Creating a New Future by Lorraine Ford

Dear Lorraine,

First, let me thank you for the audacity and freshness of thought I find evident in your point of view. Am sure to let you have my comment after I have duly read through..

Best wishes(and for that garden, thank you!).

Chidi

Dear Lorraine,

So glad to see that you're still playing this game. I do agree with you that current physics is wrong about the nature of fundamental reality, although I had not before reading your essay seen this is a major contributor to attitudes that are destroying our planet. From previous essays and exchanges, we share a view of information as inherently connected with experience/consciousness. I would not quite say that "this information is indistinguishable from physical reality itself", but I believe I understand your point. I view physics as a manifestation of the gravitational field, and so, a seamless universe, but for all practical purposes the experience of this universe is, as you say, one of separate interacting, interrelated parts, such that information has a subjective topology.

In a similar vein, I reject the deterministic "set-&forget" view and see the continuing creativity of nature, but again, I view this as the unfolding of the principle of self-interaction, and not as new rules emerging. This is more a semantic point than a matter of disagreement.

As you note, the world of Darwinian physics has a certain zombie-like character, based on the unproved and erroneous assumption that consciousness, the experience of reality, is an essentially artificial mechanical construct, emerging when the right parts are placed in proper order.

There is hope. Five years ago my first essay was on "The Physics of Consciousness", and last year Max Tegmark, he who runs the FQXi show, published a paper on consciousness as a physical property. Although his approach is hopelessly incorrect, it's still a hopeful sign that at least establishment physicists can admit that consciousness is relevant for physics. Thus, while you observe that "the perverse physics mindset is pretty rusted on", there may be hope.

You mentioned "prominent physicist Brian Greene" and his smug dismissal of free will, due to his belief in determinism. Prominence and public relations are not unrelated, and have little to do with insight or physical reality. There are number of physics experiments that are producing data that will upset a lot of apple carts.

Simply think of the multiverse as a beloved exercise for the chattering class, who, on the basis of the slimmest logic and no supporting data at all, like to spin yarns to amaze their less-imaginative friends. I do agree that the end has a certain toxicity, as it confuses the hell out of Joe Public when these "certified" expert spin their yarns. But you notice, Yogi Berra-like, they avoid predicting things, especially the future.

You are correct about free will, and right to dismiss as zombie-like all who deny its existence. I think that the scientific establishment has gone overboard in so many ways that it is near a tipping point, and those who have pushed the concepts much farther than the evidence supports probably will not be happy when the tip occurs.

"Call Dr. Redwine! They done it to themselves." (**)

Thanks again for participating in this contest and the exchanges. I always look forward to your ideas. You present them so well. I hope you find my essay interesting.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

(**) Ferrol Sams, "Run With the Horsemen", Penguin, 1982

My two cents - Determinism/free-will are not mutually exclusive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

Dear Lorraine,

What comes below may seem odd but it helps me reconcile your notion of free will as "inherent unpredictability (perhaps due to the subjective topology of information)" with Brian Green's idea of: "...free will as a certain sensation of the laws of physics acting themselves out."

Let me just ask you, do you own your body or your body owns you? You will find that the answer is sort of yes AND know. You don't tell your heart to beat; you don't even know how it came about the idea of beating. And you don't tell your body when it is hungry, it tells you. Yet it is you (whatever this may mean sans your body, let us call it now "free will") that has to feed and preserve your body else it gets no food/survival.

I find that the divide or "uncertainty" between "you" and your body is very like that between corpuscular and wave nature in QM. I like to think of the individual as strictly a distinct "elementary quantum of action". This would be in GR terms a distinct inertial frame (space-time; observer); in Hugh Everett terms it is one of a "many-worlds". So the person/subject you are at (experiencing this world) through her eyes is a distinct universal i.e. the de facto "constant"; it is by definition the matter wave proper. Every other "matter" or experience is a scale (measurement; amplitude) owing to it. Information is the world as our working "subject" measures it.

Of course physics presently is not thinking like this, yet this in my view is where everything else is headed now. Quantum gravity is poised to change physics far beyond even physicists themselves imagine presently. You are correct that: "The view of nature as a non-experiential, non-subjective, non-creative mechanism is the SOURCE of the problem we face" but I say, the so-called measurement problem in quantum theory is insisting on just the opposite view to that of classical physics. Physics can't resolve the measurement problem without adopting your position!

You may want to also look at my essay.

and let me have your comment.

All the best,

Chidi

Sorry, correct link here: community/forum/topic/2094

Lorraine,

An important point to make and very well argued. You highlight the contradiction of this essay topic, typical of the mindset that prevents advancement of understanding.

Nobody can ultimately describe consciousness with causality, even if we keep pushing back the boundaries of nonsensical 'quantum uncertainty' to describe classically observed effects with classical dynamics, we'll never disprove free will.

There is then always a place for originality, uniqueness and unpredictability in the most causal of backgrounds. As I argued last year everything, every person, grain of sand, cell and observable particle is different. We can't then even say A = A, only A ~A, so how can causality be 100%?

I also liked your; "Information in the universe has a subjective topology." which site well with my proof this year of observer dependence allowing classical reproduction of quantum predictions, so no 'action at a distance'. But again as you say;

"the perverse physics mindset is pretty rusted on"

so I can't see even that will free up thinking to the level required. I've suggested we need to start in schools, teaching kids how to think, challenge and express their uniqueness before we let them go into science. An example of poor attitudes is the 3 score on yours and 1's clearly put on mine and others without comment added. Do we need a revolution to escape that mindset? 'Toxic' in more than one way.

I always like your lovely easy to read style too. Very well done.

Best wishes

Peter

Dear Lorraine,

I would like to support what you already clearly expressed in your abstract: "people can and do "steer the future", and physics has made invalid assumptions about the nature of fundamental reality".

I will have to read your essay in order to understand what you meant with "new future". Isn't the future always something new?

Also I am curious, are "invalid ideas about the nature of reality" really "a major contributor to the toxic attitudes that are destroying our planet"?

While free will is not my topic, I recommend reading Roger Schlafly's essay as a beautiful while perhaps unintentional parody of what you are criticizing.

I see my own free will determined by a huge multitude of influences that can never be found out.

All the best,

Eckard

Dear Lorraine,

While I expected a bit more, let me copy what you quoted:

"There are infinitely many other inhabited planets, including not just one but infinitely many that have people with the same appearance, name and memories as you, who play out every possible permutation of your life choices." [4]

Is this the utterance of a serious scientist? He didn't bother to indicate any checkable reason for his wild speculations. He didn't even cautiously write inhabitable but he wrote inhabited.

Eckard

Dear Chidi,

I don't think of free will as "inherent unpredictability": in my essay I was saying that the free will/free choice of a subject is inherently unpredictable to an observer. Also, I don't think that there can be any reconciliation between my idea of free will and Brian Greene's notion of "free will": his so-called "free will" is a type of self-deception.

Re "You don't tell your heart to beat...And you don't tell your body when it is hungry, it tells you" :

I agree with you. As I contend in the conclusion of my essay: "Within reality's dependable, deterministic structure, there are always degrees of freedom, openings and opportunities for subjects to choose/create physical outcomes." So I don't tell my heart to beat, and I can't choose to miraculously turn into a bird and fly away, but I CAN choose what to say or do i.e. I can create my own future.

Thanks for commenting on my essay: I will comment on your essay as soon as I can.

Cheers,

Lorraine

Nice to hear from you again Peter. Thanks for reading and commenting favourably on my essay.

As you say, "We can't then even say A = A, only A ~A, so how can causality be 100%?" So to me, this "originality, uniqueness and unpredictability" indicates a creative aspect of reality that current physics doesn't acknowledge.

Will look at your essay ASAP: I am interested to see what you say about "observer dependence".

Cheers

Lorraine

Dear Ms. Ford,

Your deeply insightful essay was beautifully written and I do hope that it does well in the competition. I do have a minor quibble that I hope you do not mind me mentioning. It is not only the fundamental aspects of reality that the physicists got wrong. They got all of reality wrong. As I have gone to great lengths to patiently explain in my essay REALITY, ONCE, everything in the real Universe is unique, once. There are no laws of unique. Unique, once, cannot be predetermined. Unique, once cannot be measured, or analyzed, or synthesized, or moralized. Each person on earth has always had free will. No person on earth will ever exercise free will because each person on earth has a greater need to belong.

With comprehensive regards,

Joe Fisher