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

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

People generally associate the idea of cold fusion with electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann.  However, similar experiments to the ones that led to their momentous announcement and equally momentous downfall were reported as far back as the 1920s.  Austrian scientists Friedrich Paneth and Kurt Peters reported the fusion of hydrogen into helium via a palladium mesh.  Around the same time, Swedish scientist J. Tandberg announced the same results from an elecrolysis experiment using hydrogen and palladium.
 
Apparently, everyone forgot about those experiments when in 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann from the University of Utah astonished the world with their announcement of a cold fusion experimental result.  Prior to this it was considered impossible to generate a nuclear fusion reaction at anything less than the temperatures found at the core of the sun.  Standard nuclear reaction equations required temperatures in the millions of degrees to generate the energy needed to fuse light atomic nuclei together into heavier elements, in the process releasing more energy than went into the reaction.  Pons and Fleischmann, however, claimed to generate nuclear reactions at room temperatures via a reaction that generate excess energy from an electrolysis reaction with heavy water (deuterium) and palladium, similar to those in the 1920s.  

When subsequent experiments initially failed to reproduce their results, they were ridiculed by the scientific community, even to the point of driving them to leave their jobs and their country, and continuing their research in France.  But, since then, despite the fact that the cultish skeptic community declared that no one was able to repeat their experiment, nearly 15,000 similar experiments have been conducted, most of which have replicated cold fusion, including those done by scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Russian Academy of Science.

According to a 50-page report on the recent state of cold fusion by Steven Krivit and Nadine Winocur, the effect has been reproduced at a rate of 83%.  “Experimenters in Japan, Romania, the United States, and Russia have reported a reproducibility rate of 100 percent.” (Plotkin, Marc J. “Cold Fusion Heating Up -- Pending Review by U.S. Department of Energy.” Pure Energy Systems News Service, 27 March, 2004.)  In 2005, table top cold fusion was reported at UCLA utilizing crystals and deuterium and confirmed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2006.  In 2007, a conference at MIT concluded that with 3,000+ published studies from around the world, "the question of whether Cold Fusion is real is not the issue.  Now the question is whether or not it can be made commercially viable, and for that, some serious funding is needed." (Wired; Aug. 22, 2007)  Still, the mainstream scientific community covers their ears, shuts their eyes, and shakes their heads.

So now we have the latest demonstration of cold fusion, courtesy of Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi from the University of Bologna, who announced last month that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W.

The scientific basis for a cold fusion reaction will be discovered.  The only question is when. 

Tags: cold fusion, pons and fleischmann
Categories: Future Tech | Physics | Science

Dr. Daryl Bern, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Cornell University recently published an astounding paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology called "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect."  In plain English, he draws on the results of eight years of scientific research to prove that precognition exists.  His research techniques utilized proven scientific methods, such as double blind studies.  According to New Scientist magazine, in each case, he reversed the sequence of well-studied psychological phenomena, so that "the event generally interpreted as the cause happened after the tested behaviour rather than before it."  Across all of the studies, the probability of these results occurring by chance and not due to a real precognitive effect was calculated to be about 1 in 100 billion.  

This little scientific tidbit went viral quickly with the Twitterverse and Reddit communities posting and blogging prolifically about it.  We have to commend the courage that Dr. Bern had in submitting such an article and that the APA (American Psychological Association) had in accepting it for publication.  Tenures, grants, and jobs have been lost for far less of an offense to the often closed-minded scientific/academic community.  Hopefully, this will open doors to a greater acceptance of Dean Radin's work on other so-called "paranormal" effects as well as Pim van Lommel's research on Near Death Experiences.

More to the point, though, this has many scientists scratching their heads.  What could it mean about our reality?  Quantum physicists say that reality doesn't really exist anyway, but most scientists from other fields have compartmentalized such ideas to a tiny corner of their awareness labelled "quantum effects that do not apply to the macroscopic world."  Guess what?  There isn't a line demarking quantum and macroscopic, so we need to face the facts.  The world isn't as it seems and Daryl Bern's research is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

OK, what could explain this?

Conventional wisdom would have to conclude that we do not have free will.  Let's take a particular experiment to see why:

"In one experiment, students were shown a list of words and then asked to recall words from it, after which they were told to type words that were randomly selected from the same list. Spookily, the students were better at recalling words that they would later type."  

Therefore, if students could recall words better before the causative event even happened, then that seems to imply that they are not really in control of their choices, and hence have no free will.

However, our old friend Programmed Reality, again comes to the rescue and offers not one, not two, but three different explanations for these results.  Imagine that our reality is generated by a computational mechanism, as shown in the figure below. 

 

Part of what constitutes our reality would also be our bodies and our brain stuff - neurons, etc.  In addition, assume that that "Computer" reads our consciousness as its input and makes decisions based both on the current state of reality, as well as the state of our consciousnesses.  In such case, consider these three possible explanations:

1. Evidence is rewritten after the fact.  In other words, after the students are told the words to type, the Program goes back and rewrites all records of the student's guesses, so as to create the precognitive anomaly.  Those records consist of the students and the experimenters memories, as well as any written or recorded artifacts.  Since the Program is in control of all of these items, the complete record of the past can be changed, and no one would ever know.

2. The Program selects the randomly typed words to match the results, so as to generate the precognitive anomaly.

3. We live in an Observer-created reality and the entire sequence of events is either planned out or influenced by intent, and then just played out by the experimenter and students.

Mystery solved, Programmed Reality style.

 

Tags: precognition, paranormal, daryl bern, programmed reality, free will, retrocausality
Categories: Life | Philosophy | Programmed Reality | Science