Using Me!

Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness, Reality and Computation – Part V

So in this series of posts I have not yet addressed the word in my title … ‘Computation’.

To cut a long story short, it seems to me that what Quantum Mechanics does is what any computer programmer would do when faced with an enormous amount of information that he could not possibly compute in a sensible timeframe.

Why track every particle in the universe if it only matters where it is when you need to know about it?

Could the interference patterns caused by single particles be the result of approximations in the computational algorithms of the universe?

Put it this way… if the universe was in some way ‘pure’. If it existed arbitrarily, independent of anything else, then why would time and space be quantized? Are Xeno’s paradoxes for real? If time and space were not indivisible then I would claim that Xeno’s paradoxes would NOT be paradoxical IF the universe were ‘pure’ and ‘free’ because a smooth calculation over ANY interval would be possible. The paradoxes ONLY become paradoxical if you have to make the calculations! If nothing needs to do any calculations then yes you CAN integrate from 0 to 1 in a finite time. It is ONLY if something has to work something out that an un-quantized space or time will never complete an integral.

So, in the way that I see it, the Universe really works like an enormous computer. There are a huge number of locations, but they are discrete. One planck volume each. And a huge number of times, but discrete. One planck time each. At each time each volume contains information. Nothing more.

And my idea is testable! I learned this in my degree when simulating the n-body problem.

Take two bodies that are falling towards each other under gravity. As they get closer together they get faster and faster. Any computer program that simulates this over discrete time periods will eventually reach a point where the bodies are really close together and the forces on them are enormous, so the accelerations are enormous and so their new velocities are enormous. After one more time period they have passed each other and are racing away at stupendous speeds. You just violated conservation of energy. So you step back one step and you move forwards by a smaller period of time. Now the forces, accelerations and velocities get even higher. And no matter how small you make your unit of time you always face a point where things break down. Even at the planck scale of time and distance conservation of energy will be violated.

So we have a position where either planck scales are real or they are simply descriptive in terms of quantum uncertainty. You can test by conservation of energy which is the case. It may be beyond our detection abilities at the moment but the test is there. If we could prove that energy is not conserved then we would know that time and space are genuinely discrete and therefore we COULD describe the universe as a set of information which is really just like a computer model. Or we would show that energy is conserved and that therefore the planck scales are simply descriptive of our ability to describe the universe using observation. Indeed a place between unit 0 and unit 1 on the planck scale would exist. In which case quantum theory would appear to break down. In fact Xeno would come back to haunt us. After all if you need to make an infinite number of calculations to move an infinitesimal step forward in time and space you could never get anywhere. After all even the tiniest change in the universe requires the propagation of that change to everywhere else in the universe, allbeit at the speed of light of less. In a smooth scaled universe any change, no matter how small, requires an infinite number of propagations of the changes – as per Xeno.

In a way, if I follow this argument to its logical conculsion I have to ask myself again : Why does a single photon interfere with itself in Young’s Double Slit experiment? If I follow this path then the answer is that it does so because the universe doesn’t know where the photon is and therefore it does pass through both slits and that it is not because of interference with another universe where everything is identical except that the photon went a different way. After all where the bloody hell ARE all these other universes? That’s the hardest question for the multiverse proponents to answer! Myself included!

One answer would be to conclude that the universe itself is a quantum computer but then it would have to exist inside some container which leads to infinite regression.

I’m not happy with any of the answers. How CAN a photon go through both slits? Yet how CAN there be an infinite number of universes (or rather a very very large number representing each possible quantum state)?

I suspect the answer is far more subtle than any of us can realise. I do not want to shed the idea that our universe is mechanistic although including a lack of knowledge that we call the WaveForm, but neither do I wish for a plethora of universes constantly being created.

So it would be so easy just to say the universe is a computer program. But then it’s got to be running somewhere on something and we have to wonder about the rules of the universe in which that computer exists. If that universe was singular and purely mechanistic with not even the concept of a wave-form then where would they come up with that idea from? Indeed without the mechanisms of quantum mechanics what would existence even be like? Everything we know relies on quantum mechanics. Take it away and you are left with a reality that we could not even begin to describe. Could anyone come up with a way to describe a self contained computer that conforms to everything we know? After all… there is such a thing as a wave function that describes the entire universe and if it can be conceptualised (although not solved) inside that universe would it require a larger universe to contain it?

Quantum Mechanics is the most confusing thing human endeavour has EVER come up with.

I believe it was Feynman who said “If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics then you don’t understand Quantum Mechanics.”