Irrational mechanics, draft Ch. 14

[John Clark]

Giulio Prisco wrote on  https://www.turingchurch.com/p/irrational-mechanics-draft-ch-14

>"I’ve been talking of the ultimate God (the cosmic operating system, aka Mind at Large" [...] The cosmic operating system is alive and aware, or better super alive and super aware, and computes above and beyond what we call time.

 

 I like your term "cosmic operating system", but I think it's a mistake to equate that to the traditional concept of God. The Cosmic Operating System is not a person or even a super person, it need not be conscious or intelligent and it might operate the universe but not have created the universe. The existence of the universe might turn out to be a logical necessity because "nothingness" is unstable. 

> "We need, or at least I need, a concept of life after death that is solid enough to suspend disbelief. Without such a concept of life after death I would fall into the deepest state of paralyzing despair, and jump off the closest window to exit this unpleasant game but God is not enough".

 

As far as life after death is concerned, the idea of an invisible man in the sky does not give me any comfort or hope, especially not a God as unpleasant as the Christian or Muslim God. The existence of God is not necessary or sufficient for life after death, but the fact that quantum mechanics says information cannot be destroyed because everything evolves according to the Schrodinger equation in a reversible deterministic way is a little more interesting; of course quantum mechanics could turn out to be wrong about that but I sorta doubt it, so it gives me a little hope. Not a lot but a little.  That's why I'm going to have my brain frozen to liquid nitrogen temperatures when I die. I want the information that makes me be me be scrambled as little as possible. I want to make it as easy as I can for your cosmic operating system.

 > "and penultimate God-like cosmic engineers"  

I don't think such cosmic engineers exist in the observable universe… at least not yet.  I believe that if someday we build a Jupiter brain and then ask it "does God exist?" His  reply will be "He does now". 

> "I guess there is a high degree of entanglement between persons who love the same people, do the same things, or have similar thoughts and feelings, 

Quantum entanglement is a real thing and there is even a theory that the geometry of spacetime is the product of the quantum entanglement of information and there's some sort of correlation between spatial distance and entanglement, but so far it's just a theory, or maybe a theory for a theory. 

> and that entanglement propagates in time.

Your sort of entanglement and  quantum entanglement do  have that in common.

> "I don’t think technological resurrection needs a perfect copy of a quantum state."

I think that is a virtual certainty, otherwise you'd become a different person many trillions of times every second, every time an air molecule bumped into you and changed the quantum state of your body. 

 John K Clark 

[Giulio Prisco]

Hi John,

<The Cosmic Operating System is not a person or even a super person...>

In Chapter 8 I argued that the cosmic operating system is not less
than personal, but more than personal. If the cosmic operating system
is super alive, super conscious and super intelligent, then cosmic
operating system = God.

By the way, I've completed the book draft! In a few days you'll get
access to the entire current draft and I look forward to your
comments!

<...the fact that quantum mechanics says information cannot be

destroyed because everything evolves according to the Schrodinger
equation in a reversible deterministic way is a little more
interesting; of course quantum mechanics could turn out to be wrong
about that but I sorta doubt it, so it gives me a little hope. Not a
lot but a little.>

You have it easier than me! I don't think that everything evolves in a
reversible deterministic way (not in the Laplacian sense at least, see
chapters on libertarian determinism and Gödel), so building hope is
more difficult for me. But I've done it!

<I believe that if someday we build a Jupiter brain [-> God]...>

What if some alien civilization has already done so?

<...so far it's just a theory, or maybe a theory for a theory. >

Like everything!

<[If technological resurrection needs a perfect copy of a quantum
state] you'd become a different person many trillions of times every
second...>

This contradicts what you just said about deterministic evolution. The
quantum state (of you + the environment) evolves deterministically and
contains all those changes. But we agree that technological
resurrection does not need a perfect copy of a quantum state.

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[John Clark]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 12:26 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Giulio

><  "If technological resurrection needs a perfect copy of a quantum state] you'd become a different person many trillions of times every second"

 

> "This contradicts what you just said about deterministic evolution". 

I don't see the contradiction. Yes it's possible, even probable, that a single air molecule bumping into you could change you enough that one year from now your history and your conscious experience will be very different from what it would've been if that particular air molecule had not bumped into you, but that doesn't change the fact that right now, at the instant the air molecule hit you, your conscious experience will not have changed nor would that of anybody else. And if Hugh Everett's Many Worlds idea is basically correct, which I think it probably is, then "you"  DO split trillions of times every second and they will all eventually have different histories, but NOT at the instant of the split. Up until that instant they all will have had identical conscious experiences, and it would be nonsensical to ask which one is really "you". They would all have an equal right to call themselves Giulio Prisco.

By the way, if the things that we already understand about quantum mechanics ever start to sink into the zeitgeist of the general population then the English language is going to need to make some big changes, especially about the way it handles personal pronouns. And I suspect other languages are going to have to do the same. 

> "The quantum state (of you + the environment) evolves deterministically and contains all those changes."

Yes, if everything evolves according to the Schrodinger Equation then that must be the case. There have been some very sensitive experiments which try to find circumstances where the prediction of the equation does not exactly conform to the results of experiment; some competitors to the Many Worlds idea, such as objective collapse theories, claim that the equation needs modification, but so far at least the unmodified Schrodinger Equation has passed all tests with flying colors. But if experimenters ever do find an example where the original Schrodinger Equation doesn't work then they will have proven that Everett's Many Worlds idea is dead wrong. Personally I don't think they're going to find anything but I've been known to be wrong.

 >"But we agree that technological resurrection does not need a perfect copy of a quantum state."

Yes.

>>< "I believe that if someday we build a Jupiter brain [-> God]...>"

> "What if some alien civilization has already done so?"

If that were the case then the Galaxy, if not the entire observable universe, would look radically different from what we see; and I'm not talking about anything subtle, you wouldn't even need a telescope.  

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

nnr

[Giulio Prisco]

Hi John,

<...at the instant the air molecule hit you, your conscious experience

will not have changed nor would that of anybody else.>

Your conscious experience doesn't change like it would change if you
are hit by a brick, but the quantum state of your body changes (it is
now entangled with the molecule). And this is why I don't think a
perfect copy of a quantum state is needed for technological
resurrection.

<...so far at least the unmodified Schrodinger Equation has passed all
tests with flying colors.>

I would be very surprised if this remains the case for long. The
history of science shows that *all* theories are eventually upgraded.
We are babies on the cosmic scene, I think we still have a lot to
learn.

<...all you'd need is a glance into the night sky.>

But perhaps they are subtler than that. Note that we observe wild
animals with cameras hidden inside decoys that look & smell like one
of them, and I've seen videos that suggest the animals think a decoy
is one of them. Sure our super aliens are at least that smart.

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 2:02 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

<...all you'd need is a glance into the night sky.>

>> "But perhaps they are subtler than that. Note that we observe wild
animals with cameras hidden inside decoys that look & smell like one
of them, and I've seen videos that suggest the animals think a decoy
is one of them. Sure our super aliens are at least that smart."

In order to be smart a brain is required and to operate a brain energy is required, but right now in our galaxy alone hundreds of billions of stars are radiating all their energy uselessly into infinite space. That is not very smart and a Jupiter brain would never allow that to happen, certainly not for a trivial reason like in order to fool Homo sapiens into believing that He doesn't exist. 

  

But events that have occurred during the previous 12 months have increased my confidence that the galaxy WILL be engineered in the near future, by that I mean in less than 50 million years. 

 See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

l5m

[Giulio Prisco]

<...billions of stars are radiating all their energy uselessly into
infinite space....>

Billions do, but perhaps millions (or thousands) don't. They are
talking of Tabby's star...

Even if Tabby's star is not that thing, come on man, some imagination!
They could extract energy from the quantum vacuum (zero point field
and all that). Perhaps their astroengineering consists of giant
utility fogs that fill entire stellar systems and condensate to do
things where and when needed. Perhaps they have left matter as we know
behind and live as blobs of thinking quantum fields. Just thinking
aloud...

<...the galaxy WILL be engineered in the near future, by that I mean

in less than 50 million years.>

I think so, too!

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 7:09 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

><...billions of stars are radiating all their energy uselessly into nfinite space....>

> "Billions do, but perhaps millions (or thousands) don't."

I could explain the existence of no Dyson spheres in the Milky Way, and I could explain the existence of many billions, but I could not explain the existence of just a few thousand; the idea that we just happen to exist during the tiny sliver of time in which that would be the case seems too improbable to consider. 

> They are talking of Tabby's star...

I think dust could explain the Tabby star observations much better and certainly more simply than ET can. It's mind boggling to suppose that we are alone in the universe, and it's mind boggling to suppose that we are not, but one of those things must be true, and I think one of them is significantly more likely than the other. 

  

> "They could extract energy from the quantum vacuum (zero point field
and all that). Perhaps their astroengineering consists of giant
utility fogs that fill entire stellar systems and condensate to do
things where and when needed. Perhaps they have left matter as we know
behind and live as blobs of thinking quantum fields" 

And perhaps a simpler explanation is that ET does not exist because we are the first, after all the observable universe is finite in both space and time so somebody's got to be first.

See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

hwk

[Giulio Prisco]

<And perhaps a simpler explanation is that ET does not exist because

we are the first...>

I can't disagree because you said the magic word: perhaps.
Perhaps we are the first. Perhaps the universe is teeming with
superintelligent life that acts upon reality in ways that we don't
perceive. Perhaps other perhapses are perhaps true and perhaps not.
Time will tell and we will see.

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Mar 24, 2024 at 1:33 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

><And perhaps a simpler explanation is that ET does not exist because
we are the first...>

> "I can't disagree because you said the magic word: perhaps."

But the scientific method and Occam's Razor insists that if the existing laws of physics can adequately explain an observation (or in this case a lack of one) then you shouldn't conjure up radical new fundamental laws of physics to explain it because doing so is unnecessary. I like Carl Sagan a lot but I think sometimes a lack of evidence IS evidence of absence. For example: If the LHC had not found evidence for the Higgs particle then physicists would've had no choice but to reject the entire idea and try to find some other reason to explain the fact that quarks have mass.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

orr

[Stuart LaForge]

On Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 11:42:36 AM UTC-7 johnk...@gmail.com wrote:

On Sat, Mar 23, 2024 at 7:09 AM Giulio Prisco <giu...@gmail.com> wrote:

><...billions of stars are radiating all their energy uselessly into nfinite space....>

> "Billions do, but perhaps millions (or thousands) don't."

I could explain the existence of no Dyson spheres in the Milky Way, and I could explain the existence of many billions, but I could not explain the existence of just a few thousand; the idea that we just happen to exist during the tiny sliver of time in which that would be the case seems too improbable to consider.

I find it strange that you find it believable that either we are the first technological species in the universe or that somebody else would have had millions of years of a head start on us, but ignore the continuum of possibilities in between. According to the FLRW lambda-CDM model, the universe started at the same time everywhere and the same amount of proper time has passed for all comoving frames of reference in the metric. Since life depends on carbon and other other heavier elements, some very rare like phosphorus, it does stands to reason that a few generations of stars needed to come and go before the raw materials of life were available for evolution to operate upon. Here is an interesting graph that extrapolates Moore's law backwards to place the cosmic origins of life to almost 10 billion years ago. And since then, it would have been following Moore's law also which means that any technological civilization should not be all that far ahead of us. Maybe a few thousands of years due to random variation.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2013/04/15/113741/moores-law-and-the-origin-of-life/

 

> They are talking of Tabby's star...

I think dust could explain the Tabby star observations much better and certainly more simply than ET can. It's mind boggling to suppose that we are alone in the universe, and it's mind boggling to suppose that we are not, but one of those things must be true, and I think one of them is significantly more likely than the other. 

  

> "They could extract energy from the quantum vacuum (zero point field
and all that). Perhaps their astroengineering consists of giant
utility fogs that fill entire stellar systems and condensate to do
things where and when needed. Perhaps they have left matter as we know
behind and live as blobs of thinking quantum fields" 

Vacuum energy? How about simple fusion? Once a species has mastered fusion, expending *rare-earth* metals to capture second hand fusion energy from unwieldy stars is like eating leftovers. And despite the fact that fusion energy always seems like it is 20 years away, it, as assessed by the triple product, has been progressing just as fast Moore's law.

https://publish.illinois.edu/kgimbel2/plasma-fusion/

 

And perhaps a simpler explanation is that ET does not exist because we are the first, after all the observable universe is finite in both space and time so somebody's got to be first.

I think this young SETI astronomer named Beatriz Villarroel is going to do wonders for the field. Here in her blog she discusses getting rid of uninformative and stigmatic labels such as UFO and UAP and going with more definitive and informative classification systems for objects like "flying saucers" and "glowing orbs". And she wants to look anomalous techno-signatures not just in deep space but in our own skies and oceans.

https://medium.com/@beatriz.villarroel.rodriguez/i-have-had-a-lot-of-time-to-think-in-the-last-couple-of-days-and-feel-compelled-to-share-my-f73566768a3e

Stuart LaForge

[John Clark]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2024 at 12:38 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

> "Since life depends on carbon and other other heavier elements, some very rare like phosphorus, it does stands to reason that a few generations of stars needed to come and go before the raw materials of life were available for evolution to operate upon."

Yes it takes many billions of years for the universe to create an element like phosphorus that is essential for life, but that is all the more reason to suspect that we are the first because life couldn't have started much earlier than it did here. On earth the first very simple single celled organisms came on the scene about 4 billion years ago, but it took another 3 1/2 billion years before any form of life was large enough you could see without a microscope, and Homo sapiens, the first species that was smart enough to have the ability to make a radio telescope, only came on the scene about 100,000 years ago.  To me that indicates that it's very difficult for Darwinian Evolution to produce an intelligent being and it takes a long time and is very rare. Therefore I think it's really important that we don't fuck this up.

  

> "Vacuum energy? How about simple fusion?"

It doesn't matter how ET manages to get its energy, the second law of thermodynamics demands that if you use astronomical amounts of high quality low entropy energy then you will  produce astronomical amounts of low quality high entropy waste heat in the form of infrared and microwave radiation, and that should be easily detectable by us, but we see not the slightest hint of such a thing, not in this galaxy nor in any other. I think that is because nobody's home.  

John K Clark