Re: A unique number for every "person" - can it be done?

From: Gerry Quinn (gerryq_at_DELETETHISindigo.ie)
Date: 04/05/05 

Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:49:54 +0100

In article <i49351l30i5tgbr86l3gqjnajfikqb6671@4ax.com>,
Chris@Sonnack.com says...
> Gerry Quinn writes:

> > I don't think that makes sense. How can randomness come from nowhere?
>
> Same way non-randomness comes form nowhere. Seriously, for every "where
> does randomness come from" there's a matching "where does order come
> from" question.

Randomness is something - a piece of information. Order isn't.
Something happened versus nothing happened.

> AIUI, Aspect's experiment demonstrates that two particles that have been
> entangled (in the Quantum sense) remain entangled and appear to have some
> instantaneous effect on each other even when separated by distances that
> do not normally permit instant communication.
>
> I'm not sure I see anything that proofs against randomness here, though.
> When one of the particles is "measured" it will have a *random* value.
> When the other particle is measured it will also have a random value, but
> when the measurements are compared THEN a correlation is recognized.
> (Because each measurement is random in itself, this method can't be used
> to get around the c barrier.)

Yes, but you are defining randomness in a particular way, i.e.
randomness as related to a particular observer. I was talking about
randomness as part of how the universe actually works.

> I've wondered about Aspect's experiment in the past. What I read was
> about photons, and photons are a little weird. Massless and moving at
> c time stops for them.
>
> I've speculated that, to the photon, the entire experiment takes place
> in the same (eternal) instant. I think of the split ray like a forked
> stick--rigid to the photon. If you perturb one end of the stick, the
> other moves. This little bit of imagination also solves the two-slit
> weirdness.

If quantum theory is right, the same will apply to any particle. Of
course, non-locality suggests in itself the concept of an 'eternal
instant', or rather that time is something of an illusion. One way of
looking at the many-worlds concept is that nothing actually 'happens'
but every instant one can experience consists of a valid
observer/observed pair out of the gamut of possible unitary evolutions
of the universal wave function. Of course, the difficulty is to
explain why we only observe universes that seem to encode a history of
smaller universes that evolved into the observed one!

> What bothers me about the MW theory is that new universes are being
> created by the gazillions all the time. Where does all the matter
> (or energy, if you prefer) come from?
>
> I have a friend who points out that equations often have multiple
> solutions (which require no more "resource" than one solution) and if
> the universe was just a mathematical expression, the MW weirdness
> might make a lot more sense.

Yes, I think that's where this line of thought leads. Of course, there
is no matter generated when a universe splits - it's the same universe,
just different branches of its wave function that have somehow become
separated.

> > Of course for any finite observer there will be events that are random
> > from his perspective. The point is that the decay of an atom in a
> > sample of radioactive material may be correlated logically with the
> > absorption of a photon in a distant star, as part of some grand
> > fundamental pattern, inaccessible to us. We can already see such
> > correlations, and quantum theory suggests that they are pervasive but
> > very hard to detect.
>
> Yep, could be. I dislike the implications, however. Essentially,
> what happens to free will if there truly is no randomness? If the
> universe is just a really, really, REALLY big billiard table, then
> the outcome was fully determined in the first stroke and we're all
> just playing out our pre-set courses.

I take the view that free will and determinism are not connected. If
you can always outguess me in rock-paper-scissors, have I suddenly lost
free will?

- Gerry Quinn

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