Quantum Causal Asymmetry

Causal Asymmetry in a Quantum World

PHYSICAL REVIEW X 8, 031013 (2018)

Jayne Thompson, Andrew J. P. Garner, John R. Mahoney, James P. Crutchfield, Vlatko Vedral, and Mile Gu

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...Consider a cannonball in free fall. To model its future trajectory classically, we need only its current position and velocity. This remains true even when we view the process in reverse time. This exemplifies causal symmetry. There is no difference in the amount of information we must track for prediction versus retrodiction.

However, this is not as obvious for more complex processes. Take a glass shattering upon impact with the floor. In one temporal direction, the future distribution of shards depends only on the glass’s current position, velocity, and orientation. In the opposite direction, we may need to track relevant information regarding each glass shard to infer the glass’s prior trajectory.

Does this require more or less information? This potential divergence is quantified in the theory of computational mechanics [6]...

[6] J. P. Crutchfield, Between Order, and Chaos , Nat. Phys. 8, 17 (2012).
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This paper shows a quantum causal asymmetry that does not exist classically and uses a cannonball as an example of classical time reversal symmetry of prediction and retrodiction. However, including the atmospheric friction around the cannonball trajectory results in the same classical versus quantum complexity dilemma as this actual cannonball trajectories as a painting in1628 by Diego Ufano shows.

Even the simplest actual classical cannonball trajectory involves much more classical than quantum information since the trajectory is continuous and infinitely divisible but chaotic due to atmospheric friction. However, the quantum trajectory involves discrete jumps or hops and quantum therefore ultimately limits the information needed for retrodiction. However, the price to pay for that quantum limit is in a limited uncertainty while classically, there is no limit to the uncertainty and therefore the information is unbounded.

The cannonball trajectory makes up a causal set of precursors and outcomes and are all predicated on atmospheric eddies at a higher resolution. Eventually, a discrete quantum limits the information for quantum retrodiction and so provides a kind of quantum arrow of time. Although not discussed in this paper, it is quantum phase decay that brings quantum and classical retrodiction together as one.

Our Subconscious Free Will

It is now well established that we make decisions based on irrational subconscious feeling and not based on conscious rational reasoning. Perhaps the most compelling evidence is that of the delay between when we are conscious of a choice and when that choice shows up in the brain MRI. However, it is not then true that we do not have free will or free choice despite the fact that our subconscious and not conscious mind determines choice. Many people argue that since subconscious decisions are based on irrational feeling and not based on rational reasoning that we then do not have free choice and our choices are all somehow persuaded by a determinate universe.

However, how we feel about things and therefore how we make choices derives from a spectrum of emotions that in turn arise from a spectrum of subconscious archetypes of free choice. Free choice involves a recursion of thought, memories, and feeling and archetypes are what we believe in and expect and are what affect our emotions and therefore feelings and memories. Some of our subconscious archetypes are innate but they are by no means completely fixed and constant and constantly evolve in life. As other people and things that happen persuade us to believe differently, so our beliefs evolve as a result of the persuasion of others and how they act. Instead of directly perceiving reality, our archetypes provide a template of what we call perception and we respond to things that happen with emotions and feeling. Irrational feeling then determines how we make free choices and why we have free will.

The technical reason that we have free will is that we actually cannot always know the reasons why we make the choices that we make even though those reasons do exist. What we do is first make a choice based on our subconscious feeling and then we rationalize that choice with conscious reasoning that may or may not have had anything to do with our choice. In very technical terms, we each live in our own subjective quantum universe of matter, action, and phase and while matter action is how things change, quantum phase is also a part of how things change and we also have quantum phase that affects how we feel. In fact, the very nature of neural action potentials has to do with quantum phase so our quantum phase affects how we see matter action and then also how we perceive reality.

A large number of classical events like flips of a coin toss or neural action potentials, necessarily also entangle quantum phase noise. This is because even though a macroscopic event entangles only very small amounts of quantum phase noise, large numbers of such events by design do. While a classical event is never really random, a quantum event is truly random in the sense that quantum is not predictable with arbitrary precision.

Each moment of thought is an EEG power spectrum of neural resonances of a large number of neural actions and each free choice represents an outcome EEG spectrum. Every precursor spectrum of thought is a superposition with a large but finite number of outcome spectra and it is quantum phase decay that transitions from the precursor to outcome spectrum in what we call a free choice. Although each free choice is an outcome spectrum due to the collapse of precursor spectra superposition, it is not possible to predict the precise outcome of free choice from just the precursor spectra superposition even though it is possible to often predict the most likely choice. Therefore, there are no precisely certain outcomes given a known precursor and this is why we have free choice and free will.

Therefore it is also not possible for anyone to know all of the precursors for their free choices even though those precursors do exist in a causal discrete set universe. Our free choices are free precisely because it is not possible for anyone to actually know all of the precursors for our free choices. The very definition of free choice is that these choices are ours and ours alone and we are free to choose to bond or conflict...

The outcome of a precursor superposition is not precisely certain and neural superpositions exist for only very short times. Once we make a free choice, the outcome follows even though the precise precursor remains uncertain.

One of the most important free choices we make is the balance between the conflict of individual free choice and the bonding of compassionate social responsibility of coerced choice. We actually need free choice to survive even though it leads to conflict and we need as well as some compassion to bond with others, cooperate, mate, and have a family. Our subconscious archetypes are how we perceive the world as well as how we feel about what we perceive. Although some archetypes are innate, we learn most archetypes from the many narratives that we see, hear, and feel as well as in how we see others act, since we often then act like we see others act. This is all part of the mystery of free choice.

Inequalities in Education, Life Expectancy, and Income

We live in an age where our entire civilization benefits from the technological advances of the enlightenment. All of the measures of progress show a steady advance and in particular, the three key competencies of education, life expectancy, and income all show steady progress in individual free choice. However, there are still very large variations within each of these competencies and our social responsibility struggles with the wealth distribution even though there is average or mean progress. In effect, the means of progress reflect the individual free choice of its individuals while the distribution of progress about those means reflects each individual’s social responsibility to reduce disparities in each competency.

The likelihoods of IQ, long life, and income all show distributions that peak in likelihood at about the same incomes. While long life tends to follow IQ, the likelihood for income crosses around the median income. Long life and IQ then do not increase at the same rate as increasing income. When you are $25,000 income, you gain 15% longer life for an $10,000 income increase, but at $150,000 income, you only gain 1.9% longer life for the same $10,000 income increase.

The basic dilemma of inequality is not really in progress, which is rapidly occurring in any event, but rather in how much social responsibility people have in reducing the unequal distribution of progress. Civilization has long struggled with the dilemma of inequality given the fundamental natural inequality as a result of variation of human ability across each competency. That is, individuals have their own free choices for education, health, and income, but individuals also have a socially responsible free choice for reducing the inequalities of opportunity for education, long life, and income. All outcomes are unequal because human abilities are unequal, but those inequalities can be exacerbated from limited access to education, health care, and to free and fair markets for creating new wealth, i.e., equality of opportunity. Inequality that is largely a result of the large natural variations in individual quality of life, ability to learn, and of course, ability to create wealth is simply human.

There are a total of 14 competencies that completely define people’s free choices: education, health care, housing, transportation, food, energy, environment, tools, communication, security, leisure, risk, administration, and money. While education and health care both relate directly to progress, the progress for income and wealth distribute across all 14 competencies as wealth that people earn as income or spend as consumption. Money represents wealth and facilitates commerce among competencies and people make money by specializing in the products of a particular competency and then tend to distribute that wealth to a limited set of competency products. People produce in some competencies and consume some of the 14 competency products and this commerce is therefore the most important reason for innovation and progress across all competencies.

These 14 competencies make up the macro economy and each individual creates wealth in one competency and then distributes that wealth as consumption among the other 13 in order to survive. While the 14 competencies are a very rational description of the way civilization is, people basically do not really make rational decisions, people make free choices based on their feelings. Feeling is the root of free choice and the result of a set of five emotion complements and subconscious archetypes. It is by feeling that we make our decisions and not by rational thought and so the archetypes that we learn early in life are what guides free choice in our lives.

Others persuade us into free choice as we grow up by acting like we act and then persuading us to act like we see others act as well. By this persuasion, we acquire the grand narratives and archetypes of civilization as free choice. Free choice and feeling either bonds us into cooperation with others or separates us from others with conflict. We adopt a set of unconscious archetypes that are then how we feel about others and feeling is how we make free choices.

Even though outcomes all have causal precursors, it is not possible to know all precursors even though they do exist. This is fundamentally because both the precursor and we have quantum phase and that phase limits what we can know about quantum superposition. This means that fundamentally each free choice that we make is for one of many possible outcomes and we can only know the precursors within some uncertainty. The outcomes that we choose are not then determinate and instead, there are many possible outcomes that are subject to quantum uncertainty.

This does not mean that outcomes are random, but rather means that outcomes simply have some unknowable precursors even though they can have fairly rational precursors. If you are hungry, it is certain that you will eventually eat or you will not survive very long. However, when, where, and what you will decide to eat are all free choices that really have unknowable precursors. If you are lonely, you will likely seek companionship, but with whom, when, and where are all free choices and not random at all.


Census.gov, Table A-2. Selected Measures of Household Income Dispersion: 1967 to 2017

life expectancy versus income in the United States
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/health/

IQ and Permanent Income: Sizing Up the “IQ Paradox”
https://humanvarieties.org/2016/01/31/iq-and-permanent-income-sizing-up-the-iq-paradox/

The Wonder and Glory of the Pulsed Universe

It is things that happen that make up the universe and most of all that means that it is the universe most of all that just happens. The very slow matter action of the universe pulse is a very slow action that happens very slowly. Although the very fast atom matter actions are what make up the universe, all very fast atom matter actions are still subject to very slow universe matter action as well. In effect, there are two dimensions of time and three dimensions of space that all emerge from matter action.

Time and space have meaning for everywhere in the universe of atoms except at certain boundaries called event horizons. The matter accretions known as black holes, exist beyond the time and space of the universe of atoms since there are no longer any atom matter actions for a black hole. Instead, each black hole exists as only a mass, a quantum phase, and a surface or event horizon and yet black holes are still subject to the overarching universe matter action. Thus the very slow change of the universe pulse still has meaning for a black hole very slow change. Black hole decay along with the universe decay then represents the destiny of all atom matter action as the universe matter-action pulse decays. The eventual decay of the universe into a single black hole outcome becomes the precursor to an expanding antiverse outcome.

The eventual universe precursor is then in a superposition with an antiverse outcome until a dephasing occurs and the antiverse expansion then begins from the black hole precursor. This antiverse expansion of antimatter the becomes the eventual precursor to another shrinking matter universe like the universe that we find ourselves inside of today.

We know that we are in a shrinking universe of growing force because of the many different measurements of matter decay along with force growth. The kilogram standard has decayed over 130 yrs, the earth day has decayed over 50 years, atomic clocks all dephase at characteristic rates per atom, and pulsars all show a limiting frequency decay.

We know that we are in a growing force universe because the Hubble galaxy red shifts occur despite the universe of shrinking matter. The further wonder is that all of science is completely convinced that the universe expands and does not shrink at all. Relativistic gravity is simply a manifestation of a shrinking universe of quantum matter.

The universe matter pulse complements the photon pulses that bind matter and result in quantum gravity as well. An exchange spin = 1 photon binds each electron and proton and has an emitted spin = 1 photon with complementary phase. These spin = 1 phase complements result in a spin = 2 biphoton or graviton whose exchange with other matter biphotons is quantum gravity. Since gravity biphoton exchange does not depend on quantum phase, gravity is always attractive and therefore unlike photon exchange, which depends on quantum phase.