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vol VII: Notes

2014

Notes

[Notebook: DB 78: Catholicism 2.0]

[Sunday 12 October 2014 - Saturday 18 October 2014]

[page 40]

Sunday 12 October 2014

digitize_feynman: hopefully an application of the computation model to the Feynman path integral.

We have to develop the product slowly and carefully in its full generality.

On being a citizen of the world, and not a sectarian.

Monday 13 October 2014

Feynman Path Integral page 19: '. . . there is a quantity called a probability amplitude associated with every method whereby an event in nature can take place. . . . The operation of the measuring equipment is sufficient to disturb the system and its probability amplitude.' [to communicate, the measurer and the measuree must agree on a basis] Feynman & Hibbs

What he means here is that at the moment of measurement we learn what we are measuring. This may be when the electron hits the screen, or it may be which hole the electron went through, because quantum mechanics when it is not observed is non-local. Quantum nonlocality - Wikipedia

page 22: 'Our knowledge of the past is qualitatively different from thy of the future.' Because the past future boundary lies at the end of one event, which is fixed, and the beginning of another, whose outcome is uncertain as a consequence of indeterminism (symmetry). p(past) = 1, p(future) = |φ|2.

Lagrangian method enables us to comput the path of a classical

[page 41]

particle between x1, t1 and x2, t2. So it does not tell us where it is going [which we already know] so much as how it gets there.

page 28: 'Now we can give the quantum mechanical rule. We must say how much each trajectory contributed to the total amplitude to go from a to b.' On the classical assumption that the particle does go from a to b, we must get the result |K(b, a)|2 = 1, so what are we really calculating? Are we looking for the one math that carries all the probability, as in classical mechanics.

φ[x(t)} = const. e (i/ℏ) S[x(t)] = const (cos S/ℏ + i sin S/ℏ).

Are we saying that the sum over all paths has a probability amplitude of 1?

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Feynman page 37: 'Amplitude for events occurring in succession in time multiply.' The actions for subsequent events add..

Maybe I am just not lucky / intelligent enough to complete the project I have set myself. But press on. Nothing else to do!

So what we are doing is adding all the amplitudes at the time t across all the alues of x and then multiplying the resulting superpositions at subsequent times, tn, tn+1

Worming my way ahead inch by inch.

A Turing machine is a functional, producing a number out of a process. A computer does logic, ie executes it, and this is what the world does too so that we can have science. Feynman

[page 42]

conclusion.

The path integral method is a [mathematical] story about what happens as a particle moves from a to b tracking in a high dimensional space as described by the method of 'infinite screens with infinite holes' devised by Feynman's fertile imagination. Can we provide another story? Yes, but first we must be clear about the sort of results we expect this process to give us. Ultimately it is an amplitude ψ from which we can compute a probability p = |ψ|2. Is there another way to do this, yielding the same probabilities from another story?

Wednesday 15 October 2014

Probably time to start coding quantum field theory to se if I can get right answers by logical / digital methods. But what language? Xcode 4.x for OS 10.6.8.

. . .

From a scale invariant point of view creation and annihilation of fundamental particles is the same as the birth and death of living things, so we expect each fundamenta particles to have a formal genome and a process that expand this to the phenotype.

Thursday 16 October 2014

Scial thermodynamica. Maybe the good society is a liquid, banded but fre to move, rather than a sold (bonded rigidly) or a gas (colliding violently with n

[page 43]

common bond.

Friday 17 October 2014

Mind seems to have gone quiet while body recovering well from radiation therapy. Mental things have been going well but I am having trouble moving from ideas of principle like the application of fixed point theory to God, to getting down to detail, the quantum mechanics of God, It is looking quite good because quantum mechanics shows us how to compute the fixed point of the Universe given an Hermitean operator which has a set of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues, but how do we find the right operators? From the digital point of view we begin with the Pauli matrices that tell us about two state systems, then move to the gamma matrices which deal with four states. So we deal with photons, electrons and positrons. These seem to be very fundamental particles (fixed points). How do we get from QED to QCD? Via symmetries, the boundaries of the divine Universe. Will I ever get anywhere? Keep on, The desire t create a Universe digital to the core may be deflecting me from the answer, but it is an avenue. After all each particle is a fixed point some more durable than others, and we know that quantum theory can embody all computable functions. So we can just take quantum theory as read, although this seems too easy, since the digital to the core model seems to be able to deal with all the infinities that we currently try to sort with renormalization, whereas one would expect the basic structure of the Universe to be very simple (ie it is the simplest manifestation of the divine). Digital computation is both very simple, built around the NAND operation (a simple fixed operation, ie a fixed algorithm) but capable of computing anything computable when suitably complexified. All we need is a structure

[page 44]

that holds the bits together. My idea is that the underlying system maintaining the fixed point structure is what we have in the past called God, which gives the illusion of motion by creating and [annihilating] fixed points. What we see is a kinema, produced by underlying dynamics, What we are all trying to do in our lives is to understand the dynamics enough to produce the next frames of the kinema, This process is best understood at the physical level of the Universe, ie at the most abstract, which I imagine to be gravitation the total symmetry, rather like omnino simplex.

Aquinas is said to have felt bear the end of his life that he saw all his work as so much straw, and he was probably right, since very little of what he wrote stands up in the light of our modern understanding of the world, I wonder is my efforts to salvage something from his work are of any value, and maybe my writings are rather strawlike also. However we probably share many of the experience of human life. At least having sent some time in the Dominicans I have some idea of the discipline he followed all his life, I feel sorry for him not being able to escape as I did and experience the pleasures, joys and difficulties of having children and bringing them up. One can see that a large proportion of the denial of reality evident in the Church is s product of its dehumanizing emphasis on the superiority of poverty, chastity and obedience over normal life. Much of the evil inherent in our current Australian government us clearly a consequence of the dominance of Catholics and Christians in the governing party.

Aquinas is an example of the widespread belief that we can earn ultimate pleasure in the next life by suffering a certain amount of [self-imposed] pain an deprivation in this: poverty, chastity and

[page] 45]

obedience. I see the political motivation of this as the ruling elite ensuring their pleasure in this life by depriving the ruled class of their own pleasures so as so contribute to the pleasures of the elite. W have often defined religion as the technology of peace, but perhaps a ore practical definition is the technology of pleasure, It is true that we sometimes have to suffer to gain our pleasures if the work by which we ob tain our food, shelter and other elements of our fitness are unpleasant. Most of the unpleasantness is the result of competition for scarce resources, and so the technological foundation of peace and beatitude is the means of having our pleasures without depriving others of theirs.

Saturday 18 October 2014

So the religious algorithm becomes maximize my personal pleasures and minimize the pain caused to others in the process. So I might have caught the rat that lives in my kitchen, which is a pleasant action, I have caught it in a non lethal trap by offering it food. Now what? I have to relocate it far enough from here so that it does not come back, somewhere in the bush, where it will no longer (I imagine) enjoy the warmth and shelter and food scraps that my kitchen has provided and be subject to the dangers of wilderness.

'Ultimate pleasure if our goal' (Mathematical Theology, 1987)

Our pleasures have an evolutionary foundation, the pleasure of winning a mea, avoiding an evil, achieving a mating, and so on, We have much to learn from our evolutionary roots, which the Church continues to deny, The tension between pleasure and prudence is always with us — spend or save, work or play, and so on. For me to work for global pleasure is pleasure, with

[page 46]

the downside that it does not bring much response. On the whole I make my money by bringing subtle pleasures like hot water and leakproof roofs to my customers.

The interlay of pleasure and pain is exceedingly complex. Christianity simplifies it by placing the pain in this life the pleasure on the next. It also embodies the ISIS 'death cult' idea that the murder of Jesus somehow appeased God for the curiosity of the first people.

Dear Tony, Christianity is a death cut, as you can see by the 'stations of the cross' te be found in many Catholic Churches.

Any story is an algorithm, ie a fixed sequences of processes [executed in cooperation with the reader or listener].

Quantum mechanics — only discrete phases (quanta of action) are observable and we imagine 2π phase to correspond to a completed computation.

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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Feynman, Richard P, and Albert P Hibbs, Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, McGraw Hill 1965 Preface: 'The fundamental physical and mathematical concepts which underlie the path integral approach were first developed by R P Feynman in the course of his graduate studies at Princeton, ... . These early inquiries were involved with the problem of the infinte self-energy of the electron. In working on that problem, a "least action" principle was discovered [which] could deal succesfully with the infinity arising in the application of classical electrodynamics.' As described in this book. Feynam, inspired by Dirac, went on the develop this insight into a fruitful source of solutions to many quantum mechanical problems.  
Amazon
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Tzu, Sun, and Thomas Cleary (Trnslator) , The Art of War , 1988 Jacket: 'Compiled more than two thousand years ago by a mysterious warror-philosoher, The Art of War is still perhaps th most prestigious and influential book of strategy in the world today, as eagerly studied in Asia by modern politicians and executives as it has been by military leadrs since ancient times. As a sudy of the anatomy of ogranizations in conflict, The Art of War applies to competition and conflict in general, on every level from the interpersonal to the international. Its aim is invincibility, victory without battle, and unassailable strength through understanding of the physics, politics and psychology of conflict.' 
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Papers
Houghton, John, "Metings that changed the world: Madrid 1995: Diagnosing climate change", Nature, 455, , 9 October 2008, page 737-738. 'John Houghton chaired the tense IPCC meeting without which there would be no Kyoto Protocol. Here he recalls how science won the day.'. back
Links
IPCC, IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, About: Mandate: 'The IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they need to deal objectively with policy relevant scientific, technical and socio economic factors. They should be of high scientific and technical standards, and aim to reflect a range of views, expertise and wide geographical coverage.' back
Quantum nonlocality - Wikipedia, Quantum nonlocality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Quantum nonlocality is the phenomenon by which the measurements made at a microscopic level necessarily refute one or more notions (often referred to as local realism) that are regarded as intuitively true in classical mechanics. Rigorously, quantum nonlocality refers to quantum mechanical predictions of many-system measurement correlations that cannot be simulated by any local hidden variable theory. Many entangled quantum states produce such correlations when measured, as demonstrated by Bell's theorem.' back

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