2 posts tagged with "quantum mechanics"

I recently finished reading Anathem and what a great read it was! Though filled with occasional meanderings by Stephenson, it covered topics which I didn't think fell under the preview of science fiction. Below are some of the points which I found to be interesting.

Spoiler alert! If you intend to read Anathem someday, stop here. The next section is full of spoilers.

1. Long Term Thinking

Anathem sets up a mathic world which is devoid of contact from external world for 1, 10, 100 and 1000 years. The 100 and 1000 year maths seemed to have wisdom and knowledge which is much deeper than 1 and 10 year maths.

One issue which I began thinking was - how do you build something for the long term? Religions last for a long time. Christianity is around 2000 years old. Hinduism or the set of beliefs which comprise Hinduism is around 4000 years old. Companies or corporations are fairly short lived - Google is only ~ 20 yrs old. Long lasting companies like GE are around 125 years and have already faded in glory IMO (though "company" as an idea is still very new - 1700s I think) While christianity and Hinduism are still very relevant. What are the properties of such orgs like religion which make them much longer lasting than businesses? Is it just that they solve much bigger problems (like meaning of life, purpose of existence) than companies which are primarily built on profit motive?

1. Being an "Enthusiast"

Came across this definition of Enthusiast. Made me wonder if this is what people mean when they write "Startup Enthusiast", "Blockchain Enthusiast" in their linked profile. Surprisingly I have never come across anyone claiming to be "Math Enthusiast"

1. The need for a story

Here, Stephenson talks about how the industrialization/corporatization has taken away the story from the life of an individual and made him nothing more than a clog in the wheel. If we look into history, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Before the conception of modern corporations and assembly, people used to earn their living as artisans, farmers or traders. An artisan has much more connection to their work than an industrial worker working in a modern corporation.

This is also the reason why relgion and sports become very important. They provide humans with a story to live by, rather than just being an insignificant speck in the grand universe.

1. Quantum Mind

In the book, Neal Stephenson talks about a Thousander (one who remains secluded in his math for 1000 years) who has acquired the capability to participate in many Narratives simultaneously. This is similar to the idea of Many worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics.

He also points to the idea of Quantum Mind which suggests that the emergence of consciousness in brain cannot be explained by classical mechanical theories and there must be some quantum phenomena happening in brain which gives rise to consciousness.

1. Emergence

This idea is broadly related to the idea of quantum mind but also points to how one can train one's mind through disciplined thinking. Though the benefit of this may not be apparent immediately, the training enables one to perform when the time arrives.

As Robert Pirsig points to in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.

Well, there are many more points which I want to talk about - but these are the top 5 big ones. May be I will do a second post talking about some more insights.

Have been reading a bit about consciousness and it seems that the following topics are closely related:

1. Consciousness
2. Brain
3. Meditation/Yoga
4. Quantum Mechanics

One of the big question which prompted this line of enquiry was the discussion which I read in the book “Homo Deus” -

How does a network of billions of neurons lead to a consciousness? How does the “I” originate?

The question is more complex than it looks like and surprisingly, from what I have learned till now, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on the answer.

Different disciplines try to approach this in different ways. The growing feeling which I get from following the different lines of thought is that the current “real world” which we perceive is a very small microcosm of the complete set of “realities” which can be there. As we relax the small set of conditions in which we spend most of our lives, the perceived reality changes dramatically.

For example, the concept of Time which we take for granted in everyday lives is not so simple. Einsteinian physics demonstrates how the concept of time changes dramatically as objects start traveling close to the speed of light. Time can dilate or run fast.

The states of awareness which we perceive when awake is just one of the many states of awareness. According to Mandukya Upanishad, there are 4 states of awareness:

1.Wakefulness

2.Dream

3.Sleep

4.Turiya - Pure Consciousness

While the first 3 are states which most of us are aware of, the 4th state is a state of complete awareness () achieved by people doing meditations. These different states are confirmed by different EEG signatures, as confirmed by many researchers on meditation. So, there is a biological correlation with different states of consciousness. But the causality is more difficult to establish.

Does the mind lead to different EEG signals, or does the different firings of neurons lead to a different level of awareness?

According to one hypothesis, the consciousness is a by-product of the humming of different neurons. It is not the intended effect but a side product which emerges in the process.

This is also the classical mind-body debate. There can be 2 solutions:

1. Monism - Only one of Mind or Body is real and the second is the manifestation of the first or vice versa
2. Dualism - Mind and Body are two different entities

Does the brain(body) give rise to mind? In that case is mind a different entity than brain?

A closely related topic, which is starkly showcased in one of the stories() in The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov is the emergence of consciousness at advanced level of intelligence. Basically, once computers get sufficiently advanced - they develop a “consciousness” which has similar electromagnetic signatures to what we currently refer to as “consciousness”

If “consciousness” is an emergent property of a high level of intelligence, then it could be just as well possible that human beings are just highly intelligent organic computers created by some more intelligent species. Similar to how we have created computers. That lends credence to the SIM theory which even Elon Musk supports, that our current world is just a simulation.

An enquiry into these issues, makes me feel that the real world which we perceive is just so much a function of how we think about it, rather than what it actually is. The writings of Upanishads which seemed a lot of mumbo-jumbo to me some years back seems so much more insightful now - as at least their language points to ideas which I have laid out above.

As Mark Twain said -

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

The same seems true for Upanishads/Ancient philosophers to me.