Reading this, my thought was that this would have absolutely blown my mind if I hadn’t been primed/prepared for similar ideas from my (fairly superficial) encounters with similar ideas from the Qualia Research Institute, David Pearce, and even this old [Overcoming Bias post](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/does-real-feel.html).
So I was kind of surprised to see this [thread](https://nitter.it/algekalipso/status/1562889329399123970#m) on Twitter (link is to Nitter). I am a big admirer of QRI and Andres Gomez Emilsson but in this case I do wonder how carefully/closely Andres read your essay. I had had the impression while reading your essay that it was very close, possibly in agreement, with some of the relevant positions of QRI, while, sure, not addressing the binding problem.
You actually come fairly close in your essay to outright saying you’re explicitly not trying to address the binding problem: “we are not talking about … how our experiences seem somewhat unified”. (Caution here though, I don’t yet understand what’s meant by the binding problem and have been waiting for it to “click” for me for some months.)
So I thought your essay was excellent, fwiw from someone way, way out of their depth.
I think it’s addressed in the text, but the binding problem is solved by physics—fundamentally, there are no atoms, only interconnected universe. Then the decomposition problem—why we can’t read others’ thoughts—is solved by the observation that we can, as in our thoughts are casually affected by the others’ thoughts (for example when we hear someone say something about what they think) and degree/speed of casual influence is consistent between physical laws and our feelings about mind isolation. Ultimately there is no isolation of qualia—only qualia of isolation. And when treated as representation of reality, qualia, as any other representation, can be imperfect.
Entanglement doesn’t allow any transfer of information. So thought-reading (or anything that requires transfer of information) through entanglement is impossible.
Classical universe is not less global—it’s either the case that an electron from faraway galaxy is tugging on your thoughts or, if you want to consider classical universe with relativity, it’s the same kind of locality, just not in Hilbert space. Anyway what’s predicted is very small-scale thought-reading and that’s what actually happens. I think the key element here is the theory of knowledge that supports you being unaware of small-scale differences in your qualia.
No-communication theorem is a thing that exists and applies to quantum stuff.
Light-speed keeps to be a relevant limit on what can happen. If you have a superposition of state A+B and it resolves “superluminally” to one of those two, it can only span an area that A could have spread (at lightspeed) to or B could have spread (at lightspeed) to.
Global correlations themselves are not that unusual? You can just write “+” and “-” on different halves of paper, take random one, and now wherever you go, if you see a “+”, you know the other one will see a “-”. So classical universe also has nonlocal correlations. But in both universes they are locally originated and things only change locally—you can only move your shared blob of amplitude no faster than light, and it only changes when someone locally interacts somewhere they moved it.
And I mean ok, you can call changing my blob with interaction not in my location “nonlocal”, but there are still no implications for thought-reading, except yes, you can expect some correlations, but so what? Presented solution for the hard problem predicts them and they happen.
In classical universe, you can write plusses and minuses on a piece of paper and tear it half , but the two halves will always remain within the future lightcone, however much you separate them...so they are not nonlocally correlated , in the technical sense.
Metaphorical cones? Do you object to the possibility of geometrical representation of speed of influence-propagation in Hilbert space or what? Because (relativistic) quantum mechanics is local by both “you can’t spread influence faster than light” and “it uses only local derivatives” definitions of locality.
You can argue that QM doesn’t allow nonlocal influences or signalling, but that isn’t the result of the existence of anything analogous to a Hilbert space light cone, it’s the result of the fact that you cant control a nonlocal correlation,.so you cant signal with it. But nonlocal correlations are still there.
First, to be clear, there are direct analogs of lightcones in relativistic QM that disallows just moving faster than light. But even when talking about entanglement specifically, it depends how analogous you want it to be? It’s still “the space/equations prevent FTL signaling”—why it matters that it’s lightcone in pieces of paper case and “you can only move nearby blobs of amplitude in some dimensions”? I mean, from that perspective it’s kinda weird you can’t signal through entanglement. Is it just that it fits the “you can only affect stuff that is associated with your classical spatial location” definition of locality? But sticking to that definition is not motivated by the reasons we initially cared about it!
Reading this, my thought was that this would have absolutely blown my mind if I hadn’t been primed/prepared for similar ideas from my (fairly superficial) encounters with similar ideas from the Qualia Research Institute, David Pearce, and even this old [Overcoming Bias post](https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/12/does-real-feel.html).
So I was kind of surprised to see this [thread](https://nitter.it/algekalipso/status/1562889329399123970#m) on Twitter (link is to Nitter). I am a big admirer of QRI and Andres Gomez Emilsson but in this case I do wonder how carefully/closely Andres read your essay. I had had the impression while reading your essay that it was very close, possibly in agreement, with some of the relevant positions of QRI, while, sure, not addressing the binding problem.
You actually come fairly close in your essay to outright saying you’re explicitly not trying to address the binding problem: “we are not talking about … how our experiences seem somewhat unified”. (Caution here though, I don’t yet understand what’s meant by the binding problem and have been waiting for it to “click” for me for some months.)
So I thought your essay was excellent, fwiw from someone way, way out of their depth.
I think it’s addressed in the text, but the binding problem is solved by physics—fundamentally, there are no atoms, only interconnected universe. Then the decomposition problem—why we can’t read others’ thoughts—is solved by the observation that we can, as in our thoughts are casually affected by the others’ thoughts (for example when we hear someone say something about what they think) and degree/speed of casual influence is consistent between physical laws and our feelings about mind isolation. Ultimately there is no isolation of qualia—only qualia of isolation. And when treated as representation of reality, qualia, as any other representation, can be imperfect.
But that would still work in a classical univserse,without quantum entanglement.
The point is that global entanglement would predict thought-reading without speech.
Entanglement doesn’t allow any transfer of information. So thought-reading (or anything that requires transfer of information) through entanglement is impossible.
Classical universe is not less global—it’s either the case that an electron from faraway galaxy is tugging on your thoughts or, if you want to consider classical universe with relativity, it’s the same kind of locality, just not in Hilbert space. Anyway what’s predicted is very small-scale thought-reading and that’s what actually happens. I think the key element here is the theory of knowledge that supports you being unaware of small-scale differences in your qualia.
Yes it is, because it lacks nonlocal correlations.
Don’t you mean nonlocality?
No-communication theorem is a thing that exists and applies to quantum stuff.
Light-speed keeps to be a relevant limit on what can happen. If you have a superposition of state A+B and it resolves “superluminally” to one of those two, it can only span an area that A could have spread (at lightspeed) to or B could have spread (at lightspeed) to.
Global correlations themselves are not that unusual? You can just write “+” and “-” on different halves of paper, take random one, and now wherever you go, if you see a “+”, you know the other one will see a “-”. So classical universe also has nonlocal correlations. But in both universes they are locally originated and things only change locally—you can only move your shared blob of amplitude no faster than light, and it only changes when someone locally interacts somewhere they moved it.
And I mean ok, you can call changing my blob with interaction not in my location “nonlocal”, but there are still no implications for thought-reading, except yes, you can expect some correlations, but so what? Presented solution for the hard problem predicts them and they happen.
In classical universe, you can write plusses and minuses on a piece of paper and tear it half , but the two halves will always remain within the future lightcone, however much you separate them...so they are not nonlocally correlated , in the technical sense.
Yes, and with that definition there is an equivalent statement about quantum universe. You may just need to draw your cones in Hilbert space.
That’s not how it works. Hilbert spaces don’t even have light cones.
Metaphorical cones? Do you object to the possibility of geometrical representation of speed of influence-propagation in Hilbert space or what? Because (relativistic) quantum mechanics is local by both “you can’t spread influence faster than light” and “it uses only local derivatives” definitions of locality.
You can argue that QM doesn’t allow nonlocal influences or signalling, but that isn’t the result of the existence of anything analogous to a Hilbert space light cone, it’s the result of the fact that you cant control a nonlocal correlation,.so you cant signal with it. But nonlocal correlations are still there.
First, to be clear, there are direct analogs of lightcones in relativistic QM that disallows just moving faster than light. But even when talking about entanglement specifically, it depends how analogous you want it to be? It’s still “the space/equations prevent FTL signaling”—why it matters that it’s lightcone in pieces of paper case and “you can only move nearby blobs of amplitude in some dimensions”? I mean, from that perspective it’s kinda weird you can’t signal through entanglement. Is it just that it fits the “you can only affect stuff that is associated with your classical spatial location” definition of locality? But sticking to that definition is not motivated by the reasons we initially cared about it!