"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.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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)
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Do You See What I See?
"The realization of this experiment opens interesting perspectives for controlling quantum systems. Instead of freezing their evolution, repeated measurements could provide information used to channel them towards tailored quantum states by active feed-back operations." - Bernu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 101: 180402 (2008). (here)
Don't look now, but something got me thinking...
When last we discussed how I was going to take a wild stab at modeling physics to include 5 dimensions of experience, I was fixated on the quantum zeno effect, which is perhaps the most direct example of a physical system being impacted by measurement. (I am still absorbing information on QZE and the particular observations and problems that gave rise to the idea of quantum decoherence. This will take awhile.)
While reading this blogpost, my thoughts went to another article - one on non-local observation. In this experiment "[t]he experimenter asked each participant either to imagine that he or she could intuitively sense the presence of the photons in a specific area of the interferometer... or to withdraw that intuitive perception and allow the photons to pass through the same area unimpeded." (My emphasis.) In this experiment, the participants were not directly observing the laser/Michelson interferometer system. The hypothesis was that if "such [non-local] observation were possible, it would theoretically perturb the photon's quantum wave functions and change the pattern of light produced by the interferometer." A significant decrease in overall level of illumination was present in the non-local observation condition, as predicted by the behavior of the same system when the interference pattern has collapsed due to attempts to gain information about the path of the photon.
Is quantum decoherence compatible with non-local observation? Or would it make more sense to map observation effects (like QZE) onto certain cognitive parameters associated with observation? It's interesting to me that in Radin's study the "result was primarily due to nine sessions involving experienced meditators". This suggests that cognitive attributes of a particular observer are associated with the degree and nature of 'observation' that they can bring to bear on a system. This in turn reminded me of Schmidt's article, discussed lo these many months ago, which also suggests a continuum of observation based on factors such as the 'alertness' of the observer.
And I began to wonder... Where are the studies that map cognitive attributes such as absorption, and neurological properties such as visual cortex activation, onto effects of observation such as the QZE?
Don't look now, but something got me thinking...
When last we discussed how I was going to take a wild stab at modeling physics to include 5 dimensions of experience, I was fixated on the quantum zeno effect, which is perhaps the most direct example of a physical system being impacted by measurement. (I am still absorbing information on QZE and the particular observations and problems that gave rise to the idea of quantum decoherence. This will take awhile.)
While reading this blogpost, my thoughts went to another article - one on non-local observation. In this experiment "[t]he experimenter asked each participant either to imagine that he or she could intuitively sense the presence of the photons in a specific area of the interferometer... or to withdraw that intuitive perception and allow the photons to pass through the same area unimpeded." (My emphasis.) In this experiment, the participants were not directly observing the laser/Michelson interferometer system. The hypothesis was that if "such [non-local] observation were possible, it would theoretically perturb the photon's quantum wave functions and change the pattern of light produced by the interferometer." A significant decrease in overall level of illumination was present in the non-local observation condition, as predicted by the behavior of the same system when the interference pattern has collapsed due to attempts to gain information about the path of the photon.
Is quantum decoherence compatible with non-local observation? Or would it make more sense to map observation effects (like QZE) onto certain cognitive parameters associated with observation? It's interesting to me that in Radin's study the "result was primarily due to nine sessions involving experienced meditators". This suggests that cognitive attributes of a particular observer are associated with the degree and nature of 'observation' that they can bring to bear on a system. This in turn reminded me of Schmidt's article, discussed lo these many months ago, which also suggests a continuum of observation based on factors such as the 'alertness' of the observer.
And I began to wonder... Where are the studies that map cognitive attributes such as absorption, and neurological properties such as visual cortex activation, onto effects of observation such as the QZE?
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