Image of nature in our solar system as a giant whale

1. Why we Need Images of Nature 

Recently I updated my web site to reflect my new understanding of how four levels of reality work and connect with each other: 

(1) the Einsteinian level which I now understand as most fundamental; 

(2) the David Deutsch level, the best mainstream quantum field theory, the version which has passed many experimental tests in the realm of Quantum Information Science and Technology; 

(3) Von Neumann's approach to explaining consciousness, mind and life as we know them in mundane life as the result of emergent statistical patterns embedded in Boltzmann and Bellman equations; and 

(4) the spiritual level, from PSI to cosmos. Minds, Brains, Souls in a unified new mathematical viewpoint explaining what seem like contradictions between objective reality and first person experience.

 I have never claimed to have a COMPLETE understanding of level 4. That would be worse than a biologist claiming to know every species possible on earth and elsewhere! But if we look hard at all the evidence before us, we DO seem to know SOME things. And so, I believe that 

--  we ARE part of a "solar system noosphere," a connected organism reaching at least from deep mud under the oceans of the earth all the way to the sun, and maybe some more in our area  

--  AND that this organism has a "brain," a nervous system, making heavy use of ordinary matter (electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons, whatever these are) AND of "dark matter" (which we can now see in photographs at a scale of many light-years, which includes both "particles" and "force fields").  

--  And that most or all of us are in a state of symbiosis with that "solar bra in." 

--  And finally, that Carl Jung's Red Book  includes an excellent first person account of HIS conscious awareness of his connections with that brain, and more. 

All is in the updated webpage (except for two slides which have yet to upload). BUT: what do we know of OTHER minds beyond us mundane earth animals and the solar brain? That is an area of huge ignorance. And what do we know about the DETAILS of our solar system brain, what is its spirit of telos, and how it connects to our level of life? There is so much we do NOT yet know, which may become easier to understand, bit by bit, if we clear our vision by at least looking at reality here. By using both science and first person observation, integrated together. 

 Jung tells us a lot about how to achieve integration. He shows how greater consciousness of ourselves, of our connections with our own preverbal mind as well as the noosphere, depends a lot on how well we use not just words but images, analogies, feelings, and even music. There is not just one true image we can use, but many, which can blend together like photographs of a 3D object taken from different angles. 

 2. The whale: one good specific image or analogy to represent our local solar system organism 

 My favorite images of our local solar system noosphere brain are a tree (a special type of tree) and an image of the sun which some Shinto associate with Amaterasu. (It helps that I see both of them most of the time on most days through our back doors and windows. No, I don't confuse any tree with the whole noosphere, but most of them ARE alive, and can be used as gateways of the mind.) I have also mentioned the Jewish star and the kabbala of Luria. 

But yesterday I was reminded of the value of ANOTHER image or analogy, our local noosphere organism as something like a great whale. My thinking started in a Quaker Meeting by Zoom, where someone talked about climate: "We should not underestimate the power and intelligence on Nature on our planet, which may help us survive problems which we humans seem unable to solve ourselves." Then two people spoke of the Netflix video "My Octopus teacher." 

We humans are the peak intelligence of a whole mountain range full of species with intelligence on earth, but there are two other whole mountain ranges of animal brains on earth: (1) brains of octopi and beyond, like giant squids; and (2) hive minds of ants and bees (and beyond?). The giant squids reminded me of earth history, and of the giant sperm whale, whose brain is an interesting example of how complex brains can evolve and work. 

 The sperm whale has the largest brain on earth. But how INTELLIGENT is that whale? Scientists debate that, and study that, but do not truly know how to integrate what they know. (Most scientists do not even know how mammal brains work; the upgraded link on my web page above points to very recent explanation of that. Pilot whales are not the same as sperm whales, but are studied more because it is easier. ) 

YES, the whale has a big brain, but it also has a huge body. How much of that huge brain is really just coordinating small pieces of a huge body, lots of neurons, but at what LEVEL of mind? And so, what of our noosphere? It has a huge nervous system, but how much is restricted to local boring tasks? Hazen's book the Story of Earth suggests that Amaterasu is like a brilliant woman who just spent a billion years (1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago) cleaning out the stinkiest, most poisonous giant toilet within lightyears. How do we strike up a relation with HER, and what kind of mood is she in? (Ward and Kirschvink give a similar picture, all backed by very hard science.) But then I think of the sperm whale. It too spends ever so many years just eating and metabolizing. 

But there are also those whale songs, which many say can reach thousands of miles, a very complex social system requiring and displaying intelligence. Lack of hands is a serious limiter, but solar noospheres do not have that problem. It took a long time to de-sulfur earth's oceans (in 1.8-0.8 billion years ago, "the boring billion"), but that does prove that nothing else was happening. 

 It amuses me to remember I published a paper in an obscure place, the Rosicrucian Digest, in 1977 or so, before I even knew about dark matter. Based on recent discussions with Schwinger and his TA Chaikin, I considered how particles like tachyons with negative mass-energy would not only fit their models, but would predict a kind of cosmos-wide ocean of energy and matter, where big organisms would evolve, analogous to whales. I even received a letter from Tryon  saying that this paper inspired his own next thoughts about how things work in our universe. But now that I think of it, sperm whales are carnivores, which is how they evolved brains bigger than what other whales have. (Humans and wolves have a similar relation to cows and deer). We really have no idea what mix of species exist on that scale of length in our cosmos. And how does the Spirit of the Deep change the picture?

For folks over 70: realities of our coming afterlife

 Two windows into what happens after ordinary mundane death:

(1) real ghost stories; but

(2) VERY important aspects we miss if we think that is our whole story

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1. GHOST STORIES

A retired top executive from the computer industry, who previously played a major role in the management of our local Quaker Meeting, recently called me by Zoom to talk about many subjects. He mentioned two things relevant to this topic:

(1) "I have been visited by a whole lot of ghosts, right here in my study. My wife says she cannot see them, but we all know I am still of clear mind. What do you think?"

(2) "That huge picture on the wall behind you, what is its story?"

Back at the time of William James, before the rise of  modern quantitative parapsychology (due to Rhine of Duke?), there were many very honest, intense and sincere groups working hard to understand PSI in a more scientific way than older traditions. I recommended my friend to read or learn about the classic book, Phantasms of the Living.

"First thing that you need to know is that what you see might be a projection from a LIVING person, not a ghost or spirit body or anything like that." Many traditions talk about "astral projection" rather than "astral travel."  What you see is NOT any kind of real body, but a projection of someone's mind. That someone might be alive or might be dead.

But yes, the story is tricky because so MANY older people suffer from Cognitive Decline, and the fraction who say they see ghosts increase at the same time. Science knows amazingly little about how elder cognitive decline actually works; when we age past 70, we are well advised to learn what science CAN tell us, limited as it is. Hameroff's conference in 2018 -- maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n941JWmT_xQ -- included a great session describing research trying to understand the links between cognitive decline and anesthesia; from that, I concluded we should avoid a need for anesthesia in any way we reasonably can. I HAVE seen people who showed cognitive decline after an operation which could have been avoided. One of my neighbors who experienced that learned that there are low level infections usually in hospitals  which few doctors know about which CAN be treated, but usually are not. And then Bredesen has great books on other aspects we should know about. On the positive side, I have seen reference to blueberry juice and mental stimulation in very serious technical literature, to stimulate production and use of new stem cells which can reverse the direction.

And so: GIVEN that "seeing ghosts" by older people can be explained away so easily, why should we believe such things?

First, it is NOT ONLY older people, but let me not elaborate. So MANY other people in our Quaker meeting have discussed such experiences, one of whom successfully created a new school and still teaches teachers skillfully in big Zoom classes!

Second... I told my friend: "I have seen the other side of this." 

Buried deep in http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm is the link:

http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2020/09/classifying-my-first-person-spiritual.html

where I mention my OWN experiments with "astral travel," mainly back in the 1970s,

echoed only in (veridical) dreams after that.

I certainly remember floating into rooms where one or even a few people, generally older, could actually see me. I communicated with them by smiles and other such body language, even as people around them seemed utterly puzzled or even disgusted. The people who could see seemed to have a kind of whitish glow about them, and yes, they saw enough of me that we COULD interact.

"What were you trying to tell them?" My friend asked. Nothing special. I do not even know what drew me to that particular place at that time... Or at other times, it would be just a side effect of my going somewhere else or answering a question on MY mind. 

That picture behind me was a huge picture of my father, Walter J. Werbos, who actually taught a course once (pro bono) at Wharton on marketing and public relations, and may be embarrassed now about one of his students who appropriated his way of signing the "J" with a great flourish. 

My father gave up Catholicism when he was young, probably due to abuses and distortions he ran across, or maybe due to lack of sheer justification in the DETAILS of what the church teaches now. Before 1967, when experience FORCED me to accept what I now call PSI (the other side of our minds and lives), I assumed he was probably a solid German technological atheist as I was. But later, when I confessed to him how my views had changed, he just smiled and said: "We wondered how long it would take for you to grow up." No, it wasn't just my half wild Irish Druid Catholic mother... it was the solid Germanic and industry side even more!!!

But my father was quite insistent he did NOT want a traditional Catholic funeral (as HIS mother had had), with a body and a viewing and all that. "When you die, you are gone. The body should be given to science. Don't waste money, and don't waste what's left."

When my brother and sister and I met at his house in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, when the time came to implement his wishes and discuss his estate, I insisted on sleeping in his bed that night. "WHAT?" they asked. A friend of my sister even offered for me to stay in her house, and I was actually VERY attracted to her at times, but most people would ask: "Aren't you afraid of seeing a ghost?" My reply: "If my father is ready to talk to me, I really would not wish to miss the hope of learning what he might tell me, of this life or beyond." (I have known many Asians who would fully appreciate this and have said much more to me.) 

Sadly, I did not see or hear from any ghost. But I DID have an "assumption dream," which is explained in that blog post above. (I hope I cited Eisenbud https://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=mpsa.006.0065a ). Just as living people may "see a ghost", can a ghost see them? I first saw through my father's eyes at his Catholic memorial service (arranged by my family), where he was a little frustrated at seeing "through" the eyes of exactly that big picture which hangs behind me in my study now, which they used to represent him at the service. He did not ask or will or desire to be there, but the many people at the service looked at this picture and thought of him, and that "puled him in." (Did the ghost come to visit YOU, or did YOU call the ghost? PLEASE CONSIDER WHOM YOU CALL!!)

And then later, he travelled to the medical school place where they sent his body (prior to some kind of cremation later, though we never saw the ashes). And yes, THEY focused on the person they imagined they saw, and he had to put up with that for awhile. A short while, however, and ... 

2. NO WE DO NOT JUST GO TO HEAVEN OR HELL OR THE ASTRAL PLANE OR EVEN SHEER NOTHINGNESS

To us as normal humans, it seems easiest to imagine that nothing much really changes after mundane death, even if we end up in a strange place. "My self is permanent and unchanged." (MY self changes a lot even from early morning to late night after red wine, even now that I HAVE given up the Irish Cream.) 

But science, logic and first person experience ALL warn us  not to give way to that kind of human-centric bias in trying to understand a cosmos which is much, much bigger than us. It really is. Excess, undisciplined ego distortions are a huge problem for all levels of humanity. 

In the 1970's, I remember reading a brief, private piece by H. Spencer Lewis, which basically said:

"If you are trying to understand the soul and greater life, you should at a minimum study and understand two great books -- the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian Book of the Dead." Tibet we visited and understood quite easily, but the Egyptian viewpoint seemed ever so strange to me until just a few years ago. "What are these ka and ma, TWO souls for each person?"

BUT: for now I must be brief. The links I gave now explain that our "souls" are all part of larger local soul/mind, our local noosphere, fully consistent with hard core Einsteinian realism. As PART of a larger system, we are like neurons in a brain. We are very diverse. The very life and future of our souls all depend on our CONNECTIONS (as is true for neurons in a brain). We all have varying MIXES of local and global connections. When folks like Gary Zukav 

sound like the Disney cartoon Coco --that IS PART of our fate and our potential and our true nature. But so too are

LONG DISTANCE and GLOBAL connections. Kill the long distance giant pyramid cells, and the brain itself will die. We need both, and harmony, and each of us... has multiple manifestations..

What do Einstein and Hamilton tell us about Jung's Spirit of the Deep (aka God)

THE QUESTION OF THE DAY 

 More and more over the past few weeks, I find myself drawn to a concept of "third order sanity," in which we become more aware and connected to what Carl Jung called "the spirit of the deep" (in his Red Book).  Jung discusses how we can use visual images, among other tools, to deeply assimilate and use any new point of view, so when I tried to achieve more third order sanity myself, I started by  visualizing triangles. That worked, and it still works,  but lately I simply think of our cosmos and the Spirit of the Deep as something which looks like the vast neural-like network web of dark matter which we see in photos taken by gravitational lensing. See the lower right of this slide.

This slide gives an overview of the youtube talk and discussion I led nine days ago  giving my new four-fold understanding of the reality we live in, starting from 

(1) Einstein's view of how the cosmos works, rising to 

(2) the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch version of quantum theory (which is our best approximation now to the statistics of how the cosmos works), rising to 

(3) those streams of mathematics from VonNeumann which can explain life and mind as we know them as emergent phenomena, rising still further to 

(4) larger scale emergent phenomena like a few kinds of higher intelligence alive in our cosmos, explaining how and why we have "souls" and authentic PSI or spiritual experience. 

I define "first order sanity" as the same kind of integration which Freud and Confucius taught.  I define "second order sanity" as the integration of brain and soul, as in Jung's extension of Freud. (That fits the old Western concept of "alchymical marriage".) But third order sanity would involve fuller integration beyond our personal soul to the full spirit of the deep, whatever that is. 

But what is it? What does that vast neural-like network in our cosmos really represent? Is it really a mind at all? I have some fuzzy new thoughts about that this morning, and hope that some real dialogue is possible to help clarify it all. 

HOW MUCH IS OUR COSMOS LIKE A GIANT MIND, IF WE BELIEVE THE EINSTEIN VIEW? 

In the youtube talk, I first explain why I now agree with Einstein that EVERYTHING we ever see and know comes from what we experience in a hard core 4D space-time continuum. The talk gives a specific definition of Hard Core Einsteinian Realism, HCER, the "theory of everything" that I now believe in. 

Does that imply that we live in a cold, mindless universe? DON'T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS.

People often look at these equations and think they must be cold and mindless, because they don't understand what the math is really telling them. This is where Lagrange and Hamilton, and maybe even Lorenz (not Lorentz, Lorenz) can help us understand better. FINITE minds, like what we have in our heads and like what our entire noosphere possesses are born with an inborn sense of purpose (telos or U), with a striving to learn to make choices which better serve that purpose, and to better understand the uncertainties they always face BECAUSE they are finite minds, and do not understand everything. But what about the cosmos AS A WHOLE, the whole big 4D thing? 

In LAGRANGE'S original concept of how it works, the universe ALSO has something like a sense of purpose or U. In physics, they use the letter L for Lagrangian, but THE MATH IS THE SAME. More precisely -- in the neural network mathematics (RLADP)  which describes how the brain works ) we learn how the brain as a whole system (complete with qualia and consciousness and all that) is based on an equation called the Bellman equation, which tells us how to maximize U UNDER UNCERTAINTY.

 The original equations of Lagrange and Euler, for the physical universe, are THE SAME EQUATIONS for the special case where there is no uncertainty. In other words, when HCER tells us that everything in the cosmos is governed by Lagrange Euler equations (slightly tweaked for curved space), it is telling us that THE COSMOS IS ACTING LIKE A GIGANTIC BRAIN WITHOUT UNCERTAINTY. It predicts that the cosmos will BEHAVE like a gigantic perfect superintelligence, and that everything we ever experience at the finite level from this willful behavior of the cosmos as a whole. It actually fits quite well with the image of Creator in Yeshua's writings and in Luria's cabbalah. 

Whether we call it "God" or not does not matter so much. What matters is that it is the driving current behind everything which happens in our universe, and that it acts with something like PERFECT intelligence. BUT DOES IT? That is the REAL question I ask today. 

The math is important, and the consequences are real. Lagrange tacitly assumed that L, the "value function of the universe", is NONNEGATIVE. THAT is what clearly would create behavior like a great mind, pushing as hard as it can in... its direction, which we are well advised to try to discern. 

But the equally great mathematical physicist HAMILTON argued with Lagrange. Roughly, he said: "You claim that the universe is maximizing L, a positive function over all space time. You say it is governed by the Lagrange-Euler equations, which describes what happens in a universe maximizing its L. HOWEVER, those same Lagrange-Euler equations are ALSO needed to describe a MINMAX universe, where some decisions are made to maximize L while others minimize it." In fact, my "Bible" (The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by Von Neumann and Morgenstern) explains a lot about how minmax systems arise and how they work. They are what you get in a zerosum game, an all-out war, between two players. 

And so, once we decide that we DO live in a universe governed by Lagrange-Euler equations (and maybe some equality constraints like the Lorenz gauge), we have an obvious choice: 

(1) Is it ONE God-like player out there, ala Lagrange? or 

(2) Is our universe the battlefield of TWO players in total opposition, a bit like God versus Devil, or Zoroastrianism? 

In my chapter in Karl Pribram's book Origins, I describe some simple simulation experiments showing how the TURBULENCE generated by two forces acting in different directions may be crucial to nonstatic phenomena like life. COULD THAT BE IT? How can we know, and what would that say about trying to follow the spirit of the deep? 

THE ANSWER, THE NEW UNIFICATION, WHICH COMES AS I TYPE THIS: 

My impression is that thermodynamics may be what really clarifies this situation. (Hey, that is part of PART 3 of my 4 part story of reality!) 

Ironically, it is the Hamiltonian energy density H (as it appears in Lagrange-Euler systems!) which may "save us from the devil." It IS possible to define mathematical systems where H can be negative or can be positive at different times, in different places. But if H is unbounded IN THE NEGATIVE DIRECTION, we usually get instabilities which make the system explosive and undefined in ways we do not see in our experience of the cosmos. 

When it is bounded from below, we get an entropy function... well, actually I worked out PRECISELY what the entropy function is for this class of Lagrange-Euler system back in 2004! In the youtube video, I discussed what happens if we try to use Deutsch's vision to predict how life works as an emergent phenomenon. But as I type this I realize... now that I believe in HCER.. it is EXACTLY THE ENTROPY FUNCTION GIVEN IN THAT PAPER which contains and governs all life in our cosmos!!!

It is the positivity of THAT ENTROPY function which gives us the positivity of our spirit of the deep! Hey, is THAT one the real God Equation? I actually do know something about that equation and how it works... and how it DIRECTLY can work through the new quantum technology I discussed two days ago! (Yes, there are levels higher than tQuA level three... BUT NO, that certainly does not mean we can build a God computer. Like Elon Musk, I have at times wondered whether anyone else ever did.) 

At times, I am reminded of Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan... but even so we small creatures ARE connected parts of a larger system. That's who we are. And it may help if the larger system is less distorted and self defeating than smaller social systems we see sometimes...

tQuA: Explanation and Capabilities of a Radically New Type of Quantum Computing

 Recently I developed a new approach to Quantum Annealing, which I call true Quantum Annealing (tQuA).

Tomorrow, we will have a Zoom discussion with IT people on the details. 

=================================

THE BIG PICTURE (GENERAL CONTEXT):

Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST) is one of the four core areas calling for further R&D, to address the

risks and possibilities of massive changes coming in the internet in general:

http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm

This would fall under the new internet effort which www.millennium-project.org has been pushing, if it ever becomes a real S&T effort. 

The United States government is putting massive investment into ONE TYPE of quantum computing, the Quantum Turing Machine (QTM), originated by the great British physicist David Deutsch. He appears as a major figure in history, in my previous talk to this group about the biggest big picture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHBO_uuRyE. But there are FIVE types or levels of quantum computing open for development:

http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2020/04/role-of-quantum-technology-in-massive.html

The QTM gives us capabilities similar to an ordinary Turing machine, like a sequential computer, but with thousands or trillions of parallel computing streams to do the job. True Quantum Annealing (tQuA) harnesses the same power, to solve ANY optimization problem, which may even include optimization of a physical plant like a chip or a radio telescope or an airplane, or drug discovery. For example, "quantum bromium" (tQuA applied to detecting backdoors in chips) may be able to find backdoors a thousand or a trillion times as fast as ordinary "sandbox" bromium security systems. 

Crudely speaking, the QTM is a kind of parallel computing. Instead of just building a thousand "cores" on a chip, to do a thousand jobs in parallel, Deutsch showed us how to do thousands or trillions of computing jobs in parallel, on ONE chip, by creating thousands or trillions of copies of the chip in quantum superposition with each other. If a QTM has ten "qubits" or forty "qubits", that means that it can harness 2^10 (about 1000) or 2^40 (about a trillion) copies of the same chip in parallel. A true quantum annealing system (tQuA) could achieve the same power, for solving optimization problems of all kinds. 

Unfortunately, Canada's famous DWave QuA system does not really do that. However, the underlying physics says that we CAN do that, and here is how.

[The link on Sustainable Intelligent Internet (SII) at the top of this post goes to a list of links.  At the bottom of the list is section on Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST), a term used in the past by the interagency Quantum information Science Coordinating Group (QISCOG), on which I was once the NSF representative before my retirement. The US funding efforts were broader in scope until Howard Brandt (the real thought leader for QISCOG) died suddenly two weeks before his planned announcement of a new direction.]

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WHAT IS true Quantum Annealing (tQuA), versus DWave (DQuA)?"

MY CONCEPT of true Quantum Annealing (tQuA) turns out to be very different from the RELATED but weaker concept in the present literature on Quantum Annealing. 

More precisely: a Basic Quantum Annealing (BQuA) box would include: (1) an array of N "flux qubits", N binary processing elements, call them u(j) as j =1  to N; (2) a simple standard "Ising type" hamiltonian, H, such that the wave function psi( the vector u) evolves according to a term linear in u and a term of the form Hjk*uj*uk, where the USER gets to specify the coupling constants Hjk; (3) a way to initialize the u at a start time t0; (4) read out and coupling to the external world.

BUT THIS concept of BQuA includes BOTH the version of quantum annealing which is now common in the literature

(e.g. the vast literature available for the company D Wave,

 A numerical implementation of" quantum annealing"

B Apolloni, D De Falco, N Cesa-Bianchi - 1988 - cds.cern.ch), AND a useful special case of what I call true Quantum Annealing, what I assumed in my review.

I was shocked to learn that THEIR variant of BQuA is not a true quantum computer at all, but that it is very straightforward how to modify that kind of design to produce a BQuA box which IS a true quantum computer, and permits a wide range of important capabilities. For example, one can hook it up so as to probe for backdoors in chips one buys from risky sources, like the hardware backdoors which recently led to the biggest, most harmful compromise of US government data systems like the OPM personnel database. 

I was indeed stunned to learn that the DWave community and its followers have not yet figured out the simple things needed to make it work as I expected it to work. 

In essence, the DQuA (what they do) starts from a user-chosen vector u, and orbits AROUND the space of possible values for the vector u, hoping to use quantum tunneling to get from regions of low energy H to regions where some states have lower energy. (Yes, they have lots of details.) They use "annealing" by assuming a COUPLING constant multiplying the term for interactions across bits, and dialing the coupling up or down. It sounds like an electron IN ONE state, tunneling at times to get to a better state.

But true quantum computers, like Deutsch's universal quantum Turing machine, isn't like that. A true quantum computer is based on QUANTUM SUPERPOSITION, like the original Schrodinger cat. Deutsch, a major developer of the multiverse idea, described it as a kind of parallel computer, harnessing the power of parallel universes to perform different computations IN PARALLEL , and pick out what you choose in the end.How many parallel universes? Well, with 20 qubits (Q=20), it is slightly more than  2"20 universes in parallel, a million. BOTTOM LINE: there are lots of working Deutsch style quantum computers working out there now, some with many more than 20 qubits. This is not science fiction.This is today's working technology. (You may ask what good it is, but that's another subject.)

A true QuA box should be able to manage Q real qubits,not just "flux qubits" which may or may not be real qubits, in parallel. Thus a classical simulated annealing or stochastic search  box should be able to find good values of a vector u, to minimize some function H, but a true QuA box should be able to search through a million times as many possibilities if Q is 20. 

How could such a thing be possible?

To begin with, the hardware to implement u should be the kind of hardware which is used to hold qubits in Deutsch style quantum computing. I can think of four good candidates. DWave uses something SIMILAR to one of the four, the SQUID, first used in Maryland for quantum computing and widely used in China under Pan Jianwei. But DWave's is only similar; they set it up in a way which leads to far more noise than necessary, but that is not the main problem.

The main problem is that they don't seem to understand what ANNEALING is, what any real condensed matter physicist would know. (I have cited Chaikin and Lubensky many times.) 

One major ADVANTAGE of tQuA over quantum Turing machines is that decoherence is not a problem, in principle; losing information through noise is not a problem, when we don't want to perpetuate initial condition information anyway. 

BUT: in true annealing, COUPLING TO THE ENVIRONMENT TO SHED HEAT is the essence of how the system state u goes to minimum energy. It is not about adjusting coupling coefficients, but about shedding energy to the environment. If one can do that, thermodynamics is what does the selection.

But this discussion leaves out one more crucial aspect of any optimization system. How does one define what is to be optimized, what the user WANTS the system to accomplish?

=======================================

THREE LEVELS of tQuA (LEVELS OF USER NEEDS TO MEET): 

There are three possibilities. 

Level 1: Endogenous scoring:

The easiest to implement is ENDOGENOUS SCORING, where the user's goal is simply encoded into the coupling coefficients Hij, and that's it. A quadratic optimization system. A fancy quadratic program? 

Of course, that can be done ITERATIVELY, where an optimum is calculated, evaluated against more complete nonlinear standards, and the optimization problem revised, until the user is happy. DWave certainly has worked hard to develop that kind of interface

Level 2. Internal Coupled Scoring:

Second choice is INTERNAL COUPLED SCORING, where

a process inside the big computer system scores each possible u, and the overall score is fed back to the QuA box, perhaps to a set of power utility input bits. In truth, new papers are needed spelling out how the thermodynamics of this works. 

Level 3: QuATh):

Third is Quantum Annealing of Things (QuAth), which is essentially the same except that the scoring system need not be a computer program but may be an external object, like a chip to be assessed. A macroscopic Schrodinger cat. 

================

Hardware Choices Which Should be Pursued In Parallel:

I NOW see the importance of the three stage approach to developing and building real QuA technology. But even stage 1 requires considering WHICH ACTUAL hardware platforms to use. I would claim that a rational program would not choose just one, but should juggle what can be learned from FOUR parallel coordinated efforts learning from each other. These would be:

true QuA based on quantum optics platforms (also used in some QTM work)

Squid platform, which DWave uses, but more like what TM uses

Massive quantum dot arrays, like Samsung TVs with billions of optical processing elements in a square meter or less

High frequency electronic systems, like what is used in GHZ electronics for cell phones 

(see http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.134.2754&rep=rep1&type=pdf, which has further applications in QuIST)

Developing better component models is VERY crucial to better design capability.  Yeshua (Howard Carmichael's group in New Zealand) is closer to some of the experiments needed to get better component models than I am, but the link to Werbos and Fleury at ResearchGate also has crucial information. 

How could you and I be macroscopic Schrodinger cats if the cosmos MIGHT only be 4D underneath? It seems our states are like the photon states in that paper. But for now, the Deutsch physics are good enough, in most respects. The thermodynamics of the interface are a tricky issue, to be resolved by empirical work in the end. 

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What are OTHERS already doing about quantum computing for optimization?

Exactly after I typed this yesterday, I received an email from Berkeley inviting me to THEIR two hour Zoom  on QuIST for optimization! This was supported by the Simons Foundation, which many view as the US best hope for real math in any computer topics. One was in a familiar office in Maryland. Here is the invitation and my reactions to what I saw:

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1:00 am – 12:00 pm: Quantum Algorithms for Optimization, Ronald de Wolf (QuSoft, CWI and University of Amsterdam) |  Abstract

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm: Panel Discussion on Quantum Algorithms for Optimization, Andrew Childs (UMD), Eddie Farhi (MIT/Google), Ashley Montanaro (U. Bristol), Umesh Vazirani (UC Berkeley; moderator)

This colloquium series will feature talks by some of the foremost experts in quantum computation in the form of "an invitation to research in area X". With the explosion of interest in quantum computation, there is a dizzying flurry of results, as well as a diverse group of researchers who are drawn to this field. This colloquium series aims to target three audiences: 

1. Experts in quantum computation: It is increasingly difficult for even experts to keep up with the results in adjacent areas. These colloquia will aim to identify the key results and techniques in the area, as well as the most important directions for further research. 
2. Interested researchers in (classical) theoretical computer science: There are deep connections between ideas in quantum computation and classical complexity, algorithms, etc. These colloquia will make these connections more accessible to the broader TCS community. 
3. Interested mathematical and physical science (MPS) researchers: These colloquia will enable MPS researchers to cut through the clutter to make connections to CS style results in quantum computation. 

Public Zoom webinar link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/95040632440

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These folks were certainly selected to be the world's best in their area. (And it was truly international.)

HOWEVER, it was mainly world's best on how to use a QTM to solve optimization problems. They spent a fair amount of time on backpropagation, the new gold standard, but do not understand the basic math of backpropagation, and seriously missed what can be done even with a QTM. Their bottom line: they are far away from even linear or quadratic speedups in optimization by using quantum methods, with one narrow exception which the lead speaker was far from. 

There is an Arora-Kale SDP optimization which was designed in COLLABORATION with real physicists using tricks which the usual QTM computer scientists do not understand, outside their paradigm. I suspect it is a special case of QuA.

The lead speaker says only three real net benefits from quantum computing look real now -- cryptography, quantum simulation and optimization. The Maryland guy said no not optimization yet, and the lead speaker apologized and agreed.

And so: tQuA is just as solid, and beyond the US mainstream, as I suggested earlier today. Actually, there are also ways to use it to improve cryptography, beyond any QTM system I have seen, but maybe we should save THAT discussion for later, if there is a later. The key barrier has been the need to really understand the underlying physics, IN computation.

Why do they even screw up how to get gradients? My guess: the unwritten rule they must cite their friends, and the friends don't know the math. I am tempted to say more, but... no real need.

A specific way of meditating on Jewish star brought happiness

It worked!!

Two weeks ago, I made a shift in my full mind, to better organize my feelings, plans and choices. And suddenly, life also became a lot happier, so far. (I hope it stays that way.) One of our neighbors even commented how much happier I became. WHY? What worked? As in most of life, there were several factors at work, and the wheel will turn again, but for now: ONE very serious and useful factor was how I started thinking about a new view of the old Jewish star. I am  not Jewish... but it works because it connects to things which connect to all of us.

And so, here is what I posted 12 days ago ago on Yeshua's discussion list about this new way of reading meaning into that old Jewish star and using it. Just as this symbol can help add badly needed organization in my feelings, I have added headings here to organize this post:

What I posted:

1. No, I am not Jewish. What I am:

First, because there are lots of dangerous phobias out there about Jewish culture, let me start by saying I do not claim or qualify to be a spokesman for that culture, but even there I suppose I should insert a caveat. Yeshua and others have told me that there are TWO tribes, traditionally (Judea and Israel?), but they believe that there were twelve tribes originally. I was happy when my wife showed me a newish book, 1173BC, which shows how archeologists are beginning to remember more about the larger movement of sea peoples at that ancient time; the original Hellenes and the invasions of the Eastern Mediterranean in general were part of that. So who knows? When 23andme uses DNA analysis to show my own family emanated from Doggerland in the North Sea, and even claims I am 88% British/Irish (a great shock to me at first), maybe I do belong to one of the lost tribes?

More seriously, I see a lot of value, diversity, problems and great achievements both in traditional Israeli culture and n Shinto culture, and I have tried very hard to reach out and see what can be learned from both. The traditional Jewish star, and the Tree of Life from the cabbalah of Luria, fit that. I see all these as pieces of one part of a more complete fourfold worldview, depicted in https://youtu.be/jfHBO_uuRyE.

2. How Our Minds Need and Can Use Such Symbols:

Why should ultramodern people (like me?) pay any attention to such ancient symbols? That comes back to my new saying: "To integrate or to disintegrate, those are the real choices ahead of us." INTEGRATION means finding harmonious and efficient ways to unify our thoughts, feelings, values and even levels of existence, and THAT IMPLIES managing a HUGE degree of cross-cutting complexity. In a giant modern server farm, when there is a gigantic mass and variety of data, we do need some "address labels" and "memory cues" to organize it, to keep track of the diversity.

WORDS are important EXAMPLES of PART of what we depend on. These lists use words like "consciousness," "emotion," "self" and even "reality" which have many DIFFERENT meanings. The path of sanity does NOT tell us to give up using such words, but it does tell us to be ever conscious and vigilant about how they have MULTIPLE MEANINGS, some legitimate and some debilitating, but never just ONE meaning ordained by God (who does not speak English or Sanskrit or Hebrew or Mandarin as a first language in any case). 

THE SAME APPLIES to the most powerful graphic images. They to can have more than one useful meaning. Instead of wasting time fighting over which is "the right meaning," many of us do better by remembering several DISTINCT useful meanings. 

3: How I  Learned/See/Use the Upwards Triangle Part

And so, early in my usual daily "Cosmic Consciousness" meditation in bed, I thought first about a Love Triangle. (Those poor pseudo-mystics who never connect their words and ideas to powerful emotions need to get past THAT stage, to ever have hope of  attaining even first order sanity.) Love triangle -- talk about a simple symbol pointing to a powerful complexity, with many dimensions and energy!!

But in truth, to manage my own emotions, I have gravitated a lot to a very specific triangle, pointing up, with my wife and me on the bottom, and our local noosphere on top. And no, I do not limit myself to Western or Jewish symbols. At the top, I think of the sun which is so visible from where I am sitting now, most of the day, and I think of Amaterasu, a humanizing symbol for the local noosphere. (By the way, for photos and deeper analysis of Shinto stuff, see links at werbos.com/religions.htm). 

As love triangles go... me, my wife and Amaterasu... 

if you imagine that such triangles entail a bit of complexity, multiply by 1000. But the noosphere is not specifically male or female (so far as any of us creatures know, or should focus on). To avoid confusing myself, I need to be ever mindful of how SHE has her relation upstairs too, and it really is a love triangle, not a war, the very foundation of what keeps me motivated and alive.

(My incessant efforts to avoid human extinction, for example, have been mainly energized by my feelings of connection to our noosphere.)

4. But then came that downwards triangle... SUCH a power!!!

But THIS morning... an echo. That traditional "Jewish star" also contains a downwards pointing triangle, and I am reminded to give it equal time and equal emphasis, more and more as I can appreciate it too. For me at the bottom (you when you use it), the upper right side may be our local noosphere again, and the left... well, call the right Jung's spirit of the times (another window into our noosphere) and call the left his spirit of the deep. 

WHAT IS THAT spirit of the deep?

My integrated theory says that our noosphere (of which our "souls" are parts) is one of an entire huge species of noospheres, filling the entire cosmos. But the cosmos itself has aspects of mind which connect to us as well. In a fuzzy sort of way, that mind of the cosmos (like the creator in the trees of life of Luria and of Yeshua) acts in part as the soul of the entire network of noospheres. Or the network of noospheres might be seen as the "flesh" of the comsos considered as a single entity, which has both flesh and matrix.

So in any case, that's what's on the left side of that downward pointing triangle, and we are called to remember and strengthen ALL these connections.

[Added later: Since this post, attention to and awareness of the "spirit of the deep" has become a central part of my morning meditation. It is much  more complete and more fully connected than the old inner morning conversations which I once described as "God is my psychiatrist."]

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Some footnote/caveat things:

My wife (who is so much more than what those four letters carry alone) recently pointed me to more of the true history of the "Jewish star." I used to think that that was the seal of Solomon, familiar from 1001 Arabian Nights and many, many other sources. no. That was a typical drift in cultures. It was actually a five pointed star, like what you would see on old Soviet tanks. I wonder whether they discuss that in Israel? And of course Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis is another upwards facing triangle, quite different in connections, but also important and linked in many ways. 

The problem of phobias and how they weaken dialogue, cause disintegration and lower the level of consciousness is very well known in serious neuropsychology (and even known in pop cultures like scientology). That is a huge and important topic, but this email is already too long; I will save that for another day, except to note it IS included in one of the links at werbos.com: 

   Minds, Brains, Souls

P.S. In two hours I walk to the hospital for the first of my two eye repair operations. Hopefully you will see fewer typos from me after that.

[And now, the other eye comes in two days. Posterior capsulotomy worked SO WELL for me! It was another important lesson to experience life before and after, adapting to both. Probably I should post

what I learned from eye exercises in that period, but that would be a different post and track, and these too need to be organized. That which is not organized and connected gets lost, anything from essays to our very souls. THIS morning, I came back to Gurdieff's old saying "To know, to do, to be," in conversations with my wife, immediately AFTER cosmic consciousness... but perhaps even more cosmic in its way. And then the new obligatory morning qi stretching exercise and shower, another required change past age 70 just to prevent premature collapse. Why choose between qi and cosmic consciousness when we need to integrate both, in sequence, in our lives?]