Notes
[Notebook: DB 61 Warm]
[Sunday 19 August 2007 - Saturday 25 August 2007]
[page 149]
Sunday 19 August 2007
Christianity is a massive application of carrots and sticks.
Our society is based on a set of common law fictions that have been established by judges over the ages. These fictions have a strong empirical base, in that they have been contrived by judges at the coal face in order to capture in words what they feel in their hearts to be meet and just.
One of these fictions is that the unity of a community
[page 150]
can be embodied in a sovereign whose particular role is to represent the community as a whole. From this idea we get subsidiary fictions such as that all land is held by the crown and a criminal offense against an individual is an offense against the crown.
The multiplicity of nations implies a multiplicity of sovereigns and leads naturally to the idea of a sovereign sovereign (= god) whose nature is shared to a lesser extent by lesser sovereigns.
In our history the archetypal sovereign is the Pope, who wears a triple crown:
Accipe thiaram tribus coronis ornatam, et scias te esse Patrem Principum et Regnum, Rectorem Orbis, in terra Vicarium Salvatoris Nostri Jesu Christi cui est honor et gloria in saecula sauculorum.'
[Receive the tiara adorned with three crowns and know thou art Father of Princes and Kings, Ruler of the world, Vicar of Our Saviour Jesus Christ in earth, to whom honour and glory in the ages of ages.'] Papal Tiara - Wikipedia
Henry VIII Henry VIII
God has yet to come up with something better than sex.
Monday 20 August 2007
d'Espagnat page 128: 'at least some properties of the world have an existence independent of human observers'. d'Espagnat
Every observation is a meeting of two systems which contribute equally to the outcome, eg a go-no go gauge and a part.
[page 151]
Realism - it takes 2 to be realistic.
Inference - the same initial conditions can lead to different outcomes of there is not the variety requisite to control the outcome. Ashbyseparability - maybe uncoded messages are instantaneous, ie they do not see space
A complete basis does not need coding because it cannot go wrong. It covers every possibility and none of the possibilities is an error.
Quantum mechanics differs from local realistic theories: 'It follows that local realistic theories are almost certainly in error. The three premises on which these theories are founded are essential to a common sense interpretation of the world. . . . ' d'Espagnat page 128
Only the 'geometric' common sense. They seem consistent with the communication model: a) communication takes 2; b) no amount of description can completely constrain a real world outcome; c) some forms of communication are faster than others so we see the hammer hit the nail before we hear it.
Einstein Podolsky Rosen deals with correlations between distant events. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (1935), Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (PDF)
d'Espagnat page 130: All correlations in the Universe can be attributed to a common cause antecedent to the measurement, insofar as the Universe is one entity.
page 131: 'In the literature of quantum mechanics . . . there are numerous arguments all purporting to show that correlations and differences need not exist until they are measured,'
[page 152]
Tuesday 21 August 2007
Digital computation can be performed with exact precision because physical realizations of its binary digits can be made effectively orthogonal by engineering design and error correcting software. Quantum computation, since it is essentially an analogue process, is much more difficult to engineer. So that the error correcting overhead becomes very burdensome. Nevertheless it is possible at some level, and so can gradually bootstrap itself up to digital precision, as we see in the copying of DNA (1 error in 109 as opposed to 1 in 1018 in a pretty ordinary silicon processor [?].)
Timing is of the essence. In addition to the spatial separation of the symbols involved in an operation they must also be temporally separated. An essential component of a digital computer is the digitization of time, based on a clock. The clock serves to hide the physical (analogue) transitions in the digital computer, leaving us with purely logical states.
Maxwell's Angel = capital = zero entropy energy.
Bank makes its money like a black hole, by taking in lots of little sums (high entropy money) and consolidating [them] into large chunks - (low entropy money). Low entropy has value, the price of money.
Maxwell's Demon : a worker
Maxwell's Angel : capital
[page 153]
The initial singularity and black holes are the physical capital of the world, the unify organizing principle.
Quantum mechanics tells us that confinement breeds structure - the energy momentum levels of a potential well. In a more general way, the very unity of the Universe (confining it to consistency) is the source of its structure.
Why does the wave function 'collapse'? Why does anybody do anything? Because the motivation overcomes the resistance, as is the case of a 4 am pee on a frosty morning.
Translate this into quantum mechanics : POTENTIAL & ACTION
The 'effective basis' of a quantum measurement is the set of eigenvectors of the measurement operator.
Lonergan: something happens when it is virtually unconditioned, ie all inhibitions are removed. Lonergan
Wednesday 22 August 2007
Lo page 37: 'every entangled state of any number n of remote subsystems is non -local . . . The only states that are totally consistent with the EPR assumption are direct product states.' Lo, Popescu and Spiller
[page 154]
The Carnot cycle shows how effectively we can combine lots of small contributions into a large contribution, rather like a bank. ['probabilistically combine'; algorithmic combination can give 100% efficiency].
The Universe has structure because it was (and remains a unity. Quantum mechanics reveals the mechanism by which unity generates structure. We start with a complete set of basis states.
You can't expect to understand a network by taking it to pieces. You cannot read all the traffic, but you can count it, and this is what quantum mechanics does. This is how we understand entanglement.
Nature 8 December 2005 Kimble. Chou
We are inside the Universe and so must study it from the inside. The divine outside point of view is not available to us, or to anybody, including the Universe itself [we are in effect both outside the layers below us and inside the layers above us, which include God].
Aspect, Phys Rev Lett 49 1804 (1982) Aspect
Spin is the point at which Hilbert space and ordinary 4-space meet?
Nielsen page 46: '. . . we believe that the qubit model (and generalizations of it to higher dimensions, quantum mechanics in other words) is capable of describing every
[page 155]
physical system. Nielsen
The result you get depends on the basis you measured with (you preconceptions in other words). So with spin, measuring it with a z basis gives +-1, as does measurement with x and y.
So we have two contributions to any measured result. First the measuring instrument (which may define directions etc) and the 'fit' between the thing measured and the instrument. So how does the piece of wood fit my tape?
The past constrains the future; it is the capital of the future.
One cannot tell before the measurement what number the tape will read (otherwise why bother measuring it) although one can give an experienced guess 'by eye'.
'Quantum source' Nielsen page 54.
Schumacher's noiseless channel coding theorem. page 54
von Neumann entropy = Shannon entropy only if states are orthogonal. As long as they are not exactly parallel von Neumann tells is that we can communicate a little bit of information.
In Bell states the joint basis is not necessarily orthogonal to any of the producing bases, so these vectors are indistinguishable.
Gavriel Segre: 'The No Cloning Theorem versus the Second Law of Thermodynamics'. Segre
Insofar as universal computation is reversible, it must preserve the garbage and so the Universe becomes more complex. The Universe is simplified by erasure which costs entropy.
Segre page 8: 'Algorithmic physics is, by definition, that discipline analyzing physical processes looking at them as computational processes.'
Hamiltonian flow = computational process.
Electronic structure of an atom (and all other struture) shows that we cannot have structure without energy/momentum
Lo page 41: We prove many things (like Carnot's law) by appealing to the impossibility of perpetual motion. From the quantum mechanical point of view, however, anything with energy is in perpetual motion E = d psi/dt.
Lo page 42: 'The laws of nature are such that it is impossible to create (or increase) entanglement between remote quantum systems by local operations . . . Furthermore, a reversibles manipulation of entanglement - any reversible transformation consisting only of local operation, that transforms one entangled state into another, is analogous to a reversible heat engine.'
Reduce entanglement = increase entropy.
Thursday 23 August 2007
Friday 24 August 2007
Entropy is purely a matter of cardinal numbers so we can compute an entropy wherever we can count.
Low entropy, low count, confinement.
We have to show how networks increase and decrease entropy and move it around. [Carnot engine does this].
Network stores its entropy in a distributed (delocalized) way. [information theory says this is the only way to store information, as discrete identifiable symbols].
Advertising is intended to inform and motivate, and people will pay for it insofar as it pays them by selling their goods.
The power of order: by ordering we can vastly increase the count that can be represented by symbols, eg 1, 2, 3 can be made into . . . numbers from 1 to 321. So ordering or meaning can greatly increase entropy and so stabilize itself. Here we can see a connection between 'probabilistic' information (energy) and algorithmic information (momentum).
This fact has to connect in some way with the distinction between boson (cardinal) and fermion (ordinal) via the quantum mechanical formalism. [money attracts money = boson]
I have a problem seeing why Lorentz invariance is relevant to particle interactions insofar as when particles are interacting they are in the same rest frame and presumably the same Hilbert space, although the energy and momentum of the
[page 158]
interaction depend on the relative velocities and masses of the particles before they interact. [relative 4-momentum, a directed quantity]
When I was a child (and still in the building trade) I used to take the random arrangement of logs in the wood heap and make them into neat walls according to an idea I had conceived. Rather like an abstract plan to create order and life. Somewhere is here is a sort of gain. We see the same in the relationship of genetic codes to life.
ORDER - MEANING - TRANSLATION (TRANSCRIPTION)
Harry Potter and Wands : magical power resides in magical wands ie algorithmic information, ie definition of a Turing Machine or set of Turing machines (Universal Turing Machine). Such is the magic of religion and all its symbols. But the magic only works if there is a coupling between the algorithmic information and the physical system which is capable of implementing it, as a builder is the coupling between an idea in an architect's head represented by drawings and specifications and a building built to conform to the architect's ideas. In the magical world the wand is the builder.
. . .
Rowling, Hallows 399: 'Oh yes, if you are any wizard you will be able to channel your magic through almost any instrument. The best results, however, must always come when there is the strongest affinity between wizard and wand. These connections are complex. An initial attraction, and then a mutual
[page 159]
quest for experience, the wand learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand.' Rowling
Jesus is not a human person but a symbol or symmetry in human space. To have algorithms, the symbols must be discrete and addressable and subject to interactions controlled at least by their own properties and possibly the properties of higher systems that are using them.
ALGORITHMIC ENTROPY = exp (PROBABILISTIC ENTROPY) [?]
This equation governs the creation of the world.
This book is devoted to explaining this one equation in excruciating detail, using Catholic Dogma as the false imitation of reality to be replaced by my superior product Caveat lector. Know that I am broke and trying to write a best seller by showing that ancient and revered institution is a rotting hulk of delusion that loads enormous pain onto the world.
Let us draw a line from Homer to the Manhattan Project and pick out a gradient along that line. Homer laments that the will of the Gods is often that we kill one another. We are helpless before the gods, and they are just as stupid as any fighting fucking bunch of wild humans. No doubt stories like these are just the codified version of very ancient oral stories dating from the origin of thought and language.
Then came the God of the Hebrews. There is only one of Him, so his act is much better coordinated.
[page 160]
The Christians, the first organized religion with an imperial business plan, preach the Gospel to the whole world.
Then the Papacy. Theology (Aquinas) God became rational and warlike. The bond between science, religion and war was forged. The Roman Catholic Church, in its quest for world domination, has pioneered all the marketing scams that so crowd our world.
Begin with the impossible product: face cream that makes you younger? Not likely. They say
a) death is not real; and
b) if you do what we say you will have another life of eternal bliss after you die.
How does it work? Oh, it is a mystery. Trade secret.
The same symbols maybe interpreted as algorithmic and probabilistic information, probabilistically by counting them, algorithmically by decoding them with some algorithm.
Insofar as quantum algorithms work perfectly they must work digitally, and by logic rather than by analogue arithmetic.
A matrix of minimal complexity (a 'gate') can be used to transform a complex qubit. The gates are the processor. At most a gate for processing a vector of length n has 2n **2 coefficients, and is held
[page 161]
to be able to simultaneously process all the elements in a superposition, as does a classical computer sequentially.
For many people now the old religions are quaint and obsolete myths. This may be so, but they still contribute heavily to the theories of governance by which the powers that be govern us. My starting point is Christianity as embodied in the Roman Catholic Church.
The fundamental premiss of the Church is that humanity and the Universe as a whole are currently in a damaged condition because of the Original Sin recorded in the Book of Genesis.
Christianity revolved around the idea of a human sacrifice arranged by God to 'redeem' the world, that is to make satisfactory recompense to God for the original lese majeste. In particular, we are all held to be sinners only held in check by the paternal authority of a fatherly god acting through the Roman Catholic Hierarchy whose head the Pope claims an error free communication channel with God.
Saturday 25 August 2007
Relativity is so plainly and obviously right that it has taken it only a century to find itself at the centre of physics along with its equally ancient friend, quantum mechanics.
Sometimes I get quite excited thinking that this might
[page 162]
all come to something, ie I will be able to make a good living out of it.
This writing is a random event, like the emission or absorption of a photon, a system acting as a source.
We take algorithmic information to be error free and maximally compressed. The encoding and decoding and transmission of algorithmic information are deterministic processes like the writing and reading of mathematical papers by people who understand them perfectly or the processes in an error free digital computer. (Turing machine) Algorithmic information comes with meaning attached, which enables us to detect error.
Probabilistic information has no meaning but is simply a fluid to be transmitted from one placetime to another.
