I read Goertzel’s recent paper on “Morphic Pilot Theory”, which sketches a possible framework for PSI phenomena of the inexplicable synchronicity type.
As far as I could understand, the idea is that the seemingly causally unconnected phenomena are mutually affected by nonlocality from the Bohmian interpretation of quantum physics. The anomalous cognition part comes in as some kind of conservation of algorithmic information, where the Bohmian configuration state tends towards having a low Kolmogorov complexity, this shows up as the same pattern acausally showing up in several places at once. I guess human and animal brains are then assumed to have been evolved to make what use they can of this phenomenon.
I can’t really evaluate the paper. I’ve never looked into Bohmian QM in any detail and would have to work up my physics to get there. I do get that the paper is very speculative, but it is interesting in positing zero ontologically basic woo to work. On the other hand, PSI with quantum physics is a well-deserved crackpot indicator, and I’d really need to know more about the generally physicist-approved version to tell if this stuff is off the deep end or not.
My account of the paper’s argument is likely to be quite inaccurate and incomplete, so it’s best to aim critiques at the paper itself. Does Bohmian interpretation count as one of the standard ones?
As far as I can tell, the conservation of algorithmic information was the big speculative thing in the paper. It’s not ontologically basic woo, as in mental intentions irreducible to basic physics, but I”m guessing it’s not standard QM either.
Bohm is one of the standard interpretations. It’s more complex than MWI (the wave function, plus an independent “pilot wave” to make only the visible part of the wavefunction “real”), and it involves faster-than-light time travel, but is supposed to prevent said time travel and FTL from ever allowing information to be communicated thusly.
Gary Drescher has a section in his book, Good and Real, in which he presents the arguments for MWI and notes the frequency with which the other interpretations are used to justify woo (FTL and time travel that conveniently never affect us, mysterious forces that coincidentally annihilate the rest of the wave function beyond what we can see, claims of consciousness as having magical powers, etc).
I’m in no position to analyse it either, but if psi exists and can be selected for by evolution, doesn’t this imply that an AI (or even just a brute force algorithm on the right track) can optimise for it too?
So that’s something to consider if there turns out to be anything substantial behind all this.
Depending on exactly what kind of interaction of physics and computing would be going on, the algorithm might need to search through different physical configurations of its sensors or substrate. I’m reminded of this experimental result, where a circuit evolution process that was supposed to make an oscillator component came up instead with a circuit that couldn’t produce anything by itself, but did act as a radio receiver that could pick up a suitable oscillating signal from a nearby computer.
I read Goertzel’s recent paper on “Morphic Pilot Theory”, which sketches a possible framework for PSI phenomena of the inexplicable synchronicity type.
As far as I could understand, the idea is that the seemingly causally unconnected phenomena are mutually affected by nonlocality from the Bohmian interpretation of quantum physics. The anomalous cognition part comes in as some kind of conservation of algorithmic information, where the Bohmian configuration state tends towards having a low Kolmogorov complexity, this shows up as the same pattern acausally showing up in several places at once. I guess human and animal brains are then assumed to have been evolved to make what use they can of this phenomenon.
I can’t really evaluate the paper. I’ve never looked into Bohmian QM in any detail and would have to work up my physics to get there. I do get that the paper is very speculative, but it is interesting in positing zero ontologically basic woo to work. On the other hand, PSI with quantum physics is a well-deserved crackpot indicator, and I’d really need to know more about the generally physicist-approved version to tell if this stuff is off the deep end or not.
I know a little about quantum physics. Under any interpretation of quantum theory equivalent to the standard ones, this won’t work without woo.
My account of the paper’s argument is likely to be quite inaccurate and incomplete, so it’s best to aim critiques at the paper itself. Does Bohmian interpretation count as one of the standard ones?
As far as I can tell, the conservation of algorithmic information was the big speculative thing in the paper. It’s not ontologically basic woo, as in mental intentions irreducible to basic physics, but I”m guessing it’s not standard QM either.
Bohm is one of the standard interpretations. It’s more complex than MWI (the wave function, plus an independent “pilot wave” to make only the visible part of the wavefunction “real”), and it involves faster-than-light time travel, but is supposed to prevent said time travel and FTL from ever allowing information to be communicated thusly.
Gary Drescher has a section in his book, Good and Real, in which he presents the arguments for MWI and notes the frequency with which the other interpretations are used to justify woo (FTL and time travel that conveniently never affect us, mysterious forces that coincidentally annihilate the rest of the wave function beyond what we can see, claims of consciousness as having magical powers, etc).
I’m in no position to analyse it either, but if psi exists and can be selected for by evolution, doesn’t this imply that an AI (or even just a brute force algorithm on the right track) can optimise for it too?
So that’s something to consider if there turns out to be anything substantial behind all this.
Would seem to follow, if it’s the case that PSI exists and PSI is a physical phenomenon. Goertzel’s got something on this.
Depending on exactly what kind of interaction of physics and computing would be going on, the algorithm might need to search through different physical configurations of its sensors or substrate. I’m reminded of this experimental result, where a circuit evolution process that was supposed to make an oscillator component came up instead with a circuit that couldn’t produce anything by itself, but did act as a radio receiver that could pick up a suitable oscillating signal from a nearby computer.