[extropy-chat] PLAIN OLD PHYSICS

[Dirk Bruere]

On 11/29/05, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
>
> At 07:12 PM 11/28/2005 -0800, Eliezer wrote:
>
> >Someday you will understand how qualia work.  And when you do, you are
> >going to be WAY embarassed by the fact that qualia turn out to be PLAIN
> >OLD PHYSICS, not mysterious physics but ordinary physics, just like the
> >LAST SIX THOUSAND MYSTERIES that the human species encountered, from
> stars
> >to phlogiston to elan vital.  That's what makes the mistake EMBARASSING.
>
> SORT of. It depends, as always, on the EVIDENCE and the power of available
> THEORIES. Until a bit over a century ago, scientists would have scoffed at
> the idea of RADIOACTIVITY. If they'd known of its existence, they'd have
> been certain also that it could be explained by PLAIN OLD PHYSICS. What
> JACKASSES.
>
> Meanwhile:
>
> ==============
> Next June 18-22, 2006, the University of San Diego will host the 87th
> Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the AAAS.  As part of this
> wide-ranging conference (biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, marine
> and environmental science), AAAS will host a symposium tentatively called
> "Frontiers of Time:  Reverse Causation -- Experiment and Theory."
>
> Frontiers of Time: Reverse Causation -- Experiment and Theory
>
> Causality, the notion that earlier events can affect later events, but not
> vice versa, undergirds our experience of reality and physical law.
> Causality is predicated on the forward unidirectionality of time, however,
> most physical laws are time symmetric; that is, they formally and equally
> admit both time-forward and time-reverse solutions.  Time-reverse
> solutions
> are distressing because they would allow the future to influence the past,
> i.e., reverse (or retro-) causation.  Why time-forward solutions are
> preferentially observed in nature remains an unresolved problem in
> physics.
> (While the most convincing explanations invoke the second law of
> thermodynamics or the expansion of the universe, in the end, purely
> forward
> causation is an ad hoc physical assumption.
>
> Some recent experimental results from the domain of parapsychology,
> including human psychophysiological responses to future stimuli and
> mind-matter interactions with random physical systems provide evidence for
> reverse causation effects at the macroscopic scale.  While laboratory
> evidence is intriguing, theoretical models to explain such outcomes have
> lagged; those that exist have not yet made deep enough connections with
> fundamental physics. Furthermore, even the most basic physical constraints
> -- e.g., whether reverse causation is best explained by energy transfers
> or
> simply by correlations without information exchange -- remain open
> questions.
>
> This symposium will explore recent experiments, theory, and philosophical
> issues connected with reverse causation.  In particular, it is hoped that
> this meeting will help: i) generate better theoretical models by which
> established experimental results can be understood; 2) devise new
> experiments by which the underlying physics may be more clearly exposed;
> and 3) establish fruitful research collaborations.
>
> ==============
>
> Damien Broderick
>

Exactly.
I note that until now everyone has shied away from the word 'Psi'.
I also believe that conventional notions of causality in physics will
eventually be scrapped and replaced with 'consistency'.

Dirk
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