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  • Post #273

Dear George

I would like to show interesting story where Top-Dawn approach get useful

http://vixra.org/abs/0907.0022

I mean trick with inversion dark green column

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  • Post #274

Ok I have looked at the Weinberg derivation (pages 150-151 in his book). I agree it's good to have a derivation that depends only on unitarity. Unitary transformations however are time reversible. There is therefore nothing in the dynamics that can choose one time direction as against the other as far as any dynamical development is concerned, just as there is no intrinsic difference between the particles alpha and beta.

Consequently just as in the case of the Boltzmann derivation of the H-theorem, the H-Theorem (3.6.20) will hold for both directions of time (just reverse the direction of time and relabel alpha to beta: the derivation goes through as before). This is the point which is explained very clearly by Penrose in his various books as regards Boltzmann's derivation. Weinberg's derivation of the H-theorem does not determine a preferred direction of time from the underlying unitary dynamics. It can't do so, as there is no preferred direction of time in that dynamic.

" As in the case of digital computers, which can run any algorithm whatever, in the case of the brain the underlying physics enables us to think, but does not constrain what we are able to think about."

Right on, George. Androids may dream of electric sheep, but only a human brain can dream of an android dreaming of electric sheep.

The capacity for infinite regress cannot be programmed into a finite state machine.

Tom

The point of the above is that it is impossible to derive the arrow of time - one of the most important aspects of macro physics and biology - from microphysics alone. Both statistical physics and quantum field theory give you a beautiful H-theorem: and the derivation applies equally in both directions of time (this applies for example to Weinberg's derivation of the H-theorem: see my last comment). Supposing you break this symmetry somehow by random fluctuations: you have no guarantee the direction of time will be the same everywhere. We do not see opposing arrows of time in the real universe. Bottom up causation alone is incapable of giving an explanation of one of the most important features of everyday physics.

Consequently, as pointed out by Wheeler, Feynman, Sciama, Davies, Zeh, Carroll, Penrose, and many others, one needs some global boundary condition to determine a consistent arrow of time in local physics:a top-down effect from the cosmological scale to everyday scales. This is what the Santa Cruz "experts" have not understood, even though the issue has been known since the time of Boltzmann and Loschmidt.

This global coordination is plausibly provided by a macro-scale low entropy condition of the early universe, see the writings of Carroll (From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time) and Penrose (Cycles of Time). For readers who have not encountered this debate, a useful summary by Sean Carroll is here ; and

here he gives extensive quotes from Feynman on the issue. For my own summary of this and other top-down effects in cosmology, see here .

George

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  • Post #278

Dear George,

these are just some things, pertaining to your last post, that I think are worth considering, not necessarily requiring an answer now. What is the real universe, in your opinion? Impossible is a very strong word, are you sure?

There is a high resolution, horizontal version of diagram 1 in my essay thread.A reality interface can be a 'simple' light sensitive material such as cine film which changes in chemical structure when exposed. It does not have to be the sensory system of a sentient organism or a complex artificial detection device. Respectfully, Georgina

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  • Post #279

Hi George,

Indeed, I do appreciate the Martinez-Moya reference.

I have thought for some time that brain science is the next great frontier of knowledge, because my wildest conjecture is that the brainscape perfectly mirrors an isolated cosmoscape in a simply connected network. Not to be too sci-fi on the subject -- as you say, " ... as pointed out by Wheeler, Feynman, Sciama, Davies, Zeh, Carroll, Penrose, and many others, one needs some global boundary condition to determine a consistent arrow of time in local physics:a top-down effect from the cosmological scale to everyday scales." (In fact, that's what my essay in this competition is about.)

The introduction of multi-level causation to biological evolution, multi-scale variety (Bar-Yam) to all systems, IGUS (Gell-Mann & Hartle) to information theory, local arrows of time to cosmology (Ellis, et al) ... and more ... have persuaded me that a continuum of complex multi-scale connections reflect a deep truth of how the universe works.

Martinez and Moya allow, "By highlighting the mutual co-determination between levels of organization in the process of natural selection we have recovered and articulated a multilevel perspective that is absent from previous discussions." And they quote Hitchcock 2003, "The goal of a philosophical account of causation should not be to capture the causal relation, but rather to capture the many ways in which the events of the world can be bound together."

Bar-Yam puts it this way: "In considering the requirements of multi-scale variety more generally, we can state that for a system to be effective, it must be able to coordinate the right number of components to serve each task, while allowing the independence of other sets of components to perform their respective tasks without binding the actions of one such set to another." [Y. Bar-Yam, "Multiscale Variety in Complex Systems." Complexity vol 9, no 4, pp 37-45 2004]. In other words, distributed control -- lateral information -- increases variety. Increased variety increases the coordination strength of the network.

George, may your tribe increase. :-)

Best,

Tom

My post above. Can't seem to stay logged in.

Dear Prof Ellis

I enjoyed reading your essay and was prompted to also read your other papers that you cite. In one of those you mention Wheeler's delayed choice experiment as "a case of top down causation from the apparatus to the very nature of the particle/wave at the time it passed through the slits." In this instance, top down causation sounds a lot like retro-causation through the role of future boundary conditions (as modeling measurement processes) in selecting what actually comes about.

In this regard, I think you would find interesting Couder and Fort's bouncing droplet quantum analogues of single-particle diffraction and interference (refs [18],[21},[23] in my essay). Retro-causality also plays a second role in this system: the analogue of de Broglie's pilot wave is a standing wave (not a phase wave), in other words the particle is the source of a semi-retarded plus semi-advanced radiation field.

I have some ideas on the classical to quantum cut that I tried to explain in my essay, again related to retro-causality.

cheers

Andrew

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    • Post #282

    Dr. Ellis

    Does The Crystallizing Block Universe mean one single cycle of the Universe?

      Dear Andrew

      your paper is very interesting, and I like its seriousness and originality.

      I agree on the possibility of retro-causality: please see this paper for a view that is a bit similar to yours in that regard. I also like the multi-scales in your model, which accords with what I am trying to do here. However of course quantum theory has to do much more than just model an electron: it will be very interesting to see how you take it further.

      Best wishes

      George Ellis

      Hi Georgina

      well the word "impossible" here relates to the relation between two theories that are supposed to describe the real universe on different scales.

      If you have a theory T1 that describes it on a small scale L1, you can in principle coarse-grain to get a theory T2 that applies on a larger scale L2. This is what happens for example with the kinetic theory of gases. Now if the theory T1 is subject to a symmetry S1, for example time-reversal invariance, then unless the averaging procedure explicitly breaks that symmetry, for example with an averaging procedure that changes with time, the theory T2 must necessarily exhibit the same symmetry. That is what underlies the discussion above: we believe that fundamental physics is time symmetric (more accurately: it has a PCT symmetry, as Sean Carroll explains), so any derived coarse grained theory must also be time symmetric. There is no option about this: that logic is where the word "impossible" comes from.

      However the time asymmetry can come not from the dynamic equations of the theory but from the boundary conditions. That is what Wheeler, Feynmann, and many others have explored. Then it is a top-down effect from the context (the environment) to the solutions.

      I agree completely about the reality interface. It can also be a plant leaf (chlorophyll acts the way you describe). Indeed any photo detector will do, such as a CCD in a camera, where a free electron is emitted at a detection event. Indeed it is free electron emission that underlies also the detection events you mention. You might find interesting my discussion of detectors in sections 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 of this paper (which also discusses the averaging procedure I mentioned above in some detail).

      George

      Hi Tom

      great, we agree on how living systems work: "a continuum of complex multi-scale connections reflect a deep truth of how the universe works."

      My point then is that this extends to quantum physics as well: phenomena such as superconductivity are also dependent on such effects. It's a novel view to physics, or more correctly to some physicists, but not to biology.

      be well,

      George

      Not necessarily: it can have multiple cycles provided the transition between them is non-singular. No one has yet given a cyclic theory without singularities of one kind or another.

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      • Post #287

      Dear Professor George Ellis,

      I reaffirm that my criticism only addresses Georg Cantor's naive set theory and what I consider implications of a revealed as wrong conclusion from experiment by Michelson and Morley. I respect your work and will go on trying to understand it. Unfortunately you seem to consider it not worth showing in what my essay is wrong. I envy you for facing rich criticism that provides you good chances to explain what you meant with top-down. While I am a bit familiar with the interplay of caudal to cortical and top-down propagation of information in case of auditory perception, I did never see this a reversal to the direction in the causal chain. Your essay seems to be too genial for an old EE like me.

      With respect and sincere apologies,

      Dr. E. Blumschein

      Dear Daryl,

      Thank you for giving me a hint. I did not forget that someone somewhere asked me for something. This was embarrassing to me. Where do you expect my reply?

      Regards,

      Eckard

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      • Post #288

      Hi George. Thank you for keeping an open mind in regard to my ideas.

      You wrote that you agree with my statement: "If the self did not represent, form, and experience a comprehensive approximztion of experience in general by combining conscious and unconscious experience, we would then be incapable of growth and of becoming other than we are." DREAMS PROVE ALL OF THIS: That the self represents, forms, and experiences a comprehensive approximztion of experience in general by combining conscious and unconscious experience...AND that dreams are demonstrative of our growth and becoming other than we are. I proved/showed the linked physics (of dreams with waking experience) in my essay as well.

      Then you wrote: "The question is how physics allows this to happen. Modular hierarchical structures with both bottom up and top down causation is a key part of the answer." My essay shows exactly how the physics of dreams allows this to happen.

      You asked about my statement: "FUNDAMENTAL gravitational and inertial equivalency and balancing fundamentally sits at the heart of physics" I also demonstrate fundamentally balanced and averaged acceleration with this, including balanced attraction and repulsion and instanataneity in the physics of dreams. Electromagnetism, gravity, acceleration, and inertia are in fundamental equilibrium and balance in dreams. I showed this clearly. This demonstrates/proves F=ma fundamentally as well. (Force/energy as F, actually.)

      Gravity sits at the heart of fundamental/general unification in physics. Gravity is at the heart of our feeling, vision, and touch. Thoughts and emotions are differentiated feelings. Gravity felt at the VISIBLE ground, so no gravity at the very top of the head where INVISIBLE space enjoins. Inertia and gravity in balance, so VISION begins INVISIBLY inside the eye/body; as gravity (seen and felt) is fundamental to fundamentally stabilized distance in/of space.

      Can you please rate and review my essay George? I would appreciate it.

      Hi Frank

      dreams may well be important as to how the mind works; people like Freud and Mark Solms have investigated this. But dreams can't be significant for how physics operates:its the other way round, in the end physics underlies dreams somehow because physics underlies the brain.

      Which physics? You claim "Gravity is at the heart of our feeling, vision, and touch." I side with biophyiscs in saying it is electromagnetism that plays this role. In fact the principle of equivalence supports this: our bodies function adequately for extended periods in free fall, where there is no effective gravitational force. So gravity can't underlie mind functioning.

      I'll put some comment over there.

      George

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        • Post #290

        Dear George,

        I am fascinated because the ideas you propose in your essay are essentially some insights I got some years ago. They were from a philosophical or spiritual point of view, and you brought the same ideas into the language of physics. I'm a physicist too, and I know how hard is to propose anything on this subject. But the connection you established with computer programming is perfect for it. Actually, I believe that once we could completely understand computation, programming and its relation with physics your ideas will be definitely proved right and also deeply clarified.

        I think looking to this problem as problem of language and can give us many insights. Continuing or repeating what you say, follow my line: The only way to describe a high level program is using a high level language. A high level program can be implemented in a low level language, but it is not described by it. That is, there are several different implementations of a high level program in a high level language; and it contains more information than the high level one; so, you cannot say that you are describing the same program in the low level language.

        To say that top-down causation happens is simply to say that physics can "run high level programs". I believe quantum computation is just like assembly programming, so it is the lowest level possible. Therefore, a high level quantum programming language might me the missing ingredient for understanding this. It would make your analogy formally valid in physics!

        I believe our mind and any other spiritual element would exist in high level layer and could only be described by high level languages. And then, as they exist, they would be able to provoke top-down causation in the lowest layer: physics. The interaction between mind and matter would be something of this form. That's why it is not described by current physics: actually our mathematics does not really support top-down causation. For sure it is the missing ingredient for a revolution in physics!

        In my essay, "The Final Theory and the Language of Physics", I discuss the relation between language and theory, and try to elucidate the nature of a physical theory. Please, give me some feedback. A computer language is just like a framework for writing physical theories. A high level language would be like a high level framework, with high level concepts and mathematics, and understanding top-down causation will at some time require this.

        Best Regards

        Frederico

          Hi George,

          You say: "...our bodies function adequately for extended periods in free fall, where there is no effective gravitational force. So gravity can't underlie mind functioning."

          Unless you are excluding the gravitomagnetic component of gravity, this is not necessarily true.

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Hi Eugene

          It's a nice idea, but it won't work because those effects are so weak. For this to work, they'd have to be detected by physical systems on Earth. The most expensive and complex gravitational wave detectors have so far failed to detect the gravitomagnetic component of gravity, see Kip Thorne's discussion of the nature of these effects in two papers at http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1208.3038 and http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1208.3034. If those detectors can't detect them, then certainly our brains can't.

          George