Using Me!

Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness, Reality and Computation – Part IV

This post follows on from my much earlier musings on Quantum Mechanics, here, here and here.

It does not sit well with me to think that a conscious observer is required for QM to work and therefore for the Universe to exist.

Which of these two would you say has a fundamental existence? The understanding of Mathematics or the concept of Mathematics? I would insist that Mathematics exists regardless of the ability to understand it.

Mathematics can describe any geometry, any equation, any self-consistent ‘thing’. We can create a perfectly valid set of rules that describe a universe that differs from our own. Physics describes the universe we live in – and sometimes a universe we don’t live in – but it only does so through mathematics.

Yet how could you possibly think that these mathematical frameworks only exist when there is a consciousness to observe their operation? Since the early universe clearly did not have any consciousness in it the only way you could believe this would be to create a God. But a god would have to be outside of the Universe to be able to observe the point where time began but being outside the Universe he would be outside the mathematical framework of QCD and therefore unable to interact with it. Occam’s Razor makes a clean cut here. It is far simpler for the Universe not to have to require a conscious observer than it is to create an observer who is outside of the Universe and can observe it without breaking QCD (or indeed to extend QCD into some extra dimension or concept to explain how this can be).

That is to say that “The Universe exists as it is, as we understand it, as anyone understands it, and as anything will ever understand it, regardless of whether we do so correctly or not or indeed whether we or any other conscious being exists to be capable of understanding it”.

And that “Mathematics exists as a framework for describing any possible reality regardless of the existence of any particular reality that it can describe”.

And so, applying this to QM, it would be easy to say that I must therefore believe that one of the Many Worlds interpretations is the choice for me. But that seems so excessively complex as to beggar belief. So what am I to think?

To go back to Schroedinger’s Cat… this thought experiment relies on something very crucial. The box itself is isolated from the rest of the Universe. The inside of the box must be interacting with the outside of the box and thence with the rest of the Universe. So information is flowing out of the box at all times. The wave function must be collapsed at all times! That is, you cannot perform this experiment and so why should it have any relevance to which form of QM might be right or wrong?

Also, just to backtrack for a moment, the requirement for a consciousness makes ‘consciousness’ special. I am a materialist, not a dualist or pluralist, so I do not believe that there is any ‘thing’ that cannot be described by the laws of physics. To me the ’self’, ‘id’, ‘ego’, ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ or whatever you want to call it is nothing more than the complex macroscopic expression of fundamental physics. There is no extra ingredient that makes life alive or the mind ‘mind-ly’. Therefore even if the requirement didn’t make sense to me in a purely logical way I would have to deny it.

So here’s what I believe the correct interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is:

1. I believe that the Wave Function describes the lack of information about a system, not a lack of determinism in the system.
2. I therefore have to believe in a Many Worlds version of the theory. No other interpretations will work, given point 1, with the majority of the features of QM.
3. I can find no other way to explain single photon interference given 1 and 2 other than to agree with Deutsch that it must be caused by interference between universes (see his book The Fabric of Reality).

The strange thing is that is not the conclusion I thought I would come to. But having spent so long researching and thinking about it that’s where I ended up!

Origins of Christianity

I found this wonderful and astonishing website with a timeline of the major events in human history, called MacroHistory and World Report. There are sections on specific regions or time periods but I was just browsing my way through the whole timeline when I found this interesting piece on the origins of Christianity.

25CE : Since 150 BCE, Jews called Essenes have denounced the Jewish majority as apostate and temple worship in Jerusalem as polluted. They describe the majority of Jews as the “sons of darkness” and themselves as “the sons of light.” They live in communes, share, and look forward to Armageddon — God’s day of judgment.

28 CE : Like the Essenes, John the Baptist has seen perversity in Jewish society and has envisioned the coming of an Armageddon that will bring a new Israel under God. But rather than stay separated from others as have the Essenes, John joined various others who traveled about Galilee preaching. John made verbal attacks on the Judah’s king (who is subservient to the Romans), Herod Antipas — the son of Herod the Great. John around this time, give or take a year or two, is imprisoned and executed.

30CE : A young man whose name in Greek is Jesus has created a following of his own, while recognizing there is none greater than his former leader, John the Baptist. This year, give or take a year or two, he goes to Jerusalem for Passover and there creates a disturbance. He is executed — by stoning if convicted of blasphemy and by crucifixion for some other offense.

37CE : Followers of Jesus keep his movement alive. Among these followers, John the Baptist has been relegated to second standing. The followers continued to worship at Jerusalem’s temple, “the House of the Lord.” They call themselves the “The Poor” or “The Saints.” They look forward to Jesus returning and bringing a New Order. Some among them draw attention to themselves by arguing with other Jews. Some are expelled from the city, and one of them, Stephen, is executed.

I had not heard before that Jesus considered John to be his leader and I’m not sold on the evidence that Jesus even existed but given the amazing amount of information on this site that, in my casual browsing, otherwise appears to be correct to the best of my knowledge, I thought it bore pointing out.

Interesting indeed.

Vaccination Immunity Duration

You may have seen in the media that skepchick.org has a campaign to give people boosters to their Pertussis (Whooping Cough) vaccination immunity. At the recent DragonCon free injections were being given out.

Over the past year or two I’ve been doing a lot of research into vaccines and the anti-vax movement. One thing I did not know was how long the immunity you gain from vaccination can last. With a new baby in the family who is just approaching his first vaccinations and the recent re-emergence of Pertussis (particularly in California) I have become concerned whether my immunity is up to scratch and whether I or anyone else my son might come into contact with might even be a carrier of diseases that he could catch.

I had to visit my doctor yesterday so I asked him “Why we don’t have continual boosters throughout our life for Pertussis or Tetanus for example?”

He said that the perceived wisdom here in the UK is that after your childhood course of 5 vaccinations for each condition you are as good as protected for life. Now my doctor is pretty good and quite the skeptic himself. We recently had a good chat about Andrew Wakefield being struck off. So he didn’t state this as fact. He stated it as the NHS’s position.

Since then I’ve been looking for research articles on the duration of vaccination immunity and so far this is the kind of evidence that I’ve found:

Pertussis vaccination immunity wanes in 4-12 years
Natural immunity can last up to 30 years
There are also articles which discuss the need to re-vaccinate the elderly against diseases including Pertussis.

So it seems on the surface at least that the NHS is wrong. If the last vaccination is given in the mid teens then by the age of 30, possibly even by the age of 20, people will have lost their immunity to at least some of the diseases they were vaccinated against. Those diseases may no longer pose a significant threat to their lives but they do still pose a risk to the lives of the young and old they come into contact with.

Now I am thoroughly confused about why we let this risk exist and I draw no firm conclusions at this point as to the level of the risk or the accuracy of the links above in relation to the specific NHS vaccination schedule. More research needs to be done but my opinion is clearly moving towards there being a real risk as a result of this vaccination policy.

Change in online advertising

Just announced, the Advertising Standards Authority will now have online advertising in its scope of authority. As I have pointed out before any complaints about adverts on a company’s own website were, until now, under the authority of the Trading Standards Authority.

This change makes a lot of sense and will mean my future complaints about woo and bullshit will be easier to initiate.

Full story at the BBC.

Update:

I just spoke to the ASA and found that the change to their remit takes force on 1st March 2011.

The next bracelet phenomenom

Funny conversation at the golf course last night…

Man at front of queue gestures at bracelets on sale at the counter. The packaging says “Embedded Holographic Technology” and “May improve your strength and swing” etc.

Man at front of queue: Do those really work then?

Boy behind counter: Yeah, I wear one all the time.

Me: Yeah, wearing a hologram on your wrist will really make you better at golf.

Boy behind counter: Well I play off 4.

Man at front of queue: [With slight sarcasm] There must be something in it then.

Me: Yeah, Confirmation Bias.

Anyway I looked these things up and the company behind them is EFX. They have websites for many different countries. I stumbled across the US, UK and Hungarian sites in my top few google hits.

I decided to make a new Trading Standards complaint about it. And here’s my complaint sent to Consumer Direct:

Please would you forward this complaint to Kent Trading Standards, as the body responsible for applying the law in this company’s region.

The company detailed in this complaint is selling a range of products for which there exists no evidence to give backing to the claims they make for their ‘Embedded Holographic Technology”. The products are sold by many websites and shops around the country and are no more than snake-oil.

Allowing such blatant rubbish to be pedaled at the expense of those without a basic understanding of medicine and physics is shameful.

The claim on their website follows – ALL this from a mylar ‘holographic’ device???

A side note – their main US website claims that Mylar is a ‘metallic substance’ when in fact it is a polyester (plastic)… they can’t even get THAT right!

—

Q. What is the major benefit of EFX?

A. EFX helps restore natural in harmony to the body.

The effect is believed to stabilize and harmonize the body’s bioelectric current. When the body is in harmony, the muscles relax, cells un-clump, and blood circulation increases, allowing for greater stability, easier movement and pain relief.

EFX energetic power works instantly. The immediate effects experienced are; increase strength, balance, flexibility and range of motion. EFX products have also been reported to help relieve joint and muscle pain, improve blood circulation, reduce swelling, keep muscles conditioned and flexible, alleviate stress, boost endurance, and prevent motion sickness.

I am still waiting to hear back from the Trading Standards Office in Manchester about the ‘minus-ion’ bracelets I complained about previously. They aren’t obliged to contact me unfortunately but the chap I spoke to there did say he would try and call me when he had something to report.

The 4-Chord Song

This has nothing to do with critical thinking or politics et al. except that there is a tiny moment of Tim Minchin in it. However it’s funny, it’s clever and it’s genius.

May I present Axis of Awesome:

This is a bit more on theme for the blog though…What would Jesus Do?

My favourite lyric “He’s a Zombie Wizard…”.

New Site

After a brief hiatus I am back up and running on a new hosting provider. If you are reading the RSS feed hopefully you won’t get a second copy of every old post but if you do, I’m sorry.

The new theme might take a bit of tweaking but I think this is a bit easier to read and less gloomy than the old one.

Anyway, let the posts recommence!

Electoral Reform Addendum

The BBC has published a page on the electoral reforms that I was discussing yesterday. They explain the systems quite well but please please don’t take any notice of the figures they give for the number of seats in the election under the different systems. This is only guesswork as I tried to explain because we have no way of knowing who would choose what second preference or how having a second preference would change tactical- or non-voting.

It’s just typical of recent BBC trends… unattributed articles with not even a mention of assumptions that are made in them.

At least I tried to explain what changes might happen and why!

Electoral Reform (Part 2)

To follow on from my last post. I am left wondering…

In the AV+ system, why does the proportional part of the system only have one fifth of the weight of the AV part which for the most part is just first-past-the-post?

What if instead the House was made up from 50% AV and 50% proportional voting? You’d still have a regional MP but the overall result would be much closer to proportional representation and there would be almost no reason to vote tactically.

In fact if you’re going to go down this road you could turn it on its head and make it 20% AV and 80% proportional – or any other combination more balanced towards the proportional part of the equation.

Politicians defending the current system would probably tell you that as you move down that scale your local MP becomes less and less relevant to the views of the people in their region. And to a large extent they would be correct. But that is the whole problem with the Party system. If every candidate was an independant and the ‘party’ system only existed ephemerally as loose and shifting alliances on individual issues everyone could have a candidate who’s job it was to represent them rather than to represent their party’s views. The only time I ever wrote to my MP I got a response back that said my views were not those of the MP’s party and therefore could not be given any consideration.

Here’s another idea then…

You can keep the party system but each consituency is increased in size by a factor of 20. Each of these new mega-constituencies elects 20 MP’s on effectively the STV system. For each 5% of the vote gained by a party they put one MP in Parliament. After the 5%’s are knocked off the remaining votes generate candidates exactly as in the STV system with secondary votes being distributed.

Every region would have a range of MP’s that in and of themselves would closely resemble the voting in that region. Parliament itself would obviously also be very close to proportional representation. Any party that could attract 5% of the vote in a region would get a seat or seats.

It would genuinely lower the bar to entry to Parliament that prevents the smaller parties from having seats that represent their true popularity.

I hereby name this new system ‘Multi-Candidate per Party Single Transferable Vote System’ – MCPSTVS. That doesn’t roll off the tongue well…

Perhaps… 5PASM – ‘Five Percent And Secondary Mediation’. Henceforth to be known as ‘Spasm’.

Electoral Reform

In the near future the British electoral system may be overhauled. The Liberal Democrats want it as part of the price of their forming a coalition government as I have mentioned before. But what system will be adopted? There seems to be three possibilities.

Single Transferable Vote

- Liberal Democrat preferred system

Alternative Vote

- This was previously mentioned by Gordon Brown as a possible future system

AV+

- Possible compromise

So what are the details of the three systems and how proportional are they? All three of them keep regional representation but they differ significantly in their makeup.

Single Transferable Vote

This system requires a candidate to achieve one more than 1/(N+1) portion of the votes where there are N seats to be won in a constituency. e.g. When one person is to be elected they need one half of the votes plus one. When there are 5 people elected each needs one sixth plus one. Initially all votes are assigned as per the voters first preference. The results are then calculated in a series of rounds. Anyone already past the portion of the vote required is elected. Any surplus votes they had are assigned to the voters’ second preference in proportion to how the second preference was chosen. If no one is elected in a round then the person with the fewest votes is eliminated and all of their votes are assigned to the second preferences.

There is a good example of how this works on this Wikipedia page.

The question is… how many candidates should we choose to elect per constituency?

If we only elect one the system will produce pretty much the same result as first-past-the-post. The largest pool of votes needs a lot less secondary votes to reach the number required, if it’s not over the amount on primary votes alone. On the other hand if we elect three per consituency then in most of England the three main parties will be voted in and they’ll end up with roughly the same number of seats, probably something like 30% each with the rest split to mostly the regional parties, the Irish, Scottish and Welsh interest parties. If we elect more than three then we end up giving minority parties much more influence than their actual primary vote proportion would make fair. The minority parties as they are now would end up between them with at least 25% of the seats even if they only had their current 12% or so of the vote.

The right number, as far as I can see, would be two MP’s per consituency. This would mean there was a meaningful battle between the main three parties, and where a strong candidate stands from the other parties, one of them as well. The regional interest parties would most likely land one of the two available seats in most of their regions, the three main parties ought to land seats in the rest of the UK in proportion to their actual popularity with a few exceptions where strong candidates from the Greens, UKIP or even the likes of the BNP stand.

While I’m mentioning the BNP… on the radio this morning I heard people espousing that a proportional system was wrong because it gave too much power to the extreme parties like them. This is a total failure of logic for two reasons. Firstly you cannot possibly argue that democracy is good, except where it’s too democratic. And secondly because there is no way in the world that one of the major parties would give any power to such a party by forming a coalition with them as one caller was certain they would.

With two MP’s per consituency I believe this system would be a good approximation to proportional representation. The smallest parties would be at a disadvantage but if people learn how to use their two votes effectively over a few elections they could gain a good balance with their actual popularity. The three main parties would gain a number of seats MUCH more in accordance with their votes than they do today.

Alternative Vote

The Alternative Vote system runs exactly the same as the STV system except that it only produces one winner per consituency. It would be a little better than the current system but not by a very long way. Generally speaking I believe it is fair to say that most people’s primary AND secondary votes would be for one of the three main parties – or a main party and a regional interest party. Only where multiple candidates are quite evenly matched and a strong candidate is standing for a minority party and he/she picks up a lot of secondary votes would there be any difference from the current system. There may be some changes in that one might be able to show that one of the three main parties is more or less likely to pick up secondary votes from another of them, e.g. Lib Dem being more likely to pick up Labour secondary votes than the Conservatives are. Indeed one could argue that it seems reasonable that the Lib Dems would pick up more secondary votes from the Conservatives than Labour too. In relatively balanced seats this should tend to introduce more Liberal MP’s which would go some way to redressing their seat numbers relative to their overall votes.

AV+

AV+ or Alternative Vote Plus is being seen as a possible compromise that a Lib/Lab coalition might introduce or a Lib/Con coalition might offer a referendum on as a compromise between the parties’ desires.

Constituencies would vote under the AV system to elect a single member each and then a further 15-20% more MPs are assigned on a purely proportional basis.

Constituencies would have to be made larger so there were the same number of seats overall but if we had the same election voting over again with this system adding a further 20% of seats we would end up with 779 Seats split thusly:

Conservative – 352 Seats – 45% of Seats (-2%) – from 36% of vote
Labour – 296 Seats – 38% of Seats (-2%) – from 29% of vote
Liberal Democrat – 87 Seats – 11% of Seats (+2%) – from 23% of vote
DUP – 9 Seats – 1.1% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
SNP – 8 Seats – 1.1% of Seats (0) – from 1.7% of vote
Sinn Fein – 6 Seats – 0.7% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
Plaid Cymru – 4 Seats – 0.5% of Seats (0) – from 0.6% of vote
Green – 2 Seats – 0.3% of Seats (+0.15%) – from 1% of vote
UKIP – 4 Seats – 0.5% of Seats (+0.5%) – from 3.1% of vote
BNP – 2 Seats – 0.3% of Seats (+0.3%) – from 1.9% of vote

As you can see it’s not significantly fairer than the current system. However people would vote a bit differently. A lot of people either vote tactically or do not vote at all because their preferred candidate has no hope of victory. In this system there would still be a good reason to vote for your preference. I believe everyone except Labour and the Conservative Party would benefit at their expense. I would hazard a guess that perhaps 20 more seats would change hands because of this.