The Age of Chaos

"Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth."

Research this week has produced several interesting things, one of which is Hacking Matter, by Wil McCarthy (2003). (Hopefully it's clear why I found that title especially amusing. ;) 'So?', you say. 'Why is that interesting? It's a book that, presumably, you could have found five years ago.' I'm going to attempt an analogy to explain this, which you are free to trash if you think I've made some fundamental conceptual error...

Person A conducts research with a classical computer. He inputs keywords that allow the computer to search through its known, limited set of data for the items which best match the search. The search is constrained by 1) the set of data accessible to the computer, which is finite, 2) the accuracy of the tags assigned to the data by the persons who created the database, and 3) the degree to which Person A can use search keywords in accordance with the intentions of the designers of the database.

Person B conducts research using a hypothetical quantum computer. Her computer has access to every possible combination of matter, and its output, while still dependent on the input to the system, is not dependent upon the linear progression of earlier, known events. 'Wait!', you say. 'What about consistency and the arrow of time?' Shush, I'm getting there.

Let's say Person B receives as the output of her search the book Hacking Matter, which was published in 2003. How can her search not be constrained by what was happening in 2003? Here's where things get interesting... We live in a world that contains information that exceeds our personal capacity to know and store it by orders of magnitude. We live in the midst of what is, to our limited cognitive and perceptual capabilities, essentially chaos. This is what allows Person B to use her quantum computer effectively. The output of her search must be logically consistent with her state of knowledge of 2003, physics books, and other relevant output parameters (that's another post), but is otherwise free to vary in any way that best fulfills the input requirements. Since her state of knowledge of any of these parameters is likely to reflect only a small portion of what is available to be known, the range of output of her quantum computer can be exceedingly large, possibly infinite, without presenting any logical incongruities to her.

You may have known about Hacking Matter, but Person B did not, prior to receiving the output of her search. 'So what are you saying then, that she created Hacking Matter for the rest of us as the result of her search?' No. I'm only suggesting that there are as-yet-unclear dynamics which may explain both her subjective experience of the input/output relationship that resulted in Hacking Matter, and the fact that we now have a consensus state with respect to our knowledge about Hacking Matter...