Removing the Element of Surprise by Aaron M. Feeney

It is interesting the Cassandra machines; some time ago I thought a strange tachyon machine (a story for the grandchilds), where a machine that write in the present write in the same machine in the past, so that who write a text? The ink disappear in the present, to appear in the past, and the pen in the present delete the old writing! There is a book in a temporal loop, and no one write the book.

The computer can be a Turing machine that write in the past, deleting the present tape, so that the computer have the result before of the calculation (always a story).

I am thinking that each weather forecasting is a Cassandra machine, if the forecasting is perfect, and the prediction time is not high: if there are classical equations, and weak quantum effect, then the Cassandra machine work well.

Each dynamics have forbidden trajectories, so that it is true that not all the futures are possible (simmetries and invariants), and each real Cassandra machine can say this prohibition.

A machine that reduce locally the entropy, for example cooling a system, or concentrating a system, is a local Cassandra machine? Is it possible to include information in the system, to send locally message in the past?

If an essay make you think, then it is a good essay.

Dear Aaron

You have put in a lot of thought into this. The concept of a foreknowledge machine is the stuff of science fiction, but you have considered the possibility of their being real - like one day we can download an app that will tell us what we will do in the next 24 hours or week or year. I would imagine that if such a machine were possible its accuracy would diminish with the distance in the future of the setting.

Unfortunately, from my own point of view, and more specifically from the physics of my Beautiful Universe theory , there is no time dimension. Past present and future are just outcomes of memory, perception and speculation successively. All we have is one universal 'now' state that changes.

You can counter by saying, yes but what will future 'now' states be? I do not subscribe to many-world theories, so the future such a machine would read would be a Laplacian causal projection. Alas it has been repeatedly argued that any tiny variation in setting the initial conditions (the butterfly flaps its wings, or not) will cause a large change down the causal chain (the storm, or not).

As for the single photon experiment read Eric Reiter's experiments on his unquantum.org site. He has proven that there is no such thing as a point photon - ie the photon goes through the two slits all the time.

I wish you all the best, and do not worry nobody is going to tell about WWIII through a foreknowledge machine. Be happy ...now.

Vladimir

Thanks for the interesting clarifications, Aaron. I'm glad if my comments were helpful. I have a few more quick responses:

1) I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it is logically possible for a computer to follow a program accurately. Computers certainly can follow programs accurately. But that's an empirical fact, not an analytic statement. I don't think we can ever guarantee that a computer will necessarily follow its program. It seems to me--I admit I might not have really understood your scenario--that it might be the computer that fails when connected to the Cassandra machine, rather than the other way around.

2) You wrote that "all known optical systems can only receive information about past scenes" because "it always takes time for light from any scene to reach any lens". I took that to mean that we see the past rather than the future because the speed of light is finite. I'm guess I'm not sure now what you mean here.

3) I'm not sure how information about the future from another point in spacetime can arrive faster than the speed of light. What am I missing?

4) My guess is that foreknowledge machines are not physically possible in our region of the universe. Especially if they depend on closed timelike curves to work. As far as I know, there's no evidence that such curves exist--Godel's spacetime is kind of a theoretical special case, right? And if a foreknowledge machine had to create and manipulate such curves to function--is there another way--I assume the amount of energy required would be literally astronomical.

5) I will have to think about how this works more carefully, since I'm not sure I understand how this would work.

6) It will be interesting to see who's right. I agree that in some ways technology develops exponentially--if that's what you're suggesting--but I also think that qualitative advances become exponentially harder to achieve in some areas. Projects that require infrastructure or use high energies can be particularly slow. I am afraid at this point we may not even have controlled fusion in 20 years.

7) You seem to be using distinguishing prediction from foreknowledge in a technical way that wasn't clear to me when I first read your essay. But in any case this is where I think I most strongly disagree with you. A viewing technology that is sometimes wrong can still be tremendously useful. It won't be useful--and may even be harmful--in the specific case where it is wrong. But on balance--if the error rate is low and roughly known--it can be very valuable. Consider diagnostic tests. These routinely produce both false negatives and false positives. But if the error rate is low enough they are still an invaluable tool of medicine. Our actual telescopes inevitably distort images, but nevertheless remain useful to us. I doubt that any machine can run without producing errors. We should certainly seek to minimize observational errors. But we can live with some. In fact, I think we have to.

Thanks in any case for the interesting discussion!

Robert

Hi Domenico,

I'm glad you enjoyed my essay. I found your "strange tachyon machine" idea interesting, as well as the Turing machine which has the result before the calculation. There is a history of this kind of musing.

I would like to respond about your repeated mention of Cassandra machines. Cassandra machines are not logically possible, they are like round squares. We can talk about them, just as we can talk about round squares, but neither can ever be real. So, the phrase "each real Cassandra machine," is as nonsensical as the phrase "each real round square." Instead, I suggest that you may mean to refer to foreknowledge machines, as they are both useful and logically possible.

Now, with this change in terminology in mind, perfect weather forecasting would not be a foreknowledge machine, because foreknowledge machines do not forecast or predict anything. They see the future as it will happen, or they give only vague information or fail to operate if they encounter an interference viewing scenario. Also, I would not say that a machine which reduces the local entropy is a foreknowledge machine, since every living organism does exactly this.

I recommend looking over my article again and reading the conversations with Michael Allan, Tommy Anderberg, and Robert de Neufville above. I would love to hear your further thoughts after this clarification.

I now have your article in my spreadsheet to read, and I look forward to it. All the best to you here, and in life.

Aaron

Aaron M. Feeney,

Responding to your invitation to rate your essay: I do not think that relativity theory is correct. I do think that the effects known as time dilation and length contraction are real. In the case of time dilation, I don't mean a property of time, I see it as the observed effect that events slow down under the correct circumstance. There are two points that follow from this: One is that I do not accept the idea of space-time or general relativity. The second is that these ideas are accepted physics theory with a long history of effects that are interpreted to confirm the theory. Therefore, investigations into further development of the effects predicted by relativity theory are certainly justified. In other words, your essay presents something that deserves serious consideration in line with accepted physics theory. That is how I judge it. I think physicists should seriously evaluate your essay and in keeping with that opinion, I am pushing your essay up for greater visibility hopefully to be evaluated by the judges. Your essay is a far better fit, in my opinion, for the subject of this contest than are many others that are presently highly rated. Good luck.

James Putnam

I am thinking that the single antimatter particle dynamic can be interpreted like retrocasuality dynamic (Dirac equation), so that can a macroscopic mechanism with a prevalence of antimatter be interpreted like a local pastward time travel?

How an antimatter universal computer (analog or digital) work, with interaction with the matter (photons of measurement)?

It seem more and more interesting.

Dear Aaron,

Excellent essay! A pleasure to read. I had some loosely thoughts that I want to share.

We don't need to hurry to invent a future viewer. We can wait until past travelling is invented and come back and change nothing.

The oracle of delphi was an early future viewer, who told Oedipus that he would kill his father and marry his mother. To avoid his faith he left for Thebes, where he killed his father on the way and married his mother. It seems, that the future viewing provoked the events it viewed. Same as in your P-0 program in the computer. It will do, what the future viewer tells him. It's a bit the chicken-egg problem. But I can't avoid the horrifying picture, that its' the future viewer that is steering us.

I wonder whether we could decide if the future viewer is telling us something about the future or the past. If there are only deterministic reversible laws the future viewer could not tell us anything, that we could not know now. Future and past have not a real meaning. If we add the second law of thermodynamics - entropy increase - and the future viewer would tell us something, that increases the relative information to what we know already it would be almost sure an information of the past and not from the future. How comes? This is the topic of my essay.

I met a boy with a story coming from the future. The fool thought he could change his past.

We shall not know the future otherwise we would not act in order to steer it.

Best regards,

Luca

You're welcome, Robert. It was fun, since your questions and points are so good. Now for the next round:

1) I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it is logically possible for a computer to follow a program accurately. Computers certainly can follow programs accurately. But that's an empirical fact, not an analytic statement. I don't think we can ever guarantee that a computer will necessarily follow its program. It seems to me--I admit I might not have really understood your scenario--that it might be the computer that fails when connected to the Cassandra machine, rather than the other way around.

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As you will see in my paper, it is a generalized future-viewing machine that is put to the test, to see if it could act like a Cassandra machine, not a Cassandra machine.

Now, as I wrote in my previous response, I was taking what is strictly necessary for my argument to go through to extremes. Indeed, this argument could still work in a time before Alan Turing, when all they would have had to go on is logical possibility. I meant, then, that as long as there is no contradiction in the idea of a computer following a simple program and accurately controlling a robotic arm which operates properly, then the argument is solid. For a run of P-1, for instance, it is impossible for any kind of machine or omniscient being whatsoever to provide the computer with a definite x-value that will turn out to be correct with respect to the future position of the weight (during any run where the computer operates properly and the arm functions as designed), because x does not equal x 1 (in modulo 4). From this we know that the generalized future-viewing machine cannot be a Cassandra machine, i.e., it cannot be a future-viewing machine that can always supply definite and correct information about all future outcomes, in every circumstance. (The italicized words combine to mean that one must only determine whether it is possible for the computer and the arm to function properly, to see that the argument succeeds.)

2) You wrote that "all known optical systems can only receive information about past scenes" because "it always takes time for light from any scene to reach any lens". I took that to mean that we see the past rather than the future because the speed of light is finite. I'm guess I'm not sure now what you mean here.

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Yes, that is what I meant. Any finite speed of light would only allow us to see the past.

Now, if the speed of light were infinite, light would not come from the future. Arriving at a destination before leaving is not a matter of going faster. An infinite speed of light would allow us to see the present, no matter how far away the things we are looking at might be.

3) I'm not sure how information about the future from another point in spacetime can arrive faster than the speed of light. What am I missing?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You might have meant information about a gamma ray burst while it is still in transit, say in 2015, but, in my last response, I was referring to viewer foreknowledge of its eventual detection on earth in, say, 2020. So, viewer foreknowledge received in 2014 of the 2020 detection event could be used in 2014 to deduce the burst's 2015 position.

4) My guess is that foreknowledge machines are not physically possible in our region of the universe. Especially if they depend on closed timelike curves to work. As far as I know, there's no evidence that such curves exist--Godel's spacetime is kind of a theoretical special case, right? And if a foreknowledge machine had to create and manipulate such curves to function--is there another way--I assume the amount of energy required would be literally astronomical.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who knows how they would work? The paper primarily offers logical observations to isolate the kind of useful machine that could exist, in principle. It leaves it up to others to eventually discover how to make one, if they happen to also be both physically possible and feasible.

(Continued in next post)

Dear Aaron,

Read your essay. The foreknowledge machine is an interesting concept. I'm not sure if I got it right, though.

If I got the gist, I think your claim is that a foreknowledge machine will only show future events that would not be/are not changed by the observer. Or anyone or anything. And that if a 'successful' result of an event is not shown, that is, no clear result is shown, it should not be attempted. Is this the case? This seems to imply that many future events can only be observed at most once. Indeed, that many (most? almost all?) future events cannot be observed at all with such a machine. Unless perhaps there is only one foreknowledge machine, and its results are not shared.

Like to know if I got this right. Thanks.

OH, yes. Thanks for your observation, and your helpful scale. I am not down-voting either.

Charles

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for stopping by and conversing with me. I first want to say that I really meant obvious lack of integrity. While self-interest and obvious lack of integrity are two different things, I think maybe putting "obvious lack of integrity" on everyone's page might have been a bit too much. However, whenever a person tolerates an obvious lack of integrity, it is at the service of self-interest gone mad. That's why I used one to imply the other.

I have no problem with self-interest. Every time I stop my bicycle to avoid a car, I am exercising self-interest, so we are in total agreement about your excellent statement: "If we cannot harness self interest as a species, we will by no means be able to 'steer humanity'."

Now, in my opinion, self-interest is best served by giving each article the rating it deserves, not by trashing articles without reading them which happen to have high ratings at a given time. (A practice which is known by more than one of us to have happened here.) I'm sure that you're not saying such behavior is a productive way for human beings to act.

Now, you giving me a low rating for the considered reason you did would naturally go along with giving it the appropriate low rating number you believed it deserves, in your opinion, which I trust is the procedure you followed. In which case, you did nothing unethical and at the same time you did what you believe, so I applaud it.

Now, as far as the practicality of my idea is concerned, I wonder how many people would consider the idea of cell phones to be practical in 1879? Only approximately 110 years later, cell phones were starting to become a widespread phoneomenon (yes, that is a real typo, but it was so funny I decided to leave it), and look at where they are today. Practicality is not a good measure of the usefulness of an idea if one allows themselves to think in terms of decades or centuries of progressive surprising developments.

I have to give a reply I've given many times before. Foreknowledge machines do not forecast or predict anything. They see the future as it will happen, or if they encounter an interference viewing scenario they give only vague information or fail to operate. So, foreknowledge machines cannot be described as prediction machines to any extent, even though a person could be wildly successful by using one claim that they have made predictions. However, a person who uses a foreknowledge machine and then claims to make predictions about what he has seen would be lying: They have not predicted anything, because the foreknowledge machine has not predicted anything. When a person receives viewer foreknowledge and knows that it is viewer foreknowledge within a complete theory of foreknowledge machines and sufficient experience with the machines themselves, they would know they have seen the future for exactly what it will be.

Here's a parallel: Can you claim to predict something you have just seen in a telescope? That would be an absurd word to use. You can predict that your friend with good eyesight will also see a distant fixed object when she looks in a telescope locked to a tripod, but once having seen it, to express that you "predict" the thing itself is wrong. I do use the term "predictively useful" in my paper, but if I ever use it again it will be only used with the following qualification: A foreknowledge machine would certainly be predictively useful, but it would not predict anything.

I never knew how important it would be to clarify this distinction until interacting with everyone here on FQXi, and I really am thankful for all the important feedback.

I have your paper on my spreadsheet to read now. Thanks for your message, responding to it was enjoyable and it has produced a statement that is likely to be very informative to anyone who might read it. All the best to you!

Aaron

Hi Aaron,

As I promised in my Essay page, I have read your nice Essay. Here are my comments/questions:

1) "Displaying for its operator every possible future, but could not show which one will occur" is similar to the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. This should be the Bohr's point of view, while the Cassandra machines should represent Einstein's point of view. I think you suggest a third, intermediate point of view. Something like "a deterministic quantum mechanics".

2) I like your statement that "One must realize that we are still at a very early stage of science and technology". In science we need both humility and optimism.

3) Don't you think that it is, in a certain sense, a full circle that a case wherein an individual or group helps to bring certain future outcomes to fruition, based upon what has been learned in viewer foreknowledge?

4) What is the difference between "unmistakable viewer foreknowledge" and "effectively unmistakable viewer foreknowledge"?

5) What is called "second-time-around fallacy" in philosophy is called "chronology protection conjecture" in physics.

6) When Kurt Gödel have shown that closed timelike curves could in principle exist in general relativity, Einstein claimed that "such a potential existence gives me shivers running down my spine"

7) On one hand, the idea that the future will steer humanity looks intriguing. On the other and, don't you think that removing the element of surprise could mean that life will become bore? See also point 3).

In any case, your Essay enjoyed me a lot. Thus, I give you an high score.

Best luck in the contest.

Cheers, Ch.

Aaron,

I've returned as promised now the buttons at the top seems to be working again. I agree all scores are too low due to the rule breaching 1's flying about. I've refused to join 'tit for tat' and derived a cunning plan which I've suggested to Brendan; anyone giving a 1 (or poss any very low score) where clearly not warranted has it removed and applied to their own essay! That may eradicate the dishonest practice completely.

Anyway, your own fair and well deserved score is now applied.

Best wishes.

Peter

If you're not using your machine full time may I borrow or hire it for a day?

Dear AAron,

In my last article that I wrote for COSMOLOGY (it is still under peer review) I created a "time-machine" that is in fact an "Eternal Now Hopper" so it could also be used as a time machine.

I quote you the text just for fun:

quote

5. Time-Travel Becomes "ETERNAL -NOW- MOMENT HOPPING"

The splitting in the original Many Worlds I interpretation goes only forward in time, not backwards. In our conception it IS possible that our consciousness "activates" Eternal Now Moments from other time/life-lines (or from parallel available universes) . Should this mean that time travel is possible ? Yes but...should we call this phenomenon time-travel ?

What we are understanding as time-travel in this causal time/life line always leads to the well-known paradoxes like killing your grand-father. (What a mentality !!!) These paradoxes however are no longer problematic when we apply the perception of Total Simultaneity. Then time-travel in the past and/or the future would become ENM-Hopping, and the so called "physical" time/life-line (in our memory) continues normally. Our consciousness is able not only to hop from one ENM to another but also line up these ENM's and in this way creating for itself the best possible past and future, Real Free Will resides in TS.

The extension of our Free Will lies in the extension of our consciousness and so in a closer contact with our NCC in order to realize more choices in the ENM availabilities. We think that the a future coupling of the quantum-computer and our brain will be an opening.

In the article "Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules..." 16 Prof. Nick E. Mavromatos, proposed that :

"For the first time there is concrete evidence for quantum entanglement over relatively large distances in living matter at ambient temperature, which suggests a rather non-trivial role of quantum physics in path optimization for energy and information transport" :

(http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/329/1/012026) (14) ,

It becomes clear that quantum entanglement and decoherence time, which are for the construction and the operational qualities of quantum computers the main issues, these qualities are are already available in our own brains inside the Cell Microtubules (MT).

(decoherence = The particles that make up a computer interact with surroundings, so that information is spreading out, which means: this effect is spoiling quantum computations, (to decohere = lose their quantum properties)).

Regarding the "macroscopic" aspect : Recent experiments on atoms in salt crystals have shown that an amount of 1020 atoms formed a hugely entangled state. Vlatko Vedral in "Living in a Quantum World" (Scientific American , June 2011) and "Progress Article Quantifying entanglement in Macroscopic Systems" (June 2008 Nature 453, 1004-1007 : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/full/nature07124.html .(21). Quantum Bit Storage is advancing not only in the macroscopic way but now also scientists have succeeded to retrieve coherent information for extended times (39 minutes) at room-temperature. See Kamyar Saeedi et al in "Room-Temperature Quantum Bit Storage Exceeding 39 Minutes Using Ionized Donors in Silicon-28" http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/830 (22)

Our brains are RWA (Ready Willing and Able) to perform quantum states that when brought in coherence with a quantum computer. This will enable us to realize "ENM-Hopping".

Figure 4 : the Construction of an ENM-Hopper/Time-machine

When we are regarding the quantum computer as proposed before with 1,000 qubits, we see that in organizing such a "machine" we have to be able to control the "decoherence". May be we solve this decoherence problem by using the "technique" that the Microtubules are applying inside our brains or we can realize the 103 dimensional solution (see page 9) which is direct contact with TS, and needs only ONE particle . If we could arrange one of those experiments , the next step would be to create an entanglement between the "cells" of the Quantum-computer and the Microtubules of our brains. The 10300 answers residing in the Quantum Computer would then direct be "available" for our Brain. We saw already that we did even need not to put it "on", it is like entanglement an immediate process without "processing time".

By combining the same kind of technique as our microtubules are using; namely Ca2 ions, and applying for example the the technique to entangle salt crystals or maybe Ca2 ions in a quantum computer, we would be able to establish an entanglement between these Ca2 ions in the brain and in the computer . Of course there are still a lot of problems to be resolved. The salt crystals were reaching entanglement in using a specific magnetic field, so the brain and the quantum device should be both in the same magnetic field, a field wich has not to damage the brain.

Once we should have realized this "unification" with the quantum computer we as human beings would have direct available the 10300 answers that are "availabilities" in the quantum computer. These are the same kind of availabilities as those in Total Simultaneity, so the path would be open to "access" them in the way that our non-causal consciousness is achieving this.

This means that we could HOP to other Eternal Now Moments, also those who seem to be in the past and/or future of our actual time/life-line, we then have extended our Free Will.

unquote

If you want I will sent the whole article on your private mail, mine is wilhelmus.d@orange.fr see also my contribution in this contest "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS", as aphilosopher you may like it.

I like the quote of Shakespeare, I was unaware of this , thank you for that.

About the rating you are quite right, so I hope that you will find some time to read my essay (link above) and leave a comment that refers to the essay on my thread, I would be obiged if you gave it also a rating in accordance with your appreciation.

best regerds

Wilhelmus

Dear Aaron,

In responding to your invitation, I've read and rated your essay.

I think it is interesting and well written. Your idea is valuable but in my view, only theoretically: I don't think that obtaining information from the future is physically feasible. Anyway, who knows?

Moreover, I think that it is very difficult to predict the effects of such a machine. Who would have access to it? Everybody? How people would react if free will is only an illusion?

I have also discussed about the double-slit experiment in my essay, from a different perspective.

Regards,

Aitor Elorza

Aaron,

I managed to read you essay. Fascinating. I fear for the future, particularly now the future of physics. The guilty seem blind to how low they've sunk. It's endemic, almost a pandemic. If your machine can give us the vision to wake thm up it can save humanity! Nicely written. I'm marking it now. I hope you do well.

Judy

Dear Aaron,

Your name came to limelight by your invitation on my wall. I have replied your comments on rating issue wrote about. Since you will revisit the essay it is needless to paste it here again! Please kindly read it.

About your essay, I can see that you have a concept. And I do commend you for that instinct. I have also rated you!

I want you to read mine STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND ECOSYSTEM See the link here http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2020

I anticipate your comments and rating as well.

Wishing you the best in this competition.

Regards

Gbenga