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Mountain Man's Global News Archive

The Internet Science Education Project

and Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D.

Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia - Southern Summer 1996


Welcome to the 21st Century

Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 10:45:13 -0800
From: "Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D."
Organization: Internet Science Education Project
Newsgroups: sci.physics, sci.skeptic, alt.consciousness
Subject: 21C

"Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D." writes:


How Quantum Thought Shapes The Classical Brain
According To David Bohm

A Commentary by Jack Sarfatti

Part One

Henry Stapp opens his book, Matter, Mind, and Quantum Mechanics with the remark that the world divides into thoughtlike things and rocklike things. Stapp also notes that William James at the close of the 19th Century pointed to the fact that there was no way in the classical physics of the time to formulate how a thought could influence the brain. This led to Watson’s classical materialist behaviorism based on Pavlov, to Crick’s Astonishing Hypothesis and to the current mis-conceived classical theory of consciousness of Churchland, Dennett, Calvin, Minsky,Edleman and others too numerous to mention. :-)

The orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr is totally idealistic asserting that the world at the fundamental level of quantum reality only consists of thoughtlike things which then collapse into the rocklike things of classical physics. There are several variations on this idea due to Heisenberg, von Neumann, Wigner, Wheeler and Penrose, but they all involve two qualitatively different kinds of dynamics. One is the unitary deterministic time evolution of the thoughtlike quantum wave pattern of an isolated system between measurements by an external system. The second is the nonunitary indeterministic collapse of the pattern to an actual classical rocklike thing.

David Bohm, directly under Einstein’s influence at Princeton in 1951 or so, had an epiphany after writing his Copenhagen-based book, Quantum Theory, and realized that quantum reality has both thoughtlike and rocklike things. Bohr said it was impossible to visualize the motion of a tiny rocklike particle in quantum reality. Bohm proved Bohr wrong. Bohm’s thoughtlike thing is the quantum pilot-wave. His rocklike thing is the hidden variable. That was a poor choice of terminology, and I will use John Bell’s later word beable instead of hidden variable. In Bohm’s version the beable is the actual position of the particle at a moment of time for particle mechanics. The beable is also the entire classical field configuration over all space at a moment in time in quantum field theory. The quantum wave properties of particles are caused by a new kind of nonlocal form-dependent quantum potential. This is how thought shapes brain matter. The quantum particle properties of classical fields are caused by a similar super-quantum potential. The photon is an example of the latter.

There is a very important qualitative difference between Henry Stapp’s quantum theory of the mind-brain based on an ontological collapse and my post-quantum theory of the mind-brain based upon Bohm’s idea of active information. So let’s see what Bohm means by active information. The following quotes are from The Undivided Universe with Basil Hiley.

Note the path x(t) of the rocklike particle is causally determined in quantum mechanics. In contrast, with post-quantum back-action (i.e., the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, to use quaint images) the particle, now attached to it’s thoughtlike quantum pilot wave, becomes alive and participates in its self-determination even opposing non-self Darwinian natural selection pressures in some robust cases.

Note use of the word never.
What never? Well, hardly ever. .... (Pinafore).
If it were really never, then that settles it. There is no possibility of personal immortality and Christ’s message would then be false. However, recent research at IBM on quantum teleportation suggests that the thoughtlike quantum pilot-wave pattern of implicate information can be teleported between different rocklike particles. If so, then one brain could experience the actual experience of another brain distant from it in space and time. Note also, as for the particle, the causal determination of the wave transforms to living self-determination when post-quantum back-action takes over from random environmental decoherence. The rocklike particle and its attached thought like pilot-wave feed error-correcting information back and forth between each other to become a self-determining conscious post-quantum adaptive system. The important point here is to realize that this is not possible in quantum mechanics. Bohm explains why it is not possible right here:

This is the most important sentence in the entire book. This is the seed out of which the post-quantum physics of the 21st Century will blossom. What Bohm is saying here is that quantum mechanics has zero back-action. Back-action means just the opposite. The post-quantum field (or pilot-wave) does have sources and is directly affected by the conditions of the particles. Thus, there is a two-way relationship between the quantum wave and the classical particle or beable in post-quantum physics. In contrast, there is only a one-way force of quantum wave on classical particle in quantum physics.

Eberhard’s theorem of quantum physics has a corollary that says that all paranormal phenomena based on clairvoyant telepathic faster-than-light and precognitive backward-in-time communication using nonlocal connectivity is impossible. Eberhard’s theorem does not work in post-quantum physics.

Note that the super-quantum fields of the classical gauge fields are also directly affected by the conditions of the latter’s configurations over all space at a fixed moment of time. This Hamiltonian picture must be extended to the Feynman path Lagrangian picture. Just as special relativity with zero spacetime curvature is extended to general relativity with non-zero spacetime curvature to explain gravitation, so I have, single-handedly in the face of enormous opposition from my peers, extended quantum mechanics to post-quantum mechanics to explain consciousness. I must thank Nick Herbert for pushing me into this strategy with his insistence that I make a new Sarfatti Mechanics. :-)

Bohm continues:

This essential difference is missed not only by laymen, but also by theoretical physicists who should know better. The difference is that the classical gauge fields, like Maxwell’s electromagnetic field, are local in spacetime. In contrast, the quantum field of n point particles is local in a higher 3n dimensional classical configuration space C3n at each instant of time in the Hamiltonian picture. Therefore, it is objectively nonlocal in the ordinary 3D space of the classical gauge field. Similarly, the super-quantum field of the classical gauge field is local in the infinite-dimensional classical configuration space Cinfinity because the classical gauge field is the limiting case of n coupled particles with n approaching infinity as a discrete cellular space lattice approaches the classical continuum of real numbers. The classical Wheeler superspace for the three-dimensional geometries of the metric gravitational gauge field of general relativity is an example of a Cinfinity classical rocklike configuration space. Note that classical configuration spaces are not the same as the quantum Hilbert spaces of pilot-wave functions. The classical configuration space is the rocklike space in which the beable moves. The quantum Hilbert space is the thoughtlike space in which the pilot-wave moves. The thoughtlike Hilbert space is a fiber space which has the rocklike classical configuration space as its base space.

Thus, the thoughtlike quantum Hilbert space of pilot-waves of funda-MENTAL (e.g., the Chalmer’s field) implicate information and the rocklike classical configuration space of the beable, form the mind-brain fiber bundle when the post-quantum back-action is not zero. This is how the post-quantum physics of consciousness connects to the mathematics of Saul Paul Sirag in the latest edition of Jeffrey Mishlove’s The Roots of Consciousness. Sirag was the vice-president of the original Esalen Physics Consciousness Research Group when I was president in the mid-seventies.

Now Bohm shows how quantum mechanics is the approximate limiting case of zero back-action just like the similar case of the flat spacetime of special relativity which has zero gravitational field in it.

Going to 14.6 p. 346 we find Bohm asserting:

Stapp interprets Bohm’s above words so that, in a large scale system, the empty wave packets of our interpretation would tend to disappear to show the equivalence between his ontological post-Heisenberg-James collapse theory of consciousness and my back-action theory. If so, my back-action theory is more detailed and can explain the self-determination of free-will choices in individual events which he explicitly admits he cannot explain. In other words, Stapp’s theory can be likened to phenomenological thermodynamics with my theory as its statistical mechanical explanation. While Stapp’s theory and my theory probably are equivalent on the level of proton masses, they may differ significantly on the level of electron masses which may account for the persistence of the experience of self-identitity over the human life span of about 100 years. Imagination would then correspond to recombinations with empty wave packets that do not objectively collapse. So whether, as Stapp believes, Bohm’s inactive information really plays no role in consciousness is something we need to keep thinking about.

We also now see the connection to the Penrose quantum gravity model on consciousness in his book, Shadows of the Mind, because the GRW model is a special case of the Nanopoulos superstring-quantum gravity model. There are essential differences of detail between Nanopoulos and Penrose that do not concern our more general concerns here. I do note them for the record.

The Nanopoulos model says that superstrings at the quantum gravity energy 10^28 electron volts do trickle down to cause an objective quantum gravity friction at 1 electron volt and less to collapse Bohm’s empty wave packets quite fast for biologically relevant numbers of proton masses. However, this quantum gravity friction is 10^20 times slower for the same number of electron masses, and it is the electron masses that control the conformations of the protein dimers in the microtubules. That is why I do not accept Stapp’s assertion of equivalence to my theory uncritically at this early stage. In any case, it is clear that Stapp is proposing a post-quantum theory of consciousness not a quantum theory as he sometimes seems to suggest.

Now let’s return to the main intent of this article which is Bohm’s notion of active information bearing in mind that the key difference right now between Stapp’s theory and my theory is whether or not the inactive information of the post-quantum mind-brain conscious adaptive system is wiped away moment to moment as our streams of inner felt-consciousness, like Ol Man River just keeps on flowin along.

The interaction of the classical particle system with its quantum pilot wave field (i.e., quantum potential also called Q) is qualitatively different from the interaction of a classical charge with a classical local electromagnetic field. This is a key point that many paraphysicists completely miss in tying to model the paranormal. Since the CIA and the DOD of the USA have paid good money for such models, what I am saying here is important to the taxpayer. :-)

Bohm writes:

Bohm then compares this to ...

Clearly the form dependence of the quantum motion is thoughtlike as when we do something because we intend to do it. The word form is identical to the way I used context as in context-dependence in the past.

Bohm goes on to say that the new form-dependence implies that a particle may not move uniformly in a straight line in the absence of all classical forces. That is Newton’s laws are modified in quantum reality.

Note Bohm’s use of the words is taken up in the movement.. This is obviously how thoughts influence brains. I mean it is really obvious. We see how the brain sucks up the messages from the mind.

Clearly it is to the shame of the Nobel Committee that they did not give The Prize to David Bohm. They should do so posthumously. Bohm was Oppenheimer’s smartest student at Berkely in the 1930’s. It shows the limited one-dimensionality that Herbert Marcuse described that Big Science is dominated by mean-spirited men who have a problem with the vision thing. :-) (I am now under the influence of a half glass of good chianti as I sit in the Caffe Trieste in San Francisco’s Bohemian Cafe infested North Beach on New Years Eve with my laptop and wireless modem!)

A good example of Bohm’s active information is in the quantum Carnot engine that I invented as a thought experiment. Couple a very hot negative quantum temperature to a cold positive classical temperature and you will see active information at work in a very dramatic counter-intuitive way that is relevant to Frohlich Bose-Einstein condensates in living microtubules.

By form, Bohm means a new kind of implicate quantum information of unique complex individuals that is qualitatively different from Claude Shannon’s thermodynamic entropy-based explicate classical statistical information of actuarial ensembles of simplistically abstracted so-called identical individuals. The form is the message. Marshall Mc Luhan was wrong. It’s not the medium stupid, it’s the form! :-)

Yes, indeed, just like the thoughts in your mind which determine the movements of the muscles in your body.

End of Part One.
Copyright, 1997 All rights reserved by Jack Sarfatti (sarfatti@well.com) and the Internet Science Education Project.
This document can be linked on the World Wide Web for non-commercial educational purposes without violation of the copyright.


The Physics of Channelling

Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 16:38:06 -0800
From: "Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D."
Organization: Internet Science Education Project
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: The Physics of Channelling


What is 'post-quantum back-action'?

To get an idea of what constitutes 'post-quantum back-action' and 'Post-Quantum Physics', using the presentation of PowerPoint, it is best to point your browsers at the source:

http://www.hia.com/hia/pcr/qmbeynd.html

or to access the slide show direct ...

http://www.hia.com/hia/pcr/pq/pq1.htm


LogoforMountainManGraphics,Australia

Mountain Man's Global News Archive

The Internet Science Education Project

and Jack Sarfatti, Ph.D.

Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia - Southern Summer 1996