First Things First: The Physics of Causality

By the way, this post was from Roger.

I have a problem with the notion of time in the multiverse scenario that Sean Carroll prefers as a valid interpretation of quantum mechanics.

To illustrate the problem, let's do a gedankenexperiment:

Suppose that tomorrow i will go to the quantum laboratory and make a superposition experiment with two distinct possible outcomes. No matter what measurement outcome i will see tomorrow, my "clone" will the the complementary outcome.

My question now is: does this clone already exist today? If yes, in what sense does it exist already today?

If not, i must take the usual narrative of a branching universe seriously (for the sake of the argument) and infere that a whole universe is generated at the moment the wave function collapses.

The puzzle now is twofould, namely who was the original person in the lab and who is the clone. If i am the clone then i merely have a false memory about my past - i did not live that past but the original did live it. The clone therefore lives in a virtual reality equal to a boltzmann brain that believes its full blown memory about the past indicates that it lived it in the past.

If an infinitude of "original me's" has lived my life from birth to tomorrow (when i go into the lab and perform my experiment) and after the experiment one of those "original me's" is differentiated from me (by seeing the complementary measurement result), I have to ask in what sense it was *not" me before the measurement outcome took place. Are there an infinitude of identical universes stacked upon each other at every point in time? And last but not least - does the formalism of quantum mechanics indicate in any way that such an infinitude of identical "copies" is inherent in the superposition that will take place tomorrow?

I would be thankful for some enlightening answers.

"it gave him a way to define "meaningful information"--and that even slipperier idea, "meaning" itself."

But his definitions leave something to be desired. Here are some better ones

Rob McEachern

"does the formalism of quantum mechanics indicate in any way that such an infinitude of identical "copies" is inherent in the superposition that will take place tomorrow?"

No. See my comments here

Rob McEachern

These interviews of Carroll and Rovelli are both quite interesting since they show two very smart people with many related but very different narratives about the nature of reality. Narratives with measurement are what guide science and without measurements, there really is no role for science. However, narratives without measurement are what guide philosophy and there are philosophy is a perpetual discourse among many very smart people about the nature of physical reality.

"Every philosopher believes they are correct in disagreeing with every other philosopher and so only one philosopher could ever actually be correct." Paul Skokowski.

Neither Carroll nor Rovelli acknowledge the unknowable precursors that result from quantum phase correlation and superposition, but both accept the notion that the universe changes and that outcomes all have precursors, i.e., cause and effect. However, they do not discuss the two very different kinds of changes that make up things that happen: First there is the very slow change of the universe due to gravity; Second, there are the very fast changes of atoms due to charge.

Black holes are endpoints of time and space, but black holes are still subject to the slow changes of universe matter and action. In mattertime, the universe pulse destiny is a single black hole and that destiny births the next antiverse/universe pulse. An antiverse expansion is the first half pulse that grows with antimatter precursors then a universe matter pulse decay is the

second half pulse.

Hi Kate, BTW re. your "Does drinking a glass of red wine with dinner make you live longer? Does it make cancer cells less likely to grow?". "In its Report on Carcinogens, the National Toxicology Program of the US Department of Health and Human Services lists consumption of alcoholic beverages as a known human carcinogen." https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/alcohol/alcohol-fact-sheet

Worth knowing I think. However it may reduce likelihood of other stress related illnesses.

But the philosophers belief in the correctness of their disagreement could be wrong. E.g. Sometimes people are talking about the same things in different words. And so there need not be just one correct philosopher. I think the statement by Paul Skokowski is just a put down regarding philosophy; as if the explanation of things is unimportant. Is agreement without understanding, or the attempt to understand, better? I think not.

Dear Georgina,

Please remember that: Cogito, ergo sum is (sic) a Latin philosophical

proposition by René Descartes usually translated into English as "I think,

therefore I am". The phrase originally appeared in French as je pense, donc je suis in his Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. Wikipedia

René would have been closer to telling the truth had he averred: Je suppose que,

comme tout le monde sur la planète "I guess, just like everybody else on the

planet does." All philosophers and theoretical physicists would come closer to telling

the truth if they would only preface all of their remarks with the term:

"I guess." Professor Markus Mueller of the Vienna Institute for Quantum Optics

and Quantum Information has confirmed to me by email that all philosophers and theoretical physicists have always guessed about the real structure of the Universe. But he insists that he only makes "good" guesses, not arbitrary ones.

Joe Fisher, Realist

The 2019 FQXi conference [1] has pinned this article [2] to the top of its twitter page. The speakers and attendees have spent a lot of time trying to decide what life, agency and free will are, and whether they are compatible with current physics, or whether new physics is required.

But the topology of life, agency and free will is completely different to the topology of determinism:

.....Determinism means that laws of nature determine all outcomes for matter.

.....Agency/ free will means that matter itself determines some of its own outcomes. This is new physics only in the sense that it is a different view of matter.

The other issue is that the nature of life, agency and free will is only representable as (but not determined by) algorithms; the nature of life, agency and free will is not representable as equations and numbers alone. Yet there is no way that equations and numbers can transmogrify into algorithms. This is new physics only in the sense that the behaviour of matter needs to be represented by algorithms.

1. Mind Matters: Intelligence and Agency in the Physical World, 20-25 July 2019.

2. First Things First: The Physics of Causality, https://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/236 .

Does this mean all of your statements about reality will be prefaced with "I guess" from now on?

Thinking they are never wrong, and never being wrong are not the same.

Thinking you are right is a natural part of consciousness, but is subjective and a natural part of philosophy. Being right is a part of objective agreement with others, which philosophers never seem to have and only comes from the measurements of science.

...however, it is not possible to know all of the precursors for agency/free will...otherwise, agency free will would also be determinate.

This is why quantum uncertainty plays a key role in agency/free will...

NATURE made the only version of reality VISIBLE.

Joe Fisher, Realist

I read Sean Carroll's piece in the New York Times. Very insightful. I would say we'll probably never have a complete theory of quantum mechanics because there is always more to know about different dimensions, or degrees of freedom. Quantum mechanics happens at 10 ^-35, but there are other degrees of freedom above and below this dimension. Sometimes when these dimensions interact, we have interesting things, like reverse causality in the transactional interpretation of QM. When the pilot wave or DeBroglie wave extends to infinity, QM kind of can't be complete. Descriptions of other dimensions are not static. Neither are relations between degrees of freedom.

Hi Joe,

I agree somewhat. I question some of the specific terms you use, like unnatural. I think what Von Neumann and the non-Copenhagen schools taught was that there was a natural, real aspect to QM wave functions. For Von Neumann, it was geometrical. We're beginning to see the confluence between physical properties and numerical properties, such as the interesting research out of Princeton last year about prime numbers being encoded in special crystals.

Please Joe, stop to post Always the same,it's odd ,it's autistic like comportement,if you explained different things and details,it could be interesting,but there it's crazy and irritating.Develop please what you tell us.Thanks

Dear Steve,

NATURE provided only one form of VISIBLE reality. If you only like reading about "developed" unnatural humanly contrived codswallop, all you have to do am NOT READ MY COMMENTS.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Joe,all what I say is that you must add details,philosophically,mathematically,physically.There people see Always the same with your visible surface.What is this surface?what is its cause?do you beleive in a kind of Eternal infinite consciousness? have you explainations at different scales,quant or cosmol? please improve your ideas.