Subject: Re: Dr. Quantum G 'thooft & Seth Lloyd, Teilhard de Chardin & Friedrich Nietzsche
On Aug 4, 2010, at 1:09 PM, JRJ wrote:
Dr. Sarfatti,
Thank you for the extensive response, and all the links you posted within it. It seems that Seth Lloyd is using a quantum computer as a metaphor for the 'computational' nature of the universe rather than suggesting that the information stored on the surface of a black hole – or a cosmological horizon similar to it, could actually be extracted.
Wrong, he means it literally. So do I and so do other mainstream physicists into the hologram conjecture. It's a computer. Indeed, I think it is a conscious post-quantum cosmic VALIS computer. The idea is already implicate in Fred Hoyle's book "Intelligent Universe" early 1980's and in his "Black Cloud" sci-fi novel and in I.J. Good's "GOD(D)" though not with the modern detail of the future horizon and the hologram of Bohm's Implicate Order -- indeed the smeared information on the horizon of Lenny Susskind's "black hole complementarity."
After all, the quantum computers we have now do require an interface with conventional computers to input commands and extract data and I still cannot imagine what this mechanical interface would be extrapolated to the cosmic scale (or even what 'space' it would occupy). But lets assume that I am sold on this point after I read Seth Lloyd's book – which I will do, because it is relevant to part of my dissertation.
No, the computation concept is more general than the implementation of classical material computers. See my paper with Creon Levit http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.0032 on how gravity tetrad fields emerge as a supersolid distortion "world crystal lattice" from the post-inflation macro-quantum coherent vacuum. That is the "computation" that creates the curved fabric of 4D spacetime.
Before moving on to what's really important, let me also clarify my point about the comparison to Teilhard and, since you brought him in, also Philip K. Dick. Unlike your Omega Computer, both Teilhard's "Omega Point" and the "Holy Spirit" that is behind and beyond VALIS are 'universal' and 'necessary' in the sense that they would have come into being IN ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS.
Sorry, but that is what Richard Feynman would dismiss as apriori "philofawzy" that belongs in the dustbin of history. Sure you can find trivial differences of detail that obscure the key point. Obviously, Teilhard and Dick did not get the physics 100% correct. They see through the glass darkly. "Universal"? "Necessary"? I find no need for those vague terms. In mainstream chaotic inflationary cosmology we have an infinity of universes, some are conscious. This is related to the "cosmic landscape" however with signal nonlocality the universes outside ours are, in principle, detectable.
I'm also a (late) Wittgensteinian in the sense you mean, and so I agree with you (and Feynman) that these are meaningless as metaphysical terms, but they have a very real psychological significance in that they appeal to religiously inclined persons seeking an absolutely certain cosmological crutch.
Sure, so what?
This mentality is radically opposed to the Nietzschean one that admittedly inspires your work, and so I was just suggesting that you ought to be careful not to allow the scientific theory that you have helped to develop be facilely adopted by persons who are really after crafting a new belief system.
Perhaps. I will leave that to the philosophers. However, all great ideas are corrupted by the Priests, the Victorian Station Masters, the hack bureaucrats of Kafka. Look what they did to Jesus, to Marx and to Josephson! ;-)
This is why the difference between what you mean by "final cause" and what they mean by it, does matter – sociologically. They don't need to be able to understand advanced mathematics in order to grasp the fact that you are NOT restoring ultimate meaning and purpose to the ENTIRE Cosmos (including what lies beyond our holographically projected observable universe). There's a Persian expression that refers to luring childish people into agreement with something they don't understand and that is ultimately not in their interests, it goes like this: "we'll make them dumb with candy, and then we'll sever heads with cotton" ;-) Don't do that. They should know what they're getting into with this theory, and how radically it departs from anything theologically motivated.
I disagree, it's enough that our observable universe bounded by our past and future horizons may well be a matrix virtual reality with a self-creating conscious program. Whether all the universes outside those two bubbles are also conscious or not is secondary.
Now, let's see if we can agree on what is really important, namely a falsification possibility for this theory. I understand that your interest in remote viewing is in the precognitive phenomena you refer to as "strong retrocausal signal nonlocality", because it fits into this theory. But the point I was making is that there are other phenomena observed in remote viewing research that could call this theory into question.
I hope so. Remember I think this is a really crazy idea spawned by Gerard 'tHooft, his Frankenstein, that is interesting because, maybe, it's crazy enough to be "true."
These are: i) the ability to remote view the past; ii) the fact that remote viewers would sometimes become so fascinated by a site that they would 'bilocate' there (i.e. have an out of body experience) and break communication with their interlocutors at the facility; iii) instances where remote viewers were able to exert psychokinetic influence on the environment of the target site or people within that environment. Surely, you don't want to accept only the part of the remote viewing data that confirms the theory (of 'tHooft, Susskind, et al.) that you are advancing. OK? So please reconsider the following scenario: a remote viewer bilocates to the past and is tasked with slightly changing an aspect of the past that his interviewers at the remote viewing program have all studied (but one that should not directly alter his past or the conditions of him carrying out the mission in the present).
Wait, if Novikov's principle applies, all seemingly paradoxical attempts will fail. Indeed it will not be possible to change any past detail that is recorded - unless the recording is in error. In that case, the past is what it is precisely because of intervention from the future in a self-consistent Feynman history. All self-contradictory Feynman histories vanish. On the other hand, if Deutsch's idea is "true" then anything goes because we have splitting timelines - each timeline is consistent. Deutsch works out the possibilities in his papers.
If he were to return to the present with different memories of the event targeted for change, then it would appear that one of two things has occurred: either he has wiped out large segments of the time line of his own universe (this means that some people who were originally born may not live the entire lives they have as a consequence of his actions, etc.); or, alternatively, he has crossed over into a parallel universe (and his co-workers who share his memories of the event targeted for change are still back in his original universe, where either the event never changed or his consciousness never made it back into his body from the past).
You here assume David Deutsch's conception of reality. Check out his papers and see if you have anything new to add to what he has already published.
You agree with me that under the theory you are defending it would not seem any more possible for us, as holographic projections, to cross over into a parallel universe than for a Star Trek holographic character to leave the holodeck. (I re-watched "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Ship in a Bottle" yesterday.) You also affirmed that, on account of the Novikov self-consistency principle, this theory does not allow the past to be changed. Well, if the remote viewing/influencing experiment above were to be carried out successfully, so that remote viewers tasked with carefully altering the past repeatedly returned to the present with different memories than their coworkers in the program, then it would seem that either: a) the remote viewers have crossed over into a parallel universe, and so they are NOT holographic projections of an Omega Computer co-extensive with THIS universe; or b) the Novikov self-consistency principle is violated by a change in the past of THIS universe. Either way, the theory that you have extended and are defending would be falsified. Can we agree on this empirical test?
Partially. The hologram theory does not choose between the Novikov super-determinism and the Deutsch splitting and fusing timelines. Your gedankenexperiment here might distinguish them. The Omega Computers in the parallel Level 1 (Tegmark) universes may be connected by signal nonlocality into a vast meta-Omega network - even extending to Level 2 and maybe Level 3 (I have some qualms about Level 3).
If we DO agree, then why not actually test the theory? ;-)
Any scientific theory that is not testable in principle is worthless.
You know Hal Puthoff. Are you also still in contact with Jacques Vallee?
Not for years - not directly. Vallee, I am told, mentions me in his Vol 2 of "Forbidden Science." I have not read it yet -- too busy.
Besides being involved in the remote viewing program, in the 1970s ("The Invisible College" period) Vallee seemed to flirt with the idea that the UFO phenomenon was a projection of an artificial, information processing "control system". I don't see any reason why, with the right backing from such individuals as Puthoff and Vallee, the empirical test I've crudely sketched above could not be carried out – at minimal cost, perhaps privately and by a group of volunteers. Of course, in case it actually works, we would have to take extreme precautions not to change anything about the past that would inadvertently affect OUR personal histories! I want my life left just the way it is.
Really? Many people would like to change their past. Oh, you mean by using the CIA Remote Viewing SRI protocols? That's interesting. ;-)
Finally, I would like you to know that our exchange has given me cause to rethink the part of my proposed dissertation where I argue against theories that we are living in a computer simulation. I had already been torn over whether or not to preclude this possibility. After looking into Seth Llyod and going back to read Philip K. Dick (as you suggested), I spent part of yesterday provisionally redrafting the relevant sections of my dissertation proposal so as to leave open the simulation possibility. If I stick with this revised line of thinking, I will credit you for provoking it.
Your point about the creative tension between retro-causal hologram images of the future event horizon hologram (conjecture) crossing over, perhaps through a wormhole, to a different alternate observable universe is a good one. However, there is a new point that must be clarified - the future horizon we are inside of, unlike the black hole horizons we are outside of, is observer-dependent. That is, we need to think about what the future horizon is for an observer who has warp drive and/or stargate super-technology. In addition, the horizon picture is not fine-grained, but very coarse-grained - all short distance scales are integrated out. For example, the metric field of the solar system has in principle no relation to the cosmological metric - except for the Pioneer anomaly that is telling us something. So these are clues.