Hello, Cy, OMF II - Part 2

First topic message reminder :

And for the insane, or other wise, we present:

Schroedinger's Cat is not Alone

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.4206v4

Beatriz Gato, Beatriz Gato-Rivera
(Submitted on 23 Apr 2010 (v1), last revised 31 Mar 2011 (this version, v4))
We introduce the `Complete Wave Function' and deduce that all living beings, not just Schroedinger's cat, are actually described by a superposition of `alive' and `dead' quantum states; otherwise they would never die. Therefore this proposal provides a quantum mechanical explanation to the world-wide observation that we all pass away. Next we consider the Measurement problem in the framework of M-theory. For this purpose, together with Schroedinger's cat we also place inside the box Rasputin's cat, which is unaffected by poison. We analyse the system identifying its excitations (catons and catinos) and we discuss its evolution: either to a classical fight or to a quantum entanglement. We also propose the BSVΨ scenario, which implements the Complete Wave Function as well as the Big Bang and the String Landscape in a very (super)natural way. Then we test the gravitational decoherence of the entangled system applying an experimental setting due to Galileo. We also discuss the Information Loss paradox. For this purpose we consider a massless black cat falling inside a massive black hole. After that we outline a method to compute the contribution of black cats to the dark matter of the universe. Finally, in the spirit of Schroedinger, we propose that next generation double-slit experiments should use cats as projectiles. Cat interferometry will inevitably lead to the `Many Cats' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, allowing to shed new light on old mysteries and paradoxes. For example, according to this interpretation, conservative estimates show that decision making of a single domestic cat will create about 550 billion whole universes every day, with as many replicas of itself.

So, here we are with idealism, and I have no idea how it works, and I don't know of anyone who does, and, yet, it is one of the most widely held beliefs.  In modern times, only dualism has come to rival idealism/immaterialism, and no one knows how that might work, in fact, by definition, it cannot work.  The two parts of dualism cannot interact, by definition.  Yes, it is a strange world in which we live.  It is a world that should be rife in speulative immatrerialism, but it isn't, is it?  


4:40--------

Gary,

Well, well...... Whatever has happened to our old buddy, Mad Max?!

Has he turned his collar around? I'm still trying to wrap my mind around his talk, the slide show, and the four arxiv papers referenced therein.

Is he not halfway down the slippery slope from informationalism to inter-subjective immaterialism?

It is funny how he points out that his debunking of the quantum mind hypothesis (1999, Brain decoherence) was actually just a clever cover for the postscripted thesis, which is that of 'hyper-classicality' or 'perceptronium'.




(cont.)

In his previous posts, Gary references a video of Max Tegmark and his associated slide show in which there are references to five of his papers, arXiv:...... quant-ph/9907009, 1108.3080, 1008.1066, 1309.7349, 1401.1219.  I am attempting to connect these dots to any one of my dots.  

The noteworthy fact, to me, is that Max is introducing the observer/subject into cosmology via his 'perceptronium'.  This is the first physical attempt to subjectivize cosmology, TBMK, and this coming from the 'archdruid' of the materialists/informationalists.  

I would like to get Gary's opinion on this seeming incongruity.  Do all roads lead to Rome, after all?!  

A key ingedient of Max's is quantum Bayesian theory (QBT or QBism). This is of surprisingly new vintage ~2002.




(cont.)

I have spent the last couple of days, at Gary's instigation, reviewing the many worlds theories of Max Tegmark.  As a result, I am more convinced that he is performing a reductio-ad-absurdum for the multiverse and for materialism, bless his heart!  

His lynchpin is the mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH).  He arrives at the MUH, directly from the eternal reality hypothesis (ERH).  If there is an objective external reality, then it must be devoid of qualia, and therefore it must be purely quantitative or mathematical.  This can be used as ammunition against dualistic, mind/matter, theories.  

But then what does it take to breathe fire into the formulas?  

No fire-breathing is needed, when everything is a mathematical construct.  In the MUH, the math is not an abstract description..... the numbers are all there is.  Spacetime, and the atoms within, are an artifact of these structures.  

Interestingly, in the same breath, he turns right around and debunks, quite effective, the simulation hypothesis.......

Time must be embedded within the mathematics.  There is nothing, ontologically, to be gained by actually performing calculations, as in a computer game.  All scenarios must already be present, as if on a DVD or memory stick.  

Furthermore, we don't have to actually calculate anything, since all the structures already exist, as if by some Platonic fiat(?)!  This is the lazy-man's universe, which is the whole point of it.  

This last part is beginning to sound like the BPWH, embedded/framed within eternity, as it is.  

If this were a simulation, its mathematical structure could be embedded on a memory stick, which could also be part of the simulation, and so there is logical regress.  

BTW, most of these notes are coming from his book, Our Mathematical Universe.

A significant point for Max is that the mathematics and the universes be finite. This comes out of the computable and finite universe hypotheses (CUH/FUH) outlined in chapter 12.




(cont.)

If this were a simulation, its mathematical structure could be embedded on a memory stick, which could also be part of the simulation, and so there is logical regress.

Dan, if you watch carefully near the end you'll see the revolution against virtuality is lost within the simulation, with no where to go.

http://www.starpod.us/2014/04/21/watch-2ne1-dystopian-sci-fi-music-video-come-back-home/

And not all simulated world-dreams are disturbing -- some are quite lovely but they may also be alienating.

From: Dan
Date: April 23, 2014, 11:38:48 AM EDT
To: Paul
Cc: Gary and David
Subject: Re: BPW vs. Eternal Inflation

Paul and Gary,

I don't see anything wrong with inflation, per se.  How else can we explain the apparent size and homogeneity of the universe?  

Rather than beat our heads against the inflationary wall, I would, instead, suggest that we look at Max's struggles with his multiverse theory.  I find it rather instructive, especially, for instance, when he argues against the notion of infinity.

Eternal inflation and the BPW are two ends of a spectrum.  Only by examining the extremes can we get a better idea of what may lie in the middle.  IMHO, it is just a slippery slope, and that is what Max is beginning to struggle with, bless his heart.  

I will take this up, back on the OM blog........  

So, yes, Max is beginning to wrestle with his own demons......

Demon #1 is infinity....  How do we explain this bit of psychology?  So much for eternal anything, much less, eternal inflation?

Is Max simply reverting to the Greek aversion to the infinite/Apeiron?  
And what is that psychology?  

How does the apeireon relate to the aether, we might want to know?  

Related to this question may also be the transactional interpretations of physics, the holographic principle, occasionalism and the future horizon.  There is also the direction of time and QBism.  

In fact, I just now understood Max's take on QBism.... arXiv:1309.7349.  Why does Max introduce the subject into QBism?  

There is the problem of wavefunction collapse.  The Everett MWI is the most objective approach.  Otherwise we have to consider decoherence, usually understood as an interaction of the quantum system with the environment.  

But, see, this is where I was mislead by the establishment, back in grad school.  I was lead to believe that it was simply the chaotic environment, apeiron, that collapsed the wavefuction.  But collapse and decoherence are two different animals, I am now learning.  

And this is where entropy comes into the picture........

1.)  Nobody understands why entropy increases, or why there is a direction to time.  

2.)  The established explanation is that entropy is just due to coarse graining, of using an arbitrary cutoff wrt experimental resolution.  

3.)  But, IMHO, #2 goes against QM.  And this has to do with the IR catastrophe, which may, in turn, have to do with the panpsychic catastrophe (Ned Block), which, yes, should have something to do with the aether.  

Max's point is that decoherence only increases entropy.  IMHO, decoherence, by means of entanglement, simply disperses the information wrt the quantum state.  It does not destroy information, which, as Landauer showed, requires work.  

However, now see.... http://phys.org/news/2011-01-scientists-erase-energy.html , wherein instead of expending energy, one expends angular momentum. But isn't that almost the same?

The non-destruction (conservation) of information, has everything to do with the thermodynamics of event horizons.




(cont.)

Dan, did you miss Tegmark on how observation reduces entropy?

https://youtu.be/GCEU3HWTmho?t=39m34s

Gary,

Take it easy, we're doing this, one step at a time........

From: Dan
Date: April 23, 2014, 1:59:16 PM EDT
To: Paul
Cc: Gary and David
Subject: Re: BPW vs. Eternal Inflation

Paul,

You're missing the point.......

Gary follows Max.  If we want to get ahead of Gary, we'll need to get ahead of Max.  

Who does Max follow?  Max follows Maxwell's demon.  Maxwell's demon is still demonizing physics.  We need to exorcize that demon, but this will be no ordinary exorcism.  We cannot erase the demon, we must harness it.  

Back to the blog........

So what does Max do......?

He introduces Maxwell's demon, under the guise of a Subject.  The subject observes the object (quantum state) and collapses it to an observational eigen-state, thereby reducing the entropy of the object.  What happens to the entropy of the subject?  That may depend on whether this was a weak or a strong measurement.  

And I am much less than convinced that any information has ever been created or erased.  How then was the world created?  If not from inflation, it was created from the aether, which, as Paul has explained, ain't nuthin'.  

Most of my fellow Xians suppose that God eventually erases Creation.  Why do they suppose this?  They suppose that the stain of sin has penetrated so deeply that only annihilation will suffice for redemption.  Think of Lady Macbeth trying to wash her hands.  

I beg to differ.  IMHO, this is the BPW, and there is, necessarily, universal salvation, and that includes all of Creation, of which we are the co-Creators.  

My point is that our ultimate concerns inform every moment of our lives, either consciously or otherwise.  This exercise is to ascertain how those concerns inform Max's extreme, Meinongian, pluralism..... everything that can exist, does exist.  

And, having said that, I now realize why Max abhors the Apeiron.  

Max and the Greeks abhor contradiction, inconsistency and, yes, incoherence.  And so do I!  What does that mean?  

It means that we abhor sin and ignorance.  It means that we strive for coherence.  This must mean that the Aether is the anti-Apeiron.  

IMHO, coherence, agape and apocatastasis are One and the same.  Therefore, I have just demonstrated that the God of coherence is necessarily the God of love and simplicity, which is Truth, and the spirit thereof.  


3pm---------

You see, it has been assumed, from the ancient of days, that the Earth would end in fire, but there has been much contention over the nature of this 'fire'.  A recent theory of black holes includes a fire-wall.  

At the very least, the Earth, and we, will need a good cleansing, lest we contaminate heaven, heaven forbid!  

This also has to do with Taboo.  Cosmic intercourse, the realization of Agape, is widely tabooed.  A specific example is simply the communication with spirits, of one sort of another.  More generally, gnosticism is taboo.  


5:15----------

From: Dan
Date: April 23, 2014, 5:12:28 PM EDT
To: Paul
Cc: Gary and David
Subject: The very instructive madness of Max.....

Yes, Paul and I just had a lengthy convo on these points.......

1.)  True, I did not adequately appreciate the difference between 'ordinary' inflation and eternal inflation, and that eternal inflation 'appears' to avoid the singularity, entirely.  

I don't entirely buy into the objectivity of the second clause.  For instance, no one is claiming that there is reason to suppose.......

2.)  that eternal inflation did not have a singular(?) beginning, or.....

3.)  that there could not have been more than one inflation.

But, yes, please refer back to the blog for the continuing discussion of Max's radical conundrum.  

In the meantime, Paul will be preparing an outline of his arguments against the naive/US/MWT view wrt the ether.  He will provide a one-two punch toward resurrecting the ether.....

1.)  His proprietary splitting of the Levi-Civita connection, demonstrating the residual component of the gravitational field, which cannot be gauged away, as per the equivalence principle.  

2.)  He has rediscovered G. Builder's article on the clock paradox ...... http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1958AuJPh..11..279B which provides another proof of the Minkowski ether theory.  

Before I forget it, Paul made another point, about the importance of the Higgs field in understanding the dynamic, non-kinematical, explanation for the gravitational influence on time dilation. As I undersand it, one must undersand the Higgs field in order to understand the gravitational influence on real clocks. I, frankly, am a bit skeptical, and I'm not all that partial to Higgs. I don't think that inertia can be understood in such a non-phenomenological fashion.





(cont.)

Yesterday I met up with Eduardo Luna and his brother Napo, who is visiting from Equador.  It had been almost three years...... http://lunachaman.blogspot.com/ .  With Eduardo translating, I asked questions of Napo.  He speaks of time travel and of communicating with various entities from various worlds.  I was able thus to compare and contrast his worldview with that of the BPWH.  Anxiety about the future is not something recognized within shamanism.  Next time I will focus on whether the ET/UTs are concerned with our propensity for self-destruction.  We mainly focused on the spiritual alienation of the modern world.  


Now I'm back to Max&Co.......

It is noteworthy that, while debunking (1999) the considerable (Penrose&Co.) quantum-mind effort, Max, in his latter work, is adopting the formalism of QMech to construct his models of the interactions btw subject, object and environment.  In doing so, he appeals to informationalism, QBism (QBT), quantum Darwinism and the work of Henry Stapp.  

It would seem that mad Max is getting some quantum religion.  How exactly he gets from decoherence to back to quantum subjectivity, or the rationalization thereof, is something on which I do not have a complete grasp, nor may Max, either.  Is it all in the ether?  


noon-------

Let's now go back in time to the 60's and 80's, with Wheeler and DeWitt and then Page and Wooters.  W&D were trying to avoid the singularities that occur in quantum gravity, but, in doing so, they eliminated time.  P&W showed how an entropic form of time could be reintroduced by considering the quantum entanglements.

This latter move, toward a more local or phenomenological time, a CTC(?) set within eternity, is reminiscent of the BPW/SWH.  

Space may also be seen to emerge from these entanglements.  

And notice how the (local) observer is the one who is creating the phenomenological time and/or spacetime.  And how does this relate to the teleology of weak-measurements, we would like to know?  


1pm-------

1310.4691.....

We show how a static, entangled state of two photons can be seen as evolving by an observer that uses one of the two photons as a clock to gauge the time-evolution of the other photon. However, an external observer can show that the global entangled state does not evolve.

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/d5d3dc850933...... In this synopsis of the above arXiv post, it is suggested that emergent gravity might use a similar 'mechanism'.

Then we have Clock Time and Entropy.... http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9303020 .


5pm------

Here Paul refers to the above quote re: time......

From: Paul
Date: April 25, 2014, 3:25:13 PM EDT
To: Dan
Cc: Gary and David
Subject: Re: The very instructive madness of Max.....

I see this as yet another attempt to overcome fundamental difficulties created by Einstein kinematics when trying to formulate a
theory of quantum gravity.

Clearly the basic idea is that the "time" of 1916 GR emerges from a certain formulation of QM (Wheeler-de Witt) at some point prior
to the inflationary epoch. This paper deals with some of the technical details.

I see this is a good illustration of the "road block" to quantum gravity posed by Einstein kinematics, which the mainstream still
insists is an essential feature of GR. If I'm right, Einstein kinematics not after all an essential feature of GR and such difficulties are
purely artificial.

I'd have to examine this paper in painful detail in order to evaluate the authors' solution to this conundrum, but off the top of my head
I seriously doubt that it resolves the problem of emergent time within the Wheeler-de Witt paradigm.

Regardless, I think the bibliography might be useful.

In a following post, Paul refers us to a more general synopsis of the problem of reconciling time in GR vs. QM...... http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2157 .


7:45-------

Then Paul refers to Lee Smolin's book... http://alpha.sinp.msu.ru/~panov/LibBooks/SMOLIN/Lee_Smolin-Three_Roads_to_Quantum_Gravity-Basic_Books%282002%29.pdf . I'm starting from the back and reading towards the front, a not uncommon strategy for me.




(cont.)

Last weekend I was caught short by the possibility that I had been oversimplifying my objective idealism by neglecting the large contribution of the subjectivity of our perceptions.  This is particularly true wrt the idea of direct perception.  

The modern view of cognition, since Descartes, is termed the representational or computational theory of mind (RTM/CTM).  On this view, what we perceive are just our mental re-presentations of sensory data.  What is the brain for, if not to create mental images?  

When I ostensibly look at a tree, what am I seeing?  Am I not just seeing the image of the tree that is impressed upon my brain?  If not, then what are our eyes for?  

It seems like such an obvious deduction that it is only ever questioned by philosophers.  It is even fair to say that most philosophers are doubtful.  If they weren't then they are in the wrong profession.  They should have been scientists.  And you can see why scientists are wont to ridicule philosophers for their armchair critiques.  

So what do I think, me being an intersubjective idealist?  I suppose that a tree is a shared idea.  And so are numbers, but we don't go climbing on numbers, so how are some ideas more tangible than others?  We may not climb on numbers, but we do vote in elections, and our votes do count, usually.  

How do intangibles come to be, and how do we become acquainted with them, and how do they differ from the tangibles?  

One promising idea is the Language of Thought (LoT) hypothesis.  We don't actually see a tree, rather we just think 'tree'.  This is one way to explain the effectiveness of verbal communication.  The LoTH is strongly supportive of the RTM/CTM and the possibility of strong AI.  

One thing being neglected in the LoTH is the holism of words.  Words do not exist in isolation.  They come supplied with a very considerable infrastructure and support network.  

A spinoff of the LoTH is informationalism, wherein the world is supposed to be a quantum computer of some sort.  This seems like a big step toward idealism, particularly if we take the world to be a mathematical construct.  


2:30--------

Informationalism is a view that is in accord with a large swath of scientists and pantheists.  It is a form of panpsychism.  What its proponents tend to neglect is its presupposition of holism.  IOW, informationalism + holism = theistic idealism, IMHO.  

This is a mouthful!  

Perhaps what I'm suggesting is that the cosmic mind/monad/ether provides the 'secret sauce' that holds the qubits together.  This may be the simplest statement of the BPWH, to date.  

What else could suffice?  Spacetime, then, is simply a convenient manifestation or, yes, representation of this ether.  

It has been said that spacetime is God's way to prevent everything from happening at once.  But this could be turned around to suggest that everything has already happened, at once, and we are just on the pickup crew.  We are stitching it all back togther, on the way to the apocatastasis.  We are an after-the-fact fishnet/filter wrt the Monad, on our way to closing the CTC circle of life.  

We are the balene of the cosmic Whale.  God has played 52-card pickup on us.  The big-bang/evolution is just a re-presentation of this game!  

Now, we're just waiting for the knowledge-implosion or MoAPS.  Any day, now!  Hurry, Lord!  


4pm---------

There are any number of items that could be used to flesh out this very simple idea.......

1.)  The transactional interpretation of QM, Ruth Kastner, is an obvious strategem for knitting things together.

2.)  quantum entanglement

3.)  the holographic princple,

4.)  weak measurements and the sum over histories.

5.)  the return of the subject to physics via QBism and quantum entropy.  

6.)  Various schemes for the emergence of spacetime out of a pre-geometry.  

7.)  Paul Davies, Information and the Nature of Reality.  Excellent resource.  

8.)  Craig Dilworth's notion of simplicity.  

9.) Holographic horizons for demarking our toroidal CTC

10.) Kant's noumenon, the uCs, the Logos, neutral monism, prana, qi-gong, potentiality, etc., as various aspects of the aether.



(cont.)

I am seeing informationalism as a helpful, neutral territory between theism and pantheism or panpsychism.  However, most scientists are aware of the slippery slope.  There is not yet even a wiki entry for informationalism.  The nearest candidate is computationalism, which is applied only to the mind.  

The main support for informationalism should come from theoretical physics wherein Pythagoreanism reigns.  This is often stated as the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.  Again, though, there is very little to be found on either Pythagoreanism, in this modern sense, or on mathematicism.  

Max Tegmark and Paul Davies are the most recent champions of these views, and they follow the divergent paths noted above: panpsychism vs theism.  

David Deutsch is another cosmologist with an informationalist/multiversalist PoV.  


I am finding Davies' book on Information/Reality to be most instructive.......

He and the various contributors harp upon the normative and representational aspect of information.  At the least, it plays a very contextual/functional role in biology.  


7pm---------

The fact that there is major explanatory gap wrt the origin of life is due, in no small part, to the initial provision of a normative context in which biological information may function.  

Nonetheless, the mere fact of biological information does tend to favor a mechanistic, non-subjective view of it.  I would have to appeal to vitalism, at the least.  

Biology makes no sense without functionalism, which, by definition, is normative.  One could argue that vitalism is a species of panpsychism.  I would argue that atoms partake of this vitalism via the quantum effects.  Prior to my turn to immaterialism, I spoke of a variable quantum 'aperture' to explain the mediation of the vital force.  At that point, the aperture became the universe.  I'm not sure this notion can be made less dualistic.  

I would also like to deploy the notion of the ether, in this context.  It is not clear that ether and aperture have any commonality.  

In this regard, it may be useful to think of an organism as a measuring device. In particular, metabolism has many features of measurement.


(cont.)

When is a measurement?  Where is a measurement?  

No phenomenon is a real phenomenon unless it is observed - Wheeler.  

What counts as an observation?  

An asteroid strikes Jupiter and is observed on the Earth, by chance.  How real were all the millions of other strikes?  A tree falls in the woods......

The answers depend on the nature of reality.  Can there exist unobservable universes?  


noon----------

More importantly, what counts as an observation?  What does it take to collapse a wave-function?  

The classic example is Schrödinger's cat..... Is it the cat or the experimenter who collapses the wave-function?  

More technically, this is the question of decoherence.  This is a tricky subject........

It is very widely assumed that the direction of time is tied to the increase in entropy, which, in turn, is tied to quantum decoherence. However, there is then the problem of the black hole information paradox, qv.

But first, I am trying to sort out the connection between measurement and decoherence..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence#Measurement .



(cont.)

If you want to boggle your mind, do take a look at this page..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics .  There are 19 interpretations listed, and these are just the 'common' ones.  In another entry, 17 'minority' interpretations are listed.  

Among the 19 interpretations on the first list is the von Neumann-Wigner interpretation, which is the only one to explicitly include consciousness, wherein the observer's Cs causes the collapse.  
 

5:30----------

We might choose the Sun as a prime counter-example of invoking mind as a correlate of quantum measurement.  

How could fusion take place in the Sun, without an unobservable transition of free protons into a deuterium ground state: p+p -> d?  Does this not entail a collapse of the wave-functions of the protons, with the deuterium nuclei serving as recording devices?  How else could the Sun shine?  Is not the Sun our prime example of an entropy generator?  And there are no observers in the center of the Sun.  

When the Sun expires, we will be left with a neutron star as a permanent record of its life of fusion.  Nothing wrong with this picture.  

But did the individual wave-functions collapse, or was it just the Sun?  Trees fall in the forest, leaving individual records of these occasions, were we to doubt, quantum or no quantum.  

Do we not need to account for Wigner's Friend?  

Most commentators see his Friend as dismissible, since it leads to a logical regression.  The only way to defeat the regress is to invoke God, which entity is inadmissable, by fiat.  

What is my excuse?  I wish to invoke the Sensorium, i.e. the panpsychic ether, of which you and I are condensates.  

This is a leap, but what choice is there?  Perhaps we could invoke the transactional interpretation (TIQM), qv.  I maintain this to be just the ether, by another name.  

What does this tell us about the ether?  IMHO, it says that there must be a correlation between the ether and the akashic record.  This is no small result.  It also suggests that the akashic record must be irreducible, i.e. it is not a digital medium.  It is not a DVD in the sky.  

This further suggests that the panpsychic akashic record must have a strongly holistic aspect, as does consciousness.  IOW, IMHO, panspychism must have a pantheist aspect, or panentheist, to be more precise.  So finally, without panentheism, the Sun would not, could not shine.  Is there any other conclusion to be drawn?  

True, this is not what you and I learned in Physics 101, nor did we learn it in Sunday school.  Should I apologize?  

Yes, I believe that this holism also points to some sort of least-action principle (LAP), a-la Leibniz.  How else could we achieve the necessary coherence?  But the LAP does not suffice.  We need its optimal version, the OAP ==>> BPW/SWH, IMHO.  




(cont.)

It is still widely assumed within the physics community that quantum decoherence and measurement are virtually synonymous.  Nonetheless, this view is actively disputed by a dedicated number of physicists and philosophers, as acknowledged in the various wiki entries that pertain.  I only became aware of this fact, thanks to reading Max Tegmark's recent papers on this topic, where, by examining the evolution of the density matrix, he demonstrates that observation and decoherence have contrary effects, e.g. arXiv:1309.7349v1.  

IOW, the macroscopic 'objective' world does not emerge merely through decoherence.  

Now, there is a sense in which the macroscopic world is self-measuring or recording.  A neutron star is the record of a burned-out star.  However, it can hardly be concluded that the future solar neutron star is what is now causing the sunshine.  


11:30--------

Now comes W Zurek into this picture.......

Zurek claims to have solved the measurement problem by appealing to 'pointer-states'.  That entry, however, has been removed from wiki.  In its stead you may find 'einselection'.  

The critical case, here, may be quantum Brownian motion (QBM)..... http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0843 .  This is a dense 92-page article.  Does QBM disprove Max's thesis?  Is this a definitive solution to the measurement problem?  

The measurement problem is not addressed in the article.  All 92 pages are focused simply on reproducing the classical diffusion equation.  This effort involves a full deployment of the Feynman diagramatic techniques, not to mention renormalization theory.  Frankly, I'm smelling a coverup.  


12:30--------

Here's what's happening........ Zurek, in 'solving' the QMP, makes reference to a very dense 92-page paper that never actually mentions the QMP.  This is a very high-level shell-game that is being perpetrated right under our noses.  Do they know not what they are doing?  Wherein are they to be forgiven?  

Decoherence, Einselection, and the Existential Interpretation (the Rough Guide) - Zurek (1998) - http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9805065 ....

The view that seems to be emerging from the theory of decoherence is in some sense somewhere in between these two extremes. Quantum state vectors can be real, but only when the superposition principle—a cornerstone of quantum behavior—is “turned off” by einselection. Yet einselection is caused by the transfer information about selected observ- ables. Hence, the ontological features of the state vectors—objective existence of the einselected states—is acquired through the epistemological “information transfer.”

Obviously, more remains to be done. Equally obviously, however, decoherence and einselection are here to stay. They constrain the possible solutions after the quantum–classical transition in a manner suggestive of a still more radical view of the ultimate interpretation of quantum theory in which information seems destined to play a central role.

So, here we are, back to 'information', but, now, instead of with just bits, we have to deal with qubits.  Are we not being led on a wild goose chase?  


1:40-------

N.B.:  Information, in as much as it has meaning, is not reducible to bits, and surely not to qubits.  

If qubits depend upon the ether, then so must measurement.  By definition, they are non-local.  Since qubits are hardly vacuous, they must be an aspect of the ether.  

I would also suggest that any robust definition of the ether must include some aspect of the collective uCs (CuCs).  Our question then hinges upon the identification of, or differentiation between, the CuCs and panpsychism.  

Aether = CuCs??

Ok?  Then here is the next question......

To what extent may panpsychism be thought to include, ab initio, rocks and/or stars?  If not, are we facing Ned Block's 'panpsychic catastrophe' (P/C)?  Do note, that the first google entry for the P/C is to OMF I, which includes some interesting politics, on p.17.  


5pm---------

Had a lengthy phone call with Paul......

The problem is to connect the measurement problem in QM with that in SR.  

There is a connection between GR tensors and Hilbert tensors.  Paul favors Minkowski's SR over Einstein's.  

We agree that decoherence does not solve the measurement problem.  

There are those in the history of physics who suppose that Einstein never made a mistake or changed his mind.  This view is part of the hagiography that is especially prevalent within the US phyiscs establishment.  Misner, my erstwhile advisor at UMd, was amongst these, little beknownst to me, back then.  

Is there a measurement problem in either SR or GR?  I did not establish this fact with Paul.  Paul is advocating a general covariance.  GC does support the ether and the Minkowskian version of SR.  

I should ask Paul again about Machianism.  I tend to favor it.  The distant stars are part of our CuCs.  Just ask Giorgio d'.  

From: Paul
Date: May 1, 2014, 4:48:54 PM EDT
To: Dan
Subject: Re: Video: Giant sinkhole swallows Baltimore street - Telegraph

I was relieved to see that it wasn't your "residential area".

I've been digging up some very interesting material re: Lorentz/Poincare vs. Einstein.

For example, the fact that Bohm and Hiley proposed a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of QM,
something that Jack may not be aware of. The motivation is closely parallel to Bell's.

Will have a list of points written up soon. Also looking at Tegmark's papers.

Yes I think we will be in a a position to give Jack a run for his money when he gets back.


On 5/1/2014 8:01 AM, Dan Smith wrote:
Jack,

Yes, we even had a flooding problem near the top of our ridge, due to new construction at the Hampton Mansion NHS, just up a slight grade.

Hope all is well on your travels.  Paul and I will hopefully have some ideas for you, on your return, next month.

Dan


On May 1, 2014, at 5:34 AM, JACK SARFATTI  wrote:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10800381/Giant-sinkhole-swallows-Baltimore-street.html

And, yes, we did discuss the fact that information plays a big role in black-hole thermodynamics.  

There is, for instance, the Unruh effect (UE) to consider.  And I did also mention the fire-wall problem.  The UE underlines the observer's role in ontology.  

From: Paul
Date: May 2, 2014, 6:21:30 PM EDT
To: Dan
Subject: Your latest OMF post

Dan,

Comments on your most recent OMF post below in red:

______________________________________________

5pm---------

Had a lengthy phone call with Paul......

The problem is to connect the measurement problem in QM with that in SR.  

Well, so to speak.

More accurately, the problem is to relate Einstein's approach to the measurement of time in his 1905
relativity paper to the "Copenhagen" approach to the measurement problem in QM.

According to Heisenberg for example matrix mechanics was modeled on Einstein's elimination of the luminiferous ether
in his 1905 relativity paper, and his 1926 uncertainty principle paper was inspired by Einstein's remarks on the
"positivistic" arguments he used in the same 1905 paper.

There is a connection between GR tensors and Hilbert tensors.  

This is mathematical analogy. Hilbert space Hermitian operators are analogous to second-rank tensors on Euclidean
or Lorentzian geometric spaces. They both change the directions and magnitudes of vectors in their respective spaces.

Paul favors Minkowski's SR over Einstein's.  

No, I retain Minkowski's spacetime model in a fully covariant formulation, but I reinterpret it as an abstract geometric
model for the Poincare-Lorentz version of "restricted" relativity, as opposed to Einstein's.

The point here is that the automatic form invariance of the laws under arbitrary spacetime coordinate transformations
clears the path to a reversion to Galilean kinematics in Minkowski spacetime.

Einstein's time transformations are retained as Lorentz's "local time", while Galilean transformations are interpreted as
giving true frame invariant kinematical time.

All observables are represented by GCT tensors in such a model, just as they should.

We agree that decoherence does not solve the measurement problem.

OK.

There are those in the history of physics who suppose that Einstein never made a mistake or changed his mind.  This
view is part of the hagiography that is especially prevalent within the US physics establishment.  Misner, my erstwhile
advisor at UMd, was amongst these, little beknownst to me, back then.  

OK.

Is there a measurement problem in either SR or GR? I did not establish this fact with Paul.

Yes of course there is. The problem was first discussed by Poincare in his 1898 essay "La Mesure du Temps":

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Measure_of_Time

This essay was also included in his "The Value of Science" published in 1905.

Such problems were also discussed in his "Science and Hypothesis", published in 1902. According to his buddy Maurice
Solovine they had been reading Poincare's "Science and Hypothesis" (which included this essay) over a period of months
during 1902-1904. Also Einstein's job required him to eview all the lates papers on electrodynamics, including those published
by the Academie des Sciences in Paris (which published Poincare's articles).

In his 1905 relativity paper Einstein followed Poincare's approach in the "measurement of time" very closely, right down to
the method of clock synchronization using light signals. His position that clock synchronization and the definition of kinematical
time is based on conventions is classic Poincare.

Paul is advocating a general covariance. GC does support the ether and the Minkowskian version of SR.

I argue that the standard generally covariant formulation of Minkowski SR admits Poincare-Lorentz as a natural physical
interpretation, with Lorentzian time coordinates treated as "local times" as opposed to true kinematical times --- exactly as
in Lorentz's theory of electrodynamics, as developed by Poincare.

I should ask Paul again about Machianism. I tend to favor it. The distant stars are part of our CuCs. Just ask Giorgio d'.

Einstein gave up on "Mach's principle" as an explanation for inertia in GR. In 1920 he conceded that a luminifeous ether is physically necessary after all.

Mach's idea doesn't work in modern gravitational physics. Here I agree with Jack: Woodward's program, based on Sciama's
work, doesn't make sense from the standpoint of GR.

In any case, ether models for inertia are fully relational, since the ether (according to Einstein >1918) is a physical object
with physical properties, no less than are rocks and bricks.  

The reference to Giorgio d' was, of course, to G de Santillana, NTBM.  



(cont.)

Dan:

Has Ron ever experienced any anomalous phenomena while assigned to the hampster desk, or any other desk?

How would he react in such situations - if you were to guess? Violently? Inquisitively? Respectfully?

Just curious.

Bard,

Recently, he did mention that his home electric circuit had a tendency to behave strangely.  Years ago, he spoke of some strange phone calls.  That's about it.  In general, he has only once admitted to there being a 'phenomenological problem'.  


Back to measurements.......

It does occur to me that Brownian motion is perhaps the best example of an inorganic measurement process.  I like to suppose, for instance, that the special biological properties of water may be attributable to its existence as a quantum fluid.  However, Brownian motion suggests that the water molecules are behaving classically, even when 'observed' only by suspended dust particles.  Thus, the biologically important process of molecular diffusion can be adequately treated as a classical process.  No 'secret sauce' there.  

Is Brownian motion, thereby, an even better example than sunshine of quantum level processes that need not be mediated/measured by biological or conscious observers?  IOW, it serves as a counter argument to the von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of QM?  

However, I could appeal to anthropics by pointing out that without classical molecular diffusion, biology would not be possible.  I have pointed out previously that evaporation and transpiration are decidedly molecular processes, that might also be seen as anthropic extensions.  Furthermore, they are not as directly observable as is the Brownian phenomenon.  

I am wont to claim these as, at least, quasi-noumenal processes.  Is this fair?  It seems a bit of a stretch, while watching the dust particles jiggling in the water.  


Noon--------

(In SfA....).... What would we gather were there to be no diffusion?

Or, given the necessity of diffusion, how might it, or might it not, manifest under a microscope?  

I don't see another way for this process to manifest.  It is a necessary form of emergence, like the atoms themselves.


2pm--------

Atoms may instructively be compared with stars wrt their ontology......  

Atoms play a much more important role anthropically, in real-time.

Stars, OTOH, seem much more decorative.  But given day and night, where would night be, without the moon, planets and stars?  This is a very non-trivial aesthetic issue.  The biology comes in with the great importance of the tidal estuaries.  

And, instead of atoms, I could refer to (solar) photons.  Both could be said to emerge, logically, from their secondary phenomena.  

Metabolism require particles, both massive and massless.  


But, we have gotten away from the measurement problem.  

The measurement of photons does require metabolism.  Atoms, OTOH, have a more ubiquitous presence.  Dust motes serve as minimal, non-biological, measurers.  But a crucial point may be the recording thereof.  

We have the respective cases of dust dispersion vs. glucose formation, for instance.  Do the motes truly collapse the wave-functions, when we're not looking?  I would maintain that to be an arguable proposition, keeping in mind that decoherence is not the same as measurement.  We have dispersal vs. synthesis, two different beasts, anthropically and entropically.  

Ok, I have fended off, or at least blunted, once again, the microscopic attack on immaterialism, but, now, I wish to go on the offensive........

What constitutes a record?  And what is their ontological role?

From the outset, a record is a thoroughly normative concept.  It has no scientific/objective basis.  A record is only a representation, as is any other piece of information.  It must be interpreted, through some act of intentionality.  

Furthermore, records, themselves, must be observable.  The status of a record that is written on a sandy beach is problematic...... 'Bill loves Mary', as the tide flows in.  Has the 'wave' function been collapsed?  

What I may be trying to say is that the CTC is a wave-function that is collapsed by Eternity, if that makes sense.  


6:40---------

Once a measurement, always a measurement? A collapse is a collapse is........

The measurement we make today cannot be overruled retroactively. But this is not quite the point.

Observations can only occur in a context, just like any bit of information. As the context expands, the information is liable to reinterpretation. There does have to be an ultimate context. This is what I meant by the earlier paragraph.

The informational buck has to stop somewhere, and this is the role of eternity. The metanarrative must be self-contained, and be contained within Eternity. This need not be self-contradictory.



(cont.)

Ok, here is a possible deal......

Our CTC may be likened to the stationary electronic states of a (Bohr) atom, wherein there must be an integral number of electron wavelengths in each orbital.  Thus do we satisfy the circular boundary conditions.  

I wish to posit that the stability of the microcosm and the macrocosm are interrelated.  The quantum measurement problem simply reflects this fact.  

Here is another way to state this interrelation......

measurement <=> coherence <=> metanarrative <=> holism <=> monism <=> CTC/SWH/BPWH.  

Self-containment/organization is a requirement for this cosmic coherence.  

Another way to approach this problem is through the notion of cycles within cycles, within the CTC circuit, see http://www.bestpossibleworld.com/index06.htm#Metaphysics .  Just above the entry on cycles, you will see reference to AZO/X/QRP.  This is another way to state the connection between the macro- and micro-cosms, by appealing to circularity.  The latter trio also points to the Euler identity, e^i*pi = -1.  There is also the implied connection between the christos and the Vitruvian man or adam kadmon.  

I would further venture that the (relativistic) electron spin, being integral to macro-stability, may turn out to be a another key link in the coherence 'package'.  


How might we proceed to make these links more plausible?  Am I looking for something that is numerical or more analogical?

And I should point out that there is an important Kastner/Davis/Sarfatti connection in all of this.


noon--------

The KDS connection relates particularly to Ruth's TI/QM.... http://transactionalinterpretation.org/


Integral values of the electron wave-numbers, along with the half-integral electon spin, lead to atomic stability.  It is not clear what would be the equivalent stabilizing elements of our BPW/CTC.  

The optimal action principle (OAP), adapted from Leibniz' LAP, should be self-stabilizing.  There is a collective optimization occuring in the implicate/noumenal/CuCs realm.  In the LAP, the stability comes from the constructive interference near the extremum points.  

There is also the fact of the 10^10-11 circuits of the cosmic soul, juxtaposed with the 10^-10m atomic scale and the 3x10^9m/s light speed.  At some point, numerology will be unavoidable as a step toward rationalization.  There are the cycles within cycles within the singular CTC.  Undoubtedly there is a deeper connection between the various cycles.  


The many metabolic cycles may be stabilized through Sheldrake's notion of morphic resonance.  Kastner's transactional hypothesis could lend itself to this possibility.  One is reminded of the quantum amplification that occurs in lasers.  

Biological organisms, being quintessential measuring devices, are likely to be using these subtle effects to direct the organic process in a teleological fashion.  Quantum biology still struggles to make inroads into the mechanistic ethos of biological science.  The animated videos of cellular processes may lead to a greater appreciation of the role for these 'vital' processes amidst the mind-boggling complexity.  

It would be strange indeed if these organisms had not learned how to harness these coherence effects in order to overcome entropic forces of decoherence.  The theoretical models, however, are not sufficiently precise to compare the actual in-vivo efficiencies with those calculated classically in-vitro.  


Another thought is to look at organic processes from a more radical, immaterial perspective, despite its seemingly self-contradictory aspect.  

As usual, we may start with Leibniz, and now his identity of indiscernibles (II).  In dealing with biological processes, who is doing the discerning?  From a quantum perspective, there need be only a single prototypical cell.  This proto-cell is then subject to the focused, teleological intensity of an entire ecosystem.  Morphic resonance is then the default condition, with spacetime emerging only at a higher level of sentient observation or abstraction.  


It is important to point out the ontological differences that may arise from the epistemological aspects of the quantum.  In classical physics there is no observer.  It is very hard for us to then conceptualize such a role.  We choose to go about this by amendment, it would seem.  There is the possibility that we need to rethink the entire ontological enterprise, from the bottom up and the top down.  This is certainly the enterprise of idealism.  

In this process, we may have to invent a new form of ontology, i.e. 'quantum' ontology.  Surely, this cannot be novel.  It could be, however, if we take measurement even more seriously than Tegmark has been willing to.  In this process, the micro- and macro-aspects of measurement may not be so readily distinguished, not if we also take more seriously the holistic or ideational aspects of information.  No?

The observer can then not fail to take on a more holistic or less analyzable aspect.  Would this not also provide a more robust ontological foothold for the ether?  Just wondering....?  

There is then the pedagogical problem of not being able to quantify that which is not analyzable.  

It is as though Wigner's friend remains friendless.

Prana/akasha to the rescue?  How do we quantify dequantification?

Speaking of CTCs/ouroboros, do consider the 'point at infinity'.  

It appears that information may require a projective completion.  Any volunteers?  

Could not our common event horizon be likened to the projective sphere of the complex plane?  Is this the complexity of e^i*pi.... QRP/X/AZO?  

An informational projective sphere?  Isn't this just the holographic horizon??    

Kastner's offer and confirmation waves originate from the alpha/omega, respectively, i.e. the point at infinity.  We may need a 3D torus.  

In a similar vein, is a Klein bottle a traversable wormhole?



(cont.)

From: Dan
Date: May 6, 2014, 9:20:08 AM EDT
To: Paul
Subject: Re: William Lane Craig

Paul,

Thanks for this reference.  I was not aware of Craig's extensive work on time.  

I guess that the BPWH could be characterized as presentist/eternalist.  We are the temporal/historical aspect of God, of which aspect, Jesus is the exemplar.  

The present is a microcosm of Eternity.  Eternity is total Presence.  Change is relatively illusory.

Nonetheless, the prophetic tradition is real, as are the Alpha and Omega.  God valorizes history.  

History, then is God's way of expanding and completing the present.  History is God's mode of self-revelation through the real growth of the human spirit.  


On May 6, 2014, at 2:32 AM, Paul wrote:

I've been impressed with this person's writings on the foundations of relativity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig

You might want to check this out:

"Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity"

Back to measurement and information.......

One way to look at the measurment problem is to understand that the quantum aspect of it is pointing to the larger informational problem.  Classical physics has an informational problem, which is demonstrated in the problem of measuring entropy.  

Most succinctly, dS = dQ/T.  Is there any problem?  This tells us that, with perpetual motion being impossible, the energy that is lost is dissipated as heat, Q, which increases the entropy, S.

The problem comes when we attempt to give a causal or analytic explanation of entropic processes, such as with Maxwell's demon.  We quickly run into the information problem.  

Quantum and classical entropy are usually treated as distinct subjects, with the active vs. the passive observer.  The limits of knowledge are either absolute or practical.  


1pm----------

Neither absolute nor practical contend with the holism of knowledge.  I suggest that holism trumps both, e.g. the collapse of the wave function becomes an afterthought.  

As far as the physics is concerned, there is virtually no difference between individual atoms or cells, if individuality there be.  Electrons barely need to know which atoms they inhabit.  And physics does proceed on a need to know basis.  

Everything we can experience is supra-physical.  Cosmology is cosmetics, is it not?  Everything beyond 'individual' electrons is massively contextual, and all of that contextuality is a sop to sapience.  Ants are pawns in that game.  

Ants and everything else, including electrons, are artifacts of the optimality.  Nothing is extraneous to that end.  Everything is the means to our end.  Our end is also our beginning: O => A.  

The ether is the cosmic omniscience that is omnipresent.  We are that we are.  We need no other excuse.  The ether is the MWB of the monadic self-excitation, out of which spacetime emerges.  It is a singularity in its own right.


2:45-----------

What have I missed?  What needs to be calculated?  What needs to be proven?  What is the final straw...... what is the first straw of the MoAPS?  What is the hurry?  

How much worse might things get?  Is there anything more that can be done to prepare for a tribulation?  Should anything more be done?  

How much (more?) tribulation would be good for us?  Haven't we had enough tribulation in the last 2,000 years?  What more do we need to learn of suffering?  


6pm----------

If we all share the same soul, wouldn't one person's suffering be enough for all of us? Wasn't this supposed to have been the point of xianity...... vicarious atonement? It didn't quite work out, did it?




(cont.)

Back to measurement.........  

We sapients have a love-hate relationship with our own sapience.  We fear the power of our own minds, and for good reason.  We do not, individually, control that power.  Our minds have a mind of their own.  

Religion, more than any other institution, has wielded that control, up to about now.  But, as it has gradually beaten back religion, science now finds itself in the unenviable position of the in-locus parentis wrt our free thinking.  

That scientific thought control is so effective in the modern, and seemingly free-wheeling, agora is due, as is all effective power, primarily to self-restraint.  But do KIM that God is the cosmic sensor par-excellence.  The rest of us are just rank amateurs.  

What happened to Chicken Little's self-censorship?  My free-thinking is very effectively hidden right here on OM.  How better to hide something than in plain sight?  

When science wants to censor something, all it has to do is analyze it to death...... heat death by a thousand cuts.  This is what has happened to life and meaning.  The slowly resurrecting ether is the tip of an iceberg..... nay, it is the tip of the cosmic Monad.  

The ether is the closest thing we have to a non-physical substance.  Science has tried to analyze it to death, and, now, its failure to do so is coming back to haunt it.  

How do life and meaning relate to the ether......?  

At the crudest level of interpretation, the ether is the cosmic glue and/or container, thereby replacing absolute space and time.  But, no, the reality is much more subtle, so much so that no one has been able to wrap their mind around it.  But watch me try.  

To get a better handle on the ether, we have to ask which came first, the ether or the....... what??  

I submit that life and meaning arose in conjunction with the ether.  The ether is, perhaps, best observed in the notorious non-locality of QM.

The ether is, then, best observed in the non-locality of life and meaning.  In short, it is best observed in the meaning of life...... no meaning no ether and vice-versa.

The ether is simply an expression or manifestation of cosmic omniscience and omnipotence.  As they say, knowledge is power.  


All I have to do now is prove it........

We believe that we are lost, lost in space and time.  We now cling to that belief for dear life, and that is no idle concern.  

The simple fact is that the ether is pointing to the source of reality, and the Source is coming to get us....... to take us back.  It's just that simple sports fans.  That's life..... it's dog eat dog.... god eat god.  

And it all comes back to the holism of measurement and information.  

A measurement cannot occur in isolation.  A tree cannot fall, exept in a forest.  

It's all about Wigner's friend.  Who is his friend?  Well, very briefly, I was his friend, his comrade in the sky.  But, ITBK, God is the only one who fits the bill, when it comes to passing the cosmic measurement buck.  I'm here, God willing, to take back this cosmic IOU.  Yes, that, and all ye, all ye, in free.  

The Earth is a measurement system, par excellence, and, yet, the Earth is isolated, is it not?  Well, that is the question I pose.

Lest I forget it, the ether is the CMB of the Source.  It is the gravitational field that, inexorably, pulls us back to the Source.  

The ether is our first scientific clue as to the non-isolation of the Earth.  

Here is the deal..........

You can tell me when was evolution, perhaps, but can you tell me where was evolution?  It was on the Earth, dummy!  Well, not quite so fast smarty-pants.  

Who says it was on the Earth?  Yes, says who?  Does Wigner's friend say that?  I am Eugene's friend, and that is not quite what I say.  There is a caveat..........

Evolution, according to the best and brightest, is occuring everywhere.  Or is it nowhere, unless it is now here?  That is my little caveat, out of which I intend to make a cosmic case.  Just watch me.  

Let's suppose that evolution is occurring on planet on the other side of the Milky Way.  That is a probability.  But that is all it is, unless it is observed...... by whom?  

See, there is a hidden assumption that evolution, just like everything else is either self-observing or self-recording.  Samuel Johnson did not create the rock that he kicked down the path.  It was there on its own accord.  It was a record of its own existence.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  This is what we need, in the hour of our extremity, to understand.


11am---------

Sam's rock was its own record.  That is what classical objects are, just self-recording devices.  Hey, the rock is its own Selfie!  Hmmm..... we'll see about that.  

Yes, rocks do exist, t'is hardly to be denied.  But, when and where do they exist?  There's the rub.  Forget about evolution on the far side of the galaxy.  Let's just do rocks, for the nonce......

Aren't we inhabiting the third rock from the Sun?  

We think of rocks as little selves, because of decoherence, in modern parlance.  The rock is being kept in place by it's neighboring rocks.  It can't just get up and wander off, Brownian-like.  

Even when we observe the Brownian dust particles through a microscope, they are always in one place or another, never superimposed like Schrödinger's cat.  


12:15----------

Nonetheless, a rock is a rock.  It may have a story, like Sam's rock, but whose story is it?  Is it the rock's story or is it Sam's.  It is hard to imagine how much ontology may hinge upon that answer.  

Yes, Sam is the rock's friend, but who is Sam's friend?  Not me!  Nor was Berkeley.  

We like to suppose that the rock's neighbors are its 'friends', but that is hard to prove.  

What I may be driving at is the II.  We suppose the individuality of rocks.  We used to suppose the individuality of electrons.  It took us many years to learn otherwise.

I question the individuality of rocks, every rock except the third rock from the Sun.  

Individuality must be bestowed.  There are rocks, and then there are pet rocks.  

Perhaps I am questioning, not only the individuality of rocks, but also the existence of rocks, per se.  'Per se' is no small caveat..... back to selfies.

Per se....... what a throwaway phrase.  In itself.  Hmmm...... what a mouthful that is.  

Rocks are made of protons and electrons, loosely speaking, and, NB, if you ever catch me not speaking loosely...... shoot me!  


2:10----------

Just off an hour's confab with Paul.  We seem still to be on the same page.  There exists a tiger, which we may or may not have by the tail.  

The tiger is Wigner's friend, and Mad Max is also on this trail, and we are not anxious to be scooped by Max. We will try to conspire to bring Ruth and Jack into heading off Max at the pass.

Isn't competition wonderful, even when it has to be manufactured?  

The point is that, despite her TI/QM, Ruth is not a teleologist.  Why not?  We don't really know.  I suggest that it is the fear of meeting our Maker.  How could we possibly be prepared?  

The Princess is not answering her phone, so to whom else can I turn, other than to the footman?

Will or will not the footman be part of our conspiracy to head Max off at the pass?


5:20-------

There has been a convo with the Princess.  We are not sure what to do next.  Any ideas?  


Then try this.......

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/05/07/russia-and-the-ukraine-the-worrisome-connection-to-world-oil-and-gas-problems/



(cont.)

So here we are, several hundred years into the scientific revolution, and we still have no idea what a measurement is.  Yes, I can go out and measure the length of a football field, and a robot can be programmed to do that, as well as you or me.  It can all be laid out in a set of very specific procedural steps.  And, at the end, we have before us a particular number of feet or meters.  The problem comes in the representation.  How exactly do we attach the number to the object?  This is not a quantum problem.  

There are no convenient hooks or handles.  We might use labels.  I can take a picture of John Smith, and then print his name on the picture.  There could even be a facial recognition surveilance system, that could pick John Smith out of a crowd, by matching his face with a mug shot, and send out an alert.  

John Smith has, thereby, been recognized and apprehended.  Where is the quibble?  

The system behaves as if a cognitive act had occurred.  Who is to judge that it did not?  Surely no cognitive scientist.  Have we missed some crucial bit of introspection?  

We are, perhaps, left with the problem of personal identity, but how are we to distinguish that from artifactual identity, without appealing to purely subjective experience, which has no scientific standing?



(cont.)

"Our Mathematical Universe" by the supergroup Apparatjik, featuring Guy Berryman (Coldplay), Magne Furuholmen (A-ha), Jonas Bjerre (Mew) and Martin Terefe - at least in this particular parallel universe.

Question of the day: Is the Creator funda-mental or emergent?

Gary,

I submit that the fundamental vs. emergent distinction need not apply to God nor even to persons.  This distinction assumes that time is an absolute or overriding reality, which is an essential part of the materialist credo.  

For the immaterialist, it is time that is emergent relative to eternity.  Yes, crudely speaking, God creates time.  More accurately, Creation is a bootstrap 'process', wherein the closed timelike curve (CTC) that is Creation resides within Eternity.  There is no external dimension of time.  

It may be tempting to think of the Creator/Creation bootstrap as emergent, but this is only meant to be an analogy, so conditioned are we to ascribing to space and time an overriding or transcendental status.  

This is also my argument with the Multiverse theory.  It requires a self-existing background of super-space and super-time, a very metaphysical notion, arising from a strongly subjective bias that we are inclined to project upon or ascribe to a transcendental realm.  

In this regard, I am both a 'presentist' and an 'eternitist'.  The one entailing the other.  


Perhaps the best argument against ascribing too much significance to the quantum measurement problem comes from a consideration of the simple process of evaporation.  If there were an overriding measurement problem, then the very process of molecular evaporation would, itself, be problematic.  

The mere fact of an individual water molecule attaining sufficient kinetic energy to overcome the surface tension of the liquid water is tantamount to a measurement and individuation of that molecule, without any of the attendant issues of an observational or recording process.  The molecule is self-identifying.  There is no reason to suppose that evaporation cannot occur on the far side of the galaxy, with or without invoking metabolism or any more complex processes.  

Am I hereby acceding to atomism, and thereby to materialism?  

Why, then, am I less troubled, for instance, by having to explain thermonuclear processes inside the Sun?  Why should individuation seem more pertinent to evaporation than to fusion?



(cont.)

Before I knew Maria's name
And heard her wail and whinin'
I had a gal and she had me
And the sun was always shinin'

Then one day I left my girl
I left her far behind me
And now I'm lost so cold and lost
Not even God can find me

Maria, Maria
They call the wind Maria

Did I forget to mention that Creation is a game?  Dang, me......

It can be a lot like paper, rock and scissors.  Yes, Creation can be a lot of things....... It can be like deep-sea diving and long-line fishing, and don't think for moment that God does not know how to play the line.  

I have also said that Creation is heaven's dynamo.  And heaven's centrifuge, a carbon fibre reinforced centrifuge.  The long-line is the Monad, stretched out into a single fiber.  We are the fish on the hooks.  Every night we are let off our hook.  In the day, we are the pearl divers, crushed in the artificial weight of the centrifuge.  Just when we feel that our lungs are on fire, we let go the anchor line, wondering if we'll make it back to the surface, to the fresh night air.  

The long-line is the great chain of being, we being the links.  But it's hard to know where on the line we are, we all being in the centrifuge.  Another, cruder aspect of the chain or circle of being is paper, rock and scissors, but here we have monad/soul, words, numbers and atoms.  I keep trying to remind myself to not let the atoms grind me down, and catch me crying..... out.  

Atoms are the panpsychic catastrophe, run amok.  Little buggers they can be.  Why did God give us such a long line, and how do we pass the line onto the atoms, but still keep them in check.  The four horsemen, Sam H, Dan D, Richard D and Christopher H, celebrate the infernal, willful stubborness of the atoms.  I am usually less amused.  

But then I am reminded of paper, rock and scissors.  And numbers.  The only things more cussed, more recalcitrant than atoms are numbers.  Atoms we can fission, fusion and annihilate.  Numbers, though, they just sit there and laugh at us.  God created the integers, the 10^11 hooks on the long-line, all the rest, the windings of the dynamo, are our doing.  

The numbers are the epitome of the panpsychic catastrophe.  We may not be able to crush the numbers, but we can crunch them.  We can spin them in the silicon centrifuge and come up with the Mandelbrot, bless its little heart.  

There are a lot more numbers than there are atoms, and everyone is a perfect individual.  Before we were mathematicians, we were numberologists, and we studied their souls.  Steven Jobs may know the soul of the machine, but Srinivasa knows the soul of numbers.  Atoms and numbers are perfect manifestations/expressions of Pan.  We?  We have to get our hands dirty, not to mention our souls.  

So, yesterday, I was complaining about water not been sufficiently superfluidic for my taste.  It was just too darn grainy, thank you very much!  But last night I thought about liquid He^4, and I decided that maybe God wasn't so stupid, after all.

But is it ok if I still worry about evaporation on the far side of the galaxy?  How is that worse than evaporation on the far side of Titan?  

Is there a chain of being?  Is there a spectrum of ontology?  Can one atom be less real than another?  One number?  Are we creatures not also substantiators?  Rare Earth?  Probably.  But then evaporation on the far side of the Galaxy, is that not ontology run amok?  

I mean, look, it is perfectly respectable for philosophers to be constructivists when it comes to numbers.  Why might it seem less than respectable for me to be a constructivist wrt atoms.  Does that mean I am also a hollow-Earther?  Well, ahem, I am, after the torroidal-CTC, centrifugal fashion.  

It's the same problem as with falling off the end of the world.  Or, more to the point, being raptured off the end of time.  

IOW, do we sweat in heaven?  Do we breathe?  Do we turn blue in the face?  I'm guessing it's more like a lucid dream, just a bit more lucid.  And I once did a page on 'Dream Atoms', http://www.bestpossibleworld.com/next22.htm ...

Because each atom implements the entire realm of mathematics, they are indeed the microcosmic cornerstones of our reality.  All of  the prerequisites of our consciousness are thus ensured by their very manner of design.  The dream Atom is God's primary bootstrapping tool.  Very clever of Her.

Ok, but this does not address the problem of the ontological spectrum.  

Yes, our atoms, the ones heavier than iron, were compounded in the neutrino shockwave of a supernova that is now wandering around as a black hole.  Am I a tad skeptical?  No, I'm just constructivistic.  

I am also a constructivist wrt heaven.  Is heaven more like Hilbert's Hotel or like Hotel California?  


10am--------

Kit Green, besides debriefing former Presidents, also debriefed astronauts.  He would know more than I would about falling off the end of the world.  Kit would be glad to tell us what he found out, all we need is a Congressional subpoena.  

Thar be serpents, as they used to say.  Ask Edgar M and Gordon C, for instance.  Hey, Brian O didn't even need to get in the rocketship.  We get the picture.  It ain't rocket science or brain surgery.  

Look, if we want to throw enough money at it, we can measure the vapor pressure on the polar sea of Titan.   But we can already calculate it.  But, if you want to go there in person, you'll likely end up with Kit as your shrink.  Hey, I'd pay good money for that.  

Sure, pay science enough, and they will be glad to extend your reductionist reality.  Hey, isn't that what we pay them for?  

But, it may not always be what you were bargaining for.  If you have an infinity of dollars, they will give you Perpetual Progress, but will it be more like Hilbert's Hotel or Hotel California?  

When I last checked, Heaven was for free.  Your admission has already been paid, or so I've heard.  

It's a free world and you have a free choice....... follow the money, or follow the blood.  

Me?  Hey, I have it even easier.  All I have to do is follow the truth, even when the truth is 40' down at the end of an anchor line.  Deep-sea diving, Rocky Mountain climbing....... and sometimes in a smoke filled strip joint, at the far end of the bar.  


11:20----------

I think what I'm trying to say is that science is like a pelican, its beak can hold more than its belly can.  That is what the astronauts found out.  All we need is a congressional subpoena.  And do recall that Ron's aviary name was pelican.  


Now back to Brownian motion..........

Superfluidity is nice, in the right place.  The right place is mainly inside the cell, and this is what those animations are pointing to.  

Look, I don't want to be a Dr. Quantum.  I don't want to promote quantum idolatry, now do I?  

But......  the quantum is an important pointer to our path back to the Source.  And so is the ether.  How do we quantize the ether?  That is a question to pose to Paul.  

Here is the next question....... are the Earth quanta worth any more than the Titanic quanta?  

I strongly suspect so, but that is not going to be easy to quantify.  

The ether is stronger on Earth than it is on Titan.  We just need a number.  

But, see, it's not that easy.  The ether is stronger inside the cellular membrane than outside.  It might be likened unto osmotic pressure.  

Of course, the ether is nonlocal, but how nonlocal is it?  Can we put a number on that?  

I have a call into Paul.

Furthermore, the ether, like the Logos is contextual.  But how contextual is it?  How lumpy is it?  Is it lumpy like the CMB?  

We need to give it some structure.  Right now, it is just protoplasmic.  

I am suggesting, as the essence of the BPWH, that the Earth is the primary lump in the ether.  


1:40---------

Had a 45' convo with Paul.  It seems that we are still on track.  The current target is the lumpiness of the ether, which could be related to the lumpiness of the CMB.  

Part of this question has to do with the in-vitro/in-vivo distinction of the ether.  The idea is that the cellular protoplasm does have a quantum-aperture that is bigger than with the extra-cellular Brownian motion.  

It turns out that the Brownian motion caused the Machian logical positivists to convert to logical empiricism.  It caused me to have a bad day.  

And it turns out that Jack also believes that his non-linear, non-unitary QM does afford an in-vitro/in-vivo distinction.  

So, yes, the ether may have its logos/lumps.  And the protoplasm may be an ether induced super-fluid, following the lead of Penrose and Hameroff.  

And, yes, Paul Dirac was a big fan of the quantum ether, which is to be distinguished from the Feynman quantum vacuum.  

And, concerning the QA, do see the Heart of the Matter...... http://www.bestpossibleworld.com/nexu54.htm  

Jack and David B were both dualists, affording equal ontic status to both the implicate and explicate orders.  In 1981, thanks to KW, I jettisoned the explicate order.  What will it take to get someone to comprehend that monism?  

At worst we have the Cs and the CuCs.  The ether is involved in both.  The ether helps to localize both of them.  However, with the approach of the Omega, the presentism of the Cs merges with the eternitism of the CuCs.  Is that too complicated?  


2:30-------

I point out that both the logos and the ether are lumpy. How do we relate those lumps? The prana and the qi-gong..... are they not also lumpy?



(cont.)

We have paper, rock and scissors.  

We have Monad/soul, Logos, numbers and atoms.  

We have the Cs and the CuCs.  

We have the explicate and implicate orders.

But no, God does not play dice.  The Monad is the thumb on the scale, the finger in the pie.  


And then there is the ether........

The closest analogy for the ether is what we find in Cs vs. CuCs, with the ether being the latter.  

In another sense, the numbers are the Cs, and mathematicians are the Jungian psychologists of the numeric CuCs.  Just ask Srinivasa R, and witness the mandelbrot.  

Obviously, anthropics applies to atoms.  I contend that it also applies to numbers, as in Euler's identity, e^i*pi = -1.  But where are the adjustable parameters in mathematics?  Something more subtle is afoot, and it is a big foot, and we are the footprint.  


Paul sends the following link..... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kingdon_Clifford#Philosopher , although, he is known mainly for his mathematics.  

The hypothetical ultimate element of mind, or atom of mind-stuff, precisely corresponds to the hypothetical atom of matter, being the ultimate fact of which the material atom is the phenomenon. Matter and the sensible universe are the relations between particular organisms, that is, mind organized into consciousness, and the rest of the world. This leads to results which would in a loose and popular sense be called materialist. But the theory must, as a metaphysical theory, be reckoned on the idealist side. To speak technically, it is an idealist monism."

So there.  And the work being described was published in 1878.  It is but a short step from monist materialism back to monist idealism.  That may be why we are targeting the neo-pythagoreans, i.e. theoretical physicists.  Bohm went over to the other side, to the implicate order.  Jack saw into that eschatological abyss, and pulled back.  And then along came chicken-little.  

In this context, we must also mention Craig Dilworth's metaphysical contrast between complexity and simplicity.  The Monad is all about non-trivial, qualitative simplicity.  

And I should point out the close analogy between Euler's identity and the Mandelbrot.  It would seem that the one must be adumbrating the other.  It is all about complexity vs. simplicity.  It is about quantity vs. quality.  Just ask Pirsig.  


Back then to the structure of the ether, which is also like asking about the structure of the Simple.  

John had the first approximation..... love.  The 2nd approx. is hate, and so forth, dialectically speaking.  Yes, it is about thesis, antithesis and synthesis.  It is about the Tao.  


10am---------

We have the explicate and the implicate, somewhat in analogy with in-vitro and in-vivo.  This could also be Derrida's Differance.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Différance .

So maybe I am following Derrida in claiming that identity is inessential.  Is that not the lesson of the quantum?  In which case, we do have to reinvent, invert the scientific world.  

It could be, then, that the ether is just the archimedian fulcrum of our anticipated gestalt switch or MoAPS.  

So, yes, I am embarked upon the deconstruction of Science..... long overdue, one might say.  


11am--------

We should note that Derrida was a fan of apophatic theology.  

The tool for our deconstruction of science, the fulcrum, is slated to be the ether.  

And I do wish to say that the ether is as lumpy as life, enabling the in-vitro/in-vivo distinction, or should we say differance?  

The cell is the etheric antenna.  Beyond the cell, there is only the structure of the E8xE8 and the Monster.  

So the stucture of the ether is just the logos, or, more accurately, the dia-Logos or love.  That is about as simple as it can get.  


Ok, then, the efficacy of the dialogos is to be found in redundancy, and this, then, is the rationale of Creation.  And the power of Creation is to be found in the quantitative power of Leibniz' PII.  

We are not just our brother's keeper, we are our (twin?) brother/sister.

Rocks don't have that power.  They only have the E8.  But crystals, they do have something extra.  Just ask John Bardeen and Felix Bloch.  Ask your iPad.  

We have amplification through heterodyne(?) redundancy.  That is why atoms can be so recalcitrant, and why we can't live with them, and can't live without them.  

But what happens in heaven?  In heaven we live on the slippery slope into the Great Attractor.  


Now, I asked Paul to get me a number.  Number, number, who's got the number?

Life and Lasers must have something in common.  In-vivo is a special kind of Bose condensate.  A cell is a high-temperature superconducting laser.  We just need a number for that.  Penrose and Hameroff must have come very close.  Yes, a cell is a special kind of a crystal.  But what kind is it?  

Ok, it is a liquid crystal.  And, yes, the life giving property of water stems from its being a quasi-liquid crystal.  Do see the google images for liquid crystals.  

Wonderful, but what does the ether have to do with LCDs?  

The ether must be able to sustain and amplify high-temperature quantum coherence effects, by making use of the PII, in conjunction with the quantum-aperture.  

That is a mouthful.  All we need is a number to go with it.  


12:20--------

But from whence might come this number?  It would have to do with an enhanced form of quantum entanglement.  How might we use the QLCC/ether to enhance the entanglement?  

Hey, it looks like we have a QQLCC/E3.  But we still don't have a number.  

I mean, what is the ether good for, if not for this?  

KIM that we also have the intra- and extra-cellular matrices.  These matrices must be able to entangle with the ether.  What else are they good for?  

I suspect that it all goes back to Tegmark's original (1999) debunking paper, wherein he is allegedly debunking brain coherence.  But, as he later admitted, the debunking part was just a cover for his own, related thesis, or, should we say, antithesis.  

The key point is how he gets from section C to section D, in which he introduces the quantum Subject.  

That is one heck of a segue!  


1pm---------

His point is that microscopic systems can never behave classically.  Our neurons are microscopic systems.  They can never behave classically.  Transistors behave classically, despite their microscopicity.  We force them to.  They are illiquid.  Ergo the brain is a quantum antenna tuned to the logos of the ether.  What more to say?  


And this is why quantum computers will not instantiate strong-AI, because they do not have the right 'frequency'.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_the_Frequency,_Kenneth%3F ?  

So, yes, this is the question I pose to Paul..... what is the aetheric frequency?  




(cont.)

Ok, back to Derrida and the inessentiality of identity........

Jackie was the quintessential postmodernist.  He turned his his battering ram against the arts and the soft sciences, but, TBMK, not against physics and cosmology.  Well, he had to leave somehing for chicken little.......

You would think that, with relativity and the quantum, both in the bank, physics would have been an easy target for Jackie's apophatic battering ram.  

Jackie shied away from Gottfried.  That would have been getting too close to the flame.  The PII is strongly anti-materialist, and Jackie didn't want to go there.  There is no identity to be found in substance.  

But, wait......

Difference is a key concept of philosophy, denoting the process or set of properties by which one entity is distinguished from another within a relational field or a given conceptual system. In the Western philosophical system, difference is traditionally viewed as being opposed to identity, following the Principles of Leibniz, and in particular his Law of the Identity of indiscernibles. In structuralist and poststructuralist accounts, however, difference is understood to be constitutive of both meaning and identity.

I think what I'm pointing out is that if identity is relative, then so is difference/differance...... in the End.  

Yes, Differance leads inevitably back to an apophatic/dialectical Monism, i.e. it leads back to Hegel.  Jackie probably saw this or sensed this, and took a long detour around Leibniz and Hegel.  

Indistinguishability is a relative concept..... certainly subjective.  In the End, nothing is distinguishable from God, especially not Creation.  This is just a restatement of apocatastasis, at-one-ment.  This is apophasis on steroids.

How, then, do we apply the PII to the ether?  Hopefully, via relativity and the quantum.  And also via numbers.  

This is about the organicity of mathematics.  And how could that differ from the organicity of biology?  It is about Euler and the Mandelbrot.  It is about Srinivasa and Andrew Wiles.  

Are numbers relative?  Are they dialectical?  Certainly logic is, and where are number's without logic?  Hey, it is the constructivists who deconstruct platonic mathematics.  

Wasn't Turing a constructivist?  Even so was Cantor, but he just couldn't help himself.  

The ether is the monadic potentia.  And how does this differ from the Apeiron.....?  

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Hmmm.......


10:20--------

Ok, then, have we not pinned down the ether?  It is quantifiable in the organicity of mathematics.  To what degree is mathematics organic?  Just on the other side of that coin, is the ether structural.  

Another measure of the organicity of mathematics is the power of category theory, with its dualities and transitivities.  

Do we not have the number of the ether?  

But what is the frequency, Kenneth?  


11:30--------

And lately, Paul has been bugging me about Tononi and his theory of integrated information (IIT), http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-theory-of-consciousness/ ....

Indeed, the theory is blind to synapses and to all-or-none pulses of nervous systems. At least in principle, the incredibly complex molecular interactions within a single cell have nonzero Φ. In the limit, a single hydrogen ion, a proton made up of three quarks, will have a tiny amount of synergy, of Φ. In this sense, IIT is a scientific version of panpsychism, the ancient and widespread belief that all matter, all things, animate or not, are conscious to some extent.

Here we are, back to the panpsychic catastrophe.  His comrade in arms is no less than Christof Koch, not to mention Gerald Edelman.  

It seems that our materialist friends are stuck on the horns of a dilemma...... eliminative materialism vs. panpsychism.  And there is a difference, sports fans.  


2pm---------

Brief convo with Paul, who points to the following quote from Tononi (2008, p.18) - http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.full.pdf ...

However, if consciousness (i.e., integrated information) exists as a fundamental property, an equally valid view of the universe is this: a vast empty space that contains mostly nothing, and occasionally just specks of integrated information (phi)—mere dust, indeed—even there where the mass- charge– energy perspective reveals huge conglomerates. On the other hand, one small corner of the known universe contains a remarkable concentration of extremely bright entities (where brightness reflects high phi), orders of mag- nitude brighter than anything around them. Each bright “phi-star” is the main complex of an individual human being (and most likely, of individual animals).13 I argue that such phi-centric view is at least as valid as that of a universe dominated by mass, charge, and energy. In fact, it may be more valid, since to be highly conscious (to have high phi) implies that there is something it is like to be you, whereas if you just have high mass, charge, or energy, there may be little or nothing it is like to be you. From this standpoint, it would seem that entities with high phi exist in a stronger sense than entities of high mass.

3:20----------

Then we have Zurek (2002, p. 22) ......

Obviously, more remains to be done. Equally obviously, however, decoherence and einselection are here to stay. They constrain the possible solutions after the quantum–classical transition in a manner suggestive of a still more radical view of the ultimate interpretation of quantum theory in which information seems destined to play a central role.

So, here is a list of the people whose ideas need to be correlated.....

On the physics side......

Wheeler, Wigner, Sarfatti, Kastner, Davis, Tegmark, Tononi, Zurek, Davies, Laughlin.

On the philosophical side......

Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Derrida, Dilworth, Nagel.  

Have I missed anyone?  

Yes, I'm missing someone concerning the organicity of math.  Penrose, perhaps.  Yes, Penrose with his Orchestrated Reduction, and with his math -> mind -> physics diagram.  


5:20--------

I am presently on the air with the Princess on LotP/WolfSpirit radio, on mute, that is.  

She is at a UAV conference in Orlando, and is interviewing special participants.  

Before that, Paul and I had an hour's confab on Leibniz in relation to Tononi and Tegmark.  We suspect that Tononi is a closet Leibnizian, but that the people who support his TII..... Koch, Edelman and Tegmark, may not actually be aware that Tononi is a Leibnizian.  

Also notice the similarity of the TII to the PII.  

In the meantime, I spoke with Ron.  The LotP show is being broadcast from the AUVSI conference..... Association of UV Systems International... http://www.auvsishow.org/auvsi2014/public/enter.aspx .  


Back to substantivalism.... http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-theories/#5.2 .  The ether is the substance, herein.  This is closely related to the hole problem.  


I didn't realize we were still on the air, at 5:55, and I tried to find out if she had fround Ron, who was in the parking lot trying to find Kashmir.  The Princess was trying to ignore my inappropriate inquiries.  

Well, no, she did not hear my inquiries.  


Anyway, back to ontology.......

Rovelli is an anti-substantivalist or, thereby, a relationalist.  


6:30--------

Paul suggested that we should add Stapp, Einstein and Pauli to the above list of physicists.  Einstein is a monist, according to Paul.  My understanding is that Einstein is a Spinozist, and that Spinoza is a pantheist.  We need to be careful about our terms.

Pantheism = Monism??  That is a non-trivial question.  


8:30---------

An important point, according to Paul, is Leibniz' treatment of atoms and bodies.  

Another point is that Tononi is trying to sytematize Leibniz' monadology.  

I am reading two papers on Leibniz recommended by Paul......

1.)  Two Realms, Jonathan Bennett, 2005 ... http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/jfb/tworealm.pdf

2.)  Monadic Domination, Brandon Look, 2002 ... https://www.uky.edu/~look/8899403.pdf

In #2, the dominant monad is the soul, and the subordinate monads comprise the body.  


Paul was less than enthusiastic about my proposed connection between the ether and the organicity of mathematics.

He did point out that the metricity of space is etheric.

Also that Tononi is very much of a holist wrt his TII.

.