Can Reproduction and Darwinism Explain Quantum Mechanics' Observer Effect?

[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 won't agree with that but its important in order to make sense of my argument. So let's 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]

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.

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]

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?

Because they wouldn't be here if reproduction wasnt their primary objective. It's like asking why are animals so adamant about protecting their young. Because those who weren't lost all their successors. Only the ones with that trait are still around. Same goes for reproduction.

 

[Coldcall]

Because they wouldn't be here if reproduction wasnt their primary objective. It's like asking why are animals so adamant about protecting their young. Because those who weren't lost all their successors. Only the ones with that trait are still around. Same goes for reproduction.

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 don't 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 that's 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]

Sounds interesting and a little like biocentrism.

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]

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 don't 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 that's 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.

That has nothing to do with it. I don't 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 don't 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]

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.

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

 

[Coldcall]

That has nothing to do with it. I don't 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 don't as to why the universe is.

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 wouldn't be here if reproduction wasnt their primary objective. It's like asking why are animals so adamant about protecting their young. Because those who weren't 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]

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

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/teleological-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 "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Three_Dialogues_Between_Hylas_and_Philonous" . 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 don't 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]

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.

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]

Unfortunately Berkeley missed the quantum revolution by a few centuries.

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]

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.

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).

(By the way, how do we get observers out of nothingness? - that's another thread I think!)

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.

The world cannot both be real and nonreal at the same point in time. P=P.

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

 

[Freeman Dyson]

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".

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

 

[Coldcall]

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.

Hi Kote,

I agree both Berkeley and slightly later Whitehead were ahead of their time and pioneers in ideas which have since been partly legitimised by 20th century QM. I just don't agree with the idea that an observer-centric universe requires observers at its birth. Then i came across Wheeler's PAP which i believe makes a very good case for self-referential universe based on qm retro-causality.

"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."

Yes it is somewhat inconsistent until one includes the retro-causal (telelogical) behaviour of quantum states and we accept the pretense that only an observer can effectively collapse a wave function. I suggest you read a paper on Wheeler's PAP because it explains better than I but i will do my best in layman's terms:

First of all our universe appears to have evolved out of nothing other than perhaps being triggered by a quantum fluctuation which broke symmetry causing the BB. This is more or less the standard understanding of how we got a universe out of nothing. So the early universe was a pure quantum system. As we understand qm, wave functions if undisturbed (not collapsed), will just continue evolving becoming ever larger with an ever larger set of probabilites. Given enough time to evolve in this sort of massive virtual computation the universe with the correct properties leading to the rise of observers (ours) self selects itself because the coming of those observers means only they are capable of collapsing the wave function on itself, selecting the only viable universe - the one where observers emerge.

So, as we see with Wheeler's delayed choice or the more recent derivative the "quantum eraser" experiment; One can make an observation today which will impact on events buried deep in history through qm enatnglement which makes reality consistent and objective. The fact that entanglement appears to act instantaneously even from one end of the universe to the other means that actions today will have an impact on events that took place billions of years ago. So while it seems weird qm has shown itself capable of this incredible feat of retro-causality.

So if observers are vital for wave function collapse (as i believe) then one can see how the late arrival of observers can act as retro-causal trigger, in effect, selecting our living universe from the cosmological wave function consisting of an almost infinite amount of universal probabilities.

So all the universes which would not have produced observers die a virtual death in the wave function and are never realized. Observers look back and collapse the wave function and select the universe which has all the properties necessary for them to emerge.

I much prefer this scenario compared to the alternative which purports that all those universes without observers actually exist in a physical reality. Can one imagine the energy resources which would be squandered if all those infintie universe are real? Nature just does not seem that wasteful, and her laws of conservation appear to be primary at least in our universe which is the only example we have.

Sorry if that is confusing :-)

 

[Coldcall]

Hi Freeman,

Thanks for interesting quotes.

"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?"

Perhaps the universe's only purpose is to exist and if we accept the observer-centric view of qm, then only observers can create "reality" and help the universe exist in a physical format. This makes observers useless without a universe and the universe useless without observers. So they need each other.

This is why i brought the conundrum about reproduction into it, because one could view reproduction not from our personal point of view but from the much larger perspective of the universe needing the "reality" to continue. If observers are vital then reproduction makes a lot of sense.

I suppose one could ask who created nature's qm laws because they appear to be the key to how something emerges out of nothing. So there is still room for a "god" if religious folks feel so inclined.

Same as why i never understand why religious folks need to question Darwinian evolution. There's plenty of room for "god" before or at the momment of the BB.

 

[WaveJumper]

I suppose one could ask who created nature's qm laws because they appear to be the key to how something emerges out of nothing. So there is still room for a "god" if religious folks feel so inclined.

Same as why i never understand why religious folks need to question Darwinian evolution. There's plenty of room for "god" before or at the momment of the BB.

This, i believe, is the main reason why this idea isn't studied more closely in secular societies. It is rejected on estethical grounds, though all other interpretations of QM implicitly imply creation(fine-tuning of initial conditions; origin of physical laws, etc), unless one chooses to believe that there are 198 thousand trillion universes.
I was thinking about posting a thread on this same topic, but you were obviously faster.

 

[magpies]

Ok so it seems to me this universe needing observers is dependant on the fact that observers do have an effect on the universe. I'm not totaly sure they do. It seems like they should but if I try to think up a way that an observer would have an effect on the universe in the purest sense I can't really. The best I can think of is that the observer is the universe. But in that case the universe would only have one observer, itself. If observers do have an effect on the universe then I wonder to what extent? If you could control the way your observing and your observing has an effect then you could basicaly control the universe possibly? Does that make any sense?

 

[WaveJumper]

Ok so it seems to me this universe needing observers is dependant on the fact that observers do have an effect on the universe. I'm not totaly sure they do. It seems like they should but if I try to think up a way that an observer would have an effect on the universe in the purest sense I can't really.

Not necessarily and we can't know for sure. Even if "we" affect and cause reality as it is, it doesn't appear that we are consciously and willfully affecting it. The way i understand the OP is that it is implied that we might be a sort of 'medium' through which reality is manifested. And the only thing that 'objectively' exists is the illuminated moment of 'now' in which through retrocausality, wavefunctions of past events are collapsed to form a meaningful and comprehensible reality.

The best I can think of is that the observer is the universe. But in that case the universe would only have one observer, itself.

This reminds of De-Broglie's implicate order and the oneness of everything in reality.

If observers do have an effect on the universe then I wonder to what extent? If you could control the way your observing and your observing has an effect then you could basicaly control the universe possibly? Does that make any sense?

This cannot be answered without a definition and at least a basic understanding of what constitutes an 'observer'.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

Hi Freeman,

Thanks for interesting quotes.

"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?"

Perhaps the universe's only purpose is to exist and if we accept the observer-centric view of qm, then only observers can create "reality" and help the universe exist in a physical format. This makes observers useless without a universe and the universe useless without observers. So they need each other.

This is why i brought the conundrum about reproduction into it, because one could view reproduction not from our personal point of view but from the much larger perspective of the universe needing the "reality" to continue. If observers are vital then reproduction makes a lot of sense.

I suppose one could ask who created nature's qm laws because they appear to be the key to how something emerges out of nothing. So there is still room for a "god" if religious folks feel so inclined.

Same as why i never understand why religious folks need to question Darwinian evolution. There's plenty of room for "god" before or at the momment of the BB.

Well I think it goes against the literal interpration of how man was created. They don't want to think we came from "lower" animals.

And I think a lot of atheists use evolution to say that life and the universe has no purpose. And they will use cosmology in the same way. But that is a philosophical statement. The how doesn't answer the why.

Here is one of them:

"Above all, Darwin's theory of random, purposeless variation acted on by blind, purposeless natural selection provided a revolutionary new kind of answer to almost all questions that begin with "Why?" Before Darwin, both philosophers and people in general answered "Why?" questions by citing purpose. Since only an intelligent mind, with the capacity for forethought, can have purpose, questions such as "Why do plants have flowers?" or "Why are there apple trees?"—or diseases, or earthquakes—were answered by imagining the possible purpose that God could have had in creating them. This kind of explanation was made completely superfluous by Darwin's theory of natural selection. The adaptations of organisms—long cited as the most conspicuous evidence of intelligent design in the universe—could be explained by purely mechanistic causes. For evolutionary biologists, the flower of the magnolia has a function but not a purpose. It was not designed in order to propagate the species, much less to delight us with its beauty, but instead came into existence because magnolias with brightly colored flowers reproduced more prolifically than magnolias with less brightly colored flowers. The unsettling implication of this purely material explanation is that, except in the case of human behavior, we need not invoke, nor can we find any evidence for, any design, goal, or purpose anywhere in the natural world.

It must be emphasized that all of science has come to adopt the way of thought that Darwin applied to biology. Astronomers do not seek the purpose of comets or supernovas, not chemists the purpose of hydrogen bonds. The concept of purpose plays no part in scientific explanations."

I always hear people like Richard Dawkins saying life and the universe is an accident and has no purpose at all. And that science proves is. They are obsessed with removing any meaning from the universe and see any hint of it as a threat to their belief system. The same way many theists do. Dawkins says, the entire universe is "lacking all purpose".

Here is Freeman Dyson again:

"Weinberg himself is not immune to the prejudices that I am trying to dispel. At the end of his book about the past history of the universe, he adds a short chapter about the future. He takes 150 pages to describe the first three minutes, and then dismisses the whole of the future in five pages. Without any discussion of technical details, he sums up his view of the future in twelve words:

"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

Weinberg has here, perhaps unintentionally, identified a real problem. It is impossible to calculate in detail the long-range future of the universe without including the effects of life and intelligence. It is impossible to
calculate the capabilities of life and intelligence without touching, at least peripherally, philosophical questions. If we are to examine how intelligent life may be able to guide the physical development of the universe for its own purposes, we cannot altogether avoid considering what the values and purposes of intelligent life may be. But as soon as we mention the words value and purpose, we run into one of the most firmly entrenched taboos of twentieth-century science. Hear the voice of Jacques Monod (1970), high priest of scientific rationality, in his book _Chance and Necessity_:

"Any mingling of knowledge with values is unlawful, forbidden."

Monod was one of the seminal minds in the flowering of molecular biology in this century. It takes some courage to defy his anathema. But I will defy him, and encourage others to do so. The taboo against mixing knowledge with values arose during the nineteenth century out of the great battle between the evolutionary biologists led by Thomas Huxley and the churchmen led by Bishop Wilberforce. Huxley won the battle, but a hundred years later Monod and Weinberg were still fighting Bishop Wilberforce's ghost. Physicists today have no reason to be afraid of Wilberforce's ghost. If our analysis of the long-range future leads us to raise questions related to the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, then let us examine these questions boldly and without embarrassment. If our answers to these questions are naive and preliminary, so much the better for the continued vitality of our science."

 

[Freeman Dyson]

This, i believe, is the main reason why this idea isn't studied more closely in secular societies. It is rejected on estethical grounds, though all other interpretations of QM implicitly imply creation(fine-tuning of initial conditions), unless one chooses to believe that there are 198 thousand trillion universes.
I was thinking about posting a thread on this same topic, but you were obviously faster.

Exactly. People are so biased against religion that they have become biased against the idea of any kind of purpose or design to the universe. And that is unscientific imo. Atheists like Susskind and Weinberg WANT to believe in the mutliverse because of the reasons I just mentioned.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

Are you guys saying, in a sense, that we are the ones fine tuning the universe in order to view it?

 

[WaveJumper]

Are you guys saying, in a sense, that we are the ones fine tuning the universe in order to view it?

What do you mean by "fine-tuning"?

 

[Freeman Dyson]

What do you mean by "fine-tuning"?

Arranging it in a way we can view it. Like arranging quantum states into a classical object. The universe is basically a mess until we impose order on it. It's like an out of tune guitar that we have to tune to play.

 

[WaveJumper]

Arranging it in a way we can view it. Like arranging quantum states into a classical object. The universe is basically a mess until we impose order on it. It's like an out of tune guitar that we have to tune to play.

This is close to what Wheeler suggests in his pasticipatory universe. I believe it was his idea to devise the Delayed choice experiment to highlight this very issue.

It is worth noting that, we have no fundamental knowledge of anything(we don't know what causes the eigenstates to 'collapse' to a single state), so if anyone, regardless if his name is Einstein or Ed Witten, insists that they know what reality is, it's extremely likely that they don't know what they are talking about. What ontologically makes sense to Penrose, does not make sense to Smolin and Feynmann. Get all the famous physicists together and ask them what reality is and you'll get a dozen conflicting answers.

Most of the questions that get asked here, do not have answers. I've backed out of arguments numerous times here, not because i agreed with opponents, but rather because there were no answers that you could state with certainty. When certain topics engage firm footings like physics and biology, there is good basis for debate, but when it comes to interpretational issues, logic and foundational problems, heated arguments do not appear to reflect good knowledge of the depth of the subject at hand.

Anyway, standard QM does not go so far as to say there is no objective reality, it is implied though. The other interpretations suggest that if there is an objective reality, it is nothing like what we perceive in day-to-day life. There is close to zero hope that naive realism will ever be recovered and the theory of QG(as is thought in circles that are working on it) will likely entail a new paradigm shift of our understanding of reality and our place in it. Right now, expressing great certainty about how reality works is probably the least intelligent statement one could make.

Having said that, neither fields nor 'particles'(real or otherwise) have the property "awareness"(which is what we dub 'everything'), so it's worth keeping an open mind.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

This is close to what Wheeler suggests in his pasticipatory universe. I believe it was his idea to devise the Delayed choice experiment to highlight this very issue.

It is worth noting that, we have no fundamental knowledge of anything(we don't know what causes the eigenstates to 'collapse' to a single state), so if anyone, regardless if his name is Einstein or Ed Witten, insists that they know what reality is, it's extremely likely that they don't know what they are talking about. What ontologically makes sense to Penrose, does not make sense to Smolin and Feynmann. Get all the famous physicists together and ask them what reality is and you'll get a dozen conflicting answers.

Most of the questions that get asked here, do not have answers. I've backed out of arguments numerous times here, not because i agreed with opponents, but rather because there were no answers that you could state with certainty. When certain topics engage firm footings like physics and biology, there is good basis for debate, but when it comes to interpretational issues, logic and foundational problems, heated arguments do not appear to reflect good knowledge of the depth of the subject at hand.

Anyway, standard QM does not go so far as to say there is no objective reality, it is implied though. The other interpretations suggest that if there is an objective reality, it is nothing like what we perceive in day-to-day life. There is close to zero hope that naive realism will ever be recovered and the theory of QG(as is thought in circles that are working on it) will likely entail a new paradigm shift of our understanding of reality and our place in it. Right now, expressing great certainty about how reality works is probably the least intelligent statement one could make.

Totally agree. And about the philosophy of scientists. It reminds me of what John Polkinghorne said:

"The average quantum mechanic is no more philosophical than the average auto mechanic."

 

[Coldcall]

Ok so it seems to me this universe needing observers is dependant on the fact that observers do have an effect on the universe. I'm not totaly sure they do. It seems like they should but if I try to think up a way that an observer would have an effect on the universe in the purest sense I can't really. The best I can think of is that the observer is the universe. But in that case the universe would only have one observer, itself. If observers do have an effect on the universe then I wonder to what extent? If you could control the way your observing and your observing has an effect then you could basicaly control the universe possibly? Does that make any sense?

But observers do have an effect on the universe, as is well demonstrated and documented through qm. The counter-argument is not based on questioning whether obervers can "fix an atom" so to speak, it is based on whether only observers can fix an atom or "collapse a wave function.

 

[Coldcall]

Hi Freeman,

"I always hear people like Richard Dawkins saying life and the universe is an accident and has no purpose at all. And that science proves is. They are obsessed with removing any meaning from the universe and see any hint of it as a threat to their belief system. The same way many theists do. Dawkins says, the entire universe is "lacking all purpose"

Dawkins is in no position to pronounce whether there is purpose or not in the existence of the universe. Darwin's theory, which was perhaps the greatest scientific discovery in human history, does not answer that question about purpose on a universal level. It simply provides an excellent framework mechanism for understanding how we evolved.

I also find Dawkins anti-religious fervour slightly scary and no less ideologically driven than hardcore religionists.

Personally without more evidence i prefer a sort of agnostic stance.

 

[Coldcall]

Exactly. People are so biased against religion that they have become biased against the idea of any kind of purpose or design to the universe. And that is unscientific imo. Atheists like Susskind and Weinberg WANT to believe in the mutliverse because of the reasons I just mentioned.

Thats the funny part about it. They want to believe in the multiverse because otherwise our fine tuned universe appears so coincidental to be practically impossible.

But from an empirical standpoint there is zero evidence for multiple universes, and all the evidence so far points to one universe - ours.

 

[Coldcall]

Hi Wavejumper,

"Anyway, standard QM does not go so far as to say there is no objective reality, it is implied though."

Whats sort of funny is how science is still grappling with this issue today, hence we have silly interpretations such a Bohmian mechanics which basically invent a realism which just does not exist. It would be like arguing that gravity is actually controlled through huge invisible elastic bands.

Many scientists are loathe to give up the ghost of classical physics and instead insist on creating fairy tales in order to make our universe determinstic and objectively real.

"environmental decoherence" was a failed attempt to solve the measurement problem and is purely a FAPP type interpretation so that young students don't ask difficult foundational questions.

 

[WaveJumper]

Many scientists are loathe to give up the ghost of classical physics and instead insist on creating fairy tales in order to make our universe determinstic and objectively real.

It is indeed a ghost embedded world, even if waves were real. If 40 billion neutrinos pass through my body per second unobtrusively, i don't see a reason to believe we are anything short of a ghost, embedded into a self-referential 'reality' of interacting 'particles'. If something can pass with ease through the Earth and the Sun and the other stars, then those mentioned 'objects' need a new proper designation. The shadow classical world can be either real or not, but it would still be a shadow as far as our incomplete perception goes.

 

[apeiron]

"environmental decoherence" was a failed attempt to solve the measurement problem and is purely a FAPP type interpretation so that young students don't ask difficult foundational questions.

Do you have some references regarding this failure? My impression is that it has become the mainstream approach over the past decade.

While I would agree that the detailed machinery offered by Zurek and others is too clunky to be satisfactory, the general idea of the Universe as a system that is decohering events over random spatiotemporal scale seems the right one. It puts the "observer" everywhere and nowhere in the system.

 

[WaveJumper]

Decoherence doesn't address the issue of what happens to the other states when a single outcome is selected through loss of information to the environment and it is presumed those waves are real(in most formulations). MWI is too much of a baggage with its trillions of universes, i reject it on Occam's razor grounds.

"Leak of information" is a rather weak explanation as to why a certain single eigenstate is preferred. It is in fact no explanation at all for classical reality, but just a mechanism that might be useful in a future theory with greater explanatory powers. The only way decoherence makes sense as it is, is when coupled with MWI where every probability is realized in a different universe. But i am not convinced that believing in ghosts, the Loch Ness monster and blood sucking aliens is not easier to swallow. I can imagine Einstein asking Pais:

"Do you really think a new 72 billion light years across universe is created everytime a dung beetle moves its antennae?"

 

[Freeman Dyson]

Yet, there is at least one glaring omission in present physical theory. This is how small-scale quantum processes can add up, for large and complicated systems, to the almost classical behaviour of macroscopic bodies. Indeed, it is not just an omission but an actual fundamental inconsistency.

-Penrose

Has anybody heard of quantum darwinism?

Did you know there was such a thing as 'Quantum Darwinism'? Indeed there is, and it postulates the theory that quantum mechanical states are selected and reproduced.

The team also succeeded in finding clear indications of Quantum Darwinism, that is to say the notion that during interaction with the environment only the "strongest" states - the pointer states - remain stable and are able to create offspring.

A team of physicists has proved a theorem that explains how our objective, common reality emerges from the subtle and sensitive quantum world.
If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?

Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism.

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/can_there_be_quantum_darwinism

 

[apeiron]

Has anybody heard of quantum darwinism?

I thought you were referring to Zurek who coined the term...

Quantum Darwinism is a theory explaining the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian natural selection. It is proposed by Wojciech Zurek and a group of collaborators including Ollivier, Poulin, Paz and Blume-Kohout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Darwinism

Penrose was instead exploring the idea that gravity was responsible for the collapse.

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

One could be called a subjective approach, a collapse of the wavefunction from the outside by the "observation" of a system.

The other is objective in that the collapse happens due to what is going on "inside" the wavefunction itself.

 

[apeiron]

"Leak of information" is a rather weak explanation as to why a certain single eigenstate is preferred. It is in fact no explanation at all for classical reality, but just a mechanism that might be useful in a future theory with greater explanatory powers. The only way decoherence makes sense as it is, is when coupled with MWI where every probability is realized in a different universe.

Wavejumper, you are putting your finger on what I find "too clunky" about decoherence modelling to date. But I don't see MWI as the fix at all.

The way I view it is that the classical universe is a "QM uncertainty dissipating structure" (so I am expecting an even more thermodynamic slant to the eventual interpretation machinery).

The universe is a system of constraints. At this constraint is felt with increasing definite effect as scale grows. So while the constraint or "collapsing observation" is weak near the Planckscale, it would grow with powerlaw vigour with physical scale. Or perhaps exponential. And so in our classical realm, QM uncertainty is decohered on a very fine grain generally, but also potentially can have fractally large scale - escape decoherence for quite a while.

An analogy would be an ideal gas. Take a box with a bunch of gas particles at gaussian equilibrium. Insert a much hotter or colder particle and quite quickly it will be "decohered" to the ambient average state. The idea gas is a system of constraint that can't necessarily get you right away, but will get you on some emergent average scale.

"Do you really think a new 72 billion light years across universe is created everytime a dung beetle moves its antennae?"

That would be crazy. As there is no evidence to suggest it happens.

But just about as crazy is what must be true when you look into the night sky, and see a distant star. QM tells us that there is a dance, a collapse over a sum of histories, between some excited stellar atom and the photoreceptor in your eyeball. To account for known QM effects, this has to be a retrocausal link with a "nonlocal" aspect.

So classical reality is probably best viewed (via systems decoherence, rather than environmental decoherence, perhaps) as a mesh of such interactions, such collapse events. Some of the events have vast scale (point-to-point event across millions of lightyears). But statistically, the great majority of events are quick and local collapses. Two atoms in the star are far more likely to make that photon connection.

Maybe even virtual particle interactions stabilise classical reality before things get that far, creating the true baseline? That seems to be where some theories like Wilczek's condensates are pointing.

Anyway, the natural commonsense expectation of a sound interpretation of QM would seem to revolve around the idea of one generally classical universe which becomes a sort of homogenising, wavefunction dissipating, equilibrium structure. There is no observer as such as observation, or constraint, is present everywhere. The history of where the universe has been becomes the general shape of what can happen next. Then QM uncertainty intrudes on the fine grain to make things a bit unpredictable and creative - in a predictable average sort of way.

Well, my expectation that this is a natural approach is probably due to my familiarity with systems science in biology and neuroscience where this kind of anticipatory or forward-modelling logic is the norm.

 

[Moonbear]

Bolting on the theory of evolution and how it seems nature has a tendency towards complexity we can take this idea one step further.

I haven't read anything else in the thread, but you have a seriously flawed premise here. Nature has no such tendency toward complexity, and that would have nothing to do with evolution. Evolution can and does happen in any direction.

 

[apeiron]

I haven't read anything else in the thread, but you have a seriously flawed premise here. Nature has no such tendency toward complexity, and that would have nothing to do with evolution. Evolution can and does happen in any direction.

Of course there is a trend to complexity in nature. This is what dissipative structure theory, maximum entropy production principle, entropy degrader approaches, and other stuff is all about.

Order exists because it accelerates disorder. That is what life and mind are all about.

What you perhaps mean is that evolution itself - the darwinian selection mechanism - is essentially uncreative and homeostatic. And modern theoretical biology would agree. That is why they split biological systems into evo and devo.

Development is about the self-organisation into complex dissipative structures. Then evolution is about the constraints exerted by an environment that limit the possibilities.

So a tree could sprout limbs and leaves in many branching patterns. But all sorts of accidents of circumstance in an actual forest limits it to some actual pattern of branching.

The tree - viewed as devo - wants to be as complex as possible in its branching to dissipate as much as it can. Then evo forces may knock off branches, chew its leaves, shade it out, starve its roots - act in blind and undirected fashion.

 

[Coldcall]

Do you have some references regarding this failure? My impression is that it has become the mainstream approach over the past decade.

While I would agree that the detailed machinery offered by Zurek and others is too clunky to be satisfactory, the general idea of the Universe as a system that is decohering events over random spatiotemporal scale seems the right one. It puts the "observer" everywhere and nowhere in the system.

Apeiron,

The evidence regarding the failure of "decoherence" to address the measurement problem is in the public domain. Even Zurek, one of the founders of "decoherence" admits its not a solution to the measurement problem.

And if you think it does solve the MP then you have been misled in a big way.

 

[Coldcall]

I haven't read anything else in the thread, but you have a seriously flawed premise here. Nature has no such tendency toward complexity, and that would have nothing to do with evolution. Evolution can and does happen in any direction.

Apeiron has answered your post well. In fact i find it laughable you actually made this post because clearly you have never read any studies on natural complexity, natural self-organisation and the wider areas of chaos theory.

I suggest you go to the library.

 

[WaveJumper]

Apeiron,

The evidence regarding the failure of "decoherence" to address the measurement problem is in the public domain. Even Zurek, one of the founders of "decoherence" admits its not a solution to the measurement problem.

And if you think it does solve the MP then you have been misled in a big way.

Yes, there doesn't appear to be a way to resolve the measurement problem without admitting that our conscious activities(also referred to as measurements/observations) 'collapse' wavefunctions to 'particles'. Most of the interpretational problems of QM start and end at the double slit.

Quantum entanglement and Bell's conclusion that if QM is right, reality cannot be both local and realistic is very anti-realistic. "Local realistic" is the perception of the average Joe on the street as to how the world is. This view, however, isn't supported by experiements. I've yet to see a sensible explanation of what a non-local but realistic world is supposed to be; this cannot be a feature of a purely materialistic world.

 

[apeiron]

The evidence regarding the failure of "decoherence" to address the measurement problem is in the public domain. Even Zurek, one of the founders of "decoherence" admits its not a solution to the measurement problem.
And if you think it does solve the MP then you have been misled in a big way.

My own feeling was that Zurek's early papers (along with what others like Gell Mann were saying) was creating the right framework, but then along the line the thinking became contorted trying to cash out new formal machinery.

For me, the big problem is always in anchoring observation back to a static, located, human observer when reality is dynamic and self-organising (I presume from a systems science standpoint). So observers and their measurements have to be generalised in that direction, taking the nod from global boundary constraints thinking.

So in this view, decoherence would be about expanding light cones of QM potential. When spatiotemporal scale is still small, the potential has little context and so is less likely to encounter some crisp collapsing context. But as scale grows, it become rapidly more likely that collapse will occur.

This is hard to explain unless you can think about QM potential as a vagueness. There is not even a wavefunction crisply existent until the scale, the field of view, has grown enough to take in, say, a pair of particles who could frame some definite exchange.

It is a phase transition view I guess. When scale is small, you may have in effect a particle surrounded by a vague QM potential to "do something". The particle's gravity, EM, give it a QM potential or "presence" that propagates as a spherical boundary moving at speed of light. But it is a very raw QM state - like a chaotic jostle of dipoles in a hot bar magnet.

Then the scale grows large enough so that a second particle comes within exchange range. At that point, a crisp wavefunction can exist. There is a global boundary condition that can create constraint of that vaguer potential. General limits to what can happen are created and then something does happen. It is like the sufficient cooling that allows a crisply divided local~global state of order in a magnet.

In effect, the wavefunction and its collapse are two faces of the same thing. The wavefunction was not "always there and evolving" in an independent sense. Instead there was a rawer potential for somethingness developing, then a crisp QM wavefunction/crisp classical collapse did something with that spreading potential. We only impute an evolving wavefunction after the fact.

OK, I'm thinking aloud here as this was the general picture I took from Zurek's early writings about decoherence, combined with what I was hearing at the time from quantum vagueness guys like Chibeni (that stuff seems to have died a death sadly), and Cramer's convincing arguments for retrocausality. Plus, as I say, what seems obvious from a phase transition, systems science, way of looking at reality.

Zurek seems to be working in the right area on this...
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0701/0701768v2.pdf

But I think the key thing missing is the idea that QM information starts vague and needs a classical context to turn it into crisp QM probabilities, even if the crisp QM probabilities are still of the crisply entangled, uncertain and superimposed probabilities on the wavefunction side of things.

Boiling it down, the usual framing of the measurement problem is that we have an evolving wavefunction forever in search of the machinery that forces its collapse. The difficulty in seeing why the wavefunction should collapse (because no internal mechanism or hidden variables are permitted) leads people to say collapse requires consciousness, or perhaps in many worlds fashion, never happens.

Decoherence is broadly the attempt to put the collapse machinery back out there in the physical world. And really it would be good to have it happening as a global boundary constraint - that is, something that is presence and active over all classical spatiotemporal scales. (technical note: global means thermodynamic macrostate rather than "largest size").

Then what I take this to require is that the collapse machinery in fact manufactures the wavefunctions out of rawer QM potential. So it is the collapse that causes the wavefunctions, not the wavefunctions and that must produce a collapse.

 

[Freeman Dyson]

I will throw another thing out there that I have been interested in over the years:

Synchronicity

That events are tied together by purpose. By meaning. That is the connecting principle. Only meaningful and purposeful things happen. Classical objects form from quantum states because they are meaningful/purposeful objects.

Kind of out there I know..

 

[disregardthat]

Yes, there doesn't appear to be a way to resolve the measurement problem without admitting that our conscious activities(also referred to as measurements/observations) 'collapse' wavefunctions to 'particles'. Most of the interpretational problems of QM start and end at the double slit.

Quantum entanglement and Bell's conclusion that if QM is right, reality cannot be both local and realistic is very anti-realistic. "Local realistic" is the perception of the average Joe on the street as to how the world is. This view, however, isn't supported by experiements. I've yet to see a sensible explanation of what a non-local but realistic world is supposed to be; this cannot be a feature of a purely materialistic world.

Science does to a certain degree assume a realistic perspective, but my opinion is that this is only because of the context in which scientific predicates usually are understood. An important insight is that scientific predicates only says something about our perception, and the scientific body of knowledge represents the structure of perception. Realism posits that the world is mind-independent, and that scientific predicates makes sense in the absence of a mind understanding it and giving it meaning. But this is a senseless view in my opinion. The world independent of the mind can not be said anything about. It makes no sense to make a distinction between objects in a mind-independent world, it makes much less sense to talk about properties of objects, not even spatial and temporal properties. These are all conceptual characteristics. We see these characteristics of objects because through perception our minds interpret sensations with spatial and temporal structure. I find the anti-realistic view much more appealing. It also rid itself of many problems the realist view stumble into.

The results of QM are very interesting, and we couldn't find a better tool to propagate these points through with. My knowledge of QM is however limited, but it is my understanding that objects under observation more or less behaves as we would expect. Perhaps you, apeiron, are more knowledgeable about Kant's metaphysical theories about the necessities for experience than me and hopefully you have a comment on this. I find it incredibly interesting how Kant's points are manifested through the results in quantum mechanics.

 

[apeiron]

I will throw another thing out there that I have been interested in over the years:

Synchronicity
.

Experiment has already put tight parameters around such connectedness. So while QM supports nonlocal (making the global context meaningful and not just an a-causal void) it also limits the nature of the connection in very strict fashion.

You could argue that the psi research literature does the same from a different angle. If any kind of spooky stuff exists in a mind-entangling complex way, the signal is so small as to be swamped by experimental artifact and experimenter fraud.

So yes. Any theory can be entertained. But synchronicity in any Jungian sense has a stack of negative findings against it now.

 

[apeiron]

Science does to a certain degree assume a realistic perspective,

The realist vs anti-realist choice, as you put it, does offer also a third path other than a binary either/or.

You can instead say we need to model in terms that include both - both modeller and modeled, observer and observed.

Which is the essence of what Pattee, Rosen, Salthe and others in the semiotic, systems science, camp would be doing.

 

[disregardthat]

The realist vs anti-realist choice, as you put it, does offer also a third path other than a binary either/or.

You can instead say we need to model in terms that include both - both modeller and modeled, observer and observed.

Which is the essence of what Pattee, Rosen, Salthe and others in the semiotic, systems science, camp would be doing.

I don't think that the anti-realist is rejecting realism on behalf of his own perspective, that would be violating the very "ideology". The realistic perspective is a perfectly "valid" perspective in the anti-realistic sense as it is a coherent system of beliefs as any. But I agree with you if I understand you correctly. But instead of talking about a "third way", we can remove the clear-cut distinction between realism and anti-realism. In a way, anti-realism incorporates both perspectives. The reason I find anti-realism appealing is the rejection of subscribing to any specific set of beliefs or any specific ideology.