Dear Lawrence,

I've just had another read-through of your essay. It's simply amazing how many different concepts you draw on, allude to, or mention---AdS/CFT, Wess-Zumino-Witten models, quantum error correction, MERA, ER=EPR, together with Lewisian modal realism, Popper's open cosmology, and many, many more. I'm quite confident in saying that all of these concepts probably never before shared the same environment, as they do in your essay---indeed, they probably never even shared the same mind before.

And to top that off, you preface the whole thing with a Leonard Cohen quote (and one of the best, too); that alone means I can't be too critical of your essay!

But while the essay is very impressive in its eclecticism, it's also very hard to follow, and one fears to loose track of the central point; indeed, I'm not completely sure I can articulate what that central point is. In principle, you seem to be saying that there is a necessary openness to physical systems in the world, due to their being long-range entangled with other, in principle arbitrarily distant, systems, leading to topological order.

Unfortunately, it's not quite clear to me how this openness is connected to goal-directedness, intentionality, etc. I get your point regarding the impossibility of making perfect predictions in an essentially open system, but I'm lost at the point where you connect this to hyper-Turing machines and pink noise as relating to consciousness (?). I'd be grateful if you could elaborate a little.

    I will confess there is a lot here. I was going to sit this essay contest out. It then dawned on me that a secondary interest in MH space I had some years ago might have a bearing upon what I am working on. The main interest I am working on is contained in sections 2 and 3. The connection to MH spaces is made in section 4.

    In statistical mechanics a closed system will approach equilibrium and there is from there no prospect for any sort of self-directed system. Closed systems simply die. As a result systems that have some self-directed properties must be open thermodynamic systems. I have been working on how cosmology is a quantum mechanically open system. They are open with respect to entanglement swapping. In the ER = EPR prespective with quantum hair it is then possible that three states in a tripartite entanglement in one timelike region can exchange themselves with a bipartite entanglement plus nonentangled state. This is connected with the firewall problem.

    I could have gone deeper on this in other directions. In particular the duality between the equivalence principle and the unitarity principle, dual in a similar way Bell's theorem indicates a duality between locality and reality, means there may be some connection with Verlinde's hypothesis on the nature of dark matter. The presence of DM may be a signature of this complementarity with quantum gravity and cosmology.

    The subject of this essay debate is huge, and a part of it is that it centers around something that we have a poor understanding of, that is consciousness. I just advanced the argument the foundation requirement of there being an open nature of the universe.

    Cheers LC

    Dear Lawrence,

    You write: Closed systems simply die.

    Are you sure? I thought the laws of conservation required that closed systems, systems with no exchange whatsoever with their immediate environment, that is, would be preserved and enjoy stability. That closed systems tend to evolve into thermodynamic equilibrium, as opposed to open systems. So if life is for you viability, instead of death, and viability a chance for emergence of consciousness, then one would think that you would give preference to closed or stable systems in the pursuit of inception of intelligence.

    I can't make sense of your argument.

    Now of course perfectly closed systems do not exist. And life has developed on the basis of highly stable systems but not "absolutely" stable systems. It is within the "small window" of instability (1% perhaps) that give and take occurs, that which we call metabolism and interaction with the medium mediated by cognition.

    Am I wrong...

    Joseph

      The rule in biology is that equilibrium is death. A system that reaches equilibrium is not at large evolving.

      With gravity there is a subtle matter with the definition of equilibrium. An anzatz involving a black hole in a world with the same background temperature illustrates the point. A black hole with mass M has a Bekenstein-Hawking temperature T = 1/8πM (in naturalized units) will absorb a unit of mass δM or by quantum tunneling emits a unit of mass δM. It is then clear that in the case the black hole absorbs a unit of mass that its temperature is a tiny bit lower than the background temperature and it will statistically more likely absorb energy from the background. Conversely, if the black hole emits a quanta of radiation it will get hotter and statistically be more probable for quantum decaying away. Equal temperature does not mean equilibrium.

      There are open questions still concerning the nature of thermodynamics and certainly quantum mechanics with gravitation. My interest with this has been of late with BPS black holes that have gauge charges. The induced "quantum hair" has consequences for the universe as a quantum open system. Quantum open systems are to open thermodynamics, what Poincare recurrence in classical systems is to the recurrence of quantum systems. It is where the real fun lies.

      Cheers LC

      10 days later

      You are welcome Lawrence.

      I understand,difficult sometimes to resume a general work.Your mathematical plays are always surprising and relevant.Your posts on blogs and forums lack us Lawrence.:)

      Best

      Hi thinkers,

      Lawrence, I have difficulties to accept the reasoning of Verlinde about MOND.The fact to modify our newtonian mechganic is odd,it is also odd that the fact to consider the quantum gravitation like an emergent electromagnetic force.All searchs this weakest quantum force.It is well like that,that boosts and catalyses the compétitions,we have so many interesting works searching answers.But I don't understand why so many scientists insist only on photons and only on this luminiferous aether ???? it is a prison this special relativity and if a main primordial causality has created an universe, I am doubtin,g that it is a prison ??? the aether is gravitational and the universe is more complex than our standard model.It is really odd that all insists in this prison and these chains .Like if in 200 years of sciences we had all understood and concluded ,only the photons exist ??? the cold and heat .....The consciousness and the gravitaztion has nothing to do with our standard model in logic.

      psd verlinde tells that dark matter does not exist in fact and that the reasoning that Zwicky has found in galaxies inventing dark matter is not necessary.So Verlinde wants to explain gravitation in all the sense, entropical this, now mond, and this and that.Well is it a joke ? has he a team of business men behind him??? all the pappers pondered become irrational.Sometimes competition is well sometimes no, and a little of holidays also sometimes is well for the Heath and the pression :)

      Dark matter seems essential ,this matter baryonic permits to balance the standard model when we consider the zero absolute,the cold.

      MONDS OR emergent electromagentic gravity ...are not really universal.

      Best Regards

      I have read Verlinde's paper on this MOND-like theory. Over all I gave the paper an attention level of 5, where I studied the initial idea pretty closely and some of the later development not so much. I would file this hypothesis into the maybe file. It is not an entirely crazy idea.

      The idea is that with anti-de Sitter spacetime entanglement corresponding to Einstein-Rosen bridges (ER = EPR) connect on the boundary or conformal boundary. If a de Sitter spacetime emerges from a causal wedge of the anti-de Sitter spacetime these entanglemnts do not necessarily connect on the horizon. This means that entanglement is a structural mortar for spacetime. This results in curvatures in spacetime. This Verlinde interprets as a MOND-like modification of gravity.

      I do think that if there are these entanglements not connected to horizons exist there should then be some interpretation according to elementary particles. A pure spacetime physical perspective and a particle perspective might have some sort of duality to them.

      I have read several ideas also and pappers about these MOND.We search of asnwers after all and all works seraching these answers are always important for the evolution of sciences.We know so few still about our universe and its gravitational laws.The universal mechanic is so complex and we analyse at this moment a so small part of this puzzle,detrministic and objective.We are so youngs still,our knowledges are so weak still.This universal sphere is an incredible splendor of evolution of matter energy.

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts Lawrence,I am wishing you all the best in this contest, your ideas are always relevant.

      Friendly

      Excellent essay Lawrence!

      I tend to agree with your main thesis, that an open universe favors emergence of consciousness. I also see some overlap of your black hole analysis with my current areas of interest. But this essay is jam-packed with ideas and information, to the point where I pity folks who are not savvy about the abbreviations for technical terms, or conversant enough to see what you are trying to show with the Math. An impressive tour de force! But I will have to go back over it a few times, to absorb it all.

      This work is pretty much tied into a particular view of quantum gravity and black hole research, involving String Theory. Luckily; I got to hear Maldacena's talk on entangled black holes at GR21, along with a few others like Don Marolf, which seem to have a direct tie-in with what you are trying to prove. I think you win your point, in any case, but it somewhat rises and falls with the fate of the AMPS firewall BH model. There is a big 'it from qubit' resurgence these days, where a lot of researchers are focusing on entangled spacetime. Some of that work appears a little artificial to me.

      In the larger view; Padmanabhan has recently argued that the same thermodynamic considerations that create an open universe also require gravity to be quantum mechanical. So it argues for the necessity of quantum gravity. If the fabric of spacetime itself emerges from entanglement on a higher-dimensional boundary, this supports some models of induced or entropic gravity that might otherwise fail. But I am more in the camp of Ashtekar, where I see a need to put many models of quantum gravity on an equal footing, in order to make progress, rather than focusing only on String Theory. We shall see what comes of it.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

        I had also wanted to mention,

        One does not have to rely on thermodynamic considerations, to have an open universe. In some scenarios, as with the DGP model, it can happen due to purely geometric considerations. That occurs in a brane-world formulation where the prior space is 5-d, presumably AdS5, which spawns a 4-d spacetime when a 5-d black hole implodes to become a white hole in our universe.

        There was a Scientific American article "The Black Hole at the Beginning of Time" which was interesting except for the misleading title (not at time's inception, but as above). There was a paper in JCAP "Out of a White Hole..." also in 2014, with technical details. But this could show where the AdS background comes from, and explain why the universe is open.

        On the other hand; recent work by Dvali and colleagues focuses on an analogy between BEC formation and the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole. They derived that BHs are the most powerful efficient possible quantum computers, but also that physical limitations prevent us from using them to obtain useful information or perform meaningful calculations. Care to comment?

        Regards,

        Jonathan

        Thanks for the positive response. I will comment more tomorrow. It is getting a bit late for a long writing session. This is in line with the approach with Raamsdonk that spacetime is built from entanglements. I wrote an answer on stack exchange that connects with this perspective with regards to Hawking radiation.

        The open world emerges from the existence of gauge hair and BPS charge. The hair of the black hole is entangled with particles in a vast number of other black holes in the universe. In the unique situation where there are two black holes maximally entangled one would have a complete Einstein-Rosen bridge connection to the interior of the other black hole in this other world. The openness comes from the fact the spatial surface in region I has an ambiguity with respect to being connected to other cosmology or the black hole interior region. For maximal entangled Bhs one in principle can avoid the singularity and travel around to other worlds.

        I will write more tomorrow. I have been recovering from influenza, and today it the first day I feel not utterly horrible. I am not that familiar with DGP model, but I will see what I can make of it.

        Cheers LC

        Dear Lawrence B.

        I enjoyed reading your interpretation of consciousness and reality.

        What I found intreging was your remark :

        "A truncated system may be able to perform these actions, but not in a complete God-like form."

        This is in concordance with my perception that the emerged phenomenon called reality is a truncated entity from Total Simultaneity, it is NOT the "complete" God-like form that TS can be seen as.

        The theory of Holography and hairy BH's combined with entangled units of quantum information (tensors) is also used in Eric Verlinde's theory of emergent gravity, and as I pose it is just another good explanation of the unknowable essence of our emergent reality, that becomes an availability in Total Simultaneity, at the moment we THINK about it.

        If there were NO observers and none consciousness there would only be Chaos.

        Your interpretation by your own consciousness has become now in my perception a probability in TS. (and a nice one)

        I hope that you will find some time to read/comment/rate my essay "The Purpose of Life"

        that offers just another way of explaining our consciousness.

          Thanks for the interest in my paper.

          The open world paradigm sets up a way of looking at MH spacetimes. These are able to perform hyper-Turing computations. A simple Zeno-effect form of this is a switch that is set off at t = 1, then on at t = 1/2, then off at 1/4 and so forth. After one second will the switch be on or off? It turns out of course that in the last "epsilon" of that second the energy required to flip the switch diverges so the whole system end up in a black hole. The result if there is any occurs in a black hole the exterior observer is not able to see into. With MH spacetimes such as the interior of an RN black hole the output of infinite calculations is on the interior horizon. Yet due to Hawking radiation this can't be absolutely infinite.

          This sets up a quantum algorithmic system of truncated hyper-Turing computations, or with adjusted Chaitin halting probabilities. If we have perfect hypercomputations all the Chaitin probabilities would be either 0 or 1, but because black holes have finite duration by Hawking radiation this ideal can be maybe partially approached, but not achieved. The systematic element of this I think extends to the rest of the universe. This is the duality with black hole hair and ordinary quantum states I argue.

          I read your paper early last week. I think I gave you a 7. I didn't comment much because I had the flu and was not feeling well.

          Cheers LC

          Lawrence,

          Interesting essay. Not the smoothest to read due to the typo's but the language and concepts were fondly reminiscent of university days.

          As for your proposition I found it reasonable but felt it didn't falsify other options, so appeared inconclusive. i.e. could not a long lasting closed universe allow semi intelligent beings such as us even though an open one may encourage higher intelligence?

          Also; if we assume say a heat death or other 'end', what is to stop a new iteration starting some time later (if time then continues!) Consider perhaps one with entirely re-ionized matter. In that case could not a 'long cycle' model have produced us? or even intelligent life?

          I ask partly as attempted falsification of a model I've published myself based on studies of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN's), quasars and an evolutionary galaxy sequence, where the quasar (the 'black hole outflows' in old money) is the matter recycling mechanism. We've now studied and understand the accretion, helicoil and shear propagation mechanisms in great detail and a lot of unknowns are resolved in the recycling model. The implicit patterns produced are then found at the greater scale in the CMB 'axis of evil', and spiral and many other inconsistencies and asymmetries otherwise confounding theory. The suggestion then is a fractal recycling model, which stellar scale examples support (Crab nebula heart etc.) Redshift is derived elsewhere from the Schrodinger sphere surface expansion so accelerating universe expansion isn't required.

          What I tried to establish is whether or not you conclusions would preclude such a model. I formed the impression they didn't, but what would be your view?

          If you have time to read the paper it's here;

          DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4540.5603 or;

          http://www.hadronicpress.com/issues/HJ/VOL36/HJ-36-6.pdf

            Sorry about the typos. I did do this in a bit of haste. To be honest these contests are a bit fake in a way. When the winners are announced it is always with the exception of a couple FQXI members who win.

            I can't say a lot about galaxy structure. I was at a conference some years ago and talked with a galaxy structure theorist. What I learned mostly is that I really don't know that much about the subject. The black hole in galaxies or in the AGN can in effect recycle material that pushes in on the supermassive black hole and is then pushed out again by radiation pressure. Matter that falls through the horizon though is effectively lost. So an AGM can spark stellar nurseries, that is if my understanding on this is right.

            I will try to get to your paper as soon as possible. I looked at a lot last week, but got the flu and was not up to reading anything.

            Cheers LC

            I gave you an 8. This was as of the same flavor as your book in quantum gravity. Very mathematical. I.e. very lucid. I will later give you questions as to what you intended.

            Thank you for your interesting essay. It is not clear to us why the proposed mechanism will be less random that the one provided by outcomes of quantum measurements. In our view it is not enough to have under determined or random results in order to have freedom of choice.

              I agree John Templetons conception has been rather lost, but peer pressure is not to be radical and for loyalty to colleagues. It would take a great leader to resist those. Having scored at or near the top many times I have little expectation of change. Bohrs 'But is it crazy ENOUGH to be true' isn't reflected in scoring criteria at all, except as 'interest'. So much for encouraging advancement!

              Yes, Galaxy structure is complex with many theories and masses of data but still no temporal evolutionary sequence or derivation of growth in mass or bars (most spirals have visible central bars) apart from mine, which is a touch too far from doctrine for most editors. Astronomers are often too focused to worry about theory which they see as lagging by decades (and few make good theorists!) Indeed if you talk in the language of your paper they'll roll their eyes and look to the heavens (a habit!).

              They do have a point. Laura Mersini Haughton has debagged the old 'Black Hole' concepts and AGN's themselves are now well understood in morphological terms. The core torus has counter rotating 'helicoil' dynamics which accelerate the matter, finally 'ripping it apart' completely at the cusp where the contraflow jets emanate. Sure much 'information' is lost in the particle re-ionization, but total matter actually increases due to new condensation by shear at the column collimations. Sir Martin Rees first discussed this in the 1960's! The growth in the Galaxy mass function over ~10Gyr could be explained if with each quasar cycle the new iteration has such higher mass.

              Your explanation is rather off. For 'radiation pressure' read momentum (the inner collimated jet pulses are found at at up to 46c in the ambient frame). Imagine a spinning ballerina; 'Accreting her mass (arms) inwards increases spin speed, except the mas is ejected up & down. That is in fact a nuclear tokamak! And yes, the outflows lead to new star formation at the head of the column of jet matter, which are the earliest stars of the new iteration (I identify as the ends of the 'bar' of a new open barred spiral, from which the arms trail.

              I suspect ALL cosmology should now be 'observational' as we now have massive observational powers and overwhelming data. With Gaia running and the James Webb on stream soon Earth needs more population to handle the data!

              I hope you're now out of the (Lyman Alpha?) forest with your flu.

              If you want 'radical', deriving all QM's predictions classically! check out my essay.

              Best

              Peter

              I remember something about Mersini Haughton a few years ago. I think she had some idea about how black holes never form. I think that is not upheld much, or at least I have not heard any follow on with that.

              I will try to get to your paper some time today. I have been pretty tied up with things. Also my interest in this whole affair has been a bit low. I now see that my essay dropped a bit more once again. I will though try to read yours and a couple other essays today.

              Cheers LC

              The main physics of interest to me is in the second and third sections. I appealed to some work I did a few years ago on MH spacetimes and hyper-computation. This gets comparatively speculative at this point, but it centers around the role of the Chaitin probability for halting, which is itself not generally computable. In a hypercomputation framework this will be either 0 or 1 for any input Turing machine or algorithm. However, Hawking radiation prevents eternal black holes, so while the Chaitin halting probability is changed it is not generally computable. I agree there is some open question here, but that was in many ways what I wanted to offer. This is a possible route for exploration on this matter, not that this is some complete solution to the problem.

              LC