Darwinism, Reproduction and QM

Coldcall

This is a whacky idea but i thought why not try it out here and see what folks think.

This theory is based on accepting an observer-centric interpretation of qm. Many wont agree with that but its important in order to make sense of my argument. So lets pretend that the existence of an information processing observer is absolutely vital for physical reality to occur as we experience it in this universe.

So if observers are vital for the universe to exist, then the only way the universe becomes sustainable from the perspective of an unfolding reality, is if those observers/biology go on to reproduce new observers which "hold open" the physical reality. So reproduction could serve the purpose of allowing the universe to exist and continue evolving new complexity.

Bolting on the theory of evolution and how it seems nature has a tendency towards complexity we can take this idea one step further. As species evolve with more complex sensory organs and better ability to process information/reality we are better able to define in greater detail our physical environment (universe).

I know there are problems with this idea because one can argue that the universe appears to have existed a few billion years before any biology evolved, but as anyone who studies qm understands the early universe could have evolved in a large wave function of probabilities before self-selecting the reality of a universe which eventually brought about observers.

Outlandish yes, but i think it offers a reasonable solution for the existence of biology whose first and foremost objective appears to be reproduction.

Any comments or arguments most welcome.

Freeman Dyson

Sounds interesting and a little like biocentrism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentrism

It also sounds like Wheeler's it from bit and participatory universe:

"Wheeler: It from bit. Otherwise put, every 'it'—every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. 'It from bit' symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic) in origin and that this is a participatory universe."

Basically we get out of the universe what we put into it.

Coldcall

Freeman,

Yes it's absolutely based on PAP. "Biocentrism" being a derivative of PAP itself. However Wheeler is quoted in his later years as having decided "observers" are not vital. Not sure why he changed his mind other than perhaps because he did not want to step too far outside the mainstream.

However i am trying to look at it from the point of why all biology has reproduction as its primary objective. Is it about the continuation of species or about the continuation of reality?

Freeman Dyson

Because they wouldnt be here if reproduction wasnt their primary objective. It's like asking why are animals so adamant about protecting their young. Because those who werent lost all their successors. Only the ones with that trait are still around. Same goes for reproduction.

Coldcall

Yes that argument is a lot like the anthropic argument which says we would not notice the biocentrism of the universe if it did not have the finely tuned properties which enable biology to evolve. usually that argument is accompanied by a need for there to be an infintie amount of universes to explain our luck in existing in the one which can harbour life.

I dont buy it on the following grounds.

1) Quantum fluctuations which pop in and out of existence are (if we go with the mainstream thought) borrowing and paying back energy from some finite well of total energy. I say its finite because why would there be a need for payback if energy is available in limitless quantities? That makes no sense, at least to me.

2) And if the other universes are based on a quantum mechanical framework as is ours and there can be universes(realities) with no observers able to reproduce, then that would make nature very wasteful of energy resrources. So that would contradict with the laws of conservation we observe in nature at least in our own universe.

Of course thats assuming that all universes in the multi-verse emanated from the same forces of nature. hence they should follow the same basic principles of energy conservation.

WaveJumper

It also appears to imply that the universe is in a sense 'alive' and straining towards what we term objective existence(collapsing the wavefunction to an actual state for all observers).

Honestly, this sub-forum has become depressing - there is no other place, where one feels like a taliban as in the Philosophy forum. There is so little that we know about reality that trying to build a model of our experience without knowing what conscious awareness, life, time, space and even matter are, is often quite depressing.

Sorry for my rant, the thread is interesting by itself and i will get back to it.

Freeman Dyson

That has nothing to do with it. I dont think you know how evolution and natural selection work.

Random mutations happen. A ton of them. And then selective pressures decide whether those traits survive. Out of all those random mutations at least some will be beneficial. Like a mutation that makes a cheetah run a little faster. That cheetah survives and passes on that trait. The gene pool fills up with faster cheetahs because they are better at hunting and passing on their genes. The same thing with reproduction. Why does sex feel good? It started as a random mutation. It stuck because it is beneficial to survival.

Organisms ARE finely tuned. They are fine tuned to their environment because they have had billions of years of trial and error to become so. We have an explanation why animals are fine tuned. We dont as to why the universe is.

WaveJumper

Freeman Dyson, i think Caldcall is trying to come up with a general framework for why Life is what it is, not how it is(which can hardly be disputed given the evidence in favour of the TOE). The TOE does not explain why life formed or why it has to mutate. It could have simply died out 2 minutes after being formed as a rna structure(and never re-surface again), but it did not. There is likely more to this than "it happened like that for no reason".

Coldcall

Well I'd agree with that, though not sure about the "taliban" reference :-)

Coldcall

Hi Freeman,

You've misunderstood me as wavejumper has point out, though its probably my own fault for sort of going off on a tangent. I am not questioning how evolution works, and I'm totally signed up advocate of Darwinian theory. PAP or a derivative of it can easily co-exist with a theory of evolution.

My point was that your statement: "Because they wouldnt be here if reproduction wasnt their primary objective. It's like asking why are animals so adamant about protecting their young. Because those who werent lost all their successors. Only the ones with that trait are still around. Same goes for reproduction." - is more more or less the same as that used in weak anthropic principle to explain away the phenomenal fine tuning necessary of physical laws in order for biology to occur.

kote

Are you familiar with teleological arguments? They are a class of arguments, historically for the existence of God, that appeal to apparent fine-tuning of things towards certain purposes evidence of their intelligent design. Your argument sounds very similar, except instead of God being the creator, you have observers as the creator.

The problem with teleological arguments is that the apparent design is often easily explained by other factors. Even if teleological arguments are not easily explained in another way, philosophically they do not offer logically valid justification for their claims.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good overview of the current state of things in http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/te...cal-arguments/. It even discusses QM and "Cosmic Fine-Tuning." Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" was probably the first and most influential book on the particular ideas you bring up.

Your concept of observers maintaining reality is not necessarily related to the teleological portions of your post, however. George Berkeley, a 17th century British Empiricist, famously argued that all reality depends on its observation. He concluded, however, that the limited and subjective scope of observation by individuals was not sufficient to maintain objective reality, and therefore an omniscient God must exist, observing all at all times, and maintaining reality.

He presented this argument very accessibly in his 1713 "Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous." See also: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berkeley/. The thesis is known as idealism.

Coldcall

Hi Kote,

I think the problem is that traditionally religious folks have used a sort of telelogical argument as some sort of evidence. Personally i think its a bit of a stawman argument.

For instance Wheeler's delayed choice experiment demonstrated telelogical behaviour in quantum systems but we dont need to invoke "god" into the equation, as its just how nature works. Retro-causal behaviour as we see in quanutm entanglement is basically telelogical. Thats not to say one can send signals backwards through time - just in case anyone thinnks i am saying that :-)

When we say that we need to disturb the atom in order to make a measurement we are admitting a form of teleology exists because our measurement will not only effect the current position but also the distribution and potential of its historic position.

However i don't agree with Berkeley's view that when no observer exists it is "god" which maintains the objectivity of a physical reality.

kote

Berkeley's point was that a constant omniscient observer was necessary to the idea that reality depends on the observer. If there isn't someone watching at all times, then it would be true to say that my desk doesn't exist when I'm not looking at it. It would also be true to say that reality really is different depending on your point of view, and that nothing is objective.

Berkeley's program in the Dialogues was to be as consistent with common sense as possible - more so than the materialist. Doing so requires him to invoke a constant observer, and he brings up some very good arguments against distributed subjective observers as the maintainers of reality.

Coldcall

Hi Kote,

Quantum cosmology initiated by theories such as Wheeler's PAP explains how it does not matter when the observers turn up, they may in fact have a retro-causal effect on the birth and early evolution of the universe when no observers are present.

Unfortunately Berkeley missed the quantum revolution by a few centuries.

kote

He didn't miss anything relevant . Note that I'm not in support of Berkeley's idealism, but I think he did have a lot of good things to say. QM seems to support Berkeley's arguments further in that it provides more support against a naive materialism. Philosophically, Berkeley almost predicted much of what happened with QM and a resurgence of the role of the observer or subjective.

I would argue that the notion of retroactively creating reality is inconsistent. If nothing were real at t=0, and then an observer came into the world, you can't magically say that something was actually real at t=0. (By the way, how do we get observers out of nothingness? - that's another thread I think!) Either you were plain incorrect when you first claimed nothing was real at t=0, or you've got a logical contradiction. t=0 is a way of identifying the world at a point in time according to any philosophy of time I am familiar with. The world cannot both be real and nonreal at the same point in time. P=P.

WaveJumper

This is the essence of retrocausailty - measurements/observations now influence 'events' in the past. Maybe it wasn't real back then, but because of retrocausality - it is real now(by collapsing wavefunctions representing past events).


Judging by the OP, he'd likely suggest by way of a conscious mind, though "nothingness" can have many connotations so it isn't clear what you mean.




This is the bare essence of a mind-dependent reality, as suggested in the OP.

Freeman Dyson

Ah, I see. Instead of the how; by what means, you want to know the why. We are talking about purpose now. I forgot this is a philosophy forum for a minute.

I am very interested in this question too. In teleology in general. Could it have been any different? Does the universe and its laws have purpose? Or is that just the way things are and the only way they could be? Does the universe have a plan? Was some thought put into it? Is there an idea behind it? A principle?

Here are some quotes coldcall may like:

"A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world."

-Wheeler

"Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?"

-Wheeler

"Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study."

-Whitehead

"There is a certain sense in which I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance. Some people take the view that the universe is simply there and it runs along–it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it, about its existence, which we have very little inkling of at the moment."

-Penrose

"There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for."

-Fred Hoyle

"I do not feel like an alien in this universe. The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming."

-Freeman Dyson