Quantum Physics and Consciousness

On Dec 15, 2004, at 11:12 AM, Jack Sarfatti wrote:

Peter is a smart guy that's why.
There is Information Good, Bad and Bogus
The original Telegraph article was Bogus - worse than Bad - incompetent.

On Dec 15, 2004, at 2:07 AM, visions wrote:

Peter, you seem to be echoing the opinion of physicist Jack Sarfatti who wrote to me:
 
"This is junk. No physicist will like it. It's strictly for scientific
illiterates written by one. This kind of misrepresentation of physics
as religion is opiate for the the intellectually challenged - the
lemmings on their way to the Abyss. It's cliche New Age sound bytes for
the ADDs on too much MTV. The morality expressed is fine, but don't try
to prove it with a bogus appeal to quantum nonlocality! The argument is
snake oil. It's not new to me."
 
Cheers
Dave




----- Original Message -----
From: phayesxxxx@aol.com
To: testingmediums@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 6:49 AM
Subject: Re: [testingmediums] 'The Greatest Religious Discovery Of The 20th Century'

This is way too much hype.  Quantum  entanglement has been inherent in the
formulation of quantum mechanics  since its beginning, although recent
measurements have simply confirmed  it.  Entanglement means only statistical
correlation, and it does not  involve the possibility of using this "connectedness" to transmit information or effects.

This is not quite true. Entanglement is now an information resource as in cryptography and teleportation. See "Quantum Information and Relativity Theory" A. Peres & D. R. Terno, Rev Mod Phys January 2004, Vol 76 However, it is limited by "signal nonlocality" also called "passion at a distance".

Generally the issue is faster than light and backwards in time signaling which would be called "signal nonlocality". Now there is a generalized quantum theory (e.g. Antony Valentini) where such paranormal effects do occur! There is also evidence, e.g. presponse described by Dick Bierman and others.

So the Fat Lady has not sung yet on that. The Jury is still out.

The relation of micro-quantum theory to MACRO-Quantum theory is like that of special relativity to general relativity.

Space-time is a rigid non-dynamical background that acts on, but is not acted upon, in special relativity. Space-time is a non-rigid dynamical player on equal footing with the electromagnetic field in the general theory of relativity which makes gravity and inertial rest masses of elementary particles come into being.

Similarly, the quantum information wave is a rigid non-dynamical background that acts on, but is not acted upon in micro-quantum theory. This is where Asher Peres makes his "biggest Bohrian blunder" that quantum information is only epistemological and not ontological. The human mind is a giant macro-quantum local wave in the human brain that controls neuronal firings via electric dipoles in the microtubules, but which is also directly acted back upon by those same electric dipole signals in a spontaneously conscious self-organizing environmentally pumped feedback control loop. This is why we have free will BTW.

The following quote from the article is not  true: "Only now, when quantum mechanics has shown us that all matter is one, that there is no separation between me and my neighbour, do we have the physical proof of what he really meant."  QM does not show that all matter is one, nor does it show that people are not separate.  So highly respected  is physics that people uncritically try to use it to bolster whatever they wish  to believe. There is a plethora of books attempting to get mystical  meaning out of modern physics. The universe is strange indeed, but one  type of strangeness does not prove another.

     Peter Hayes

Yes, Peter is correct in this last paragraph.