You are more than data to me sweetie pie :)

I like your new FB pic. Whose hand is that?

Clau

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Thanks Clau, U2. It is Tom's hand I think, either that or Ted's.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Well, I must say that I am surprised to see that this conversation got out to seven pages without my ever hearing about it, but oh well, it's fine. (A lot of the discussion doesn't seem very relevant to my emails anyways!) Basically, I am here because it was my first time googling myself. I am vaguely surprised at how many Chris Drosts there are!

Points relevant to this discussion:

(1) A lot of the mathematical notation has been garbled in the above email; apparently either Tom's email client or his message board software cannot handle unicode. If your browser and fonts can handle UTF-8 encoding for special characters, and you want to follow basically all of the ideas from the core outward, I have typed up something much more extensive here:

https://github.com/drostie/essay-seeds/blob/master/physics/doubleslit.md

The above will introduce you to Dirac notations, density matrices, and the double slit experiment. Unfortunately it may not be 100% accessible at this point, which is why I have it filed in my github account as an "essay seed" -- it might one day germinate into something much more fruitful, but now it is kind of in a "raw form." (I have tried to specially polish it since I am linking it here now, though. But it is still not a totally-lay explanation.)

(2) Tom described me as a physicist. I feel uncomfortable with this because I do not have any formal degrees from any institution in any branch of physics. I spent three years in the Applied and Engineering Physics department at Cornell University and am now trying to complete a Master's degree in Applied Physics at the Technical University Delft, in the Netherlands.

(3) Tom summarized our email exchange by saying: This is at least somewhat misleading. I was trying in that email (and in the above link) to show Tom the effects of decoherence theory, which is actually much more recent than the 1920s idea, and properly came into its own only in the 1970s with the work of Zurek. It is not an assumption but a prediction inherent in the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics.

(4) Tom also stated I guess this is a matter that I should take up more privately with him, but I think that it could have pretty dramatic impact on the MBT. The problem which this little almost-nitpicky point raises -- "you don't have to actually measure the slit the double-slit photon went through, rotating it by ± 45 degrees depending on which slit it went through is enough" -- is the sort of problem which makes it very hard to take any consciousness-relative theory of everything seriously.

That is, if one is going to say "we live in the Matrix," this little point means that the Matrix is actually keeping track of all those variables which we aren't so concerned about. The Matrix cares that the photon was rotated! We didn't even have to observe its rotation with a big macroscopic apparatus to tell the Matrix "hey, you, I want to observe this thing over here"; the Matrix is keeping track of all of these little variables.

In other words, our Sun is a typical star with a power output of 4 * 10^26 J/s. It's a yellow star, so it's emitting photons of, say L ~500 nm, which gives a typical photon energy of E = h c / L = 4 * 10^-19 J. This means that every second, the Sun spits out 10^45 photons. (We can even see that the Sun is essentially a quantum beast by looking at the spectrum of that light, which is a blackbody spectrum -- Planck's initial motivation for quantum mechanics, and his basis for calculating his constant h.) I am not even going to consider the fact that there are over a hundred billion stars in the galaxy.

What matters is simply this: The polarization of a photon is in quantum mechanics a nice little 2-level system, can be up-down or left-right or some superposition between the two. If we can get our photons from anywhere, and the Matrix is keeping track of the states of all photons while performing proper quantum manipulations, then we have a huge problem.

The set of basis elements which quantum mechanics needs in order to describe this system is therefore 2^(10^45). If you thought 10^45 photons was big, you cannot imagine this number. In scientific notation it would be, to five significant figures,

2.8980 * 10^(301,029,995,663,981,195,213,738,894,724,493,026,768,189,881).

So unless someone decided to make a computer with that many circuit elements in it, quantum mechanics would have to break down every second when considering the photons coming out from the Sun -- the computer just couldn't handle them all.

(5) In addition, I think that the lesson you're trying to derive from quantum measurements is something like "the universe is consciousness-relative," which is the only reason I can see for connecting quantum measurement with a virtual reality idea. But quantum measurements have many properties which wouldn't strike you as consciousness-relative. One of them is discussed in the above notes: you can, in general, postpone any measurement until the end of an experiment, trading any classical operations done with that classical bit into quantum operations done with that qubit. (The reverse of this is actually what makes quantum teleportation look surprising. It doesn't look so impressive when you make controlled-Z and controlled-X gates from one qubit to another, but the idea that you can move the measurements earlier than these operations and just do them classically by sending two classical bits makes it seem very surprising indeed.)

I mean, if you want to be a proper theory of anything, you should be making predictions -- that's just how scientific theories work. I mean, something as simple as "the observable universe might only have 10^80 particles and we might guess that even if you had an entire observable universe of circuit elements for each of those particles, you'd only have 10^160 or so circuit elements -- bottom line, the the computers which simulate our reality probably don't have more than 10^(301) elements, therefore quantum effects cannot happen in any system with more than 1 thousand parts" would be a good starting place. I know of at least one paper which entangled ~100,000 Rubidium atoms in an optical lattice. I'm sure that only scratches the surface.

(6) I wish to clarify the above by saying that I don't pretend to understand the MBT, and from my discussions with Tom, I simply came away with the understanding that it was not a theory of anything in particular -- that is, I came away with the impression that there were no physical tests to be made of his ideas. Perhaps that was a wrong impression from me; I don't know. I just gathered that it was a virtual reality theory motivated by quantum weirdness, and I sought to correct some misunderstandings of that quantum weirdness, so as to motivate a better inquiry into the whole picture.

Welcome to the MBT Forum, Chris.

I'm not ashamed to admit it, I've googled myself, too :)

Hi Chris:

What a surprise. I am glad you posted this interesting information. I selected the phrases above, as I agree. MBT thinks it is only necessary to compute in details if it is likely that a Consciousness (like human consciousness) is going to look at results related to an event. But in any case if observations increase, the virtual reality needs to approach to having to do more calculations to satisfy that demand.

Do you have any alternative to the virtual reality theory? Even if you think it is not a virtual reality, something needs to generate all the information with the big combination numbers you posted. Reality by itself is impressive, so imagine that the "behind the scenes" can be even way more impressive.

Hope this can convince Tom to research further, and consider what scientific evidence brings.

Hope you keep posting and Tom reads these comments. I also wrote emails to Tom regarding my opinion related to QM. I agree with you that the variable that affects results is the degree of decoherence (0 to 100% and all in between) and not that "whether we know" introduced by Ross Rhodes that now is nowhere to be found.

Good to meet you, and hope to see more open minded and skepticism like you bring.

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Hi Chris, and as Lynda said welcome to Tom's MBT forums to your very own thread. MBT is a model of Reality that is calling Consciousness a nonphysical digital information system that we are all parts of having this seemingly physical experience here, but that it is actually just data streaming to us each which we are interpreting into what we think is solid reality, but it is just an illusion like Einstein thought, or a Virtual Reality as Tom finsihed up Einstein's desire for a TOE with. MBT is a TOE, and one with much use. It goes beyond the physical. Welcome again.
Love to you and yours,
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Welcome to MBT Chris. I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I have to admit I did not understand 100% of your post as I do not know as much physics, but I did not see anything you wrote that would contradict MBT.

Chris and/or Claudio: My understanding is that decoherence doesn't explain the measurement problem, nor does it attempt to. I think MBT does.

Chris, your interesting calculation in (4) just reinforces the concepts provided by MBT even more. The underlying "computer behind the scenes" doesn't calculate all of the information deterministically - it relies on probabilities, history, and the rule-set to provide the data to consciousness on an as-needed basis. The rest is wasteful as you've clearly shown. Now I have to admit, this is a concept I still wrestle with in my mind (I don't believe it) on an intellectual level, let alone anything deeper.

_________________
Mike

Chris:

Excellent work. I checked what you wrote on that page. Very clear. Hope Tom realizes his error as you explain very well here:



Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Mike:

In the quote from Chris above it is well explained and agreeing with the evidence. Tom should follow what Chris explained well. This does not significanly change the MBT model. It is still a virtual reality (IMO) and still Consciousness is fundamental. It needs adjustments only in how TBC (the computer behind the scenes) responds and gives an answer (response to entanglement for example is the response from TBC, and decoherence effects are part of the rule-set of the virtual reality) in a double slit QM experiment.

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

When you are dreaming, is there a "matrix" "keeping track of all these little variables"? Is dream reality consciousness-relative?

Thanks to the people who welcomed me. I hope I haven't brought too much fire here. ^_^;;

AeroLynda123: The thought honestly didn't occur to me until my professor told me that he got a blog visitor from Hungary who was googling my name (I had left a comment on his blog.) He thought this was very peculiar and told me about it.

soprano: There is an atheist legend about some professor who was giving a lecture on planets and gravitation and so forth, and some kind old lady told him at the end of the lecture, "this was all interesting, but you are so horribly wrong! Everyone in my religion knows that the world spins on the back of a giant TURTLE." The scientist thought about this while the room seemed to buzz in anticipation, then smugly replied, "I just have to ask you one question, ma'am: ...what does the turtle stand on?" The kind old lady replied, "Oh, you think you're so clever, young man, but it is no use: it is turtles all the way down."

I like to think about turtles when I think about virtual reality. I think the fundamental appeal of virtual reality theories is that, by modeling the physics of the universe as a computation performed by a computer, we can do those computations on a computer which is much much smaller than the observable universe -- thus the computer is 'simpler', in an Occam's Razor sense, than believing that all of these subatomic particles actually really exist somewhere.

Is it turtles all the way down? If this simulating computer is much much smaller than our observable universe -- let's say that it's merely the size of Jupiter or so. Then what would happen if we built a replica inside of our reality? Could the external Jupiter computer simulate the internal Jupiter computer? If so, then we should expect that it is even simpler to assume that the external computer also exists in a simpler virtual reality, which presumably exists in a simpler one still. Taken in reverse, there seems to be a simple boundary to 'turtles all the way down', something like 'any simulator is at least as complicated as its simulation.'

Beyond that, there is a slight grain of truth to the virtual reality ideas which I think is worthwhile to look at: since our perceptions are removed slightly from reality, as evidenced by simple optical illusions and so forth, it might some day be respectable to imagine that, in addition to creating our conscious experience, our brain also creates a world of subjective perceptions, based on the objective perceptions which our eyes and toes make, for us to experience and interpret that data consciously. Now, this has a lot of criticisms to face down, especially the ones provided by Bishop Berkeley when he was criticizing similar ideas out of Descartes' mouth. But it helps for the subjectification of the universe to happen as close as possible to each subject within.

msagansk: The huge problem that I was trying to express is that quantum mechanics is *very* hard to compute. The key problem is that superpositions of two states are allowed. So whereas in classical physics I could store 4 bits with 4 bits -- 0110, for example -- in general, quantum mechanics requires that we keep track of probabilities for 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, ... -- sixteen in total. For 20 bits, we have to keep track of just over a million probabilities.

If we observe quantum mechanics is a 100nm x 100 nm device, as we do today, and the atoms are about 0.1 nm wide, then there are about 1000 x 1000 = 1 million atoms, and the number of probabilities you have to keep track of is 2^(1 million), which is a 1 followed by 300,000 zeroes, give or take a thousand zeroes. This is what we need for a classical computer to handle the quantum mechanics of a million particles. We are now interested in building precisely configurable quantum computers, so that we can simulate these things without all of that mess. A computer could write down a 1 followed by 300,000 zeroes, but it couldn't count anywhere close to it, much less store that many probabilities.

Dante: if I had to guess, yes, there is a "matrix" when you are dreaming; no, it is not keeping track of all of those little variables; and yes, dreams are pretty consciousness-relative.

Of course, I don't routinely do scientific experiments in my dreams to test the consistency of the dream world. In fact, my dreams are pretty explicitly inconsistent, what with me flying and all. :P

Chris,

The 'turtles all the way down' has been a running joke here. However we don't consider it, Tom does not describe reality in MBT as VRs all the way down. Rather there is just description of NPMR type VRs and PMR type VRs. I will repeat a very compact description of the layer under these VRs, the reality cells of Consciousness Space, that I recently gave a new member to the board, probably with some insertions. I think it likely to be a very available jump start into this information for you with your background.

Within this level of of reality cells and Consciousness Space is where all of the action really exists. It is where we exist as IUOCs as the acronym that Tom created. It is there that The Big Computer generates our VRs with data streams as sent to us over the Reality Wide Web which distributes data to us and carries our return free will choices for our interactions. Here reside the turtles. Here I will insert something which I already sent to you so that others can follow this.

Tom's description of how TBC computer functions to generate a VR is not however based upon the approach that you are describing in the sense that the QM world of probabilities underlies and forms the basis for any possible generation of this if it were a VR. Your rejection of the concept that this is a computer simulated VR on that basis being impossible is not something that we would disagree with. Instead, Tom describes the VR as generated based upon first probabilities and secondly probabilities as applied to fractal levels of our VR. Since the purpose of the VR experience is considered to be the interactions in which we engage with other IUOCs via our virtual selves as we are represented here in the VR, the VR is generated not from the bottom QM layer up but from the 'center' fractal levels which we can perceive directly under the rule set that governs this VR. It was not created for the future employment of physicists to ferret out that rule set in detail but for the interactions of all conscious creatures participating in the VR. Those QM levels and astronomical levels of reality are implicit within the probability calculations of TBC, but they are not calculated in detail, sub atomic particle by sub atomic particle. So for the vast history of conscious entities, what needs to be calculated is the developing probabilities of this VR, as opposed to any details, and what can be perceived by conscious entities. That means that unless you are a microscopic entity with a degree of consciousness but a very limited decision space where you have some small volume of water rendered in detail for your experience and interaction, a pond with dirty water in it is just a pond with dirty water in it. Until microscopes are invented, as far as humans are concerned, that is just dirty water and drinking it may result in illness based upon a probability basis, not specifically on the presence of particular microscopic beasties that do you harm. The same goes for astronomical dimensions. They are just lights in the sky until telescopes and lenses are invented. There are extensive discussions of this type of probability based calculation and how it reduces calculation requirements on the BB. There is no reason in this approach to generating a VR for each sub atomic particle to be calculated out in detail. You don't even have to keep track of each grain of sand, unless you are examining it up close and personal and it makes a difference that a given grain of sand is kept in detailed observation. This is an entirely different approach to generating a VR than you appear to be considering and it may take you some time to wrap your mind around it.

Since I don't think you have returned to see this yet, I decided it would be worthwhile to edit it to add some references now. I decided that it would be logical and that there were other reasons as well in what Tom had said about the generation of VRs by TBC to think more in depth about what I called the Virtual Reality Rendering Engine as a sub function of TBC which specifically collapsed the specific observations out of probability for conscious entities and produced the detailed and modified for a specific and individualized viewpoint for a VR experience. Here is a link to a reference thread on this subject: MBT and the Theoretical Basis of Quantum Mechanics: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2453 Here is another reference thread that you might find of interest: Models of and Modeling of Reality: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3696

You might look at the bottom third of the index page for the BB to find a lot of background and reference type information. Not complete and perfect, but of some value. If you don't feel that you have the time to investigate, I can give you some specific references linking to discussions of VRs and some of these other aspects of Tom's model. Let me know if and how you wish to proceed further.

Ted

Ted said it well so I don't have much to add but this quote from Tom:

"That we in PMR find a probabilistic description of potential states of a complex system to be immensely challenging says much about our limitations but nothing at all about the capability of the larger consciousness system to handle the problem with ease."

viewtopic.php?p=11864#p11864 (that whole thread is very enlightening about this issue)

_________________
Mike

Chris: The thought honestly didn't occur to me until my professor told me that he got a blog visitor from Hungary who was googling my name (I had left a comment on his blog.) He thought this was very peculiar and told me about it.

Claudio: I think things happen for a reason. You and me coming to this board is not just "random". You may play an important role in trying to divert towards a better course for the future of MBT.

Chris: Is it turtles all the way down? If this simulating computer is much much smaller than our observable universe -- let's say that it's merely the size of Jupiter or so. Then what would happen if we built a replica inside of our reality? Could the external Jupiter computer simulate the internal Jupiter computer? If so, then we should expect that it is even simpler to assume that the external computer also exists in a simpler virtual reality, which presumably exists in a simpler one still. Taken in reverse, there seems to be a simple boundary to 'turtles all the way down', something like 'any simulator is at least as complicated as its simulation.'

Claudio: It does not seem to be an infinite number of levels. Once you go to the next level up (NPMR), you see that the environment allows you to manipulate information easier and faster. If you didn't, Chris, I recommend that you read the Trilogy. The model is very good, and you can add some valuable ideas after reading it. In the model, Tom describes that Consciousness is capable of modifying itself and produce and almost infinite number of bits of information.

Chris: The huge problem that I was trying to express is that quantum mechanics is *very* hard to compute. The key problem is that superpositions of two states are allowed. So whereas in classical physics I could store 4 bits with 4 bits -- 0110, for example -- in general, quantum mechanics requires that we keep track of probabilities for 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, ... -- sixteen in total. For 20 bits, we have to keep track of just over a million probabilities.

Claudio: Why can't you just store the parameters of the probability wave functions to fit the data. The probabilities don't need to be fully stored if they can be reproduced by functions (routines). You start from a certain event and calculate the probabilities moving forward. I think that's how the future probabilities and other databases work. I mentioned this to Tom in the NC gathering (it is taped) and he agreed.

Chris: If we observe quantum mechanics is a 100nm x 100 nm device, as we do today, and the atoms are about 0.1 nm wide, then there are about 1000 x 1000 = 1 million atoms, and the number of probabilities you have to keep track of is 2^(1 million), which is a 1 followed by 300,000 zeroes, give or take a thousand zeroes.

Claudio: Yes, but why do you need to store each single one? You can just "generate" them using CPU. You can store the "most significant" scenarios that cause important events. This is mentioned by Tom.

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Claudio please stop trying to "divert", if you want your own Model put forth start your own site, right? Link to this one if you chose.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.