At 11:27 AM 6/3/2005, rmiller wrote:
At 10:23 AM 6/3/2005, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear R.,
You make a very good point, one that I was hoping to communicate but
failed. The notion of making copies is only coherent if and when we can
compare the copied produce to each other. Failing to be able to do this,
what remains? Your suggestion seems to imply that "precognition,
coincidence and "synchronicity"" are some form "resonance" between
decohered QM systems. Could it be that decoherence is not an "all or
nothing" process; could it be that some 'parts' of a QM system decohere
with respect to each other while others do not and/or that decoherence
might occur at differing rates within a QM system?
Stephen
Yes, that's what I am suggesting. The rates may remain constant---i.e.
less than a few milliseconds (as Patrick L. earlier noted) however, I
suspect there is a topology where regions of decoherence coexist and
border regions of coherence. An optics experiment might be able to test
this (if it hasn't been done already), and it might be experimentally
testable as a psychology experiment.\\
More to the point---Optical experiments in QM often return counterintuitive
results, but they support the QM math (of course). No one has
satisfactorily resolved the issue of measurement to everyone's liking, but
most would agree that in some brands of QM consciousness plays a role. On
one side we have Fred Alan Wolf and Sarfatti who seem to take the "qualia"
approach, while on the other side we have those like Roger Penrose who (I
think) take a mechanical view (microtubules in the brain harbor
Bose-Einstein condensates.) All this model-building (and discussion) is
fine, of course, but there are a number of psychological experiments out
there that consistently return counterintuitive and heretofore
unexplainable results. Among them, is Helmut Schmidt's "retro pk"
experiment which consistently returns odd results. The PEAR lab at
Princeton has some startling "remote viewing" results, and of course,
there's Rupert Sheldrake's work. As far as I know, Sheldrake is the only
one who has tried to create a model ("morphic resonance"), and most QM
folks typically avoid discussing the experiments--except to deride them as
nonscientific. I think it may be time to revisit some of these "ESP"
experiments to see if the results are telling us something in terms of QM,
i.e. decoherence. Changing our assumptions about decoherence, then
applying the model to those strange experiments may clarify things.
RM
RM
----- Original Message ----- From: "rmiller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <everything-list@eskimo.com>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 1:07 AM
Subject: Equivalence
Equivalence
If the individual exists simultaneously across a many-world manifold,
then how can one even define a "copy?" If the words match at some
points and differ at others, then the personality would at a maximum, do
likewise---though this is not necessary---or, for some perhaps, not even
likely. It's been long established that the inner world we navigate is
an abstraction of the "real thing"---even if the real world only
consists of one version. If it consists of several versions, blended
into one another, then how can we differentiate between them? From a
mathematical POV, 200 worlds that are absolute copies of themselves, are
equivalent to one world. If these worlds differ minutely in areas *not
encountered or interacted with by the percipient (individual), then
again we have one percipient, one world-equivalent. I suspect it's not
as though we're all run through a Xerox and distributed to countless
(infinite!) places that differ broadly from one another. I rather think
the various worlds we inhabit are equivalent--and those that differ from
one another do by small--though perceptible---degrees. Some parts of
the many-world spectrum are likely equivalent and others are not. In
essence, there are probably zones of equivalence (your room where there
are no outside interferences) and zones of difference. Even if we did
manage to make the copies, then there would still be areas on the
various prints that would be equivalent, i.e. the same. Those that are
different, we would notice and possibly tag these differences with a
term: decoherence. Perhaps that is all there is to it. If this is the
case, it would certainly explain a few things: i.e. precognition,
coincidence and "synchronicity."
R. Miller
