Quantum Physics and Enlightenment 

James Higgo2000

     

  

Contents  

      Preface                                                             ix      Acknowledgements                                            x      Introduction      Summary                                                           xiI     Quantum Theory                                                 I2    Interpretations of Quantum Theory3    Information theory4    Liebniz’s Monads5    Buddhism6    Thinking about thinking7    Consciousness and time8    Kolmogorov, anatta, monads and the wavefunction9    Implications - From knowing to believing to living10   Conclusion

                            [Total 60,000 words, approx. 140 pages]

PrefaceQuantum Physics and Enlightenment takes the reader from no knowledge of quantum physics or Buddhism to an understanding of how the two are paths to the same insight: all we have is the present. The ideas discussed here are neither provable nor disprovable, and are therefore in the realm of metaphysics. Nevertheless, there are many good reasons for choosing one idea over another when experimental verification is not available. While Buddhism and quantum physics are the main themes, there are two supporting strands to this book: the philosophy of Liebniz and modern Information Theory. Liebniz’s thought seemed very strange to Bertrand Russell, that arch-Newtonian. Strange, but coherent. A curiosity, rejected because its conclusions (all we are is this present thought) seemed so obviously false. Information theory shows us that far the simplest structure for the universe is one in which everything exists: an infinite ensemble of universes, much as described by the Everett Interpretation of quantum physics. The book is intended to be read by anyone with a basic school education. If you do not understand some of the ideas, the fault is therefore mine. I welcome comments on areas I could expand on or clarify. The first TWO chapters offer a standard introduction to Quantum Physics, and readers familiar with these concepts should skip them. Chapter FIVE is a basic introduction to Buddhism, and Buddhists are advised to skip this chapter. Chapter SEVEN summarises my own interpretation of Liebniz, which is based on Russell's. The Summary covers most of the ground of this book in a very dense few pages. It is an unedited version of a paper written in 1999 and published in the Middle Way, the journal of the Buddhist Society, in February 2000. I am handicapped by having at my disposal a toolbox of symbols - English - designed to express a philosophy diametrically opposed to the one presented in this book. Language is not good at communicating metaphysical concepts; rigour is impossible. The text hops between three modes of thought, which I call Newtonian, Quantum and Philosophical. The Newtonian mode is the everyday common sense encapsulated in our languages. The Quantum mode is the more precise ‘scientific’ way of thinking taught to physics undergraduates. The philosophical mode is the most rigorous, taking nothing at all for granted. In this mode, cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) is a statement which makes two enormous and unjustifiable assumptions: more rigorously, we can only say, ‘this thought exists therefore something exists, of which this thought is all or part’.

 

Acknowledgements

  Most, if not all, of the ideas in this book belong to other people. In particular I would like to thank Imogen Green, Bruno Marchal, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Vic Stenger, Jacques Mallah, Desmond Biddulph, Mick Rook, Wei Dai, Max Tegmark and all on the everything-list at eskimo.com.

 

SummaryThis summary first appeared in the February 2000 issue of

The Middle Way, the journal of the Buddhist Society, London  The discovery of the quantum nature of matter left the physics community of the 1920s in a state of profound shock. It was, and is, not possible to reconcile the observed facts with a universe which is remotely Newtonian. All of the competing interpretations still force us to abandon one or more cherished idea: time, locality, identity. The fundamental problem in quantum physics can be illuminated by a candle. As a candle emits a single photon (a particle of light), a scientist can determine with extraordinary precision its probability of  being in any one place. A probability ‘wavefunction’ is said to emanate from the source, and the photon can be anywhere allowed by that wavefunction. The details are computed by the celebrated Schrödinger equation. The problem comes when you observe the photon, and discover where it actually is. At this moment, the wavefunction ‘collapses’ from a cloud around the candle to a single point. This has led to a large number of metaphysical speculations. How does the wavefunction ‘know’ it is being looked at? How can quantum mechanics be formulated without recourse to the idea of the conscious observer, outside the system, initiating that collapse? This is the problem. In 1927, at the Solvay Conference, Niels Bohr succeeded in constructing an orthodoxy (the Copenhagen interpretation) which allowed physicists to continue building their armoury of quantum mechanical techniques, while avoiding the frightening questions of what actually happens. He simply said that it was meaningless to give a photon spatial attributes until the wavefunction collapse. This developed into the creed of logical positivism, adherents of which argue it is meaningless to discuss anything that cannot produce concrete experimental results. Positivism is still a major factor in the teaching of physics; students are still told to ‘shut up and calculate’ rather than inquire after meaning. The most intuitively accessible description of the problem is the famous Schrödinger cat. In this thought experiment, a cat is placed in a sealed box, along with a radioactive source. The source is set to open a bottle of cyanide if it decays. There is a 50% chance of the source decaying in the minute while the box is closed, so there is a 50% chance of us seeing a live cat when the box is opened. But, according to Bohr, it does not make sense to ask what happens before we make the observation (open the box). The Copenhagen interpretation would have us believe that the cat is in a ‘superposition’ of the alive and dead states while the box is closed, and only becomes actually dead or alive when we open the box to make our observation. This, and various other paradoxes, has led wayward physicists to question the orthodoxy and try to develop interpretations that resolve the problems. Because this will not affect how physicists do quantum physics, this endeavour is called metaphysics. Few respectable physicists will lend their name to such a project. Notable exceptions include Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (based on Bohm’s pilot wave); Henry Stapp’s papers deriving consciousness from quantum mechanics (based on Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation), and David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality (based on Everett). Nevertheless, the icons of Newtonian physics are crumbling. It is widely acknowledged that time can no longer be considered an objective feature of reality (Barbour, Price, Stenger), or at least its direction of

travel is arbitrary. But the Everett ‘many worlds interpretation’, or MWI, goes much further. It implies that nothing is objective. Everything exists, and what you see in the plenitude is a function of how far you restrict your view. Everett simply posited that there is no wavefunction collapse. In other words, the photon is emitted every which way simultaneously; the cat is alive and dead at the same time; a pencil balanced on its point will fall in all directions at once.  We only see one result, instead of all of them, because we observe a single path through an ever-branching multitude of infinite universes, and we call that path ‘our universe’. The process of splitting is called ‘decoherence’. According to Everett’s MWI, the universe is branching off every Planck Time (10-43 seconds) into countless billions of other universes, each an unmoving snapshot in time, and each branching out in turn. So as you turn the page in ‘this universe’, you go out for a cup of tea in many others. When you roll a die, all numbers come up. In billions of universes, you roll a six; in billions more, you get a one. In some universes, the die turns into a diamond. None of these events contradicts any known laws of physics. As the probability of anything happening is always one (it will happen), Everett used the term, ‘measure’ to describe the relative proportions of events. For example, the measure of dice showing one to five is five times the measure of dice showing six, although there are infinitely many universes corresponding to either category. David Deutsch calls the infinite ensemble of snapshot universes the ‘multiverse’. MWI is not the orthodoxy of the physics community, but neither is any competing ontology. It makes precisely the same predictions for the results of experiments as the Copenhagen or any other interpretation. When positivism is accepted as the way to do science, anything that is ‘not even wrong’ is widely ignored. Nevertheless, various polls of leading physicists have concluded that, when pressed for an answer, more believe MWI than anything else. There are better reasons for supposing that MWI is true. They centre on the principle of ‘Occam’s Razor’, which states that the simplest theory compatible with the facts is the one we should choose. Superficially, we should choose the MWI because it gives the same results as the Copenhagen Interpretation, without the need for an observer-induced ‘wavefunction collapse’. But more profoundly, the MWI makes the world we observe compatible with a universe containing just one bit of information. This startling idea can be attributed in outline to Max Tegmark, Bruno Marchal and Jürgen Schmidhuber. To an information scientist - and all of physics can be regarded as a subset of information science - the information content of a system (its ‘Kolmogorov complexity’) is defined by the length of the computer program required to generate it. The program to generate an MWI system, an infinite multiverse, can be very short. Wei Dai has suggested a counting algorithm. For example, the BASIC program LET A=A+1; GOTO START will generate an enumerably infinite set of natural numbers. These can be mapped onto an infinite physical multiverse - but its information content is almost nil.  On the other hand, the program required to generate a single classical universe might be as large as the universe itself. By analogue, consider the Mandelbrot set, Ford froth, or a fractal pattern. The expression, znew=z2 + c where z and c are complex numbers, can  be used to generate infinitely complex, and beautiful ‘landscapes’ on the screen of a computer (see Figure 1). An inhabitant of a Mandelbrot world would see amazingly rich complexity all around. Mathematicians, outside the Mandelbrot set, can understand that the Kolmogorov complexity of their world is very small - a short equation.

Figure 1 (generated by the University of Utah applet at http://www.hath.utah.edu/~alfeld/math/mandelbrot/mandelbrot.html)

 Given that we know that something exists (cogito ergo sum), it only takes one further assumption to give us MWI: that there exists the minimum possible amount of information compatible with something existing. Only one bit of information is required to distinguish between nothing and an infinite universe. Anyone who advocates a different interpretation of quantum physics has a lot of complexity to explain away. Natural questions to ask at this point are: “so the universe is infinite, but why do I exist?”, “Why is my universe the way it is?”, “How can you explain death, taxes and the value of pi?”. The answer is in the ‘weak anthropic principle’, which accounts for the fact that we see a stable, congenial environment around us. Most parts of the universe (or most universes if you prefer) are not suited to life, but we can only exist in universes hospitable to life, so only see those outcomes. This is the ‘Weak Anthropic Principle’ (WAP). In 1974, Brandon Carter first proposed the WAP as an explanation for the laws, constants and regularities that we see in the cosmos. I would go further in arguing that ‘laws’ are merely those parameters that need to be within certain tolerances in order for us to survive. Professor Victor Stenger runs an Internet page at the University of Hawaii, which allows the user to choose certain initial parameters for a universe, and have his computer calculate the resulting constants such as the speed of light and atomic mass.  Very few are hospitable to life, but those few are the ones life inhabits. The very Laws of Physics are subjective.  Most people have come to terms with the idea of an infinite universe. An infinite ‘multiverse’ is no bigger. But the idea that everything exists is frightening. It means, for one thing, that there is no particular significance attached to you or me. All variations of you exist, all variations of me; from almost all perspectives ‘we’ are pure noise in the infinite plenitude. We have significance, existence, purely from a subjective point of view.  To summarise the paper so far: there are good grounds for believing that everything exists. Everything includes an infinite number of beings of all possible descriptions. It includes a Christian God and a devil.

It includes an infinite number of monkeys. It includes a thousand-foot ghost of my grandmother. It includes every dream you have ever dreamed. Everything is true. Knowing this, we can see that it is purely for anthropic reasons - happenstance - that we pay any attention to our selves, or the world that we chance to find around us. It is an infinitely tiny sliver of an infinite multiverse. We see ourselves as a subject undergoing successive experiences in time in a classical universe simply because our view is so restricted. If we could see the whole multiverse, we would not be able to see anything: it is all noise unless you ‘squint’ and look down a certain fissure in the multiverse, choosing a time line and spatial co-ordinates. What would someone who fully understood and believed this feel? They would see that their universe is purely subjective. Nothing is objective. Everything is relative to the observer: space, time, truth. From an Archimedean perspective (outside the ‘multiverse’), you can see what you like in the universe. It makes no sense to single out one person, one universe, one set of physical laws or constants. As the Buddha taught, individual things neither exist, nor do not exist. The three signs of being, the characteristics common to all life, are impermanence, suffering, and an absence of a soul. “Buddha keeps away from these discriminations and looks upon the world as upon a passing cloud. To Buddha every definitive thing is an illusion. He knows that whatever the mind grasps and throws away is insubstantial; thus He transcends the pitfalls of images and discriminative thought” (The Teaching of the Buddha, p.104) The same space-time that contains you contains something else, when viewed from most perspectives. “To a man a river seems like a river but to a hungry demon which sees fire in water, it may seem to be like fire. Therefore, to speak to a man about a river existing would have some sense, but to the demon it would have no meaning” (ibid, p.110) You are not an objective feature of reality; your self does not exist as an independent entity within the multiverse. But every event occurs. Time is not an objective feature of reality: the time is always now and the thought you have now is an event within the multiverse, not related to a thinker. Buddhaghosa says: “Mere suffering exists, but no sufferer is found; The deeds are, but no doer is found” (in Visuddhimagga). A full, deep understanding of physics is equivalent in some ways to the Buddhist concept of enlightenment. The idea of self is relinquished. The very fabric of reality is seen to be subjective. The absurdity of attachments becomes clear. Ignorance and being are ended; the events of warmth, loving kindness and compassion exist. Perhaps Western science could be assimilated by Buddhism, and Buddhism could be absorbed by science. Such a process would give back to the West a basis for morality. The irony is that this has happened in a billion worlds, and it will never happen in a billion others. To wish it on ‘our universe’ is to miss the point entirely.

  

 

Introduction  This book is based on a very simple set of premises. The entire argument is explained in the following sentence: The simplest explanation for ‘your existence’ is that every thought exists, and that this current thought ‘of yours’ is one sample from that infinite set. By simplicity, I mean the universe with the minimum complexity, as defined by Kolmogorov. The entire book is an expansion of that idea, and an introduction to a number of independently-formulated but complementary concepts from physics, Buddhism and philosophy. Each of these ideas is a different perspective from which we can see the same simple fact. It is unlikely that you will be persuaded of this argument. Unlikely, for the same reason that Descartes thought ‘cogito ergo sum’ to be the most fundamental knowledge possible. His idea, ‘I think, therefore I am’ contained the giant leap of faith that is the root of every philosophical paradox: the unwarranted assumption that, if there is a thought, there must be a thinker. It is entirely understandable, and normal, for you to reject this argument outright as soon as you hear it implies that ‘you’ do not exist. You do not exist as anything more than this very thought.

Quantum Theory  Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) is the most accurate theory physics has ever produced, and yet it offers a counter-intuitive view of the world and begs more questions than it answers. This chapter begins at the very basics with the double-slit experiment and the behaviour of a photon emitted from a candle. It covers the EPR experiment and the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox. Quantum Physics is the science of things so small that the quantum nature of reality has an effect. Quantum means 'discrete amount' or 'portion'. Max Planck discovered in 1900 that you could not find less than a certain minimum amount of anything. This minimum amount is now called the Planck unit. Quantum Physics is weird. Niels Böhr, the father of the orthodox 'Copenhagen Interpretation' of quantum physics once said, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it". To understand the weirdness completely, you just need to know about three experiments: Light Bulb, Two Slits, and Schrödinger’s Cat. Two SlitsThe simplest experiment to demonstrate quantum weirdness involves shining a light through two parallel slits and looking at the screen. It can be shown that a single photon (particle of light) can interfere with itself, as if it travelled through both slits at once. [2000 words explaining double-slit in detail, with three diagrams.] Light BulbImagine a light bulb filament gives out a photon, seemingly in a random direction. Erwin Schrödinger came up with a short equation that correctly predicts the chances of finding that photon at any given point.  He envisaged a kind of wave, like a ripple from a pebble dropped into a pond, spreading out from the filament. Once you actually look at the photon, this 'wavefunction' collapses into the single point at which the photon really is. Schrödinger’s CatIn this experiment, we take your pet cat and put it in a box with a bottle of cyanide. We rig it up so that a detector looks at an isolated electron and determines whether it is 'spin up' or 'spin down' (it can have either characteristic, seemingly at random).  If it is 'spin up', then the bottle is opened and the cat gets it.  Ten minutes later we open the box and see if the cat is alive or dead. The question is: what state is the cat in between the detector being activated and you opening the box. Nobody has actually done this experiment (to my knowledge) but it does show up a paradox that arises in certain interpretations. [500 words total on Cat] EPR [500 words on EPR] Summary and conclusion 

 

2 

Interpretations of Quantum Theory If you dare to think about the meaning of quantum theory, you have to believe one of the following things: 

 

MENU 

Your consciousness affects the behaviour of subatomic particles

- or -Particles move backwards as well as forwards in time and

appear in all possible places at once- or -

The universe is splitting, every Planck-time (10-43 seconds), into billions of parallel universes

- or -The universe is interconnected with faster-than-light

transfers of information----

Full English BreakfastCoffee or Tea

 These are the results of the different competing interpretations of quantum physics. The meaning of quantum physics is a bit of a taboo subject for physicists, but everyone thinks about it. To make it all a bit more respectable, it is better to say 'ontology' rather than 'meaning' - although it is the same thing. The one thing all the interpretations have in common is that each of them explains all the facts and predicts every experiment's outcome correctly. Otherwise respectable physicists can get quite heated about how sensible their pet interpretation is and how crazy all the others are. At the moment, there is about one new interpretation every three months, but most of them fit into the following categories. For each example, I shall try to explain what it means for Schrödinger’s poor cat.

 Copenhagen Interpretation (CI)This is the granddaddy of interpretations, championed by the formidable Niels Böhr of Copenhagen University. He browbeat all dissenters into submission (with the notable exception of Einstein) at a Brussels conference sponsored by a philanthropist named Solvay in 1927.  Böhr thereby stifled the debate for a generation or two.  The CI stretches the meaning of the word ‘interpretation’. It essentially says, "Thou shalt not ask what happens before ye look". Böhr pointed out that the Schrödinger equation worked as a tool for calculating where the particle would be, except that it 'collapsed' as soon as you looked at the experiment. If anyone asked why this was, he would say, "shut up and calculate" (or words to that effect). When you do try to take Copenhagen seriously you come to the conclusion that consciousness and particle physics are inter-related. This is the thinking behind books such as The Dancing Wu-Li Masters. More recently, Henry Stapp at the University of California has written papers such as On Quantum Theories of the Mind  (1997). Stapp's central thesis is that the synapses in your brain are so small that quantum effects are significant. This means that there is quantum uncertainty about whether a neuron will fire or not - and this degree of freedom that nature has allows for the interaction of ‘mind’ and ‘matter’. What happens to the cat? You are not allowed to ask. Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI)The various paradoxes that the Copenhagen Interpretation gave rise to (particularly Schrödinger’s cat, and Einstein's dislike of "spooky action at a distance") led others to keep on trying to find a better interpretation. The simplest was put forward by a student, Hugh Everett, in 1958. He said that the Schrödinger equation does not collapse. Most scientists laughed at him, because they could see that the photon, for example, was in just one place when they looked, not in all possible places. But after a couple of decades, this issue was resolved with the concept of decoherence - the idea that different universes can very quickly branch apart, so that there is very little relationship between them after a tiny fraction of a second.  This has led to what should strictly be called the 'post-Everett' Interpretation, but is still usually called MWI. It is now one of the most popular interpretations and has won some impromptu beauty contests at physics conferences. Unfortunately it means that billions of ‘you’ are splitting off every fraction of a second into discrete universes and it implies that everything possible exists in one universe or another. This comes up with its own set of hard-to-digest concepts, such as the fact that a 500-year-old you exists in some universes, whereas in others you died at birth. In 1997, Max Tegmark at Princeton University and Bruno Marchal in Belgium proposed an experiment to prove that MWI was correct. It involved pointing a loaded gun at your head and pulling the trigger. Of course, you will only survive in those universes where the gun, for whatever reason, fails to go off. If you get a misfire every time, you can satisfy yourself - with an arbitrarily high level of confidence - that MWI is true. Of course, in most universes your family will be weeping at your funeral (or possibly just shaking their heads and muttering). The further implications of MWI are discussed in detail at the end of this chapter. What happens to the cat? It is dead in half of the subsequent universes and alive in the other half. Pilot Waves, Hidden Variables and the Implicate Order

David Bohm (1917-1992) was a very brilliant physicist and that's why people went along with him when he came up with an elegant but more complicated theory to explain the same set of phenomena (normally, more complicated theories are disqualified by the principle known as Occam’s Razor). Bohm's theory follows on some original insights by Prince Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), who first studied the wave-like properties of the behaviour of particles in 1924. De Broglie suggested that, in addition to the normal wavefunction of the Copenhagen Interpretation, there is a second wave that determines a precise position for the particle at any particular time. In this theory, there is some 'hidden variable' that determines the precise position of the photon. Sadly, John von Neumann (1903-1957) wrote a paper in 1932 ‘proving’ that this theory was impossible. Von Neumann was such a great mathematician that nobody bothered to check his maths until 1966, when John Bell (1928-1990) proved he had bodged it and there could be hidden variables after all - but only if particles could communicate faster than light (this is called 'nonlocality'). In 1982 Alain Aspect demonstrated that this superluminal signalling did appear to exist, although David Mermin then showed that you could not actually signal anything. There is still some argument about whether this means very much. Bohm's theory was that the second wave was indeed faster than light, and moreover it did not get weaker with distance but instantly permeated the entire universe, acting as a guide for the movement of the photon. This is why it is called a 'pilot wave'. This theory explains the paradoxes of quantum physics perfectly. But it introduces a new faster-than-light wave and some hidden mechanism for deciding where it goes - to create an 'implicate order'. That's quite a lot of extra baggage, and scientists like to travel light. Worse still, Bohm went on to become a mystic, identifying his 'implicate order' with Eastern spirituality and spawning books like Fritjof Capra's  The Tao of Physics.  That is heretical behaviour in the eyes of most physicists. What happens to the cat?  It is either alive, or not alive, as determined by the implicate order. Consistent HistoriesThe Consistent Histories interpretation, put forward by Robert Griffiths in 1984, works backwards from the result of an experiment, arguing that only a few possible histories are consistent with the rules of quantum mechanics. It is an interesting idea but not very popular because it still does not seem to explain how a particle can go through two slits and interfere with itself. Roland Omnés, in The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics(1994) wrote down 80 equations in a single chapter and came to the conclusion that the 'consistent histories' interpretation was much the same as the Copenhagen. What happens to the Cat? Again, you're not supposed to ask. Alternate HistoriesThe Alternate Histories Interpretation is quite different, being similar to the Many-Worlds Interpretation, but with the insistence that only the actual outcome is the real world and the ones we are not in do not actually exist. Unfortunately this gets us right back to their being some kind of 'collapse'. What happens to the cat? Again, you're not supposed to ask. Time ReversibilityRichard Feynman (1918-1988) was a genius who developed a new approach to quantum mechanics. He formalised its crowning achievement, Quantum Electrodynamics, which is the most accurate scientific theory ever devised.  He also developed the Feynman Diagram, which represents the interaction of two

particles as the exchange of a third particle.  This diagram has time on one axis and space on the other and the interaction can be viewed as happening both in forward and in reverse time. An electron, on its way from point A to point B, can bump into a photon. In the diagram this can be drawn as sending it backwards not just in space, but also in time. Then it bumps into another photon, which sends it forward in time again, but in a different direction in space. In this way, it can be in two places at once. There is little doubt that a Feynman diagram offers the easiest way to predict the results of a subatomic experiment. Many physicists have seen the power of this tool and taken the next step, arguing that reverse time travel is what actually happens in reality. Victor Stenger of the University of Hawaii argues strongly for this ontology in his book, Atomic Reality (unpublished as this book goes to press).  Of course, for a layman, it is hard to understand why a photon bounces around in such a way that it appears in two slits at once. What happens to the Cat? You will need to ask Vic Stenger. I did not understand when he explained it to me. Transactional InterpretationLike Stenger's, John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation relies on the fundamental time-symmetry of the universe. He argues that particles perform a kind of 'handshake' in the course of interacting. One sends out a wave forward in time, and another sends one out backwards in time. What happens to the Cat? Ask Cramer. Further implications of the MWIIf everything exists, how can you attribute objective existence to any one or other particular pattern in the white noise of the plenitude? From outside the multiverse - 'Archimedes's point' - you cannot. It is only from within the multiverse, from a limited perspective, that any particular pattern emerges. This has the dramatic consequence that you do not exist as an objective feature of reality. You are real only to yourself. You have subjective existence only. [100-200 further words] SummaryThere is no evidence for one interpretation rather than another. However, it can be argued that the 'Many Worlds Interpretation' (MWI) makes fewer assumptions than the others and dissolves more paradoxes. If MWI is true, and I believe that it is, then no structure in the 'multiverse' has any objective significance. You only exist to you and anyone else who chooses to see you within the infinite potential of the plenitude. There is no significance whatsovevr to the particular pattern you think of as yourself. This is a common thread, arrived at independently in the following chapters. 

 

3 

Information theoryDoes the universe contain almost no information?

  

Kolmogorov demonstrated that the information content of a system could be defined by the length of the computer program required to generate it. Tegmark, Marchal and Schmidhuber point out that the program needed to generate an infinite MWI ‘multiverse’ is very short indeed, whereas the program needed to generate one ‘single universe’, as we think of ‘our own universe’ would be extremely large. A.N. Kolmogorov (1903-1987) developed a notion of complexity based on randomness. In 1933, he used the recently-developed theory of effective computability to resolve the problem of the proper definition of a random sequence - something that had been discussed by Laplace but was, until Kolmogorov, unresolved.  A key question is: how does one generate a physical world? Is there really a physical world? How would we define it? A good exchange on the subject occurred between Jacques Mallah of Princeton and Bruno Marchal of Brussels on the ‘everything-list’ newsgroup: Marchal had described how he implemented a ‘Universal Dovetailer’ reality-generator on his Macintosh SE/30 in 1990, and was arguing that the Macintosh itself could be viewed as ‘local décor’: it does not matter what substrate the universe is generated by. Jacques Mallah:> Of course, in your Macintosh example, the UD was itself implemented by>some other mathematical structure - your "local decor".  Does that matter?Bruno Marchal:A big part of my reasoning is that it *doesn't matter* indeed. For mostpeople this is a difficulty.Jacques Mallah>Actually, I would say that any mathematical structure that has real>existence (in the strong sense) should be called "physical".I do not know>of any better definition for "physical existence".Bruno Marchal:What is that strong sense of existence?  And why do you want toclassify as physical any mathematical structures.If you do that (a little like Tegmark) you are obliged to explain howwe feel a difference between physicalness and mathematicalness (why isthere math courses and physics courses) etc.Tegmark, like Everett, *do* distinguish the first and third person,which helps to make sense of that idea. The physical would besome mathematical structures sufficiently rich for having "insidepoint of views" (through SAS point of views for exemple).The physical point of view (pov) would correspond to these internal pov.Jacques Mallah:>Nowhere did I say that _only_ a "physical" system could implement a>computation.  But you did bring to my attention the fact that I should make>the definition of "implementation" more clear on this point.  In other

>places, I do point out that one computation can implement another.  (In>turn, the second one might implement another, etc.; the first one will>therefore implement all of those.)>So, your objection is irrelevant.  You do believe a UD implements other>computations.Bruno Marchal:Sure. Yes. UD implements all computations, and even all implementationsof all computations. SummaryKolmogorov shows us that the whole can be very much simpler than its parts. If we assume everything exists, then we can 'generate' it with a very short algoithm. If we assume just one classical universe exists, we have to explain where a near-infiite amount of information came from. It is therefore much more parsimonious to believe that everything exists. Again, there is no significance to the pattern you call yourself. It is not an objective feature of reality and can only be seen if you set out to look for a you-shaped pattern. We should not be surprised to find that we are - 'environment' and 'self' - as we are. This 'you'-pattern is bound to exist. [8000 words] 

 

4 

Liebniz’s Monads 

“I find in these thoughts so many things which alarm me, and which almost all men, if I am not mistaken, will find so shocking, that I do not see of what use a writing can be, which apparently all the world will

reject’ - Arnaud, letter to Liebniz, c1695  Liebniz is best known for inventing the infinitescimal calculus just ahead of Newton, and for his assertion that, since God is good and God created the world, we must be living in the best of all possible worlds. If this or that particular horror were to be removed, something worse would have to take its place. This doctrine was the public output of a paid philosopher, and is based on some preposterous premises, including an omnipotent being. Liebniz’s real beliefs were quite different, and unpublished. For this reason, Russell observed, “Liebniz was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable”. Liebniz’s true philosophy, as revealed by Russell and Couturat at the dawn of the 20 th Century, almost 300 years after his death, is quite different. Before going into detail on his schema, it is worth looking at some of the remarkable ideas Liebniz created based on pure logic. The references are to Russell's 'Extracts from Liebniz'. Liebniz believed in quantum physics and in an infinite number of parallel universes. Furthermore, he came to the conclusion that, from the outside the multiverse is all one, and it is purely subjective perceptions that break it into 'meaningful' parts. All of these concepts are introduced in a single paragraph (G.II.278):  "Matter is not continuous but discrete, and actually infinitely divided, though no assignable part of space  is without matter. But space, like time, is something not substantial, but ideal, and consists in possibilities... And thus there are no divisions in it but such as are made by the mind, and the part is posterior to the whole". This one paragraph is amazingly prescient: quantum physics ("matter is discrete"); many worlds ("space, like time... consists in possibilities"); the denial that objective things exist ("no divisions in it but such as are made by the mind"). The next paragraph caps it all by introducing the notion of Kolmogorov complexity: "Unity is divisible, but not resolvable; for the fractions which are parts of unity are have less simple notions, because integers (less simple than unity) always enter into the notions of fractions... Parts are not always simpler than the whole, though they are always less than the whole". This has clear parallels with Marchal and Tegmark's idea that the entire multiverse, the Unity in Liebniz's words, is simpler than its own parts. This is a truly remarkable concept to have arisen in the 17th Century. Just to cap it all, Liebniz believes that space and time are relative (G.VII.363): "I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is" Liebniz deduces this since space is entirely uniform and is therefore only distinguishable, one point from another, by reference to the bodies in space.  If there were no such

bodies, all points in space would be the same one point: "To suppose two things indiscernable is to suppose the same thing under two names... an impossible fiction". A major premise of this book is that nothing in the multiverse exists as a separate entity unless viewed by someone who has a partial view. An omniscient being would see nothing. In his later writings (1712), Liebniz alludes to this also (G.IV.450): "The explanation of all phenomena  by nothing but the mutually conspiring perceptions of monads, setting aside corporeal substance, I hold to be useful for the fundamental inspection of things". Nevertheless, Liebniz did hold some ideas that still seem quite strange. A funamental concept in his thought was the 'pre-established harmony'. This held that the a person's body acted in a certain way due to some sort of pre-established programme, with no relationship to a mind or soul. But the mind or soul operates a parallel program, so that - for example - when a person decides to move a limb, the limb moves at the same time, as the physical and mental programmes are synchronised in time. This concept is developed to circumvent the enigma of how the body interacts with the soul. Liebnitz thought it 'vulgar' that there should be some kind of organ able to interface between the two. To me, this begs the quewstion: why assume a physical world at all? The mental programme is sufficient and there need be no physical world at all. In this chapter, I simply drop the physical and interpret Liebnitz's thought on this basis. [Libniz's 5 axioms, and from there to monads, 500 words, based on para at end]Liebniz coined the term, 'monad', to denote somehing quite similar to the 'Observer Moment' of the previous chapter on Information Theory... On the basis of this logical framework, Liebnitz concluded that there was no interaction between any one monad and any other.  However, each monad's own 'inner nature' is such that it has within it a perfect copy of the information regarding its place in the universe. G.IV.484: "And accordingly, since each of these substances accurately represents the whole universe in its own way and from a certain point of view... there will be a perfect agreement between all these substances, which wll have the result as if they had communication with one another... such as the mass of ordinary philosophers suppose." In G.VI.607, Liebniz concludes: "There is no way of explaining how a Monad can be altered in quality or internally changed by any other created thing... The monads have no windows through which anything could come in or go out." So, a monad could contain the thought, 'I am James, and I had chicken for lunch, along with my friend Robert at 13:07 to 14:45 GMT on 1st April, 2001' - and although it has no contact with anything else in the universe, there will be another monad with the thought, 'I am Robert and I had lunch with my friend James from 13:07 to 14:45 GMT on 1st April, 2001'. This is startlingly similar to the conclusion of the Quantum Physics and Information Theory chapters. However, in these chapters, I argue that each 'thought' or 'observer moment' is related to others only in that - since all thoughts/OMs exist - there must be a correspondingly 'related' thought/OM. But these relationships are subjective only. With Liebnitz, the monads actually do have relationships as a matter of objective fact, since there is a physical universe which echoes, or plays out, the intended motions of the monads. .........Summary 

Liebnitz believed that each monad - a concept similar to an observer moment - had within itself an innate knowledge of the universe seen from its perspective. However, it does not interact with other monads or anything else for that matter. This is very similar to the idea, in the Information theory and MWI chapters, that each thought or Observer Moment, contains its own memories which, while not objectively related to any other thought or OM, will happen to be true memories since all thoughts/OMs, including the 'remembered' thought/OM, exist. These concepts were not arrived at through religious introspection, nor through scientific analysis of the physical world. Liebniz deduced all of this through pure, daring, logic.  .......... adapt to bridge into monad definition above.A core idea in Liebniz's logic is: “Semper igitur praedicatum seu consequens inest subjecto seu antecidenti…” (“Always therefore the predicate or consequent inheres in the subject or antecedent”, Liebniz in Opuscules et Fragments inédits de Liebniz) What Liebniz is saying is that all true statements are analytic, i.e. they are of the form, ‘a red box is a box’ - relating a property of a person or object (redness) to that person or object (a box). Any statement that does not do so must be untrue. Any statement about an object must assert that an object has a property, Opuscules, p.521 However, every object is infinitely complex, for it includes in its self its relationship with every other object in the universe: “Every singular subject involves the whole universe in its perfect notion”. This applies also to Liebniz’s famous monads. Each includes within itself is relationship with all other monads......Liebniz was remarkable in implying that there is one substance, not necessarily a body and a soul. In his letters to Arnaud, (G.II.118) he writes: "it is the animated substance, to which this matter belongs, which is truly one being, and matter taken as mere mass is only a pure phenomenon or well-founded appearance." …One of Liebniz’s most significant ideas was that there were two types of space: one subjective (the perceptions of each individual monad) and one objective view, which Russell called ‘the assemblage of points of view of the various monads’ (History of Western Philosophy). This distinction is discussed in the previous chapter on information theory. The individual perceives a ‘self’ undergoing successive experiences in ‘time’, but objectively, there is no time or motion in the block universe. [4,000 words]

 

5 

Buddhism 

An introduction to Buddhist Philosophy 

There are as many interpretations of Buddhism as there are of quantum physics. However, there is a core doctrine - the four noble truths and anatta - that is common to all the main schools: Theravada, Mahayana, and Zen. Buddhism is presented here very briefly, for the purposes of drawing out the parallels with the other strands in the book. I ask the majority of Buddhists, who will view this cut-down version as a travesty, to skip this chapter or accept my apologies. The Four Noble Truths

1.   Things are unsatisfactory. This unsatisfactoriness, or suffering, is called ‘dukkha’ in the Pali language of the major Buddhist scriptures.

2.   Things are unsatisfactory because we would rather they were different.3.   Things will cease being unsatisfactory if we stop wanting them to be different.4.   There is a path to achieving this cessation of unsatisfactoriness, and that is the Noble Eightfold

Path. On first inspection, the first three truths seem glib, almost obvious. But this is a very deep truth, which really does need to be contemplated for some time before the penny drops. For us to be perfectly happy with the world, we either need to change it so that it fits our ideal or change ourselves so that the world as it is becomes our ideal. In the West, we are constantly attempting the former. This is futile, because we cannot make the world perfect; we cannot possess all of the world, which is what most people want. It is, however, possible to change ourselves. Unfortunately, it is not easy; but at least it is possible. Dukkha: unsatisfactorinessI have translated ‘dukkha’ to mean unsatisfactoriness. In general use, it can also mean sorrow and misery. It applies to our deep unhappiness at the loss of a loved one, and to our mild irritation at the broadcasters when we try to find an interesting program on television. I want my life to be different: I do not want the battery on my laptop to expire before my train reaches Zürich. I do not want this cold I picked up in Chamonix. I do not want my nice view to vanish as we enter a tunnel. I want this book to be finished. I do not want my mother to be suffering after her recent hip operation. In general, things are pretty unsatisfactory. All these unsatisfactorinesses are dukkha. Samudaya: the origin of unatisfactorinessMy room service menu is lousy. I want smoked salmon. I am unhappy. What has made me unhappy? The chefs, the hoteliers who created the menu? Or my desire for smoked salmon? The second noble truth is that the cause, the origin, of suffering, is our own desire. This is a universal truth, and applies to all suffering. If we are ill, we blame the disease. In fact, if we lived in the present, and stopped wanting to feel different, we would cease to suffer. 

When a family member dies, it is natural to think of this as a bad event in itself. It is a stand-alone bad thing. Buddhists point out that value judgements can only be made by people. The death of my father is only unsatisfactory if I wish he were still alive, rather than accepting the here and now as it is. This wishing is an essential ingredient in the unhappiness. Sorrow cannot exist unless we wish the world to be other that the way it is. This is one of the hardest things for non-Buddhists to accept. The very idea that all our anguish is of our own making arouses people to anger: how dare you say I have only myself to blame for this suffering? There are many parables designed to deliver the message far more subtly that I have done here. Nirodha: the truth of freedom from sufferingThe third truth, the truth of emancipation, follows logically from the second: stop wishing things to be other than they are, and you will stop causing suffering for yourself. If I stop wanting salmon, the fact that it is not on the menu will not bother me. The same is true, but less intuitively so, of illness. If I stop thinking about being sick, but live in the present, then I stop suffering. Magga: the path to the freedom from sufferingThe Noble Eightfold Path is essentially a technique for living in the present. One who lives in the present and sees things as they are is enlightened, (has reached Nirvana). The way to achieve this is to act like an enlightened person until eventually one becomes enlightened. That is, acting selflessly until one becomes selfless. The Path is a list of specific selfless things one must do, which come under the general headings of wisdom, ethical behaviour, and mental discipline. The Noble Eightfold Path (after Rahula) is as follows:

1.   Right understanding (wisdom: seeing things as they are; understanding the Four Noble Truths)2.   Right thought (wisdom: thoughts of love, selflessness, detachment)3.   Right speech (ethics: no lies, hurtful or foolish speech)4.   Right action (ethics: not harming others)5.   Right livelihood (ethics: do not make money by helping people to harm themselves or others)6.   Right effort (discipline: preventing and eliminating negative states of mind)7.   Right mindfulness (discipline: to be aware, attentive to the activity of the mind and body)8.   Right concentration (discipline: meditation to achieve thought-free awareness)

 Anatta: no self“There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.” (Walpola Rahula, ibid)  Buddhist philosophy of assimilation. Wittgenstein… [15,000 words] 

 

6 

Thinking about thinkingepistemology and anthropic reasoning

 Occam’s RazorEpistemology and reasons for favouring the MWI-plenitude world-view.MWI offers a universe of a very few bits in complexity. I argue that just one bit is needed for MWI, against the inconceivably large number for the other interpretations. Occam’s time-proven principle states that we should always prefer the simplest explanation consistent with the facts. This chapter also discusses the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP). [2000 words] The Archimedes pointTrying to understand this view of reality, and what it means for you.[The section discusses the difficulties of seeing from the outside something that has no outside. Our brains are not predisposed to grasping this concept because there is no evolutionary advantage in doing so. 2000 words] The uses and limitations of science and languageIf everything is true, and there are no objective relationships, how is science useful?[How can we move from speaking in one subjective context to another? How can we overcome the barriers of a language which has evolved to describe a subjective, self-referential reality? 1500 words] 

6 

Consciousness 

You are only your current thought 

Time does not exist as an objective feature of reality. Hence, there can be no objective progression of thoughts through time, and hence no consciousness. This very thought is all that exists of ‘you’. That does not mean that all of the patterns that you think of as ‘I’ do not exist. They do, but someone needs to be looking out for them in order to give them any significance over the ‘white noise’ of the infinite multiverse. Everything exists. The key to this chapter is the recognition that Descartes’ famous cogito ergo sum is incorrect. It is a leap of faith to say I think, let alone I exist. All we can say is, ‘this thought exists, therefore a thought exists’. This thought may be a thought replete with ideas of an objective outside world. But like Liebniz’s monads, it may be just a self-contained thought. I argue that a self-contained thought it all it is. It has no objective relationship with anything else: no past thoughts or future thoughts. No physical brain. No ‘you’. However, it is a complex thought and, as argued earlier, the simplest explanation for complexity is that everything exists. So another thought, which we might recognize as a thought of the same ‘person’ one ‘second later’, exists. In fact, all of the thoughts that you imagine making up your life, do exist. But so do all the tiniest variations of them. It still makes no sense to speak of an objective ‘you’ - it is as fatuous as pointing at a square piece of pastry, saying ‘there’s a fish!’ and cutting a fish shape out of the square to prove it.   [6,000 words]

 7 

Consciousness and Time  

8 

Kolmogorov, anatta, monads and the wavefunction 

How the Buddhist way is implied by the MWI-plenitude world-view A recap of the ideas of the book, set against the writings of the Buddhaghosa (from Visuddhimagga). [12,000 words]

 

9 

Implications Could this synthesis of Buddhist philosophy and Western physics give us back a basis for making moral choices? And would it matter if it did? [Explain why there is a need for a basis for moral choices] 1 - moralityThe religion of the West could be characterised as conscientious nihilism: science with a residual Christian conscience. With no moral foundation, this residue can evaporate, leaving us with pure nihilism. And nihilism is the basis for sociopathic behaviour: acting purely selfishly, with no qualms about lying, cheating, murdering. All religions offer a basis for morality: act for the good of the group and you will be rewarded (with heaven or a fortunate rebirth). Act antisocially, and you will be punished (with hell or a lower rebirth). Buddhism, like all other religions, has a simple mechanism for the masses: karmic law has the same effect as the Christian heaven and hell. Unlike other religions, Buddhism also gives a logical reason. Selfish behaviour tends to result in personal unhappiness; selfless behaviour results in greater happiness. In fact, selflessness is the path to ultimate happiness, Nirvana.  2 - Buddhist philosophy of assimilation3 - why bother? [8000 words] objective vs subjective, 1st person vs 3rd person, the observer-moment What I mean by using 'objective' is that, unless a thought defines it, a group of thoughts can not exist. Archimedes, viewing the multiverse from without, cannot see any groups of thoughts unless he specifically chooses to - in which case he can see anything, choose any group he likes. But what would be the point of that? Archimedes can just imagine something without bothering to look at the multiverse, as he knows for sure that something is there.You could say, "well this very present thought of mine is defining a group of thoughts as all the ones I remember, and calling that group 'Me'". Congratulations, you have defined yourself into existence! But why do so? What is the point? What objectives will you meet? The only thing you achieve is pander to an urge that is a component of your very present thought - an urge to believe 'I exist!'So this is why I say it is meaningless to declare that ‘you’ or ‘I’exist. It is meaningless to say anything particular thing exists ifeverything exists. This means that observers ('selves') do not exist, if you define them as groups of thoughts - unless they literally think themselves into existence! The reason I mention Buddhism now and then is that I just happened to notice that this is Buddhist philosophy too - Nirvana is when you stop willing yourself into existence, and simply enjoy all there is to enjoy, your very present thought.A common 'koan' runs: 'if there is no self, who is it that achievesenlightenment?' This paradox is traditionally not susceptible to logic, so I am feeling rather pleased with 'myself' for having come up with the beginnings of a logical answer.

 

Conclusion 

This Very Thought Three completely different areas of study are pointing in one counter-intuitive direction. Information theory, quantum physics and philosophy (particularly Liebniz and Buddhism) all suggest that the Newtonian world we take for granted is an illusion. The reality is something you cannot accept: nothing exists of you but this very present thought, this thought that you are a human being in such-and-such surroundings, reading this sentence. For an information theorist, all systems - including the universe - can be thought of as information. The information content of a system is defined by the length of the shortest formula (computer program) which can generate that system. What is the simplest explanation for the existence of the universe? That the formula is ‘count to infinity’ - a very short program indeed. Within that infinite series is every system in our infinite universe. The alternative would be to program a single universe: that would take a formula which specified every molecule in your body - something mind-bogglingly complex. So, the simplest explanation consistent with your thinking this thought is: all thoughts exists, this is one of them. There is no relationship between this thought of yours and any physical body. No relationship between your memories and a ‘past’. From quantum physics, we learn that the Newtonian world-view is false. There are many competing interpretations, but the most parsimonious appears to be the Everett ‘Relative State’ formulation, or ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ of quantum mechanics. This simply states that, compared with the orthodox ‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ of 1927, there is no ‘wave function collapse’ - i.e. the universe splits in all directions, rather than following the one time-line that we think of as our universe. This implies that all possible universes exist. What we think of as ‘time’ is one line connecting many ‘snapshot’ universes together. This line is purely subjective. It is not an objective feature of reality. Hence, our own existence is merely our current thought in this very universe. Buddhism teaches us anatta: the doctrine of no-self. The thought without the thinker. The Buddha seemed to come to this conclusion on the basis of similar lines of reasoning to Liebniz: all we can operate on are our own logical constructs. You can make no true statement about a thing that is not included in the nature of that thing… What does all of this mean in practice? That there is no practice. That ‘you’ are a disembodied thought. An immortal thought. I hope you like it.    

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