"Imagine, if you will, that the world's destruction is at stake and the only way to save it is for you to write a one-pager that convinces a jury that your old cherished view is mistaken or at least seriously incomplete. The more inadequate the jury thinks your old cherished view is, the greater the chances that the world is saved. The catch is that the jury consists of earlier stages of yourself (such as yourself such as you were one year ago)." (lol - Good one!)
Ladies of the jury,
The purpose of this statement is to argue for the rejection of the currently-proposed idea of modeling experience in 5 dimensions. For the purposes of this statement, the 5-dimensional 'model' (such as it is) refers to the idea described by this author, and to no other attempts to describe the universe in 5+ dimensions.
We will not begin by arguing about the nature of our experiences. If you are younger versions of me, then your experiences will drive you to look for an explanation, and I must only convince you that this particular explanation is ill-advised. This is not difficult for me to do, as I can see that my role in advancing this particular idea has reached its limit.
It isn't hard to see why this proposal should be rejected. The nature of what this author is proposing involves re-contextualizing the laws of nature and physics as we know them. Of all the arrogance! And this from someone who is too cowardly and ill-equipped to succeed at doing it!
Ladies of the jury, you are me, and we weren't always such a coward. You, Me(2000), wanted to pursue this idea's predecessor as a dissertation, but you couldn't assemble the cross-disciplinary team of advisors to do it. You never doubted your ability to do the work, including the math and the modeling that you now avoid. But then, you had a much smaller idea.
And now look at us. Look at what I have become, for the flaws of this idea come from me, and I am your future. I have judged my opinion of my experiences to be more valid than the judgments that would be placed upon it by others. This idea is nothing but a stubborn, egotistical refusal to accept a definition of myself as flawed. And yet that egotism hasn't gone far enough. This explanation, this idea, in its current state, is undeveloped. It is not been carried forward, as science demands, to make testable predictions about the laws of physics as we currently know them. What self-respecting scientist clings to an idea that she has little or no hope and/or intention of making anything more of?
When you become me, you will have gone just far enough and know just enough that you can feel accomplished and right. You will know what this idea represents, and you will feel superior for having had such a big idea. But you will also be angry. Angry that you can't ignore what this idea represents. Angry that the feeling that you should do something more won't go away. Angry that you know enough to know what is respectable to do and what isn't. Angry that the burden of doing something that you are not equipped to do gets placed on you. Angry at the assholes who make you afraid to ask for help. Angry that it's always about the 'show', and not the 'tell'. Angry at yourself that you haven't mastered your fear. And you will stop, somewhere between the feeling of accomplishment and the fear. You will decide that this place is just fine. And you will not push yourself to do what is necessary for science. You will tell yourself that it is too big of an undertaking, and you will let this absolve you of the need to press forward. That is perhaps where this idea is the most dangerous.
Ladies of the jury, I urge you to reject this idea when it comes upon you because it is an idea that you will cling to for all the wrong reasons. It has not been substantiated by the experience of others. It has not been successfully integrated with the mountains of evidence that suggest that the rules of a 4-dimensional world work just fine. It is a problem that you may not be sufficiently motivated to solve, for you will fear success at doing so more than you will fear failure, and it would cost you a lifetime either way. It will fulfill your basic psychological need for self-validation on several levels, but that won't make it worth anything to anyone else if it can't be properly developed into a predictive model that can be experimentally tested. As the 'author' of this idea, I haven't done that. I don't know if I can do it, or even if I want to do it. I simply want to be at peace with what I am and what I can do. And that isn't enough for you to accept this idea. You should strive for something better. This idea, in its current state, represents all the weakness of my ego, not the strength of science.
(You're right - that was helpful, and cathartic. ;)
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
13 Conversations About One Thing
"Physics, in actuality, is a never-ending search made by human beings. Gods and angels do not come bearing perfectly formed theories to disembodied prophets who instantly write textbooks... Conversations are essential to science. But the off-the-cuff nature of conversation poses a difficulty. It is rare, even in these digital times, to have a complete transcript of every word spoken between two people on a given day, even if that conversation someday leads to a new understanding of the world."
It would be nice if this blog could become a permanent record of the evolution of an idea. Hell, it would be nice if actual conversation took place here. While I have yet to lose faith in science, I occasionally lose faith in scientists, especially self-proclaimed 'thoughtful' scientists. Faith is a limited resource, which can be replenished or depleted by observation. Never assume that you know how much of it there is when you begin, or that you can get it back once it's lost.
[Pause for not-so-random philosopher quote.]
"Who has not experienced meeting a person distinguished by prominence or fame or even by real qualities, or a person of whom one wants something: a good job, to be loved, to be admired? In any such circumstances many people tend to be at last mildly anxious, and often they 'prepare' themselves for the important meeting. They think of topics that might interest the other; they think in advance how they might begin the conversation; some even map out the whole conversation, as far as their own part is concerned. Or they may bolster themselves up by thinking about what they have: their past successes, their charming personality (or their intimidating personality if this role is more effective), their social position, their connections, their appearance and dress. In a word, they mentally balance their worth, and based on this evaluation, they display their wares in the ensuing conversation. The person who is good at this will indeed impress many people, although the created impression is only partly due to the individual's performance and largely due to the poverty of most people's judgment. If the performer is not so clever, however, the performance will appear wooden, contrived, boring and will not elicit much interest.
In contrast are those who approach a situation by preparing nothing in advance, not bolstering themselves up in any way. Instead, they respond spontaneously and productively; they forget about themselves, about the knowledge, the positions they have. Their egos do not stand in their way, and it is precisely for this reason that they can fully respond to the other person and that person's ideas. They give birth to new ideas, because they are not holding onto anything. ...they [know] that something new will be born if only they have the courage to let go and to respond. They come fully alive in the conversation, because they do not stifle themselves by anxious concern with what they have. Their own aliveness is infectious and often helps the other person to transcend his or her egocentricity. Thus the conversation ceases to be an exchange of commodities (information, knowledge, status) and becomes a dialogue in which it does not matter any more who is right. The duelists begin to dance together, and they part not with triumph or sorrow - which are equally sterile - but with joy."
These are the conversations that are worth having, and the ones that history should remember. But they are rare. And they almost never take place where or when you want them to.
Fortunately, for those of us who recognize that output reflects input, there is a wealth of interesting people and ideas scattered around the internet. A dialogue of sorts, perhaps, but one between you and the universe, driven entirely by your ability to ask questions and then go looking for the answers.
It would be nice if this blog could become a permanent record of the evolution of an idea. Hell, it would be nice if actual conversation took place here. While I have yet to lose faith in science, I occasionally lose faith in scientists, especially self-proclaimed 'thoughtful' scientists. Faith is a limited resource, which can be replenished or depleted by observation. Never assume that you know how much of it there is when you begin, or that you can get it back once it's lost.
[Pause for not-so-random philosopher quote.]
"Who has not experienced meeting a person distinguished by prominence or fame or even by real qualities, or a person of whom one wants something: a good job, to be loved, to be admired? In any such circumstances many people tend to be at last mildly anxious, and often they 'prepare' themselves for the important meeting. They think of topics that might interest the other; they think in advance how they might begin the conversation; some even map out the whole conversation, as far as their own part is concerned. Or they may bolster themselves up by thinking about what they have: their past successes, their charming personality (or their intimidating personality if this role is more effective), their social position, their connections, their appearance and dress. In a word, they mentally balance their worth, and based on this evaluation, they display their wares in the ensuing conversation. The person who is good at this will indeed impress many people, although the created impression is only partly due to the individual's performance and largely due to the poverty of most people's judgment. If the performer is not so clever, however, the performance will appear wooden, contrived, boring and will not elicit much interest.
In contrast are those who approach a situation by preparing nothing in advance, not bolstering themselves up in any way. Instead, they respond spontaneously and productively; they forget about themselves, about the knowledge, the positions they have. Their egos do not stand in their way, and it is precisely for this reason that they can fully respond to the other person and that person's ideas. They give birth to new ideas, because they are not holding onto anything. ...they [know] that something new will be born if only they have the courage to let go and to respond. They come fully alive in the conversation, because they do not stifle themselves by anxious concern with what they have. Their own aliveness is infectious and often helps the other person to transcend his or her egocentricity. Thus the conversation ceases to be an exchange of commodities (information, knowledge, status) and becomes a dialogue in which it does not matter any more who is right. The duelists begin to dance together, and they part not with triumph or sorrow - which are equally sterile - but with joy."
These are the conversations that are worth having, and the ones that history should remember. But they are rare. And they almost never take place where or when you want them to.
Fortunately, for those of us who recognize that output reflects input, there is a wealth of interesting people and ideas scattered around the internet. A dialogue of sorts, perhaps, but one between you and the universe, driven entirely by your ability to ask questions and then go looking for the answers.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Journal Club #6
"I don't want to be a pie. I don't like gravy."
Out of the 279 papers in the January 2009 quant-ph section of arxiv, three of them were downloaded onto my computer. The criteria for download being 1) I understand all the concepts/terms in the title, 2) I understand the first line of the abstract, and 3) I can see how it relates to my humble quest for 5-dimensional glory. It will become ridiculously apparent in just a few minutes why I don't attempt to discuss papers like this more often.
Of the three papers that I downloaded, the winner is a tasty morsel that grabbed me with the second line of its abstract - "The greater the information that is gained, the less reversible the measurement dynamics become." This sounds familiar, though I'm starting to forget exactly where I wrote about certain ideas... I'll repeat the gist of it. The more well-anchored an observation is in memory - that is, the more supporting and/or dependent observations that are also encoded in connection with an observation, and/or the more connections to previous memories that are generated with respect to a particular observation - the less-likely you are to be able to UNDO the observation.
With pen in hand, I delve into the introduction, hopelessly curious about the nature of the 'uncertainty' relation between reliability and reversibility that the authors will be deriving with respect to quantum measurements. "Can we find a useful role for the idea of dynamical reversibility in the context of quantum physics...?" The way I'm reading this, the question could be restated 'Can the presentation of a specific outcome state be undone, allowing the object to settle into the same quantum (smeared) state that it maintained prior to the measurement?' Presumably from there it could subsequently be observed in a different state.
It's immediately apparent in the following sentences that the aspect of information retention is causing a bit of a problem. "To measure is to create information; and information is a state - in a machine or an organism - which extends from a certain time into the future." This quotation is actually from Otto Frisch's 1965 paper "Take a Photon." (Brief pause while I google for a copy of this paper. Significant pause to appreciate the irony of finding, among the top google results, Raymer - one of the author's of the paper I'm currently reading - discussing rational atheism with John C. Garrison in online story posted today. Unable to find the Frisch article though.)
By page 3, the first few lines of the section titled 'Unitary Evolution', I'm lost. Measurement as a four-step process? What are 'kets' and 'qutrits'? Hey, isn't there a big game on that I could be watching?
I've now given up all hope of complete comprehension of this paper within a reasonable time frame, and am skimming the rest of it for key concepts that will enable me to have a punchy ending to this blog post. "A key element of our treatment is to consider... what constraints are placed on this reversibility by virtue of leaving a permanent trace (information) in the probe." If I were to argue that the only state of 'information' that matters is the state of the neurons post-observation related firing, then the question of reversibility becomes one of undoing or overriding the changes to the neurons as a result of observation-related firing. If we accept the experience of information becoming 'undone', then the most likely site for such an 'erasure' of information should be one that evidences the possibility of such modification. Such an erasure wouldn't be permanent, but would it be sufficient for experiencing inconsistent observations that suggest such an erasure? (Thusly do I retreat into the familiar to salve my wounded ego.)
"[T]he degree of reversibility decreases with each newly added observer k..." Ah, multiple observers! I understand this! But wait - why does the degree of reversibility decrease? Each observer is treated as "an additional probe oscillator coupled to the counter as in Figure 1." So, physical interaction with the system? Which leads me to wonder how exactly the authors are suggesting that the information from the system is dispersed across interactions with observers... I see shades of relative and cumulative entropy in this section.
"The very act of Bob deciding to remember permanently the result is sufficient to make the measurement irreversible... Furthermore, the greater the information that is gained by Bob... the less reversible the dynamics become." This is almost consistent with the concept of 'memory as an anchor.' "[O]ther observers necessarily change the state of the system, making it less amenable to reversal from Bob's viewpoint." This seems to be a definitive statement in support of the existence of multiple observers, whose existence and effects I have previously pondered.
Even though I'm missing out on a great deal of the detail/depth of this paper, I enjoyed being exposed to an attempt to model relationships that resemble (to me) the ones I have previously discussed. Perhaps you will see something in this paper that I missed.
(So, how was that for an attempt to leap interdisciplinary boundaries? ;)
Out of the 279 papers in the January 2009 quant-ph section of arxiv, three of them were downloaded onto my computer. The criteria for download being 1) I understand all the concepts/terms in the title, 2) I understand the first line of the abstract, and 3) I can see how it relates to my humble quest for 5-dimensional glory. It will become ridiculously apparent in just a few minutes why I don't attempt to discuss papers like this more often.
Of the three papers that I downloaded, the winner is a tasty morsel that grabbed me with the second line of its abstract - "The greater the information that is gained, the less reversible the measurement dynamics become." This sounds familiar, though I'm starting to forget exactly where I wrote about certain ideas... I'll repeat the gist of it. The more well-anchored an observation is in memory - that is, the more supporting and/or dependent observations that are also encoded in connection with an observation, and/or the more connections to previous memories that are generated with respect to a particular observation - the less-likely you are to be able to UNDO the observation.
With pen in hand, I delve into the introduction, hopelessly curious about the nature of the 'uncertainty' relation between reliability and reversibility that the authors will be deriving with respect to quantum measurements. "Can we find a useful role for the idea of dynamical reversibility in the context of quantum physics...?" The way I'm reading this, the question could be restated 'Can the presentation of a specific outcome state be undone, allowing the object to settle into the same quantum (smeared) state that it maintained prior to the measurement?' Presumably from there it could subsequently be observed in a different state.
It's immediately apparent in the following sentences that the aspect of information retention is causing a bit of a problem. "To measure is to create information; and information is a state - in a machine or an organism - which extends from a certain time into the future." This quotation is actually from Otto Frisch's 1965 paper "Take a Photon." (Brief pause while I google for a copy of this paper. Significant pause to appreciate the irony of finding, among the top google results, Raymer - one of the author's of the paper I'm currently reading - discussing rational atheism with John C. Garrison in online story posted today. Unable to find the Frisch article though.)
By page 3, the first few lines of the section titled 'Unitary Evolution', I'm lost. Measurement as a four-step process? What are 'kets' and 'qutrits'? Hey, isn't there a big game on that I could be watching?
I've now given up all hope of complete comprehension of this paper within a reasonable time frame, and am skimming the rest of it for key concepts that will enable me to have a punchy ending to this blog post. "A key element of our treatment is to consider... what constraints are placed on this reversibility by virtue of leaving a permanent trace (information) in the probe." If I were to argue that the only state of 'information' that matters is the state of the neurons post-observation related firing, then the question of reversibility becomes one of undoing or overriding the changes to the neurons as a result of observation-related firing. If we accept the experience of information becoming 'undone', then the most likely site for such an 'erasure' of information should be one that evidences the possibility of such modification. Such an erasure wouldn't be permanent, but would it be sufficient for experiencing inconsistent observations that suggest such an erasure? (Thusly do I retreat into the familiar to salve my wounded ego.)
"[T]he degree of reversibility decreases with each newly added observer k..." Ah, multiple observers! I understand this! But wait - why does the degree of reversibility decrease? Each observer is treated as "an additional probe oscillator coupled to the counter as in Figure 1." So, physical interaction with the system? Which leads me to wonder how exactly the authors are suggesting that the information from the system is dispersed across interactions with observers... I see shades of relative and cumulative entropy in this section.
"The very act of Bob deciding to remember permanently the result is sufficient to make the measurement irreversible... Furthermore, the greater the information that is gained by Bob... the less reversible the dynamics become." This is almost consistent with the concept of 'memory as an anchor.' "[O]ther observers necessarily change the state of the system, making it less amenable to reversal from Bob's viewpoint." This seems to be a definitive statement in support of the existence of multiple observers, whose existence and effects I have previously pondered.
Even though I'm missing out on a great deal of the detail/depth of this paper, I enjoyed being exposed to an attempt to model relationships that resemble (to me) the ones I have previously discussed. Perhaps you will see something in this paper that I missed.
(So, how was that for an attempt to leap interdisciplinary boundaries? ;)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Mindflex
"Think It. Move It. Believe It."
Not quite 'hacking the smear', but amusing (and productive) nonetheless. Practice generating target brain states to control a floating ball in a new game called Mindflex, due to debut this fall from Mattel.
Video here.
Blog review here.
And when you're ready to graduate to actual hacking, try this or one of the other RNG applications by Psyleron. I trained with a heads/tails disk that spun in its own stand. This has got to be more fun than that. Eventually I'd like to see other applications of this technology, including extending the color-shifting lamp concept into a larger grid of available colors which could be manipulated to create a variety of patterns. Think Lite-Brite meets old-school screen saver. (Check out the first picture in this article.) It's the artwork of the future. ;)
Not quite 'hacking the smear', but amusing (and productive) nonetheless. Practice generating target brain states to control a floating ball in a new game called Mindflex, due to debut this fall from Mattel.
Video here.
Blog review here.
And when you're ready to graduate to actual hacking, try this or one of the other RNG applications by Psyleron. I trained with a heads/tails disk that spun in its own stand. This has got to be more fun than that. Eventually I'd like to see other applications of this technology, including extending the color-shifting lamp concept into a larger grid of available colors which could be manipulated to create a variety of patterns. Think Lite-Brite meets old-school screen saver. (Check out the first picture in this article.) It's the artwork of the future. ;)
Information and Representation
"Ice, ice, baby
Too cold"
It's so cold outside that ice crystals are huddling together for warmth. I should be firmly entrenched under the covers right now, like a good Mid-Westerner, but I was bothered by the sloppiness at the end of my last post.
In struggling to learn the basics mechanics of information theory, I am consistently plagued my pre-existing education in cognition and neuroscience. While the entropy of a fair coin is defined as one bit, I know that there are at least six distinct ways to represent the final state of the coin.
If HEADS, then NOT TAILS.
If HEADS, then NOT (NOT HEADS).
If TAILS, then NOT HEADS.
If TAILS, then NOT (NOT TAILS).
The cognitive representation of each of the six states listed above is different. A different set of neurons is activated in each representation. If I'm arguing that the activation of mental representations contributes to the selection of the state of subsequent observations, then the differences in each of the representations that I just mentioned become critical.
Similarly, the activation of the mental representation 'HEADS' at 5 second intervals for 2 minutes would need to be treated differently than a single activation of 'HEADS', or the activation of 'HEADS' followed by the activation of 'NOT TAILS'.
Additionally, the neurons that are active in a particular representation continuously modify and are modified by the neurons that are subsequently activated and the neurons whose activation immediately preceded their own. (Hint: Pay attention to what you are thinking immediately before and immediately after you try to select an outcome state.) The accessibility of a particular representation is changing with each activation.
My working definition of 'cumulative entropy' tends to take into account such differences in representation, treated them as varying degrees of information. My vocabulary in attempting to communicate these ideas is probably imprecise, as I am trying to reconcile concepts from various disciplines, but I will try to clarify as misunderstandings arise. Apologies for the confusion.
Too cold"
It's so cold outside that ice crystals are huddling together for warmth. I should be firmly entrenched under the covers right now, like a good Mid-Westerner, but I was bothered by the sloppiness at the end of my last post.
In struggling to learn the basics mechanics of information theory, I am consistently plagued my pre-existing education in cognition and neuroscience. While the entropy of a fair coin is defined as one bit, I know that there are at least six distinct ways to represent the final state of the coin.
If HEADS, then NOT TAILS.
If HEADS, then NOT (NOT HEADS).
If TAILS, then NOT HEADS.
If TAILS, then NOT (NOT TAILS).
The cognitive representation of each of the six states listed above is different. A different set of neurons is activated in each representation. If I'm arguing that the activation of mental representations contributes to the selection of the state of subsequent observations, then the differences in each of the representations that I just mentioned become critical.
Similarly, the activation of the mental representation 'HEADS' at 5 second intervals for 2 minutes would need to be treated differently than a single activation of 'HEADS', or the activation of 'HEADS' followed by the activation of 'NOT TAILS'.
Additionally, the neurons that are active in a particular representation continuously modify and are modified by the neurons that are subsequently activated and the neurons whose activation immediately preceded their own. (Hint: Pay attention to what you are thinking immediately before and immediately after you try to select an outcome state.) The accessibility of a particular representation is changing with each activation.
My working definition of 'cumulative entropy' tends to take into account such differences in representation, treated them as varying degrees of information. My vocabulary in attempting to communicate these ideas is probably imprecise, as I am trying to reconcile concepts from various disciplines, but I will try to clarify as misunderstandings arise. Apologies for the confusion.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Messages From Water
"Water represents the interface between the 4th dimension in which we live and the 5th dimensional sphere of our soul." (Give me a moment to recover from finding that quote...)
I generally don't like the fact that water freezes and becomes ice. It has the nasty habit of doing so on roads that I have to drive on. I don't believe that ice would be any less dangerous to drive on if I had projected loving thoughts at the water while it was freezing. And that about sums up my interest to date in the water crystal formation studies of Dr. Masaru Emoto.
So I wasn't thinking too much about this recent replication of Emoto's work until I read this. And then I got to wondering about the exact nature of the differences in the water crystals after they had been treated... Where there physical differences in the structure of the crystals? Were those differences quantified/quantifiable? Do the treated water crystals exhibit a more highly-ordered state when compared to the untreated crystals?
To begin to get some answers, I had to go to this earlier replication of the same study. The results of the study deal primarily with subjective ratings of the aesthetic appeal of the crystals. "To assess the aesthetic appeal of these 40 crystals, a group of 100 volunteers were recruited over the Internet to blindly and independently rate each crystal, one at a time, on a scale from zero to six, where zero meant “not beautiful” and six meant “very beautiful.”... Beautiful crystals were defined as symmetric, aesthetically pleasing shapes." No objective measure of crystal structure was reported, however the presence of symmetry is a known contributor to judgments of beauty in other situations.
Now my question is... How does symmetry in the structure of a crystal relate to the energy needed to create the varying levels of crystal structure? (Is it easier or harder - in terms of energy - to create a symmetrical crystal? Is a more-symmetrical state more or less likely to occur naturally? Is there more or less information contained in a symmetrical crystal?) As I am still not a physicist, I resort to google searching for a quick and dirty explanation. "Factually, the correlation of entropy and symmetry in a qualitative manner was already hinted at by Schrödinger many years ago that negative entropy corresponds to asymmetry, broken symmetry, or less symmetry. However, it remains generally a tacit assumption that higher symmetry of a system implies less entropy." My source article goes on to explain "the symmetry increase leading to a macroscopically equilibrium state is obvious. [Obviously.] However, as will be pointed out, the corresponding effect of information loss (or entropy increase) is also obvious, such as the consequence in the formation of a perfect crystal. Here, information content and symmetry of different static structures are compared and their differences are considered." Sounds confusing but promising, yet a bit beyond the scope of this post...
The major questions that arise from the water crystal formation studies have to do with reconciling the differences in symmetry and entropy in the crystals with the processes were 'applied' to the crystals. I think we're all beyond the classic model of a physical force of some kind that is directed at the water, so I can safely ask this question... Are the observers who are directing intentions at the water and/or the observers of the crystals able to collectively select a more symmetrical state of the ice crystals? (While the 2006 replication briefly mentioned observer effects, it did so without mention of a mechanism for those effects.) I then also want to know if the more-symmetrical state has a higher or lower probability of occurring, relative to the 'not attractive' (and therefore, presumably, less symmetrical) crystal states? Can the relative probabilities be correlated somehow to the efforts of the relative observers?
An intentional selection of a specific state (whether it be ice crystals or any other system) is not possible without information about the system. I couldn't help but notice that information (photographs) about the target bottles of water was given to a much larger number of observers than the number who had information about the control bottles. I began to wonder about the total amount of information (and with it, the ability to influence the process of state selection) that existed with regards to those 'treated' bottles of water... While lost in earlier musings about the concept of relative entropy, I was quickly prompted to think about the related concepts of cumulative entropy (the sum of the information that exists about a system/state across multiple observers, moments in time, and degrees of knowledge) and distributed entropy (information about a system that is distributed among different observers). And I began to wonder... If the amount of information that is available about a system is related in some way to the amount of order in a system, then can varying the cumulative entropy of a system have an independent effect on the amount of observable order or disorder present? Can varying the nature of the information that is available about a system have an independent effect on the amount of observable order or disorder present?
I'm not suggesting that more information about the system means that more energy is locally available to physically affect the crystal formation. Rather, I suggest examining the process of state selection as a function of the amount and nature of the information that exists about the system.
I generally don't like the fact that water freezes and becomes ice. It has the nasty habit of doing so on roads that I have to drive on. I don't believe that ice would be any less dangerous to drive on if I had projected loving thoughts at the water while it was freezing. And that about sums up my interest to date in the water crystal formation studies of Dr. Masaru Emoto.
So I wasn't thinking too much about this recent replication of Emoto's work until I read this. And then I got to wondering about the exact nature of the differences in the water crystals after they had been treated... Where there physical differences in the structure of the crystals? Were those differences quantified/quantifiable? Do the treated water crystals exhibit a more highly-ordered state when compared to the untreated crystals?
To begin to get some answers, I had to go to this earlier replication of the same study. The results of the study deal primarily with subjective ratings of the aesthetic appeal of the crystals. "To assess the aesthetic appeal of these 40 crystals, a group of 100 volunteers were recruited over the Internet to blindly and independently rate each crystal, one at a time, on a scale from zero to six, where zero meant “not beautiful” and six meant “very beautiful.”... Beautiful crystals were defined as symmetric, aesthetically pleasing shapes." No objective measure of crystal structure was reported, however the presence of symmetry is a known contributor to judgments of beauty in other situations.
Now my question is... How does symmetry in the structure of a crystal relate to the energy needed to create the varying levels of crystal structure? (Is it easier or harder - in terms of energy - to create a symmetrical crystal? Is a more-symmetrical state more or less likely to occur naturally? Is there more or less information contained in a symmetrical crystal?) As I am still not a physicist, I resort to google searching for a quick and dirty explanation. "Factually, the correlation of entropy and symmetry in a qualitative manner was already hinted at by Schrödinger many years ago that negative entropy corresponds to asymmetry, broken symmetry, or less symmetry. However, it remains generally a tacit assumption that higher symmetry of a system implies less entropy." My source article goes on to explain "the symmetry increase leading to a macroscopically equilibrium state is obvious. [Obviously.] However, as will be pointed out, the corresponding effect of information loss (or entropy increase) is also obvious, such as the consequence in the formation of a perfect crystal. Here, information content and symmetry of different static structures are compared and their differences are considered." Sounds confusing but promising, yet a bit beyond the scope of this post...
The major questions that arise from the water crystal formation studies have to do with reconciling the differences in symmetry and entropy in the crystals with the processes were 'applied' to the crystals. I think we're all beyond the classic model of a physical force of some kind that is directed at the water, so I can safely ask this question... Are the observers who are directing intentions at the water and/or the observers of the crystals able to collectively select a more symmetrical state of the ice crystals? (While the 2006 replication briefly mentioned observer effects, it did so without mention of a mechanism for those effects.) I then also want to know if the more-symmetrical state has a higher or lower probability of occurring, relative to the 'not attractive' (and therefore, presumably, less symmetrical) crystal states? Can the relative probabilities be correlated somehow to the efforts of the relative observers?
An intentional selection of a specific state (whether it be ice crystals or any other system) is not possible without information about the system. I couldn't help but notice that information (photographs) about the target bottles of water was given to a much larger number of observers than the number who had information about the control bottles. I began to wonder about the total amount of information (and with it, the ability to influence the process of state selection) that existed with regards to those 'treated' bottles of water... While lost in earlier musings about the concept of relative entropy, I was quickly prompted to think about the related concepts of cumulative entropy (the sum of the information that exists about a system/state across multiple observers, moments in time, and degrees of knowledge) and distributed entropy (information about a system that is distributed among different observers). And I began to wonder... If the amount of information that is available about a system is related in some way to the amount of order in a system, then can varying the cumulative entropy of a system have an independent effect on the amount of observable order or disorder present? Can varying the nature of the information that is available about a system have an independent effect on the amount of observable order or disorder present?
I'm not suggesting that more information about the system means that more energy is locally available to physically affect the crystal formation. Rather, I suggest examining the process of state selection as a function of the amount and nature of the information that exists about the system.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
City at the End of Time
"They are fate-shifters, born with the ability to skip like stones across the surface of the fifth dimension, inhabiting alternate versions of themselves."
"Some call it luck, others fortune. We know it here as Chancing, which is great Will, consistently applied to random circumstance to guide favor..."
From City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear (2008).
And here I was thinking that I had a solid lock on my first science fiction novel. ;)
Now if we could just get a forward-thinking institute to host a conference on the fifth dimension... (cough) ... perhaps we could explore turning science fiction into science fact.
I have a sneaking suspicion that writing quality science fiction is actually a harder skill to master than doing quality science. Science fiction is notoriously forward-looking, while being grounded in concepts to which we can all relate. It reaches people who enjoy playing with ideas and thinking about things in different ways. You never know what a particular flight of imagination will touch off. (It was science fiction that put us onto state exclusion.) Someday I'd like to seriously try writing science fiction, just for the freedom of expression.
For the moment though, as I can now create a list of 'fiction with a 5th dimension', I shall do just that, keeping this post open for updates and/or reviews as I have time to add them. Your additions to the list are warmly solicited.
Fiction with a Fifth Dimension
Here, There, & Everywhere, by Chris Roberson (2005)
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear (2008)
"Some call it luck, others fortune. We know it here as Chancing, which is great Will, consistently applied to random circumstance to guide favor..."
From City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear (2008).
And here I was thinking that I had a solid lock on my first science fiction novel. ;)
Now if we could just get a forward-thinking institute to host a conference on the fifth dimension... (cough) ... perhaps we could explore turning science fiction into science fact.
I have a sneaking suspicion that writing quality science fiction is actually a harder skill to master than doing quality science. Science fiction is notoriously forward-looking, while being grounded in concepts to which we can all relate. It reaches people who enjoy playing with ideas and thinking about things in different ways. You never know what a particular flight of imagination will touch off. (It was science fiction that put us onto state exclusion.) Someday I'd like to seriously try writing science fiction, just for the freedom of expression.
For the moment though, as I can now create a list of 'fiction with a 5th dimension', I shall do just that, keeping this post open for updates and/or reviews as I have time to add them. Your additions to the list are warmly solicited.
Fiction with a Fifth Dimension
Here, There, & Everywhere, by Chris Roberson (2005)
City at the End of Time, by Greg Bear (2008)
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