Our rule set, as I understand it, is fixed within TBC. Something never seen before may have to be rendered for the first time, and regularly is. But it exists in potential in the probability wave. Just because we do not know and understand it all does not mean that TBC has to create anything on the fly in terms of the rule set.

Ted

When Tom was explaining the quantum eraser using an example with envelopes and destroying some parts of information, I got more thoughts.

If the experiment is not being observed real-time by any conscious being in this PMR, then most probably there is no need to render the experiment in full details down to the photon level, because the information about the experiment will enter our reality much later. So it seems reasonable that the Big Computer will create the slit detector data and the data of the results later on the fly (depending on a probability for both pieces of information to enter our PMR in some particular order which needs "wave collapsing" to avoid causality problems). During the experiment it is too early to calculate which results will need wave behavior, and which ones will need particle behavior, because if scientists have a free will, they might do anything about the results. So the BC has just wait to the point when the scientists do something with the experiment data. (Of course, the BC is not waiting, according to the ToE, the BC is doing some forward calculations all the time, which reminds me some another game-engine programming technique called "client-side prediction").

Tom said: "information enters our reality and exists there". I assume, the only way the information can enter our PMR, is through conscious interpretation of data. If the data stays on a paper and is never interpreted, there is no information about some fact. If this reality has some conscious entities which are able to interpret the data, then the probability for information to enter PMR is very high. But how high quality consciousness is needed to assume that the information has entered our PMR?

Let's say, scientists keep the slit data and the results and destroy half of the slit data before examining the results. But there is one modification. Before destroying the slit data, the data is shown to a cat (or a dog .. or a fly or a 1 year old child). I guess, the cat is not able to interpret the data, so there is no information - it's just data on a medium (paper). It is even not clear, what kind of data there is at that point - if the BC does not consider the cat to be conscious enough, there might be just a blank list of paper because the BC still waits to see if the screen data becomes information when the chance is high for the slit data to become information (or when the slit data has already become information).

So the question: does the Big Computer consider a cat to be enough qualified for "wave function to collapse"? If it is not true, then there is another problem: the cat has become the media, the data storage for the measurement data. If the cat itself does not understand the data, there is a risk that in the future scientists will find a way to get the data out of the cat's memory. Maybe they'll put the cat in anabiosis and wake up after a hundred years, and then they'll have a device to extract the data. Does this mean that the BC will calculate the probability for all the ways how the measurement data can become meaningful information, and if it can create some problems, then the BC will render the "politically correct" data of the experiment results for the cat to avoid causality conflicts in the future?

If I were the programmer of our PMR, I guess, I would make the results "it was a particle" even in a case when the slit data was burned because there is still a miserable possibility that maybe one day the scientists will find a way to collect ashes and restore the data. For our computers it seems more efficient to render data about a particle which went through some certain slit than to waste resources calculating all the ways in which causality might be in danger.
But that's just my opinion, I have no idea, which solution is more efficient for the Big Computer, maybe rendering data about a photon going through some slit takes more resources than calculating all the probabilities far enough in future.

_________________
In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

:)
much speculation but so far so good - up until the cat comes into play.

Would somehow obtaining knowledge of what some cat saw decades ago constitute the same effect as if the data where still there - to be looked at?

Would that method be sure enough?
I guess it would be hearsay at best - as good as if it was not there at all.

Same would be true for a person with photographic memory but no understanding.
He could later tell anything.
Even if its true - anyone else would have to believe instead of knowing.

The "particle" is shown when we have knowledge about the "path" the "thing" took.
In any other case it is not neccesary to create a particle for us to observe.

Did you have a look at the links to bottomlayer.com yet?

No, I did not know about bottomlayer.com. Thanks, I'll look at it, seems interesting.

About that cat I meant it as using the cat as some trustworthy source of information. Not asking the cat "what did you see" and hoping that it will be honest :D but being able to get the image of that sheet of paper out of the cat's brain. In this aspect the cat is no worse data media than a paper (if we assume that the cat's informational capabilities are not good enough to make "wave function collapse"). The Big Computer has to be sure there is no way we could read today a wave behavior results from the result sheet, and then decades later be able to extract the info out of that cat and find out that actually there was a photon which went through the slit number one.

That also depends on how far in the future the BC calculates before it stops because too many probability errors accumulate.

Anyways, it's just a speculation, as you said :)

_________________
In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

That is what I meant too.
Is it a trustworthy source? In any case?
It is not wholly about the piece of paper showing some results.
It is about the information and its presence.
We also rely on the credibility of the scientists who did that experiment, since we did not do it ourselves.
But it is reproducible at any time.

The experiment here is just a thought-experiment.
There is a real one - the delayed choice quantum eraser.

The link is in this post on the previous page of this thread.
The first link there - The Reality Program - is also very good background info.

Then I guess actually there is no way we ourselves can get real information, we always have to trust someone or something: we trust scientists, scientists trust detectors (in the quantum eraser case) or their eyes or a paper .. or a cat.

To be 100% sure about that photon, we ourselves should become that very photon and experience going through one of the slits. But despite the inability to experience this directly, still the BC takes care about the rules, so our trust to the physical reality does not get completely broken.

_________________
In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

I think TBC is not so contorted in its thinking as all of this. All of this as Tom describes it comes down to when does information exist within the PMR VR simulation, in which case it is maintained consistently. If information is not present in the PMR VR simulation, it is maintained as probability only and will be rendered from probability at any later time that it is require, based entirely on probability as there is no consistency problem.

The main thing that seems to not be clear in your thinking about this and is quickly and readily lost track of is that none of this exists as a physical reality. Neither you nor me nor the girl next door. What ever you experience exists only as probabilities calculated in TBC and rendered for you, blended with the interactions of other IUOCs and passed to your IUOC as that experience. The brain of a cat, which you propose as a possible data storage media, exists no more than you or your brain unless it is observed by an IUOC. More typical recording media likewise exists only within TBC which maintains its consistency or not, determined only by what is necessary to maintain the consistency of the PMR VR simulation for participating IUOCs. By typical recording media, I mean anything from paper to film to magnetic recording media of whatever kind. None of it has a physical reality. It is all just bookkeeping entries in TBC and is kept there as well or as or better than our PMR computers do as they are also simulations within TBC.

This is all if you are thinking based upon the My Big TOE model of reality. If you wish to reject that and go back to considering things strictly physical, then you can drop back to the bafflement of the typical QM physicist as to how it really works, speculate between a dozen or more theoretical models of reality and as the saying goes among quantum physicists, shut up and calculate. There is a way to think through any one of your speculations but it is worth it to only go so far. The desirable thing is to teach and for you to learn the principles and then apply them. That process of reasoning through these things has been repeated at many places/threads here on the board, by Tom in his presentations and in other writings by Tom. We could go on dissecting and reasoning through what if scenarios from now on and unless you pick up the principles, there would be no resolution. Consider the further elaboration of any of these what ifs as an exercise for the student. Apply the principles and you can figure it out for yourself.

Ted

Is your trust in physical reality broken?
It does not need to be.
That is where we chose to live.

It is 100% reliable.
It only seems not to be when you don't know all the rules.
There are ways to learn about them.

It can surely be very useful being able to integrate the seeming oddities we do observe into a good model.
It is good to know - from what we can know - that physical reality is not real but an illusion.
(beware of the negative connotation of that word - it means: its real, just not physical)

That does not make it pointless - to the contrary.

Yes, the result of the experiment remain in probability when it's not observed, the results are in the future.

Midix, this is a misunderstanding many people make. People put to much emphasis on something "conscious", that there should be a difference between a human or cat.. It has to do with information, and whether it's available or not when the observation is made. Observation just means it becomes fixed in this reality, it has nothing do with with understanding anything at the intellectual level, as in "knowledge". It's about whether the envelopes are opened or burned, and not about it being a physicist with some understanding versus a clueless cat or toddler that makes the decision, or who views the results if the decision is made randomly in a computer.

I advise you and anyone else that want to read more about this, to use the search function, there have been probably 15 different discussions on this in the past, and it's all there :)
Here's one example: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=5699

I just went to breathe some fresh air and it helped a bit, I guess I was overheated.

So for the sake of cat itself there is no need to "collapse wave function", the cat will not make any sense of it anyway. But for my own experience (if I were a scientist), it would not matter if I get the information from sensors, paper, cat or anything else; it would matter only what the constrains of this reality are: how great fluctuations I am allowed to experience. So basically Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research experiments show me the limits of allowed fluctuations in my experienced PMR.

As Tom said, there may exist other less constrained realities, where PEAR-like experiments would show much greater fluctuations (like in dreams), and more constrained realities, where I could not experience things I call anomalies.

Now I am going to "shut up and read" :)

_________________
In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

(Please read all the way through)

Not to argue; but to discuss rationally,here's the thing I see with Ross Rhodes' interpretation...

It boils down to this:If I'm not wrong, RRs seems to assume that the which path info exists in a determined state at the 'recording' or 'envelope'; but not at the backwall-detector.He seems to believe that the probability of observing an interference pattern has not been constrained by the history of the events at the slit detector;though both events have already occured.What justifies this?

In order for things to happen this way,the backwall detector would have to be in an undetermined macroscale superposition of something like: [interference patten] + [no interference pattern] Of course when an experimenter observes the backwall detector it is always without the interference pattern if the slit detectors were on.The only interpretation that allows for such a macroscale undetermined superposition is the 'Relational Interpretation' ,which is very friendly to the VR hypothesis,as I understand.

In the R.I. the backwall is in an undetermined state only relative to the experimenter before he/she observes.To the detector's frames of reference,it's a done deal,it already happened.When the experimenter checks the data,the 'particle' like behavior/path history becomes determined 'retroactively' for that relational POV.Meanwhile,there is no absolute-objective frame of reference inside PMR. The two frameworks are combined at the moment that a detector is observed and a consistent history is maintained. As I understand,MMORPGs operate something like this.

Does this mean that RRs and Tom are wrong about availiblity of information? I don't really think so.In the double slit experiment,a light measures 'particle' behavior at only one slit.Yet,the backwall pattern is that of no interference pattern when observed, which means that a 'particle' behavior/path is rendered for events that did not interact with the slit detector's light.How does this coordination occur? It has to be one 'entangled system' and the available information has to be consistent if I understand.

Edit:In other words,when the detector is on,50% of the time (I think) a 'particle'.. 'goes through' the slit without interacting with the measuring device.Yet it still contributes to the two bands that reveal a particle like history.How does 'it' 'know' how to behave so that the future pattern will be consistent with particle-like behavior? As far as I can see,this is the only way the DS experiment seems to act like the DCQE experiment.The whole thing seems to 'know' what is being measured overall and will become known to the experimenter.

Could you please tell what article you are referring to with your thought on his interpretation?
... assuming you refer to something on bottomlayer.com ...

To be honest, I don't understand what you mean, but would like to.

(Warning.I'm no physicist and I don't pretend to be.But I do believe everyone is capable of understanding the philosophical dilemas of QM.)

I'll find the video on YT of RRs and post it back here in a couple of minutes along with a video on the Relational interpretation and MMORPGs.

A key thing to keep in mind is that for a recording device in the double slit experiment ,an 'irreversible interaction' occurs and entropy increases.To change this would be to violate the fundamental law of conservation of energy.If a recording occurs at the slit,why shouldn't it also occur at the backwall detector?

(In contrast to the DCQE,the photon polarizations in it are reversible during the time of the experiment.)

I recommend the first three chapters (at least) to supplement any video.
The third in particular, but it builds upon the prior two.

Here's Ross Rhodes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBOaXcG3 ... ideo_title

Here's an interpretation that's consistent with the conservation laws and consistent with the VR hypothesis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxBfJAds ... D325A4AE51