Michael Prescott's Blog

Information, please

Recently there’s been some hype in the media about how the idea of the universe as a computer simulation has been disproved. I was skeptical that such a sweeping hypothesis could be definitively falsified, and according to the good folks at Popular Mechanics, I was right. The researchers cited by news articles were not actually looking into the cosmic simulation question but into the issue of using classical computers to simulate quantum computers; and the results they got, while interesting, are irrelevant to the "information matrix" debate. 

In any event, the notion that the universe is simulated by some sort of physical supercomputer created by an extraterrestrial species is, in my opinion, rather childish — a result of limiting speculation to a crudely materialistic paradigm. What I see as a more sophisticated version of this idea is that the universe consists essentially of information and information processing, not because the cosmos is generated inside a MacBook operated by an extradimensional nerd with too much time on his hands, but because information as such underlies all physical entities and phenomena.

In other words, we’re not talking about a supercomputer designed by ET, but about a matrix of pure information that is the ground of being. The limitations of physical computational devices, whether using classical or quantum physics, are irrelevant to this idea, since no physical information processing is taking place. By definition, all physical things emerge from the information processing matrix. 

For a discussion of some possible advantages to this way of looking at things, please see Matt Rouge's guest post and one of my own posts from a few years ago. 

I’m hardly certain of this highly speculative notion, but I do find many of the arguments used to knock it down to be extremely weak. Let’s take a look at some of the more common objections. 

Objection 1: Information can exist only in the context of a mind that perceives it. An information field cannot be the ground of being, because it must be grounded in consciousness.

It’s true that the term information, as used colloquially, implies knowledge held by a mind. But that’s not how information theorists use the term. They speak, for instance, of information encoded in DNA. That information was present long before there were any human minds capable of knowing about it.

According to an online dictionary, information theory defines information as "a mathematical quantity expressing the probability of occurrence of a particular sequence of symbols, impulses, etc., as contrasted with that of alternative sequences." Mathematical quantities exist whether or not a mind conceives them. A hydrogen atom has one electron and it has always had one electron, long before anyone was around to notice it.

One could reply that God is the observer, the Mind that knows. But this merely begs the question by assuming there must be an observer in the first place.

A good discussion of the term "information" as used by theorists is found here. (The page is from an Intelligent Design site, but I’m not linking to it for that reason. I just think it’s a good essay.) I also discussed the issue at some length in this post.

Another thing that trips people up is that information theory is often concerned with the transmission and reception of messages. This naturally leads to the assumption that consciousness must be involved in formulating the message or at least in apprehending it.

But while intelligible messages aimed at consciousness can be studied this way (and in fact, the field got its start studying ways to improve the clarity of radio messages), the message in question does not need to be sent or received  by a mind. Messenger RNA, as its name implies, delivers messages, but that doesn’t mean the ribosomes that receive the information have minds or understand what they’re doing. Such messages can be compared to a key that fits a particular lock; the key does not know which lock it fits; the lock does not know that the key will open it; but when the right key finds the right lock, the "message" has been received.

In short, consciousness is not necessary for information to exist, when the term information is used in its technical sense.

Objection 2: Information can’t exist on its own; it must be encoded in some physical substrate, whether it’s the double helix of DNA, the pages of a book, the microcircuitry of a computer chip, or the neuronal pathways of the brain. Therefore a field or matrix of pure information is impossible and inconceivable.

I agree with part of this. An information matrix with no physical reality is inconceivable, in the sense that the human mind cannot visualize it or make it real. However, I don’t see this as a problem. Why would we think that the ultimate nature of reality would be directly graspable by our minds?

We live in a 4D space-time universe. We are fully immersed in it. It is pretty much all we know, with the occasional exception of profound mystical experiences that transcend space and time. But our hypothesis is that this 4D universe is not the ultimate reality — that there is a deeper level, below both physicality and consciousness, a level that is outside of space and time and is not definable in 4D terms.

The classic illustration of this idea is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, a book that is part social commentary, part religious satire, and part mathematical treatise. In the book, Mr. A. Square, a two-dimensional resident of Flatland, is lifted up out of the sheet of paper that is his world and rudely introduced to the third physical dimension (height). From his new perspective he can look down on Flatland and see inside the buildings. When he returns, he tries to give voice to his revelation, but no one knows what he’s talking about. The other Flatlanders think Mr. A. Square is crazy.

When it comes to imagining a ground of being that is outside the parameters of our universe — outside space and time — we are in the same unfortunate position as the people of Flatland. We can’t really conceive of it, except in theoretical terms, and we can’t picture it except by metaphors and analogies. But this is true of any attempt to describe the fundamental nature of reality.

The issue of metaphors and analogies leads us to ...

Objection 3: Isn’t the information matrix merely the latest in a long line of metaphysical theories that use current technology as a metaphor for reality? When clockwork mechanisms were all the rage, the idea of a clockwork universe was fashionable. Centuries later, when holography was au courant, David Bohm compared the universe to a hologram. Now that we're in the Information Age, the universe is seen as a virtual-reality environment generated by information processing. When the next technological revolution comes along, the metaphor will change again.

There’s a good deal of truth in this observation, but I’m not sure it’s actually damaging to our hypothesis. As I said above, the only way to intellectually grasp (or at least grasp at) the foundational nature of reality is by metaphor and analogy. As our technology becomes more sophisticated, our metaphors may get closer to the truth.

The clockwork universe was not a completely accurate representation, but it was a major advance over the idea of a universe ruled by the whims of gods. This Newtonian paradigm is still perfectly valid when dealing with macroscopic phenomena. Using Newton's calculations exclusively, it is possible to chart the trajectory of a spacecraft from Earth to the moon.

As for Bohm's theory, a holographic universe is broadly compatible with the information processing idea. A holographic plate consists of wave interference patterns, which are simply encoded information, so the universe-as-hologram is essentially a 4D image projected out of a substrate of information. And since Bohm's holographic universe changes over time, the holographic plate presumably must be undergoing changes as well, which would correspond to the ongoing algorithms of  information processing.

Better technology in the future may well yield better metaphors, but for now we need to work with what we have. In general, using cutting-edge tech as a springboard  for ontological speculation has proven pretty successful.

Other objections are possible. Some people feel the whole idea of an information-based universe is depressingly cold and impersonal. Maybe so, but why does reality have to be warm and fuzzy? Others find the idea to be unscientific because it is unfalsifiable in principle. This is probably true, but how is that different from any other ontological proposition? Still others note that the all-important issue of the origin of consciousness is left ambiguous; is mind an emergent property of an informational system, or something else? Honestly, I don’t know.

Finally, there are those who complain that commonly reported transcendent experiences such as episodes of "cosmic consciousness" and NDEs say nothing about information as the ground of being. But this is debatable. Some NDEs do include decidedly "holographic" elements, as our longtime commenter Art has often mentioned, and most "cosmic consciousness" episodes involve the sense that a complex, well-orchestrated, logical system underlies the illusion of  physical reality. I think the information-matrix idea is also broadly consistent with the Seth material channeled by Jane Roberts. (See this book for a discussion of parallels between Seth's lectures and Bohm's holomovement.)

For additional discussions, see The Bottom Layer website, which does an unusually good job of laying out the reasons for thinking that quantum phenomena can best be understood as expressions of an information processing system; Brian Whitworth's highly technical but fascinating essays; and, what the hell, my own novella Chasing Omega, which includes this issue in a dramatized depiction of afterlife research and the possibilities it raises. 

Guest post: The death of the Western Myth and the cold comfort of “belief” thereafter

Matt Rouge is back with his second guest post. Take it away, Matt!

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In my first post here, I wrote:

[In the Mist, t]here is no one to confirm that, yes, one is just so right about everything. Indeed, the contradictions and issues one perceives impugn one’s ability to sort them all out, to paint the Big Picture once and for all. Should Michael permit, it is lack of ease and comfort in the Mist that I would like to explore in my next guest post.

Thanks, Michael, for permitting!

For more background, please read the above post, but I am going to get right into things here. One tenet of the Skeptic (capitalized per Roger’s excellent recent guest post) mythos is that “belief”¹ is, as Marx characterized it, the opiate of the people. Thus, if we believe in God, we desire the comfort of a Sky Father in benign control of things, and if we believe in the Afterlife, we do so merely because we don’t want to die forever. Skeptics on the other hand, thanks to their superior intellectual constitution, are able to accept the harsh truth that God and the Afterlife do not exist.²

Yet, as I asserted in my preceding post, Skeptics are just as much in the Chamber of Maiden-Thought (and outside the Mist) as the religious fundamentalists and other “believers” they excoriate. Why? Because they have not accepted the death of the Western Myth.

The Western Myth³ is a concept I am introducing here, and I think it’s an essential one. Very much necessary yet currently lacking in the discourse of our culture, indeed of our world. What is this myth? On the surface, it is the strong, confident bones of Abrahamic religion, which includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.⁴ To wit, there is a God, He created, knows, and understands all, which in turn means that all is understood, known, and created with a specific and perfect intention. Things are designed to work right, and when they don’t, that is our fault. In other words, when things go wrong, it is because we are sinners. Simple.

Thus, if you are gay, that’s your lifestyle choice, and you are a sinner, inasmuch as God didn’t create gay people, and He didn’t design people to be gay. If you stray in your marriage, you are a sinner, inasmuch as God designed the institution of marriage to work; He designed monogamy to work. There ought to be peace, yet due to bad people, there exist crime, war, and every ill of society. But don’t call it flaws in human nature; call it original sin.⁵ Or maybe Satan or Iblis is tempting you. Someone. Something.

Ah, but it’s so easy to ditch all this simplistic thinking, isn’t it? Just stop believing in those silly religions! Then we’ll all be thinking as correct as can be, right? Right?!

Not so fast. However much we wish to reject the surface beliefs of the Western Myth, its underlying assumptions are likely to stick around and mislead us. Let’s look at some examples:

• Freud was as big an atheist as they come, but he saw people more or less as perfect blank slates from birth, mentally. If you have a mental problem or illness, it’s due to things that were done to you. Probably by your mother in a time you can’t remember. In other words, it’s the fault of humans. Genes… what are those?
• Marx was as big an atheist as they come, but he saw class struggle and its end result as a historical necessity. Communism was meant to happen, and it would work. Later he would be treated as a virtual god in a secular religion.
• Similarly but at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Ayn Rand was as big an atheist as they come, but she saw her “objectivism” as being simply the truth, and so do her followers today. They believe that if government would only get out of the way and let the winners win and the producers produce, we would be living in a Libertarian utopia. It would just work.
• In the West and East, on the Left and Right, there has always been the desire to see leaders as right by nature. Comrade Stalin is just right. Chairman Mao is just right—consult the Little Red Book for details. The Fürher is just right. The Party is just right. The guru is just right. The Pope is infallible when he speaks ex cathedra. The Bible, al-Quran, Book of Mormon, and so on are infallible. The Constitution of the United States is a document inspired by God and should be upheld at all costs. The examples of this type of thinking are endless.
• It’s not just the big issues of politics and religion. There is a tendency in matters of health to see the body as inherently healthy—if only people wouldn’t screw it up. Do you have diabetes or heart disease, or are you overweight? Didn’t you know that the right diet and exercise prevent that kind of thing! And if the conventional wisdom doesn’t work for you, then a vegan/low-carb/paleo/gluten-free diet will do the trick, since it just works.⁶
• Shall we delve into self-help and management advice? Let’s not. Suffice it to say there are a million books prescribing some type of mind hack or management method that is the way toward ultimate success. Once you know the truth, it just works. Of course, if it doesn’t work, that means that you didn’t follow the method correctly.
• Here’s one more. I think the whole global warming/climate change things is a good example of the Western Myth at work in a presumably secular but actually quasi-religious manner. There is a right way for the global climate to be, but we humans have sinned by producing greenhouse gases, and thus we will pay for our sins through a global climate catastrophe that will probably make us go extinct. We can only expiate our sins through the penance of drastically reduced carbon output.

Thus, the Western Myth is about much more than believing in a capital G “God”; it’s an approach to ontology (reality), epistemology (knowledge), eschatology (final destiny of things), and indeed all of the big questions we humans face. Ultimately, it is an approach to things that keeps us in the Chamber of Maiden-Thought and out of the Mist. I would say the approach comprises the following three beliefs:

1. The answers to all questions are known by God or an authority figure. At the very least, all things are knowable.
2. There is way to live (or do anything) that will result in optimal results. Things only go wrong when we violate this system.
3. There are no contradictions. If something seems to violate the belief system, the person who experiences this perception is incorrect.

Skeptics think they have escaped the Western Myth by denying the theistic belief system of the West, but they have merely traded one surface for another while maintaining the underlying approach. They’ve repainted that ugly old Chevy, but the engine and transmission are the same. To wit:

1. Science has discovered everything of importance thus far, and it is our only tool for discovering anything of importance. It hasn’t figured out everything, but in time it probably will.
2. If people would simply give up their stupid religions and superstitions, we’d be living in a perfect world, or at least a much better one. Rational thinking is the key to peace and prosperity.
3. Any phenomenon we say doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist. Each and every example to the contrary is the result of a hoax, hallucination, or misperception.

It is true that Skeptics hold beliefs that would pain most people, such as the belief that there is no God or Afterlife. They feel that they are therefore cognitively superior to those who don’t have the fortitude to embrace their surface belief system. Yet, as inheritors of the Western Myth, they have established a world that is as cognitively neat and trim as that of the most believing fundamentalist.

A further error they commit is the one referenced by the title of this post: they assume that people who have not embraced their surface belief system live in comfort within their beliefs. Yet giving up the Western Myth means traveling out of the Chamber of Maiden-Thought and into the Mist, where ease and comfort are not to be found.

As for myself, I have read about NDEs (near-death experiences), read transcripts of ADCs (after-death communications), and had many spiritual experiences of my own. Yet the vast majority of the accounts I have read do not indicate the presence of an ultimate controlling authority, nor have my own experiences revealed one. Put simply, people having near-death experiences do not shake hands with a God who then tells them “how it all works.”⁷

I will not say that the accounts bring no comfort at all; indeed they do. They indicate to me that there is a very good chance that I will not cease to exist when I die, that all the effort I am expending now to gain knowledge and grow as a person will not disappear in an instant. But the fact that these accounts bring some degree of comfort does not bring comfort itself. ADCs and my own spiritual experiences mesh nicely with the information presented in NDEs, and such meshing is good, it gives credibility to the “big picture” that begins to form, but it too brings only some comfort and not comfort itself.

Indeed, I remain in a state of discomfort and yes, to some extent, fear, for one must consider again the nature of the Mist, per Keats:

[A]mong the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the nature and heart of Man—of convincing one's nerves that the World is full of misery and Heartbreak, Pain, sickness and oppression—whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open—but all dark—all leading to dark passages—We see not the balance of good and evil. We are in a Mist—We are now in that state—We feel the burden of the Mystery.

Put another way, when we are open to what we see and all its complications and apparent contradictions, we go “down the rabbit hole,” as Alice did in Lewis Carroll’s tale. For example, most NDEs are pleasant, but how do we deal with negative NDEs? In most NDEs, people present accurate information (i.e., they see the living as living and the dead as dead). How do we deal with the rare ones that do not? Most NDEs are fairly consistent in how they present God/Spirit/Source. How do we deal with those that present a specific religion as being true? Do we simply ignore the cases we don’t like as outliers, or do we try to integrate them somehow?

Here’s another example, a big one, at least to me. I say we need to be open to all phenomena, a principle that Skeptics of necessity must violate. Thus, I am open to UFO and related phenomena. I think there is absolutely no way that all of the cases come down to hoaxes, hallucinations, and misperceptions. Yet I have absolutely no idea of how to integrate the phenomena into my belief system. There are many arguments against UFOs being actual extraterrestrial craft, and one of the most famous of UFO researchers, Jacques Vallée, believes firmly that they are not. Per Wikipedia,

Vallée proposes that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon, partly associated with a form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time. The phenomenon has been active throughout human history, and seems to masquerade in various forms to different cultures. In his opinion, the intelligence behind the phenomenon attempts social manipulation by using deception on the humans with whom they interact.

Very well. If we suppose that he is correct, then how do we integrate that into a Universe in which NDEs are also true? If this non-human consciousness has some power over us, then what prevents it from having infinite power, and so on?

This to me is the most tantalizing fact: Regardless of how we feel about all the phenomena, and regardless of how contradictory or lacking in order we perceive them to be, we still exist in a Reality that is stable enough for us to exist and think about these matters. As a corollary of this fact, we likewise know that there is not a power in the Universe with the will and capability of destroying the Universe and life, since we are here.

Based on this fact and the phenomena I have perceived, I intuit the intention for us to understand Reality, which is in turn undermined by the intention (not necessarily a different intention!) for us not to understand Reality completely, or for Reality not to be completely understandable in the first place. It is this contradictory nature of things that occupies my brain on a daily basis and seems to threaten at times to burn out the neural circuits.

This approach within the Mist directly contradicts the Western Myth, which explicitly holds that the answers are known and contradiction is impossible. This approach I take seems to me correct, and it does give the comfort of feeling I understand something instead of nothing, yet the comfort is ultimately cold. The machine is beautifully designed and capable of efficient and cost-effective production, but there is always a wrench thrown in the works.

The Skeptics think that giving up “God” and the afterlife is the big challenge that people must face and will eventually face, since that’s just right, and the right thing will happen given enough time. But it is not so. The big challenge is to acknowledge the phenomena in all their complexity and let the Western Myth die. To leave the Chamber of Maiden-Thought as a species and go bravely into the Mist.

 

¹Scare quotes because Skeptics use the word “belief” yet it does not operate in the mind as they think it does.

²Skeptics are correct that many beliefs are held out of a desire to assuage our fears and find comfort. They tend, however, to reason fallaciously that whatever belief brings us comfort must be “too good to be true.” Skeptics also correctly point out that religion and superstition bring people a great deal of fear, so in any case it’s difficult to sort out exactly why people believe as they do. It’s no doubt a combination of wishful thinking, social pressures, and the actual truth of many of the things believed. Skeptics are blind to the fact that they too are affected by wishful thinking (i.e., that each and every example of the paranormal is easily dismissible bunkum) and social pressure.

³I am distinguishing the Western Myth from the Eastern Myth (and other belief systems, such as African, Native American, etc.), although of course they share many things in common. Western culture has been dominated by the notion of a unitary, omniscient, omnipotent “God” who created all and therefore intended all in a way that the East has not. Nevertheless, owing to what may be called “human nature,” the East has produced a similar belief in infallible authority, such as the omniscient Buddha. As humans, we really want to believe that the answers are known—if not by us, then by somebody.

⁴There may be a tendency these days to think of Islam as a belief system of the Middle East and East, but it is very much comes from the same geographical and intellectual region as Judaism and Christianity. Consider that Thomas Aquinas cited Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle, and the picture becomes a bit more clear.

⁵I happen to think that the doctrine of original sin is pretty smart in essence. There is something inherently broken in everything, though not for reasons that Christianity would like to recognize. More on this perhaps at a later date …

⁶It’s more complex than this, of course, now that we understand genetics a bit, but there is still a tendency to see a particular diet or health regime as the way to health.

⁷This is not to say they receive no information at all about the working of Reality; they absolutely do. But the information they receive, outlier cases excepted, does not confirm the beliefs of any particular religion, nor does it confirm the existence of a unitary, all-controlling “God,” nor does it deliver a complete explanation of things. I think the teachings of Seth are a good example of information that jibes well with NDEs and explains a lot while shying away from a definitive explication of “how it all works.”

Addendum to footnote 7:

In reviewing this post, Michael wrote, “Some NDEs do involve the feeling that total knowledge of reality is being imparted, and that it all makes sense, it's all part of a master plan, every smallest detail happens for a reason, etc. I believe some other transcendent mystical experiences also take this form. Of course the NDErs (and others) find it impossible to convey more than a fraction of this infinite knowledge in words upon their return, but they do claim to have seen the whole plan.”

In response, I would say first that the nature and content of the “master plan” that is presented or experienced by NDErs and mystics seems to be significantly different than the nature and content of the Western Myth. From my reading, they see a reality (a kind of final or ultimate state of things) that is unitary and non-hierarchical and in which all of elements (people, spiritual entities, etc.) come together in a fully organic and autonomous fashion. The eschatology of the Western Myth is much more primitive than this: the righteous with God in Heaven, the evildoers in hell, and a “God” who has manipulated the pawns from start to finish. Forgive my negative characterization, but it’s definitely not to my taste, nor does it seem to be true based on observation of the world and history.

Further, NDErs and mystical experiencers describe, in my general interpretation, a kind of “ultimate rightness to things” that vastly transcends the concepts and content of the Western Myth. To cite one of my own spiritual experiences, I experienced a state once either before, during, or after sleep (that was not a dream) in which entities were communicating with each other and I was communicating with them, but we were not using symbolic language or even mental concepts as we know them. This jibes with what I have read about higher-dimensional communication and cognition, and it also jibes with the ineffability that people who experience the “master plan” describe. People who experience the “master plan” are not told “how it works,” and they can’t convey such a thing to others with words, since Ultimate Reality does not “work” on the level of our human cognition.

I think NDErs’ and mystics’ experience of the “master plan” is a true reflection of reality, actually, but I don’t think it solves the “problem” of the Mist. Perhaps I can make this quandary the topic of my next guest post, if Michael again permits!

The narrow margin

Since this is said to be the season of miracles, here's an excerpt from John C. Lennox's God's Undertaker, which neatly summarizes some of the evidence for the apparently miraculous fine-tuning of the cosmos.

After briefly discussing the “abundant supply of carbon” made possible by the very specific resonance of helium and beryllium nuclei (“if the variation were more than 1 per cent either way, the universe could not sustain life”), Lennox moves on to other matters: 

In terms of the tolerance permitted, this [carbon] example pales into insignificance when we consider the fineness of the tuning of some of the other parameters in nature. Theoretical physicist Paul Davies tells us that, if the ratio of the nuclear strong force to the electromagnetic force had been different by one part in 10¹⁶, no stars could have been formed. Again, the ratio of the electromagnetic force-constant to the gravitational force-constant must be equally delicately balanced. Increase it by only one part in 10⁴⁰ and only small stars can exist; decrease it by the same amount and there will only be large stars. You must have both large and small stars in the universe: the large ones produce elements in their thermonuclear furnaces; and it is only the small ones that burn long enough to sustain a planet with life.

To use Davies' illustration, that is the kind of accuracy a marksman would need to hit a coin at the far side of the observable universe, twenty billion light years away. If we find that difficult to imagine, a further illustration suggested by astrophysicist Hugh Ross may help. Cover America with coins in a column reaching to the moon (380,000 km or 236,000 miles away), then do the same for one billion other continents of the same size. Paint one coin red and put it somewhere in one of the billion piles. Blindfold a friend and ask her to pick it out. The odds are about one in 10⁴⁰ that she will.

Although we are now in realms of precision far beyond anything achievable by instrumentation designed by humans, the cosmos still has more stunning surprises in store. It is argued that an alteration in the ratio of the expansion and contraction forces by as little as one part in 10⁵⁵ at the Planck time (just 10^-43 seconds after the origin of the universe), would have led either to too rapid an expansion of the universe with no galaxies forming or to too slow an expansion with consequent rapid collapse.

Yet even this example of precision-tuning is completely eclipsed by what is perhaps the most mind-boggling example of all. Our universe is a universe in which entropy (a measure of disorder) is increasing: a fact which is enshrined in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Eminent mathematician Sir Roger Penrose writes: “Try to imagine the phase space … of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a 'pin' – which is to be placed at some point in the phase space … Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator's aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively 'easy' to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit. But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy – so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics – the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result?”

His calculations lead him to the remarkable conclusion that the “Creator's aim” must have been accurate to one part in 10 to the power of 10¹²³, that is 1 followed by 10¹²³ zeros, a “number which it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe there would not even be enough particles to do the job.”

Faced with not one, but many such spectacular to examples of fine-tuning, it is perhaps not surprising that Paul Davies says, “The impression of design is overwhelming.” [pp. 70, 71]

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. 

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.

Bingo!

I'm increasingly intrigued by the idea that the paradoxes of quantum physics can largely be resolved by analogizing the universe to a virtual reality simulation. As wacky as this idea sounds (and it certainly struck me as nutty when I first heard it), the more I think about it, the more it seems to make sense.

In the past I've tried to explain how the VR idea could resolve the long-debated paradox of wave-particle duality. My efforts along these lines were decidedly poor. But today, rereading an entry from the Web site The Bottom Layer, I realized that the author, Ross Rhodes, had presented this idea as clearly and concisely as possible.

Wave-particle duality involves the fact that a subatomic entity like an electron, when observed, behaves like a particle, but when unobserved, behaves like a wave. As Rhodes points out, it doesn't behave like a physical wave, but more like a set of mathematical potentialities which can be loosely described as a probability wave. Observation, it is said, "collapses the wave-function" down to a single point - a particle. Once observation ceases, the particle expands back into a smear of potentialities distributed along a probability curve.

This is all very odd if we think of reality as consisting of physical objects moving through space. But if we think of reality as being, in essence, information and information processing, then the paradox disappears and things operate in a very logical way.

Here's how Ross Rhodes explains the situation in his online paper "A Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics." When I read it today, I said, "Bingo!", which is not quite as respectable a response as "Eureka!", but I'll take it.

As John Gribbin puts it, "nature seems to 'make the calculation' and then present us with an observed event." [In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, 111.] Both the "how" and the "why" of this process can be addressed through the metaphor of a computer which is programmed to project images to create an experience for the user, who is a conscious being.

The "how" is described structurally by a computer which runs a program. The program provides an algorithm for determining the position (in this example) of every part of the image, which is to say, every pixel that will be projected to the user. The mechanism for transforming the programming into the projection is the user interface. This can be analogized to the computer monitor, and the mouse or joystick or other device for viewing one part of the image or another. When the user chooses to view one part of the image, those pixels must be calculated and displayed; all other parts of the image remain stored in the computer as programming. Thus, the pixels being viewed must follow the logic of the projection, which is that they should move like particles across the screen. The programming representing the parts of the image not being displayed need not follow this logic, and may remain as formulas. Calculating and displaying any particular pixel is entirely a function of conveying information to the user, and it necessarily involves a "change" from the inchoate mathematical relationships represented by the formula to the specific pixel generated according to those relationships. The user can never "see" the programming, but by analysis can deduce its mathematical operation by careful observation of the manner in which the pixels are displayed. The algorithm does not collapse into a pixel; rather, the algorithm tells the monitor where and how to produce the pixel for display to the user according to which part of the image the user is viewing.

The "why" is problematical in the cosmic sense, but is easily stated within the limits of our computer metaphor. The programming produces images for the user because the entire set up was designed to do just that: to present images to a user (viewer) as needed by the user. The ultimate "why" depends on the motivation of the designer. In our experience, the maker of a video game seeks to engage the attention of the user to the end that the user will spend money for the product and generate profits for the designer. This seems an unlikely motivation for designing the universe simulation in which we work and play.

The key points, I think, are as follows:

• Particles are analogous to pixels, and, like pixels, they are rendered only when under observation (i.e., on the screen, or in the field of awareness).
• Unobserved entities are left in the form of "inchoate mathematical relationships" to conserve processing power. They "remain stored in the computer as programming," i.e., formulas.
• The so-called collapse of the wave is not a collapse at all; "rather, the algorithm tells the monitor where and how to produce the pixel for display to the user according to which part of the image the user is viewing."

Other quantum paradoxes that seem to be resolved by the VR approach include nonlocality (a change in the calculation of the value of particle X will instantly change the calculated value of particle Y, no matter how far apart they are in physical space); quantum leaps and quantum tunneling (the pixels, or particles, never actually move, but only assume different positions as the calculations change; these changes in position occur each time the "screen" is refreshed); and the quantum Zeno effect (continuous observation seems to cause the screen to stop refreshing, thus freezing the pixels and preventing any change, i.e., any decay).

The implication of this hypothesis is that the physical universe is, at heart, information, and that all physical things are expressions of this information as it is processed by a sort of Cosmic CPU.

A related analogy involves the three-dimensional image of a hologram, which is projected out of a two-dimensional pattern of wave-interference. The wave-interference pattern is essentially encoded information, and the beam of coherent light that passes through the holographic plate is the processor that constructs the image out of this information.

Getting to the bottom of things

A couple of times I've posted about an idea put forward by some freethinking physicists -- namely, that our universe might be best understood as a virtual reality simulation.

What I didn't know is that there's a neat little Web site devoted to this idea, with some well-written essays that explain the concept in refreshingly nontechnical language.

It's called The Bottom Layer.

If  this kind of ontological speculation appeals to you (as it does to me), check it out.

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.