Questions related to causal diamonds and ZEO

ZEO involves several questions which are not completely understood. Do SSFRs correspond to repeated measurements for a set O of commuting observables? Does BSFR occur when a new set of observables not commuting with the set O are measured? What exactly happens in SSFR?

1. Questions related to SSFRS

1.1 SSFRs as a generalization of Zeno effect and weak measurements

Consider once again the question related to the identification of SSFRs. SSFRs are identified as the TGD counterpart for weak measurements, generalizing the notion of repeated measurements giving rise to the Zeno effect.

1. The most straightforward generalization of the Zeno effect is that in the kinematic degrees of freedom for CDs the sequence of SSFRs corresponds to a sequence of measurements of commuting observables. BSFR would take place always when the set of measured observables changes to a new one, not commuting with the original set.

2. D ,K_z and J_z leave the center point of CD, identified as position of CD, invariant. D does not commute with momenta. Should one just accept that momenta and \{D ,K_z,J_z\} are two sets of mutually commuting observables and that the change of this set induces BSFR.

   The size of CD and therefore the value of the geometric time would change in the sequence of measurements of D, K_z and J_z but not in the sequence of momentum measurements one would have superposition over different sizes of CD and time would be ill-defined as also Uncertainty Principle requires. This would conform with the original view.

1.2 What really happens in SSFRs?

I have written a lot of what might happen in SSFRs and BSFRs but I must admit that the situation is still unclear and the proposals depend on what one takes as starting point assumptions, which can be overidealizations.

On the more general level, the sequence of SSFRs would correspond to dispersion in the moduli space of CDs and if SSFRs correspond to the measurement of same commuting observables identified as generators of SO(2,4) or D\rtimes P or their duals as generalized position in the moduli space, rather simple picture emerges of what can happen.

BSFR would take place when the new set of observables not commuting with the original set emerges. What are the conditions forcing this? If one assumes that sleep is induced by BSFR, it becomes clear that this does not happen at will but when metabolic energy resources are depleted and the system must rest. The dissipation of the time reversed system looks like self-organization and the system heals during sleep. Also homeostasis would rely on BSFRs in various scales making it possible to stay near quantum criticality.

But what exactly happens in SSFR? It seems clear that the states at the passive boundary are not changed. But what happens to the passive boundary?

1. Do the contents of sensory experience assigned with the sequence of SSFRs localize

   Option a: to the active boundary of the CD or

   Option b: to the 3-ball at which the half-cones of the CD meet.

2. What happens to the passive boundary itself in SSFR? The scaling occurs for the entire CD but there are two basic options.

   Option 1: The scaling leaves the center point of the CD invariant. Passive boundary is shifted towards past just like active boundary towards future.

   If the sensory experience is assigned to the active boundary (Option a)), option 1) is consistent with what happens when we wake up. The time has been flowing during sleep but we have not been aware of this. The arrow time would be determined solely by the change of the state at the active boundary.

   If the sensory experience is assigned with the 3-ball (option b)) at the center of CD (Option b)), time does not flow in the sequences of SSFRs.

   Option 2: The scaling leaves invariant the tip of CD associated with the passive boundary so that it is not shifted at all but is scaled. This option is consistent with both option a) and b) for the localization of the experience of time flow. However, waking-up from sleep would take at the time when we fell asleep: this does not make sense.

   The model for sleep favours option a)+1) for which CDs would define ever expanding sub-cosmologies changing the arrow of time repeatedly. Any conscious entity would eventually evolve to a cosmology, a kind of God-like conscious entity.

3. One can also consider other empirical inputs. There are stars and even galaxies older than the Universe. Their existence is consistent with option a)+1).

   CDs form a scaling hierarchy. CDs in the distant geometric past assignable to stars and galaxies are much smaller than the cosmological CD. The scaling cosmological CD inducing the time flow takes place much faster than the scaling of the much smaller astrophysical CDs. Cosmological time runs much faster and astrophysical CDs remain in the distant geometric past.

4. A third test is based on after images, which appear repeatedly. They correspond to sub-CDs of a CD. Could the after images correspond to life cycles of the same sub-CD as I have proposed? This is the case if the sub-CDs are comoving in the scalings of the CD shift. This looks rather natural.

2. More questions and objections related to ZEO and consciousness

The best way to make progress is to make questions and objections against the existing view, which is often far from clear. In the following I raise some questions of this kind.

What could BSFR mean biologically?

1. In have considered the possibility that BSFR could mean as biologically birth in opposite time direction. This however leads to rather complex speculations.

   The most natural assumption is that it means what it says, the emergence of a new CD (see this) as a perceptive field of a conscious entity. This does not require that biological death would be a birth in the opposite time direction although this cannot be excluded. This means one counter argument less.

2. I have considered the idea that in BSFR the size of a CD could decrease dramatically so that the reincarnated CD would be much smaller than before BSFR. This would make possible what one might call childhood. The idea is that the painful memories from the end of the lifecycle could be deleted. This model however requires rather detailed assumptions about how the memories of life cycle are stored at the active boundary of CD. The oldest memories would reside near the tip of CD and newest nearest to the intersection of the half-cones of the CD.

   Is this picture consistent with the view about SFR as a localization in the space of CDs? Since the number of CDs larger than given CD is much larger than those with size smaller than it, one can argue that the size of CD increases in statistical sense without limit in SFRs. If one can assume that death involves localization in the space-like degrees in the space of CDs (E³ position and size of CD), the reduction of CD size looks rather implausible. If the preceding SSFR involved also this kind of localization then the CD after BSFR would in statistical sense be larger than it was before BSFR.

3. Can CDs interact? For instance, can a CD catch the sub-CD defining a mental image of the CD with which it overlaps? This is not the case: it is not possible to catch the spotlight of consciousness.

CD serves as a correlate for the perceptive field of self. Self is also an active causal agent. This aspect must relate to the zero energy states defined as superpositions of space-time surfaces inside a CD.

1. CD defines a perceptive field, a kind of spotlight of consciousness, which makes it possible to sensorily perceive the space-time surface, which continues outside CD although one can also imagine a situation in which this is not the case. Saying that mental image co-moves means that the spotlight moves.
2. Self has also causal powers. SSFRs change the state at the active boundary of CD. This induces changes inside the future light-cone in turn define perturbations of CDs of the geometric future possibly inducing BSFRs.

   Since the superposition of 3-surfaces at the active boundary of CD changes in SSFR, SSFRs have an effect on the geometric future. This is of course the case: our acts of free will affect the world around us but conform with causality.

   Almost deterministic holography for space-time surfaces and zero energy states dramatically reduces the freedom of free will due to state function reductions . The delocalization in WCW taking place in the space of CDS during the analogues of unitary time evolutions preceding SSFR improves the situation.

   One can also imagine a situation in which nothing changes at the boundaries of CD: self is completely passive: this is of course true at the passive boundary and can be true also at the active boundary in special situations. The classical time evolution for preferred extremals is not fully deterministic. Space-time surface is analogous to a 4-D soap film with frames and the case of 2-D soap films suggests that a finite non-determinism is assignable to the frames. This kind of SSFRs would not affect the space-time surface around CD at all. Pure cognition or meditative states might correspond to this kind of SSFRs.

The notion of ego is central in Eastern philosophies. How could one understand this notion in the ZEO based theory of consciousness?

1. Ego means that mental images want to survive. Self survival instinct is an analogous notion although it refers to the biological body. The quantum state at the passive boundary of the CD defines a good candidate for ego since it is indeed preserved during the sequence of SSFRs during which the set of measured observables is preserved.
2. BSFRs means death of self or subself as a sub-CD. Also the external physical perturbations arriving at the passive or active boundary can affect the quantum state at it and can induce BSFR. The self assignable to CD is exposed to perturbations, which might induce BSFR. A simple example of this kind of perturbation would be a blow in the head inducing a loss of consciousness.

   Ego preservation could mean that self does its best to make the periods of time with an opposite arrow of time as short as possible. This is not in conflict with the fact that the durations of sleep and awake states are roughly the same if a given arrow of time means that the time fraction spent in a state with this arrow of time dominates over that in a state with an opposite arrow of time.

   At the magnetic bodies carrying dark matter as phases with large h_eff, the interactions perturbing the boundaries of CD are expected to be rather weak. One has something analogous to a quantum computer isolated from the external world.

3. This suggests a more quantitative definition of the period with a fixed arrow of time. One expects that consciousness with a given arrow of time can have gaps. There is indeed empirical evidence suggesting that our flow of consciousness has gaps. Perhaps the wake-up-sleep ratio of the periods with different arrows of time is what matters. For a given arrow of time, the system would be dominantly in wake-up state or in sleep state.

   At a given level of self-hierarchy there is some average time for a given arrow of time and it is expected to increase at the higher levels. Magnetic bodies carrying dark matter interact only weakly with lower levels of the hierarchy, in particular ordinary matter, would make possible long periods with a given arrow of time, in the first guess proportional to say h_eff.

4. What could biological death as a process at the level of ordinary biomatter mean? Is biological death determined by the situation at the lower hierarchy levels? On the other hand, dark matter at MBs defines a control hierarchy and is gradually thermalized as suggested in see this) so that the ability to perform biocontrol is reduced. Also the ability to gain metabolic energy is reduced and makes it difficult to preserve the arrow of time. Since the average value of h_eff is reduced, the system becomes more vulnerable to perturbations inducing a BSFR changing the arrow of time.

There are also questions related to metabolism.

1. A metabolic energy feed is needed to preserve the distribution for the values of h_eff. The energies of quantum states increase with h_eff and in the absence of a metabolic energy feed, the values of h_eff at MBs tend to decrease. The system becomes more vulnerable to perturbations and the BSFRs changing the arrow of time occur more often. The system becomes drowsy.
2. Sun serves as a fundamental source of metabolic energy but TGD leads to a proposal that also radiation from the core of Earth, which happens to be at the same wavelength range as solar radiation could have served and maybe still serve as a source of metabolic energy.
3. I have proposed remote metabolism as a mechanism in which the system contains a subsystem with an opposite arrow which emits energy, say dissipates, in opposite time direction and thus seems to gain metabolic energy if seen from the standard arrow of time.

   This is possible if there is a system able to receive the effective negative energy signals. For instance, a population reversed laser could serve as such a system. The second option is that the environment loses thermal energy so that the second law in its standard form would be violated. For instance, heat could be transferred from a system with a given temperature to a system with higher temperature. The dissipation for the time reversed system looks like self-organization. Sleep periods would in this picture mean gain of metabolic resources and healing.

4. Also life with the opposite arrow of time needs metabolic energy. We receive metabolic energy basically from the Sun. Could the Sun serve as a source of metabolic energy also for the time reversed systems? The answer is positive.

   To understand why, one must clarify what the change of the arrow of time means. Time reversed signals have positive energy and only the reversed time direction makes them look like negative energy signals. The sum of energies for the sub systems with opposite arrows of time is conserved apart from effects due to finite sizes of CDs (Uncertainty Principle). Also life with an opposite arrow of time can use solar energy as a metabolic energy source.

5. The biological death is assumed to be due to the loss of quantum coherence at the level of MBs inducing a loss of ordinary coherence in short scales implying bodily decay. What could the situation be in the next reincarnation with the same arrow of time? Does the next life with the same arrow of time end at roughly the same time so that the size of the CD would become rather stationary. There would not be much progress.

   Or could the MB be able to preserve the quantum coherence for a longer time in the next reincarnation? Since the quantum coherence of MB naturally explains the coherence of the ordinary biomatter, impossible to understand in the standard physics framework, there is no reason why MB could not achieve this feat in the next incarnation.

See the article New results about causal diamonds from the TGD view point of view or the chapter with the same title.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.