Sunday Special - Consciousness, Quanta, and Meaning

 There’s no shortage of theories trying to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics, and consciousness often gets dragged into the mix. Some even claim it has a special role in state vector reduction—those quirky “quantum jumps.” Roger Penrose is one such advocate, but he’s not alone. When you ask these consciousness enthusiasts if physics behaves differently on the far side of the Moon (where no one’s watching) or if atoms over there just stop jumping, the answers get...let’s say, "evasive."

Who's Consciousness Is It Anyway?

Now, I'm not here to knock anyone’s ideas. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. But, honestly, this view feels a bit like trying to peer through a foggy window. I mean, whose consciousness are we talking about here? When John Wheeler, another big name in the "consciousness club," was pushed on this point, he eventually said it was “consciousness in general.” Sounds poetic, right? The problem is, no one knows what “consciousness in general” actually means.

And let’s be real—science knows more about quarks and gluons than it does about human consciousness. So, no, I don’t think consciousness is irrelevant, but I do think it’s being overhyped in quantum mechanics.

Is the Universe Watching Itself?

Measurements and observations in the universe happen, whether we’re looking or not. The cosmos doesn’t wait for us to wake up in the morning to start its business. Atoms are constantly observing other atoms, cats are keeping tabs on mice, and things happen regardless of our awareness.

This brings me to my simple, no-nonsense perspective: consciousness doesn’t create reality, it just interprets it. Consciousness, in my view, is there to give meaning to what we observe. The more complex the consciousness, the deeper and richer the meaning.

The meaning of it all?

The Meaning of Consciousness

Here’s the kicker: the higher your level of consciousness, the more meaning you can extract from an experience. A cat sees the world differently than bacteria, and we humans have the potential to see meaning on levels a cat can’t even dream of. This ability to find meaning ties into free will—we see meaning in something, and it allows us to make conscious decisions, changing ourselves and reality. It’s like designing your own narrative rather than just playing out some mechanical script.

So, no, I don’t believe in consciousness collapsing wave functions. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless—it’s just not responsible for playing referee in quantum mechanics.

Gravity vs. Consciousness: The Final Showdown

Now, if consciousness isn’t out there reducing wave packets, then what is? Gravity, maybe? Some theories suggest gravity might be responsible for collapsing quantum states. But here’s the twist—what if wave function collapse actually explains gravity? It’s one of those chicken-and-egg scenarios, except the chicken is quantum mechanics and the egg is the entire fabric of spacetime.

I don’t claim to know the definitive answer to what reduces wave packets, but I do know how to describe the process. And that’s what matters. A simple, quantitative description that satisfies both quantum theory and the observations of a humble peasant (equipped with the finest metaphorical pitchfork, of course).

Problems in Objectizing

 Bernard d’Espagnat

Here I would like to mention one particular physicist and philosopher: Bernard d’Espagnat. In his paper “Problems in Objectizing”, d’Espagnat opts for “Mind-Independent Reality”, and, in particular, he also supports Hans Primas’s proposals which EEQT developed into a full-fledged mathematical model. 

Direct realism is often thought of as the common sense theory of perception.

That is an example of a totally subjective view.

But even d’Espagnat is somewhat pessimistic about the final results of such an approach. He ends his paper with the comment:

…although we cannot know Mind-Independent Reality, still we get, through physics, not fully deceitful glimpses of it. I feel Primas’s optimistic guess somehow strengthens my position in this matter.

Waves and Things: Information!

In EEQT we are dealing with two kinds of objects: material objects about the existence of which we have no doubts, and which are necessary if we want to tell engineers what to do; but also we have “wave functions” that are necessary for modeling quantum phenomena - two different categories of objects. These two kind of objects are coupled together – there is an exchange of information between them. That is why in our theory we have not only “dynamics” – exchange of forces, but also, what we called, “binamics” – exchange of “bits of information”. Therefore our theory can be considered as one step towards an introduction to the active role of information in physics.

I was already well-situated in my career as a scientist when I made the decision to follow this path so it was not so easy to attack me – it was enough to just ignore my work. 

The Three Questions of John Archibald Wheeler

Here comes the important term that is rather new in physics: Information. It has become more popular since John Archibald Wheeler published his famous “It from Bit” article "Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links", and asked three important questions:

How come existence?

How come the quantum?

How come the “one world” out of many observer-participants?

The simplest answer to the first question, “How come existence”, is, I would say, existence comes from “timeless information”.

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What does John Wheeler mean by his famous 'It from bit' idea?

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John Wheeler's "It from bit" idea is a concept that suggests that all physical reality is ultimately based on information. In other words, the physical world can be thought of as being made up of bits of information rather than physical particles. This idea is rooted in the field of quantum mechanics and suggests that the universe is fundamentally digital in nature.

Tell me more

P.S.1. To my wife: The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies

Lyrics.

P.S.2. 

"When I speak, the reason says, “This will I say”; but God

takes the word out of my mouth and the lips say something else

at which reason trembles."

Sri Aurobindo

P.S.3. New version of my notes on the conformal group.  Will add still more today.

P.S.4. 25-06 12:45 Finished Sec. 6.7 "Calculating the conformal structure". Updated the file.

P.S.5. A Reader has sent me a link to a paper by Alexander Prahauser "Hegel in Mathematics"

At the end of this paper I am finding, in particular, these gramatically correct sentences:

"From this fermionic superpoint, through a series of canonical extensions, emanates a piece of 11-dimensional spacetime R 10,1|32 , which has precisely the properties that are demanded by M-theory, the joint generalization of string theory and supergravity. Our physical universe would then be determined by some manifold in ∞ − SF S or some extension thereof, with some force field on it that is the unified fundamental force which manifests as the four fundamental forces of our universe after M through a process called KK-compactification, which yields the four-dimensional spacetime we all know and love. At this point mathematics becomes difficult to avoid. However, it should be noted that a conjecture by Sati and Schreiber called Hypothesis H, based on the observations by Sati in [21], states that such a field would be described by a cycle in the fourth differential equivariant J-twisted cohomotopy on X, so a differential equivariant refinement of a section of the J-morphism into the 4- dimensional spere. Given the importance of the n-dimensional spheres and the J-morphism in homotopy theory (and in general), this result would be highly satisfying."

Frankly speaking I consider it as a "word salad" that has nothing to do with Reality. Escapism into total abstraction - that is how I call it.

One Law I want to know

John Archibald Wheeler proposed The One law for the Universe; Boundary of the boundary is zero - BB Principle. 

In symbols:

∂∂ = 0.

From Warner Allen Miller ,"The Geometrodynamic Content of the Regge Equations as Illuminated by the Boundary of a Boundary Principle", (pp. 201-227 in Between Quantum and Cosmos: Studies and Essays in Honor of John Archibald Wheeler, Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Alwyn van der Merwe, Warner Allen Miller, Princeton University Press 1988):

All our laws of nature would be then consequences of this one. Looks nice and simple indeed. In topology and in algebraic topology it holds indeed, either as a theorem or as a postulated fundamental property.

In my vision there is also one law: it is the "Law of Free Fall". Everything moves along a geodesic of some kind of "geometry". Can these two visions, Wheeler's and mine, be merged into one vision? Is free fall another expression of BB? Is BB just another expression of Free Fall? And what about Free Will?

And then: why THIS law and not some other? And why one law and not two or three? Or even an infinite number of laws? Why?

While looking for answers, enlarging my knowledge (and my ignorance as well, but only linearly), I am asking myself: "Am I of this world?"

"And so we wander on our way asking ourselves—if truth be known, muttering to  ourselves really—“Am  I  of  this  world  or  the  other?”  and  answering  “I  am  of  both.”  And  we remind ourselves of this as we go along."

 

"Through this circular river symbol, the moat, the tale warns us that this water is not just any water but a certain kind. It is a boundary water, much like the circle the maiden drew around herself to keep the Devil away. When one crosses into or through a circle, one  is entering  into  or  passing  through  to  another  state  of  being,  another  state  of awareness, or lack of one. "

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "Women Who Run With The Wolves", 

I want to know

 

P.S.1

Found by Laura for me to watch. A good one indeed. Recommend for everybody!

 P.S.2. Just chceked my researchGate mail. Discovered a message from September:

"Hallo Arkadiusz,

I looked to your your Preprint Time of arrival operator in the momentum space, it is interesting and please see my paper (blow) , where one can see the relation to the Fujiwara–Kobe time operator, sec 4 of your preprint.

https://www.mdpi.com/2624-960X/2/2/15
or
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340491512_Time_Operator_Real_Tunneling_Time_in_Strong_Field_Interaction_and_the_Attoclock_Open_access_journal_Quantum_Report_httpswwwmdpicomjournalquantumrep

P.S.3 While Igor Bayak wrote me 

"Уважаемый Аркадиуш, здравствуйте!

Посмотрите, пож., на уравнение 3.16 из статьи Хаотическая динамика электрона. Вы ее легко найдете в моем профиле. Там речь о динамическом решении для нулей дзета функции Римана."

Riemann Zeta! Beatiful piece of art!

P.S.4 Another worth considering quotation from "Women Who Run With The Wolves" mentioned in the main text of this note:

"The young and the injured are uninitiated. Neither knows much about the dark predator and are, therefore, credulous. But, fortunately, when the predator is on the move, it leaves behind unmistakable tracks in dreams. These tracks eventually lead to its discovery, capture and containment."

"Wild Ways teaches people when not to act 'nice' about protecting their souls. The instinctive nature knows that being 'sweet' in these instances only makes the predator smile. When the soul is being threatened, it is not only acceptable to draw the line and mean it, it is required."

P.S.5. I am back to conformal infinity. It is a part of U(2). Perhaps I will write a note about it. 

P.S.6. From the battlefield Planet Earth;

P.S.7. I have on my table these two books. Oh God, how much I would like to know their content and master it!. Why it is not possible for us to bring these books close to our heads and download their content (even if it may take a while), and push the button "Understand" and another button "Now"? Why?

But I clearly realize that different people may have extremely different standards of "understanding"....

Different level of "depth". The next button would be "Integrate". Of course the first book would have nothing to ingrate with. Would be instantaneous. But with each new piece of added knowledge integration would take exponentially longer time.

By integration I mean making the whole more than just the sum of parts. For instance: when we learn about complex numbers, we understand much better real numbers about which we have learned before. We create a huge number of connections and interactions between the old and the new knowledge. Thus, approximately, when we have m pieces of old knowledge and add m pieces of new knowledge we can optimally-ideally gain mxn rather than just m+n. But there is also useless knowledge: a knowledge that cannot be integrated with our other knowledge, because it belongs to a different "species" of knowledge. For instance knowledge of blacksmithing or  knitting will hardly add anything useful  to your knowledge of algebraic topology.  We all have finite resources and we have to choose whether we want to know superficially possibly many subjects, or to know really deeply at least one. People with extremely high IQ seem to be naturally gravitating towards the first option.

And, as John Wheeler has noticed: the more we know about a given subject, the more we are painfully aware of how little we, in fact,  know.

P.S.8. You should not miss or neglect this one:

It from Bit? Or Order out of Chaos?

 John Archibald Wheeler advocated the idea of "It from Bit". Everything in the universe, including mid, is made of information, and information consists of sequences of binary alternatives 0 and 1. More on this subject can be found here: "IT FROM BIT: WHAT DID JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER GET RIGHT—AND WRONG?". The article contains the view of an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian Willian Dembski. More about his views can be found in the article "HOW INFORMATIONAL REALISM SUBVERTS MATERIALISM". Let me quote just two paragraphs from this last article:

Informational realism does not deny the existence of things (i.e., entities or substances). But within informational realism, what defines things is their capacity for communicating or exchanging information with other things. Things are inferred from the information they communicate. Information, as the relational glue that holds reality together, thus assumes primacy in informational realism.

In informational realism, things make their reality felt by communicating or exchanging information. Thus, things that are not in immediate or mediate informational contact with other things might just as well not exist and so, in fact, don’t exist within informational realism. Informationally isolated or disconnected entities thereby become nonentities. 

This sounds to me as more reasonable approach. There is information and there are "things" that communicate this information  What is this "communication"? For bits of information to be considered as a "communication" they need to be "meaningful". And what that means? It is the role of the mind and of consciousness to decide what has a meaning and what doesn't. The main problem here is, as far as I can see, the ability to distinguish between order and chaos. These are two fundamental concepts: ORDER and CHAOS. Intelligent creation is the ability to crate order out of chaos. Thus not 0 and 1 are the fundamental elements of Being, but O and C. Both order and chaos must include in their description infinite sequences of bits, and infinitely complex algorithms for creating these bits. And there is no reason for supposing that Nature is scared of infinities. Exactly the converse might be true: Nature effortlessly operates with infinities, and of any order. With our finite means we can only approximate in our description the true workings of the Universe.

Concerning Order and Chaos, let me quote from the recent book I decided to study what a clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson has to say in his  "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos"

Order is where the people around you act according to well- understood social norms, and remain predictable and cooperative. It’s the world of social structure, explored territory, and familiarity. The state of Order is typically portrayed, symbolically—imaginatively —as masculine. It’s the Wise King and the Tyrant, forever bound together, as society is simultaneously structure and oppression.

Chaos, by contrast, is where—or when—something unexpected happens. Chaos emerges, in trivial form, when you tell a joke at a party with people you think you know and a silent and embarrassing chill falls over the gathering. Chaos is what emerges more catastrophically when you suddenly find yourself without employment, or are betrayed by a lover. As the antithesis of symbolically masculine order, it’s presented imaginatively as feminine. It’s the new and unpredictable suddenly emerging in the midst of the commonplace familiar. It’s Creation and Destruction, the source of new things and the destination of the dead (as nature, as opposed to culture, is simultaneously birth and demise). 

Order and chaos are the yang and yin of the famous Taoist symbol: two serpents, head to tail.   Order is the white, masculine serpent; Chaos, its black, feminine counterpart. The black dot in the white—and the white in the black—indicate the possibility of transformation: just when things seem secure, the unknown can loom, unexpectedly and large. Conversely, just when everything seems lost, new order can emerge from catastrophe and chaos. For the Taoists, meaning is to be found on the border between the ever-entwined pair. To walk that border is to stay on the path of life, the divine Way.

From there I will particularly stress this observation:

meaning is to be found on the border between the ever-entwined pair.  

In the future posts I will deal with this "border" or "boundry" - using simple algebra.

P.S. Saturday's entertainment:

And something really really scary:

"People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the 'Future.'"