From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Sat Sep 5 17:29:16 1998 Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 14:11:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Henry Stapp To: klein@adage.berkeley.edu Subject: Stapp-Klein Dialog (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Dear Stan, I think our dialog has produced important clarifications, and I would like to post the following to q_Mind and Kleinlist. Henry ***************************************** On Tue, 1 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > Henry, I'd really like to understand what you are up to. It sounds > like you might be onto a different interpretation, which would be > interesting indeed! You said: > > > This is sounding like the universe is the Whiteheadian experiences of > the observer. The stuff above the split. I thought knowledge was > after the collapse. How do you put it down by the wavefunction > without becoming a Bohmian. I guess I will have to see it laid out > in terms of bras and kets. > > Stan Dear Stan, Yes, the stuff above the old movable cut is made the basic reality: it is `idealistic' in that sense, though `pragmatic' iscorrect also, in the sense that the pragmatic Copenhagen interpretation does take our experiences to be fundamental, and takes the formalism to be merely a practical tool for computing connections between experiences. So in that sense the cut is moved IN. But also the cut is moved OUT, because the entire physical universe is represented via the quantum formalism, not just some smaller "observed system". The theory is not Bohmian: no classical world-line is singled out, and I retain the central Copenhagen docrine that the quantum state represents knowledge, and that each new experience e entails a reduction S-->S_e = (P_e S P_e). Bohm has no such reduction. The Heisenberg idea of transition from possible to actual is retained: the state S represents knowledge, but also specifies the potentialities for the next experience. A physical system, within the physical universe specified by state S, has, under certain conditions, the capacity to pose a quantum question. This question is then answered by nature in a manner statisically in accord with the quantum probability rule: Prob(e) = Tr S_e/Tr S. This seems to me to be far and away the most coherent and "natural" interpretation of quantum theory. What do you think? Henry On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > If there are people in China and alpha-Centauri that are > having experiences at lots of random times then couldn't they produce > inappropriate collapses in a double slit expt that I'm doing. I don't > understand how the universal time works. It seems to me the collapse > has to be only in my brain, and must exclude that fellow in China. > Stan Your experiences are associated with P_e that act only on the degrees of freedom associated with your body/brain. But the state of the universe S is changed to (P_e S P_e) Henry On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > I didn't understand your response. What does it mean for the person in > China to be making a measurement at time T, but that measurement not > extending to my double slit experiment. How do we define measurement in > that case? Do we have to look at what all the infrared photons are doing? > I thought that when a measurement is made anywhere then the wavefunction > of the universe collapses. That might be needed because I might have > gotten entangled with the fellow in china. So a measurement in China might > undo my double slit interference pattern. > > Stan I guess we are not communicating well. You are absolutely right that the transformation S-->(P_e S P_e), where P_e is a projection operator that acts on degrees of freedom associated with the brain of the observer in China [and that hence commutes with the similar projection operator P_f associated with your brain here in Berkeley] will, to the extent that the state S of the universe has the appropriate entangement, alter the expectation value of Tr P_f S P-F/Tr S, just as in the EPR case. Henry On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > > I need to think more about how the projection operator P_e works. > The way I think about the P_e is first to recognize that the dynamics in the world as it exists [i.e., as represented by the pretty-well collapsed psi] will allow the world to be separated pretty well onto some macroscopic systems such as individual human beings that are pretty well separated from each other, plus a lot of intervening stuff. So to a "good" approximation one can define degrees of freedom associated with the various observers. I am in fact thinking in particular about the degrees of freedom associated with the coherent part of EM field associated with the brains of different observers, and even more specifically with features that persist--as oscillating modes that persist over intervals lasting long enough to be associated with an experience ---and I am thinking of projection operators that act on these modes to pull out a coherent state of the EM field, which will automatically, of course, be represented by a classical EM field analogous to the EM field that would be associated with the brain in a classical model. One can conceive of the quantum brain, for this purpose, as essentially a superposition of classical brains, each member of the superposition being represented by a classical EM field, which pretty much summarizes what we can measure about the brain. Only the components with wave lengths around cell-size to brain-size probably will be pertinent to P_e. So I have a very reduced and reasonably managable model for the mind/brain aspect of the brain, closely connected to what many experimenters are now measuring. > I also think I was confused in how I was interpreting your earlier statement > about bringing brain into the physical world with mind. What I said was that bringing the brain into what was represented by the quantum state---recall that Copenhagen leaves the brain out---brings in mind, simply because mind is represented in the theory by aspects of the brain. > I was assuming that > by physical world you were meaning the potentia, By the physical world I mean the physicist's representation in terms of an operator S in Hilbert space. The reality that this state represents (according to this theory) is knowledge, but this state can by USED to make statistical predictions about upcoming experiential increments in knowledge, and hence can also, at a pragmatic level, be construed as a "potentia" for upcoming (experiential) events. > but I guess you were > meaning the opposite: the observers. Well, the physical body/brain of Stanley Klein might be construed to be an `observer', so when we bring Stan's body/brain into the Hilbert space representation we are bringing in an observer. But by bringing in this physical observer, namely the body/brain of Stanley Klein, into the Hilbert space description we are bringing in the representation of that aspect of the universal knowledge that is associated with a certain sequence (stream) of experiential increments in knowledge. This stream of consiousness is "Stan Klein's stream of consciousness" because it is represented in terms of degrees of freedom that are associated with the body/brain of Stanley Klein. By bring the physical representation of this stream of conscious events into the physical world, in this way, we are bring in the representation of the flow of mental/phenomenal/psychological events that constitute an "experiential observer" called Stan Klein. > So you are wanting to bring the full > brain upstairs? Why is that? Most of the brain's activity is unconscious. There is no upstairs/downstairs. The activity of the brain is governed by the Schroedinger equation, and is unconscious, except for some "events", each of which represents an experiential increment in knowledge: increment e change the representation S of knowledge to the new form (P_e S P_e), which is the same as S, except that all aspects of the brain's representation of the world that are incompatible with e are excluded. Qunity was supposed to represent the "Quantum Unity" of mind and matter achieved in this way. There is no cut. Rather there is one reality, growing knowledge, which has a mathematical structure that allows us to usefully represent it in the way that quantum theory specifies. Henry On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > > > Henry, > Amazingly, I think progress is being made. In recent postings you have > resisted discussing the precise placement of collapse. No more discussion > of sodium channels. I think the only difference between our views is that > you want the collapse to occur only at the point where some entity in the > universe has a conscious experience. I never placed the collapse at the ion channels. That calculation was specifically to show that there necessarily was quantum spreading of the wave function of the brain, so that quantum theory was in principle necessary, not only to account for chemical reactions, which no one doubts, and which might be mocked up by some crazy classical forces, but on the scale of the whole brain. If there were no reductions, then, due to the superposition of the Yes and No options for vesicles, the brain, as represented by the evolving wave function, would evolve into a superposition of probably very different branches at the *macroscopic* level, in analogy to what happens to Schroedinger's cat. The only purpose of that calcium ion calculation was exactly to show that a quantum mechanically described brain would be like a Schroedinger Cat. The argument was against the claim that the effects of quantum theory were confined to the molecular level. Having established that essential foundational point I could them advance to my central point, from which I have not deviated: I retain from the pragmatic Copenhagen interpretation the notion that the quantum state represents knowledge, and also specifies the potentialities for new experiential increments of knowledge, each of which result in a change in the state of knowledge S, which is the transition S-->(P_e S P_e) that eliminates from the prior state S the parts that are incompatible with the experienced increment e. The collapses are to the *macroscopic* brain states that represent the experiences, in a way that I explained. You will see that this is what I said in my book, in very similair words. > The problem with that view is that it > gets into useless discussions about parameciums and silicon creatures on > alpha centauri. I suspect that within five more years you will loosen your > placement of the collapse and allow it to be flexible. In that case I think > our views will be identical. I agree that they are useless, at least for the present, and hence insist on continued adherence to the pragmatic stance that the theory continue to be viewed as a practical tool, but a better practical tool because there are no awkward "Cuts", and knowledge is a universal knowledge represented by the quantum state S of the entire universe. There is no evidence as yet for collapses outside human experience, so until such evidence appears, or is discovered, I propose, as a practical choice, to temporarily ignore them, at least in consciousness studies, though they may be of some use in cosmology. > Maybe one difference still is that you said in your last Q/M posting that > your view doesn't have a cut. But isn't that just language. I'd be fully > happy > to never use the word cut or collapse or reduction and just use the word > projection operator on Hilbert space, Pe. [But in my mind I'd know that what > I meant by Pe was what other people call reduction, and the cut was what I > had once meant by the process S -> Pe S Pe]. > It certainly is the very important to use the best language. That is what this discussion is all about. I am suggesting that the best way to think and talk about quantum mind/brain is to discard the language of movable cuts and talk about what quantum theory really talks about, which is connections between our experiences, as we describe them to ourselves and others, and the manner in which statistical aspects of these very connections are represented by a mathematical model of the universe that evolves in accordance with specified laws and that, *because this model is conceived of as a representation of knowledge*, quite naturally undergoes jumps when experiential increments in knowledge occur. > I am coming to better understand why you say there is not a duality. It is > one Qunity world with lots of projections occurring. But the big question is > at what point does the projection take place? In my moveable split version > Pe is flexible. So at any one instant in universal time for a delayed Pe one > would still have S, and for a quick Pe one would have Pe S Pe. And that is > the duality. > It is better to have a unified conception: one single unified picture of what is imagined to be going on. As you stressed at the Claremont meeting, a big difficulty bringing people who might be interested in a quantum approach is all of these different ways that quantum theorist have of saying things. A basically simple picture would help a lot, and it should be as close as possible to actual computational practice. > Otherwise I see no difference. So I guess what I need to do is to keep after > you on the question of does a fetus have experience. If so, how many neurons > does the fetus have before the experiences start? > There is the very interesting-to-me question of trying to formulate a plausible rule for the generalization of the "experiential increments in knowledge" that are the foundation of our present practical quantum theory. Bohr rightly avoided this question, and focussed on the immediately useful aspect. That was the conservative prudent thing for a practical scientist to do. I do have ideas about the generalization, but testing them brings us to a future stage of science that I would like to separate of from the present stage of theory. But it will not be about "movable cuts": it will be about the conditions for a possible increment in knowledge to occur. > Let me know when you are ready to allow the split to be moveable and we > could maybe write a joint paper :-). > > I think I'll refrain from sending this to Q/M until I hear from you about > whether I'm missing something. Incidentally, I think this flexible Pe solves > your discussions with Aaron and Pat. First they will have to admit that > your formulation is to be preferred over classical mechanics since > 1) QM agrees with all the experiments of the world whereas CM fails. > 2) Your framing of QM has experience as the essence of the real world, > something that CM doesn't have a special place for. > You may be wrong about what Pat and Aaron will agree to. > I think the problem that you will never solve with Aaron or Pat is the > notion that CM can have conscious entities (and you have agreed). The > flexible Pe loosens your claim so that I think Aaron's and Pat's > objections would go away. But the flexible Pe means is a pan- > experiential move that you would have to accept. > > Stan > I abhor "Movable Cuts": one coherent picture is the far better way way to go. "Everything cuts can do, I can do better." Henry On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > You say: > I do have ideas about the > generalization, but testing them brings us to a future stage of science > that I would like to separate of from the present stage of theory. But > it will not be about "movable cuts": it will be about the conditions > for a possible increment in knowledge to occur. > > > I can live happily with that language. The issue then becomes whether > frog's and 10 day old human fetuses can produce increments in our > knowledge. I definitely think the answer is YES. In the spirit of > having a unified front I'm willing to abandon the moveable cut language > in favor of the 'what produces increments in knowledge' language. > > That's progress. > Great! By the way, Copenhagen talks of "our knowledge" which I take to mean Human Knowledge, which is in the title of two of his principal books. But I think the VN/W extension makes the "our" inappropriate. Henry On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > I guess I still don't understand > the quantum Zeno effect in your framework. You seem to have some > outside entity e, that is controlling Pe. That does have a flavor of the > dualism that Jeff Schwartz desires. . I think much better is to have > WILL come from a little neural assembly that is trying to conquer the > dominant compulsive assembly. > Stan > Experience is not "outside" of anything: it is part of the reality, which is growing knowledge. The growth is by experiental increments. Since the evolving quantum state of the universe S is our representation of this growing state of knowledge, and an experience e is represented by a change in S, the experience e is "in" the physical universe in the sense that the representation of e is in the evolving S. I do not doubt that the competition between neural assemblies of which you speak is very important in situations perceived as an action of WILL. The feeling of intentionality in the experience e is expressed in S as a functional property of the neural (or brain) correlate of e that the operator P_e singles out. The only issue is: How, according to the quantum picture of the mind/brain, does the experience e influence the subsequent course of experiental events that are bound together by this brain? The "normal" picture is that the evolving state of the brain will eventually divide into several branches corresponding roughly to different basins of attraction of the corresponding classical model, and that a quantum jump (Dirac Choice on the part of nature) will them pick one of the possibilities, in accordance with the quantum statistical rules. Thus the "normal" process is controlled by a combination of two causal processes: (1) the deterministic evolution via the Schroedinger equation, which brings in all of the aspects of the "person" stemming from genetic factors, educational training, moral reflections, etc., and (2), the seemingly random choice on the part of nature. The overall picture is not significantly different from the classical picture, which at least practically, has all the randomness coming from thermal and other noises, and also our huge uncertainties as regard the microscopic degrees of freedom, which, as chaos studies reveal, can become extremely important in a nonlinear system such as the brain. There is, of course, a huge lack of knowledge about nature's choice. This opens the door to rampant, and unfortunately not well controlled, speculation. Any tie-in to PERSONAL WILL is gratuitous and largely uncontrolled. If, to keep speculation controlled, one insists on strict randomness in nature's choices, then there seems no natural place for WILL, even though the whole theory is now built upon experiences, which come into the theory in a very efficacious way. [Each experience is expressed in S as a reduction of the physical state of the brain to one that has functional properties that match the felt intentionalities in the experience.] The problem is that the choice among the various possible experiences is , then, nature's purely random choice. So the PERSON does no more than he did classically---which was, to be sure, a very great amount. But under special conditions there is the extra possible causal influence of the experience e on the choice of the next question, a choice that the QZE converts into an extra "mental force" in the way I have described. Your "little neural assembly" will play an important role in the whole dynamical process, for the potentiality of the experience must first be there for the Heisenberg choice to choose: this choice must, for QZE to work, be just a slight shifting of the choice of which question to ask relative to a nearby momentarily strong possibility, or perhaps a rapidly repeated asking of a question that is momentarily strong, but must quickly be caught by QZE if it is to be held fixed. Henry Date: Sat, 5 Sep 98 14:21:01 PDT From: Stanley Klein To: hpstapp@lbl.gov Subject: for Q/M? It's okay with me for you to post our dialog. It does clarify things for me and so it could help others. I think it would be helpful for you (or me in response) to offer a dictionary: My language Henry's language cut the point at which the S -> Pe S Pe process occurs. moveable cut 'what produces increments in knowledge' I do like your formulation since it is so clean. Stan > Dear Stan, Good! The word "cut" traditionally referred to the idea that only a very small part of the world was to be represented in the quantum Hilbert space: most of the world, in the pragmatic scientific treatment, was to be described in ordinary language refined by the concepts of classical physics. This description provides the needed information about the experimental arrangements, and about what outcomes appear to us. Since the description is both in the language of classical ideas and physics, but is a description of actual or possible experiences by human observers, expressed in that language, there is much freedom for different physicists to emphasize one aspect or another of this "classically describable" part of the description: is it mind or matter that is represented? The pragmatist doesn't care: what counts is how the description is used to make predictions about our upcoming experiences. If one regards that cut as a boundary between the quantum and classical/mind worlds, then one might be inclined to say, since the quantum superposition exists on one side but only the one experienced classical world on the other side, that the quantum jump occurs at this cut between the two different worlds. von Neumann showed that as far a practical predictions were concerned, it didn't matter just where the cut was placed, just as long as no actually measured interference effect was cancelled by making the quantum system too small. Thus the cut was "moveable", to this extent. In the vonNeumann/Wigner ontology, where the entire physical world is represented quantum mechanically, the transition S-->(P_e S P_e) is considered to occur at a "cut between past and future". It occurs at an instant of time "Now". Each such "now" is assumed to be some time t in the rest frame of the universe defined by the cosmic background black-body radiation. The "normal" rules of QT guarantee the impossibility of sending "signals" faster that light, even though the transition S-->(P_e S P_e) is implemented in this special frame. If by "movable cut" you mean this advancing NOW that separates past from future, and that specifies the time variable t of the evolving state of the universe S(t), then I can understand your association of the phrase "moveable cut" with the production of increments in knowledge: as the cut moves forward increments in knowledge occur. But I think this terminology is bad, because this "moveable cut" between the past and the future would surely be confused with the Heisengerg/vonNeumann moveable cut between different parts of the universe at one time, which is no part of the vN/W approach. I idea that there is a preferred frame and a preferred NOW may seem contrary to the ideas of relativity theory, but it really is not. Einstein demanded that the formulation of deterministic laws of motion be Lorentz invariant, not the world itself. He demanded that "signals" cannot propagate faster than light. But this property is assured by the "normal" quantum laws of evolution. However, it can be shown that the "normal" Lorentz invariant predictions themselves are incompatible with the demand that there be no backward in time influence in *any* Lorentz. Yet in *one* frame this property can be maintained. This suggests that the only simple way to get a coherent idea of an orderly evolving quantum universe, compatible with our unitary knowledge of it, is to allow the nondeterministic aspect to use a special frame. Henry P. Stapp Subject: Back to Basics On Sun, 6 Sep 1998, Stanley Klein wrote: > Hi Henry, > I think that summary of our discussions came out fine. I think the two > points where I still am not in agreement (or not in understanding might be > more correct) are on the flexibility of Pe and on the importance of QZE. But > I'd better get a firmer grip on the formalism first. > > Let me ask a more fundamental question. Why do you use the Heisenberg > picture with its emphasis on the operator S. The quantum state of a "pure state" physical system is sometimes represented by the state VECTOR |PSI>, in Dirac notation, and sometimes by the state (operator) S=|PSI>(P_e S P_e) := S_e, where P_e eliminates components of S that are ruled out by experience e. (6) If P_e acts only on degrees of freedom associated with brain b, then the reduction rule is equivalent to S_b-->(P_e S_b P_e). (7) If e is a possible experience when the state of knowledge is represented by S, then if the question put to nature is: "Will e occur now?", the probability that nature's answer will be YES is Tr S_e/Tr S. > So the reduction event is S > -> Pe S Pe. [Did I get that right?] Yes. > Wouldn't it be simpler in communicating to nonphysicists to adopt the > Schroedinger representation where states evolve? Then S -> Pe S. > This is somewhat simpler, and easier to picture. The issue is not Schroedinger versus Heisenberg picture, but whether to stick with operators, and not bring in vectors. I am sure that it will be much easier for nonphysicists to understand the very simple idea that the `numbers' that represent the values of observable quantities in classical physics must be replaced by operators, which can be multiplied to give new operators, but for which order of the factors in a product matters: simple examples with matrices will make this noncommutability clear. No need to confuse people with `vectors'. The clincher is the other key formula, readily derived from the basic ones given above, connecting the operator X corresponding to some observable feature of nature that corresponds to a number x [in the sense that any measurement/observation of that feature will yield a numerical value x]. The formula is = Tr XS/TrS: where is the average value of the number x in the statistical ensemble formed by summing over the possible values of x, each weighted by the probability for nature to choose that value. > Is the picture a little like many worlds except where > branches get pruned at every experience (so not it's not really many worlds > at all, but that picture might help). > Basically yes! That picture gives the "normal" dynamics that I discussed. Assume that the state evolves into a form that can be written as a sum of terms corresponding to mutually distinct possible experiences of some observe: i.e., the state S(t) evolves into a form such that S_b = S_e1 + S_e2 + S_e3 + ... , where e1, e2, e3 ,... are mutually incompatible experiences, so that for each N, S_eN = P_eN S P_eN. The mutual incompatibility of the different possible experiences means P_eN P_eM = 0 for N different from M. Thus S--> P_eN S P_eN will give S--> S_eN: the state S of the universe will be reduced to the part compatible with experience eN. > I know what would really help me is a concrete example using the double > slit and an observer. The observer would be having many experiences during > the time of the photon's travels in the closed box. Let |Oti> be the > observer's experience at time ti. I think I'll use the bra-ket notation for > clarity. Let P be the state of the photon. Then a movie of the world might > be: > > |Ot1> |Pstart> > .... > |Ot20> |sum0(Pi)> where Pi are locations between start and slits. > ... > |Ot50> |Pu + Pl> where Pu and Pl are the upper and lower slits (I'm > ignoring the normalization factor. > |Ot60> |sum(Pi)> where Pi are locations between slits and film. > > |Ot90> |sum(Pi)> where Pi are locations on film > > |Ot140>|P130> where P130 is the 130 spot on film > > Incidentally included in the sums are lots of funny things like the photon > becoming an electron positron pair, and the photon hopping in funny places, > not going in a straight line. > > I am confident that I must have this picture wrong. The thing I probably got > right is the |Oti> which are the experiences of which the world is made. Experiences are REPRESENTED in Hilbert space. If we adopt the Schroedinger picture of an evolving state of the universe, S(t), then this state is defined at all t, and makes "jumps" when experiences occur. I am not too comfortable with your statement "Let |Oti> BE the observer's experience at time ti." The observer's experience IS the observer's experience. It comes in discrete units, and each such experience e is represented in the evolving quantum state of the universe S(t) by a jump at some time t_e. In your double-slit example there may have been some earlier experience of observer O [i.e., experiences represented by jumps in S_b(t), where b is the body/brain of observer O] associated with his setting up this experiment, but then, for the period that you are talking about, the observer of effectively isolated from the experiment, and the experience represented by the jumps in S_b are not particularly relevant to the course of events in the experiment. You must pursue the description further: we could very well talk about the film, and abouttaking the film to the photo-shop where it is automatically developed, unseen by human eyes etc, until some months later some grad student O looks at the film and finds (let us suppose a high-tech experiment where only one photo was recorded on this film) that the the photon landed on the grid in square #208. Or one could imagine, instead, a more high-speed causal chain where there appears promptly (within a millisecond) a displayed "#208". The graduate student O has a brain that is able to support the experience that he describes to himself and his colleagues as "#208 appeared", and he goes on to make a corresponding entry in his log book. If we were to follow the evolving state S(t) of the universe during this period we would have all the things happening that you mention. But the state S_b of the brain of O is evolving independently of the progress of the experiment until the causal link to it causes the S_b to react: S_b will evolve into a sum, S_b = P_e1 S_b P_e1 + ... + P_e208 S_b P_e208 + ... because the Schroedinger evolution generates a superposition of these possibilities, and no reduction is supposed to have yet occurred. It is supposed that the conditions are met NOW, and the set of questions "Will experience e#N occur?" are all posed. [The order of posing does not matter, if P_e#N P_e#M =0 for all N different from M.] One experience, say e#208, will be picked by nature, and the state of the universe will become S_e#208 = P_e#208 S P_e#208, which will then evolve to later times t from that form at time t= t_e#208. > But > how do I represent the photon's funny actions. There is an aspect of > Copenhagen that I'm not supposed to talk about P while it isn't part of the > experience. But in your unitary view S has everything in it. But the possible experiences under discussion here are represented by possible jumps in the evolving state S_b(t) of the brain (or more generally the body) of observer O, who IS just the sequence of experiences that are bound together by the dynamical connections represented by the evolving S_b(t). This state of the brain S_b(t), being defined as Tr(b~) S(t), is an aspect of the evolving state of the universe S(t). I hope this explicit description of the "basics" will make the picture clearer. Henry