Quantum Mysteries
On Space/Time, Black Holes, & Consciousness
Which of these, if any, is “real”?
Update (10/6/22): At the time Shadowgnosis (Dan Lee) and I were enjoying our late night ramblings reproduced in this piece (a stunning coincidence in timing, IMHO), the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three researchers: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. This article helps us think about the kinds of choices one must make when one tries to ask what quantum mechanics tells us about reality.
We’ve decided that there is no such thing as “reality,” which puts us in agreement with the Nobel Prize winners, who have apparently retained their senses of humor about not being able to understand a single bit of any of it.
Whenever Shadowgnosis and I get into a late night email discussion, sober or not sober, something weird happens. Apparently, each of us has a brain like the inside of a gas station toilet bowl (although flushed with pride), and occasionally we sprinkle a little Comet on a brush and scrub each other out.
What rises to the surface is seldom worth revealing, but in this case the flotation continued over a few days. We’re not sure whether we solved the most-explored mysteries of quantum physics and the Unified Field Theory, or if we just need to flush one more time.
Black Holes: What’s inside and how can we find out?
Here’s what started the whole thing — “Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know” — streaming on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81343342.
There seems to be a nagging question among astrophysists about the contents of a black hole, and whether we can ever know the answer. To physicists, it’s about “information and data,” and can the guts of a black hole ever be “reassembled” to reveal what it ate. (Again, with the potty metaphor.)
Reassembled? The example given referenced a book being burned. Could we ever know what information that book contained after burning it? In theory, they argue, yes, it can, if we had a proper microscope and tweezers to recover and reassemble and unscramble and read the bits of ash.
I called bullshit and proceeded to get sucked down into the vortex with Dan.
Shroedinger’s Cat
Adelia: You know the one about the two PhD physicists arguing about Shroedinger’s cat — a pair o’ docs/paradox.
Daniel: Yeah, that darned Cat. It should be a sitcom, animated, “Shroedinger’s Cat”: Is he still alive? Tonight we’ll have a look beneath the metaphor and let the math do the talking, strings of symbols and numbers and signifiers and variants. Stare directly into the monitor and pretend you’re reading subtitles. The math is imprinted and begins to spread like a virus. Eyes meet, and zap. Holographic transfer. The math begins to make connections, having concealed itself where it would not likely be found.
Down the drain we go
Adelia: Daniel, I think they’ve got it all wrong. Physicists are looking at “information” as a physical entity, like in their burning of a book example, where they can reconstruct the words, given fine-enough tweezers and a powerful microscope, from the ashes. Well, maybe that’s possible, but it’s a stupid example.
Information isn’t just physical, i.e., made up of atoms, molecules, tangible stuff. Information is also digital, electronic, and electromagnetic. For example, literally EVERYTHING we know about the cosmos came to us through observing electromagnetic radiation of one form or another. Information also comprises the fleeting motions of molecules, like music, for example. There’s a TON of info in sound and other kinds of vibrations.
Daniel: I thought that was pretty stupid, reconstructing a book from ashes. One has to wonder how much money we give these people who obviously have way too much time on their hands. I’m glad you homed in on that too.
Adelia: Well, if it weren’t for federal funding of basic research, I wouldn’t have a postgraduate education. So I’m not opposed to spending money on thinking about mysterious things, but I do believe that research should have some justification. I can think of NO reason whatsoever why we need to know if black holes have high IQs or are utter morons. Who could possibly give a shit? Every equation about this phenomenon ends up as a singularity. Zero information content, and zero probability of ever knowing anything more about it.
We already know what will happen to us if we dare attempt to approach a black hole. There’s no avoiding being shredded, vaporized, and compressed beyond imagining. What more do we need to know? Jesus. What a fucking waste.
Daniel: :-) I do not believe that I can regain the content of a book from ashes. What we do not know for sure is whether Donald Hoffman may be right, that time/space is a feature. Are you familiar with him?
Listen:
Adelia: No, but I guess I know of him indirectly from his idea, which I also hold:
Conscious Realism is described as a non-physicalist monism which holds that consciousness is the primary reality and the physical world emerges from that. The objective world consists of conscious agents and their experiences. “What exists in the objective world, independent of my perceptions, is a world of conscious agents, not a world of unconscious particles and fields. Those particles and fields are icons in the MUIs [Multimodal User Interface] of conscious agents but are not themselves fundamental denizens of the objective world. Consciousness is fundamental.” — D. Hoffman
It has been shown in physics that the above is “true”… Again, back to Shroedinger’s fucking cat.
But even back to Shroedie’s kitty… it gets deeper. For every probability (or outcome), if there are two possibilities, there will be two outcomes. Because the cat is both dead and alive prior to observation, once observed, both a dead cat and a living cat will manifest, each in separate, but parallel, universes.
Stephen Hawking loved to discuss this, in the context of ‘branes.’ … and the possibility of communications between/among branes. Fascinating.
But here’s the rub, Daniel. From branes, to black holes, to gravity, to time/space continuum, to everyfuckingthing there is, all of it, mathematically speaking, can be derived from f=ma and/or E = mc2.
It’s all math… and therefore abstract, and therefore not real. So, if only consciousness is “real,” WTF are we doing here? and why?
Space/time never made sense to me as the supposed foundation of physical laws. The flaw, to me (and to Hawking, I suspect) was that time only flows in one direction, just like a river always flows downhill because we “believe” in gravity. And therefore, gravity has a “time arrow” built in.
People want to assign a “living entity” (a god?) to “consciousness” but it shouldn’t be a necessary condition. Consciousness merely needs connections to exist, IMHO. Like I was droning on to someone the other day, how our thoughts are just energy, and energy “travels” instantaneously to the farthest reaches of our universe, tells its story, and comes back to close the connection. “Spooky action at a distance.”
It’s a beautiful world. So simple. But don’t get hit by a bus just because you don’t believe it exists.
Oh, and don’t forget to flush.