Jack Sarfatti

These developments have been supported by a summer research grant from the Internet Science Education Project, a 501©(3) Educational Corporation.

The foundations of orthodox quantum mechanics, in the Bohm-Vigier version, appear to assume that the quantum fluctuations of a beable at one time have no influence on its fluctuations at another time [1]. This is formulated by stating that the orthodox quantum fluctuation for a beable is maximally random and uncontrollable. This uncontrollablity, i.e., the absence of back-action, allows for the conservation of the pilot-wave's Born probability current in the configuration space of its attached beable whose motion it guides, but is not guided by in this approximation. Furthermore, the temporal autocorrelation of a fluctuation of the beable, at one time multiplied by its fluctuation at another time, is a delta function of the two times [2]. Therefore, the orthodox beable fluctuations at one time are independent of all other fluctuations at other times. This statement is examined in this research program.

The essential physical condition for unitary time evolution, with total probability conserved in time, is that the pilot-wave, through its quantum potential Q, acts on its attached beable with no direct back-action of its beable on it. That is, the orthodox quantum potential is Aristotle's "unmoved mover". The boundary conditions on the wave function and the interaction Hamiltonian represent the outside or "non-self" effects of the other environmental beables. What we are talking about here is the reflexive self-effect. Indeed, the infinite renormalizations of orthodox quantum field theory may simply be an artifact of using a truncated form of the more complete post-quantum theory. One of us (Jack Sarfatti) remembers that Feynman called renormalization a "shell game" and said that the "great scandal" of modern theoretical physics was that no one could do better than he had done. Renormalization is, of course, perturbation theory, which will not work for the quantum gravity theory required to get us to the stars and beyond.

The uncontrollability and maximal randomensss of quantum processes, stressed by Bohr in his debate with Einstein, can be traced to this strange asymmetry. A similar asymmetry, or anomaly, prompted Maxwell to introduce the displacement current, unifying electricity, magnetism and light, and Einstein to unify space with time and mass with energy. Now we are unifying mind with matter. This was Bohm's greatest discovery that grew out of his discussions with Einstein at Princeton.

It was Eugene Wigner who first tried to restore the symmetry between mind and matter. Wigner was trapped in Bohr's epistemological explanation of the meaning of quantum mechanics, consequently, he did not get very far. Wigner suggested that "the von-Neumann cut" of the Copenhagen interpretation was not really arbitrary, but happened when consciousness collapsed the wave function. Consciousness was not defined physically by Wigner. How the mind influences matter is an easy problem within the Bohm-Vigier ontological intepretation of orthodox quantum mechanics provided that one recognizes that the quantum potential field of active information is "thoughtlike" in contrast to its attached beable, which is "rocklike" matter (including classical fields). The terms "thoughtlike" and "rocklike" come from Henry Stapp's book, Matter, Mind and Quantum Mechanics. Robert Jahn, of the Princeton PEAR laboratory tried to use a watered-down version of this idea in a metaphorical way. He did not succeed, because, again like Wigner, Jahn was trapped in Bohr's too narrow conceptual epistemological explanation of quantum reality. The hard problem is not how mind influences matter, but, rather, how matter influences mind. This brings us to spontaneously self-organizing post-quantum physics.

The program to formalize the notion of back-action in quantum mechanics, otherwise known as post-quantum mechanics, is based on the idea that the traditional epistemological statistical foundations of quantum mechanics need to be reexamined from the Bohm-Vigier ontological perspective. Back-action is the hypothesis, advanced by one of us, (Jack Sarfatti), that the quantum pilot wave and its attached particle, and/or classical gauge field configuration (i.e., "beable"), can exist in a self-organizing feedback-control loop that is fundamentally sentient. Sentience is the immediate inner felt property of our awareness that defines what we are. Therefore, post-quantum mechanics is the convergence of man's quest for self-knowledge breaking down the barriers between science and other parts of culture.

The individual quantum system, i.e., beable plus pilot wave, is self-guided through the active information channels the system may pass through. This suggests that, contrary to orthodox quantum mechanics, the fluctuating post-quantum potential of active information influencing, and simultaneously being influenced by, its attached beable, at one time, has a memory and intent that influences, and is also influenced by, its fluctuations at both earlier and later times in a globally self-consistent controllable way. This is the same kind of global self-consistency that Kip Thorne describes in his popular book, Black Holes and Time Warps. Fred Alan Wolf has shown, in detail, how the backward-in-time "earlier" influence is detectable in Libet's brain-wave experimental data. Roger Penrose first pointed out this phenomenon. Reports of "precognitive remote viewing "by Puthoff and Targ as well as the Princeton PEAR laboratory may be additional evidence for this idea.

The motivation for this hypothesis is that self-organizing post-quantum effects are necessary in large-scale complex sentient systems, i.e., the Gell-Mann "IGUS" (Information Gathering Utilization System). This is targeted to biological systems where robust macroscopic quantum effects may play the key role in the purely physical phenomenon of consciousness . If this is the case, then part of the information associated with these systems is what Bohm calls "active" and "implicate". In the case of consciousness, Stapp argues that the integral wholeness of consciousness requires quantum mechanics. A classical mechanical approach means that consciousness is generated by local machines that interact in a "nearest neighbor" fashion, e.g., cellular automata. This "local classical machines" point of view has difficulties, i.e., the "binding problem", in explaining the sense of wholeness that is a qualitative property of consciousness. However, if these classical machines are replaced by nonlocally entangled quantum switches, i.e., "Eccles gates", in a macroscopicaly-stabilized coherent quantum-computing superposition of classically different switching network configurations, then the binding problem has a natural solution.

David Deutsch, in his new book The Fabric of Reality, argues for an inter-dimensional (in Vallee's sense) "multi-verse" in which the classically distinct configurations co-exist in parallel universes. This is compatible with the objective reality of the different branches of the De Broglie-Bohm-Vigier pilot wave, which does the actual massively parallel computing. The beable, influenced by the recombined branches, is simply the way in which the output solution to the quantum computation is detected at the classical level. The basic idea is that the mind-brain complex adaptive system is an intrinsically sentient post-quantum non-algorithmic biocomputer. We are able to function with inner-feels because natural selection has provided a "Rube Goldberg" mechanism that prevents our biocomputers from decohering the environment for long enough periods of time.

(Note this part will be expanded in future versions)

"... detecting an interference phenomenon always involves setting up an appropriate interaction between all the variables that have been different in the universes that contribute to the interference, The more interacting particles are involved, therefore, the harder it tends to be to engineer the interaction that would display the interference -- that is, the result of the computation. Among the many technical difficulties of working at the level of a single atom or single electron, one of the most important is that of preventing the environment from being affected by the different interfering sub-computations. For if a group of atoms is undergoing an interference phenomenon, and they differentially affect other atoms in the environment, then the interference can no longer be detected by measurements of the original group alone, and the group is no longer performing any useful quantum computation. This is called decoherence. ... it is the effect of the quantum computation on the outside world that causes decoherence. Thus, the race is on to engineer sub-microscopic systems in which information-carrying variables interact among themselves, but affect their environment as little as possible."

David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality, pp213-4

This sounds like ecological Buddhism! J

The argument for quantum back-action is that the quantum wave of the mind would need to be self-directed. It needs to be self-directed in order to control and manage the non-self decoherence brought on by its effect on the heat bath or environment. The self-organizing post-quantum potential-beable system must integrate itself with the classical Shannon information associated with neuronal action potentials and the chemical messenger autocatalytic self-organizing molecular networks of the brain and body, (e.g. the immune systems). The implicate information of the post-quantum IGUS system is integrated into the explicate information of the classical macroscopic world, or Shannon information of the classical brain states, in what Bohm and Hiley call a "two-way" process.

The nonlocality property of orthodox quantum mechanics can put widely separated beable switches into instantaneous connection. This gives a nonlocal unity to the framework of consciousness that appears to give the sense of wholeness that consciousness qualitatively has. It can certainly explain the wonderful global coordination, analogous to a Corps de Ballet, of living systems. However, Eberhard's theorem of orthodox quantum mechanics precludes instantaneous nonlocal communication between these spatially separated switches in a preferred frame of reference. The preferred frame has been shown by Bohm, Hiley and Vigier to be compatible with the classical predictions of special relativity under appropriate conditions. Bohm and Vigier identify the preferred frame with the Hubble flow of the standard cosmological model of the expanding universe from the big bang. The operational definition of the preferred state of rest is where the cosmic blackbody radiation is isotropic. The hypothesis is that the quantum potentials act instantaneously in that global cosmological frame. There is actually no disagreement here with the actual experimental tests of special relativity, (i.e., time dilation, mass-energy equivalence, Doppler, aberration etc.). Remember these tests are classical where the quantum potential is too small to be relevant to the test. Vigier apparently made the claim, at the recent conference at York University, that the Faraday "unipolar generator" from 1832 can directly detect the Hubble flow.

(Note the last remark is tentative. I (Jack Sarfatti) have to check the preprint Vigier gave me.)

Post-quantum mechanics will allow nonlocal communication. It evades Eberhard's theorem which is a consequence of the uncontrollable random quantum flluctuations, in the absence of spontaneous self-organization. The orthodox quantum potential is "fragile". In contrast, the post-quantum potential is "robust". The uncontrollable randomness of orthodox quantum mechanics precludes it as a complete explanation for the physical phenomenon of the inner-felt quality of consciousness. One of us (Jack Sarfatti) postulates that the controllable robust post-quantum potential of active information is intrinsically sentient in the sense described by David Chalmers in the December, 1995 Scientific American. Bohm's "active information" is different from Shannon's classical information based on the idea of entropy.

Many "consciousness pundits" are of the opinion that there is as yet no experimental evidence that consciousness, or any biological process, is involved with quantum mechanics. Frohlich advanced the hypothesis that microtubules will posses coherent quanta associated with their electric dipole modes of oscillation. There is experimental evidence to support this hypothesis.

Another promising approach is the technique created by Creon Levit of NASA Ames Computational Nanotechnology Group. Levit . Levit and one of us (Jack Sarfatti) have shown how Bader's quantum chemistry methods agree with the Bohm-Vigier mechanics. It is now possible to build a simulation of a simplified version of the microtubule architecture molecule by molecule. If post-quantum mechanics is sound, it will then be possible to manufacture a "Q-chip" with natural consciousness.

On 10 Sep 97 at 16:50, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

David Deutsch, in The Fabric of Reality, also mentions that although quantum computers can easily break classical RSA encryption, quantum cryptography, using uncontrollable orthodox nonlocality, is untappable.

Jack: Such a post-quantum disentangler would be nonunitary permitting nonlocal communication, i.e., local decoding of messages held in the nonlocal connection without the need to cross-correlate data from the sender with that of the receiver via conventional luminal or subluminal signals. Eberhard' theorem shows this to be impossible in orthodox quantum mechanics.

The "deformation" of Hilbert space is analogous to the bending or curving of spacetime. The latter is how general relativity emerged from special relativity. The former is how sentient post-quantum mechanics emerges from non-sentient quantum mechanics.

Appendix A- Mathematics of Post-Quantum Mechanics A

Appendix B- Post-Quantum Biology

1) J. L. Doob, Stochastic Processes, 1953, Wiley, New York.

2) M, Sargent, M, Scully, W, Lamb, Laser Physics, 1974, Addison-Wesly, Reading, Mass.

3) D, Bohm, B.J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe, 1993, Routledge, London.

4) A.J. Lichtenberg, M.A. Lieberman, Regular and Stochastic Motion, 1983, Springer Verlag, New York.

5) N. Jacobson, Lie Algebras, 1962, Dover, New York.

M. Enock, J.-M. Schwartz, 1992, Kac Algebras and Duality of Locally Compact Groups," Springer Verlag, New York