Because I have a new paper under submission on life and mind and the real mathematicxal foundations of physics, I was recently sent:
My evaluation: the core of your worldview is either extremely fundamental and important to us all, OR false, DEPENDING ON A CHOICE OF HOW WE INTERPRET THE WORDS. Since the details are important, and connect to concrete global issues before us today, I will try to build up from words and fundamentals to what they change in understanding the future.
In your diagram, "Mind"/"Logos"/"Noosphere" are pictured as the root of everything.
That in itself is something of a mainstream view.
I will never forget a workshop created by Karl Pribram, in which Karl introduced me to Roger Penrose. As we stood there, Penrose asked Karl "I am curious why you invited a physicist like Paul to a conference on neural networks." Karl had a VERY expressive face... a major part of his life!.. and he expressed surprise and incredulity.
He thought HE knew who I was... but why would Penrose imagine otherwise?
Penrose went on to explain why HE traveled far to attend this conference. He was still a mathematician, still seeking to understand the mathematical dynamic laws governing everything we can connect to or experience in life. But he began to feel that the KINDS of mathematics we should be using is not the old (Einsteinian) field theories or geometry, which he knew very well. Rather, "the universe seems like a great MIND, so maybe we should be learning YOUR kind of mathematics, the mathematics describing mind." Naturally, I have always paid a LOT of attention to that possibility.
I certainly see how our "noosphere" (as I see and understand it) is fundamental to what WE as humans experience in this solar system, and in almost all of our psychic or spiritual experience.
HOWEVER: I DO HOPE that the most serious dialogue should still give SOME visible place, however small, to the very tiny very different group I represent. Actually, my group -- followers of Hard Core Einsteinian Realism (HCER) -- are small as a subset of
the powerful mainstream group, itself small, which understands and follows/uses the Everett Wheeler Deutsch (EWD) theory of physics (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Even Teilhard de Chardin did NOT propose that the noosphere as he presented it is the foundation of everything in our universe. For him, it was just the earth. I have a different view, including earth AND sun and a bit more, but NOT as the foundation of everything in our universe.
My view, in HCER, is that the most credible view of our universe (fitting logic and experience, not popular beliefs) is that it is a system of continuous fields defined over curved Minkowski space, a viewpoint created by Einstein, and defined and refined more precisely in the great book https://www.scribd.com/
https://drpauljohn.blogspot.
IN THIS VIEW, your diagram is correct IF "noosphere" is interpreted to mean "The universe as a MIND," and "Mind" as described in that blog post.
======================
===========================
But this opens the door to important new understanding, affecting even the regular level of human life considered by most futurists.
Most philosophers, futurists and policy analysts today do not know enough about real physics to know what quantum physics really does to change the story. It changes the story a lot!! Yea unto Trump today!! Even most physicists do not yet know the modern story
(as I learned from running an NSF research program QMHP from 2007 to 2015).
I do not ask you to consider believing in HCER quite yet. For now, consider the mainstream EWD theory, maybe a prerequisite to really understanding HCER. My latest patent, https://patents.
If my explanation of EWD leaves questions in your mind, it would help to see what Deutsch himself has been saying to
a general audience; he has many videos on youtube, like Do We Exist in Multiple Realities? David Deutsch and Sam Harris on Quantum Physics .
The multiverse theory (the core of EWD) predicts that macroscopic objects like computer networks and organisms can be put into a mixed states. In 1989, as a hard core Einstienian realist, I did not believe that prediction. I spoke at the world's largest
conference along with the world's top skeptics, who worked hard to plan experiments to disprove it:
But thousands of experiments were done, all confirming that prediction. For example, see:
It took me years to find a way to reconcile these experiments (and other weird things) with HCER, but for now, EWD is a good way to
begin to return to reality.
WHEN a Schrodinger Cat is hit by a quantum uncertainty (like a bullet to its head), EWD tells us that the real universe -- the multiverse -- does not CHOOSE to kill the cat or save it. It tells us that the universe itself splits into two branches, each of which then evolves in parallel (sort of), going its merry way on its own. THIS IS THE REAL WORLD FOLKS, AND IT APPLIES EVEN TO PEOPLE. BASED ON THIS FACT, AND MANY OTHER PIECES OF EVIDENCE, I STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT DONALD TRUMP (whose name I heard on France24 at the moment I typed it!!) REALLY WAS ELECTED AND INSTALLED INTO OFFICE AS PRESIDENT IN 2020... in another branch of reality.
And that is just one example. It would apply to nuclear explosions (see werbos.com/NATO_Terrorism.pdf)
Most philosophers who think about the multiverse think that this is the end of the definition story. But my multifaceted life did not allow me to just live with such a simple picture, without checking. Above all, since I learned quantum field theory in classes by Julian Schwinger (who shared the Nobel prize with Feynman, and wrote important books explaining all this), I knew that the kinds of "Feynman diagrams" we use to quantify this kind of physics describe possible states of the multiverse as "eigenstates."
Every eigenstate comes with an "eigenvalue". That is a complex number with two components -- an imaginary component which predicts how quickly that state oscillates (the universe is always vibrating), and a REAL NUMBER COMPONENT which
tells us how quickly that state decays with time (or explodes in probability for a limited time, another possibility). ALWAYS.
The states which decay are called "virtual states" (like virtual particles), VERY WELL known and established in mainstream physics.
And so, I claim that the "universe" in which Trump was inaugurated in 2021 has decayed with time, and is almost all gone by now (but with enough subtle connection that it lingers even now as a memory in his brain, our virtual President).
That other Trump WAS a fully conscious human being. And so what about us? Could some of US also be virtual people, like the shadows in the wall of Plato's cave? (This is part of what I discussed in werbos.com/NATO_Terrorism.pdf.
If things seem worse than necessary in OUR existence, it is quite possible that our noosphere might possess a level of intelligence as high as the quantum AGI described in my patent, and that IT might cause our present history to just evaporate away, to be replaced by a history -- past and future -- more to ITS liking than what we experience know. And WE might decide to make such changes!!
But what does IT like? If "everything will work out better", BY WHAT MEASURE will it be better?
I am amazed that anyone who would bring us to higher, true AGI does not have full awareness of what this question implies!! Or even to somehow elevate human minds to such a level!
In my view, life in our solar system will unavoidably change radically in this century, because of
unstoppable changes in our "food chain" (means of production and destruction). Therefore, our only real hope of survival
(except perhaps as "sheep" of other species or machines) is by open, cooperative international efforts which let humanity build a new global hardware infrastructure:
That includes the components which define the U and J and lambda and such of that design.
==========
P.S. I discussed "mind" and "noosphere" above, and in the links. "Logos" has another history. Please forgive me for skipping it here. Please forgive such a long email... but all these details and more are important.
No comments:
Post a Comment