Irreducible Complexity (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, January 08, 2010, 01:01 (5433 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Friday, January 08, 2010, 01:23

dhw,
I will separate these into manageable chunks.-> Even as I applaud the third statement, I'm struggling to reconcile it with the first two. -1. Are you saying that the laws of physics and chemistry are governed by chance? -2. That Earth's relationship to the sun is governed by chance? Or that these things came about by chance? -3. Without a degree of order in the universe we obviously could not exist or continue to exist, and I can't associate such order with the idea that the nature of the universe actually IS chance itself. -4. So what exactly do you mean here by 'fabric' and 'nature'?
> -It will be easiest to tackle 4 first as it will frame all the rest of my responses. The fabric of the cosmos is the fabric at the quantum level, and at the quantum level, particles exist in a superposition of states. There's 3 states a particle can be in (this relates to spin), and it is 0, 1, and 0 + 1. At the beginning of the expansion, the state of *everything* in the universe was 0 + 1 (the superposition). What this literally means, is that all states in the universe were happening at the same time. In musical terms, all instruments were the same, and they were playing all notes simultaneously. As for what "nature" is, it is synonymous with the universe. -Play the equation forward a little bit further and you have particles hitting each other. As I will describe below, these collisions create areas where some particles are 0, some are 1. In this sense, we can talk about energy: particles with more energy have 1, less, 0. Those that have more energy than average are 1's, those with less are 0's. Lower energy particles that hit each other clump together and form areas of cool atoms that eventually coalesce into galaxies, stars, etc. It is this last part where the perspective of the Universe as a quantum computer delivers an insight that hasn't existed previously; while I have been neglecting to discuss how the quantity called information acts in the universe, it is the clumping that it describes that provides a quantum explanation for gravity. This is the new part of the perspective that allows us to explain quantum gravity without needing to resort to the intellectual black hole that is String Theory. And--Lloyd's idea is directly testable and within about ten years we'll be able to do so on quantum computers. Because the universe itself is a quantum computer, any other quantum computer can replicate its interactions. -Answers to individual questions:-1. The answer here is complex; Quantum mechanics plays a heavy role within chemistry however, and all chemical phenomenon are quantum in nature; so the real answer here is "depends." Physical laws amplify quantum interactions. This part of quantum theory is extremely well documented. -2. What you're really asking is a solution to "How do we resolve quantum mechanics with classical mechanics." Because solving this problem is the current goal of physics--and has been for 70 years, I cannot provide an answer outside of what Lloyd has already covered. Though his explanation of the interplay under a quantum computational model of the universe only requires three big experiments to be conducted, and they can be attempted in our lifetime. (Well, at least MY lifetime, I do not know your age.) -3. Restated, "How does order arise from disorder?" This is the central study of chaos theory and complexity theory. It's "the butterfly effect" all over again; quantum fluctuations during the early universe; physical laws amplify these fluctuations over time until they appear grossly exaggerated and overly complex. How did life arise? We all know that question's open. That IS a question that will be aided greatly by quantum computing, as well as the emerging science of complexity. That said, quantum mechanics has been experimentally verified again and again, and since its nature IS probabilistic, then all order arose by chance. Literally. Final question in Pt 2.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"