The Common Mechanics of Quantum Computing and the I Ching by Thomas Howard Ray

Hi Tom,

I rated your essay. Much of it was over my head. I rated it according to how much it agreed with my world view. I appreciated the references to I Ching and Tarot. You do have this radiance of "enlightenment", this spiritual intelligent quality that comes through your words and arguments. I appreciate that you see that QM is about available STATES for quantum particles.

On the down side, you (and most of the physics community) are focusing too much on the BIT, not enough on the IT. It's an ethereal IT, not a mathematical IT. It's an IT that you can't observe directly, yet this IT has intrinsic characteristics of the physics constants c, h, permittivity/permeability. The physics community is, overall, avoiding this distinction like the plague.

On the brighter side, I gave you a score much higher than 1. :)

Hi Tom,

I'm trying to gleen what you mean by, "it's only the continuum of IT that enables mathematics constructed of BITs." The more I think about it, the more I see that the IT is literally beyond human understanding, beyond our ability to measure and interact with. Given this state of affairs that the physics community doesn't know what the IT is, I feel emboldened in believing some of the new age, occult teachings about spirits, a spirit world, astral planes, and etheric planes. Basically, since physics constants are the result of some invisible thing beyond human understanding, why can't there be other kinds of invisible things that would fall under the category of occultism?

Hi Tom,

"Then IT doesn't have anything to do with physics, does it? You can't have it both ways -- a non-interacting something we can't possibly understand, and a physical phenomenon."

Well, such an IT is going to have characteristics and mechanisms that set the physics constants c, h, G, etc. In that sense, it still is physics. One day, we'll have to try to figure out how to change those values, particularly c and G, if we ever hope to travel faster than c.

It is still my contention that wave-function phenomena is part of the IT and part of consciousness as well. Neurons firing in sync is supposed to cause consciousness. More like neurons firing in sync allows consciousness to experience the brain and nervous system, as if consciousness was an all pervading field that can slip into the physical universe through the brain, using the brain as a conduit. This is nature, but not 21st century physics.

Mr. Ray,

really, I enjoyed Your work. Symmetry breaking in sub-nuclear mechanisms.

Positions that I share. I, in my essay I went a little further and I would appreciate an opinion.

I greet You cordially.

Thomas,

"We tend to think that only numerical implementation is a precise fit to "reality," and more" scientific" because it is constrained by the rules of arithmetic -- we neglect the fact that we created the (self consistent) rules of

arithmetic, as surely as generations of shamans and intelligentsia created the

self.."



In non-mathematical and more simplistic terms my "It's Good to be the King," attributes the Anthropic Principle to man's anthropomorphic tendencies, somewhat akin to building our own rules of math. I am impressed with your open realization that human subjectivity could be involved with our theories and beliefs.

A good read, having the complete absorption of a black hole's matter, along with its density, without the evaporation some pose.

Jim

Dear Thomas,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Hi Tom,

The words I've been using are causing to resistance to the ideas I have. Let me try another approach. I want to use a word like viscosity to describe what I think is happening. I imagine there to be a viscous like substance that exists beyond universes and dimensions. Ordinarily, I would prefer to describe it as an aether or a spirit medium, but for now, I will describe it as something that is very viscous. Imagine that this viscous substance is poured into certain domains of mathematical physics (the mathematical physics that is reality, not just a mathematical model). It is this viscous medium that has physics constants as properties (for reasons beyond 21st century physics understanding). If I were talking to believers, I would call this viscious medium the spirit of God. If I were talking to occultists, I would call it the aether. If I were talking to physicists, I would deseribe it as the invisible/undetectable medium that "breathes reality" into the domain of mathematics. At the smallest scales, this viscious medium would be the wave-function that participates in unseen interferences patterns of the 2 slit experiment (and every other quantum system).

The Higgs field, all known fields, and every field yet to be discovered owes its existence to the presence of this viscious medium. In reality, this viscosity of this medium is too small to be detectable.

I mean viscosity in the "trying to stir it" sense, not the molecular electrostatic sense.

Scientists should think in terms of this medium breathing "reality" into physics equations. That's what I'm saying.

"Should they? What physical measurement differentiates a breathing medium from no medium at all?"

The fact that there are thousands of mathematical physics theories that don't describe reality at all. A mathematical physics theory is not a sufficient condition to bring a universe into existence. It takes something specific to "breath life into it", to make it real; it takes something that is capable of enforcing laws (of nature) and physics constants. Take a look at the Casimir effect. There are these quantized fields that pop into existence when we arrange plates & potiential energy wells in certain ways. There are wave-functions that pop into existence in infinite potential energy wells. That's what I'm talking about. It looks to me like wave-functions exist as things that just pop into existence and act like quantum system.

Without a "viscous medium", what else is there to enforce the laws (of nature) and physics constants? What else is there?

Dear Tom, I knew I would enjoy reading your piece but I never expected that your essay is so well written and so well thought out. It is a pleasure to read, although I have to read it slowly and several times. Here are the few quotes that I like: "The arrangements, 010 and 101 resemble an I Ching2 oracle where tossing three coins produces two heads and one tail in one case and two tails/one head in the other. Of course, all possible combinations are actually eight-- 000, 111, 010, 101, 110, 001, 100, 011-- and an I Ching reading takes six tosses of the coins (or yarrow stalks, or 0s and 1s) to make a complete "hexagram" composed of two "trigrams" one atop the other (fig. 3)" If I may say, KQID also cites Fu Xi as the founder of bagua or 8 trigrams, precursor of I Ching as well as Pythagoras were the founders of digital Existence that bit is it and it is bit: bit = it. And another, "Isn't this what Wheeler is telling us? - "The situation cannot declare itself until you've asked your question. But the asking of one question precludes the asking of another." "It" - the answer to a question - whether one addresses one's inquiry to the I Ching oracle, a quantum computer, a favorite deity, or the universe itself - is only "it" for that moment," Fantastic! But this one I strongly disagree, "A rarely spoken assumption of both quantum mechanical formalism - and the I Ching - is that time itself has no physical reality beyond a probabilistic moment." whereas, KQID says that time is real and time is the mother of space-in-time. Everything happens with, through and in time.

However, I love your insightful wisdom embedded with healthy Descartes' doubts: "Even the most primitive of oracle predictive techniques is judged against collected lore stored in the heads of shamans or in some book or books of "hidden" knowledge. We tend to think that only numerical implementation is a precise fit to "reality," and more "scientific" because it is constrained by the rules of arithmetic--we neglect the fact that we created the (self consistent) rules of arithmetic, as surely as generations of shamans and intelligentsia created the self consistent rules of their own predictive systems." Wonderful essay and I hope we continue our discussion later. I will rate this essay the highest that I have given so far. Please look and give me your erudite comment on my essay and grade it accordingly. Thanks, Leo KoGuan.