Subject: re: hawking's mind of god problem From: sarfatti@well.com

Message-ID: <328.285.69a@intuition.org> Date: Tue, 24 Dec 1996 00:17:33 -0800 Organization: Intuition Network (415) 256-1137 (voice)

I have several times raised the technical problem of how we can project down from the wave function of the universe (Hawking's "Mind of God") to the reduced density matrices of our individual brains that form our individual quantum minds. This problem applies universally to all the relatively detailed quantum models of the mind-brain whether, Stapp's, Penrose's or mine.

OK, it is a relatively easy problem in the Bohm pilot-wave/hidden-variable interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are two fundamental spaces, the classical configuration space C and the quantum Hilbert space H.

For a single particle, C is the three dimensional space without time. This is made generally relativistic in the Hamiltonianlike ADM formalism adding lapse and shift functions. One problem that I am now working on is to Lagrangianize Bohm's Hamiltonianlike approach using Feynman's path integral where the hidden-variable is an actual total path. The Green's functions will have to be modified to include the back-action in generalizing from quantum mechanics to the post-quantum mechanics where consciousness is a natural fundamental part of the physical universe.

Stapp has argued correctly that there is no room for consciousness in deterministic classical physics where the part is prior to the whole. Classical physics is entirely concerned with what Stapp aptly describes as "rocklike things". I depart from Stapp by asserting that there is also no consciousness in quantum mechanics. In this I agree with Feynman contra Wigner-Von Neumann-London and perhaps Wheeler.

Now this is a delicate distinction because the quantum wave function is not a rocklike thing. It is a thoughtlike thing -- yet it is not conscious. Is the quantum wavefunction "subconscious"? I think it's OK to say that.

Classical gauge forces (i.e. electroweak U(1)xSU(2), strong SU(3), gravity) are local noncontext-dependent pushes and pulls that depend on the intensity (i.e. its local stress-energy tensor) of the field in ordinary 3D space. In contrast, the nonlocal context-dependent Bohm quantum force of the thoughtlike pilot-wave on its attached rocklike hidden-variable has no analogous intensity dependence. As Bohm emphasizes, the quantum force (-local gradient of nonlocal quantum potential) is form-dependent. The stress-energy tensor of the quantum pilot wave field is local in classical rocklike configuration space C not in ordinary physical space. This is the source of its nonlocality in ordinary physical space. Furthermore, the quantum field also depends on location in thoughtlike Hilbert space which is the source of its context-dependence. "Form" as in "information", or as in Chalmers's call for a fundamental information field to describe consciousness and solve the "hard problem".

The quantum force does not use its energy, it guides and organizes the classical energies of the rocklike hidden variables to which it is attached. Bohm pointed out that an essential part of mind and culture is their response to form rather than intensity. Only in physical violence and sex do we influence others with classical pushes and pulls. Normally we use language. The information in the auditory and visual signals is used to guide the local energies of the body.

So quantum mechanics goes a long way to solving the hard problem of consciousness theory because it clearly shows, in Bohm's version though not in Bohr's, how a thoughtlike thing can influence a rocklike thing in a totally natural wholistic organic way where the part is subservient to the whole. The problem is not how complex behavior emerges, it is entirely the opposite, the problem is the classical limit where the parts seems to be severed from the whole. This is the Gestalt Shift that Bohm's warning against "fragmentation" is pointing to, it is the "Transformation" of Marilyn Ferguson's Aquarian Conspiracy, it is Fritjof's Tao of Physics, the Beyond of Space-Time and Beyond, the Dance of the Wu Li etc..

But there is a missing link. The missing link is how the body changes its mind. That's where post-quantum back-action comes in. Bohm proved that quantum mechanics does not allow the body to change its mind. Eberhard proved that quantum mechanics does not allow quantum nonlocality to be used as a direct communication channel. These are two sides of the same coin. I have been through this part in detail. Post-quantum back-action is the self-measuring Godelian strange loop required for consciousness as metaphorically first described by Doug Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach. The ensuing co-evolution between thoughtlike and rocklike things creates the conscious complex adaptive post-quantum self-determining system on the edge between classical determinism and quantum indeterminism. The solution in the present is now directly modifying its generating equation in a globally self-consistent feedback-control loop both forward and backward in time in accord with the Wheeler-Feynman principle without the incorrect total absorber future final condition not obeyed in our apparently open expanding universe. There is no hard evidence for a big crunch like there is for a big bang. Murray Gell-Mann did not get it completely right in his important book, The Quark and The Jaguar, which distorts the real story. However, his book did give me a clue on how to solve his problem of the "IGUS" correctly. :-)

But now we return to Hawking's Mind of God. Two point particles, with no other structure like spin, form a point in a 6 dimensional rocklike C space. A classical field in a continuum is like an infinite number of particles where each position x at a given time t is like one particle. So the rocklike C for a classical field is infinite dimensional (noncountable). We can more realistically use a Planck scale quantum gravity lattice but we still get enormous yet countable numbers of dimensions. Now Wheeler's superspace is then simply the C of the classical field 3G(x) where the latter is a 3D space geometry metric field (a 3x3 symmetric matrix) analogous to the electromagnetic field tensor Fuv(x)(a 4x4 antisymmetric matrix). There will also be the ADM lapse and shift functions. There are quantum Hilbert spaces attached to these classical fields. Take the quantum wave function psi(x,t) of a single particle. Psi's domain is C, i.e., x space. But psi's range is the Hilbert space of possible pilot waves with common boundary conditions. There is no direct dependence of psi on the path of the hidden variable particle in quantum mechanics. There is such a back-action dependence in post-quantum mechanics.

Now we understand how to take reduced density matrices for an N particle system. In principle taking the reduced density matrix for the part of the whole is no different. We project down to a subspace of C (and H) by integrating out the irrelevant degrees of freedom. The point is that the classical Wheeler superspace is simply the classical configuration space C of the 3G(x) considered as a local field. The problem of projection from whole to part for quantum gravity is conceptually identical to the same problem of quantum electrodynamics in Bohm's ontology. So, in principle, there is no major conceptual problem in seeing exactly how Man's post-quantum mind is the homomorphic image of God's Mind.

How are our thoughts -- our consciousness -- translated into action?"

I actually have a detailed theory of this based upon an extension of Bohm’s 1952 quantum pilot-wave/classical material hidden variable theory.

Note, the more modern term for "hidden-variable" is John Bell’s term "beable".

The inner quantum information density field I(x,t), whose range is in quantum Hilbert space H and whose domain is in classical configuration space C , is, quite literally, the "field of thought patterns" that make up the implicate order. These patterns of I(x,t) exert a quantum force

on the brain material beable B moving in C. That’s how thought is translated into action.

The field of thought-patterns or qualia I(x,t), together with external environmental classical forces Fe create basins of attraction for the flow of the brain system point B in C. Qualia are encoded in these attractors. When B occupies a given attractor basin the corresponding thought-pattern is felt i.e., experienced. This attractor structure in C is the quantum version of the fractal strange attractors of classical chaos theory which leaves out the thought-field force from I(x,t). In the classical limit only Fe creates the attractor structure in C. The pattern of classical Fe forces represent the Darwinian natural selection pressures of the environment. To complete this model of a complex conscious adaptive system, we need a mechanism for self-organization. Without self-organization there is no conscious intent, no purposeful explicate behavior, and no "felt" implicate conscious experience. I have shown how implicate thought becomes explicate action. We now have to show how the brain-beable B in C literally and directly changes its thought-field I(x,t) whose range is quantum Hilbert space H. This is the back-action b mechanism by which the structure of H is modified by the actual path taken by B in C. But, that path of B in C is determined by both the implicate Fq = - Grad Q and the explicate Darwinian Fe. Therefore, Fq,Fe, from I(x,t) to B, together with back-action b from B to I(x,t) is a self-organizing cybernetic feedback-control creative strange loop that creates the conscious experience and allows the I-B system to make freely-willed choices which are the results of classically nonalgorithmic quantum computations. Now I can prove rigorously, that only when such a strange loop of Godel self-reference is operating, is there an experience of one actual world. This is a Bohmian ontological model that derives Wigner’s and von-Neumann’s epistemological idea that "consciousness collapses the wave function". The strange loop means that the mind (I)-brain (B) complex adaptive system is continually measuring itself. Only then, is there the inner "felt" experience of "qualia". This is the quantum dynamo generating our streams of consciousness.

"the wave function is linear or passive in that it requires an outside agent to select events ....."

That is exactly what back-action is -- it is the "outside agent", except it is really inside. It is the generator of consciousness.

To be more precise. The usual picture of quantum measurement has a measuring apparatus M and the system being measured N. They are not the same system. That leads to the measurement problem which you discuss pretty well in its different aspects. Now Bohm thought he had solved this measurement problem and up until recently I thought he was correct. But now, in dialogue with Henry Stapp, I see a non-fatal, but serious, flaw in Bohm’s argument. Bohm is able to correctly show why it is that fringes disappear in the double slit experiment if a measurement of "which slit 1 or 2?" the particle P passes is made even though the particle wave packets and overlap on the screen. Where x is the position on the screen. This is because of the EPR correlation

Therefore,

So,

because (m1|m2) = 0. That is, the two measuring wavepackets have zero overlap in their classical configuration subspace Cm. The EPR correlation between M and N implies an incoherent superposition of the particle wave packets (x|n1) and (x|n2) even though they do overlap in their classical configuration subspace Cn.

Bohm then makes an incorrect next step for the actual path of the hidden variable P in Cn. He says that one can think that P is really in either (x|n1) or (x|n2) . The occupied wave packet is the "active information" and the empty one is "inactive information". Bohm is trying to establish that only one of the wave packets for P is totally determining the classical mechanical, possibly chaotic, attractor structure for the path of P in Cn. That is, Bohm wrongly thinks that, because of the EPR correlation of N to nonoverlapping packets in Cm, that the attractor structure in Cn is in 1-1 correspondence with the P wave packets (x|n1) and (x|n2). But what is true for the wave is not true for the particle. A careful analysis of Bohm’s equations of motion for P under the action of the nonlocal quantum force - gradQ show that both (x|n1) and (x|n2) contribute to the quantum force on P in the region of overlap in Cn. Of course, the details of the quantum force pattern on the possible paths of P in the incoherent case is very different from what it is in the coherent case where no measurement of which slit is made. The serious problem however, is that both classically incompatible worlds continue to influence the motion of P. This is not a problem in "collapse" models because one of the packets (x|n1) or (x|n2) miraculously vanishes. But Bohm’s theory cannot make this Deux ex Machina. The only consistent way there can be a 1-1 correspondence between the wave packets or "channels" and the attractor structure is if there really is no overlap in Cn. This is generally not the case in orthodox linear passive quantum mechanics. The only way to solve the problem is to consider complex systems that are able to measure themselves. Such a complex system is conscious almost by definition. That is, if N is the same as M the problem is solved because then there is only one classical configuration space C and a good "self measurement" means no overlap in C of the different wave packets that correspond to classically incompatible worlds. The hidden-variable must be in only one of those wave packets. It can never escape that particular packet because the quantum repulsive force is infinite at the edges where the wave packet is zero. But how can this happen? This can only happen if there is a direct back-action b from the path of P in C to the total wavefunction. As explained earlier this results in the self-organizing ability of all living systems. Back-action is the universal physical mechanism for life. What happens is that the self-measuring system self-organizes its wave function so that it splits into nonoverlapping wave packets. That is, the system creates its own measuring observable N in a self-consistent way and then chooses which channel to occupy. This is free will. Only conscious systems can do this trick. Without back-action beyond orthodox quantum theory there is never an effective collapse into one actual classical world.

So your "level one" is the hidden-variable material system of classical particles and classical fields. Your "level two" is the "passive" quantum pilot wave. Finally, your "level three" is the back-action b which enables the coming into being of the conscious self-organizing adaptive system that selects its own destiny. This is the physical meaning of freedom.

Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 11:44:40 -0700 (PDT)

From: STAPP@theorm.lbl.gov

To: sarfatti@well.com

Dear Jack,

Your message of Aug 25 indicates that you have come to a better understanding of my words. To stay focussed on the basic issue I first answer the question you raised at the beginning of your August 24 message, and then go onto the two key questions from the August 25 message.

JS: Brief Preface by Sarfatti. (Aug 24)

Henry keeps getting back to basic question, why is back-action required for conscious experience? In his orthodox quantum model it is not.

HPS Reply:

It is important to distinguish my (Bohr/Heisenberg/vonNeumann/Wigner) collapse model from the Bohm+CS model that I have described in earlier posts. This Bohm+CS model has consciousness appended to the Bohm model in the same way that it is normally appended to classical physics. It has no back action and no collapse: it is thus just the Bohm model with consciousness appended.

As Jack says, my collapse model has no back action. But it does have collapses, and collapses are just what Sarfatti's back actions generate. In my collapse model these collapses are required for conscious experiences. Analogously, Sarfatti takes the collapses that arise from his back action to be the prerequisite of consciousness. So his model is basically the same as mine on this score: in both models a collapse is the prerequisite for consciousness. But in the Bohm+CS model there is no such collapse, or collapse requirement, for consciousness.

My question was why does Sarfatti insist on having both a classical world AND back-action/collapse, when either one alone is enough to do the job of reconciling the quantum character of nature with the classical character of our experiences of nature: the classical world does the job in the Bohm+CS model, by being the reality that our thoughts are tied to, and collapses do the job in the collapse models. Thus having both a classical world AND collapses is redundant, as far as this essential task is concerned.

I shall address later the issue of the need for back action for self organization and adaptive behaviour.

In response to your remarks of Aug 25 let me say right away that the assumption in my Bohr/Heisenberg/vonNeumann/Wigner collapse interpretation is certainly that the mind/brain is in your words (Aug 25) a self-measuring system: there is no device around that is supposed to measure it, and no infinite regress. That has certainly been central to my approach: the actualization of some particular pattern of brain activity is the physical side of the event whose other side, or aspect, is the experiential event. This is the vonNeumann/Wigner part of my theory.

The collapse models connect certain collapses associated with human brains to human conscious experiences. In these models the classical character of human thoughts is a consequence of the fact that the relevant collapses are to states where certain key bulk properties of the newly created brain state are `classically describable': the brain state corresponds to the observer's perceiving an alive cat, not a dead cat, or perceiving the pointer on a device to be pointing to the right, not to the left. These alternative possible perceptions, like some thinker's ideas of `to be' or `not to be', or of `freeedom' or `slavery', will, according to the precepts of these collapse models, be represented by different `branches of the wave function' in the sense of Bohm's or von Neumann's theory of measurement: they will represent different brain states that are distinguishable by the fact that they correspond to different, and well separated, intervals in the values of certain macroscopic and slowly changing---on the scale of neural dynamics---variables. The separation in these variables entails that the alternative brain states are orthogonal.

Bohm's theory of measurement, like von Neumann's, is based on the idea of different branches, which correspond to different `pointer positions'. For a `good' measurement-type physical situation, the different pointer positions occupy different positions in 3-space, and, in any case, different regions in the 3n-dimensional configuration space. Hence they are orthogonal.

In the brain there are billions of such pointers. Each neuron has a huge number microchannels with, it is believed, some sort of macro-molecular gate that can be open or closed, with the state (open or closed) of these gates coordinated to the action-potential pulses flowing along the neurons. Different patterns of quasi-stable neural activity will have different patterns of open and closed micro-channels, and will thus be orthogonal, so that the Bohm/vonNeumann/Wigner theory will apply. If even just one such microchannel is open in one state but closed in the other then the two states will be essentially orthogonal.

Which one of the various branches generated by the Schroedinger equation is associated with conscious experiencee is determined, within the Bohm model, by which of these branches the trajectory of the classical-world enters, and becomes trapped within. The chance is essentially zero that the state (open vs closed) of *all* of the billions of microchannels channels, will ever come to be identical for the evolutions of the states corresponding to two distinct experiences. Even if all the gates *were* to become identical, account would then have to be taken of all of the particles in the brain, and eventually the entire world, with which the two initially different states have interacted. So, for all practical purposes, one can assume that the different branches never come back together again.

The Bohm+CS model is essentially the classical epiphenomenal model corrected to incorporate, a la Bohm, the quantum corrections: one retains the classical notion of the connection of consciousness to the classically described state of the brain, but just adds an extra force, the quantum force due to the quantum potential. All quantum effects are included by just adding this extra force. The theory is still deterministic, though no longer local. Consciousness still seems to be an epiphenomenal sideshow, determined *by* the physical aspects, rather than determining them, although one can still argue, as I did in an earlier post, that the felt self is, in a certain sense, in control.

There is a natural connection between the Bohm+CS model and the Bohr/Heisenberg/vonNeumann/Wigner collapse model: the "branches" would be the same. In the Bohm+CS model the branch that will "be illuminated by the light of conscious" will be deterministically picked out by the deterministically fixed trajectory. In the collapse model, on the other hand, the way of selecting the branch can be controlled by a rule that assigns a more basic causal role to consciousness. A fundamentally random selection, based on unexplained quantum probabilities, would, of course, not give consciousness a more basic role.

The Bohm-Sarfatti model has both a trajectory and a "back action". Your recent posts indicate that the back action produces a collapse to the "correct" branch, namely to the branch "occupied" by the trajectory. Thus the B-S model is a hybrid of the Bohm and collapse models: there is both the classical trajectory, which in Bohm+CS determines which branch is chosen, and also the back-action induced collapse, which is what does this same job in the collapse models.

In the B-S model consciousness is LESS FREE than in the collapse model, since in B-S the collapse is "largely" determined by where the trajectory goes, and where this trajectory goes is also "largely" deterministically fixed. The nondeterministic collapses via GRW gaussians may add some randomness, but this would not seem to inject meaningful freedom of choice.

Thus the injection in this way of the classical trajectory of Bohm seems, in this context, to be a throwback to classical mechanics that needlessly limits the possibility of giving a more independent causal role to consciousness itself.

The term basin of attraction is from Chaos Theory, which is classical mechanics, not really quantum theory. The way I use the term in the present context is to denote one of the small regions that the top level control system might migrate to: one of the quasi-stable basins into which the top level control system can fall in the brain's search for a suitable next action in the situation in which the brain/body finds itself. This is explained in my book. These basins are, in my parlance, the same thing as the branches of the brain state discussed above.

The other main point is that the evolving brain/mind is a self organizing adaptive system. It has strong internal energy sources and the brain has a built-in drive to grind out sequences of events that allow the system to adapt to the situation in which it finds itself. Even classical system with strong internal energy sources self organize, so the is no reason why the Bohm+CS system and the Bohr/Heisenberg/vonNeumann/Wigner collapse systems would not both be self organizing adaptive systems. Due to the fatigue characteristics of the neurons that are sustaining some particular pattern, the basin of attraction will not be able to stay viable indefinitely: the basin will fade away, pushing the brain into a seach for some alternative basin, etc.. There is no demonstrated need to go outside of standard quantum mechanics to get a self-organizing brain that constructs adaptive solutions to the succession of problems that face the organism.

So I suggest that occam's razor would call for the elimination of Bohm's classical world, which is not needed to account for the empirical facts (that is the conclusion of the Bohr-Einstein debate), and thus the elimination also of the back action, in favor of the Bohm/Heisenberg/vonNeumann/Wigner theory, which brings consciousness into the foundations from start, and in the context of not just the epistemological framework of Bohr, but also in the ontological framework of Heisenberg/vonNeumann/Wigner. This collapse theory seems to have the capacity to do whatever the Bohm theory with back action can do, but with consciousness no longer either an ad hoc superfluous appendage, or `enslaved' by its close bondage to the nearly deterministic motion of the classical trajectory.

Best regards,

Henry

One needs Bohm's pilot-wave plus this new back-action. A good reference is Bohm and Hiley's, The Undivided Universe. Pages 345-6 discusses the back-action idea that I have taken much further.

The brain is the hidden-variable, or what the late John Bell called the "beable". The Bohm pilot-wave is the mind. The nonlocal contextual Bohm quantum force is how mind acts on brain in a decision. The back-action from brain beable to the pilot-wave is how the brain literally changes its mind. This last thing can't happen in ordinary quantum mechanics which has no back-action.

Back-action is a fundamental part of the universe. This was shown by Dimitri Nanopoulos using superstring theory. Coupling of matter to the thermal environment masks the back-action. DNA/RNA/proteins have learned how to build a thermal shield around key control electron switches in microtubules. This enables back-action enough time, free from thermal disruption, to self-organize the brain.

All of this is visualizable in terms of quantum chaos theory in Bohm's sense in which the beables move on a fitness landscape in classical configuration space propelled both by the Bohm quantum force and external gauge field stimuli from outer world. This Santa Fe Institute picture is explained in Chapter 5 of Ron Kauffman's book, The Origins of Order. Because of back-action the fitness landscape changes due to the actual path of the brain-beable. This does not happen in ordinary quantum mechanics because of the thermal decoherence.

Qualia (i.e., perceptions, feelings, ideas, experiences of all kinds) are attractors on the fitness landscape. You experience a quale when your brain-beable system point is captured (temporarily) by the attractor corresponding to that quale. Each quale is essentially an eigenfunction of the observable that defines "fitness" or "perspective" or a "frame of mind" which is something like a "paradigm" or a "mind-set", maybe, even a "character structure". The Darwinian natural selection pressure is like a random stochastic driving force on the brain-beable which is also feeling the self-organization from the quantum force. Every movement of the beable forces a change over the entire fitness landscape which in turn changes the path of the beable in configuration space. This is learning or adaptation. Both the mental fitness landscape from quantum Hilbert space and the material brain beable in classical configuration space co-evolve. This co-evolution does not happen in ordinary quantum mechanics. The co-evolution from back-action in thermally-protected beables is the essential signature of all life (i.e. of all quantum self-organizing adaptive systems). Back-action is the missing piece in the puzzle of the role of mind in the universe.

It tentatively appears that the quantum potential Q found in Bohm's hidden-variable version of quantum mechanics is able to transform ordinary protons into virtual "faster-than-light" tachyons. This would permit the construction of a new type of rocket engine that would enable low-cost highly fuel-efficient practical interstellar flight for large manned spacecraft. This is because the exit-speed of the propellant could be temporarily many times the speed of light. The spacecraft itself would be limited by the Einstein barrier. However, the spacecraft could get very close to the speed of light and go to the most distant corners of the Universe in a short on-board time using very small amounts of fuel. The time-dilation would, of course, put the spacecraft and its crew very far into the future from the cosmic time of the initial launch. Therefore, barring traversable wormholes, the crew could not return to their own time, nor could they communicate with us. However, shorter trips at lower speeds could also be done. This new quantum engine would be useful for interplanetary trips with small time-dilation using only a tiny fraction of its potential power. Constructing this engine is possible with current technology with only a low-cost investment in more theoretical work applying the Bohm pilot-wave theory.

This same Q is also most likely to be the fundamental "mind-stuff" of the Universe. Recent work by Penrose, Nanopoulos, myself and others strongly suggests that there is a fundamental "quantum friction" in the zero-point vacuum state of the Universe that is an intrinsic self-organizing force along the lines first suggested by Ilya Prigogine. This self-organizing force is also called "back-action" because it can be pictured as the direct influence of classical matter and gauge field on their attached quantum pilot-waves. Page 346 of the book, The Undivided Universe (Routledge), by the late David Bohm and his protégé Basil Hiley, shows the mathematical connection between back-action and the intrinsic quantum-friction. Ordinary quantum mechanics does not have the quantum-friction in it. So this is a new theory beyond quantum mechanics that includes it as a limiting case. All non-living organizations of matter obey ordinary quantum mechanics to a very good approximation for small numbers of elementary particles because the back-action is covered up by a much stronger coupling to the thermal environment called "interactive decoherence". Even the low flux of cosmic black body photons from the Big Bang are able to "decohere" small dust particles. However, my new theory suggests that when the "hot" interactive decoherence is screened out, even small numbers of interacting elementary particles like electrons and protons in hydrogen bonds universally and spontaneously acquire a living "sentience" because the back-action is able to perform its automatic massively-parallel quantum-computing function protected from external perturbations. Stuart Hameroff has shown how this thermal screening works in the microtubules of the living cell. This is described in more detail in Roger Penrose's book, Shadows of The Mind (Oxford). When there are sufficient input and output mechanisms and a memory storage mechanism such as is provided by the DNA/protein/lipid/water system, life as we know it emerges with high probability. This "ahistorical self-organization" from the quantum level is a new factor in addition to Darwinian natural selection pressures. This idea is explained in detail in Stuart Kauffman's book, The Origins of Order, Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (Oxford). This fundamental theory of sentience immediately suggests how to make a new kind of naturally conscious computing chip from quantum dots, wires and wells using nanotechnology by emulating the carbon-based microtubule switching network in the silicon-based solid-state. The thermally protected macroscopic quantum pilot wave attached to suitable tiny switching devices is the "Soul of The Machine".

Jean Burns

jeanbur@netcom.com

Subject: Is ESP EPR?

Date: 28 Jul 1996 23:32:01 GMT

Abstract: * Although detailed information can be transmitted by ESP (example of remote viewing given), there is no way to know which ESP sessions provide such information. Paul Easton suggests that because ESP is "unreliable", that's a reason to think it transmits information via quantum nonlocality. But even an unreliable signal is a signal and a signal cannot be transmitted via nonlocality. So nonlocality described by the laws of physics, cannot explain ESP. *

An important distinction must be made. Jean's conclusion is correct for what Henry Stapp in Phys Rev A, July 15, 1994 p.18 calls "orthodox quantum mechanics". Indeed, it is a corollary to the Eberhard-Stapp theorem. The best reference is Henry Stapp's book Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics, which I am now in the process of reading.

Henry makes the case for the Heisenberg/James model of quantum mind which is not my Bohm model. I believe that the basic questions that are hard in Henry's thoughtful theory are much easier to deal with in my Bohmian approach, but that is for another post.

Getting back to Jean's conclusion, the whole thrust of recent developments in quantum theory as seen in the Aharonov double-vector theory, the Nanopoulos string-friction theory, the retro-PK Stapp theory, Josephson's "Utilization of Nonlocality by Biological Systems, my Bohmian back-action theory, the Valentini thesis cited by Josephson, and last, but not least :-), the Hameroff-Penrose "orch OR" theory, is to jump the next step beyond orthodox quantum mechanics to a "post-modern physics" in which the Eberhard-Stapp theorem is transcended. In Bohm's theory the reason that a faster-than-light (FTL), or, a backward-in-time (BIT) signal cannot be locally decoded to get the message is the fragility in the quantum potential Q which corresponds to Bohr's "uncontrollable quantum randomness". This can be traced to the unitary conservation of probability current and the Born interpretation which are explicitly violated in most, but not all, of the new theories I cited above. Therefore, in accord with Josephson's grand vision of "the biological utilization of nonlocality", we will be able to explain ESP, especially precognitive remote viewing, with a generalized or post-modern extension of EPR. This is obvious in the Bohmian model I propose because the feedback-control loop between the "thought-like" pilot wave and its attached "rock-like" beable, absent in orthodox quantum mechanics, introduces a self-organizing dissipation (as in Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures) in which probability current is no longer locally conserved in configuration space. So all bets are off as far as the Eberhard-Stapp theorem is concerned. It is no longer relevant, because one of its main premises is conservation of probability current. The quantum potential Q is made robust, stabilized by the feedback-control loop from the combined action of the -grad Q nonlocal contextual quantum force on thought on brain, with the direct nonunitary back-action of brain on thought. Thus, the formerly uncontrollable quantum randomness of Penrose's "R" is now controlled or "orchestrated" in a very transparent way not at all easily seen in the Hameroff-Penrose way of formulating the problem.

The remote viewing program conducted by Hal Puthoff* and later by Ed May* had many stunning sessions in which accurate details of a site were described. For instance, Russell Targ* describes a remote viewing session for which the viewer was only given geographic coordinates. The viewer described the following: A huge crane with eight wheels rolled on tracks and could pass over a building which was underneath the crane, between the tracks. Inside the building a 60-foot metal sphere was being assembled, by welding together pieces shaped like sections of an orange peel.

The site was a secret laboratory in the USSR, and the presence of the crane was confirmed by satellite. The project to construct the 60-foot welded sphere was later also confirmed.

But, while many of the remote viewing sessions gave accurate information, such as above, there was never any way to know which sessions were the accurate ones.

Paul Easton said (posting to QUANTUM-D, 7/23/96),

Quoting from a posting he made earlier:

5- As a nonlocal effect EPR entanglement is a prima facie candidtate to explain ESP like effects.

5a- It is true that although these quantum effects propagate faster-than- light, neither qm theory nor experiment supports the possibility of communicating faster than light. To do so would open the door to paradox. However, the unreliable nature of ESP might a allow it to avoid paradox.

Easton's argument from time paradox is false, as is clearly explained by Kip Thorne in Black Holes and Time Warps in his discussion of Igor Novikov's "global consistency". There are a lot of papers on this in Physical Review D.

And on 7/23/96:

... one might suppose that ESP can occur only if it cannot quite be observed, i.e. if it is inherently unreliable in an experimental context.

But even an unreliable signal is a signal, and quantum nonlocality, as presently understood in physics, precludes sending information by a signal. Unreliability doesn't get around that problem.

Yes, that's absolutely correct, Jean. Pretty soon we will have precognitive quantum computing chips as reliable as a modern Intel Pentium Pro. Indeed, it is precisely this reproducible "precognition" found in the DAT data ( e.g. emay.html) that explains Penrose's conjecture that "strong AI" is wrong and that human understanding is "nonalgorithmic".

* Almost the entire issue of *Journal of Scientific Exploration*, > 10(1), 1996, is devoted to the topic of remote viewing.

See Jack Sarfatti right now on digital TV on the World Wide Web if you have Netscape 2.0 on Win 95 or NT. Get the vdolive and Amber plug ins and then get the VDO Lecture and the Amber versions. You can also see the .pdf Amber version with any form of Acrobat Reader.

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