Wandering Towards a Goal: The Causal Provenance of Intent by Robert Groess

Dear Robert,

I like your essay, I even managed to learn something from it. I have a couple of questions for you. At the conclusion, you quote P. Anderson:

" In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less society."

If it is so, what do you think is the value of the particle physics for the humanity?

I appreciate the very end of your paper:

" They leave thermodynamic trails which we can follow. Their ultimate progenitors however remain elusive. Until such time as intentions find a way to know themselves."

Do you think they might to know themselves in scientific way?

I will score your text soon.

Cheers,

Alexey.

Robert, let's ponder a bit about your answer on the value of the particle physics (PP). This is a typical answer we heard many times, but is it good? The answer points to byproducts of PP, not to its direct aims. That sort of answer implies that the direct aims do not have a sufficient value to humanity, doesn't it? Keeping in mind that there is no reason to expect more fruitful byproducts from PP than from any other branch of physics, high price of PP and complete silence about its direct value, what might be a reason for humanity to support it? What do you think?

Dear Robert,

(I post this also on my thread (like you do) for the continuity and the alerts we receive when a new post is added)

As we ALL are emergent agents in this emergent relity it is also for me sometimes difficult not to fall in the pitfall of accepting reality as REAL. Also it is quite difficult to obtain an "exteriour" viewpoint...

When we stay comparing an emergent reality with its Source (TS) I am inclined now to accept that any emerging reality (ER) that is "lived" by a consciouss agent is a singularity both in TS as in ER. The singularity in ER is the whole "memory" of the agent, that SEEMS to be a FLOWING experience for the agent. The singularity in TS is the Eternal Now Moment. The "FLOWING" experience needs the introduction of TIME (that does not exist in TS. So you could say that from the emergent singularity emerges the experience of TIME and its specific life-line.

The emergent SSS that I described produces for each agent its own data, and like the ever changing colours on a soap bubble each moment these data change through emergent time. The SSS is though just a method to explain our experience of reality out of a singyularity...

As I indicated TIME is a restriction needed for experience. As TS is a timeless Hilbert Space (complete set ?) of ALL ENM's of ALL consciousnes agents it is indeed the "Place" where everything is simultaneous...

So...now for the neutron decay : The data leading to the outcome of these experiments are experiences from your consciousness from your past, so from the FLOW of your reality awareness, also these data (once on your emergent SSS) are compressed in the singularity that is the origin of your life-line. So it is not "netron decay really happenes" but "the neutron decay data really were projected data on your SSS in your past".

Now you can say : Okay where is my free will ?

As there is an infinity of your life-lines in TS, each ENM that stands for a specific one is the one that is realised in time restricted decisions you made.

So as this speific life-line is compressed in the singularity of ER (entangled with Total Consciousness in TS) at each decision it can be imagined to jump to another ENM, so forming another new life-line. The last thought is a one that is restricted by Time and Space. So in TS there ARE already ALL life-lines available as probabilities, which means also the so-called NEW one that is realised by your decision in ER is already an ENM that is "lived" by another agent called Robert...This could mean that Free Will is our ability for consciousness in Emergent Reality (through entanglement with Total Consciousness in TS) to make INTERPRETATIONS that are leading to THINK and DECIDE. ALL these interpretations are in ONE singularity...

I know it is difficult to imagine and leads to many other INTERPRETATIONS, but it is a beautifull thought that is connected with the beauty of the experience of music. The awareness of the FLOW of a piece of music that in fact is timeless.

I thank you for every question asked, it makes me think, so if there are more don't hesitate.

best regards

Wilhemus

Dear Robert,

Thanks for the interesting discussion. I have just scored your essay.

All the best,

Alexey.

Dear Robert,

I very much enjoyed your essay.

In your treatment of Maxwell's demon as "a situation that is laced with intent", you gather a number of well-known facts and weave them together in as succinct a presentation as I've ever seen, focused on entropy, the Landauer limit, from Schrödinger's 'aperiodic crystal' to Watson and Crick. A key observation:

"there is always a thermodynamic cost of storing information and any information that has no predictive value for the future is superfluous and wasteful."

You then apply this to the genome as a memory register of useful knowledge that has accumulated over time.

I believe this also correlates strongly with your remark on my page about Chomsky, re: "the fundamental nature that language has on the structure of an individual brain." In The Automatic Theory of Physics [my ref 5] I develop Steven Grossberg's mathematical model of neural nets and show an example neural network for sequence detection, with the example sequence "j", "oo", "ss" = 'juice'. As you note this is a neural structure, and clearly the predictive value of language is exceedingly high.

I have made new connections based on your essay and your comments on my page. FQXi annually opens a new gold mine. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Robert,

you wrote an excellent essay! It gives me a lot of things I have to think about. I'll have to come back with questions, but right now I'm too tired. For the moment I just say: Good luck for the contest!

Cheers, Stefan

Hi dear Robert

Your work seems to me deeply analytical where you try to represented mutual interconnections of the peculiarities of whole with the primordial bricks. I think this is the right and maybe only is a single way to solve actual questions in such character. For me also it is attractive that you have guiding by energetically aspects of study and judgement, that allows to use math opportunities. However I am some skeptical that the offered question can be solved at all and right now, even principality (not speaking about of practically.) I feel you also have finished in somewhat sadly note on this. Why it is so, you and me can understand this as there are not clarified yet much of fundamental questions, as the quantum-classical duality, the essence of elementary particles at all, as will as mystery of gravity, break of symmetry etc. Then I think that it is just not so serious try to explain how operated and taking the decision the human brain when we cannot yet to answer what kind of force pressed on us in the our chair. I think our efforts must be directed on these in first. I hope my work can be in your interest (there main things are in refs). Meantime I continue to read your attractive essay. Hope you will answer in my page and we will completed our impressions!

Best wishes

Robert,

Thanks for your rare perception & comments on my essay. I've replied there. I've also just seen Charlie Bennett's IBM Q video, thank you. Very good if quite sold that it was all Einstein that was wrong. I've now read your essay too and found it a great refresher on the key role of entropy. I've always been somewhat skeptical of the importance of the 2nd law but I now have a broadened basis for it.

I can't write much now (96yr old mother being rushed hospital) but two things that did stop me was; "{i]Biological systems arise from elements that are described completely, if intractably, by the laws of physics that we already know" Do you really think we already know all the laws which may be applicable to biology?

And did you suggest 'intentions' ..require the ability to perform computations'. (or even require US to have that ability. Is computation not a conscious act? so does a baby really 'compute' for his first intentional acts?

Best

Peter

Thanks dear Robert that you find time to read my article as well as for favorable words. I also have completed my readings and I can add to my early post not so much but only your article really contained many interesting directions and aspects, which deserve more carefully studies than we doing hurried in such circumstance. In my view your work deserves to good rate that I'm going to do.

Be well, my dear!

Dear Robert,

With great interest I read your essay, which of course is worthy of the highest rating.

I'm glad that you have your own position

«In Maxwell's apparatus we wish to sort the fast-moving molecules from the slow-moving ... thereby providing a thermal gradient that has the ability to do work. This situation is laced with intent.»

«As with the statistical nature of thermodynamics, quantum equations themselves present no indication of aims and intentions.»

Your assumptions are very close to me

«This is a classical case of free expansion and provides us with the following insight into the dynamics of the physical world.»

You might also like reading my essay , where it is claimed that quantum phenomena occur in the macro world, where "there is no measurement problem" due to the dynamism of the elements of the medium in the form of de Broglie waves of electrons, where parametric resonance occurs and solitons are formed, wich mechanism of work is similar to the principle of the heat pump.

I wish you success in the contest.

Kind regards,

Vladimir

Dear Robert,

Your Essay is a remarkable contribution to this Essay Contest. In fact, Maxwell's Demon, Landauer Principle (which is a further proof of the power of the Second Law) and the quantum-classical boundary are intriguing issues that always fascinated me. In fact, I am currently working in the quantum-classical boundary of black hole physics, where the role of thermodynamics is fundamental. In any case, I enjoyed a lot in reading your work, which deserves the highest score that I am going to give you.

Congrats and good luck in the Contest.

Cheers, Ch.

P.S. I replied to your comments in my Essay page.

Hi Robert -

Thanks for your very thoughtful and well-informed meditation on our theme. I agree with your approach, and you generally support your argument well with concrete instances.

There's one point (in section 5) where I think you jump too far, though. In a computational setting, I'm sure it's true that "replication, given the right constraints, is inevitable." But such an artificial environment lets us set up whatever constraints we like, and I don't think it's clear at all "that life on the early Earth was an inevitable result of complex carbon chemistry being subject to... solar, volcanic and electrostatic energy sources." I know this has been argued by some quite knowledgeable folks, but they tend to take a broad thermodynamic view, and underestimate the great many specific difficulties in the way of the emergence and survival of replicating systems.

As you know from looking at my essay, I lean the opposite way, emphasizing the improbability of the major transitions in our history. Very unlikely accidents are by definition rare, but they can also be very important, as we all know from the course of our own lives. But I don't think this contradicts the gist of your argument.

Incidentally, I think your treatment of senescence is largely correct in relation to complex organisms, but probably not in relation to bacteria. At the cellular level, sex and horizontal gene transfer, along with various repair mechanisms, seem to deal effectively with destructive mutations over millions of generations.

Thanks again - Conrad