Stephen P. King (stephenk1@home.com)
Tue, 06 Apr 1999 03:37:08 -0400
Dear Hitoshi,
You are correct but I am not explaining myself clearly. I cut
and pasted your post together...
Hitoshi Kitada wrote:
>
> Dear Stephen,
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Hitoshi Kitada <hitoshi@kitada.com>
> To: Hitoshi Kitada <hitoshi@kitada.com>; Stephen P. King <stephenk1@home.com>
> Sent: Monday, April 05, 1999 2:22 PM
> Subject: Re: Prugovecki's time
> >
> > Dear Stephen,
> >
> >I in a sense agree with Prugovecki, in that, at observation, the clocks
> >synchronize among local systems. My assumption that local systems are
> >independent is valid only before doing observation. When one is doing
> >observation, the world is classical for him, and time synchronizes and
> >constructs usual image of the world. Thus if we want to see just the classical
> >world at any time, Prugovecki's description would coincide with mine.
His work is amazing in its scope!
> >I think you seem to have misunderstood this point. The connections appear at
> >the observation. The assumption that local systems metrics are not connected
> >is concerned only with the stage when one is inside the local system, the
> >system local currently for him/her/it.
> >In this sense, subjectivity is important in my formulation. It distinguishes
> >the local system in itself and the local systems among other LSs.
I agree, prior to an observation, an LS is everything and nothing, thus
I think of it as a balloon full of noise. Interestingly, Prugovecki's
use of stochastical exitons is parallel to this idea. I am thinking
farther about how LSs synchronize during the process of an observation.
There is, I believe, an interrogatory sequence that "selects" the
particular clocks that become synchronous.
We must not assume that the act of synchronization between LS clocks
occurs in one indivisible step for all LSs involved. I am sure that
there is at least one LS A clock involved that observes the convergence
in on step, but it is special. I believe it would act as a center of
mass for the system of interacting LSs as seen by another LS B that
observes the entire cluster of LSs as one LS, e.g. it observes a center
of mass that corresponds to A.
Think of how we communicate our ideas with each other. It takes several
back and forth posts to "home in" on the essence. This is even more
obvious when two LSs have different languages. When we find an idea or
sound or object or any concrete entity in common, we use it as a
pivoting point for further communications. It is here that I think that
Wheeler's Surprise 20 questions and my talk of tournaments and
gossiping. I apologize for being so metaphorical... :)
> >I do not think Weyl's idea is crazy. The notion of gauge is a very normal
> >extension of what was known at the age about electromagnetic field and
> >gravitational field. The general gauge fields follow then naturally. I feel
> >the approach recent physics has been taking based on this method is too naive
> >and simple. It is as if there were no other ways of seeing the world. The
> >notion of gauge is just a simple _mathematical and formal_ extension of what
> >the age knew. It is based on an observation of formal similarity between
> >gravitational and electromagnetic fields. But I think there is a crucial
> >difference between them as I have stated many times: Gravitation is classical
> >and electronic forces are quantum mechanical. This is the basis of my thought.
I hope we can spend a little time going over Eddington's review of
Weyl... :) I meant "crazy enough to possibly be true".
> >In addition to this, even in formal similarity between the two, there is a
> >crucial difference between the gravitation and other gauge fields, which has
> >been preventing physicists from quantizing GR.
> >
> >By these points, my opinion is that gravitation and other gauge fields are
> >different at the essential level.
Are you willing to consider the possibility that both gravity and EMF
have both QM and GR aspects? When I speak of electromagnetic fields as
classical I am thinking of the propagation of light rays, the infamous
light cone structures that form the fabric that gravity wraps and
weaves. The emission and absorption of EMF photons and gravitons can be
modeled well as occurring internal to the LS. Gravitons pose a
difficulty be cause one is unaccustomed to separating the "information"
content of a gravitational field from its matter/geometry. It is the
information about the metric, scale, clock and ordering that gravitons
communicate internal to the LS, there is no actual "motion" of the type
that we see of rigid bodies, no, this is very subtle, information is not
matter. Think of how many way there are to describe the same idea, and
how many ways there are of physically communicating a bit string. We can
*not* form a unique and exclusive one to one isomorphism between an
arbitrary bit of information and a particle of matter, we can only
identify mappings between the equivalence classes of each. this is
discussed well by Peter...
I know that this may be a very strange line of thinking and I may just
be very wrong! :) But could we try it out?
> > In this sense, subjectivity is important in my formulation. It distinguishes
> > the local system in itself and the local systems among other LSs.
Yes, Peter and I discussed this for a while. It appears that the
subject-object relation is symmetrical. There is a wonderful thing that
happens when we consider an LS as a subject as a singleton set A and the
other LSs that it is near to as the singleton's complement A^c. If we
think of A^c as a finite number of LSs that can somehow be reduced to a
singleton by some particular observation by A, by symmetry, would we not
expect that A becomes many neighboring yet distinct LSs? As one fuses,
the other fissions, many -> one | one-> many ... Does this make sense?
There exists a mathematical way of saying this but I do not remember it
now. :(
I do think that you and Ben speak to something along these lines in
[Time 185] discussing how consciousness is always unified.
[HK]
> Further, Consciousness of the observer gives the QM nature of the observed
> local system a classical nature as you describe:
[BG]
> In more modern language, what quantum physics tells us is that an event does
> not become <b>definite</b> until someone observes it. An unobserved quantum
> system remains in an uncertain state, a superposition of many different
> possibilities. Observation causes "collapse" into a definite condition, which
> is chosen <b>at random</b> from among the possibilities provided. This
> peculiar but well-established
> empirical fact makes it natural to associate <b>consciousness</b> with
> <b>quantum measurement</b> (Wigner, 1962; London and Bauer, 1983; Goswami,
> 1990).<p>
It is this "becoming definite" that is a computational action. But I
disagree with Ben that [observations are just] "chosen <b>at random</b>
from among the possibilities provided". There is both randomness and
order. Look at the Surprise 20 questions game. The questions and answers
are random but constrained to be logically consistent with all previous
questions and answers. Here we have a chaining of logical inference that
*can not be assumed to exist a priori*. This is at the heart of Pratt
and Peter's thinking.
> In this point, Ben's analysis of subjective consciousness is important for my
> standpoint.
>
> Best wishes,
> Hitoshi
Ben's work is very valuable to this effort! :) I am so happy he has a
common goal with us.
Onward,
Stephen
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