the difference in the films. Can't we? Isn't there an epistemic asymmetry there? A handle to grab on to?
Maybe there's a catch-22 guaranteeing that you can never gain utility from decoherence. They say that you can't use entanglement to make an ansible; maybe it's a similar kind of situation to that. I don't grok it; I didn't study hard enough in Differential Equations. But, if so, is there any way to rigorously prove that that's the case?
And could somebody please convince this layman, so I can stop dreaming?
Please, can we settle this question?
2008-03-27
The Schrödinger Gun
Roger Penrose proposes in The Emperor's New Mind that consciousness depends not just on arrangements of synaptic connections, but on funky quantum effects. (He was on a panel discussing this at a symposium at Dartmouth while I was there studying cognitive science, and I got to ask him a question. Squee!) Collapse of the quantum waveform, decoherence, boundaries between the quantum and classical, that sort of thing. Apparently he explored that particular topic, specifically with regard to a hypothesis he has about microtubules, in his next book, (hang on, Googling/Wikiing the name...) Shadows of the Mind. I haven't read it.
Suppose he's right. Suppose consciousness relies on something like quantum computing. Well, then, decoherence would interfere with it, wouldn't it? If you could figure out a way to "observe" the essential process or feature, you could disrupt someone's consciousness.
It's too bad we have no actual clue what "observe" means. Either theoretically or practically. How do you open the box on the cat? Can we mathematically define what constitutes opening the box? Penrose touches on this; he proposes that maybe it's something like, an event is observed when it's causally connected to a one-graviton outcome. He makes it clear that he's just waving his hands, though.
What if we could causally connect consciousness to a one-graviton outcome? Something like a photomultiplier for the soul. A cascade resulting from detection of some aspect of cognition.
Like say we discover that the quantummy activity in, oh heck, let's just go with the flow and say microtubules, sometimes emits neutrinos or something. Or when consciousness is happening, it has a different probability of emitting neutrinos. I dunno, all you need is something observable. Yeah, I know what you're going to say, but just for the sake of argument let's suppose we figure out a way to detect neutrinos without a coal mine full of ultrapure water. I watch PBS sometimes, too, you know.
So there you go. Point some appropriate kind of detector at somebody's head, and disrupt their consciousness. Just like the detector in the two-slit experiment, but useful.
Wouldn't that make a rockin' weapon?
Suppose he's right. Suppose consciousness relies on something like quantum computing. Well, then, decoherence would interfere with it, wouldn't it? If you could figure out a way to "observe" the essential process or feature, you could disrupt someone's consciousness.
It's too bad we have no actual clue what "observe" means. Either theoretically or practically. How do you open the box on the cat? Can we mathematically define what constitutes opening the box? Penrose touches on this; he proposes that maybe it's something like, an event is observed when it's causally connected to a one-graviton outcome. He makes it clear that he's just waving his hands, though.
What if we could causally connect consciousness to a one-graviton outcome? Something like a photomultiplier for the soul. A cascade resulting from detection of some aspect of cognition.
Like say we discover that the quantummy activity in, oh heck, let's just go with the flow and say microtubules, sometimes emits neutrinos or something. Or when consciousness is happening, it has a different probability of emitting neutrinos. I dunno, all you need is something observable. Yeah, I know what you're going to say, but just for the sake of argument let's suppose we figure out a way to detect neutrinos without a coal mine full of ultrapure water. I watch PBS sometimes, too, you know.
So there you go. Point some appropriate kind of detector at somebody's head, and disrupt their consciousness. Just like the detector in the two-slit experiment, but useful.
Wouldn't that make a rockin' weapon?
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