Programmed Reality

Programmed Reality has been an incredibly successful concept in terms of explaining the paradoxes and anomalies of Quantum Mechanics, including non-Reality, non-Locality, the Observer Effect, Entanglement, and even the Retrocausality of John Wheeler’s Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiment.

I came up with those explanations by thinking about how Programmed Reality could explain such curiosities.

But I thought it might be interesting to view the problem in the reverse manner.  If one were to design a universe-simulating Program, what kinds of curiosities might result from an efficient design?  (Note: I fully realize that any entity advanced enough to simulate the universe probably has a computational engine that is far more advanced that we can even imagine; most definitely not of the von-Neumann variety.  Yet, we can only work with what we know, right?)

So, if I were to create such a thing, for instance, I would probably model data in the following manner:

For any space unobserved by a conscious entity, there is no sense in creating the reality for that space in advance.  It would unnecessarily consume too many resources. 

For example, consider the cup of coffee on your desk.  Is it really necessary to model every single subatomic particle in the cup of coffee in order to interact with it in the way that we do?  Of course not.  The total amount of information contained in that cup of coffee necessary to stimulate our senses in the way that it does (generate the smell that it does; taste the way it does; feel the way it does as we drink it; swish around in the cup the way that it does; have the little nuances, like tiny bubbles, that make it look real; have the properties of cooling at the right rate to make sense, etc.) might be 10MB or so.  Yet, the total potential information content in a cup of coffee is 100,000,000,000 MB, so there is a ratio of perhaps 100 trillion in compression that can be applied to an ordinary object. 

But once you decide to isolate an atom in that cup of coffee and observe it, the Program would then have to establish a definitive position for that atom, effectively resulting in the collapse of the wave function, or decoherence.  Moreover, the complete behavior of the atom, at that point, might be forever under control of the program.  After all, why delete the model once observed, in the event (probably fairly likely) that it will be observed again at some point in the future.  Thus, the atom would have to be described by a finite state machine.  It’s behavior would be decided by randomly picking values of the parameters that drive that behavior, such as atomic decay.  In other words, we have created a little mini finite state machine.

So, the process of “zooming in” on reality in the Program would have to result in exactly the type of behavior observed by quantum physicists.  In other words, in order to be efficient, resource-wise, the Program decoheres only the space and matter that it needs to.

Let’s say we zoom in on two particles at the same time; two that are in close proximity to each other.  Both would have to be decohered by the Program.  The decoherence would result in the creation of two mini finite state machines.  Using the same random number seed for both will cause the state machines to forever behave in an identical manner.

No matter how far apart you take the particles.  i.e…

Entanglement!

So, Observer Effect and Entanglement might both be necessary consequences of an efficient Programmed Reality algorithm.

 

 
Tags: quantum mechanics, non-locality, non-reality, entanglement, observer effect
Categories: Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

According to a recent article in New Scientist magazine,  physicists "can't avoid a creation event."  (sorry, you have to be a subscriber to read the full article.)  It boils down to the need to show that the universe could have been eternal into the past.  Not eternal and there needs to be a creator.  Even uber-atheist Stephen Hawking acknowledges that a beginning to the universe would be "a point of creation… where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God."

Apparently, there are three established theories for how to get around the idea of a creator of the big bang.  But cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin demonstrated last week how all of those theories now necessitate a beginning:

1. The leading idea has been the possibility that the universe has been eternally expanding (inflating).  Recent analysis, however, shows that inflation has a lower limit preventing it from being eternal in the past.

2. Another possibility was the cyclic model, but Vilenkin has shot a hole in that one as well, courtesy of the second law of thermodynamics.  Either every cycle would have to be more disordered, in which case after an infinite number of cycles, our current cycle should be heat death (it isn't), or the universe would have to be getting bigger with each cycle, implying a creation event at some cycle in the past.

3. The final hope for the atheistic point of view was a lesser known proposal called the cosmic egg.  But Vilenkin showed last year that this could not have existed eternally due to quantum instabilities.

Is science slowly coming to terms with the idea of an intelligent designer of the universe?  The evidence is overwhelming and Occam's Razor points to a designer, yet science clings to the anti-ID point of view as if it is a religion.

Ironic.

Tags: big bang, cosmology, intelligent design, inflation, eternal, eternal expansion, cosmic egg, cyclic model
Categories: Cosmology | Philosophy | Science

"All great truths began as blasphemies" - George Bernard Shaw

• In the 1800’s, the scientific community viewed reports of rocks falling from the sky as “pseudoscience” and those who reported them as “crackpots,” only because it didn’t fit in with the prevailing view of the universe. Today, of course, we recognize that these rocks could be meteorites and such reports are now properly investigated.

• In 1827, Georg Ohm's initial publication of what became “Ohm’s Law” met with ridicule, dismissal, and was called "a web of naked fantasies." The German Minister of Education proclaimed that "a professor who preached such heresies was unworthy to teach science." 20 yrs passed before scientists began to recognize its importance.

• Louis Pasteur's theory of germs was called “ridiculous fiction" by Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse in1872.

• Spanish researcher Marcelino de Sautuola discovered cave art in Altamira cave (northern Spain), which he recognized as stone age and published a paper about it in 1880.  His integrity was violently attacked by the archaeological community, and he died disillusioned and broken.  Yet he was vindicated 10 years after death.

• Lord Haldane, the Minister of War in Britain, said that “the aeroplane will never fly” in 1907.  Ironically, this was four years after the Wright Brothers made their first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  After Kitty Hawk, the Wrights flew in open fields next to a busy rail line in Dayton OH for almost an entire year. US authorities refused to come to the demos, while Scientific American published stories about "The Lying Brothers."

• In 1964, physicist George Zweig proposed the existence of quarks.  As a result of this theory, he was rejected for position at major university and considered a “charlatan.”  Today, of course, it is an accepted part of standard nuclear model.

Note that these aren’t just passive disagreements.  The skeptics use active and angry language, with words like “charlatan,” “ridiculous,” lying,” “crackpot,” and “pseudoscience.”  

This is partly due to a natural psychological effect, known as “fear of the unknown” or “fear of change.”  Psychologists who have studied human behavior have more academic sounding names for it, such as the “Mere Exposure Effect”, “Familiarity Principle”, or Neophobia (something that might have served Agent Smith well).  Ultimately, this may be an artifact of evolution.  Hunter-gatherers did not pass on their genes if they had a habit of eating weird berries, venturing too close to the saber-toothed cats, or other unconventional activities.  But we are no longer hunter-gatherers.  For the most part, we shouldn’t fear the unknown.  We should feel empowered to challenge assumptions.  The scientific method can weed out any undesirable ideas naturally.

But, have you also noticed how the agitation ratchets up the more you enter the realm of the “expert?”

“The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.” – Mahatma Gandhi

This is because the expert may have a lot to lose if they stray too far from the status quo.  Their research funding, tenure, jobs, reputations are all at stake.  This is unfortunate, because it feeds this unhealthy behavior.

So I thought I would do my part to remind experts and non-experts alike that breakthroughs only occur when we challenge conventional thinking, and we shouldn’t be afraid of them.

The world is full of scared “experts”, but nobody will ever hear of them.  But they will hear about the brave ones, who didn’t fear to challenge the status quo.  People like Copernicus, Einstein, Georg Ohm, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk.

And it isn’t like we are so enlightened today that such pathological skepticism no longer occurs.  

Remember Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann?  Respected electrochemists, ridiculed out of their jobs and their country by skeptics.  Even “experts” violently contradicted each other:

• “It's pathological science," said physicist Douglas Morrison, formerly of CERN. "The results are impossible."  

• "There's very strong evidence that low-energy nuclear reactions do occur” said George Miley (who received Edward Teller medal for research in hot fusion.). “Numerous experiments have shown definitive results - as do my own."

Some long-held assumptions are being overturned as we speak.  Like LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions; the new, less provocative name for cold fusion.  

And maybe the speed of light as an ultimate speed limit.

These are exciting times for science and technology.  Let’s stay open minded enough to keep them moving.

Tags: skepticism, pathological skepticism, truth, science
Categories: General | Philosophy | Physics | Science

It is the end of 2011 and it has been an exciting year for science and technology.  Announcements about artificial life, earthlike worlds, faster-than-light particles, clones, teleportation, memory implants, and tractor beams have captured our imagination.  Most of these things would have been unthinkable just 30 years ago.

So, what better way to close out the year than to take stock of yesterday's science fiction in light of today's reality and tomorrow's technology.  Here is my take:

 

Tags: time travel, teleportation, cloaking, tractor beam, holodeck, memory implants, bci, cloning, brain-computer interface, ai, artificial intelligence, artificial life, ftl, faster than light, multiple dimensions, parallel realities, ufos, precognition, paranormal, bigfoot
Categories: AI | Cosmology | Future Tech | Life | Particle Physics | Physics | Robotics | Science

In “Time to Revise Relativity: Part 1”, I explored the idea that Faster than Light Travel (FTL) might be permitted by Special Relativity without necessitating the violation of causality, a concept not held by most mainstream physicists. 

The reason this idea is not well supported has to do with the fact that Einstein’s postulate that light travels the same speed in all reference frames gave rise to all sorts of conclusions about reality, such as the idea that it is all described by a space-time that has fundamental limits to its structure.  The Lorentz factor is a consequence of this view of reality, and so it’s use is limited to subluminal effects and is undefined in terms of its use in calculating relativistic distortions past c.

 

So then, what exactly is the roadblock to exceeding the speed of light? 

Yes, there may be a natural speed limit to the transmission of known forces in a vacuum, such as the electromagnetic force.  And there may certainly be a natural limit to the speed of an object at which we can make observations utilizing known forces.  But, could there be unknown forces that are not governed by the laws of Relativity? 

The current model of physics, called the Standard Model, incorporates the idea that all known forces are carried by corresponding particles, which travel at the speed of light if massless (like photons and gluons) or less than the speed of light if they have mass (like gauge bosons), all consistent with, or derived from the assumptions of relativity.  Problem is, there is all sorts of “unfinished business” and inconsistencies with the Standard Model.  Gravitons have yet to be discovered, Higgs bosons don’t seem to exist, gravity and quantum mechanics are incompatible, and many things just don’t have a place in the Standard Model, such as neutrino oscillations, dark energy, and dark matter.  Some scientists even speculate that dark matter is due to a flaw in the theory of gravity.  So, given the incompleteness of that model, how can anyone say for certain that all forces have been discovered and that Einstein’s postulates are sacrosanct? 

Given that barely 100 years ago we didn’t know any of this stuff, imagine what changes to our understanding of reality might happen in the next 100 years.  Such as these Wikipedia entries from the year 2200…

-       The ultimate constituent of matter is nothing more than data

-       A subset of particles and corresponding forces that are limited in speed to c represent what used to be considered the core of the so-called Standard Model and are consistent with Einstein’s view of space-time, the motion of which is well described by the Special Theory of Relativity.

-       Since then, we have realized that Einsteinian space-time is an approximation to the truer reality that encompasses FTL particles and forces, including neutrinos and the force of entanglement.  The beginning of this shift in thinking occurred due to the first superluminal neutrinos found at CERN in 2011.

So, with that in mind, let’s really explore a little about the possibilities of actually cracking that apparent speed limit…  

For purposes of our thought experiments, let's define S as the "stationary" reference frame in which we are making measurements and R as the reference frame of the object undergoing relativistic motion with respect to S.  If a mass m is traveling at c with respect to S, then measuring that mass in S (via whatever methods could be employed to measure it; energy, momentum, etc.) will give an infinite result.  However, in R, the mass doesn't change. 

What if m went faster than c, such as might be possible with a sci-fi concept like a “tachyonic afterburner”?  What would an observer at S see?  

Going by our relativistic equations, m now becomes imaginary when measured from S because the argument in the square root of the mass correction factor is now negative.  But what if this asymptotic property really represents more of an event horizon than an impenetrable barrier?  A commonly used model for the event horizon is the point on a black hole at which gravity prevents light from escaping.  Anything falling past that point can no longer be observed from the outside.  Instead it would look as if that object froze on the horizon, because time stands still there.  Or so some cosmologists say.  This is an interesting model to apply to the idea of superluminality as mass m continues to accelerate past c.

From the standpoint of S, the apparent mass is now infinite, but that is ultimately based on the fact that we can't perceive speeds past c.  Once something goes past c, one of two things might happen.  The object might disappear from view due to the fact that the light that it generated that would allow us to observe it can't keep up with its speed.  Alternatively, invoking the postulate that light speed is the same in all reference frames, the object might behave like it does on the event horizon of the black hole - forever frozen, from the standpoint of S, with the properties that it had when it hit light speed.  From R, everything could be hunky dory.  Just cruising along at warp speed.  No need to say that it is impossible because mass can't exceed infinity, because from S, the object froze at the event horizon.  Relativity made all of the correct predictions of properties, behavior, energy, and mass prior to light speed.  Yet, with this model, it doesn't preclude superluminality.  It only precludes the ability to make measurements beyond the speed of light. 

That is, of course, unless we can figure out how to make measurements utilizing a force or energy that travels at speeds greater than c.  If we could, those measurements would yield results with correction factors only at speeds relatively near THAT speed limit.

Let's imagine an instantaneous communication method.  Could there be such a thing? 

One possibility might be quantum entanglement.  John Wheeler's Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiment seems to imply non-causality and the ability to erase the past.  Integral to this experiment is the concept of entanglement.  So perhaps it is not a stretch to imagine that entanglement might embody a communication method that creates some strange effects when integrated with observational effects based on traditional light and sight methods.

What would the existence of that method do to relativity?   Nothing, according to the thought experiments above.  

There are, however, some relativistic effects that seem to stick, even after everything has returned to the original reference frame.  This would seem to violate the idea that the existence of an instantaneous communication method invalidates the need for relativistic correction factors applied to anything that doesn't involve light and sight.

For example, there is the very real effect that clocks once moving at high speeds (reference frame R) exhibit a loss of time once they return to the reference frame S, fully explained by time dilation effects.  It would seem that, using this effect as a basis for a thought experiment like the twin paradox, there might be a problem with the event horizon idea.  For example, let us imagine Alice and Bob, both aged 20.  After Alice travels at speed c to a star 10 light years away and returns, her age should still be 20, while Bob is now 40.  If we were to allow superluminal travel, it would appear that Alice would have to get younger, or something.  But, recalling the twin paradox, it is all about the relative observations that were made by Bob in reference frame S, and Alice, in reference frame R, of each other.  Again, at superluminal speeds, Alice may appear to hit an event horizon according to Bob.  So, she will never reduce her original age. 

But what about her?  From her perspective, her trip is instantaneous due to an infinite Lorentz contraction factor; hence she doesn't age.  If she travels at 2c, her view of the universe might hit another event horizon, one that prevents her from experiencing any Lorentz contraction beyond c; hence, her trip will still appear instantaneous, no aging, no age reduction. 

So why would an actual relativistic effect like reduced aging, occur in a universe where an infinite communication speed might be possible?  In other words, what would tie time to the speed of light instead of some other speed limit? 

It may be simply because that's the way it is.  It appears that relativistic equations may not necessarily impose a barrier to superluminal speeds, superluminal information transfer, nor even acceleration past the speed of light.  In fact, if we accept that relativity says nothing about what happens past the speed of light, we are free to suggest that the observable effects freeze at c. Perhaps traveling past c does nothing more than create unusual effects like disappearing objects or things freezing at event horizons until they slow back down to an "observable" speed.  We certainly don't have enough evidence to investigate further.  

But perhaps CERN has provided us with our first data point.

Tags: relativity, time travel, faster than light, quantum mechanics, entanglement, einstein
Categories: Cosmology | Particle Physics | Physics | Science | Time Travel

Astronomers from the University of Hong Kong investigated infrared emissions from deep space and everywhere they look they find signatures of complex organic matter.

You read that right.  Complex organic molecules; the kind that are the building blocks of life!

How they are created in the stellar infernos is a complete mystery.  The chemical structure of these molecules is similar to that of coal or oil, which, according to mainstream science, come from ancient biological material.  

So, there seem to be only two explanations, each of which has astounding implications.

One possibility is that the molecules responsible for these spectral signatures are truly organic, in the biological "earth life" sense of the world.  I don't think I have to point out the significance of that possibility.  It would certainly give new credence to the panspermia theory, suggesting that we are but distant relatives or descendents of life forms that permeate the universe.  ETs are our brothers.

The other possibility is that these molecules are organic but not of biological origin.  Instead, they are somehow created within the star itself.  Given that they resemble organic molecules in coal and oil, it would seem to indicate that if such molecules can be generated non-biologically in stars, and the earth was created from the same protoplanetary disk that formed our sun, oil and coal are probably also not created from biological organic material.

In other words, this discovery seems to lend a lot of support to the abiotic oil theory.

That or we have evidence that we are not alone.

Either way, a significant find.  

Buried in the news. 

Tags: panspermia, solar system, abiotic oil, organic molecules, extraterrestrial life
Categories: Cosmology | Life | Science

Special Relativity.

Causality.

Faster than light (FTL) travel.

Most physicists says that you can only hope for at most two of these three concepts to hold.

Special Relativity has the advantage of 100 years of supporting experimental evidence.

Causality has the advantage of 1000s of years of philosophic thought, and daily experience (at least until very recently - see Rewriting the Past)

Which seems to be bad news for faster than light travel.  But we all so much want FTL travel to be true.  How else are we supposed to communicate with ET?

Well, Special Relativity may have received its first chink in the armor.  Particle physicists at CERN recently released a report on the experimental evidence of FTL neutrinos.  The 6-sigma quality factor reported implies that the margin of error for this experiment is insignificant, meaning that these results may need to be taken seriously.

So, which concept falls by the wayside: Special Relativity (sorry, Albert)?    Or Causality (sorry, Aristotle)?  Alternatively, maybe the "2 outta 3" rule needs revision.

As usual, I have an opinion.

And it is...

1. Special Relativity holds for the moment.  But we need to stop using circular logic for relativistic effects.  We need to stop drawing FTL paths on Minkowski diagrams that are based on the assumption that FTL is impossible.  And, finally, we have to come to terms with the fact that Special Relativity has to do with subluminal speeds and is UNDEFINED at FTL.

2. Causality holds for the moment.  At least in the context of our conventional space-time.  Throw in inter-Hilbert Space travel or Programmed Reality and all bets are off for Causality. (again see Rewriting the Past for more on the latter)

3. Given the caveats in #1, maybe we can get 3 outta 3.

Here's just one example where it seems to fit:

Imagine a supersonic jet travelling at twice the speed of sound (2S meters/second) in the land of the blind.  A blind observer stands at 10*S meters from the jet at t=0.  At t=0, an audible event (call it Event A, the cause) occurs on the jet, such as an explosion on board the plane.  The sound waves from Event A reach the observer in 10 seconds.  At t=1 second, the entire jet explodes as the gas tanks catch fire (Event B, the effect).  At t=1, the jet is 8*S meters from the observer since it is traveling at 2S, so the observer hears Event B eight seconds later.  In other words, the observer hears event B at t=9 and event A at t=10.  Therefore the observer observes the effect before the cause.

But that doesn't mean that the effect happened before the cause.  It only appeared to happen that way in the observer’s reference frame.  Similarly, anyone on the jet (who could actually hear things happening outside) would observe a full sequence of events happening backwards in time.  Is this time travel?  No.  No one is going back in time.  They are just experiencing a sequence of events in reverse chronological order happening in someone else's reference frame.  Is there any reason to assume that the same arguments would not also hold in the domain of light?

In fact, the same thing might happen if you hopped aboard the tachyonic neutrino express.  First of all, I should note that there is some debate about this whole idea of time unfolding in reverse at superluminal speeds.  Much of it stems from the nature of the Lorentz factor:

This is the factor that gets applied to time and distance to calculate time dilation and Lorentz contraction effects at relativistic speeds.  It is also the factor applied to mass in general relativity.  It can easily be seen that as the velocity approaches c (the speed of light), the factor under the square root sign approaches zero, causing the Lorentz factor to approach infinity.  For this reason, time stands still, mass goes to infinity, and the apparent size of the rest of the universe shrinks to zero at the speed of light.  Or, more accurately, “apparent size” as you would SEE it.  But, what happens if you go past the speed of light?  In that case, the factor under the square root sign is negative.  For mathematics, this is not allowed for real numbers.  However, trigonometry has a trick, which is to define an entity i that, by definition, is the square root of -1.  Numbers containing i are considered “imaginary” or complex numbers.  In the real world, these numbers actually have a great deal of use in fields like electrical engineering, where they are used to determine the phase between periodic signals, or in physics, where they are used to determine the relative angle between field vectors.  But what they might mean to relativity is really anybody’s guess.  But it is for this reason that many physicists claim that you can’t accelerate past light speed; that is, that it would necessitate mass exceeding infinity or becoming “imaginary”.  Thus, the entire idea of traveling back in time is just one interpretation of what happens when the Lorentz factor goes imaginary. 

So, let’s go with that idea on our tachyonic neutrino express, for the moment.  If you had hurtled through space superluminally in 1804 toward Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, you would watch Hamilton "fall up" into a standing position, the bullet flying out of his stomach and back into Aaron Burr's gun.  The assassination would still have taken place in their reference frame.  Once you arrived in Weehawkin, NJ and got off the transport, your reference frame would have shifted back to theirs.  

One might wonder what happens when you land.  Does the sequence of events go forward again, in which case you could predict the future?  No, that would truly violate causality.  What happens is that you have to decelerate to stop, and as you approach light speed, the backwards time effect slows down.  When you cross over into subluminal, it reverses and the events start forward again from whatever point in the "past" was hit at light speed.  Then, you get to watch the events unfold again in the normal temporal direction.  By the time you decelerate and land, you are at the same point in time as Burr's reference frame, well ahead of the event that you just witnessed.  Hamilton would be dead, of course.  No time travel, no ability to interact with the past.  No grandfather paradox to solve.  All relativity equations still make sense, from the standpoint of the observations that we can make via known observational methods.  We would still experience time dilation and Lorentz contraction up until we hit light speed.  After that, what happens is anybody's guess.  But I have a theory.

It's just going to have to wait until Part 2.

   
Tags: relativity, special relativity, ftl, faster than light, tachyons, neutrinos, cern
Categories: Particle Physics | Physics | Time Travel

 I live in Southern California, where, at any point in time, about 1 out of every 2 people are staring at their phone.  As a long time iPhone owner, I have to admit that I also fall into that category.  Smart phones are simply so enticing - camera, stock ticker, weather forecast, stored music, videos, and photos, GPS, maps, email, texting, twitter, facebook, games, radio rebroadcasts, internet, newpapers, webcams, and so much more.  What's not to love?

The internet is often hailed as a transformative invention, which it certainly was.  But it kind of pales in comparison to that Droid in yourpocket.  After all, the smart phone includes the internet at your fingertips, which, by itself is transformative in how people interact.  Instead of having to call your buddy after you get home and look up the factoid that you argued about at the bar, now you can settle immediately.  But, as the web app is just one of the thousands of apps that can be stored on the phone, it stands to reason that transformativenature of the smart phone can be much more than the web.

For one thing, there is the impact on existing products and services.  Who needs GPS anymore, when you have an iPhone?  Who needs to hear terrestrial radio stations in your car when you can stream Pandora channels tailored to your interests.  Pagers? - a thing of the past.  With all of the market data available at your fingertips and mobile trading easily accessible, do we need the financial section of the newspaper any more?  Or stockbrokers?  While consulting at a large toy manufacturer recently, it was observed that people use smart phones to comparison shop on the fly.  You're standing in front of a camera at an electronic superstore and in seconds you can determine if their competitor sells it cheaper.  Macy's doesn't have your size of that perfect shirt you found in the store?  Check online and find out who does.  I'm less inclined to stay at home to watch a game when I know I can keep track of my team at any time.  Don't need to carry a pen to write anything down when I can take notes on my phone.  Shazam has savedme tons of time trying to figure out what that song was that I just heard on the radio.

But it's not all good.

How many deaths are attributed to texting and driving?  Reuters estimatesover 2000 per year and growing.  Celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan drove off the Pacific Coast Highway while texting about his dog last year.  

Still, these are all relatively small impacts to our society.  The real transformation is in terms of socialization.  At a glance, you can determine who among your friends is nearby where you are dining or drinking, potentially enabling slightly higher socialization.  But, to come back to my original point, what about all of those people starting at their phones all day?  If you are at a restaurant with your family orfriends, but are obsessed with twittering, you aren't really getting much out of the social outing.  When was the last time you made eye contact with someone walking down the street?  It's kind of difficult ifone or both people are staring at the device in their hand.  Maybe you just walked past the person that could become the love of your life.  You'll never know it.  Maybe you just passed a former colleague who knows of the perfect new job for you.  Opportunity missed.  I even thinkthat people are losing the ability to think.  Some of the best daydreaming, the best brainstorms, occur when you are out and about and simply thinking.  That doesn't happen much anymore.  Standing at the curb waiting for the walk sign?  Might as well check email.  Waiting foran elevator?  Might as well see what's going on on Facebook.  Sitting at a stoplight?  Might as well see if anyone responded to my last tweet. 

We are doing less reading, more microblogging.  Less thinking, more context switching.  One has to assume that this will impact ideas, innovation, creativity.

Don't get me wrong.  The last thing I am is a Luddite.  I embrace technology, I love technology.  For $10 I can download a Groovebox app for my iPad, the equivalent of which used to cost $600 and take up rack space.  I can't wait to "goggle in" in "Snow Crash"parlance, and experience other realities.  But I also can't help but wonder what we have lost whenever I watch two people crossing a street collide mid-intersection because they are both texting.  

Oops, got a text message, gotta run... 

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Have you ever wondered what we don't know?  Or, to put it another way, how many mysteries of the universe are still to be discovered?

To take this thought a step further, have you ever considered that there may be things that we CAN'T understand, no matter how hard we try?

This idea may be shocking to some, especially to those scientists who believe that we are nearing the "Grand Unified Theory", or "Theory of Everything" that will provide a simple and elegant solution to all forces, particles, and concepts in science.  Throughout history, the brightest of minds have been predicting the end of scientific inquiry.  In 1871, James Clerk Maxwell lamented the sentiment of the day which he represented by the statement "in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals."

Yet, why does it always seem like the closer we get to the answers, the more monkey wrenches get thrown in the way?  In today's world, these include strange particles that don't fit the model.  And dark matter.  And unusual gravitational aberrations in distant galaxies.

Perhaps we need a dose of humility.  Perhaps the universe, or multiverse, or whatever term is being used these days to denote "everything that is out there" is just too far beyond our intellectual capacity.  Before you call me out on this heretical thought, consider...

The UK's Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees points out that "a chimpanzee can't understand quantum mechanics."  Despite the fact that Richard Feynman claimed that nobody understands quantum mechanics, as Michael Brooks points out in his recent article "The limits of knowledge: Things we'll never understand", no matter how hard they might try, the comprehension of something like Quantum Mechanics is simply beyond the capacity of certain species of animals.  Faced with this realization and the fact that anthropologists estimate that the most recent common ancestor of both humans and chimps (aka CHLCA) was about 6 million years ago, we can draw a startling conclusion:

There are certainly things about our universe and reality that are completely beyond our ability to comprehend!

My reasoning is as follows. Chimps are certainly at least more intelligent than the CHLCA; otherwise evolution would be working in reverse.  As an upper bound of intelligence, let's say that CHLCA and chimps are equivalent.  Then, CHLCA was certainly not able to comprehend QM (nor relativity, nor even Newtonian physics), but upon evolving into humans over 8 million years, our new species was able to comprehend these things.  8 million years represents 0.06% of the entire age of the universe (according to what we think we know).  That means that for 99.94% of the total time that the universe and life was evolving up to the current point in time, the most advanced creature on earth was incapable of understand the most rudimentary concepts about the workings of reality and the universe.  And yet, are we to suppose that in the last 0.06% of the time, a species has evolved that can understand everything?  I'm sure you see how unlikely that is.

What if our universe was intelligently designed?  The same argument would probably hold.  For some entity to be capable of creating a universe that continues to baffle us no matter how much we think we understand, that entity must be far beyond our intelligence, and therefore has utilized, in the design, concepts that we can't hope to understand.

Our only chance for being supremely capable of understanding our world would lie in the programmed reality model.  If the creator of our simulation was us, or even an entity a little more advanced than us, it could lead us along a path of exploration and knowledge discovery that just always seems to be on slightly beyond our grasp.  Doesn't that idea feel familiar?

Tags: gut, toe, dark matter, universe, multiverse, programmed reality, quantum mechanics, feynman, intelligence, intelligent design
Categories: Cosmology | Future Tech | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Quantum Mechanics | Science

Researchers from the Cognitive Computing Research Group (CCRG) at the University of Memphis are developing a software bot known as LIDA (Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent) with what they believe to be cognition or conscious processes.  That belief rests on the idea that LIDA is modeled on a software architecture that mirrors what some believe to be the process of consciousness, called GWT, or Global Workspace Theory.  For example, LIDA follows a repetitive looping process that consists of taking in sensory input, writing it to memory, kicking off a process that scans this data store for recognizable events or artifacts, and, if something is recognized, it is broadcast to the global workspace of the system in a similar manner to the GWT model.  Timings are even tuned to more or less match human reaction times and processing delays.

I'm sorry guys, but just because you have designed a system to model the latest theory of how sensory processing works in the brain does not automatically make it conscious.  I could write an Excel macro with forced delays and process flows that resemble GWT.  Would that make my spreadsheet conscious?  I don't THINK so.  Years ago I wrote a trading program that utilized the brain model du jour, known as neural networks.  Too bad it didn't learn how to trade successfully, or I would be golfing tomorrow instead of going to work.  The fact is, it was entirely deterministic, as is LIDA, and there is no more reason to suspect that it was conscious than an assembly line at an automobile factory.

Then again, the standard scientific view (at least that held by most neuroscientists and biologists) is that our brain processing is also deterministic, meaning that, given the exact set of circumstances two different times (same state of memories in the brain, same set of external stimuli), the resulting thought process would also be exactly the same.  As such, so they would say, consciousness is nothing more than an artifact of the complexity of our brain.  An artifact?  I’m an ARTIFACT?  

Following this reasoning from a logical standpoint, one would have to conclude that every living thing, including bacteria, has consciousness. In that view of the world, it simply doesn’t make sense to assert that there might be some threshold of nervous system complexity, above which an entity is conscious and below which it is not.  It is just a matter of degree and you can only argue about aspects of consciousness in a purely probabilistic sense; e.g. “most cats probably do not ponder their own existence.”  Taking this thought process a step further, one has to conclude that if consciousness is simply a by-product of neural complexity, then a computer that is equivalent to our brains in complexity must also be conscious.  Indeed, this is the position of many technologists who ponder artificial intelligence, and futurists, such as Ray Kurzweil.  And if this is the case, by logical extension, the simplest of electronic circuits is also conscious, in proportion to the degree in which bacteria is conscious in relation to human consciousness.  So, even an electronic circuit known as a flip-flop (or bi-stable multivibrator), which consists of a few transistors and stores a single bit of information, is conscious.  I wonder what it feels like to be a flip-flop?

Evidence abounds that there is more to consciousness than a complex system.  For one particular and very well research data point, check out Pim van Lommel's book "Consciousness Beyond Life."  Or my book "The Universe - Solved!"

My guess is that consciousness consists of the combination of a soul and a processing component, like a brain, that allows that soul to experience the world.  This view is very consistent with that of many philosophers, mystics, and shamans throughout history and throughout the world (which confluence of consistent yet independent thought is in itself very striking).  If true, a soul may someday make a decision to occupy a machine of sufficient complexity and design to experience what it is like to be the "soul in a machine".  When that happens, we can truly say that the bot is conscious.  But it does not make sense to consider consciousness a purely deterministic emergent property. 

Tags: lida, bot, gwt, global workspace theory, ai, consciousness, programmed reality
Categories: AI | Future Tech | Robotics | Science