vol VII: Notes
2018
Notes
Sunday 24 June 2018 - Saturday 30 June 2018
[Notebook: DB 82: Life and Death]
[page 161]
Sunday 24 June 2018
The panpsychist approach demands that we consider all quantum behaviour as logical. In silicon etc digital computers we only observe the static states of the computing elements because the
[page 162]
state transitions are in effect hidden inside the clock pulses, between the leading and trailing edge. We seem to have an exactly analogous situation in nature where the actual continuous (?) dynamics of quantum behaviour is hidden from us and we only see the formal outcome in terms of observed particles, observed creations and inferred annihilations. Whereas the clocking in a techno computer is quite precise and regular, natural events have a half life but but their exact timing has a random elements. What is not random is the actual form of events which is determined to a high degree of precision by the assumed logical events which determine the outcomes of the randomised completion of operations.
What determines the actual timing of quantum event? There is obviously some control because events of a given form have a very definite half life. [Maybe it is a network phenomenon something like the randomness of human insight.]
Monday 25 June
6. Cantor's paradise
7. A transfinite computer network
8. Quantum mechanics describes a computer network
9. Shannon: why is the universe quantized?
10. Creation, annihilation and logic
Here we introduce energy, so section name is the logical creation of energy.
Tuesday 26 June 2018
Wednesday 27 June 2018
[page 163]
The classical version of the logical not is a pendulum going from potential to not-potential = kinetic to not-kinetic = potential and so on.Then we go to quantum harmonic oscillator, creating energy from action and time, creating the foundation for quantum mechanics -- is the classical foundation for quantum mechanics, ie wave equation, deterministic, also the foundation for space-time?
Thursday 28 June 2018
Here is the question at the root of panpsychism: How big is the quantum of action? Answer: it is the physical equivalent of the logical distance between p and not-p. Here is the source of my honours thesis (maybe)/
A bright idea a day keeps the gloom away.
The bifurcation of energy into potential and kinetic requires a space and a potential, maybe the beginning of gravitation, the first and most persistent potential in the universe which arises from spatial dynamics = curvature [= geometry according to Misner, Thorne and Wheeler] which requires at least two dimensions, one space, one time, ie energy must bifurcate into space and time, creating curvature and potential in one move. Where does momentum come into this? We've got shapeless bits of jigsaw to be moulded and connected. Misner, Thorne & Wheeler: Gravitation
Until we have space we cannot have c [velocity of light] which couples time frequency (energy) to space frequency (momentum).
[page 164]
We want to assemble all the quantum mechanical tool into a network a quantum harmonic oscillator maybe which has a potential arising from boson statistics. We just chat about all this until something falls together. How many dimensions of space-time do we ned to make a fermion?
The conservation of energy holds because all energy in the universe comes from the same [local] source. Conservation of action and momentum also [and the velocity of light, due classically to the local behaviour of Maxwell's equations].
For a long time we have been thinking that gravitation is not quantized because there is no possibility of error, ie it is purely classical [the error resisting power of quantization is not necessary because gravitation sees only to energy, so all its messages are effectively identical so error is not an issue].
Trying to stay close to the simplicity argument, increasing entropy 1 unit at a time, mapping to the transfinite numbers where ℵ0 = (say) 2 and growing from there. See energy as a process of action, each action being the simultaneous creation and annihilation of a state. This is pure energy / time, E = ℏω = h/t, ℏ = E.t or ΔEΔt = ℏ.
Boson, fermion, trinity, causality, velocity of light.
In a closed universe light can only go in circles as it does in a black hole, or behind the event horizon of black holes. So the null geodesics are geometrically
[page 165]
confined in closed trapped surfaces - keep rattling the kaleidoscope. Photons can exist in 2D space-time, electro = potential, magnetic = kinetic with curl.
So perhaps in the continuous zone where [error free] communication [is not important] Maxwell's equations hold and the photons are steered by the curvature of space — so null inertial geodesics remain inside the universe because there is no outside, ie outside is inconsistent and therefore does not exist? What can this mean? Space can maintain fermionic inconsistency so long as particles are spacelike separated. Another bifurcation: spacelike and fermion came into existence simultaneously. So members of the Trinity are spacelike separated, like fermions, but they can communicate through bosons.
Quantum harmonic oscillator does not need space to exist, only a spectrum of frequencies beginning with two different frequencies as boson potential [and some electrons to absorb and emit photons, enabling them to reach equilibrium]. O for the mind of a Feynman [but I've only got myself and my philosophical / theological / scientific dreams].
Friday 29 June 2018
Electric and magnetic fields related through special relativity and need space to exist and the finite velocity of light, so we have a chicken and egg here, reflected in Maxwell's equations. Electric charge is necessary for photon, and it is a measure of the rate of communication between particles. We like to think that gravitation is the initial 'force' in the universe, a topological result of the shape of space. The basic heuristic here is the layered network idea, beginning with act: Im Anfang war die Tat The second feature of this heuristic is that the function of networks is to copy, ie increase entropy and
[page 166]entropy is the measure of a panpsychic expanding universe. We can write about all these ideas without reaching any conclusions, just 'brainstorming' and putting it out so someone else may be able to ice the cake.
Physicists are hoping to get to the ultimate structure of the universe by going to higher and higher energies per particle on the view that this gets them closer to the conditions existing nearer and nearer to the origin of the big bang. However their efforts make everything more complex since high energies enable the creation of huge numbers of low energy particles which obscure what is happening. They may be completely on the wrong track if the universe started off with zero energy.
I we can provide a plausible story of the creation of the universe from the panpsychic point of view it would be a very significant breakthrough in our understanding of the world. The difficult question might be how do the high energy phenomena we observe in the universe come to be. The answer might be in high energy physics, beginning with the cyclotron where we make high energy particles by repeatedly passing them through a potential that increments their energy in relatively small steps.
We might imagine that all the high energy processes in the universe are ultimately sourced from gravitational processes even though gravitation is the weakest 'force' in the universe. So it is capable of creating black holes by accreting a large number of relatively low energy particles through its universal attractiveness.
[page 167]
High energy simply means a big gap between potential and kinetic energy and we can make high kinetic energy through a sequence of small potentials and perhaps a high potential through a sequence of small kinetics ending in a sharp collision.
Why does the universe complexify despite its energy being zero? By increasing entropy creating more states at constant energy, which implies less energy per state and so lower temperature. Can we think of mass as potential energy? Is binding energy the source of mass? How does a point electron carry its mass and energy? Does it exist in some sense outside space? Are mass, energy and time all the same reality?
Where do potentials come from? From the bifurcation of generic energy which is identical to frequency into potential energy (static structure) and kinetic energy. Has the principle of requisite variety got something to do with this because potentials are a product of uncertainty? Uncertainty and potentials are oriented toward the future, the arrow of time, whereas generic energy has no particular direction, nor has time. Time's arrow is an entropy thing. Potential will always realize themselves unless blocked by something deterministic.
Why complexity? Cantor's theorem, and uncertainty and requisite variety.
More bits and pieces to rattle into the jigsaw. [A rattled bolt will come undone, so we need castellated nuts and loctite.]
Saturday 30 June 2018
Equivalence of physical and mental effort. As a youth I was encouraged to compete physically in various sports and make a maximum effort which might be accompanied by a certain amount of pain. This did not seem to have much application in the mental sphere, but now that I am ageing both physical and mental activities seem to require equivalent amounts of effort and I have an equivalent tendency to shy away from them. My mental ambitions, however, require that I make the effort on the basis of use it or lose it. As I see my father ageing I see my own future and I want to put off my loss of physical and mental agility as long as possible.
How do we get from formalism to physics, from thought to action? We begin with Landauer's contention that information is physical and the idea that the quantum of action measures the distance between p and not-p. The quantum of action has the dimensions of energy.time, ie ML2T-2.T = ML2T-1. How does the logical defintion acquire these physical dimensions?
Action is our atom, and the appearance of dimensions is closely related (we guess) to the bifurcation into space and time consequent upon the origin of time on the sequence of creations and annihilations. We think of e+ + e- → γ + γ as a transformation conserving energy and making the transformation between identical particles (the γs) and different particles, (e+, e-). So energy is the symmetry connecting e+ and e- to one another and in fact all particles to one another. But, we think, this symmetry
[page 169]
has already bifurcated into massive (potential) and massless (kinetic), since electrons have rest mass but photons are never at rest. Photons imply the existence of space and time in that both are necessary for their existence.Mass, energy, inertia, momentum. We might be able to understand all this from special relativity. The layered network idea gives us a means of classifying and ordering the appearance of new features in the growing universe as it complexifies.
Mass energy equivalence is a consequence of Lorentz invariance which establishes a relationship between the dimensions L and T which inputs into the measurement of inertia. So we can bring everything down to the question of measurement. — Father measures the Son, quantum of action measures the distance between p and not-p. When nothing happens (no action) v simply stays p.
Relativity = communication = measurement. Where is the zero point of energy?When frequency =0, ie eternity = pure formalism ie on a null geodesic?? No spacetime interval, but photons travel through space (at c) from the beginning of the universe 14 billion years BP, 14 billion light years away. Ie zero spacetime interval bifurcates into large amount of space and time.
Modern physics talks about particles and fields, the particles being in effect quantized units of energy (messages) and fields continuous entities used to predict the nature and frequency of the appearance and disappearance of particles. It is thought that there is a
[page 170]
field for gravitation whose fields create spin 2 'gravitons'. Physicists like Einstein and Weinberg seem to feel that continuous fields are the real reality and that particles are simply observable manifestation of this reality rather like the old time idea that the universe is a manifestation of God, which seems consistent with the identification of God and the universe proposed here.
Panpsychists: Spinoza; Leibniz. Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia, Gottfried Leibniz - Wikipedia
Goff: 'for Spinoza physical science is a way of studying the psychology of God.' Philip Goff et al., (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Schopenhauer: 'will is the inner nature of all things.'
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947): Events and processes are the core of th world.
Panexperimentalism: conscious experience fundamental and ubiquitous
Pancognitivism: thought is fundamental and ubiquitous
"Constitutive cosmopsychism: — the view that all facts are grounded in / realized by / constituted of consciousness-involving facts at the cosmic level."
Can we explain consciousness in terms of processes that do not involve consciousness, or should we explain complex consciousness in terms of more fundamental forms of consciousness?
[page 171]
Consciousness: feedback / layering.
Goff: 'Indeed we can explain the extraordinary success of physics in terms of the fact that from Galileo onwards it focused on the more limited project of capturing matter's causal structure, rather than speculating about the underlying nature of the stuff that has that structure.' Maybe, as Aristotle might say, the form is all there is and there is nothing to be known about material prima: "nec quid, nec quale, nec quantum, nec aliquid eorum quibus ens determinatur."
Knowledge is a reality created by measurement, the creative role of quantum mechanics. The world is god's knowledge. There are not two copies of the world, in itself and in gods mind, but just one, held in place by the quantum mechanical no cloning theorem. Measurement in quantum mechanics - Wikipedia, No cloning theorem - Wikipedia
Eddington quoted in Strawson in Goff: 'It is rather silly, given that we know nothing from physics of the intrinsic nature of matter, to suppose that its nature is incongruent with mentality and then to wonder where mentality came from.'
