Author: vegiuliano

September 9, 2022

By Vince Giuliano

Some of the ruins at Percepolis as they stand today  By Hansueli Krapf – File:2009-11-24 Persepolis 02.jpg,

I had a past life experience 45 years ago that profoundly changed my life.  Although I talked about this experience back then with a handful of people close to me, I have never shared the story of it in public until now, here.  This is because of my trust in science at the time that led me to think that any or all past life memories were likely delusions if not sheer bullshit.  In a scientific career, I did not want to be thought of as a kook.  I retold the story of that experience three days ago to my 56 year old daughter for the first time, an experience that altered the trajectory of my relationship with her mother Lil, my second wife.  Doing this, I re-experienced the same intense emotions as when the past life remembrances first came to me in 1977.  Having robustly passed the test of time, It is time now to unseal and share the story

The time of the experience was in December 1977, a month or so before the fall of Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, the end of the Pahlavi dynasty

Persepolis                                Image source

The place was in Persepolis, a world-class archaeological site in Iran consisting of ruins of what had been the magnificent major city during the time of the grand Persian Empire.  I was working in Iran as part a consulting contract my employer, Arthur D. Little Inc. (ADL) had with the Iranian government.  The contract was part of significantly upgrading the country’s TV system.  Most of the recent history of that country is chronicled in photo, film and audio forms rather than in writing, and, under the influence of the Shah’s American wife, Iranian TV was taking on the job of preserving, organizing and making that history available.  I had a background in modern methods of information retrieval and contemporary library systems, so I led the part of the ADL team in concerned with this task. 

During a weekend a colleague and I went on a long hot drive from Teheran to Shiraz, another major city in Iran,and then on to visiting the ancient ruins of Persepolis, the former capital of the kings of the Achaemenian dynasty of Iran (Persia).  The ruins remain well preserved in the dry desert, and I found them even more impressive than any of the many Greek, Roman Egyptian and Mayan ruin sites I have visited in my extensive  travels…See these images.

The Persepolis site includes a substantial underground museum, and my past-life experience started there when we encountered a stone lion upon entering the museum.  Here is that same stone lion. Looking just as it appeared in 1977.   

I was overtaken by emotion and confusion when I came into the presence of the lion, for I somehow knew I had been in its presence many times before.  My immediate emotions were deep sorrow, regret and grief.  Presence of the lion also evoked the memory that my second wife Lil was often with me when I encountered that lion, another memory that made no sense at all.  How could that be possible?  The lion had been in Persepolis for 2,500 years or so, and this was my very first visit there.  I did recall that Lil and I often went on long walks in Arlington and Lexington Massachusetts where we encountered decorative stone lions in people’s yards, and how she very much loved them. 

Going on to explore the museum in 1977, we came at one point to a display of the cities‘ accounting records, primarily associated with the production and distribution of food and the handling of tribute.  These records were important, since food was valuable and rationed.  I recognized some of the records; I knew I had seen them before although in this life I could not read the cuneiform.  Again, a major wave of emotion and confusion swept over me.  I decided to leave the museum and, outside, perched myself amidst the ruins on the lower steps of what appeared to be small pyramid-like stone structure to figure out what was going on.  There the story begin piecing itself together.  Here is what came to me, a story that still evokes strong emotion today.

Tomb of Cyrus The Great  As I recall, the little pyramid where I sat to figure out what I was experiencing                             Image source

I was a mid-level bureaucrat at the time of King David, responsible for keeping the temple records, an important job for the life of the Percepolis and Darius’ empire. Darius was a wise king and a great administrator.  I administered on his behalf and he gave strong support for my work.  This article highlights how important accounting and bookeeping were in Persepolis. With a bit more digging I might be able to come up with the name of the chief accountant, me back then.

I don’t know my name then and will refer to me 2,500 years ago as Vince(0).  King Darius had initiated wars with Greece, with some of the initial campaigns being successful for the Persians. “The second Persian campaign, in 490 BC, was under the command of Datis and Artaphernes. The expedition headed first to the island Naxos, which it captured and burned. It then island-hopped between the rest of the Cycladic Islands, annexing each into the Persian empire. Reaching Greece, the expedition landed at Eretria, which it besieged, and after a brief time, captured. Eretria was razed and its citizens enslaved.(ref).”  the victorious Persian army returned to Persepolis with some of those slaves.  Among these was a young woman, perhaps 18, who in a 20^th century reincarnation became my second wife Lil.  I don’t know her name back then and will call her Lil(0).  When the army returned, the slaves were assigned to various duties in Persepolis.  Vince(0), offered to take Lil(0) and use her in the accounting function. The generals agreed and Lil(0) was bound as a slave to Vince(0).

Vince(0) was kind to Lil(0) and took her as a lover.  He protected her and shielded her from most of the horrors of slavedom, although he could not free her.  She was young and pretty.  His taking her was no doubt a response to lust.  Vince(0) had no regrets for doing so, because he knew he was rescuing her from a much worse fate.  She could have been assigned to the dye vats, where her entire body would soon turn bright green or purple and, in little time she would die from some terrible disease.  She could be assigned to emptying toilets, where her job would leave her open to early death by infection, or she could have been assigned as a prostitute in the army barracks.  From a material viewpoint Lil(0) lived a fairly good life for the times, But she was still only an unprivileged  slave, depending on Vince(0)’ protection for ll aspects of survival.  Liil(0) reacted to her relationships with society and with Vince personally by deep existential sadness and resentment. Until their death, hard as he tried and much as he loved her, Vince(0) could not engender happiness or contentment in Lil(0). That was the story 2,500 years ago.

In this current life at the time, 1977, the same story was playing out between me and Lil.  Driven by blind lust, I Had left my first wife to be with and Marry Lil.  Over a dozen years of marriage and despite many attempts at therapy, Lil was chronically sad and unhappy and blamed me for being the cause of her unhappiness.  No changes of circumstances or forms of psychotherapy could make a difference.  We had tried individual psychotherapy, family therapy, encounter groups. And seekng the aid of friends.  None worked.  I was at my wits end for knowing what to do about this,

Sitting on that pyramid after the past-life experience, right then and there, the solution to my present-day problem with Lil became very obvious.  I had to completely free Lil from slavery.  It was required that Lil become completely not beholden to me in any way.  One action I subsequently took was supporting her to go to Simmons library school.  In two years she was earning an excellent salary as director of the public library in Marlboro Mass.  There, she was absolute boss;  She did not need my financial support. The other action was a very friendly divorce so I no longer had any hold on Lil whatsoever.  These actions, informed by the past-life experience worked wonderfully well.  The anger, sadness and resentment completely vanished and Lil and I became close friends, a situation that persisted for over 40 years until she died three years ago.  This fact alone, as I write this, still brings tears to my eyes

Was the past life experience real, bringing me memory of what actually happened 2,500 years ago, or was it an elaborate way of my inventing a metaphor that enabled me to solve an intractable personal problem?  To this day, I do not know for sure.  Possibly both.  It was very hot that day, sitting on that little pyramid in the midst of a vast desert.  On the other hand, I recall that the museum was air-conditioned and comfortably cool.  I do know that the 1977 experiences in Iran and Persepolis were real for me, that they still evoke powerful emotions in me, and that my story appears compatible with the historical facts as they are known today.  Perhaps further research could reveal more about Vince(0) and Lil(0).  The stone lion knows the truth, but is not talking..

By Vince Giuliano

Drafted 12-17-19     Published 8/15/22

In the blog entry The Field of Intentionality I characterized intentionality as a physical field, propagated by quantum wave effects,  In my treatise On Being and Creation I describe how Stuart Hameroff and Siir Roger Penrose believe that such quantum effects leading to consciousness are generated by microtubles, structural  elements in every biological cell that also function as very tiny quantum computers.  This current blog entry lays out the hypothesis that intentionality does not require consciousness and that all biological entities that have cells can and do manifest intentionality.  Further, this intentionality profoundly affects what goes on in the universe through the mechanism of Intentional Reality Creation. This hypothesis is the basis for another hypothesis of great relevance to the question of why we have a life-supporting world despite the overwhelming probability that any slight variation of countless physical parameters of our universe and earth in particular would have made life as we know it impossible.  That hypothesis is that All lifeforms on earth, starting with the most primitive shaped those physical parameters via intentional reality creation (IRC) and retrocausality so as to enable life.  This process started wth the first bacteria that existed in super-hot ocean vents, or perhaps even earlier.

Retrocausality is a concept rooted in theories of quantum physics and Information theory, the works of Dirac, Wheeler, Feynman and contemporary people concerned with quantum computing.  For explanations of retrocausality and its relevance to intentional reality creation, please see my blog entries WHAT’S ALREADY DONE ISN’T NECESSARILY DONE YET You can modulate the past to get what you want in the future.  And my 2019 article THE ARROW OF TIME POINTS BOTH WAYS — MORE ON RETROCAUSALITY AND RETROCREATION. 

Herein, I define consciousness as a property of biological organisms, such as a human, to sense properties of its environment, process the information thus derived, perhaps in conjunction with information already stored, and act to enhance its individual and/or its species well-being or survival based on the properties of that information. For a human being, knowing where you want to go while in a bus station, consulting a printed schedule of bus departures, consulting a display of departures and times showing delays, and buying a ticket for a bus ride and walking to the appropriate gate and getting on the bus would be an example of conscious actions derived from an intention to get somewhere. 

Intentionality is a closely related property, having to do with a desired outcome associated with an act or acts of consciousness. In the bus station example for humans, the intentionality could be to get home.

For a squirrel by my house, the conscious actions of seeking food in response to internal sgnals of hunger could include scampering on my deck to see if there is food there, and if there are seeds that have fallen down on the deck from my birdfeeder, finding and eating those seeds. For a caterpillar on a tree next to my house in the Fall, conscious actions could follow from sensing internal signals that it is time for it to prepare for transformation into a moth.  The caterpillar responds by seeking a safe  location to spin a cocoon web, spinning the web, and locating itself safely in the cocoon where it can undergo the transformation process – all this while avoiding predatory birds. 

For a weed in my backyard that I have just cut back with my lawnmower, sensing its injury the response normally is to grow new leaf tendrils rapidly. For a virus particle, the actions pursuant to an intention to reproduce could be to identify a cell and where it can attach itself to the cell membrane, penetrate the cell and reproduce itself there.

For the squirrel intentionality to eat is in the interest of biological survival. For the caterpillar, the intentionality is to propagate the species by the step of transformation into a butterfly.  For the weed, the intentionality is to restore its capability for photosynthesis by creating new leaves. For the virus particle, the intentionality is to utilize the machinery of the cell it is penetrating to create large numbers of new virus particles. So, as is the case for consciousness, I assert that intentionality is expressed over the entire spectrum of biological entities.  Further, given that intentionality is so expressed, the arguments in my treatise On Being and Creation, I suggest that this intentionality can directly impact of what exists through the process of rerocausality.

So, I am clearly identifying intentionality as being manifest throughout the entire domain of biology. And arguably to other domains as well.  Can a rock in my back yard exhibit intentionality or consciousness?  Not by this definition because it cannot act in response to information, at least in any way we know of.

A programmed machine could also satisfy this criterion for consciousness in limited ways.  A Roomba robot vacuum cleaner expresses actions in response to the specific  intention of cleaning rugs, carpets and floors.  The machine can turn itself on, leave its charging station and start cleaning my living room floors, sense furniture legs, navigate around them, avoid falling down stairs, sense its battery is running low and navigate back to its charging station, and plug itself back in.  But I prefer to keep this discussion here in the domain of biological entities.

Note that as I have defined them, neither consciousness nor intentionality require brains or the kinds of awareness we think we have associated with being awake and the use of language and media.  Instructions related to Intentions can be coded and built into DNA, such as instructions for generating a new pussy cat or human being.  Executing those instruction is instinctive as we well know, and does and not require anything at all like human consciousness.

The Roomba vacuum could also be said to have limited intentionality: to clean up dirt, get around in a room full of furniture and range over an entire floor area, and keep itself charged.

I need here to draw another distinction which is that between consciousness and human awareness, the latter only the property human beings insofar as we know. Human awareness is a subset of human consciousness where we can symbolically represent situations and states of being and communicate them via language and mathematics. And store and communicate these symbolic representations to other humans. What we know about science falls in the domain of human awareness. When we talk about understanding, we are usually talking about human awareness.  And for me personally sitting here and writing this. I am experiencing an incredible array of visual, auditory and sensual experiences, ranging from words showing up on my computer screen as I type or dictate them, to my hearing birds in the yard, my feeling like what it is to sit on old uncomfortable office chair in front of my computer, to the experiences of thinking through the words I am writing.  I think other human beings have similar experiences, although I could never know this as a proven fact.

Many other species communicate via quorum sensing mechanisms to form biofilm colonies or take other actions to protect themselves.  The blog entry on plant communications written by Melody Winnig and I illustrates some of the ways plants communicate and manifest intentionality and consciousness.

Our bodies are conscious of many vital things that we humans are not consciously aware of

Wonderful and amazing though it is, my human mind awareness excludes much of what is in my human consciousness that is essential for life. There is all the monitoring and control of our autonomic processes – breathing, heart beats and blood flow, digestive processes, lympathetic processes and many others.  An initial example of this in life is embryogenesis. Although I have studied biology just about every day for over a dozen years now, I understand relatively little about how the steps of human development work. Yet my body as well as that of every other living human has been conscious of them, this having been a necessity for me to exist as I am now.  Embryonic development occurs as a unidirectional progression from a single-cell zygote to an adult organism.   I can’t begin to tell you the biological instructions that were followed in the making of my five children.  I can, however say that whatever those instructions were my body, my wive’s bodies and the bodies of my children knew how to follow them.

Similarly, we have no direct awareness of the processes of aging or death.  During embryogenesis and early stages of life, cells undergo a spatiotemporally orchestrated differentiation process, leading to the generation of all of the cell types that comprise an adult organism. These events take place within a stable environment that minimizes molecular and cellular damage. As an organism ages, however, there is a continuous and progressive decline in the mechanisms responsible for minimizing cellular damage. This eventually results in an organism’s inability to maintain homeostasis (López-Otín et al., 2013; 2016).(reference),”  This is the essence of aging, although I am completely unaware of the aging process as it takes place in me minute-to minute  Almost everything that goes on in biology including all of the internal processes that keep me alive are beyond my normal awareness.  All are excellent examples of biological consciousness.  I need instruments like thermometers, my Oura ring, blood pressure monitors and MRI machines to tell me how well I am doing and what my illnesses might be.  My body knows a great deal about my workings even though I consciously don’t.

At the other end of the life spectrum involving advanced aging there are also multiple processes that cause us to decline as organisms and surely die before the age of 120, but our human awareness of these processes aso remains only fragmentary. As many of my readers may know I have been studying the sciences of aging for more than the last dozen years, and reporting my observations in my blog www,agingsciences.com. Although the blog contains over 500 entries, many of which are treatises on important topics in aging, I can say with comfort that what I  know about the subject now is only a small fraction of what ultimately there is to know.

Helpful videos

The videos on quantum consciousness listed in the right-hand column on this page may help readers comprehend the plausibility of the seemingly implausible hypothyses put forward in this blog entry

By Vince Giuliano

Can present or future events affect the past?  A phenomenon known as retrocausality.  I have argued definitely YES, retrocausality exists in the quantum world and is also an important aspect of  what I have called Intentional Reality Creation (IRC). If you want a sample of what other “yes” voices say before going further here, you can check out the videos on this list.

The Cramer transactional model of quantum physics*, as applied to reality creation as outlined in my treatise ON BEING AND CREATION presumes quantum waves going both forward and backward in time, searching for possible events and situations that could lead fulfillment of an intention.  These are followed by quantum response waves moving in the opposite time direction.  The processes, though they have ranged both forward and backward in time are completely instantaneous because of the opposite-direction returning wave.  From the viewpoint of our intuition which is grounded in our biological grasping of the laws of normal reality, these ideas of are quite nonsensical.  After all, nothing has ever been known to go backwards in time and everything that happens takes at least a little time to happen.  And, what in tarnation is a quantum wave, anyway?  If we can’t see, hear, feel or taste any such thing, or tune it in with an electronic device, why should we believe that it exists?  From the viewpoint of physics and its mathematics, however, the situation is not so simple.  The equations of all of the fundamental laws of classical as well as quantum physics appear to work perfectly fine going backwards in time as well is forward. Just substitute (-t) for (t).  That is, they display symmetry regard to time.

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*Abstract of Cramer’s 1986 paper: “The interpretational problems of quantum mechanics are considered. The way in which the standard Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) of quantum mechanics deals with these problems is reviewed. A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the Transactional Interpretation (TI), is presented. The basic element of TI is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced and retarded waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The TI is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell Inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal. A detailed comparison of the TI and CI is made in the context of well known quantum mechanical gedanken experiments and “paradoxes”. The TI permits quantum mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as “mathematical representations of knowledge” as in the CI. The TI is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its “collapse”. The TI also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Born probability law [P=^*], basic elements of the CI.”

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What we see as the arrow of time  is inexorably increasing entropy, which has to do with asymmetry in thermodynamics which is also a time asymmetry in information transfer. Entropy is a measure of thermodynamic disorganization which always increases in any closed system, a measure with scientific history going back to the 1850’s (ref).  For example, entropy dictates that you never see smoke gathering itself up in the sky and going down a smokestack or pieces of a broken wine glass leaping up off the floor and reassembling themselves as the glass. That is because vastly more information is required to track each particle of smoke and send it back down the chimney than is required for smoke coming out the chimney and billowing out in the normal time direction. Likewise, vastly more information is required to identify the characteristics and positions of every particle of broken glass and reassemble of them into the original glass then would be required to run the movie in the normal forward direction.  The equations of Shannon Weaver information theory (ref) and the equations of statistical dynamics are identical, in fact.  And entropy and information are just different interpretations of the same equation. This asymmetry between forward in time and backwards in time is clearly and manifestly true in terms of classical physics. We experience it all the time.  However, many researchers have argued that this need not at all be the case for quantum physics. In other words, the fundamental barrier to going backwards in time need not exist on the quantum level.  That is the main topic I explore in this blog entry.  In particular, I explore retrocausation.  Events in the future effecting events in the past.

In terms of the physics and mathematics of the situation, having quantum waves go backwards in time is no problem. Again this makes no sense to us in terms of the sensory and nervous system processing capabilities provided to us as animals. Virtually everything that we read in science texts make no cognitive sense whatsoever to a worm, caterpillar, mouse or deer in a forest.  As biological creatures they as well as we humans have been evolved so as to have direct perception only of the matters most in the interest of their survival.  But we know there is much that is very real that we cannot directly perceive, like radio and TV waves, and virus and bacteria that can make us sick.

What we perceive to be real is a function of history and culture and technology of the times.  It would make no sense for most people two hundred years ago to be told that that there are invisible waves surrounding us full of sights and sounds, though we know that is so now because of TV. And for most of our human history we were unaware of bacteria and viruses as causes of infectious diseases.   Relatively few people understand the Maxwell equations governing the transmission of radio and television and cell phone waves but virtually everybody now believes that they exist. This is despite the fact that we cannot touch, smell, taste, hear or feel them or in any way perceive them without the aid of electronic circuitry. We are just not used to the incredible non-intuitive concepts of quantum physics, although we are necessarily utilizing quantum phenomena all the time for our very survival. And, most educated people say they believe in it although they do not begin to comprehend it. My suggestion is followed the math you are capable of doing so. For example, read the research articles cited below and seek to understand mathematics they puts forward.

A popular explanation of this recent research on retrocausatuion can be found in the July 2018 Science Daily article Reversing cause and effect is no trouble for quantum computers  Here are some selected quotes from that publication and my reactions to them (in red):

“Watch a movie backwards and you’ll likely get confused — but a quantum computer wouldn’t. That’s the conclusion of researcher Mile Gu at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University and collaborators. — In research published 18 July in Physical Review X, the international team show that a quantum computer is less in thrall to the arrow of time than a classical computer. In some cases, it’s as if the quantum computer doesn’t need to distinguish between cause and effect at all. — In everyday life, understanding what will happen next is easier if you know what just happened, and what happened before that. —  the fundamental laws of physics are ambivalent about whether time moves forwards or in reverse.”  Unidirectional cause-and-effect as we know it appears to be a function of the arrow of time in macroscopic decoherent systems, ultimately having to do with increasing entropy in normal reality.

“The most exciting thing for us is the possible connection with the arrow of time,” says Thompson, first author on the work. “If causal asymmetry is only found in classical models, it suggests our perception of cause and effect, and thus time, can emerge from enforcing a classical explanation on events in a fundamentally quantum world,” she says.  We are fundamentally in a quantum world and trying to see it through our biological filters of normal sensory reality simply doesn’t work.  We need to grow up and give that up if we want to understand what is really going on.

Selections from the original 2018 publication Causal Asymmetry in a Quantum World:

“The fundamental laws of physics work in the same way whether time moves forward or backward. Yet, while a glass can fall and scatter shards across the floor, glass shards never gather together and leap back onto the counter to form a complete glass. The source of this temporal asymmetry is one of the deepest mysteries in physics. We tackle this problem by combining two different disciplines, computational and quantum mechanics. Our results illustrate that the asymmetry could emerge from forcing classical causal explanations on observations in a fundamentally quantum world.”   Scientists who do this need to Grow Up if they are really concerned with the nature of reality!

“Computational mechanics asks the following question: Given a sequence of observations, how many past causes must we postulate to explain future behavior? This quantity is asymmetric when time is reversed. There is an unavoidable memory overhead cost for modeling a process in the “less-natural” temporal direction—one must pay a price to enforce explanations adhering to a less-favored order of events. — We show that quantum models always mitigate this overhead. Not only can we construct quantum models that need less past information than optimal classical counterparts, these models can always be reprogrammed to model the time-reversed process without additional memory cost. This remains true even for observational data where this classical overhead diverges, such that all classical models for the less-natural temporal direction require unbounded memory. — We illustrate scenarios where classical favoritism for particular causal orders vanishes when quantum models are permitted, thus highlighting a new mechanism for the origin of time’s arrow.”  Talking about less overhead in classical models from going from past to future is like saying you need much more information in going from future to past – so this is just another way of talking about entropy in classical models.

• “A stochastic process can be modeled in either temporal order. (a) A causal model takes information available in the past ←xand uses it to make statistically accurate predictions about the process’s conditional future behavior P(→X|←X=←x). (b) A retrocausal model replicates the system’s behavior, as seen by an observer who scans the outputs from right to left, encountering Xt+1 before Xt. Thus, it stores relevant future information →x, in order to generate a statistically accurate retrodiction of the past P(←X|→X=→x). Causal asymmetry implies a nonzero gap between the minimum memory required by any causal model C+ and its retrocausal counterpart C−.”  The memory required for retrocausality in a quantum system is the same or less as that for causality.

Implications are that retrocausality – events now or in the future affecting events or situations in the past – is no problem at the quantum level.  My fundamental proposition is that Intentional Reality Creation is basically a quantum phenomenon on the macroscopic scale.  As explained below, sending macroscopic messages backwards in time is impossible, because of thermodynamic/information considerations.  However, creating events and situations in the past may be going on all the time due to retrocaustion.   The suggestion is that we cannot send messages into the past but can to a significant extend dictate to the past to have been as how we want it to have been!  Holly bananas! Why do we not notice this?  Probably because evolutionary biology does not require such noticing and further, such noticing would confuse us endlessly.

Next, let’s turn to a 2017 publication Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past.

This article points out that allowing for retrocausality is much less of a violation of what we think we know about physics than the alternative which requires we accept “spooky action at a distance.”  Accepting retrocausality makes some of the worst paradoxes of quantum physics – liken “spooky action at a distance” go away.   “Although there are many counterintuitive ideas in quantum theory, the idea that influences can travel backwards in time (from the future to the past) is generally not one of them. However, recently some physicists have been looking into this idea, called it “retrocausality,” because it can potentially resolve some long-standing puzzles in quantum physics. In particular, if retrocausality is allowed, then the famous Bell tests can be interpreted as evidence for retrocausality and not for action-at-a-distance—a result that Einstein and others skeptical of that “spooky” property may have appreciated.”  For example, if two correlated particles are emitted from a common source and go running off in opposite directions, then one must have + spin and the other must have – spin.  But there is no way to distinguish which is which until a measurement is made.  Experimentally this has been shown.  If one has + spin then the other surely has – spin, and the other way around.  This holds no matter how far the particles have traveled apart, apparently even over stellar distances.  The paradox arises if the particles have traveled far enough and the measurements made so quickly one after another, that there is not time at the speed of light for a signal to get from the first measured particles when its spin is measured to the second particle when its spin is measured.  The second particles “knows” what spin it must have, measurements indicate, the very instant the spin of the first particle is measured.  So this information must be transmitted instantly somehow over long distances, violating the principal that nothing ever ever in the universe travels faster than light.  This is a rock solid Einstein conclusion from relativity theory that has held solid for well over 100 years now.  Now allow retrocausation and what happens is that when the spin of the first particle is measured, that spin is set back at the time when the pair of particles was emitted, and also the spin was simultaneously set for the second particle.  The paradox of a mysterious signal faster than light goes away.  Retrocausality thus permits a simple explanation of what otherwise would violate a fundamental principle of physics.

Note that in this example, it is the very act of measurement that triggered retrocausation.  As we will see, this is very relevant for IRC where the formulation of an unbounded intention IS the act of measurement.  In my treatise, retrocausation is discussed in the Cramer interpretation as due to a “quantum query wave moving backward in time looking for possible past conditions that would lead to satisfaction of the intention.”  And retrocausation was discussed there in the multiple-worlds interpretation in terms of “a successful intention shifting the intender into a submanifold of universes where past and future conditions are favorable to satisfaction of the intention.”  This blog entry uses other frameworks for discussing retroccausation, but the underlying concept is the same.  From the above-cited publication, where again comments in red and parentheses are mine.

Fig 1

Can Bell correlations be explained by retrocausal influences? Figure 1 shows an influence diagram representing the possible causal influences in a model with no retrocausality. Credit: Leifer and Pusey. ©2017 The Royal Society. — In a new paper published in Proceedings of The Royal Society A, physicists Matthew S. Leifer at Chapman University and Matthew F. Pusey at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have lent new theoretical support for the argument that, if certain reasonable-sounding assumptions are made, then quantum theory must be retrocausal.”

The appeal of retrocausality

First, to clarify what retrocausality is and isn’t: It does not mean that signals can be communicated from the future to the past—such signaling would be forbidden even in a retrocausal theory due to thermodynamic reasons. Instead, retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties of that particle (or another particle) in the past, even before the experimenter made their choice. In other words, a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.  Instantly.

In the case of IRC, where an unbounded intention corresponds to an Operator in classical QM, specifying an intention where the intention itself makes clear what must be observed for it to be satisfied, can influence past events or conditions so as to lead to satisfaction of the intention.  The disquieting implication is that the past is not manifest but exists as complex quantum wave functions of what could have existed.  The past mostly consists of wave functions of possibilities.  Note that the past also consist of “collapsed” wave functions of believed past realities, things that make it “real”  such as in memories, historical records, geological artifacts, photographs and astronomical and terrestrial observations.)  In my treatise and in past blog entries, in particular in WHAT’S ALREADY DONE ISN’T NECESSARILY DONE YET, I explain the same situation by saying the past is vastly undetermined and is fixed only insofar experience records are concerned.

In the original Bell tests, physicists assumed that retrocausal influences could not happen. Consequently, in order to explain their observations that distant particles seem to immediately know what measurement is being made on the other, the only viable explanation was action-at-a-distance. That is, the particles are somehow influencing each other even when separated by large distances, in ways that cannot be explained by any known mechanism. But by allowing for the possibility that the measurement setting for one particle can retrocausally influence the behavior of the other particle, there is no need for action-at-a-distance—only retrocausal influence.  Actually in physics, it is far less disruptive of theory to honor retrocausality than spooky instantaneous action at a distance.

One of the main proponents of retrocausality in quantum theory is Huw Price, a philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge. In 2012, Price laid out an argument suggesting that any quantum theory that assumes that 1) the quantum state is real, and 2) the quantum world is time-symmetric (that physical processes can run forwards and backwards while being described by the same physical laws) must allow for retrocausal influences. Understandably, however, the idea of retrocausality has not caught on with physicists in general.

“There is a small group of physicists and philosophers that think this idea is worth pursuing, including Huw Price and Ken Wharton [a physics professor at San José State University],” Leifer told Phys.org. “There is not, to my knowledge, a generally agreed upon interpretation of quantum theory that recovers the whole theory and exploits this idea. It is more of an idea for an interpretation at the moment, so I think that other physicists are rightly skeptical, and the onus is on us to flesh out the idea.”  A video presentation by Hue Price on retrocausality can be found here.

“In the new study, Leifer and Pusey attempt to do this by generalizing Price’s argument, which perhaps makes it more appealing in light of other recent research. They begin by removing Price’s first assumption, so that the argument holds whether the quantum state is real or not—a matter that is still of some debate. A quantum state that is not real would describe physicists’ knowledge of a quantum system rather than being a true physical property of the system. Although most research suggests that the quantum state is real, it is difficult to confirm one way or the other, and allowing for retrocausality may provide insight into this question. Allowing for this openness regarding the reality of the quantum state is one of the main motivations for investigating retrocausality in general, Leifer explained.”

“The reason I think that retrocausality is worth investigating is that we now have a slew of no-go results about realist interpretations of quantum theory, including Bell’s theorem, Kochen-Specker, and recent proofs of the reality of the quantum state,” he said. “These say that any interpretation that fits into the standard framework for realist interpretations must have features that I would regard as undesirable. Therefore, the only options seem to be to abandon realism or to break out of the standard realist framework.”

“Abandoning realism is quite popular, but I think that this robs science of much of its explanatory power and so it is better to find realist accounts where possible. The other option is to investigate more exotic realist possibilities, which include retrocausality, relationalism, and many-worlds. Aside from many-worlds, these have not been investigated much, so I think it is worth pursuing all of them in more detail. I am not personally committed to the retrocausal solution over and above the others, but it does seem possible to formulate it rigorously and investigate it, and I think that should be done for several of the more exotic possibilities.”

Can’t have both time symmetry and no-retrocausality

“In their paper, Leifer and Pusey also reformulate the usual idea of time symmetry in physics, which is based on reversing a physical process by replacing t with –t in the equations of motion. The physicists develop a stronger concept of time symmetry here in which reversing a process is not only possible but that the probability of occurrence is the same whether the process is going forward or backward.”

“The physicists’ main result is that a quantum theory that assumes both this kind of time symmetry and that retrocausality is not allowed runs into a contradiction. They describe an experiment illustrating this contradiction, in which the time symmetry assumption requires that the forward and backward processes have the same probabilities, but the no-retrocausality assumption requires that they are different.”

“So ultimately everything boils down to the choice of whether to keep time symmetry or no-retrocausality, as Leifer and Pusey’s argument shows that you can’t have both. Since time symmetry appears to be a fundamental physical symmetry, they argue that it makes more sense to allow for retrocausality. Doing so would eliminate the need for action-at-a-distance in Bell tests, and it would still be possible to explain why using retrocausality to send information is forbidden.”

“The case for embracing retrocausality seems stronger to me for the following reasons,” Leifer said. “First, having retrocausality potentially allows us to resolve the issues raised by other no-go theorems, i.e., it enables us to have Bell correlations without action-at-a-distance. So, although we still have to explain why there is no signaling into the past, it seems that we can collapse several puzzles into just one. That would not be the case if we abandon time symmetry instead.

“Second, we know that the existence of an arrow of time already has to be accounted for by thermodynamic arguments, i.e., it is a feature of the special boundary conditions of the universe and not itself a law of physics.   Since the ability to send signals only into the future and not into the past is part of the definition of the arrow of time, it seems likely to me that the inability to signal into the past in a retrocausal universe could also come about from special boundary conditions, and does not need to be a law of physics. Time symmetry seems less likely to emerge in this way (in fact, we usually use thermodynamics to explain how the apparent time asymmetry that we observe in nature arises from time-symmetric laws, rather than the other way round).”

“As the physicists explain further, the whole idea of retrocausality is so difficult to accept because we don’t ever see it anywhere else. (Actually I am suggesting we see it all the time with IRC,  We just don’t recognize that is what is going on.) The same is true of action-at-a-distance. But that doesn’t mean that we can assume that no-retrocausality and no-action-at-a-distance are true of reality in general. In either case, physicists want to explain why one of these properties emerges only in certain situations that are far removed from our everyday observations.  (If IRC goes on using mechanisms of retrocausality, not at all removed)”

—–

By Vince Giuliano

Posted December 17, 2019

This blog entry suggests that intentionality acts like a physical field like electromagnetism, citing various physicists who have argued this point.  It is intended to be supportive of my thesis that Intentional Reality Creation (IRC) operates through mechanisms very similar to if not identical with the mechanisms of quantum physics.  This is as characterized in my treatise ON BEING AND CREATION.

The roles human consciousness and intentionality play in quantum physics have been debated since the first principles of quantum physics were laid out nearly 100 years ago.  For example,  Niels Bohr struggled with the meaning and role of intentionality, as discussed in the 2007  book Halfway:  Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.  Passing to the field of biology, there is a different way to look at intentionality.  There are within organisms or every level of complexity multiple hormetic signaling feedback mechanisms.  These are needed to main homeostasis, operability and survival of an organism in the presence of changing environmental conditions.  One form of such signaling in humans is via conscious intentions, intentions which are verbalized statements of what a human would like to see develop, happen or become manifest..

I also believe human-level consciousness is not necessary for expression of intentionality.   In a human there can be  preconscious or unconscious intentions which can take the form of neurological or other signaling in the interest of survival or wellbeing of an individual member.  Further, I susbmit that every living species is interested deeply in its survival, has expressed its own form of intentions for survival, and has evolved strategies for survival.  These conditions are requisites for a species to still exist.  Such intentions, I surmise, could have contributed to the evolution of species and even possibly to the evolution of the universe itself.  I plan to explore this thesis in a future blog entry, for now sticking to consciously verbalized human  intentions.

I have suggested that conscious intentions can be propagated by quantum waves that cross space and time and influence matter in such a way that they can influence events and what exists.  That is the central thesis propounded in the On Being and Creation document.

I have suggested that a conscious intention acts like a quantum operator.

Some properties of conscious intentions:

• They deal with the domain of macroscopic “normal” reality, with what we want to show up in our day-to-day normal reality, not with intended quantum-level phenomena.
• Therefore I take it, they deal with incoherent systems, not matters like coherent light beams or superconducting fluids.
• They deal with matters in which the normal rules of cause-and-effect are applicable, as a characteristic of normal reality.
• They are mostly intentions a-symmetric in time, dealing with how situations are intended to be in the in the future rather than how they have been in the past. (This despite the fact that an intention may work by retrocausality to create past conditions necessary for the intended creation to be seen eventually as the result of normal causality.)  I am preparing a separate blog entry on retrocausality.
• Satisfaction of such an intention results in local decreases of entropy (more organization), at the expense of larger-systems increase in entropy (according to the Second Law of thermodynamics).
• Since time itself may be defined by the increase of entropy of larger systems, intentions themselves may play a role in defining time and the difference between past and future.

By the laws of normal and classical physical reality, intentions not acted on would have no effects.  (Do nothing, and nothing happens).  Personal experiences of successful intentional reality creation – too many of them to be explicable by chance – led me to come to the unlikely set of ideas I am promulgating here.  So I am suggesting that the explanation lies elsewhere, where it still can be completely objective and scientific.  The history of science provides many prior examples where this has been the case.  Most laws of chemistry and chemical properties of matter depend on electromagnetic field considerations having to do with electron orbits.  Yet, prior to Maxwell’s identification and elucidation of electromagnetic fields in 1892, there was no scientific basis for magnetism, let alone chemistry.   Think of what a mystery an electromagnetic field was at first(ref).  We know electromagnetism now it by what it does and by its properties, now described as a quantum field, the most fundamental thing it is made out of.  Although it effects are manifest everywhere, its actual nature is not directly manifest to our senses and was unknown in most of the history of humanity. The electron itself was not identified until 1897.  Most of us now believe they exist though we can never see, feel, hear or smell one.

I am suggesting the possibility that intentionality acts like a fundamental physical field, like those for gravitation, electromagnetism, the Weak Force and the Strong Force. These fields seem to have important spatio-temporal differences and differences with respect to effects on matter. (I am taking a classical view of these fields for now.  Later I will expand the discussion to consider quantum fields, thought by many physicists the only things existing in the universe.)

We know fields by what they do and their observable properties.  And by the formulae that appear to govern them.  That is all.  We can write out formulas for how these fields devolve in time and interact with matter.  But there is no way we can ground our knowledge of these fields in concepts of our ordinary animal reality.   I am comfortable with the concept that gravity is due to curvature of space itself due to the presence of matter, and that matter itself is a relatively static aspect of energy.  But for a dog or caterpillar of deer or young child, such conceptions make no sense.

Fields characterize how underlying not-observable and quite incredible complex realities translate into the normal reality of our senses and cause-and-effect we function in.  Intentionality as a field does the same.

The 4 fundamental classical fields of physics correspond, we think with particles, although not all (eg. The gravitron) have been directly observed.

An intention seems to be originated at an instance in time, but once created can have influence on both past and future events.  (Cramer Theory) Even though the results of the intention are projected to be in the future.

• Question: what systematic experiments could confirm or discredit the existence of intentionality as a field?
• Question: how do Intentions devolve and work in time? How do they interact with matter?
• Question: what would the nature of a particle associated with intentionality be – The Intenton? What experiments could we create to identify an Intention in action?

Some suggestive art

What could the field of intentionality look like if we could envision it?  I obviously don’t know, but here are a few suggestive images  from my personal Artkoukou collection:

Physicists pursuing quantum intentionality effects

Less you think I am uniquely nuts with these ideas, I point out that there are a number of serious scientists pursuing similar and closely related concepts related to quantum intentionality.  A list of references is included below.  Many but not all of these papers require backgrounds in mathematics or quantum theory to follow them.

One with a readable introduction is the 2015 document New Issue to Modeling Intentionality in the Field of Consciousness, with abstract “–The issue now emerging is a new conception of intentionality based on phenomenological, neurobiological and quantum theories, such as: 1) the notion of “intentional arc” proposed in the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty; 2) the neurobiological and quantum model of Freeman, in which self-organizing pathways are accompanied by quantum transitions in controlling intentionality in brain; 3) the recent hypothesis that some visuo-motor neurons would be involved in controlling these self-organized pathways; 4) the quantum models of Vitiello and Globus, in which a thermofield (dissipative) system governs the dynamic dialog of dual quantum modes between environment and brain. Based on this conception of mind-world interactions, it implicitly appears that intentionality might be a fundamental force which draws us irreversibly towards the future. An alternative hypothesis based on this promising proposal is argued.” 

Another example, if you are a mathematical physicist you could read Quantum Intentionality and Determination of Realities in the Space-Time Through Path Integrals and Their Integral Transforms. This article discusses intentionality as a physical field, in the same sense as this blog entry does.  “In the universe three fundamental realities exist inside our perception, which share messages and quantum processes: the physical, energy and mental reality. These realities happen at all times and they are around us like part of our existence spending one to other one across organised transformations which realise a linking field – energy-matter across the concept of conscience of a field on the interpretation of the matter and space to create a reality non-temporal that only depends on the nature of the field, for example, the gravitational field is a reality in the space – time that generates a curved space for the presence of masses. At macroscopic level and according to the Einsteinian models the time is a flexible band that acts in form parallel to the space. Nevertheless, studying the field at microscopic level dominated by particles that produce gravity, the time is an intrinsic part of the space (there is no distinction between one and other), since the particles contain a rotation concept (called spin) that is intrinsic to the same particles that produce gravity from quantum level [1].Then the gravitational field between such particles is an always present reality and therefore non-temporal. — The time at quantum level is the distance between cause and effect,  but the effect (gravitational spin) is contained in the proper particle that is their cause on having been interrelated with other particles and in the proper particle that is their cause on having been interrelated with other particles and vice versa the effect contains the cause since the particle changed their direction [1].  Then the action of any field that is wished transforms their surrounding reality which must spill through the component particles of the space – time, their nature and to transmit it in organised form, which is legal, because the field is invariant under movements of the proper space, and in every particle there sublies a part of the field through their spinor.  Then the gravitational field between such particles is an always present reality and therefore non-temporal.”

If you have the time and patience there is a relevant book Quantum Physics Meets the Philosophy of Mind.  “The key insight that will be defended here that quantum mechanics might give us some help in understanding how intentionality is rooted in physical reality, because quantum mechanuics suggests that there is some form of representation and physical processing built into the very fabric of the universe.”

Another interesting publication is Mathematical Nanotechnology: Quantum Field Intentionality.  “Considering the finite actions of a field on the matter and the space which used to infiltrate their quantum reality at level particle, methods are developed to serve to base the concept of “intentional action” of a field and their ordered and supported effects (synergy) that must be realized for the “organized transformation” of the space and matter. Using path integrals, these transformations are decoded and their quantum principles are shown.”  The body of this paper treats intentionality as a field and provides a highly mathematical model of how it operates.

It is not that all strange for quantum physicists to think of intentionality as a fundamental physical field like gravity or electromagnetism or the weak or strong or electromagnetic forces.  They have gotten used to the idea of physical fields for well over a century now.  The layperson watching a thriller in front of his gigantic TV does not want to leave the fuzzy comfort zone of normal reality.  He does not want to stop to think that he is held down in his recliner chair by an invisible gravitational field, that the TV program is brought to him by invisible fluctuations in the electromagnetic field, and that he is held together by the strong force field.

2/7/2019  Image: ArtKouKou by Vince Giuliano

Zoltar works by magic; IRC is how absolutely everything works.

    Images source and source

INTRODUCTION

My treatise ON BEING AND CREATION basically argues that Intention-driven Reality Creation (IRC) behaves according to well established rules of quantum mechanics (QM), and that materializing a reality by creating a deep-felt intention is similar to or may be the same as applying an operator is QM.  The rules of QM referred to and discussed in that treatise are those of classical QM, mostly known for over 100 years now.  They are ones I first learned when I was in graduate school in the late 1950s.  But the years since then have seen at least a few major waves of advancement in QM such as Quantum Chromodynamics, Feynman diagrams, Quantum Field Theory, , and our understanding of quantum entanglement,  And significant but illusive efforts to make quantum computing practicable have led to advances in Quantum information theory.

These newer areas bring along them whole new classes of theoretical and mathematical constructs.  And new ways of thinking.  The classical representational frameworks of classical QM like infinite-dimensional Hilbert Spaces were difficult enough to grasp. Gravity is not really a force; it is simply a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime in the presence of matter.                                                                                                                                                              Now we have new bunches of more sophisticated distinctions, For example, qubits, the basic units of information in quantum computing.    A bit in conventional computing has one of two values, 0 or 1.  A qubit is continuous-valued, describable by a direction on the Bloch sphere.  You can’t make copies of qubits or destroy them; they are very wierd.

This blog entry discusses a few selected aspect of how these newer conceptual frameworks impinge on the arguments and case made in my treatise – whether the newer theories weaken or strengthen the fundamental argument pointing to the similarity or identity of QM and IRC.  For example, if we looked at IRC through the perspective of quantum information theory, what might that tell us.

WHAT IS THE UNIVERSE MADE OF?

The old everybody-knows answer is of course space and matter, with matter made up of tiny particles, ones with hooks back in the times of the ancient Greeks, quarks and electrons as of just a few years ago.  Empty space of course contains nothing.  Comforting, and still what I tell my 6-year old grandson.  But wrong according to physicists who keep up with such matters.  The new answer is that all space is full of quantum fields and that these are the only things that exist, 12 different ones for matter and 4 different ones for forces.  Space and time themselves are a quantum field.  These fields are constantly interacting and changing and may assume different values according to the laws of quantum physics.  Matter, particles, are vibrations in fields; all of them.  Particles are not fundamental and may only arise when you go looking for them.  For all of the known fundamental particles, there is an associated quantum field.  There is an electron field, a neutrino field, and quark fields, W boson fields and Z boson fields. Particles arise through interactions among quantum fields. Matter is not basic; quantum fields are.  What exactly is a quantum field?  Who knows.  I don’t remember ever having felt, tasted, seen or smelled any if them. We can only characterize them by what they do and how they behave.  And empty space?  Forget it.  A constant boil of ephemeral basic virtual particles which come into existence out of nothing and go back into nothingness again.   There is no such thing as nothing.

As customary in these blogs, I will do my best to lay out my ideas in English without use of mathematical formulas.  However, for what I am seeking to discuss, natural language offers an extremely limited representational framework, bound by verbal distinctions that cannot really do justice to what exists.  If I could use the mathematical tools of QM, it is possible I might do better.  However even with these I might not have a good enough vocabulary and grammar for the discussion,  If we were caterpillars or mice or armadillos or goldfish that could talk, we would have no base vocabulary that would allow us to start discussing trains, electricity, urban economics and TV, let alone black holes, relativity theory, tensor representations, quasars and neutrinos.   We are humans that can talk, and our science has given us many distinctions about the universe including these, just in the last century or so.  But who knows what new distinctions will emerge that enable us to discuss IRC with more clarity and precision?   Until we have such distinctions we will have to lean heavily on metaphors, as I often do here.  If you do happen to be familiar with the mathematics of QM, however, I do here strongly suggest you review presentations that support the conclusions of this blog entry.  I list  couple of examples below.

IRC and quantum information theory

How well is IRC standing up in the light of more recent developments in Quantum Mechanics such as those discussed above?  I would say very well, near as I can tell.  I focus particularly on the newer perspective of viewing QM not about the underlying workings of the universe but rather, seeing QM as a branch of information theory, a framework embodying a set of rules relating to how we can get information about certain phenomena going on in the universe.  You can get this viewpoint in a YouTube video presentation by Philip Ball at a presentation to the Royal Institution at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7v5NtV8v6I. And in multiple writings by Christoger Fuchs (see http://perimeterinstitute.ca/personal/cfuchs/).  This viewpoint, about which I say more below, is quite accommodating to IRC as well as QM.  In fact, instead of trying to make IRC look more than QM, it is a framework that says that QM is a form of IRC.  This makes sense: what is fundamental is IRC.  QM offers calculation machinery applicable in general for IRC but macroscopic non-coherent systems are too complex for the machinery to be used.  For those systems we can depend on the familiar mechanisms of cause-and-and effect and conventional mechanics.  But let’s not kid ourselves: everything in ordinary reality consists of highly entangled systems of quantum wave functions.

NATURE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

The information revolution of the 20^th century continuing in this century is completely dependent on quantum phenomena.  Without them we could not have computers, cell phones, lasers, TV displays tunneling diodes, communications as we know them and a host of other important developments in the current technosphere.  But to be clear, what we know that works is the mechanism of Quantum mechanics, namely calculations based on the Schrodinger equation and its extensions, for predicting practical quantum phenomena.  We can do this with remarkable accuracy, enabling a number of practical applications that we now take for granted.  The various interpretations of quantum physics (Copenhagen, multiple worlds, Kramer’s) highlighted in my treatise are not part of this working apparatus but rather serve as intellectual crutches to help us build images in human-familiar concepts of what might be going on in underlying physical reality, assuming that that exists at all.   That is, they are just fancy systems of metaphors.

In QM (and in IRC) We apply an observable operator (usually a measurement such as for position or momentum of a particle) and what we observe can only be eigenvalues of the observables we apply. (“In quantum mechanics, an “eigenstate” of an operator is a state that will yield a certain value when the operator is measured. The eigenvalues of each eigenstate correspond to the allowable values of the quantity being measured” For a more precise mathematical characterization, you can see this reference) A-priori, we may only know a probability distribution of the possible outcomes (ex.  That the spin of a particle may be 1 or 0 with equal probability.)  It is intellectually misleading to say as is popular that before we measure the particle is in a superpositiosn of two states , 0 and 1.  In fact we have no information on the state of the spin of the particle before the measurement, other than if we make a measurement, it will be either 0 or 1 with equal probability.

Thus, we humans as observers are key for the workings of quantum mechanics.   Eigenvalues may or may not be probabilistically distributed.  And further, the very process of making observations may affect what is observed.  The mathematical apparatus of Quantum mechanics does not pretend to tell us what is going on in an underlying reality.  Quantum theory interpretations attempt to do that, to assist us to understand quantum phenomena in more familiar human conceptual frameworks.  QM is a theory of how our knowledge of the world changes when we intervene in it (Philip Ball https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7v5NtV8v6I).  The quantum wave function tells us only what we might expect to find if we make a measurement.  What is observed is entirely a function of what operators are applied.  Results of measurements need not be consistent in a classical sense.  In IRC terms where QM operators correspond to unbound intentions. What we observe, what happens is a function of the intention.

“Chris Fuchs:  The Activating Observer: Resource Material for a Paulian/Wheelerish Conception of Nature
(PDF file, presently 733 KB, 188 pages, not ready for viewing yet)

This is the third and final installment of three in the Cerro Grande Fire Series. It reflects the following thought. What has always struck me as most wonderful in quantum mechanics is its indication of how our world may be more malleable than was thought in classical times. With our experimental interventions into nature, we—in the capacity of physical systems and nothing more—may have the opportunity to shape the world in unforeseen and perhaps significant ways. This document catalogs and annotates various materials exploring this idea, from the potentially deeply profound to the just-plain silly. Personally I suspect many of the works cited herein lean toward the profound, but that is an issue for science to decide. The 522 citations below are meant predominantly as historical tabulation and as motivation for such a future science.

The Oyster and the Quantum
(PowerPoint, 2,768 KB, 56 slides)

I say no interpretation of quantum mechanics is worth its salt unless it raises as many technical questions as it answers philosophical ones. In this talk, I hope to convey the essence of a salty, if not downright briny, point of view about quantum theory: The deepest truth of quantum information and computing is that our world is a world wildly sensitive to the touch. When we irritate it in the right way, the result is a pearl. The speculation is that this sensitivity alone gives rise to the whole show, with the quantum calculus portraying the best shot we can take at making predictions in such a world. True to form, I ask more questions than I know how to answer. However, along the way, I give a variant of Gleason’s theorem that works even for rational and two-dimensional Hilbert spaces, give another variant of Gleason’s theorem that gives rise to the tensor-product rule for combining quantum systems, and finally derive a new form for expressing how quantum states change upon the action of a measurement.”

If you are among the few that can follow Dirac notations and the mathematics of QM, I strongly suggest you review Fuchs’ Powerpoint presentation at The Oyster and the Quantum. This makes a strong case for QM and IRC being information theories and supports other assertions I am making here.

NATURE OF INTENTIONAL REALITY CREATION (IRC)

IRC is not necessarily about changing the course of the universe, whatever that could mean.  Rather, it is a framework for a human being to interact with the universe in a way hopefully to observe a desired outcome of an intention.  In this regard it can be viewed as an information theory of knowledge rather than as a way of molding underlying reality.    An intention in IRC plays the same role as an observation in QM. Outcomes of IRC are entirely functions of the intentions applied.  Just as for QM, we can say IRC is a theory of how our knowledge of the world changes when we intervene in it. 

Differences between IRC and QM

In essence, Fuchs and others as quoted above seem to be saying that QM is part of IRC.  This leads me to discuss the obvious differences between QM and IRC.

Scale:  The mathematical apparatus QM seems to deal with sub-nuclear sized particles,  True, but strong quantum effects show up at normal human scales, such as in everyday electronics.  IRC seems to apply at every macroscopic scale.

Coherence:  Quantum effects show up in coherent systems such as in a laser beam of photons or super-cooled superconducting liquid.  IRC applies to highly complex systems where any trace of coherency is lost. Quantum coherence and quantum entanglement appear to be closely related concepts and perhaps simply describe different aspects of the same phenomena.  See this article.

Popular explanations of QM make statements such as “Quantum mechanics applies only at sub-nuclear scales when there is little entanglement and much coherence.  Otherwise classical mechanics applies.”  This is very misleading.  It is much more accurate to say “All systems behave according to the laws of QM, more accurately according to the laws of quantum field theory. At larger scales of reality where there is a great deal of decoherence (entanglement), classical mechanics provide excellent predictive approximations.  Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are not competitors with some mysterious crossover point of scale where one gives way to the other. 

Operators:  An Operator in QM corresponds to a physical experiment that leads to a measurement.  The value of that measurement beforehand can be predicted by the distribution of its eigenvalues and afterwards is fixed by the value of the observation.

Eigenvalues of some IRC intentions are known – either the intention as stated is realized or not.  The outcome of the experiment is what is observed by the intention formulator.

Physicality:  In QM, it may be necessary to manipulate a physical apparatus to initiate an operator.  This could be very complicated.  In IRC, formulation of a clear unbounded intention appears to be all that is needed.  How this works physically is less-clear than for measuring the position of an electron.  The detection measurement is whether the IRC formulator experiences realization of the intention.

Weak causality and IRC in the multiple worlds interpretation (MWI)

Here is another pass as to how IRC works, as a personal information theory about how we know the universe with reference to the MWI.  According to the MWI, if anything T can possibly happen, in some universes, T does happen.  I take the boundary condition of what can happen to being satisfaction of causality for macroscopic phenomena,  Specifically, I define weak causality as follows, using distinctions laid out in my treatise:

• At any given time t1, an individual’s experience is in a manifold of multiple universes M, each wjth different pasts and futures. Only universes with pasts consistent with the individual’s experience record are included in M.    I have no universes in M where I have three arms, or in which the capital of Alabama is Moscow, or ones where my mother was a professional tightrope walker.  However, I have argued that a person’s experience record still leaves that person’s possible pasts vastly undetermined.  I do not know what love affairs my mother or father might have had.  A large multiplicity of universes may therefore exist in M containing different complexes of past events that are unknown to me but consistent with my experience record.  These can be “mined” by IRC to create a cause-and-effect chain that leads to materialization of an intended result.
• For an intention I formulated at time t1, a condition of weak causality for I exists if there are universes in M in which past macroscopic events can create the results of the intention I according to ordinary laws of cause and effect for macroscopic entities. This is why results of hundreds of successful IRC interventions I have made over the years always after the fact, seemed to have arrived as a normal consequence of a plausible traceable chain of cause-and-effect events.
• So, in the MWI, a successful IRC intention slides the intention formulator (IF) over into a submanifold of M, call it M’ where the information fed back to IF is what he or she wants to hear; the intention is satisfied. Put simply, the universe aims to please whenever it can. Never mind all those universes where the intention I is not satisfied.

Assuming IRC extends to all biological entities as I have argued, The last point is probably why so very very many conditions in the universe are life-sustaining.

Bringing it all together, in QM and IRC, there are

• Observer (intention Formulator IF in IRC)
• Responder (no good name for this, perhaps being itself)
• A request for information (operator or experiment in QM, unbound intention in IRC)
• A response (result of the experiment in QM, whether the intention is realized or not)

 “Magic” role of the Observer (Intention Formulator)

In the movie Big, a young boy made a request to an antique carnival fortune-telling machine, the kind with a case of polished dark wood and a head and torso doll effigy of a turbaned magician in a glass case.  The magician doll had the name Zoltar and he is dressed and looks like a Mongolian mystic.  His hands hover over a fortune-telling globe.  The boy expressed an intention to the machine “I want to be big.”  The magician moves its plaster head and hand, and its eyes lit up and the machine printed out a card saying “Your wish is granted.”  And the boy woke up the next day big, in the body of a 30 year-old (played by Tom Hanks) instead of that of a 12-year old.   Quite magical.  Especially in the movie because the machine was not even plugged in.  All for just a penny.  Later in the movie the awkward boy in the man’s body found the machine again, unplugged it, and wished himself back to his original 12-year old body.

Migod!  Can we simply mess with the universe that way?  Are all my writings on IRC Magical Thinking?   It is true that as a young boy 80 years ago I was fascinated by fortune-telling  machines like Zoltar, and you can still find a few of them in dusty corners of old arcades.  Each one is unique, with the dolls in the glassed boxes dressed and laid out a little differently.   Did they brainwash me?

Images source

You can still buy one of these iconic machines for your own basement or a poster of one.  See this link.

IRC would not work for the request made in the Big movie, for at least two reasons.  The first reason, as explained above, is impossible causality – there are no possible causal chains in ordinary reality for a person’s body to change overnight from that of a 12 year-old to that of a 30 year-old or back again.  The second reason, explained in my treatise, is quantum complementarity, a bit more subtle.  Time and energy are complementary variables satisfying a Heisenberg uncertainty inequality,  If you know the exact value of one in an interaction, you can know nothing about the other.  So even if you could get the universe to muster the energy for the age shift, getting the universe to make the shift overnight is just not plausible. But it is completely ordinary for the universe to shift someone to an 18 year-older body.  It just takes 18 years.  And there is no going back.