Not An Argument, Just Need To Get It Out Of My Head
Information theory is another one of those insanely complex things that's rooted in a pretty simple idea -- in classical (Newtonian) physics, the idea of a clockwork universe came up. That is, that since we know, using Newtonian physics, what will happen to a particle or thing that's had something happen to it (bumped by something else, falling in a gravitational field, etc.) in principle, every single thing that WILL happen can be calculated, assuming enough "information" about the initial state of the universe.
In other words, a particle (in classical physics) WILL move/change/whatever in a well-defined, predictable manner based on however the rest of the universe is arranged. Pool balls will ALWAYS move certain directions when being struck by another pool ball and thus, with enough information, the entire history and future of the pool ball's movement can be calculated AND will never vary. That means that in a universe of Newtonian physics, EVERYTHING is predictable, and therefore EVERYTHING is predestined, from pool balls down to the particles and atoms that make up the proteins and synapses used by your brain.
The universe, in short, was demonstrated to be absolutely DETERMINISTIC
in Newtonian terms. Even though you feel like you're making random
choices, your brain is just an insanely complex machine following it's
invariant domino-falling track, which was set and frozen into place at
the beginning of time and which cannot be changed. Freedom of choice,
decision making, and all the surrounding foofarah related to it simply
doesn't exist. It just "feels" like it does.
Ewwww.
Quantum physics to the rescue! Physicists discovered that matter seemed to be made up of both waves and particles simultaneously, and the location of a specific particle cannot, even in principle, be known if much of anything else is known about it. Everything became a hazy cloud of superpositions and probabilities, which means maybe the universe (and you) are not just clockwork machines after all. The outcome of hitting that pool ball became uncertain and chaotic.
But, no, it just looks that way to our 3-dimensional minds which are badly designed to grasp all of multi-dimensional space/time/probability. It turns out that the "particles and waves" description of the universe is only a crude mental-picture approximation. In fact things aren't ever really matter in the atomic sense, only interacting fields (thus the relatively new branch of quantum FIELD theory) which are PERCEIVED by us as particles, and the whole shiteree can be defined by increasingly complex intersections of the probability "waves" of its components.
This looks like (and is even often defined as) chaos, but is in fact really well-defined and organized and getting better defined and described by the day. We just can't "see" the pattern as instinctively as we can estimate whether the spear will hit the moving water-buffalo out on the savanna.
The simplicity (hah!) of the universe at the Planck-time fraction of a second after popping into existence from that singularity had a certain probability "wave function". That is the description of the initial state of the universe. This wave function described all of its possible states through time as probabilities, including the infinite or near-infinite number of states that resulted in the production of our version of it.
These probability-waves continue to propagate, filling time even as it is invented by the expanding universe. This essentially resulted in nearly infinite versions, all of which are in superposition, frozen in what is likely an infinitely large block of time. This sounds pretty random, and from our poor point of view, it is. But it's not, really. It can, in principle, all be described relatively simply using some basic equations that describe waves. Schroedinger's equation, for example.
Our universe, in short, is a totally predictable standing wave in superposition with literally every other version and existing in the Schroedinger-described probability space which includes all time and is as solid as a block of amber.
It, and each of us, are therefore still deterministic, although in a matrix so complex as to make the perceived difference to us negligible.
The important question at this point, really, is why this version of "we" (each of us) are at this moment moving on this particular line through this frozen, unchanging matrix of space/time/probability. Thus the argument over "many worlds" vs "collapse of probabilities when observed" theories.
In my view, "many worlds" is the hands-down winner of this one, for reasons that would take another 15000 words, but what do I know? I'm just a guy posting in a comments section of a piss-ant little blog.
OK, moving on...wait, you didn't actually READ all that did you? Wow, Dude! I was just writing it to get it out of my head...
Oh my God I read it. I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteNo, really. I need some Ibuprofin.
Hah! Stick around and sooner or later I'll get around to explaining why nothing you remember is true because of the physical way that memory works. It includes chunks of physiology, evolutionary pragmatism, and goes deep into the areas of why we even have a sense of "self" (which is, incidentally also an illusion, contrary to what the ever-shrinking numbers of proponents of Descartian-style dualism believe) and why, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I'm still just agnostic, not atheist. It has to do with quantum foam and the practical limits of knowledge in an infinite number of universes.
ReplyDeleteYou'll love it, trust me.
Maybe I ought to put up #trigger hashtags...
I'm a big fan of quantum foam and infinite universes. Not because I moonlight as a theoretical physicist. They provide support for stories that seem magical but are grounded in science. In fact, I decided long ago that multiple universes explain both time travel and Star Trek-like transporters. This is so because there are an infinite number of those universes, and whenever the physical displacement is made in space-time that is so popular in science fiction, while it looks like one person is going from one place/time to another, they in fact go to a lot of them, and only the one who survives plus kicks off the rest of the desired story is the one we follow or for that matter care about. When our captain beams down to the planet and then beams back again, he's actually shifted (twice) from some other universe, but it happens we are inhabiting one where the difference cannot be detected. Infinity is a large number.
ReplyDeleteYes, there are stories in that. But I'm still fixing life things that preclude actual writing so hold not thy breath.
(shrug) Well, anything's possible, but the fact is that as a practical matter the probability of "magical" components of quantum anything happening are so minuscule on a macro level that the universe would have time to come and go a few thousand times before one actually occurred for even a fraction of a second.
ReplyDeleteTo humans, who are chronically challenged by the comparative inability to count much above the primitive level of "one, two, three, many", much less grasp statistical realism with numbers this large, this means that there's no reason why their earnest hand-waving horseshit doesn't work. To quote Enlightened-Level Black-Belt Goofball Jim Carrey (from his philosophical masterwork "Dumb and Dumber"): "So you're saying there's a chance!"
Pfft. In fact, the probability that any smallest fragmentary bit of anything they do works for a fractional slice of a second, much less is a common result, is near enough to zero that we don't even have a number that small. So, yeah, I'm pretty comfortable saying that it ain't happening.
As to teleportation, that's an interesting exercise in self and identity. When you're broken down to nothing, then rebuilt exactly as you were, right down to the last atom and synapse, is that still you or have you been killed and something new is replacing you without knowing it? If you're duplicated instead of teleported (which there's no reason shouldn't happen if teleportation is possible at all, and in fact happens periodically in various versions of "Star Trek") and both "copies" are exactly the same right down to the last atom and synapse, which is "real?" If the answer is "both", what does that say about the fact that "you" don't exist at all, but are just a collection of particles in a specific arrangement as demonstrated by the fact that we could theoretically stamp out copies of "you" like bags of gummie bears? If they AREN'T you for some obscure philosophical reason, does that mean they're just soulless machines acting out a programmed route based on their initial subatomic structure? And what does that say about YOUR status and free will? If they aren't "real" can they be used as slave labor even though they think they are? Or is that "thinking" process just a pre-programmed response of particle arrangements reacting to input like any soulless machine? Doesn't that mean you are too? And when we resolve all these moral conundrums the way we "center of our universe" humans usually do, what do you reckon a copy of Jennifer Aniston is gonna cost me?
These are the questions that keep ME up nights, particularly that Jennifer Aniston thing, not whether some goofball waving an eagle feather at me from a sunrise hill is going to change my life.
I ran out of I.Q. several paragraphs up.
ReplyDeleteThere WERE stories in that, damn you.
ReplyDeleteNo, that's a different issue. There still ARE stories in there. If I limited myself to the real world or The Way Shit Actually Works, my writing would have been pinched off to a thin yellow dribble years ago...
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