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

          Hi Frederico,

          you say "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. " Exactly, nicely put.

          "I believe our mind [...] 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." Exactly. " That's why it is not described by current physics: actually our mathematics does not really support top-down causation. " Well it's beginning to do so, see the papers By Walker and Davies I cited some way above, and particularly Karl Friston's article "A theory of cortical responses" (I gave the link a while back). We're getting there. Any help in sorting this out appreciated.

          I'll take a look at your essay.

          geporge

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          • Post #294

          The works of Gell-Mann and Anderson show that emergence is compatible with ordinary bottom-up causation. Anderson writes on the first page of the Science paper: "The elementary entities of science X obey the laws of science Y". He gives a table of X and Y. The first row says that the elementary entities of "solid state or many-body physics" obey the laws of "elementary particle physics", the second row says that the elementary entities of "chemistry" obeys the laws of "many-body physics", and so on. At the end of the table Anderson writes "But this hierarchy does not imply that science X is "just applied Y."" Gell-Mann offers a similar analysis in his famous book. Gell-Mann and Anderson criticize reductionism but defend the ordinary bottom-up causation. You confuse reductionism with bottom-up causation.

          Denis Noble is not a world authority on the molecular basis behind the physiology of the heart. This molecular basis obeys the laws of physics and chemistry. This is well-known. Superconductivity is a collective phenomenon for a large number of entities that obey the laws of particle physics. This is explained by Anderson in his Science paper. You confuse reductionism with bottom-up causation.

          The ideas of your "deepest thinkers in cosmology" about the second law are considered nonsense by all the experts. The reception at the Santa Cruz talk was one example. The proof of the increasing entropy due to Ludwig Boltzmann (who later committed suicide, being surrounded by people not unsimilar to your "deepest thinkers in cosmology" who were unable to appreciate the depth and validity of his key insights into thermodynamics) shows that the rest of the Universe and its history is irrelevant, because of the locality of the laws of Nature.

          Time-symmetry is an approximation to other fundamental symmetries of our universe. You consider this "Extraordinary" because you are not familiar with modern physics. What I find extraordinary is that you didn't know the Weinberg derivation before writing your amusing essay. The H-theorem (3.6.20) holds for both directions of time and Weinberg writes about the theorem: "so we may conclude that the entropy always increases". This is very easy to check. Your misunderstanding of the H-theorem is typical of the "deepest thinkers in cosmology".

          You repeat a wrong argument by Penrose, but the Weinberg derivation does not assume "time-reversal invariance, which would tell us that |M_{\beta\alpha}|^2 is unchanged if we interchange \alpha and \beta". This general derivation from quantum field theory does not need cosmological speculations.

          Your spurious citations to personal blogs and promotional websites of the "deepest thinkers in cosmology" do not change the conclusion: All the examples found in your amusing essay are compatible with ordinary bottom-up causation.

            Hi George,

            That is true if Martin Tajmar's measurement's are false, but no one has yet shown this to be the case. If instead his measurements are correct, then the coherence factor (kappa) is as I describe in my essay, the Nature of the Wave Function, with potential effects I have described in my earlier essays. The fact that everyone has decided to ignore his results is par for the course, but proves nothing. Yet if he is correct, it is the most revolutionary discovery of recent times. My own position is to treat it as correct and investigate the consequences, which are many. In fact, there are other hi-ranked essays here that propose something similar, ignoring what has already potentially been discovered.

            I don't expect to convince you, simply to record the fact that measurements exist that suggest an alternative.

            Best,

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            Dear George,

            I found your essay to be the most interesting one here. I do think that the views expressed in your essay fit better in the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, though. One can then argue that the sector an observer is located in is not a precisely defined branch, rather it is in some superposition of states that are in the same functional equivalence class (as defined on page 9 of your essay).

            Such a superposition is a complicated entangled state of the system and the environment; such a state defines the computational state of the algorithm that the brain is executing. I explain this in my essay.

            The then means that the top-down causation is in principle visible from the microstate of the system as it exists at any given time (although you will in general have a superpositon of systems in different macrostates).

            You simply don't understand that at no point have I in any ways denied that the the laws of physics and chemistry apply at the lower levels. Of course they do. The point is that they do not by themselves determine what happens. That is determined by top down causation, as is abundantly clear for example in the case of the computer, which you conveniently continue to ignore.

            It is also clear in the case of superconductivity. Yes indeed it is a "collective phenomenon for a large number of entities that obey the laws of particle physics". It is precisely the collective nature of the phenomenon which means it cannot be accounted for except in terms of the entities that make it a collective phenomenon - that is, the specific crystal structure, which is a higher level of structuration (i.e. at a larger scale of description) than the Cooper pairs. Indeed those pairs do not exist without that higher level structure. That is why superconductivity depends for its existence on that specific higher level structure, and is why you cannot deduce superconductivity in a bottom up way from the behaviour of electrons and protons, as Laughlin points out. I continue to believe he underztands it better than you do.

            "Denis Noble is not a world authority on the molecular basis behind the physiology of the heart. This molecular basis obeys the laws of physics and chemistry" Of course it does, no one has ever denied that: that is a foundation he and I believe in. But by themselves they do not create a heart nor determine its functioning. Denis Noble is a world expert on the physiology of the heart, and it is when you study that physiology that you find it cannot be understood except in terms of the interplay of bottom up and top down causation, which determines which specific molecular interactions take place where and at what time. Bottom up physics alone cannot explain how a heart comes into being, nor what its design is, nor its regular functioning. Please take the trouble to read what Noble has written on this, instead of denying his understanding of the physics and biology involved.

            The very small weak interaction time asymmetry makes no difference to the arrow of time issue, which is the point I was making. "The ideas of your "deepest thinkers in cosmology" about the second law are considered nonsense by all the experts." Who appointed these nameless people as experts in what? I have agreed with you that the Weinberg derivation is a nice one. You still don't get the point. You say "The H-theorem (3.6.20) holds for both directions of time and Weinberg writes about the theorem: "so we may conclude that the entropy always increases" ". Increase in which direction of time? The second law has no content until this question is answered - and Weinberg's derivation can't give an answer to that question, as the first part of the quote above makes clear (that derivation unhelpfully says it increases in both directions of time). "This general derivation from quantum field theory does not need cosmological speculations" --- and it does not solve the arrow of time problem. The nameless "experts" you rely on do not trump Wheeler and Feynmann, who understood that the problem is real and is not solved by quantum field theory per se.

            "You confuse reductionism with bottom-up causation." Your continued repetition of this phrase shows you simply have not paid attention to the nature of my argument, nor the vary large number of examples confirming it, such as the whole subject of epigenetics. Here is a challenge for you. Explain to me in a purely bottom up way how state vector preparation is possible, as for example in the Stern Gerlach experiment. Quantum physics is unitary, as we all know: how does the non-unitary behaviour of state vector preparation emerge in a purely bottom up way from that unitary dynamics? You won't be able to explain this action without invoking the effect of the apparatus on the particles - which is a form of top down action form the apparatus to the particles.

            Why don't you change your pseudonym to something that is not so blatantly false? If you get that so wrong, why should we believe anything you say? And you don't do yourself any favours by the sneering tone you adopt. It just comes across as arrogant.

              This response was to the previous post. It somehow got displaced.

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              • Post #299

              I didn't know about these results. It is good to know we are making progress in this direction. I'm trying to understand these papers but they are not any simple for a first reading. I might work on this subject in the future; it is something that interests me. But first there are simpler things I would like to clarify. Our understanding of complex things may always be bounded by the clarity of simple things. Progress can be made, but is much harder than when the simple is already clearly understood.

              All the best!

              Dear Saibal

              that is an interesting perspective. Personally I think quantum theory is incomplete and that we need to find the mechanism that determines state vector projection; but I'll consider your proposal too. But I have never been able to understand what mechanism leads to splitting of the wave function, or what determines when it happens. Also as I understand it, this proposal can't account for the Born rule in any simple way. Deutsch's concept of uncountable infinities of fungible particles is hardly credible.

              George