"Where am I to go now that I've gone too far?"
Perhaps it was the fact that the rising cost of everything is cutting into my coffee money... :(
Perhaps it was my fortuitous encounter with this book...
Perhaps, while thinking about all the coffee I was missing out on, I remembered all the crap I took about teleportation from the guy who used to give me coffee... (long story)
Anyway, I'm halfway through the book, and I got to thinking (which is harder to do when one has no coffee.) The word 'teleportation' conjures up images of scientists in a lab using a standard entanglement paradigm to teleport a particle from Point A to Point B. According to popular wisdom, this paradigm will eventually allow larger and larger objects to be teleported, up to and including human beings. For what we are about to discuss, let's call this Observable Teleportation (OT), meaning that the process is independent of the effects of any observers who happen to be watching it.
Because I am skeptical about how consciousness would survive this process given our limited understanding of what exactly consciousness is, I'm not optimistic about this process being successful for human teleportation. But perhaps human teleportation of a sort is already possible, to a certain degree. We'll call this type of teleportation Seamless-Transition Teleportation (STT), or, if you want something flashier - Walking Between the Worlds. ;)
We'll define STT as an observer whose continuous conscious experience produces an observable discontinuity in the environment. A change in environment is experienced, to the degree that the observer specifies, and in the absence of local 4-dimensional causes. The change may be very minor - for example, the presence of something that wasn't there before. Although I've done this type of thing many times, I've never thought of this at 'teleportation' before, until I realized that the discontinuity was the critical factor.
In my experience, this type of 'teleportation' is easier when one does not have to contend with other observers who will simultaneously experience the discontinuity. The need to deal with any effects from multiple observers of the same event would give rise to entirely different protocols for achieving teleportation, hence the distinction between OT and STT.
In theory, it should be possible to extend STT to higher and higher levels of discontinuity, until one reaches the practical limits of what the mechanisms of a stable (read: recognizably sane) human consciousness will tolerate. (Perhaps it might even be possible to achieve a complete discontinuity in surroundings, such as one might experience in conventional OT between distant locations.) I'm sure that there are practical limits to how often one can create these kinds of discontinuities (or UNDOings, as I have previously called them), as well as how much discontinuity one can create within a given span of time.
But perhaps those practical limits can be expanded by cognitive training paradigms or neurochemical assistance...
Then I could have coffee all the time. ;)
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Arrow of Time
"Research is what I do when I don't know what to do."
I like sleep. I like it for all those moments when you are somewhere between asleep and awake, and for all the snippets of dreams that you can recall if you wake up at just the right moment.
At some point, for a project long forgotten, I became familiar with the Crick-Mitchison theory of REM sleep. The theory is so old (1983) that it's hard to find a coherent account of it on the internet. The idea is that dreams are a kind of purging of useless memories and/or memory connections, essentially a type of reverse-learning.
I remember this theory because I see can distinct patterns in the material that appears in my own dreams. I'm generalizing what follows from a small set of data (my own experiences) that has not been compared to other existing data sets of a similar nature (if any exist), but the ideas are interesting nonetheless... What I see is a certain class of partially-processed perceptions and thoughts - things that were tagged with X amount of attention at one time, but which, for one reason or another, were never fully processed or integrated with existing knowledge. It's as if the processing was unexpectedly interrupted - 'I'll think about it later. Right now, this new thing is more important.' I find in my dreams images, thoughts, and ideas that can be traced to a similar interrupted and never-completed chain of processing.
What makes the whole thing so fascinating (to me) is that these images and sounds and ideas are woven seamlessly together into a dream in what largely appears to be the same temporal order in which they were acquired. This may not seem all that stunning, until one thinks about the fact that not only is the dream-purge mechanism identifying these specific fragments of conscious experience which seem to have undergone a similar level of partial processing, but it is also utilizing or preserving the temporal order in which those thought events occurred... Now we're into a whole new set of questions.
How does memory code time? (Relational time, not rate of stimulus presentation.)
Why do dream -generation/purge mechanisms 'sort' the 'data' they are purging according to this relational temporal coding? Is it a way to be energy efficient? If so, according to what dynamics? Is it done to preserve or strengthen the remaining temporal relationships among preserved memories? If so, how do these dream mechanisms recognize that temporal ordering? How is it coded?
Will I ever get a chance to hole up in a library and try to research this problem more thoroughly? ;) (Sometimes I think this blog is simply going to be a collection of all the questions and ideas that I don't have the time to explore fully...)
Understanding how the brain preserves and codes temporal relationships may 1) yield additional understanding on relational spatial-relationship encoding, and 2) enable us to disrupt those mechanisms and study any effects they may have on a person's ability to navigate a trajectory through the multiverse. (Oh yeah, I'm going somewhere with all of this. ;)
I like sleep. I like it for all those moments when you are somewhere between asleep and awake, and for all the snippets of dreams that you can recall if you wake up at just the right moment.
At some point, for a project long forgotten, I became familiar with the Crick-Mitchison theory of REM sleep. The theory is so old (1983) that it's hard to find a coherent account of it on the internet. The idea is that dreams are a kind of purging of useless memories and/or memory connections, essentially a type of reverse-learning.
I remember this theory because I see can distinct patterns in the material that appears in my own dreams. I'm generalizing what follows from a small set of data (my own experiences) that has not been compared to other existing data sets of a similar nature (if any exist), but the ideas are interesting nonetheless... What I see is a certain class of partially-processed perceptions and thoughts - things that were tagged with X amount of attention at one time, but which, for one reason or another, were never fully processed or integrated with existing knowledge. It's as if the processing was unexpectedly interrupted - 'I'll think about it later. Right now, this new thing is more important.' I find in my dreams images, thoughts, and ideas that can be traced to a similar interrupted and never-completed chain of processing.
What makes the whole thing so fascinating (to me) is that these images and sounds and ideas are woven seamlessly together into a dream in what largely appears to be the same temporal order in which they were acquired. This may not seem all that stunning, until one thinks about the fact that not only is the dream-purge mechanism identifying these specific fragments of conscious experience which seem to have undergone a similar level of partial processing, but it is also utilizing or preserving the temporal order in which those thought events occurred... Now we're into a whole new set of questions.
How does memory code time? (Relational time, not rate of stimulus presentation.)
Why do dream -generation/purge mechanisms 'sort' the 'data' they are purging according to this relational temporal coding? Is it a way to be energy efficient? If so, according to what dynamics? Is it done to preserve or strengthen the remaining temporal relationships among preserved memories? If so, how do these dream mechanisms recognize that temporal ordering? How is it coded?
Will I ever get a chance to hole up in a library and try to research this problem more thoroughly? ;) (Sometimes I think this blog is simply going to be a collection of all the questions and ideas that I don't have the time to explore fully...)
Understanding how the brain preserves and codes temporal relationships may 1) yield additional understanding on relational spatial-relationship encoding, and 2) enable us to disrupt those mechanisms and study any effects they may have on a person's ability to navigate a trajectory through the multiverse. (Oh yeah, I'm going somewhere with all of this. ;)
Monday, July 14, 2008
Quantum Mechanics and Experience
"You get curious about something and you mess around. That's what science is in the beginning, you mess around."
The other day I dug out my copy of Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Just for fun. ;)
(Between you and me, I've never made it all the way through that book. I get to the point where I have too many questions, and then I have to stop and go find answers. Ex: matrix mechanics - can they do X, Y, and Z things that I want them to do?)
On my first attempt to read it (years ago), the analogies were pretty useful - color (black, white) and hardness (hard, soft). Today, the analogies were a little distracting, as I am currently struggling to connect all of these things, and I suspect that there is something that is being overlooked in the nature of the actual properties that can be measured under this paradigm.
Not too far into the book (pages 3-4) though, I realize that the description of the sequence of measurements (color, hard, color) and its outcome sounds vaguely familiar... (pizza, something else, pizza). There's a link here - I just know it! (Where 'I just know it' means 'I'm going to keep pursuing this line of thought until I satisfy myself as to the non/existence of said link.')
My other big question of the day stems from this - "[W]e are unable to move the statistics of color disruption even so much as one millionth of one percentage point away from fifty-fifty, in either direction, no matter what we try." Why?
Seriously, I want to know why. Do we know why? What do we speculate is the reason why? (Where 'we' means 'you guys'. ;)
To me this suggests 'forces' at work that create/need/default to an equilibrium state. What kind of 'forces'? And the bigger question... an equilibrium of what? Why should so many ostensibly different properties end up in an equilibrium of their respective potential states, unless there is something that they all have in common?
Hmm... getting through this book may take awhile.
The other day I dug out my copy of Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Just for fun. ;)
(Between you and me, I've never made it all the way through that book. I get to the point where I have too many questions, and then I have to stop and go find answers. Ex: matrix mechanics - can they do X, Y, and Z things that I want them to do?)
On my first attempt to read it (years ago), the analogies were pretty useful - color (black, white) and hardness (hard, soft). Today, the analogies were a little distracting, as I am currently struggling to connect all of these things, and I suspect that there is something that is being overlooked in the nature of the actual properties that can be measured under this paradigm.
Not too far into the book (pages 3-4) though, I realize that the description of the sequence of measurements (color, hard, color) and its outcome sounds vaguely familiar... (pizza, something else, pizza). There's a link here - I just know it! (Where 'I just know it' means 'I'm going to keep pursuing this line of thought until I satisfy myself as to the non/existence of said link.')
My other big question of the day stems from this - "[W]e are unable to move the statistics of color disruption even so much as one millionth of one percentage point away from fifty-fifty, in either direction, no matter what we try." Why?
Seriously, I want to know why. Do we know why? What do we speculate is the reason why? (Where 'we' means 'you guys'. ;)
To me this suggests 'forces' at work that create/need/default to an equilibrium state. What kind of 'forces'? And the bigger question... an equilibrium of what? Why should so many ostensibly different properties end up in an equilibrium of their respective potential states, unless there is something that they all have in common?
Hmm... getting through this book may take awhile.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Seeing the Light
"I will take charge of my life. I will drift no more. I will still be true to science, but I will be true to my new light also. I will be a sceptic about everything but one thing, which does not admit of scepticism (once one has clearly seen it), namely that it does indeed matter to be as quickened a spirit as possible, and to live for the quickening of the spirit everywhere."
I don't break cover and advertise my strange thoughts all that often. (Really.) But, while you may think that the biggest problem I have is the lack of a comprehensive model, I still think that the biggest problem I have is replication. As in, if I am the only one who can see things in accordance with a 5-dimensional model, then I think the word for that is 'delusion'. ;)
As I said, I don't break cover often, but when I do, it's usually with someone with whom I have had enough conversation/interaction to be reasonably certain that they
1) are psychologically stable.
2) have enough integrity to look at new ideas and themselves openly and critically.
3) have an interest in things aren't explained by today's standards of materialist reductionism.
4) have found the right combination of searching and skeptical.
Then, if the conversation is headed in the right direction, a certain meme may get planted. ;)
Planted the meme again yesterday. I'm still 'best-guessing' at the conditions under which the meme will thrive, so there's no guarantee that it will take hold. Perhaps a 5-dimensional model simply doesn't represent enough of value to the average person, and therefore it will not be something that will ever be adopted on a large scale. The average person seems to be mostly content with his knowledge of a world governed by classical physics and a God who fills in the gaps. (sigh)
In the meantime, I continue to work on the model, simply because it's the most fascinating puzzle I've ever found.
I don't break cover and advertise my strange thoughts all that often. (Really.) But, while you may think that the biggest problem I have is the lack of a comprehensive model, I still think that the biggest problem I have is replication. As in, if I am the only one who can see things in accordance with a 5-dimensional model, then I think the word for that is 'delusion'. ;)
As I said, I don't break cover often, but when I do, it's usually with someone with whom I have had enough conversation/interaction to be reasonably certain that they
1) are psychologically stable.
2) have enough integrity to look at new ideas and themselves openly and critically.
3) have an interest in things aren't explained by today's standards of materialist reductionism.
4) have found the right combination of searching and skeptical.
Then, if the conversation is headed in the right direction, a certain meme may get planted. ;)
Planted the meme again yesterday. I'm still 'best-guessing' at the conditions under which the meme will thrive, so there's no guarantee that it will take hold. Perhaps a 5-dimensional model simply doesn't represent enough of value to the average person, and therefore it will not be something that will ever be adopted on a large scale. The average person seems to be mostly content with his knowledge of a world governed by classical physics and a God who fills in the gaps. (sigh)
In the meantime, I continue to work on the model, simply because it's the most fascinating puzzle I've ever found.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Evolving Potential
"By our best enemies we do not want to be spared, nor by those either whom we love from the very heart. So let me tell you the truth!"
Plucked from the blogosphere - "You cannot 'choose which world to end up in'." (sigh)
(Pardon me while I get this out of my system.)
"Every new theory of physics must capture the successful predictions of the old theory it displaced..." We agree upon this point. Help the process, or get out of the way. I don't have a 'new theory of physics'; I have a set of observations, some research, and some ideas. I predict that I will not have a 'new theory of physics' anytime soon.
"You will never catch a glimpse of another world out of the corner of your eye." You missed the point entirely. We know that consciousness is incapable of capturing more than a single outcome state at a time. (We don't know why that is, nor do we know what needs to occur in order to replicate that state in something to which we wish to give consciousness.) But the fact that consciousness can only capture a single state does not preclude a model where the auxiliary mechanisms of consciousness (those 'higher' processes involved in reflection, imagining, and planning) have some role in the selection of future states of consciousness. (We'll save retrocausation for another time.)
If consciousness can be said to have/be a trajectory through the smeared state of options, then the mechanisms that determine that trajectory must be accounted for. This is what we're working on, using what is, in my opinion, the data that is most relevant at this point in the game. It's possible that the entire endeavor is misguided and will come to naught. But then, if I believed that, I probably would have given this up long ago. ;)
"Since the beginning, not one unusual thing has ever happened, in this or any other world. They are all lawful." Okay, this is nothing other than an exercise in logic.
Statement: All observable events/phenomena are lawful. (All X are Y.)
Logically-compatible statement: If it is an observed event/phenomena, then it must be lawful.
Logically-compatible statement: If it is NOT lawful, then it CANNOT be an observed event/phenomena.
So if we have an observed event/phenomena that appears to contradict the laws (X and NOT Y), then our original statement only holds true if we 1) dispute X, or 2) dispute NOT Y. Your garden-variety physicist will choose Option 1, claiming that the observation was a product of fraud, hallucination, or stupidity, because the laws say it can't happen. Some of them will even get 'insulting' about the whole thing.
Choosing Option 2 does not mean that you embrace the idea of a lawless universe. No, choosing Option 2 means that you question the completeness of the existing laws. The funny thing is, if theoretical physicists weren't questioning the completeness of the existing laws, they'd be out of jobs. So questioning the completeness of existing laws is just taboo for certain physicists in certain areas. ;)
There are pros and cons for each option. Option 1 lets you lead a comfortable life with perhaps only a few anomalous experiences. Even these will cease to bother you once you've had a few drinks. After all, they violate the laws, so they didn't really happen. Option 2 is usually reserved for those who can't take Option 1 because of the overwhelming cognitive dissonance that would result. (Seriously, most people will take the easy road. If they look like they are taking the hard road, it's probably because they were drop-kicked onto it.) Interestingly enough, the thrill of discovery is only available by choosing Option 2. The drawback to Option 2 is that we do not have an unlimited capacity to question the constructs that we depend on to define and predict our existence. Choosing to suspend the dominant paradigm in one area may decrease the likelihood that you are able/willing to suspend it in other areas.
Either way, it's your choice. If you prefer Option 1, then nothing I'm doing should interest you. But if you are willing to consider Option 2, then you may have potential. ;)
BTW, props for quoting Egan, but I've got a better one...
"And the truth is, I'm glad to fail: defiantly, blasphemously, self-righteously fucking joyful - as if my failure implied some kind of reprieve for all the discredited 'reasonable' explanations that I thought I'd stopped clinging to long ago." (In other words... Thank god I have Option 1! Option 2 is just too damn hard!)
Plucked from the blogosphere - "You cannot 'choose which world to end up in'." (sigh)
(Pardon me while I get this out of my system.)
"Every new theory of physics must capture the successful predictions of the old theory it displaced..." We agree upon this point. Help the process, or get out of the way. I don't have a 'new theory of physics'; I have a set of observations, some research, and some ideas. I predict that I will not have a 'new theory of physics' anytime soon.
"You will never catch a glimpse of another world out of the corner of your eye." You missed the point entirely. We know that consciousness is incapable of capturing more than a single outcome state at a time. (We don't know why that is, nor do we know what needs to occur in order to replicate that state in something to which we wish to give consciousness.) But the fact that consciousness can only capture a single state does not preclude a model where the auxiliary mechanisms of consciousness (those 'higher' processes involved in reflection, imagining, and planning) have some role in the selection of future states of consciousness. (We'll save retrocausation for another time.)
If consciousness can be said to have/be a trajectory through the smeared state of options, then the mechanisms that determine that trajectory must be accounted for. This is what we're working on, using what is, in my opinion, the data that is most relevant at this point in the game. It's possible that the entire endeavor is misguided and will come to naught. But then, if I believed that, I probably would have given this up long ago. ;)
"Since the beginning, not one unusual thing has ever happened, in this or any other world. They are all lawful." Okay, this is nothing other than an exercise in logic.
Statement: All observable events/phenomena are lawful. (All X are Y.)
Logically-compatible statement: If it is an observed event/phenomena, then it must be lawful.
Logically-compatible statement: If it is NOT lawful, then it CANNOT be an observed event/phenomena.
So if we have an observed event/phenomena that appears to contradict the laws (X and NOT Y), then our original statement only holds true if we 1) dispute X, or 2) dispute NOT Y. Your garden-variety physicist will choose Option 1, claiming that the observation was a product of fraud, hallucination, or stupidity, because the laws say it can't happen. Some of them will even get 'insulting' about the whole thing.
Choosing Option 2 does not mean that you embrace the idea of a lawless universe. No, choosing Option 2 means that you question the completeness of the existing laws. The funny thing is, if theoretical physicists weren't questioning the completeness of the existing laws, they'd be out of jobs. So questioning the completeness of existing laws is just taboo for certain physicists in certain areas. ;)
There are pros and cons for each option. Option 1 lets you lead a comfortable life with perhaps only a few anomalous experiences. Even these will cease to bother you once you've had a few drinks. After all, they violate the laws, so they didn't really happen. Option 2 is usually reserved for those who can't take Option 1 because of the overwhelming cognitive dissonance that would result. (Seriously, most people will take the easy road. If they look like they are taking the hard road, it's probably because they were drop-kicked onto it.) Interestingly enough, the thrill of discovery is only available by choosing Option 2. The drawback to Option 2 is that we do not have an unlimited capacity to question the constructs that we depend on to define and predict our existence. Choosing to suspend the dominant paradigm in one area may decrease the likelihood that you are able/willing to suspend it in other areas.
Either way, it's your choice. If you prefer Option 1, then nothing I'm doing should interest you. But if you are willing to consider Option 2, then you may have potential. ;)
BTW, props for quoting Egan, but I've got a better one...
"And the truth is, I'm glad to fail: defiantly, blasphemously, self-righteously fucking joyful - as if my failure implied some kind of reprieve for all the discredited 'reasonable' explanations that I thought I'd stopped clinging to long ago." (In other words... Thank god I have Option 1! Option 2 is just too damn hard!)
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Escaping From Time
"The other inmates stand in a long straight line, flanked by guards, and I am dragged past them. I do not respect them, because they will not run - will not try to escape."
I like to entertain strange physics ideas all the time. (Seriously, I'm the unruly inmate that the physicist 'guards' don't like. ;)
Since my physics education has been fairly piecemeal, the pieces occasionally get put together in interesting ways. For example, the EPR paradox came up the other day. Having time on the brain, it occurred to me to wonder why the EPR paradox is even a paradox at all...
A and B are entangled (which means weirdly connected in an I-am-you and you-are-me kind of way) particles departing in opposite directions from the same source. When A is measured, B can always be found in the corresponding/complementary state, even though A has no local-causes way to communicate its state to B. (As if B would just obligingly accept such information and agree to be found in the corresponding state when its turn came to be measured.) Physicists are perplexed because they cannot explain how A and B can be connected in such a way as to allow them to 'know' which state the other is in. And certainly not how they could 'know' without the transmission of such information occurring at a faster-than-light speed. Yet A and B are always perfectly in sync.
This situation is perplexing when viewed with time moving in a single direction, but the confusion evaporates (for me, at least) when temporal symmetry is restored. I can see very well how B 'knows' what state A will be in if I visual time flowing backwards from the point of measurement to the point where A and B were created together, as well as forward. Time, or something that underlies it, would be flowing in both directions at once.
Whatever is carried/retained as time moves subjectively forward can presumably be carried/retained as time moves subjectively backward. I'm not going to go into speculation about what that might be because, frankly, I don't know how to do that with standard physics constructs. (Physicists 'guards' are welcome to jump in with helpful explanations as to why this can't be so, or throw up their hands in despair at the uber-obvious piece of the picture that I am probably missing. I got briefly sidetracked by the Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics, but that seems to reflect something a little bit different.)
This explanation for the EPR paradox makes sense to me because I think that we can access information that appears to be from our subjective future. (As in, the information correlates more heavily with what we experience in the subjective future than it does with what we experience in the subjective past. Think precognition.) This involves significantly rethinking our definition of, and relationship with, time, which is always a fun exercise. ;)
[Fair warning: I'm coming after entropy too. Just because I can. Just because it's fun.]
I like to entertain strange physics ideas all the time. (Seriously, I'm the unruly inmate that the physicist 'guards' don't like. ;)
Since my physics education has been fairly piecemeal, the pieces occasionally get put together in interesting ways. For example, the EPR paradox came up the other day. Having time on the brain, it occurred to me to wonder why the EPR paradox is even a paradox at all...
A and B are entangled (which means weirdly connected in an I-am-you and you-are-me kind of way) particles departing in opposite directions from the same source. When A is measured, B can always be found in the corresponding/complementary state, even though A has no local-causes way to communicate its state to B. (As if B would just obligingly accept such information and agree to be found in the corresponding state when its turn came to be measured.) Physicists are perplexed because they cannot explain how A and B can be connected in such a way as to allow them to 'know' which state the other is in. And certainly not how they could 'know' without the transmission of such information occurring at a faster-than-light speed. Yet A and B are always perfectly in sync.
This situation is perplexing when viewed with time moving in a single direction, but the confusion evaporates (for me, at least) when temporal symmetry is restored. I can see very well how B 'knows' what state A will be in if I visual time flowing backwards from the point of measurement to the point where A and B were created together, as well as forward. Time, or something that underlies it, would be flowing in both directions at once.
Whatever is carried/retained as time moves subjectively forward can presumably be carried/retained as time moves subjectively backward. I'm not going to go into speculation about what that might be because, frankly, I don't know how to do that with standard physics constructs. (Physicists 'guards' are welcome to jump in with helpful explanations as to why this can't be so, or throw up their hands in despair at the uber-obvious piece of the picture that I am probably missing. I got briefly sidetracked by the Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics, but that seems to reflect something a little bit different.)
This explanation for the EPR paradox makes sense to me because I think that we can access information that appears to be from our subjective future. (As in, the information correlates more heavily with what we experience in the subjective future than it does with what we experience in the subjective past. Think precognition.) This involves significantly rethinking our definition of, and relationship with, time, which is always a fun exercise. ;)
[Fair warning: I'm coming after entropy too. Just because I can. Just because it's fun.]
Thursday, May 22, 2008
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...
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...
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