Michael Prescott's Blog

Pre-adapt or die!

A previous post raised the issue of pre-adaptation in evolution. The idea remains controversial, but if it is true, it could point to a design or plan built into the DNA of all living things from the outset. In his book The Science of God, Gerald L. Schroeder makes a case for pre-adaptation, which I've excerpted below. 

Schroeder is an interesting figure - a trained scientist who tries to reconcile modern scientific data with the Bible. Since I view the Bible as a compendium of myth, legend, poetry, fiction, and a dash of history, I'm not particularly sympathetic to this project. I don't much care if the Bible can be made to seem scientifically prescient, any more than I care about seeing the Epic of Gilgamesh reinterpreted as a forecast of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, I find Schroeder's books fascinating because he thinks outside the box of materialism and explores concepts like an information-based cosmos (see his book The Hidden Face of God). 

In this excerpt, Schroeder considers the implications of the Cambrian Explosion - the sudden worldwide emergence of advanced life forms from very primitive antecedents circa 530 million years ago. How, he asks, did simple protozoans and sponge-like creatures become complex, articulated, lobster-like trilobites virtually overnight? 

Over three billion years spanned the gap between the immediate appearance of one-celled life on the just-cooled Earth, 3.8 billion years ago, and the explosion of multicellular life 530 million years ago. Perhaps during those eons, random mutations in the one-celled antecedents of all modern life stored genetic material containing latent (neutral) information potentially useful for the impending explosion of animal complexity. This would then be available for expression suddenly and simultaneously at the inception of multicellular life. Species of modern algae and protozoans have the space in their DNA for this neutral information. Each of their cells contains as much as one hundred times more DNA than a cell of any mammal, including humans. Since micro-fossils of primordial algae and protozoans have shape and size similar to modern specimens, it may be inferred that their genetic library was equally large.

We know that the genetic material of many plants and animals contains blocks of latent information able to be immediately expressed by changes in the environment or by single mutations. Chickens are known to grow hair, not feathers. Horses are born with multiple digits. Human babies unfortunately at times emerge from the womb with their "gill slits" still open. Both mammals and birds produce gill arches during embryo development, but then both mammals and birds, according to the fossil record, share a common origin as primitive fish. Marsh plants when submerged in water develop a leaf structure different from that of the same plant grown on dry land, even when cloned and therefore genetically identical.

According to the "latent library" theory, all this information is quietly present in the genome, waiting for the cue to be expressed. When the marine lizard ichythosaurus appears suddenly in the fossil record with an outer shape essentially that of a fish, or a land mammal becomes fish-like in shape as the arise for the whale, we may be witnessing a stored shift of preexisting genes from latent to active states. Fossils of what appear to be ancient primitive whales having small vestigial hind legs have been found in India and Pakistan. If the fossil record is correct, the phylum Chordata, of which both lizard and mammal are members, has at its base primitive fish. Some fish-like genes are certainly held in the genomes of modern land-based chordates, hence the occasional gill slits of human babies and the gill arches and yolk sacs of mammal embryos. Reorganization and expression of stored genes could account for a rapid "evolution" of the fish-like characteristics of these species....

The obvious questions with regard to algal and protozoan genome size are: why does an algal cell or an amoeba retain so much genetic capacity? And why, within this huge genetic library space, would a primordial protozoan have stored information related, for example, to jointed limbs or vertebrae? There would be no immediate benefit to the amoeba and so no genetic reason for them to maintain this neutral information in their DNA. If it were not neutral, then its expression was clearly not in the forms as expressed in the Cambrian animals.

The concept of a latent library posits a mechanism very different from the classical theory of evolution wherein random mutations provide changes in morphology. Nonetheless, primordial preprogramming of life's developments is exemplified in the morphogenesis of the eye. A gene group, Pax-6, is a key regulator in the development of eyes in all vertebrates. Its analog (a very similar gene) has been found to control development of the visual systems of mollusks, insects, flatworms, and nemerteans (ribbon worms). These represent five of the six phyla that have visual systems. (The sixth phyla with vision has not yet been studied.) The molecular similarity among these analogs is nothing less than astounding. The paired domain of the gene contains 130 amino acids. The match of these amino acids between insects and humans is 94 percent! Between zebra fish and human the match is 97 percent.

Could five genetically separate phyla have evolved these similar genes individually by chance?... The likelihood that random mutations would produce the same combination five times is 10 [to the power of 170] raised to the fifth power.

There is no way this same gene could have evolved independently in each of the five phyla -- it must have been present in a common ancestor. The gene that controls the development of eyes was programmed into life at at a level below the Cambrian. That level is either the amorphous sponge-like Ediacarans or one-celled protozoa. But neither has eyes. 

[pp. 90-92, The Science of God, Gerald L. Schroeder]

Cool

This is just cool. 

A quantum of solace

Interesting news from November 30 about a new experiment testing quantum entanglement (nonlocality). It's increasingly hard to deny that a particle can directly influence its entangled partner regardless of distance. 

Regular readers know that I think the Virtual Reality Interpretation of quantum mechanics looks promising as a way of making sense of all this.

Caveat: I'm not a physicist, so my opinion may be entirely worthless. 

Quantum grapes

I'm continuing to read Ross Rhodes' excellent online book, The Reality Program, which makes the case that the physical universe can best be understood as a virtual reality simulation. Yes, the idea does sound crazy ... but it also appears to make sense of quantum phenomena that would otherwise be illogical, magical, and downright inexplicable.

I was especially impressed with Chapter 3, "The Uncertainty Principle, Quantum Properties, and More on the Measurement Effect." In an extended discussion of "quantum grapes" (hypothetical units that possess the properties of subatomic particles), Rhodes clearly explains the paradoxical nature of quantum phenomena, and then shows, in step-by-step fashion, how the paradoxes disappear if the VR model is employed.

It's a real tour-de-force, and I recommend it to anyone who has ever puzzled over the mysteries of the double-slit experiment and similar head-scratchers.

Measure for measure

Reading a multipart discussion of quantum physics at Ross Rhodes' excellent website The Bottom Layer, I understood an important point for the first time.

For years I was under the impression that observation is the factor that causes the quantum probability wave to resolve itself into a single point (a particle). But in an endnote to "Chapter Two: The Double Slit Experiments," Rhodes clarifies things. In order for the quantum unit to express itself as a particle ...

It is not necessary to see or comprehend the information that is available. The experimenter cannot make information go away by not looking at it. If the information is available, it will [be] reflected in the measurement outcome.

He gives a series of simplified examples of double-slit experiments, showing that in all cases, the outcome doe not hinge on the experimenter actually being aware of the measurement that was taken; what counts is simply whether the measurement was taken and whether the information is still available.

Since I quoted a long passage from Rhodes in my previous post, I don't want to include another lengthy excerpt. Those who are interested are urged to read the chapter for themselves.

Why is this important? It gives us a clue about the nature of reality. New Age books often claim that we bring objects into existence simply by looking at them, and they point to quantum physics (and the Copenhagen interpretation) for support. But physics does not say that the experimenter manifests the particle by looking at it. In fact, the experimenter need not be looking at all. All that matters is that the experimenter has constructed a test that produces the relevant information - i.e., the measurement. Even if no one ever looks at the measurement data, the fact that the measurement has been obtained and is still available to be viewed is sufficient to affect the outcome of the experiment and determine whether the quantum unit behaves like a particle or a wave.

The words "is still available to be viewed" are italicized because they are key. If the measurement is taken but then erased, without ever having been seen by a sentient observer, and if the behavior of the quantum units is only analyzed after the erasure, then the quantum units will behave as if no measurement had ever been taken. But if the measurement still exists, even if it has not been seen, then the quantum unit will behave as if a measurement had been taken.

The availability of the information, regardless of whether or not it is actually viewed, is the determining factor. Rhodes sums up,

It turns out that, so far as experimentalists have been able to determine, the difference is whether the analysis of the results at the back wall is conducted when information about the electrons' positions at the slits is available, or not....

If we demand to know which slit the particle went through, then a particle must appear at one slit or the other so that we will have an answer to our question; and so our curiosity has caused there to be a particle at one of the slits, and now there is a particle; and if there is a particle at one slit or the other, it must obey the rules for particle motion, and so it does.

Conversely, if we do not demand to know which slit the particle went through, no particle need appear at either slit; and so we have not caused there to be any particle, and now there is no particle; and if there is no particle at either slit, the system remains free to roam the universe in whatever form seems most pleasing to itself.

And all of this is determined at the time we demand the knowledge, not at the time we institute any mechanical processes for obtaining the information.

So it is our "demand" for knowledge that determines how the quantum unit behaves. And this demand can take place after the experiment has been completed, when we decide whether or not to retain the measurements (keep them available) or erase them (make them unavailable). And this after-the-fact decision on our part determines how the experiment was run in the first place.

Which makes no sense at all in the context of physical objects moving in space. In the context of information processing by a Cosmic CPU, on the other hand, it's pretty much what we might expect.

Ether or ...

A hundred years ago or more, when trance mediumship was in its heyday, many of the purported spirit communicators talked about the "ether" as a key to the nature of reality. At the time, the idea of the ether - often styled the luminiferous ether - was universally accepted by physicists and was well known to educated members of the public. The consensus was that some sort of extraordinarily subtle and uniform substance, as yet undetected, permeated the universe and served as a conducting medium for light waves, gravitational fields, etc.

In the years since, however, the ether has fallen out of fashion. Attempts to measure the ether proved fruitless. The consensus now is that the ether, at least in its original meaning, does not exist.

So what are we to make of the mediumistic communiques? How could the "spirits" get it so wrong? Were all the references to the ether merely products of the mediums' subconscious minds? If so, how much of the rest of the communications are similarly flawed?

Before we give up on the ether entirely, we might consider the possibility that the general idea was right, but the details assumed by physicists of the time were wrong. This is the tack taken by physicist Brian Whitworth in his recent paper Simulating Space and Time (PDF), which Ben recommended to me.

Whitworth earlier wrote a paper (PDF) arguing that the universe can be understood as a virtual reality simulation. In his new paper he expands on this idea by suggesting ways in which space and time could be created in a virtual world.

First, Whitworth posits the existence of a "grid," which he describes as "the processing screen that creates the pixels, where ... the directions of space reflect grid transfer connections [and] the passage of time reflects grid processing cycles."

The "pixels," in this scenario, are light ("cyclical patterns passed between processing nodes"), matter ("information pattern tangles that stay in a node"), and energy ("the amount of processing in any transfer").

The "nodes" in the grid are comparable to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on the Web. As the universe expands, new nodes are added, meaning that the universe is "scalable" like the Internet. In each case, "new nodes that increase network load also add more processing. As network supply rises in tandem with network demand, the system can grow indefinitely. Scalability also shares control, which is why the Internet has no 'control centre'.... [S]haring control lets systems evolve better."

But what does all this have to do with our old friend, the ether? In Whitworth's view, the grid is the ether.

He writes:

The idea of an ether that is physical like the objects it contains was shown false by the Michelson–Morley experiment, but the idea of a non-physical ether has never been contradicted:

"Since 1905 when Einstein first did away with the luminiferous aether, the idea that space is filled with invisible substances has waged a vigorous comeback."

The traditional argument against an ether is that a thin, transparent jelly-like substance permeating all space would give a standard frame of reference to all movement, which by Einstein doesn't exist. However a non-physical ether, such as the grid, is compatible both with quantum theory:

"The ether, the mythical substance that nineteenth-century scientists believed filled the void, is a reality, according to quantum field theory."

And with relativity:

"According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light , but also no possibility of ... space and time..."

If the physical universe is a virtual reality, the new ether is the grid-screen that processes it.

When we view empty space we see nothing, just emptiness. This could mean nothing is there, as objective reality supposes, or that it is a processing host that perfectly transmits all light and matter, as proposed here. When one looks out a perfectly transparent window, the glass transmits the light from objects behind it. One sees the message of light the window passes, but not the glass medium that sends it. One only knows a glass window is there by its imperfections, by its frame surround, or by touching it.

Now imagine a world filled by a perfect transmitter with no imperfections so it can't be seen, that is all around so it has no boundary, and that transmits matter so it doesn't repel touch. If physics is information, then this is not impossible. If this medium filled every direction, one couldn't see around it. If it passed on all light perfectly, it would itself be unseen. And if we moved into it, it would just pass on the matter of our bodies on as it does light. Yet it could be known by logical inference, as is done here.

In the virtual reality conjecture, the grid is like a perfect diamond that completely fills the universe, continuously and flawlessly reflecting the images within it. Empty space then is quite "full", and the idea of “nothing” is just a figment of the human imagination. [pp. 239-240]

In other words (as I read it), the ether exists, but it is not a physical substance suffusing the cosmos. Rather, it is a grid of information-processing nodes - a network of information transfer and storage.

There is much more of interest in Whitworth's paper. I certainly didn't follow all the details on a first reading, and I intend to go back for a deeper look.

But in the meantime, it's tempting to speculate that maybe the "spirit communicators" of a hundred years ago weren't so far off, after all.

Inchworm, inchworm ...

Regular readers know I'm not the most optimistic guy when it comes to current events and likely trends. But here's some news that seems actually ... good. 

Cancer researchers have discovered that cancer cells metastasize by "inching" away from the tumor in a peculiar fashion. Scientists at Cornell University's Weill Cornell Medical College have apparently found a way to arrest this inchworm-like movement, and thus halt metastasis. The treatment appears to have no harmful side effects.

If this research pans out, it could mean that cancer (if caught early enough) would be confined to a localized tumor, rather than spreading like wildfire through the body. 

HT: Ace of Spades.

Hot stuff

As someone who is skeptical of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, I'm enjoying the news lately.

In case you haven't heard, a huge batch of private email correspondence among prominent pro-AGW scientists has been leaked to the Internet, and the contents of said correspondence do not put the scientists in the most favorable light. The emails seem to suggest that these powerhouses of global warming research were actively conspiring to conceal data, mislead the public, and shut down all criticism.

Leaking the emails would ordinarily be illegal, but given the public policy implications of AGW claims, this case may fall under the category of whistleblowing. In any event, the information is out there now, and it's not going away.

A few links of possible interest:

A cautious overview.

A philosophical perspective.

An amusing rundown of media reactions.

Some choice excerpts.

The blog post that broke the story.

A gargantuan comments thread that developed as the story began to unfold.

My favorite (sarcastic) comment from that thread:

Wait a minute! These e-mails and documents can’t be genuine. None of our models predicted that this information would be released.

Incidentally, I don't dispute that there has been a small rise in planetary temperatures since the nineteenth century, and that human action has played some role in it (not necessarily a major role). My skepticism is directed at notoriously unreliable computer models that pretend to predict the future, alarmist claims (such as Susan Blackmore's) of global apocalypse, dubious schemes like carbon credit swaps, and assertions that recent increases in temperatures are historically unprecedented.

There's been a lot of heat about global warming. Maybe it's time for cooler heads to prevail.

I brake for skeptics

It may not seem that way, but this post does have something to do with the paranormal -- or at least with skeptics thereof. But it will take a while to get there.

Recently an article appeared on the Autoblog, describing an experiment carried out at a Burger King restaurant. A speed bump was installed in the drive-through lane. New technology developed by company called MotionPower captured some of the energy from cars that passed over this speed bump and converted it to electricity. The article clearly stated that the experiment produced very little power and was intended only as "an initial durability test."

Despite these caveats, the article attracted a host of negative comments from people anxious to display their superior knowledge of physics. The political blog Ace of Spades, which linked to the article, described the experiment as an "epic fail."

Why was it such a failure, and a laughable one at that? Here's a sample of the commentary from Autoblog readers:

Huh? It's not FREE energy. Energy just doesn't appear out of nowhere. They are STEALING energy from the customers. The customers have to use gas to power their car over the speed bump. So whatever energy that is produced for BK from this speed bump, the customer would have have to use more to get over it, since some energy would most likely be lost in the transfer process.

This is what humanity is up against. Can you imagine that a corporation this big doesn't contain one person that understands the laws of physics. If they just added a 1/10 cent surcharge to each customer they would achieve more for both of us.

They understand the laws of physics, but they don't care. In their world, it is more important to appear green than to actually be green.

Or the people who understand this all too often have no voice in the corporate world. After all, it's an uphill battle to go up against some eccentric executives with MBA.

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea has no grasp of physics.

"Epic fail," indeed. Or so it would appear on the basis of most of the comments that were posted.

Eventually, however, someone who actually bothered to read the article carefully and think about its implications joins the discussion. This person, whose screen name is Joeviocoe, points out that the math supplied in some earlier commentary is wrong:

I think your calculations are WAY off.

Apply common sense. Would BK be interested if it could save only $5 per year? No!

Hybrid cars (like the Prius) use regen braking (the energy recaptured from slowing down from a certain speed)!

If you perform 100,000 braking cycles per year, does it not save you more than $5 in fuel costs?

Now you math freaks, lets have a bit of fun...

Joe goes on to carry out some new calculations that lead to a more sensible result -- namely, that the system might generate a little more than $1000 a year, rather than the five dollars a year estimated by an earlier commenter.

But of course, the Burger King test was not done to make money. It was done to demonstrate the basic feasibility of the system and to show that the technology would hold up under the weight of a succession of vehicles. It was "an initial durability test."

What about the objection that the car's energy is being "stolen" by the device? This would be true if the car didn't have to stop anyway. But in situations where the car is already required to stop, the energy is not stolen. It is simply redirected. (In the case of hybrids that use brake energy to recharge the battery, a case could be made that the energy is being stolen. But most cars are not hybrids.)

It should be obvious that the drive-through lane of a fast food restaurant is not the ideal environment in which to carry out this test. A better choice would be, say, the offramp of a freeway, where vehicles are required to rapidly decelerate. Placing a series of rumble strips on an offramp would allow some of the car's energy, which would otherwise be expended in braking, to be captured and used for some other purpose -- perhaps for lighting electric signs. In a high-traffic area, where vehicles are losing a great deal of energy as they decelerate, the energy captured could be significant.

As Joe sensibly observes: "My idea (perhaps thought of already by others) would be a set of rumble strips that would take away approximately 20 mph from the average car."

So why not test the system on a freeway offramp, or a stop sign? The simple answer is that it would be logistically more difficult to carry out such a test. There would be more bureaucratic hurdles to overcome; the freeway offramp or public street would have to be closed temporarily while the system was installed; etc. Most likely it was just easier to run the test at a Burger King.

Now, why am I bothering to post about this at all? What interests me is not the technology itself -- though it does seem to be feasible under the right circumstances -- but the attitudes conveyed by the skeptical comments.

According to the skeptics, the scientists who thought up the experiment don't understand the most elementary scientific principles. Or, if they do understand, their corporate chiefs don't care. The bottom line is that none of the people involved in this experiment had the slightest idea what they were doing, or if they did have some idea, they were willing to mislead the public for some nefarious purpose.

In other words, the mindset of the scoffers is a mixture of intellectual superiority, moral superiority, and unvarnished cynicism, and their responses are based on only the most cursory and superficial reading of the article in question. They don't have to read the material carefully or employ any common sense in evaluating it. They already know that they are smarter and better than everybody else. It's a foregone conclusion that anyone who's come up with something they themselves didn't think of must be wrong. After all, most people are idiots or deluded "eccentrics" or cynical manipulators playing a public relations game.

How easy it must be to approach life from this perspective! There are no questions, only ready answers. There are no doubts, only certainty. There is no need to grasp someone else's point of view, since everybody else is obviously wrong. And there is, of course, no possibility that we ourselves could be wrong ... ever.

As Colin Wilson quipped after reading Martin Gardner's best-selling book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science: "I wish I could be as sure of anything as Martin Gardner is of everything."

And here, naturally, is where skepticism of the paranormal comes in. A great many skeptics  -- though not, I emphasize, all of them -- seem to share the perspective of the scoffers quoted above. How many of the nonprofessional skeptics have actually looked, in detail and in depth, at the evidence for the paranormal phenomena they disparage? Most of the more casual skeptics have probably read, at most, a couple of skeptical books on the subject -- books that already reinforce and confirm their own outlook.

On the basis of this cursory and one-sided examination of the subject, they are quick to rule all paranormal phenomena out of bounds and to dismiss all the evidence collected over more than a century of research by hundreds of investigators on several continents.

And why not? They already know that none of these investigators had the slightest idea what they were doing, or if they did have some idea, they were willing to mislead the public for some nefarious purpose. The researchers in question don't understand the most elementary scientific principles. Or, if they do understand, they don't care. There is no need to examine the evidence, since all of it is obviously wrong.  After all, most of the investigators -- like people in general -- are idiots or deluded "eccentrics, or cynical manipulators playing a public relations game. 

"This is what humanity is up against," they lament, positioning themselves as enlightened saviors of the benighted multitude. "Anyone who thinks there is evidence for the paranormal has no grasp of science," they say, positioning themselves as the only ones who understand - who really understand -- science.  Any experiment that produces evidence for any paranormal phenomenon simply must be an "epic fail."

It's sometimes said that belief in the paranormal is predicated on certain psychological factors, and in some cases this is doubtless true. What is less widely understood is that instinctive, knee-jerk skepticism may also be predicated on psychological factors.

None of us can be totally immune to the influence of our temperament and mindset. It might be best, then, to become aware of our prejudices, parse our words carefully, and think before we speak.

And when we find ourselves speeding a  little too recklessly toward a conclusion -- hit the brakes.

Two for one

Quantum physics can be endlessly fascinating because of the mind-boggling paradoxes it presents us with. The most famous of these, and probably the most easily explained, involves the so-called double-slit experiment. I have read about this experiment many times, but always seem to have trouble retaining the memory, probably because the experimental outcomes are so counterintuitive that they are hard to absorb and retain.

Maybe if I write it down, I'll be able to remember it better. So here goes.

Though I have put it in my own words, this discussion is based on Chapter 8 of the book Biocentrism by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. If I've made any mistakes, I trust my more physics-savvy readers will let me know.

Let's say we shoot a beam of photons through two slits in a piece of paper so that the photons make an impression on a screen behind the slits. The stream of light will produce wave interference patterns on the screen, indicating that light functions as a wave.

Now let's say we slow down the stream of photons until only one photon is being released at a time. The photon arrives at the pair of slits and has to "decide" (so to speak) which slit to use. Or so it would seem -- but in fact, the photon goes through both slits, and as more and more photons are shot through the slits one at a time, they build up a wave interference pattern on the screen. Thus it appears that even individual photons behave as waves.

So far, so good. But now let's attach a detection device to the slits so that the photon can be observed and measured as it goes through -- before it hits the screen. When we do this, we get a totally unexpected result: no more wave interference pattern on the screen! Now each photon behaves like a particle, not a wave.

This is odd. It seems that the mere act of detecting the photon as it goes through the slits is enough to convert it from a wave to a particle. And it's not as if the detection device itself somehow interferes with the photon. All kinds of variations on this experiment have been done, using a variety of detection devices, and the upshot is that it is the very fact of observing and/or measuring the photon that causes it to behave like a particle.

From here, things get even stranger. Suppose we set up two parallel experiments -- two sets of double slits in front of two separate screens. Then we fire "correlated" particles at these screens. Correlated particles operate in tandem; by measuring one, we can determine the properties of the other.

If we have no detection device attached to either pair of slits, then the correlated particles will make a set of wave interference patterns on each screen, just as we would expect. If we attach detection devices to both pairs of slits, then the correlated particles will behave like particles -- again, just as we would expect.

But suppose we attach a detection device to only one pair of slits, and not the other. What happens then? Both correlated particles behave like particles. In other words, even though only one of the particles is actually being measured as it passes through the slits, the other one behaves as if it has been measured, too. Somehow it seems to "know" that its partner has been detected.

This, however, is not the end of the strangeness. Let's say we modify the experiment so that one correlated particle -- call it particle A -- travels through a pair of slits with no detection device attached to it and hits the screen, while the other correlated particle -- particle B -- takes a longer, circuitous route. Particle B eventually passes through a pair of slits fitted with a detection device, but it doesn't reach the slits until after particle A has completed its journey and registered its impression on the screen.

In this case, surely, particle A would behave like a wave, since it will pass through the slits long before its companion particle has reached the slits on its side of the experiment. The fact that particle B will be detected upon reaching the slits should have no effect on particle A, which will already have finished traveling by that point.

But, as you may have guessed, things are not that simple. What actually happens is that both particles behave like particles, not waves. In other words, particle A acts as if its companion particle has been detected and behaves accordingly -- even though, in fact, particle B has not yet been detected at all.

It's as if particle A not only "knows" when particle B has been detected, but also "knows" that particle B has not yet been detected but will be detected before the experiment is complete. It alters its present behavior to fit an event that will occur to its companion particle in the future.

Now, it seems to me that paradoxical behavior of this kind simply cannot be explained on the model of an objective reality that exists totally independent of consciousness. The model that I have been looking at lately -- here and here -- is the virtual reality model suggested by physicist Brian Whitworth (and recommended to me by Ben Iscatus). Whitworth suggests that the paradox of wave/particle duality can be explained if we think of our cosmos as a kind of virtual reality simulation in which all objects exist essentially as information in a database. According to this model, an object always has a potential existence, but it has no actual existence until the calculations are made that allow the object to be "drawn" on the "screen" of our reality.

Suppose we are playing a video game. In our virtual world, we are facing due south, and looking at a building. The building appears as an object in our world because the CPU has done the calculations necessary to draw the building on the screen. Meanwhile, behind us, in the direction of due north, there is a mountain. This mountain is not on the screen; we are not looking in that direction; therefore the CPU does not do the calculations necessary to draw the mountain. It would be a waste of processing power to do so. The mountain exists, for the moment, only as a potential. It is real, in the sense that the information necessary to draw it really exists in the database. But it is potential, in the sense that the drawing has not been done because our attention is not focused in that direction.

If we pivot so that we are now facing due north in our virtual environment, then the mountain will come into view. This means that the CPU now has to do the calculations necessary to draw the mountain on the screen. The mountain has become manifest. It is no longer a potential; it is, for the moment, an actuality. Meanwhile, the building that we were looking at earlier has now vanished from the screen. The CPU no longer has to do the calculations necessary to draw the building, which is now relegated to the status of a potential. Wherever we turn our attention in our virtual environment, the CPU draws that part of our environment. Wherever we are not looking, the CPU does not perform the calculations necessary to draw that part of our environment. Our point of view determines which parts of our virtual world are made manifest at any given time, and which parts remain unmanifest.

Applying this model to the double slit experiment, we can say that detecting the photon (or other particle) as it goes through the slits requires that the "CPU" perform the calculations necessary to "draw" the particle on the "screen" that is our physical reality. Even our conscious intention to detect the particle will trigger the necessary information processing; thus, particle A in the last experiment will be manifested (localized) when it goes through the slits because of our intention to detect particle B, even though our intention has not yet been carried out.

When undetected (unmeasured, unobserved), the particle will behave like a wave -- specifically a probability wave, or a probability distribution of all the possible points in space that the particle could inhabit. The particle will not occupy any one particular point because, to do so, the calculations necessary to "draw" it would have to be carried out, and the calculations are not performed when the particle is unobserved. The particle still exists, just as the mountain in our virtual reality environment exists even when it is not on the screen; but, like the mountain, the particle exists as a potential, or (one might say) in an indeterminate form. It is indeterminate because the calculations that would determine its precise location and other characteristics are not presently being made.

The big question, if this model is correct, is what exactly serves as the information processor. My guess, which could be wrong, is that the information processor is consciousness itself. Brian Whitworth has a different view; he regards consciousness as an emergent property of the virtual-reality environment, and sees the information processor as something entirely separate.

In any case, if consciousness is necessary to manifest objects in the universe -- if objects exist only as probability distributions until and unless they are observed by a sentient being -- then the question arises: How could there be a universe before the appearance of the first living organism? It's no good to say that God's consciousness was observing everything and making it manifest, because if that were true, then presumably God (being omniscient and eternal) would still be observing everything all the time -- in which case, particles would always behave like particles and never like waves, since there would never be a time when they were unobserved. In fact, however, particles do behave like waves a great deal of time, specifically when they are unobserved; so if there is an omniscient consciousness overseeing the universe, its observations clearly cannot affect the behavior of subatomic particles.

The logic of wave/particle duality, then, seems to lead to the conclusion that the universe, prior to the appearance of sentient life forms, existed in an indeterminate form, as a vast cloud of possibilities, a dizzying array of probability distributions, none of which had been actualized. This is the conclusion that Robert Lanza and Bob Berman reach in Biocentrism. The chicken-and-egg problem -- how could the first sentient lifeform ever exist in actuality if the universe itself was only a potential? -- can perhaps be addressed by positing a tangled hierarchy.

It seems too weird to be true ... but perhaps, as evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane famously observed, "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine."

Or, to quote astrophysicist Sir James Jeans: "The stream of human knowledge is impartially heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm."