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<TITLE>RE: [extropy-chat] the future of ...</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Another interpretation is from Bohm:</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>***************************************</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>A new theory of the relationship of mind and matter (<A HREF="http://members.aol.com/Mszlazak/BOHM.html" TARGET="_blank">http://members.aol.com/Mszlazak/BOHM.html</A>) - an article by David Bohm.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>ABSTRACT: The relationship of mind and matter is approached in a new way in this article. This approach is based on the causal interpretation of the quantum theory, in which an electron, for example, is regarded as an inseparable union of a particle and a field. This field has, however, some new properties that can be seen to be the main sources of the differences between the quantum theory and the classical (Newtonian) theory. These new properties suggest that the field may be regarded as containing objective and active information, and that the activity of this information is similar in certain key ways to the activity of information in our ordinary subjective experience. The analogy between mind and matter is thus fairly close. This analogy leads to the proposal of the general outlines of a new theory of mind, matter, and their relationship, in which the basic notion is participation rather than interaction. Although the theory, can be developed mathematically in more detail the main emphasis here is to show qualitatively how it provides a way of thinking that does not divide mind from matter, and thus leads to a more coherent understanding of such questions than is possible in the common dualistic and reductionistic approaches. These ideas may be relevant to connectionist theories and might perhaps suggest new directions for their development. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>...</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>...</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>The question of the relationship of mind and matter has already been explored to some extent in some of my earlier work in physics (Bohm, 1980). In this work, which was originally aimed at understanding relativity and quantum theory on a basis common to both, I developed the notion of the enfolded or implicate order. The essential feature of this idea was that the whole universe is in some way enfolded in everything and that each thing is enfolded in the whole. From this it follows that in some way, and to some degree everything enfolds or implicates everything, but in such a manner that under typical conditions of ordinary experience, there is a great deal of relative independence of things. The basic proposal is then that this enfoldment relationship is not merely passive or superficial. Rather, it is active and essential to what each thing is. It follows that each thing, is internally related to the whole, and therefore, to everything else. The external relationships are then displayed in the unfolded or explicate order in which each thing is seen, as has already indeed been indicated, as relatively separate and extended, and related only externally to other things. The explicate order, which dominates ordinary experience as well as classical (Newtonian) physics, thus appears to stand by itself. But actually, it cannot be understood properly apart from its ground in the primary reality of the implicate order. </FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>...</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>************************************************************</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Thanks.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2> </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Walter.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>---------</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>-----Original Message-----</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>From: extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [<A HREF="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org">mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</A>] On Behalf Of hal@finney.org</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 8:00 AM</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>To: extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] the future of ...</FONT>
</P>
<BR>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Scerir pointed to:</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>> <A HREF="http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/kitp25/" TARGET="_blank">http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/kitp25/</A></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>But he didn't say what it is the future of...</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>It is a conference on The Future of Physics! And it was held at UC</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Santa Barbara, just a couple of miles from where I live. I did not try</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>to crash it, but there was quite a bit in the local news about it this</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>weekend because the director of the UCSB Kavli Institute for Theoretical</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Physics is David Gross, who just won the Nobel Prize for his work on</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>quantum theory.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>The conference program has audio and video of the talks available to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>download, as well as the slides in an easy-to-view format. Most of them</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>appear to be very technical however.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I watched one of the first ones, Where do we Stand? by Steven Weinberg.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>It was a summary of the current state of physics. Most of it was over my</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>head but I was surprised that he spent about ten minutes on the anthropic</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>principle, its implications and applications.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Anthropic reasoning in physics is anything that is built around the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>assumption that conditions have to be such that observers can exist</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>to observe them. The example given by Weinberg is the size of the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>cosmological constant, which is equivalent (or at least related) to the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>inherent gravitational energy of the vacuum. It turns out that this</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>energy density is about the same as the energy density of the matter of</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>the universe, but there is no known theoretical reason to explain this</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>rough match. In fact current theory does little to constrain the vacuum</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>energy density and this would suggest that it would more plausibly be</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>extremely high, at black-hole density levels. However, if it were much</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>higher than we observe it at, the universe as we know it could not have</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>existed for long enough for stars to form and life to evolve.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>If you imagine that there are a lot of universes and they each have a</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>random vacuum energy density, then in most of them life will never form.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Only in the ones where it is about the size that we actually see could</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>life evolve. This can be viewed as a sort of explanation of why the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>cosmological constant is the size it is.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Weinberg went on to mention that many physicists hate anthropic reasoning,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>including Gross, the Nobelist who runs the Institute. They want to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>hold out hope that physics will advance to the point that it can explain</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>exactly why the cosmological constant has the value it does, along with</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>other such values. The idea of saying that it was essentially an accident</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>is not acceptable to them.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>However Weinberg explained that physicists might have to lower their</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>sights and accept that some things just can't be explained by theory.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>He pointed out that his had happened in the past. At one time, European</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>scientists thought that the arrangement of the continents on the Earth</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>ought to follow some simple geometrical rules. When Columbus was</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>planning his voyage to Asia there were those who tried to use simple</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>symmetry arguments to argue about the size of the oceans based on the</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>known size of Asia. Another famous case was Kepler's attempt to explain</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>the sizes of the planetary orbits using regular solids of various types,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>nesting solids and spheres together in different ways to try to make</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>them come out to the sizes of the orbits.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Today we know that the positions of the continents, and the spacings</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>of the planets, have no such simple explanations, and are essentially</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>accidental outcomes of complex processes. It might be, Weinberg</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>suggested, that the cosmological constant and perhaps some other physical</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>constants could turn out the same.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>I find anthropic reasoning fascinating because of its connection to</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>the possibility that other universes exist, and in particular the Many</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics which suggests that these</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>other worlds include ones that have alternate versions of ourselves.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Cosmologists tend to be more open to the MWI than most physicists,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>because they have to deal with an early universe that had no conscious</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>observers around to make measurements, which keeps them from using</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>certain alternative quantum interpretations.</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>If you look at the slides for James Hartle's talk at the conference,</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2><<A HREF="http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/kitp25/zee/oh/201.html" TARGET="_blank">http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/kitp25/zee/oh/201.html</A>>, you see</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>this laid out explicitly. He concludes, "We are all Schrodinger Cats</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>in Hawking's wave function of the universe." That's pretty cool!</FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2>Hal</FONT>
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