I discuss the Kardashev scales of technological collectives (civilizations) in my essay, but with a different take. I argue there are limits to this; probably anything beyond level II is highly improbable. This means it is not likely our observable universe is a simulation or "matrix."

The climatologists who simulate the future climate of this planet are performing in some ways the sort of scheme you propose. The quantum superposed amplitudes of course are replaced by a stochastic ensemble of paths or possible outcomes. It is not hard to imagine something of this sort being applied to other systems on Earth, including ourselves.

LC

    Dear Professor Doug,

    Your article is a proof of your wealth of experience. Your thought is original. It held my interest through out and wish you an astounding accomplishment in this competition.

    Kindly read my article as well and give it a rating. Here is the direct link considering the enormous entries STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND ECOSYSTEM http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2020

    Best wishes

    Gbenga

    Hi Peter,

    I will definitely look at your essay. I took a peek already and the prose is very strong and I like Bell's Theorem stuff although it can be tricky to understand -- for me at least. Therefore I look forward to reading your essay.

    By the way you may be interested in some recent work related to Bell's Theorem. First there is the EPR=ER (Einstein-Rosen) proposal of Susskind and Maldacena in "Cool horizons for entangled black holes" arXiv:1306.0533) where from what I read the proposal is there is some entanglement via wormholes (which then seems somewhat classical). They claim this resolves the "firewall paradox" of Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski and Sully (AMPS). One can find a discussion of Bob, Alice and the firewall at

    http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20121221-alice-and-bob-meet-the-wall-of-fire/

    [Also note in terms of priority Friedwardt Winterberg had a proposal for a BH firewall already in 2001 http://www.znaturforsch.com/aa/v56a/56a0889.pdf. I have not looked into this in enough detail to understand if Winterberg's firewall is the same as the AMPS one -- there do appear to be some differences -- but this does make the point that a lot of times things are a matter of luck, timing, or the right affiliation :-/].

    Second there is the Nature Physics article from about 3 years ago "On the reality of the quantum state" Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett, Terry Rudolph, Nature Physics 8, 475-478 (2012). We discussed this article in our Friday theory group meetings here for 2-3 weeks and never could exactly understand why this was such a great advance (the reason we came across this work in the first place was because it was written up in some popular science magazine as "the most important result since Bell's theorem). I think you can also find this article on the arXiv now. Also from the end of the abstract the authors say "..Here we show that any model in which a quantum state represents

    mere information about an underlying physical state of the system, and in which systems that are prepared independently have independent physical states, must make predictions which contradict those of quantum theory."

    Anyway I will have a look and comment on your essay soon.

    Best,

    Doug

    Hi Chidi,

    Many thanks and I will have a look at your essay soon. Also in almost any human undertaking there is always some unfair, subjective aspect to the undertaking. Also let me say I learned to "love" being wrong during my stays in Russia. If you give a talk there you'll be grilled very vigorously to see how well your idea holds up. This is a bit disconcerting at first coming from the US where people may think your idea is wrong but will be afraid to engage you out of a false idea of niceness and also for fear that they may be wrong or ask a "bad/stupid" question. You learn a lot when people push your ideas. Also the Russians make you understand this is nothing personal (i.e. tearing into your ideas) since they'll invite you out for vodka and snacks after.

    Best,

    Doug

    Hi Lawrence,

    Nice to "see" you again in the FQXi contest. I already had on my list to look over your essay and comment. Yes in regard to the Kardashev scale I use this only to point out that at present humanity, while having plenty to be proud of, is not really that advanced. But we do have some ability to crudely steer a direction so we should have some semi-scientific way of doing this. But I only use the Kardashev scale since it is well known. As you say it could be there may be some barrier to ever developing into a Type III civilization. Also in reply to another reader I mentioned there is another scale based on amount of information a civilization can harness/acquire instead of the level of power it can use/control. But the Kardashev scale is better known.

    What you say about climatologist simulations sounds right (I don't know enough in detail about these types of climate models). In my area one might use the example of lattice gauge calculations which take huge amounts of computing power to simulate quark bound states (i.e. protons, neutrons, mesons, etc.)

    My suggestion in the essay is to try something like this (i.e. choosing different social organization paths) in the social context. Of course the number of paths on can try in a social context will be much more limited than in the context of climate simulations or lattice QCD simulations.

    Best,

    Doug

    Dear Douglas,

    Very well expressed essay.

    The idea of many paths is the same I make in my essay(here) but from a very different perspective.

    It seems you are only looking at BIG investments by institutions and nation-states. I am, however, looking from the perspective of individual or tiny groups of people.

    You suggest the need for "weighing" and the need to find a "best" path? Cannot weighing approaches be necessarily different? Cannot different paths be more effective as communities, cultures and environments are quite different around the world?

    My essay is here.

    - Ajay

      Dear Douglas,

      Very interesting and enjoyable read. Humanity has had time to try a very large number of paths. With the result that we are HERE. I think a Kardashev value of .76 for our civilization to be very, um, flattering. First, does the earth qualify as 'a' civilization? And second, clearly the 'entropy' of a society, or perhaps more directly the free energy of a society, bears on how much a society has control of those resources.

      One of the characteristics of the late evolution of a society, (the present state of ours?) seems to be the closing off of alternative paths. Instead of open competition, with its many paths, we have oligopoly; instead of social mobility, we increasingly have oligarchy. Instead of Congressmen open to evidence and data we have those whose choices are dictated by measures other than the actual success of a path. Clearly the best paths, or even viable paths will not likely be selected in such a situation. So one of the first tasks presented humanity, us, may be how to open more paths. And this may involve increasing the free energy available, as was done, for instance, in WWII.

      You made the important point that paths do not always scale in a simple manner. This is especially be the case when responding to global issues, when the metric is not the same as smaller scales. The world is round. Yet we must start somewhere, and adjust as we go.

      You've made important points with simple examples. Excellent.

      I remember the Connections series. The episodes I saw were excellent. Some are available on YouTube. They are also available on DVD.

      I hope you find time to read my essay.

      I wish you good luck in the competition.

      Charles Gregory St Pierre

        Dear Douglas Alexander Singleton,

        You mentioned the path of what is called Energiewende in Germany. My essay addressed a quite different subject that was more important for me personally: peace. Having dealt with power electronics and batteries, I know the importance of energy and its connection to politics. Instead of considering single paths from A to B and intentional steering, I rather asked how to contribute to more basic influences; I arrived at the insight that there might be imperfections in the traditional notion of humanity, cf. my requests to Mohammed Khali and Sabine Hossenfelder.

        You will certainly agree that hope for cold fusion is irresponsible, and the promising project DESERTEC almost abandoned. Germany's decision to give up nuclear power was mainly an ethical rather than profit-oriented one.

        The territory of Germany is simply to small as to cope with possible nuclear disasters. Not even a final place for nuclear waste has been found.

        What about the various academic paths, I realized at MEI how close Moscow related to old German tradition. When I was a member of AWS, I often also felt like at home. However, close relations like for instance between Wilhelm II and Nikolaus II in 1914 don't guarantee good decisions. I will read your essay because I expect expert details.

        Curious,

        Eckard

          Doug,

          Not just you, I'm sure it's tricky for anybody in reality. You may need to forget most of what you've read and return to it's foundations.

          The concept "collapse of superposed spin states to a pure singlet state" was never meant to represent a physical model, and no proof of such an actual 'thing' as a 'singlet state' has ever been offered. 720^o spin can be derived classically so lets look at classical OAM. If we take a spinning sphere, cut it in half on the equatorial plane and send each half in opposite directions, then BOTH halves will have both north and south poles (clockwise and counter clockwise spin) but only one can be measured at a time ('Measurement' as transfer of OAM to detector field electrons).

          Now also invoke a few other things found in the last 100 years and classical joined-up-physics can re-produce the quantum correlations (but only to a quantum gauge limit so a Godel 'fractal' uncertainty remains)

          Unfortunately that's a bit too shocking for those steeped in Bells theorem, which is circumvented by using a different starting assumption. The cosine derivation is geometrical and dynamic, relating circumferences (so rotational velocity) at different latitudes. It's actually quite self apparent! Also note how the mechanism removes any bar on convergence of QM and SR.

          The tricky bit is, how on Earth does one get it published when editors put up the barricades and run away screaming with hands over everything! (and reviewers would probably do the same). The only option may be to get Neils Bohr to submit it, or at least a group of respected professors.

          I look forward to your views and ides.

          Best wishes

          Peter

          Hallo Eckard Vielen Dank, dass Sie meinen Aufsatz gelesen habe. Ich werde weiter auf Englisch zu schreiben, da mein Deutsch ist, dass von einem Schüler der fünften Klasse.

          I very much admired the German Energiewende. When I was in Potsdam on sabbatical we lived in guest housing of the Fachhochschule Potsdam and just a short distance from the campus. On our way to the Volkspark we would pass a solar power project being run by the students which supplied some power to the campus. By the way what is the opinion of Germans in regard to the Energiewende? My impression was overall favorable but since I was only there for 4-5 months I did not maybe get a complete picture. By the way in the US when the media reports about the initiative they generally point out what is not working about the the Energiewende, which then is in stark contrast to my limited observations. But long ago I realized a good part of what one reads/hears in the news is slanted to one particular view point or the other. US News is especially bad about this. BBC is OK and PBS news in the US is good (but no one watches because it's less "entertaining" than watching Fox News. Also Deutsche Welle seems good/balanced). Also I had never heard about DESERTEC so googled it. This looks like a great idea, but it seems you are indicating it is being abandoned. By the way the US had large stretches of desert in the southwest which might also be useful for such a project.

          Again thanks for your comments and I will have a look at your essay soon.

          Alles beste,

          Doug

          Hi Aaron,

          Thanks for your comments and your article sounds interesting. Do you have in mind some actual future viewing machine (i.e. something like a wormhole time machine) or is the idea "Suppose we had a machine that would allow us to view the future. This is what we should do with it." Anyway I'll have a look and leave a comment if I find anything useful/clever to say. I don't generally say if I voted and I don't say what ranking I gave since this gets into another shady aspect of this contest which is vote bartering. But usually if I make some comment I'll also take the time to vote since I did read your essay so I should have some opinion. But I do agree down voting without reading is not good.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Doug,

          You got it man, something like a wormhole time machine. The actual technology that the machine I identify would be based upon is not of central importance. The discovery is that there is a specifiable kind of future-viewing machine which is logically possible which can only be found when one proves that a naive kind of future-viewing machine is not logically possible. You'll see when you get a chance to read my paper. Now, before you comment on my page or rate my work, please read my conversations with Michael Allan, Tommy Anderberg, and Robert de Neufville on my page. A great deal of clarification is available there. I now have you in my spreadsheet to read and rate your essay. Have a good one.

          Warmly,

          Aaron

          P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate essays:

          10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

          9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

          8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

          7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

          6 - slightly favorable indifference

          5 - unfavorable indifference

          4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

          3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

          2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

          1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

          After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

          Douglas,

          I think, those pioneers who built first wind and solar power plants and the government that fostered them did steer humanity toward the better although the economy was rather bumpy. China's cheap solar modules benefited from agreed subventions to be payed by Germany's costumers of energy. You are right, the natural conditions are certainly better elsewhere. However, it turned out that the calculated costs of nuclear power didn't correctly include the need to get rid of nuclear waste and cope with possible risks. Presently, the stability of supply with gas seems to be at risk due to political crises. Environmentalists don't like the use of coal although the damage caused by digging and burning coal is perhaps more benign than by freaking. Anyway, people were told and believe that fossil sources will run out earlier or later, and sustainability is important. Many people did also not forget WWII and are in particular opposed to nuclear weapons. They organized resistance against transport of so called Castors with radioactive wast. I as an old engineer felt mainly challenged by the persisting lack of storages. My elder son has to do with protection of power grids that must be reconstructed in order to optimally distribute electricity.

          What about my essay, I see it an unwelcome challenge to anybody who was educated to believe in Einstein's relativity up to consequences that were shown in Schlafly's essay, who feels emotional in terms of his own nation, and who is not ready to accept really basic question in mathematics, physics, and other fields including ethics. I will appreciate criticism.

          All best,

          Eckard

          Hi Ajay,

          Sorry for the delayed response. This is finals week and giving finals is *almost* as nerve racking as taking them (almost :-)).

          In regard to the amount of investment from institutions/governments my suggest would in fact be at first to fund a lot of small scale projects. Usually when one makes a big investment in a single or small number of projects this can easily fail (and often does). My suggestion is the try as many different paths/approaches to different problems as possible and then based on certain objective criteria decide which path or paths are best. And I agree that in societal terms there may be more than one path since people have different ways of weighting things. In my health care system example some society's may be OK with a slightly lower cure rate for certain rare diseases as long as the system is cost effective and treats as large a number of people as possible. Other societies may be willing to pay more for health care and treat more of the rare diseases. So yes if there are different weightings in different societies one will get different "solutions" or paths. I talk about this toward the end of the essay.

          I'll try to get to your essay soon.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Charles.

          Yes I will definitely read your essay since you very well understood and criticized my essay (i.e. you found some of its shortcomings). First I agree that at present it is not the practice to try many different paths and that paths are being shut off. And of those few different paths/approaches that are tried there the choice of path is often not take based on objective measures. In terms of science I there are two examples: (i) Bell Labs used to give scientists/researchers a free hand to research what interested them. As a result the old Bell Labs produced some great advances in science and engineering. This anyway was the description I got from Doug Osheroff of Stanford. He worked at Bell Labs for a long time and his description of the place during his time there was a scientist's paradise -- decent funding and free reign to satisfy ones curiosity. He said he left partly because requirements that ones research produce some widget that the company could quickly make money on. And this seems to be generally the case with many industrial labs now -- your work needs to produce money or you don't get time/money to work on it. Another example is the cancelled SSC (Superconducitng Super Collider). It would have been cheaper to build this in Batavia, Ill (home of FermiLab). The idea would be to use the existing FermiLab facilities to greatly reduce the cost. Instead the site for the SSC was in Texas. The reason for this was Bush Sr. was president during this time and Texas was his "home" state while Illinois was held by Democrats. Also there was accusations of waste by the project management.

          So in fact the current trend in society (science, politics, etc.) is not to try many different paths but to try one or a few large paths and then stick to them even when they prove less than optimal.

          Thus it is a big question if there is some way to force/encourage governments, society to be more open to trying out different approaches. As you mention some events like WWII do exactly that -- increase the free energy available to the system. The Black Death/Plague in Western Europe is another example of a free energy releasing event. My suggestion is that society should be more open to trying different approaches to solving societal problems but without the necessity of a World War or a plague that kills ~20% of the population (or more). But in this regard (how to encourage this type of open experimentation) my essay does not give any firm answer.

          Anyway yes I will read you essay but it may take some time.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Aaron,

          Ah ha a scoring rubric. Yes this kind of thing is a good idea. My colleagues who teach courses that require essay writing (Yes there are courses like this in physics -- mainly the intro astronomy course since it's part of the general education component which usually requires some writing. Also our critical thinking course -- aka "Why Big Foot and Loch Ness monster are not real" -- requires some substantial writing. The instructors for these courses always have some kind of scoring rubric as above). Actually it might be a good idea if the next FQXi essay contest required each participant to turn in a rubric or maybe if they supplied some rubric that one was required to turn in with ones vote. Of course it's still possible to just mark the rubric low/high -- i.e. essentially ignore it -- but I think it would actually make people think a little more before voting and this would make the voting more reflective of the actual worth or not of a given essay. Anyway thanks for sharing this and I will try to get to your essay soon.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Doug,

          because you wrote "Also if one wanted a weightier question one could ask how one supplies clean drinking water to society" I found this article about drinking water it offers many kinds of contamination for consideration but does not mention, at all, that these sources of contamination can be avoided by collecting and drinking rainwater from roofs.Contaminants in drinking water In places that have a rainy season the water tank should ideally be large enough to contain all of the rain that falls on it, for use later in the year. The global groundwater depletion problem is also relevant Groundwater depletion a global problem,(click look inside)Instead of community bore holes or reservoirs open to contamination individual families could construct or buy their own covered rain water tank for private use. It could be under the house or nearby.

          You wrote "The point of this mundane example of how to supply hot water to a society illustrates that when deciding on how to weight a particular societal path one needs to choose a set of criteria e.g. efficiency, convenience, safety, ease of implementation, etc. by which to judge any given path. This part of the societal path integral proposal is the most subjective and may lead to different groups choosing different paths as best or 'classical'"I think rainwater collection wins in efficiency, safety and ease of implementation in rural and suburban environments. The only problem being when it runs out.I don't have to pay any water rates, the rain is completely free. I think there may be the perception that the water is dirty because it has come off of the roof when it is less contaminated. I only have a rainwater tank, under the house. The water is filtered once for general use and a second time through a micro-filter for drinking.

          Quote "The main thrust of this essay has been, that in so far as it is possible for humanity to steer a course, it can try to steer a best or 'classical' course by at first trying out, on a small scale, as many different paths as possible."You have also mentioned that some projects would not scale up. It is also the case that some projects only work if they are full scale. I don't know how it would be possible to try out on a small scale obtaining water from reservoirs, (such as this- Birmingham England is supplied from Wales,via an enormous endevour constructed during the industrial revolution Elan Valley water, Amazing!)( works brilliantly but is huge), for comparison with obtaining water from bore holes tapping ground water or rainwater collection or even desalination. It might be necessary to construct models to analyse the pros and cons and to compare and contrast, rather than being able to carry out a small scale trails of all of the possible projects.

          A thought provoking question, Thank you, Georgina

          Doug - Thanks for the QP primer and thoughtful essay. I was interested in your description of the process of small scale experiments and selection through a path integral process, and realized that it is similar to the mutation / selection / propagation process exhibited in evolutionary dynamics. The key, of course, as you point out, is the process by which options are chosen / fit to "the classical path." In evolutionary terms, this is analogous to selection in the fitness landscape. If you have a chance, I'd appreciate any comments on my essay The Tip of the Spear - we are dealing with a similar concept from different perspectives.

          Cheers - George