Re: [FRIAM] particles have free will

[Steve Smith]

Robert Howard wrote:   Particle decay is easy to explain if you assume a multiverse. And when you do, the “free will” disappears.   A multiverse theory today is difficult to swallow for the same reasons that the heliocentric theory, evolution, and relativity were difficult to swallow:   (1)     We haven’t evolved to sense these theories in action. We don’t sense the Earth moving, species evolving, space warping, or time dilating. We have to use our minds. (2)     These theories diminish our ego’s desire to feel unique and special. We’re NOT the center of the universe. We’re NOT so different than other animals. We HAVEN’T been here forever. But even with the (a?) multiverse theory, doesn't one have to (get to?) contemplate just how they came to be a singular identity/experiencer in a multitude of possibilities?   I find variations on multiverse cosmology quite compelling from a theoretical/symmetric/completeness point of view.  In particular I find Lee Smolin's variations quite compelling at many levels.  But if anything, it leaves me wondering (still, yet more,  not less) about the experience of identity and free will that I have.  The closest thing I have to offer is a variation of the Anthropic Principle wherein the parts of the multi-verse continuum where "object-like-phenomena" exist, and where the "object-like-patterns" have complex enough organization to include "self-organization" and "emergent organization", and where within those forms of organization there is sufficient (qualitatively as well as quantitatively?) complexity to support patterns which are in some sense recursive (patterns that have sub-patterns of themselves within them?). In these "regions" of the "multiverse continuum", there are recursive patterns which have the essential properties which I am calling self-awareness.   Other regions of the multiverse continuum don't have these patterns so there is no "pattern" akin to an "I" contemplating "itself". It is a bit resonant with my experience the day in 3rd grade when I quit mumbling the words "one nation under god" during our daily "prayer" (pledge of allegience).  The trivial amount of social studies I'd been taught (that the Soviet Union was a *bad* form of government and way of life, but the *people* were just like us) left me to wonder how *I* got so lucky to be born an Amerikun (impose image of Captain America Character) while so many were so unlucky as to have been born Pinko Commie Losers (insert a different image of your choice, preferably degrading and humiliating and easy to dismiss). I think I need another drink.  Or a nap.  Or ....  maybe I should go back to my studies of Fredkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin) Free the Particles!  Enslave the Waves! - Steve

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