In the film, David Brent, Life on Road, Brent, who suffers from serious depression, visits his unsympathetic psychiatrist and is asked, "Have you had the dream again?" He says "No". Then she spends about five minutes writing notes. After the consultation, upset, Brent tells the documentary crew his feelings, that he has no idea what his doctor thinks of him, worries that she might consider him a loser – or even a pervert. The scene is profound. It really shows Ricky Gervais's understanding of issues in the world that he probably has little contact with.
At least Brent's psychiatrist asks a question from time to time. Mine usually doesn't.
I have written about dreams a long time ago in this blog but I want to revisit this topic. I concede I will be covering material I have already gone over. I have suffered from nightmares since I was a small child and awake from dreams these days every morning. I can remember a dream I had when I was about four. It was edited in scenes like a television program and set at Sesame Street. The dream transitioned from shots of a chemist's laboratory, all bubbling pipettes, alembics, and test tubes, to shots of the street, a large puppet dog (one of the main characters then) and a human woman. The sky behind them was dark with thunderclouds. In the dream, I knew that the dog had rabies. I was the only one who knew though and was terribly afraid, felt that I needed to warn someone but didn't know who.
If I were to interpret this dream, I would note that one of my favourite books at that age was The Value of Believing in Yourself, about Louis Pasteur. I would also note that I watched Sesame Street every day. Aside from this, it is to long ago to establish what this dream meant or foreshadowed.
I wish to describe and interpret three dreams I have had since first becoming 'ill', all dreams I can remember vividly. The first happened in the middle of 2007. In the dream, I was sitting on a hill with my best friend from my days spent studying at Otago University in 1998 and 1999, Caleb Edwards A helicopter convoy arrived and took me to a house in the shadow of Mount Smart stadium, the air echoing with the bass beat of a rock concert. Inside the house, bedecked with Christmas decorations, I found myself in the presence of a number of ghouls and vampires, one of which even lacked a face. After I saw the faceless ghoul, I woke up.
Mount Smart stadium was the venue for the Big Day Out in January of that year. As I described in the posts "My First Psychotic Episode" and "My First Psychotic Episode and bFM" it was right after the Big Day Out that I had my meltdown at the radio station and maybe a month and a half later that I became psychotic. (The exact dates are in the post "Dates, Dosages, and Other Matters.") I want now to describe something that happened at the Big Day Out that is highly significant to the stories I've been telling but which I haven't told before. A bFM tent was set up on a grassy knoll in the stadium: I saw Jose Barbosa sitting there and approached him. I asked him if he wanted to go watch some bands with me. He leaned towards me and said, "I wish I could!" Something about his body language suggested he was attracted to me, that he meant something more than what he said. It was this moment that I knew for sure that he was gay but I immediately repressed this knowledge, clapping him on the shoulder in a matey heterosexual way. I suspect also that his inability to come watch the bands with me was because he was officially in the closet. Later that day I took Extasy and smoked a lot of pot with a mate from the Big House and, stoned nearly insensible, watched Tool play. People familiar with Maynard Keening's personal life (I wasn't then back in 2007) may rightly intuit that in my drugged state I may have picked up some slightly fucked up vibes. The reason for my meltdown the next Tuesday had something to do with aftereffects of the drugs but also the fact that the girl I liked, Caroline, had disappeared and I was stuck in a radio station with only Jose. A month later I saw the Chilli Peppers perform and was witness to Anthony Kiedis's indirect 'coming out' as queer – no wonder I decided that the world was full of closet homosexuals. It was all a perfect shit-storm.
Before I get back to the dream, I need to say something more about my first psychotic episode. I have said that a rumour went around my flat that I was gay but haven't offered any evidence. One of my flatmates was a girl called Kristy, a cool nice girl – I think for some reason I don't know she decided I was gay. Oddly enough I think she warmed to me more, was more friendly, when she had decided I was gay. I was walking with her once, after I started working at bFM, and she told me that there were places macho gay men could go to pick up people. I didn't know why she was telling me this and wondered if she was referring to the radio station. At a party in the interval between my leaving bFM and becoming psychotic, one of the enormous parties the Big House held,she introduced me to an obviously gay young man. He wanted a tour of the Big House and I took him around, even showing him the attic. When I showed him the attic, he said, in an innuendo rich tone, "I've heard of the attic." The only reason I was taking him for this tour was out of good-manners and friendliness but I felt uncomfortable and after this short perambulation got rid of him and found a straight male friend to talk to. When we parted company, the young gay man said, "Crazy."
To repeat myself, the reason I became 'sick' and remained 'sick' was because people around me had decided I was gay without ever asking.
I'll get back to the dream now. The reason the dream begins with an idyllic scene in which I am sitting on a hill with someone who had been my best friend for a long time when I was young, I think now, is because in the dream I was harking back to a time when my friends were straight, when male-male relationships were uncomplicated. The allusion to the Big Day Out marks my break with the past. And this is when it gets weird. The house full of ghouls and vampires I believe was a version of a Respite facility I spent at least a month as a day-patient in around December 2007 and January 2008. A house in Titirangi called "Mind Matters." During this period I spent a lot of time with other psychotics but much more time sitting doing nothing or leaving the facility for walks around Titirangi. I hated being there; in fact during the first week at the place I thought I was going to be the victim of human sacrifice. I can remember I was there just before Christmas when the staff hung fairy-lights along the balcony balustrade. My time at this Respite facility deserves a post for itself. The reason it's so weird that I dreamed about Mind Matters is because I had the dream some months before I became a day patient at the place. So the dream represented a kind of fore-knowledge or prescience.
Taken as a whole the dream describes a move from my former life, when I had been happy, to my hellish life as a patient of the Mental Health System.
Another dream I had in 2007 has stuck with me ever since. I dreamt I was in a subterranean grotto. Hellish firelight flickered over the walls. In the grotto with me was George W. Bush and the then New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. Bush said to me, "We try to keep our club quite exclusive." I was intimidated that the President was talking to me and I remember Key turning to Bush as if to say, "See how he is with us? That's how I feel with you." I left the cavern and outside, in a vestibule, stood with Tim Robbins, Nicolas Cage and a third slight figure I couldn't identify. Cage put something like a communion wafer in my mouth and immediately I was stuck in the mouth by a bolt of lightning. Cage said, "How do like that acid?"
Again this dream can be interpreted. I think now that Bush and Key were metaphors for my father and brother respectively but that they also represented themselves, the real leaders. The cave was Hell, a place of perdition, of guilty consciences. When I woke up I had no idea why Bush had said, "We try to keep our club quite exclusive." In 2007 I believed, stupidly of course, that Bush was gay and that there were more homosexuals than heterosexuals in the world. His statement made no sense. Years later I worked it out. Bush (obviously) is heterosexual but the heterosexual community is exclusive in the sense that if person comes out or is outed, even if wrongly, it is almost impossible to get back in again.
The communion wafer was I think code for Olanzapine, even though I didn't start to take this medication until late 2009. The fact that I was struck by lightning in the mouth represented the experiences I had in the months shortly after I started taking it, particularly in December 2009 and January 2010, when I thought I could telepathically communicate with Jon, Jess, Obama, and people from bFM among others. The third shadowy figure in the dream I think now was Jon Stewart. The reason I couldn't recognise him at the time was because I didn't start watching The Daily Show until the next year.
In Easter 2013, I approached the psychiatric profession again and, for the first time, identified and spoke about my parents' divorce when I was seven, the childhood trauma I believe made me vulnerable to psychosis later in life. Around this time I had another significant dream. I arrived at the Auckland University Human Sciences building and took an elevator to the top floor. I found myself in a dark space full of open-plan plywood cubicles, a little like many offices, except far more sinister. A malevolent clown patrolled the room. In the dream, I somehow leapt up, escaping the space and standing on top. Looking down into one of the cubicles, I saw my ex-girlfriend Maya, dead. In the cubicle was a chandelier. She had slit her wrists.
The reason this dream was set in the Human Sciences building was I believe because this is where the psychology department is located. Maya used to have an obsession with chandeliers and even did some art installations about them. I had always believed, if subconsciously, that her obsession wiht chandeliers was related to some kind of repressed trauma. When confronted with this trauma, in the dream, she had killed herself.
This is where it gets weird again. The layout of the dream-space greatly resembled the layout of a Market Research Company at which I worked performing telephone surveys in 2014 and 2015. I hated this job, partly because it was horrible work and partly because I was often physically and mentally very unwell during the period I worked there. It's weird because I had the dream at Easter 2013 and didn't start working at Infield until the end of 2014.
All three dreams I have described have elements that could only have come from the future. Some of my readers may think this is pretty cool, to have visionary dreams. I also used to think it was cool. Logically, if all the laws of physics are time-reversible, as they are, we should be able to remember the future as well as the past. Recently, though, I have found these dreams and other experiences I've had profoundly depressing and upsetting. It makes me wonder if my entire life, which has been mostly shit, was predetermined from the beginning. It was all fate.
Like I say, I dream most nights. I sometimes have dreams so horrible that they are comparable to the film The Human Caterpillar. One theory of dreaming has it that dreams are epiphenomena occurring when memories are shifted from short-term to long term storage. This hypothesis obviously can't apply to my dreams – my dreams, especially the memorable ones have meaning, they are messages. However in saying that dreams can be interpreted does not mean I am endorsing Freud – Freud's theory, that dreams are coded wish-fufillment fantasies, can't explain nightmares, especially the kind of nightmares I have.
I'll finish this discussion of dreams by describing a good dream. In 2013, I had a number of dreams about Jess. In one, she was a superhero capable of changing shape, and turned into a puddle of water. Obviously this dream does have a Freudian interpretation.
In this blog I often talk about my life and now I need to describe something significant that happened just yesterday. I saw my psychiatrist yesterday; she decided to double my dosage of Olanzapine. Now, she can invent any reason she likes for this change (ignoring the fact that I have been free of psychotic symptoms all year, ever since or before I wrote the post "Concerning Jess) but the real reason for her decision is that I lodged a complaint against her and Tony Fernando with the Health and Disabilities Commissioner. Psychiatrists have that much power. I know a young woman called Katrina who had a psychotic episode in her teens, was well and off the drugs for over ten years, and then had another one. She told me that the cause of this episode was that she became fascinated with the Illuminati. When she saw Fernando, he prescribed her fish-oil capsules. She was taking fifteen a day. Now, I don't believe in antipsychotic medication but to prescribe a dietary supplement for a psychotic episode is not the soundest of scientific practices. I told a friend this story and he opined that it might have had something to do with the pharmaceutical companies but I think the real reason that Fernando did this was because he could, on a whim. Psychiatric diagnoses are all arbitrary.
Thursday, 27 September 2018
Friday, 21 September 2018
Probability and Schrodinger's Cat Part 2
I originally intended to write something about dreams today but have decided to postpone that post and instead elaborate in this post on the ideas I pitched a couple of days ago. Sometimes in this blog I come back to a problem repeatedly, revising my position, as in the series of essays I wrote about Neil Gaiman's comic book storyline A Game of You; although I could just leave my musings about quantum theory in the form I presented them in the previous post, I thought I would try to clarify my position and show that, although it looks flakey, this position is defensible. It is a strange position. I am arguing, in effect, that quantum physics allows for the possibility of supernatural causation, that Einstein and others (like Bohm) were correct in supposing that quantum physics requires a hidden-variable theory, but that they were wrong in believing science capable of discovering and elaborating such a theory. In today's post I want to talk about this in more depth. Bear with me.
The heart of my argument is the justifiable supposition that any estimate of probability is subjective rather than objective. An estimate of probability exists in the mind of a knower rather than being a fact about reality existing in the outside world. In the previous essay, I discussed the example of a shuffled pack of cards and I want to return to this example and look at it from a different perspective. Suppose we have a pack of cards and in the same room four people who have different degrees of knowledge about the sequence of cards in the pack. The question asked of them is "What is the probability of drawing the Queen of Hearts from the top of the pack?" Person A knows only that the pack is an ordinary pack minus jokers; he or she estimates the probability of drawing a Queen of Hearts as being 1/54. Person B knows more; he or she knows that the top twenty-six cards are all red. Consequently, Person B estimates the probability as being 1/26. Person C knows that the top thirteen cards are all hearts and consequently estimates the probability as being 1/13. Person D, with god-like omniscience, knows the precise order of cards in the pack and knows for sure that the top card is the Queen of Hearts. Consequently, he or she estimates the probability as being a certainty, 100%.
Which of the four is correct? It seems that the four individuals are increasingly more accurate, that the first is least accurate and the last most accurate. If we assume the Law of the Excluded Middle to be right (the axiom that propositions must either be true or false), it seems that Person D's estimate is true and that Person A's estimate must be false. More charitably, however, we could say that Person A's estimate is the best guess he or she can make given the information available to him or her. Although they are making increasingly accurate guesses, Persons A through C cannot be said to be making true statements. Only Person D is in a position to make a true statement regarding the card because he or she is omniscient– and of course it is worth noting that his or her estimate is no longer really an estimate of probability, but rather of certainty. If a person is omniscient, he or she knows for sure whether future events or outcomes will occur or not; it is no longer an issue of probability. From a traditional logical perspective, then, any proposition stating the probability of a future event, a probability given as something other than one or zero, is either false or meaningless. Is the future predetermined or not? Interestingly, David Foster Wallace grappled with the same problem when he was a student, the problem of Fate, although he approached it from a different angle. (Read Wallace's book Fate, Time, and Language for his thoughts.) Wallace weighed in in favour of free will and opposed the notion of Fate, but I have argued in the past the opposite, that Fate does in fact exist and that free will doesn't.
When quantum physics was first developed in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the wave-particle duality of light and matter was first proposed, no-one had any theory at first to make sense of this duality. In 1928, Max Born made a radical suggestion: that reality is indeterminate and that the equations of quantum physics can be construed as assigning probabilities to events and quantities. The probabilistic interpretation of quantum physics has ever since been central to most accepted views of quantum physics – although de Broglie, Einstein and later Bohm challenged it. The Schrodinger Equation and Dirac equation provide us with possibilities about the energies, momenta ,and positions of particles rather than certainties because reality itself is, in a sense, uncertain. It is precisely this position that I wish to critique. The fatal mistake I think quantum physicists made then and have continued to make ever since is that they have misunderstood the nature of probability. The physicists have treated uncertainty as being an objective fact about the universe – when in fact uncertainty is subjective, is a quality of a knowing mind when confronted with the universe. And yet, with only few exceptions, physicists have continued to cling to the idea that quantum physics presents an objective picture of reality, that uncertainty is objective rather than subjective.
In the previous post, I described the Schrodinger's Cat paradox and will do so again now as an aid in presenting my counter-theory. The paradox is beautiful, profound, and important. Schrodinger imagines the following situation. A cat is put in a sealed box with a piece of uranium that has a 50% chance of decaying over a certain period. If the uranium decays, a gun goes off, killing the cat. Schrodinger argues that, according to standard interpretations of quantum physics, the cat is described by a superposition of two states: the poor creature is both alive and dead at the same time. It is only when the scientist opens the box and observes the cat that one state is confirmed. This moment, this observation when the box is opened, brings about something known as 'wave function collapse'. Schrodinger's intention in posing this problem was to show the deficiencies of the standard probabilistic interpretations, to show what happens when the ideas of quantum physics, which are normally applied only to microscopic systems, are applied to macroscopic situations. He sought to show that the orthodox interpretation of quantum physics must be false if it yields such an absurd conclusion. However radical advancements in Chaos Theory have shown that microscopic events can have macroscopic effects, ("A butterfly flapping its wings in South America can cause a hurricane in Europe") and so the objection that quantum physics is inapplicable to macroscopic systems can be challenged.
I would like to develop the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment in the following way. Suppose the experiment takes place under the guidance of three scientists – a chief scientist, an assistant, and an assistant to the assistant. Prior to opening the box we have not one but four universes – the universe of the cat, and three universes each of which belongs to one of the scientists. In the first universe, let us suppose that the cat is definitely alive. In the other three, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. The assistant to the assistant opens the box and checks on the condition of the cat. Wave function collapse occurs – in his universe the cat is now definitely alive. We now have two universes in which the cat is definitely alive and two universes in which the cat is in a superposition of both states. The assistant to the assistant tells the assistant. Again wave function collapse occurs. We now have three universes in which the cat is definitely alive and one in which its vitality is still in doubt. The assistant tells the chief scientist and, again, wave function collapse occurs. In all four universes the cat is now definitely alive. Somehow all four universes, each of which represents a state of knowledge in the consciousness of a living being about the 'real' 'objective' world, have come into alignment.
In this thought experiment, I have asserted that the collapse of a particular wave function occurs not once but multiple times, once for every conscious individual observing or learning about the state of the particular system of interest. This runs completely counter to every established theory of quantum physics I know. According to most physicists, who are not only rational but possessed of 'sound common sense', wave function collapse only ever occurs once. The state of the cat passes once, permanently, from the unknown into the known. This common-sense tenet overlooks the fact that knowledge can only exist in the mind of a knower and that there is more than one knower in the world. Yet physicists continue to ignore this subjectivity. In the previous post, I briefly mentioned that the popular theory of wave function collapse today is 'decoherence' – decoherence is an attempt to ground wave function collapse in objective reality rather than in subjective perception. Decoherence theories propose that wave function collapse occurs when the microscopic system of interest interacts with its environment, interacts with macroscopic systems such as the apparatus used to measure the properties of the microscopic system. I lack the mathematical education to fully elucidate decoherence theories but the difference, in a nutshell, between my theory and decoherence is that decoherence theories propose that wave function collapse occurs when a system interacts with other physical systems, whereas I am proposing that wave function collapse occurs when a system interacts with a conscious mind. Although I lack the physics training to present a mathematical proof, I don't need one. If probability is of its nature subjective, it makes sense to suppose that wave function collapse is also subjective.
I want to draw attention to a curious feature of the examples I have given. With respect to the 'pack of cards' thought experiment, although three of the four observers are initially in doubt as to whether the Queen of Hearts is on top, when the card is flipped all four agree that it is. With respect to the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, although three of the four sentient beings involved are initially in doubt about whether the cat is alive or dead, all eventually agree that the cat is alive. This is not intuitively obvious. If every person inhabits a different universe, I might believe Elvis is dead and you might believe he is alive, and we might both be right. If everything is subjective, then there is no such thing as objective truth. This line of thought leads to postmodernism, to the conclusion that all truth is relative. It could also lead to the idea that truth is a matter of consensus and that there is nothing outside 'consensus reality', what some philosophers have termed 'intersubjectivity'. The alternative to the idea that reality is in this radical sense fragmentary, subjective, is the idea that there are 'hidden variables' at work, an idea I discussed in the previous post. Einstein himself believed in a 'hidden variable' theory of quantum physics. In the previous post I suggested that such hidden variable theories may be eternally beyond the grasp of rational science; the hidden variables at play might be supernatural. Perhaps the only viable alternative to postmodernism is some form of mysticism.
The question I am really asking in this post is much older than quantum physics. Since the ancient Greeks people have posed the problem, "If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is around, does it make a sound?" The postmodern answer is simply, "No". Reality only exists in the minds of knowers. The hidden variable answer is, "Yes" – but only perhaps because a transcendental knower exists who knows everything. This is of course a mystical answer but sometimes seems to me the only answer.
I hope this post is clear enough; I fear that my writing style today is inadequate to the ideas that I am trying to express. If it is still unclear, read this post and the previous one again and maybe it will become clearer. I hope so, anyway,
The heart of my argument is the justifiable supposition that any estimate of probability is subjective rather than objective. An estimate of probability exists in the mind of a knower rather than being a fact about reality existing in the outside world. In the previous essay, I discussed the example of a shuffled pack of cards and I want to return to this example and look at it from a different perspective. Suppose we have a pack of cards and in the same room four people who have different degrees of knowledge about the sequence of cards in the pack. The question asked of them is "What is the probability of drawing the Queen of Hearts from the top of the pack?" Person A knows only that the pack is an ordinary pack minus jokers; he or she estimates the probability of drawing a Queen of Hearts as being 1/54. Person B knows more; he or she knows that the top twenty-six cards are all red. Consequently, Person B estimates the probability as being 1/26. Person C knows that the top thirteen cards are all hearts and consequently estimates the probability as being 1/13. Person D, with god-like omniscience, knows the precise order of cards in the pack and knows for sure that the top card is the Queen of Hearts. Consequently, he or she estimates the probability as being a certainty, 100%.
Which of the four is correct? It seems that the four individuals are increasingly more accurate, that the first is least accurate and the last most accurate. If we assume the Law of the Excluded Middle to be right (the axiom that propositions must either be true or false), it seems that Person D's estimate is true and that Person A's estimate must be false. More charitably, however, we could say that Person A's estimate is the best guess he or she can make given the information available to him or her. Although they are making increasingly accurate guesses, Persons A through C cannot be said to be making true statements. Only Person D is in a position to make a true statement regarding the card because he or she is omniscient– and of course it is worth noting that his or her estimate is no longer really an estimate of probability, but rather of certainty. If a person is omniscient, he or she knows for sure whether future events or outcomes will occur or not; it is no longer an issue of probability. From a traditional logical perspective, then, any proposition stating the probability of a future event, a probability given as something other than one or zero, is either false or meaningless. Is the future predetermined or not? Interestingly, David Foster Wallace grappled with the same problem when he was a student, the problem of Fate, although he approached it from a different angle. (Read Wallace's book Fate, Time, and Language for his thoughts.) Wallace weighed in in favour of free will and opposed the notion of Fate, but I have argued in the past the opposite, that Fate does in fact exist and that free will doesn't.
When quantum physics was first developed in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the wave-particle duality of light and matter was first proposed, no-one had any theory at first to make sense of this duality. In 1928, Max Born made a radical suggestion: that reality is indeterminate and that the equations of quantum physics can be construed as assigning probabilities to events and quantities. The probabilistic interpretation of quantum physics has ever since been central to most accepted views of quantum physics – although de Broglie, Einstein and later Bohm challenged it. The Schrodinger Equation and Dirac equation provide us with possibilities about the energies, momenta ,and positions of particles rather than certainties because reality itself is, in a sense, uncertain. It is precisely this position that I wish to critique. The fatal mistake I think quantum physicists made then and have continued to make ever since is that they have misunderstood the nature of probability. The physicists have treated uncertainty as being an objective fact about the universe – when in fact uncertainty is subjective, is a quality of a knowing mind when confronted with the universe. And yet, with only few exceptions, physicists have continued to cling to the idea that quantum physics presents an objective picture of reality, that uncertainty is objective rather than subjective.
In the previous post, I described the Schrodinger's Cat paradox and will do so again now as an aid in presenting my counter-theory. The paradox is beautiful, profound, and important. Schrodinger imagines the following situation. A cat is put in a sealed box with a piece of uranium that has a 50% chance of decaying over a certain period. If the uranium decays, a gun goes off, killing the cat. Schrodinger argues that, according to standard interpretations of quantum physics, the cat is described by a superposition of two states: the poor creature is both alive and dead at the same time. It is only when the scientist opens the box and observes the cat that one state is confirmed. This moment, this observation when the box is opened, brings about something known as 'wave function collapse'. Schrodinger's intention in posing this problem was to show the deficiencies of the standard probabilistic interpretations, to show what happens when the ideas of quantum physics, which are normally applied only to microscopic systems, are applied to macroscopic situations. He sought to show that the orthodox interpretation of quantum physics must be false if it yields such an absurd conclusion. However radical advancements in Chaos Theory have shown that microscopic events can have macroscopic effects, ("A butterfly flapping its wings in South America can cause a hurricane in Europe") and so the objection that quantum physics is inapplicable to macroscopic systems can be challenged.
I would like to develop the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment in the following way. Suppose the experiment takes place under the guidance of three scientists – a chief scientist, an assistant, and an assistant to the assistant. Prior to opening the box we have not one but four universes – the universe of the cat, and three universes each of which belongs to one of the scientists. In the first universe, let us suppose that the cat is definitely alive. In the other three, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. The assistant to the assistant opens the box and checks on the condition of the cat. Wave function collapse occurs – in his universe the cat is now definitely alive. We now have two universes in which the cat is definitely alive and two universes in which the cat is in a superposition of both states. The assistant to the assistant tells the assistant. Again wave function collapse occurs. We now have three universes in which the cat is definitely alive and one in which its vitality is still in doubt. The assistant tells the chief scientist and, again, wave function collapse occurs. In all four universes the cat is now definitely alive. Somehow all four universes, each of which represents a state of knowledge in the consciousness of a living being about the 'real' 'objective' world, have come into alignment.
In this thought experiment, I have asserted that the collapse of a particular wave function occurs not once but multiple times, once for every conscious individual observing or learning about the state of the particular system of interest. This runs completely counter to every established theory of quantum physics I know. According to most physicists, who are not only rational but possessed of 'sound common sense', wave function collapse only ever occurs once. The state of the cat passes once, permanently, from the unknown into the known. This common-sense tenet overlooks the fact that knowledge can only exist in the mind of a knower and that there is more than one knower in the world. Yet physicists continue to ignore this subjectivity. In the previous post, I briefly mentioned that the popular theory of wave function collapse today is 'decoherence' – decoherence is an attempt to ground wave function collapse in objective reality rather than in subjective perception. Decoherence theories propose that wave function collapse occurs when the microscopic system of interest interacts with its environment, interacts with macroscopic systems such as the apparatus used to measure the properties of the microscopic system. I lack the mathematical education to fully elucidate decoherence theories but the difference, in a nutshell, between my theory and decoherence is that decoherence theories propose that wave function collapse occurs when a system interacts with other physical systems, whereas I am proposing that wave function collapse occurs when a system interacts with a conscious mind. Although I lack the physics training to present a mathematical proof, I don't need one. If probability is of its nature subjective, it makes sense to suppose that wave function collapse is also subjective.
I want to draw attention to a curious feature of the examples I have given. With respect to the 'pack of cards' thought experiment, although three of the four observers are initially in doubt as to whether the Queen of Hearts is on top, when the card is flipped all four agree that it is. With respect to the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, although three of the four sentient beings involved are initially in doubt about whether the cat is alive or dead, all eventually agree that the cat is alive. This is not intuitively obvious. If every person inhabits a different universe, I might believe Elvis is dead and you might believe he is alive, and we might both be right. If everything is subjective, then there is no such thing as objective truth. This line of thought leads to postmodernism, to the conclusion that all truth is relative. It could also lead to the idea that truth is a matter of consensus and that there is nothing outside 'consensus reality', what some philosophers have termed 'intersubjectivity'. The alternative to the idea that reality is in this radical sense fragmentary, subjective, is the idea that there are 'hidden variables' at work, an idea I discussed in the previous post. Einstein himself believed in a 'hidden variable' theory of quantum physics. In the previous post I suggested that such hidden variable theories may be eternally beyond the grasp of rational science; the hidden variables at play might be supernatural. Perhaps the only viable alternative to postmodernism is some form of mysticism.
The question I am really asking in this post is much older than quantum physics. Since the ancient Greeks people have posed the problem, "If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is around, does it make a sound?" The postmodern answer is simply, "No". Reality only exists in the minds of knowers. The hidden variable answer is, "Yes" – but only perhaps because a transcendental knower exists who knows everything. This is of course a mystical answer but sometimes seems to me the only answer.
I hope this post is clear enough; I fear that my writing style today is inadequate to the ideas that I am trying to express. If it is still unclear, read this post and the previous one again and maybe it will become clearer. I hope so, anyway,
Sunday, 16 September 2018
Probability and Schrodinger's Cat
What is probability? At school we learn a little about chance – we learn for instance that the possibility of rolling a 2 on a fair die is one chance in six. What we don't learn is the deeper meaning of probability, that it is a judgement or estimate that emerges, rationally or semi-rationally, from a person's knowledge and ignorance of a situation or system, that it is subjective rather than objective. This perspective is generally known as Bayesian probability. In tonight's post, I want to talk a little about this view of probability, and then about quantum physics. I want then to venture into more flakey territory, to suggest a way the supernatural can interact with the natural world. Tonight's post follows on from another post I wrote a couple of years ago called "Free Will and Supernatural Causation".
Suppose you have on the table in front of you a shuffled deck of cards face down. You reach over and turn the top card over. The top card may or may not be the Queen of Hearts but you have no idea if it is or not until you flip the card. All you know before you flip it is that the Queen of Hearts occurs once and once only in the pack. Prior to turning it over you can make an estimate of the probability the card will the Queen of Hearts; assuming that there are no jokers in the pack, the probability is one chance in fifty-two. This is a reasonable estimate given your limited knowledge of the situation or system. Suppose however you know more, know that the top half of the pack is all red cards. In this case, you can revise the possibility – it is now one chance in twenty-six. Suppose you know that the top thirteen cards are all hearts. You can again revise the probability – it is now one chance in thirteen. Suppose you know that the top two cards are the Queen of Hearts and the Ace of Spades – now the most rational estimate of the chance of picking your wanted card immediately is just one in two. Suppose you know, for sure, that the Ace is on top. In this case the chance of picking the Queen of Hearts is simply zero. If you know however, for sure, that the Queen of Hearts is on top, the chance of flipping it is a certainty, unity, 100%. The more knowledge you have of the order of cards in the pack, the 'better' you can estimate the probability of turning over that one particular card.
We can consider the relationship of knowledge and ignorance, on the one hand, to probability on the other, by considering another hypothetical scenario. Suppose you buy a Lotto ticket every week, hoping to become an instant millionaire. A friend, condescendingly, seeks to dampen your enthusiasm by saying, "You know, you're more like to get killed in a car accident tomorrow than win Lotto first division." In a sense, your friend is telling the truth – statistically, some number of New Zealanders are killed on the roads every day but it is not every week that a New Zealander wins first division in Lotto. But it is only true in a limited sense. Your friend's estimate of the relative probabilities is grounded on the idea that New Zealanders are all the same, all indistinguishable, and does not take into account the specifics of your particular situation. Suppose that you bought a hundred lotto tickets a couple of days ago but have no intention of leaving your third floor apartment tomorrow, perhaps because you've suffered a broken leg. Given this additional information, your friends statement must be regarded as false; you do indeed have more chance of winning Lotto than being killed in a car accident. What this example shows among other things is that the fundamental philosophic axiom that statements must either be true or false runs into difficulties when the statements concern probabilities, because any estimate of probability is a conjecture based on limited information which can be revised as more information comes to light.
There is an old argument in philosophy, related to the arguments around the existence or non-existence of free will, that if the universe is deterministic and evolves according to deterministic laws, and if one possesses perfect knowledge of a particular system, one should be able to predict perfectly its future developments. Future events will all have a probability of either 1 or 0. In a deterministic universe, it only makes sense to make an estimate of probability if we only have limited knowledge, are partly ignorant. If we know everything about the present state of a system, we would know everything about its future. An evaluation of probability requires some ignorance; one must lack some information. It would be nice to say that the more knowledge we have of a situation or system, the closer our estimate of a future event's probability comes to either zero or one, but as the examples above demonstrate, the relationship between knowledge and certainty is not simple and very far from linear.
Of course, as I discussed in the other post, physicists today believe in fact that we do not live in a deterministic universe, that the universe is in key respects underdetermined. This has been for close to a hundred years the dominant position with respect to interpretations of quantum physics. The idea of probability is central to all quantum physics, the idea that we cannot know facts for sure when dealing with particles, but only possibilities. At this point, I want to bring up Schrodinger's cat, a thought experiment readers may be familiar with. It's interesting. Just in case, I'll recapitulate its basic ideas.
In 1935, Schrodinger presented the following thought experiment, an experiment in which a cat is put in a box with a piece of uranium that has a fifty-fifty chance of decaying during the period the cat is ensconced within the box. If it decays, a gun will go off, killing the cat. Schrondinger argued that, until the box is opened and the scientist looks inside, the two states "Cat-alive" and "Cat-dead" both exist simultaneously. The cat is alive and dead at the same time. However, when the scientist opens the box, 'wave-function collapse' occurs and one particular state wins out over the other. Schrodinger's purpose in posing this thought experiment was not to present a realistic picture of quantum physics but rather to show that the dominant interpretations of quantum physics current in his day must be wrong if they yielded such an absurd result as a consequence. However, physicists since have run with it – one interpretation of quantum physics that readers might have heard is the idea of a multiverse, that whenever a system can go in more than one direction multiple universes branch off, each of them enacting a different possibility. In this case, when the scientist opens the box, an even number of universes branch off, half of them expressing the 'cat-alive' possibility and the other half the 'cat-dead' possibility. These different universes don't subsequently interact. More recently, the popular theory among physicists to deal with the 'measurement problem', the problem of wave-function collapse, is known as decoherence, a theory I don't fully comprehend but which I understand to be only a partial solution to this problem.
Although I am not a professional physicist, I have thought about this problem for many years now, and have for a long time believed that there is simple route out of the mess. Many quantum physicists believe indeterminacy to be a feature of the universe. But perhaps it is simply a feature of what we can know about the universe. The Hesienberg uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know simultaneously the precise position and momentum of a particle but this does not necessarily mean that the particle lacks a precise position and momentum. Rather it may be that it is impossible for any human being to know it. The Schrodinger and Dirac equations do not describe reality, they describe what can be known about reality, set limits on that knowledge. Let's return to the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment for a bit to illustrate this idea. Surely, even if the scientist doesn't know if the cat is dead or alive, the cat itself must know? It seems we have two universes, not in the multiverse sense, but in the sense that there is universe known to the cat, and a universe known to the scientist. In the first universe the cat is either alive or dead; it is only in the scientist's universe that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Suppose the scientist deputises an assistant to open the box; suppose that the assistant finds the cat alive. We now have three universes: the cat's universe, in which it is definitely alive, the assistant's universe, in which the cat is definitely alive, and the scientist's universe, in which the cat is dead and alive at the same time – until the assistant informs the chief scientists of its condition. There is a different universe for every observing consciousness; the equations only describe what can be known by any particular individual or group, rather than revealing the inner truth of reality.
In proposing this interpretation of quantum physics, that the equations describe what can be known rather than all of what is out there, I am simply bringing the notion of probability back to its roots. Any estimate is kind of semi-rational guess based on limited information, on knowledge and ignorance, is at heart subjective. Perhaps quantum physics sets limits not only on what we know, but what it is possible to know.
When Schrodinger posed his thought experiment, he did so in order to draw attention to the absurdities of contemporary interpretations of quantum. Schrodinger in fact believed that the universe was indeed deterministic and that the current theory was incomplete. At the time, he believed in what is called a hidden-variable theory. Albert Einstein himself also believed in a hidden-variable theory, saying in a letter once, "I am convinced that God does not play dice!" In 1932, the genius mathematician John von Neumann presented a proof that no hidden variable theory could account for quantum mechanics, that no hidden variable theory could be true. Today, however, largely because of the work of John Bell in the 'sixties, we know that hidden variable theories are indeed possible so long as they are non-local, so long as they allow information to be transmitted from one system to another faster than the speed of light (contrary to the Special Theory of Relativity). So Einstein gets his hidden-variable theory but at the price of finding it irreconcilable with his Special Theory of Relativity.
I myself believe in a hidden variable theory and would now like to set out my own opinion. The universe is deterministic. Therefore we simply must accept some kind of hidden-variable theory. This theory, as Bell showed, must be non-local – meaning that whether on not the cat survives its internment in the box may well depend on stuff transpiring on the other side of the planet or on the other side of the galaxy. Aside from this non-locality, it is impossible to know the details of these hidden variables. When such hidden-variable theories were first proposed by people like de Broglie back in the 'thirties, it was assumed that even if science lacked the capacity to explore and delineate such hidden variable theories at the time, in the future science would be capable of doing so. I am not so sure. Perhaps the Schrondinger and Dirac equations set fixed limits on what humans can know scientifically. Perhaps knowledge of this core aspect of reality is only available through revelation, through mystical experience.
It is possible, arguably, that the hidden variables in any hidden variable theory are the actions of a supernatural entity or entities, perhaps God (if we suppose only one such supernatural agent), perhaps an array of spirits and ghosts who interact with matter via the grey area of quantum indeterminacy. The old adage has it that "God moves in mysterious ways" and perhaps human lives and human civilisation is guided by higher beings. We cannot prove the existence of the supernatural – this is why Kierkegaard speaks of the "leap of faith". The knowledge of reality provided by science is inevitably circumscribed and perhaps we need to look outside science for answers. The supernatural lies outside the purview of reason. Perhaps, if Schrodinger's cat survives its captivity, it's because a guardian angel is looking our for it and ensuring the uranium doesn't decay. And if it gets killed... well, perhaps there is a reason for that too. If estimates of probability arise from ignorance and quantum physics draws a line beyond which science cannot go, perhaps we must look to sources of knowledge outside the scientific method. I know I sound flakey suggesting this but no-one can prove me wrong.
Suppose you have on the table in front of you a shuffled deck of cards face down. You reach over and turn the top card over. The top card may or may not be the Queen of Hearts but you have no idea if it is or not until you flip the card. All you know before you flip it is that the Queen of Hearts occurs once and once only in the pack. Prior to turning it over you can make an estimate of the probability the card will the Queen of Hearts; assuming that there are no jokers in the pack, the probability is one chance in fifty-two. This is a reasonable estimate given your limited knowledge of the situation or system. Suppose however you know more, know that the top half of the pack is all red cards. In this case, you can revise the possibility – it is now one chance in twenty-six. Suppose you know that the top thirteen cards are all hearts. You can again revise the probability – it is now one chance in thirteen. Suppose you know that the top two cards are the Queen of Hearts and the Ace of Spades – now the most rational estimate of the chance of picking your wanted card immediately is just one in two. Suppose you know, for sure, that the Ace is on top. In this case the chance of picking the Queen of Hearts is simply zero. If you know however, for sure, that the Queen of Hearts is on top, the chance of flipping it is a certainty, unity, 100%. The more knowledge you have of the order of cards in the pack, the 'better' you can estimate the probability of turning over that one particular card.
We can consider the relationship of knowledge and ignorance, on the one hand, to probability on the other, by considering another hypothetical scenario. Suppose you buy a Lotto ticket every week, hoping to become an instant millionaire. A friend, condescendingly, seeks to dampen your enthusiasm by saying, "You know, you're more like to get killed in a car accident tomorrow than win Lotto first division." In a sense, your friend is telling the truth – statistically, some number of New Zealanders are killed on the roads every day but it is not every week that a New Zealander wins first division in Lotto. But it is only true in a limited sense. Your friend's estimate of the relative probabilities is grounded on the idea that New Zealanders are all the same, all indistinguishable, and does not take into account the specifics of your particular situation. Suppose that you bought a hundred lotto tickets a couple of days ago but have no intention of leaving your third floor apartment tomorrow, perhaps because you've suffered a broken leg. Given this additional information, your friends statement must be regarded as false; you do indeed have more chance of winning Lotto than being killed in a car accident. What this example shows among other things is that the fundamental philosophic axiom that statements must either be true or false runs into difficulties when the statements concern probabilities, because any estimate of probability is a conjecture based on limited information which can be revised as more information comes to light.
There is an old argument in philosophy, related to the arguments around the existence or non-existence of free will, that if the universe is deterministic and evolves according to deterministic laws, and if one possesses perfect knowledge of a particular system, one should be able to predict perfectly its future developments. Future events will all have a probability of either 1 or 0. In a deterministic universe, it only makes sense to make an estimate of probability if we only have limited knowledge, are partly ignorant. If we know everything about the present state of a system, we would know everything about its future. An evaluation of probability requires some ignorance; one must lack some information. It would be nice to say that the more knowledge we have of a situation or system, the closer our estimate of a future event's probability comes to either zero or one, but as the examples above demonstrate, the relationship between knowledge and certainty is not simple and very far from linear.
Of course, as I discussed in the other post, physicists today believe in fact that we do not live in a deterministic universe, that the universe is in key respects underdetermined. This has been for close to a hundred years the dominant position with respect to interpretations of quantum physics. The idea of probability is central to all quantum physics, the idea that we cannot know facts for sure when dealing with particles, but only possibilities. At this point, I want to bring up Schrodinger's cat, a thought experiment readers may be familiar with. It's interesting. Just in case, I'll recapitulate its basic ideas.
In 1935, Schrodinger presented the following thought experiment, an experiment in which a cat is put in a box with a piece of uranium that has a fifty-fifty chance of decaying during the period the cat is ensconced within the box. If it decays, a gun will go off, killing the cat. Schrondinger argued that, until the box is opened and the scientist looks inside, the two states "Cat-alive" and "Cat-dead" both exist simultaneously. The cat is alive and dead at the same time. However, when the scientist opens the box, 'wave-function collapse' occurs and one particular state wins out over the other. Schrodinger's purpose in posing this thought experiment was not to present a realistic picture of quantum physics but rather to show that the dominant interpretations of quantum physics current in his day must be wrong if they yielded such an absurd result as a consequence. However, physicists since have run with it – one interpretation of quantum physics that readers might have heard is the idea of a multiverse, that whenever a system can go in more than one direction multiple universes branch off, each of them enacting a different possibility. In this case, when the scientist opens the box, an even number of universes branch off, half of them expressing the 'cat-alive' possibility and the other half the 'cat-dead' possibility. These different universes don't subsequently interact. More recently, the popular theory among physicists to deal with the 'measurement problem', the problem of wave-function collapse, is known as decoherence, a theory I don't fully comprehend but which I understand to be only a partial solution to this problem.
Although I am not a professional physicist, I have thought about this problem for many years now, and have for a long time believed that there is simple route out of the mess. Many quantum physicists believe indeterminacy to be a feature of the universe. But perhaps it is simply a feature of what we can know about the universe. The Hesienberg uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know simultaneously the precise position and momentum of a particle but this does not necessarily mean that the particle lacks a precise position and momentum. Rather it may be that it is impossible for any human being to know it. The Schrodinger and Dirac equations do not describe reality, they describe what can be known about reality, set limits on that knowledge. Let's return to the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment for a bit to illustrate this idea. Surely, even if the scientist doesn't know if the cat is dead or alive, the cat itself must know? It seems we have two universes, not in the multiverse sense, but in the sense that there is universe known to the cat, and a universe known to the scientist. In the first universe the cat is either alive or dead; it is only in the scientist's universe that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Suppose the scientist deputises an assistant to open the box; suppose that the assistant finds the cat alive. We now have three universes: the cat's universe, in which it is definitely alive, the assistant's universe, in which the cat is definitely alive, and the scientist's universe, in which the cat is dead and alive at the same time – until the assistant informs the chief scientists of its condition. There is a different universe for every observing consciousness; the equations only describe what can be known by any particular individual or group, rather than revealing the inner truth of reality.
In proposing this interpretation of quantum physics, that the equations describe what can be known rather than all of what is out there, I am simply bringing the notion of probability back to its roots. Any estimate is kind of semi-rational guess based on limited information, on knowledge and ignorance, is at heart subjective. Perhaps quantum physics sets limits not only on what we know, but what it is possible to know.
When Schrodinger posed his thought experiment, he did so in order to draw attention to the absurdities of contemporary interpretations of quantum. Schrodinger in fact believed that the universe was indeed deterministic and that the current theory was incomplete. At the time, he believed in what is called a hidden-variable theory. Albert Einstein himself also believed in a hidden-variable theory, saying in a letter once, "I am convinced that God does not play dice!" In 1932, the genius mathematician John von Neumann presented a proof that no hidden variable theory could account for quantum mechanics, that no hidden variable theory could be true. Today, however, largely because of the work of John Bell in the 'sixties, we know that hidden variable theories are indeed possible so long as they are non-local, so long as they allow information to be transmitted from one system to another faster than the speed of light (contrary to the Special Theory of Relativity). So Einstein gets his hidden-variable theory but at the price of finding it irreconcilable with his Special Theory of Relativity.
I myself believe in a hidden variable theory and would now like to set out my own opinion. The universe is deterministic. Therefore we simply must accept some kind of hidden-variable theory. This theory, as Bell showed, must be non-local – meaning that whether on not the cat survives its internment in the box may well depend on stuff transpiring on the other side of the planet or on the other side of the galaxy. Aside from this non-locality, it is impossible to know the details of these hidden variables. When such hidden-variable theories were first proposed by people like de Broglie back in the 'thirties, it was assumed that even if science lacked the capacity to explore and delineate such hidden variable theories at the time, in the future science would be capable of doing so. I am not so sure. Perhaps the Schrondinger and Dirac equations set fixed limits on what humans can know scientifically. Perhaps knowledge of this core aspect of reality is only available through revelation, through mystical experience.
It is possible, arguably, that the hidden variables in any hidden variable theory are the actions of a supernatural entity or entities, perhaps God (if we suppose only one such supernatural agent), perhaps an array of spirits and ghosts who interact with matter via the grey area of quantum indeterminacy. The old adage has it that "God moves in mysterious ways" and perhaps human lives and human civilisation is guided by higher beings. We cannot prove the existence of the supernatural – this is why Kierkegaard speaks of the "leap of faith". The knowledge of reality provided by science is inevitably circumscribed and perhaps we need to look outside science for answers. The supernatural lies outside the purview of reason. Perhaps, if Schrodinger's cat survives its captivity, it's because a guardian angel is looking our for it and ensuring the uranium doesn't decay. And if it gets killed... well, perhaps there is a reason for that too. If estimates of probability arise from ignorance and quantum physics draws a line beyond which science cannot go, perhaps we must look to sources of knowledge outside the scientific method. I know I sound flakey suggesting this but no-one can prove me wrong.
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