From: CYMM (cymm@trinidad.net)
Date: Tue Jun 27 2000 - 06:51:25 MDT
MARTIN LING SAID: "...My question: could we 'get away' with using these
methods to send FTL signals for near-instantaneous communication over
distances?..."
CYMM SAYS: Martin, you must be careful in FTL thinking to keep your
paradigms clear of each other. Running an inference in one paradigm and then
switching to another mightn't be useful.
In "classical" QM you have nonlocality with Bell's Theorem AND you have the
Born Rule. Bell/nonlocality and Born are axiomatically independent. When you
go relativistic, you find Eberhard's theorem lousing up your attempts to do
cool stuff with FTL that derives from Bell/nonlocality.
The real problem is not to explain single- and -Oligo electron systems...
it's macroscale composite systems where you have an problem getting "useful"
info across at FTL. In a way it reminds me of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Valentini gives us some insight into a whole non-Born continuum of rules...
with Born as a degenerate and limiting case... This gets me excited.
Whenever a natural law exists as a limiting case, I ask: what's the general
case?
A more general case can be arrived at in many quantum formulations... in
Forrest's formulation... hmmm, I think you might try intefering with the
paths that represent backward time travel... you can do something similar in
Cramer's Transactional case.
Methinks you'll get a Non-Born situation.
You could also do a Jack Sarfatti type EXPLICIT invocation of a Quantum
Field, Q, in system space (... or, I think, as Sarfatti puts it, " beyond
spactime"...) that is more or less coupled to the Quantum Wavefunction,
(QWF) PSI... this yields a Non-Born scenario.
OR you can assume that the Copenhagen axioms refer implicitlty to a Quantum
Principle of Equivalence and go ahead and quantize the EMERGENT dynamics of
very complex systems - for example a neurodynamical system for a quantum
neural net - to find that in certain classes of extremely complex systems, a
strongly coupled QWF/Potential Function Q arise implicitly in system space.
You may not even have to generalize the axioms... I think Joos et al did
something on that but I haven't read it as yet.
In such a case the universe gets really interesting.
The energy of the quantum vacuum gets useable...and if "will" is a product
of a a quantum Neural Net (your brain/mind)... it may be possible to will
matter-energy into existence and to create entities that are composed of
pure spacetime or even exist beyond spacetime.
In fact, if you're very religious, you might want to speculate that the (in
this scenario) eminently configurable Q, the field that exists in the system
space of such very complex systems as quantum superminds, is, in fact, what
those old heathen Greeks called "logos" and what St. John cribbed...
identifying Christ with the "Word".
Lastly, who knows...in such a scenario...present alters past... not just
future.
It's likely (ha!) that Elizer's progeny sometime in the future - 2012? :) -
using sheer will, reaches back into that other singularity... the primordial
quantum fireball...perturbing its fluctuations slighly... so that this
particular universe appears.
God begets himself.
************************
>This all has me thinking.
>
>I posted the following to extropians earlier this month; I reset the
>question to you all in light of Forrest's thoughts.
>
>* From: Martin Ling <martin@nodezero.org.uk>
>* To: extropians@extropy.com
>* Subject: Re: FTL transmission?
>
>On Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 03:51:56PM -0700, Dan McGuirk wrote:
>>
>> > What I mean is the difference between someone watching a moon landing
>> > in 1969 on TV vs. someone watching it on Alpha Centauri many years
later.
>> > In either case there is a delay, and even if you had instant (FTL) TV
>> > signals from the moon to your TV in 1969 there still is no way that I
>> > see that you actually are going "back in time" or causing any kind of
>> > paradox.
>>
>> If you're on Earth, or on Alpha Centauri, you don't see a problem.
>> But if you're in a spaceship heading from Alpha Centauri to Earth (I
>> think that's the right direction) at a relativistic speed, you'll see
>> the effect precede the cause.
>
>[snip]
>
>> Well, if they see the effect soon enough before the cause, they can
>> send some information back to the cause, and prevent the cause from
>> happening. But then how did they ever see the effect?
>
>Now - couldn't it perhaps work out that if this happened, their signal
>would never be able to reach the point of the cause in time to stop it?
>
>In fact, doesn't it definitely work out this way, given that we already
>have multiple experiments demonstrating signals arriving before they
>depart which arrange themselves such that this effect cannot be used to
>practically signal back in time *to the same point in space*?
>
>[snip]
>
>> I agree. And that is why FTL communication must not be
>> possible. Otherwise, you _could_ send a signal back that could
>> prevent an event that has already happened.
>
>I have an idea.
>
>What if a signal were sent, by the methods used in recent experiments,
>faster than light - but only a little so. Let's say the distance
>involved is one metre.
>
>Normal light will take 3 x 10^-8 seconds to travel this distance.
>
>A signal sent by one of the methods demonstrated can be arranged to
>arrive after a negative time delay.
>
>Now, for some value of the signal velocity in between, the signal will
>arrive instantaneously.
>
>An instantaneous signal cannot create a paradox.
>
>Or, taking practical considerations into account, one arranged such that
>it was *almost* instantaneous.
>
>My question: could we 'get away' with using these methods to send FTL
>signals for near-instantaneous communication over distances?
>
>
>Martin
>
>--
>-----[ Martin J. Ling ]-----[ http://www.nodezero.org.uk ]-----
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:29:32 MST