Self or only a model of self?

Negentropic entanglement provides a model for associations as rules in which superposition of tensor product states defines rule with entanglement pairs defining its various instances. This generalizes to N-fold tensor products. Associations would be realized as N-neuron negentropic entanglement stable against NMP. One could also think of realizing associative areas in terms of neurons whose inputs form entangled tensor product and when sensory inputs are received they form analogous tensor product in representative degrees of freedom.

Thus negentropic entanglement is necessary for mental images (having sub-CDs as correlates) to mental images representing spatial patterns. Negentropic entanglement in time direction for these patterns (zero energy states) is in turn necessary to bind them to sequences of mental images representing abstract memories as sequences of mental images. Negentropically entangled sequence would be a quantal counterpart for the original association sequence introduced as purely geometric concept.

This picture however challenges the identification of self as quantum jump. Should the negentropically entangled sequences of mental images define selves so that self would be something characterizing zero energy state rather than something identified as quantum jump? Could they define a model of self to be distinguished from self identified as quantum jump? Or could one give up the notion of self alltogether and be satisfied with model of self? At this moment it seems that nothing is lost by assuming only the model of self.

By definition negentropic entanglement tends to be preserved in quantum jumps so that it represents information as approximate invariant: this conforms with the idea of invariant representation and quite generally with the idea that invariants represent the useful information. There is however a problem involved. This information would not be conscious if the original view about conscious information as a change of information is accepted. Could one imagine a reading mechanism in which this information is read without changing the negentropically entangled state at all? This reading process would be analogous to deducing the state of a two-state system in interaction free measurement to be discussed below in more detail.

The assumption that self model is a negentropically entangled system which does not change in state function reduction, leads to a problem. If the conscious information about this kind of subself corresponds to change of negentropy in quantum jump, it seems impossible to get this information. One can however consider a generalization of so called interaction free measurement as a manner to deduced information about self model. This information would be obtained as sequences of bits and might be correspond to declarative, verbal memories rather than direct sensory experiences.

1. The bomb testing problem of Elitzur and Vaidman gives a nice concrete description of what happens in interaction free measurement.
   

   The challenge is to find whether the bomb is dud or not. Bomb explodes if it receives photon with given energy. The simplest test would explode all bombs. Interaction free measurement allows to make test by destroying only small number of bombs and at idealized limit no bombs are destroyed.
   

   The system involves four lenses and two detectors C and D (see the illustration in the link). In the first lense the incoming photon beam splits to reflected and transmitted beams: the path travelled by transmitted beam contains the bomb.
   
   

   1. The bomb absorbs photon with a probability which tells the fraction of photon beam going to the path at which bomb is (is transmitted through the lense). The other possibility is that this measurement process creates a state in which photon travels along the other path (is reflected). This photon goes through a lense and ends up to detector C or D through lense.
      
      
   2. If the bomb is dud photon travels through both paths and interference at the lense leads the photon to detector D. If C detects photon we know that the bomb was not a dud without exploding it. If D detects the photon, it was either dud or not and we can repeat the experiment as long as bomb explodes, or C detects photon and stop if the detector continues to be D (dud). This arrangement can be refined so that at the ideal limit no explosions take place and all.
      
2. The measurement of bomb property is interaction free experiment in the sense that state function reduction performed by absorber/bomb can eliminate the interaction in the sense that photon travels along the path not containing the bomb. One might say that state function reduction is an interaction which can eliminates the usual interaction with photon beam. State function reduction performed by bomb can change the history of photon so it travels along the path not containing the bomb.
   
   

This picture is only metaphorical representation of something much more general.

1. In TGD framework the photon paths branching at lenses correspond to branching 3-surfaces analogous to branching strings in string model and photon wave splits to sum of waves travelling along the two paths.
   
   
2. Bomb could be of course replaced with any two-state system absorbing photons in one state but not in the other state, say atom. Now one would test in which state the atom is gaining one bit of information in the optimal situation. Two-state atom could thus represent bit and one could in principle read the bit sequence formed by atoms (say in row) by this method without any photon absorption so that the row of atoms would remain in the original state.
   

One can imagine several applications if the information to be read in interaction free manner can be interpreted as bit sequences represented as states of two-state system. Lasers in ground states and its excited state would be analogous many particle quantum system. In TGD framework the analog of laser consisting of two space-time sheets with different sizes and different zero point kinetic energies would be the analogous system.

For instance, a model of memory recall with memories realized as negentropically entangled states such that each state represents a qubit can be considered.

1. Reading of a particular qubit of memory means sending of negative energy photon signal to the past, which can be absorbed in the reading process. The problem is however that the memory representation is changed in this process since two state system returns to the ground state. This could be seen as analog of no-cloning theorem (the read thoughts define the clone). Interaction free measurement could help to overcome the problem partially. Memory would not be affected at all at the limit so that no-cloning theorem would be circumvented at this limit.
   
   
2. A possible problem is that the analogs of detectors C and D for a given qubit are in geometric past and one must be able to decide whether it was C or D that absorbed the negative energy photon! Direct conscious experience should tell whether the detector C or D fired: could this experience correspond to visual quale black/white and more generally to a pair of complementary colors?
   
   
3. ZEO means that zero energy states appear have both imbedding space arrows of time and these arrows appear alternately. This dichotomy would correspond to sensory representation-motor action dichotomy and would suggest that there is no fundamental difference between memory recall and future prediction by self model and they different only the direction of the signal.
   
   
4. Since photon absorption is the basic process, the conscious experience about the qubit pattern could be visual sensation or even some other kind of sensory qualia induced by the absoroption of photons. The model for the lipids of cell membrane as pixels of a sensory screen suggests that neuronal/cell membranes could serve defined digital self model at the length scale of neurons.
   

For details see the new chapter Comparison of TGD Inspired Theory of Consciousness with Some Other Theories of Consciousness or the article with the same title.