Slide show on post-quantum physics.

Bill Gates and I made the same really dumb error.

In haste in email I wrongly wrote

"The coherence of quantum computation permits factorization of primes in polynomial time."

In fact I stupidly made this same sloppy error three times in the same email message.

Robert Flower wrote in reply:

"Wrong. Think about it."

I replied "Yes, thanks Bob, I meant "factorizing integers into prime factors". Thanks for catching that bad goof! I was typing too fast. :-)" I repeated the error two more times.

".... If the naked conjecture is true, quantum random computers may fail to be able to factorize primes in polynomial time when they make the phase transition to post-quantum nonrandom sentience. Because, then they will be exactly like us, they will have inner experiences of qualia and we can't factorize primes inside our heads intuitively."

Bob Flower wrote:

"There is a good reason for this. Think about it.

Hint:"

"The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption] would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers."

-- Bill Gates from "The Road Ahead," p. 265.

I then wrote to Bob Flower

"My God! Are you kidding? You are pulling my leg-- right? Did Bill Gates really say the same incredibly stupid thing I did earlier today? I mean what I said before was as dumb as someone not getting Groucho Marx's question of "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" correct. Now my careless error is beginning to look like some kind of interesting paranormal precognitive loop in time. In other words, it's all your fault that I made that remarkably stupid goof in the past! :-) Your message to me now acted back in time, via nonlocal communication, to cause me to make the error - retroactive mind control. So I have a good excuse - you! What is Bill Gates's excuse? I mean he has that fancy science advisor who worked with Hawking and an army of microserfs to correct his typos. :-)

Thanks again for catching it. :-)

I did check the Gates quote. He did make the same error I did. Gates's book is co-authored with a Ph.D. physicist Myhrvold ? who worked with Hawking. So it is really odd that all the King's Men at Microsoft and at the publisher, Viking, did not catch that elementary typographical error, and that I also made it three times, when I know perfectly well that integers have a unique decomposition into primes which are a kind of fingerprint for them. Of course, a prime by definition, cannot be factored. No, what is interesting about this error is a kind of paranormal synchroncity in Jung's sense.

Here is the corrected version of that originally curiously flawed email message.

The coherence of quantum computation permits factorization of large integers into primes in polynomial time instead of exponential time. This could destroy classical computer encryption security. One has to be able to controllably manipulate quantum dynamical degrees of freedom while, at the same time, preventing environmentally induced decoherence. This is standard orthodox quantum Q -> P physics. In addition, not yet anticipated in the standard discussions, is the new post-quantum factor of complexity. That is, when the complexity of the computing system, basically the number N of entangled q-bits, reaches a certain threshold Nc, the system kicks into a spontaneously self-organizing intrinsically-sentient post-quantum "elemental mind" mode. There is a characteristic self-organization time scale of T/N for what Penrose calls "orch OR" in Shadows of the Mind. T is a very large number on the order of the age of the universe or even larger. Nanopoulos computes it. It is the same T found in the post-quantum GRW model. Let T* be the standard environmentally induced decoherence time. The post-quantum regime is when T/Nc < T*, where T* is sufficiently long. This is my "naked conjecture". If the naked conjecture is true, quantum random computers may fail to be able to factorize integers into primes in polynomial time when they make the phase transition to post-quantum nonrandom sentience. Why? Because, then they will be exactly like us, they will have inner experiences of qualia and we can't factorize large integers inside our heads intuitively. Therefore, sentience may be a disadvantage for certain narrow technological tasks like hacking into a secure computer network.

Gershenfeld and Chuang write: "multiple pulse nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to manipulate the small deviation from equilibrium of the density matrix of an equilibrium ensemble so that it appears to be the density matrix of a much lower dimensional pure state" This is near the thermodynamic branch where fluctuation-dissipation theorem is valid. What happens here when we go to the Prigogine "dissipative structure" region far from the thermodynamic branch. This is where we expect to find sentient post-quantum self-organization. Note that the quantum gravity models of Hawking -Unruh blackhole-surface radiation also use the fluctuation-dissipation theorem near the thermodynamic branch of event horizons. What is a post-quantum dissipative structure like in this case - a sentient star gate or warp drive device?

Nick Herbert, author of Elemental Mind (Dutton) recently wrote:

"One of the facts of life in physics is that we have evolved very high standards for what we mean by "explanation". By these standards we have (Culbertson, Walker, Hameroff, Safatti notwithstanding) absolutely NO EXPLANATION for ordinary consciousness and even less explanation for psi. All models of mind so far are mere airy fairy tales making little or no contact with the facts. It takes courage and imagination to take part in such a pioneering venture and these researchers should be honored for that, but, despite immense efforts, we are about as far as ever from a true science of mind. This is not for lack of trying but because the HARD PROBLEM is truly hard. In light of our immense ignorance anyone who claims that quantum entanglement can "explain psi" is a mere charlatan. Let us not confuse conjecture with fact. The field of mind science is cluttered with conjectures not one of which even remotely touches the phenomena. Because the state of our science is so paltry it is easy to waste time shooting the breeze with buffoons rather than doing real work. When we discover the Grail it will be evident. Let's get off our asses, onto our horses and on with the Quest."

BH suggests that mind and matter find a common origin in Bohm's implicate order. The implicate order is "beyond space-time and takes process as primary". What is "process"? Does it presuppose "time"? Hiley opens with a great quote from Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe" that consciousness is not passive but active "forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another" with "mind inherent in every electron". Consciousness, says Dyson differs "only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call 'chance' when they are made by electrons". Dyson dismisses many-worlds because he thinks that choice is real and not a mere illusion. My Q* <-> P idea is completely consistent with Dyson's idea. Random quantum chance is superceded by non-random post-quantum choice when there is direct back-action from material system point P to the post-quantum potential field Q* that guides P and is shaped by its path X(t) through its configuration space. This is a violation, a distortion of orthodox quantum mechanics. Look at what Edward Teller recently wrote in Science 22 May 1998 about this same problem.

"In a completely deterministic world, what we know of free will in humans is reduced to mere illusion … According to quantum mechanics we cannot exclude the possibility that free will is part of the process by which the future is created. We can think about the creation of the world as incomplete and human beings, indeed all living beings, as making choices left open to probability." p. 1200

Teller is not clear here. He seems to think that free will is possible without a violation of the statistical predictions of quantum theory. He seems to believe in the possibility of a "conscious quantum". Teller dismiss's Bohm's theory with "Attempts have been made to add laws to quantum mechanics to eliminate uncertainty. Such attempts have not only been unsuccessful; they have not even appeared to lead to any interesting results."

Remember that Teller is out of touch with recent developments in Bohm's theory. I spent several hours with him and Yitzak Rabin at Rabbi Pincus Lipner's house about seven years ago when I taught at the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco. Teller is certainly not aware of Brian Josephson's idea on the biological utilization of nonlocality. One of Dennis Sciama's graduate students at Cambridge showed how this is possible if the statistical predictions of quantum theory are distorted. Bohm's theory allows precisely that in a "nonequilibrium" of the hidden variables.

Hiley points out that von Neumann introduced "subjective perception as a necessary feature of quantum mechanics". Wigner then said that "mind is necessary to complete quantum mechanics."

Hiley cites Lockwood (Oxford) who argues for state selection. Again it is not clear if Lockwood proposes state selection as a post-quantum effect that violates quantum theory rather than a loophole inside the window of opportunity of R-collapse the way Ed Teller mistakenly IMHO thinks of it. Hiley writes of Lockwood "He argued that it is consciousness that chooses a state of the observed system in terms of some favored set of observables relevant to the brain system." It is one thing to choose the set of observables. You can do that without violating one-way Q -> P quantum theory. It is quite another thing to choose the actual common eigenstate within that choice of compatible (commuting) observables. That is the post-quantum "orch" of Penrose's "orch OR" that violates quantum mechanics and opens Pandora's Box of paranormal nonlocal communication with precognitive remote viewing etc. IMHO. Hiley says that this state selection idea is more or less shated by Albert and Loewer and Stapp "they all try to explain the collapse of the wave function through some form of intervention of the brain or mind or consciousness in general". Note how vague this all really is, and how Nick Herbert's remark is quite plausible in this context. Hiley then discusses two separate ideas that Penrose puts forward. First that consciousness needs quantum gravity. Second that consciousness needs noncomputability. Penrose then connects the two. Hiley doesn't buy it.

Hiley then turns from the physicists to the neuroscientists. Lashly showed that visual perception and recall are nonlocally distributed across the brain. Does this require nonlocal quantum entanglements directly in the brain's configuration space beyond classical nerve and chemical messenger propagation in ordinary space? Nick Herbert wrongly calls willingness to consider this idea "charlatanry". Hiley then cites Pribram's picture of the mind-brain as analogous to some kind of hologram. It would have to be a hologram of quantum waves in the brain's higher-dimensional configuration space IMHO although one could also picture a more conventional hologram in ordinary space based on the local complex order parameter of the Frohlich mode that is a non-equilibrium version of a Bose-Einstein condensate (Zohar, Marshall). Hiley cites Schempp who somehow uses the Heisenberg algebra that Larry Crowell wants to deform. Symplectic spinors play a role. I am not at all familiar with this path. Hiley then cites Eccles and Margenau "that mental events act like quantum probabilistic fields and can actually change the spatiotemporal activity of the dendritic networks… it is through intention to act that the probability of the fireing of a synapse is changed so as to produce the desired physical movements in the body." Well this is exactly what -GradQ* does do in my Q* <-> P post-quantum theory which clearly violates orthodox quantum theory while reducing to it in the appropriate limiting case when the spontaneous self-organizing time ts is longer than the environmental decoherence time td. But that is only half of the story. One must not only show how mind moves matter, but also how matter moves mind directly in a "self" way to generate consciousness. That is the back-action. The two together make the spontaneously self-organizing feedback-control loop of free will or the intent in Dyson's sense where "consciousness"differs "only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice which we call 'chance' when they are made by electrons."

Let's get to Basil Hiley's bottom line "while it is not possible to conclude that the proposal of the direct intervention of consciousness to explain the 'collapse' of the wave function is without substance, there is very little direct evidence that such a process does actually occur. … such an intervention is not necessary … I would like to propose a different way … we will have to go beyond the present quantum formalism and will almost certainly have to introduce radically new ideas."

Therefore, Hiley agrees with me to the extent that any physical theory of consciousness must be post-quantum beyond quantum theory as presently understood. Teller, Stapp and others are not clear enough about this. Hiley does not agree with me all the way of course. Hiley does not think my Q* <-> P idea is radical enough!

If we think in terms of ordinary one-way Q -> P quantum theory, the ordinary notion of "collapse", called "R" by Roger Penrose, is an illusion. Q is essentially a fitness landscape on which P moves in a gradient vector flow just like in classical mechanics. There are qualitatively new features of form-dependence, intensity independence, nonlocality, objective wholeness (e.g.vigier/slides/vigier.htm )

The Q landscape has basins of attraction for the trajectories X(t) of P that are in 1-1 correspondence with the basis of simultaneous eigenfunctions in Hilbert space for a maximal subalgebra of commuting Hermitian observables selected by the "total experimental arrangement". Now if one is making a quantum-like model for the brain-configuration P, then the basins have to select some how. There is no way to do this in quantum mechanics in any non-adhoc way. One can appeal to Zurek's environmentally selected superselection for decoherence. I will come back to all that. This ambiguity is neatly resolved in post-quantum Q* <-> P because the basins of attraction spontaneously self-organize! Nick Herbert et-al has not even begun to see through my glass darkly at the beauty, power and elegance of what I am suggesting here.