Monday, January 13, 2014

Little but important step in the understanding the arrow of time

"Fractality from your blog" posed an interesting question about possible asymmetry between boundaries of causal diamond CD. The answer to the question led to recall once again the incomplete understanding of details about how the arrow of time emerges in zero energy ontology (ZEO).

The basic vision is following.

  1. CDs form a fractal scale hierarchy. Zero energy states possess a wave function in moduli degrees of freedom characterizing sizes of CDs as well telling what Lorentz boost leaving boundary invariant are allowed for them. Boosts form by number theoretic constraints a discrete subgroup of Lorentz group defining analogs of lattices generated by boosts instead of translations.

  2. The arrow of subjective time maps to that of geometric time somehow. The origin of arrow comes from the fact that state function reductions can occur to either boundary of given CD and reduction creates time-asymmetric state since second boundary of CD is in a quantum superposition of different sizes and there is a superposition of many-particle states with different particles numbers and quantum number distributions.

  3. Subjective existence corresponds to a sequence of moments of consciousness: state function reductions at opposite boundaries of CDs. State function reduction reduction localizes either boundary but the second boundary is in a quantum superposition of several locations and size scales for CD. This predicts that the arrow of time is not constant. In fact, there is considerable evidence for the variation of the arrow of time in living systems and Fantappie introduced long time ago the notion of syntropy to describe his view about the situation.

  4. The first very naive proposal was that state function reductions occur alternately to the two boundaries of CD. This assumption would be indeed natural if one considered single fixed CD rather than superposition CDs with different size and state function reduction localizing their either boundary: restriction to single CD was what I indeed did first.

  5. This assumption leads to the question about why do we do not observe this alternation of the arrow of time all the time in our personal experience. Some people actually claim to have actually experienced a temporary change of the arrow of time: I belong to them and I can tell that the experience is frightening. But why do we experience the arrow of time as stable in the standard state of consciousness?
One possible way to solve the problem - perhaps the simplest one - is that state function reduction to the same boundary of CD can occur many times repeatedly. This solution is so absolutely trivial that I could perhaps use this triviality to defend myself for not realizing it immediately!

I made this totally trivial observation only after I had realized that also in this process the wave function in the moduli space of CDs change in these reductions. Zeno effect in ordinary measurement theory relies on the possibility of repeated state function reductions. In the ordinary quantum measurement theory repeated state function reductions do not affect the state in this kind of sequence but in ZEO the wave function in the moduli space labelling different CDs with the same boundary could change in each quantum jump. It would be natural that this sequence of quantum jumps give rise to the experience about flow of time? This option would allow the size scale of CD associated with human consciousness be rather short, say .1 seconds. It would allow to understand why we do not observe continual change of arrow of time.

Maybe living systems are working hardly to keep the personal arrow of time changed - living creatures try to prevent kettle from boiling by staring at it intensely. Maybe it would be extremely difficult to live against the collective arrow of time.

For details and background see the chapter About nature of time of "TGD Inspired Theory of Consciousness".


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://m.phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html --crow

Matti Pitkanen said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Matti Pitkanen said...


Dear Anonymous,

I have been working for two days trying to understand the work of Anirban Bandyopadhyay.

First of all, the experimental finding- if true - would be a breakthrough for quantum consciousness but certainly not for Orch-OR. Therefore I was surprised for the heavy hyping of Penrose-Hameroff theory.

I did not find any article about experiment. I found and listened the earlier talk (2111) of Anirban Bandyopadhyay, the leader who's group might discovered the quantum vibrations. The talk was also was about experiments done with microtubules and looked very interesting. See

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQngptkPYE8 .

I got the impression that he is excellent sharply thinking experimentalist and had identified the signatures for what he interpreted in terms of Froehlich B-E condensation, topological qubit, superconductivity like state of electrons inside microtubules, and so on. One can interpret the findings differently and I have been working with TGD interpretation assuming that basic findings are correct.

What was frustrating was the fuzzy terminology: for instance, he talked about conduction pathways at micro tubular surface as topological qubits and did not explain when asked about this issue. Excellent experimentalist need not be a theorist: was this the reason? Or was the unclarity purposeful?

Also the interpretation of experiments seems to be internally inconsistent and I got the impression that it reflects his own theories. It might rely on the earlier proposal of Penrose and Hameroff, which I did not find as freely available article. The only article mentioning conduction pathways that I found from web did not help: I have the feeling that they have no detailed model but want to give the expression that they have.

The wrong interpretation need not mean catastrophe: as a good experimentalist he is looking for signatures of these phenomena, and if he has found them, there are all reasons to take the findings under serious discussion.