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The Nature of Reality - Part IV

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 4/2/2007

Between Roberto Calvo Macias and Sam Vaknin

Dear RCM,

Questions as all-encompassing as the ones you presented in your last letter call for a period of gestation. The same Hofstadter reviled by you posed the following question:

Is there any difference between a "real" hurricane and a hurricane simulated on a computer? Why do we make a distinction between physical events and their representations? After all the simulated hurricane also has a physical dimension (the computer's hardware, the energy of electricity).

This is exactly the dividing line, as far as I am concerned. Both phenomena are "real" in the sense that they have a presence, they constitute part of reality, they can be observed and measured (=they can interact with observers) and they can be mapped onto each other. But a simulation cannot effect first order interactions. A simulation of the sun cannot warm us, nor can a simulated hurricane blow us away.

I suggested a hierarchy (very akin to the one suggested in the "Principia Mathematica") between first order phenomena ("real" objects and interactions, you and I, a tree, a cloud, the sun), their derivatives which I call "artifices" and which are the result of an interaction between intelligence and first order phenomena (robots, cars, computers, drugs) and (second order) simulations. The first order phenomena and their derivatives (artifices) can interact with each other and induce changes in one another. Simulations cannot cross this line. Simulations do not effect - they inform. They provide information (that might lead to changes) - but they do not effect changes. In other words: simulations can act only through the agency of an intelligence, they must be mediated to the world by an intelligent agent which must be either an artifice or a first order phenomenon. A language is a good example of a simulation. Mathematics is another.

And the 64,000 dollar question is:

Is PHYSICS a simulation?

This is connected to your comments regarding physical laws and time. I assume that physical laws do exist (in the Platonic, "ideal" sense, maybe we should call them "Laws of Nature" and distinguish them from the "Laws of Physics"). Our current state of knowledge - and all future states of knowledge will only approximate these laws. But I do think that the laws of physics are simulations. That they are unable to effect us without the intermediation of an intelligence. This is very close to religion (God as the supreme intelligence) or to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (the Universe as the result of observation). Writing this makes me feel bad. Still, the laws of physics are not first order phenomena because they have no physical existence (when was the last time you ate the law of gravity).

Religious people say that the laws of physics are artifices (invented by the supreme intelligence God). I disagree. The laws of physics dictate to first order phenomena and to artifices how they should and can behave and it can be proven (through formal logic, mainly Godel's work) that no artifice can do so efficiently where an INFINITE number of other artifices is involved. Since the laws of physics are infallibly efficient and since they deal with an infinite number of artifices - they cannot be artifices themselves. The laws of physics are infinite and consistent - no set of artifices can be both infinite and consistent.

The laws of physics are kind of road maps or manuals which prescribe the way first order phenomena and artifices should and can behave. This is as good a definition of simulation as any I have heard. It is a language. Can a language exist divorced from intelligence? Not really because then it loses its meaning. Meaning exists only through the manipulation of language by an intelligence. The paths (the world-lines) of these manipulations constitute the context within which meaning is born.

It is here that virtual reality, the ability to manipulate images and historical records with computer applications and so on - come to mind. It is the first time in human history that artifice and simulation become indistinguishable. What is the "hard"-ware versus the "soft"-ware elements in the computer? The distinction is totally artificial. With quantum computing the distinction disappears. Particles ARE, to a known extent, part simulation (mathematical functions) and part first order phenomena. The confluence and convergence of quantum physics and the computer sciences will bring about a revolution in the very fabric of reality. It will eliminate the ancient and intuitive distinction between real (artifice) and imaginary (simulation), meta (statement about something) and ontos (that something). Your question about "labelling" the particle in the teleportation experiment was naive but also excellent. It is impossible to label the particle because it is only partly first order phenomenon. But it is unnecessary because it is a language (=simulation) element. A photon is a photon is a photon - they do not have a personality. It is a topsy turvy world where the proof of existence is simulated while "real" existence is of no consequence. I will write more about it in a later letter.

What is time? Is it a law of physics? Is it a language element? Is it an extensive property of every physical system (perhaps carried by a particle)? Is it a simulation? Is it an epiphenomenon (it does not exist in the realm of particles - and suddenly appears in the macro)? And how is time connected to fractals (hint: the identity of all time segments - each second identical to another)?

Let's leave something to my next letter. Or maybe you could write something about time?

Sam


Dear Sam,

The last two paragraphs of your letter directly hit the nerve.

Phrases like " It's first time in history that artifices and simulation become indistinguishable", "The confluence and convergence between quantum physics and the computer sciences will bring about a revolution in the very fabric of reality" gave a great picture of what is happening in the world (and not only in the world but in ourselves, as humans). The last phrase is specially interesting, for, if I have understood you well, physics are simulations and (computer) sciences shall be too. So, we have two simulations interacting in the very fabric of reality!? I let you respond to this. And also I am looking forward to your opinion on time and fractals - I cannot wait!:-). We are winding up our theoretical positions on theory. Afterwards, perhaps in your next letter we should pass to "reality" (the pragmatic side), which is, needless to say, much more interesting than theory. Don't you think?:-)

I would like to give my opinion on "the great line" with an example:

Surely, everybody had the opportunity of listening to a fervent discussion between the defender of "natural food" against someone promoting "artificial food". It's far from my intention to participate in such a sterile dialogue. All food, more over, all things are natural (as Ph. D. Vaknin stated so well). What makes a "natural food", let's say an apple, superior to the so called "artificial food", (even in the case, which is not, that food companies were to analyse the almost infinite list of chemical components of an apple and to artificially reconstruct them and perfectly simulate the apple) is that an apple, as a living element, embodies a principle which is superior to the sum of its components. It has a shine, it smells... And also, we would have been the wiser to eat that apple not for its chemical composition but for the appetite that it invokes in us being an apple.

And this opens up a question that I would like to present to you. What is genetics: a simulation, an artifice or something totally new?

It is high time I should say something, but before I do so, I shall make a brief introduction. You have exposed the situation with your high-tech ability. I cannot compete with you there (my dominion of physics and its language is less secure). As you well know, I prefer to use some narrative way to illustrate these questions - what would be better than to describe "simulations and artifices" than metaphors, that language simulations?. Also I always like to introduce history, and what are the modern sciences of complexity but "natural history"?! So I will introduce in my letter a fairy tale. Let's call it:

"A Time Tale."

Imagine that a scientist of the XXI century (let's call him H.G. Goods) or just a genie in a bottle (let's call it Chateau Laffite) has provided you with the opportunity to make use of a time-machine. Inebriated, you walk into the time-craft. You sit down, light your seventh cigarette of the night and take a look at the dashboard. It's a post-modernist design, the kind a post-modern architect would called "minimalist". It's a white square with only one button, labelled with this pleasant motif:

LETS MAKE A "TIME-LEAP".

There are no dials, no screens, only one button (let's call it "hassard sauvage").

Just as you fatally surrender to the smooth labyrinths of "le chateau laffite" your last conscious thought is something like : "well, never mind"; and you press the button:

It is a millennium ago, about 990. One of those tenebrous monasteries of the middle-age. In a dark, small cell, an unknown monk called Gerberto (known later as Pope Silvester II) is in deep meditation, using his spirit as the will to power. He is just about to make the greatest attack ever known against the force of gravity force. He is stopping time dead in its tracks. He is opening a new history, with a new time. He is "designing" the first true automaton: the mechanic clock.

Time used to flow happily, like water, like the shadow that slowly ran its path. But since that gloomy day, time will never flow again. "It" is entrapped in a gearwheel, halted over and over again by an automaton, a mechanism known as "escape" (the name is revealing). As a bonus-track of this fantastic act of hubris we also have a beautiful music: a kind of tic-tac, percussive, repetitive, monotonous, demented...

Let's make another time-leap and place ourselves in a renaissance studio.

Over there, a titan with a "human form" is dissecting a human body with an iron scalpel. The body is not sacred anymore, and what is sacred to modern knowledge (that strange form of "voyeurism")? There are no more limits, all is possible! Soon, others will do the same to living humans. Fascinated with the inner organs, Leonardo, inebriated, fills one sketch after other. Finally, he says: "voglio fare miracoli!"

Far from there, in space but not in spirit, another man is also trying to effect miracles. Roger Bacon, "doctor mirabilis", builds a bridge from nothingness, crosses the great channel and leaves behind him nothing but smoke and fog. A new race of wizards is born: the techno-scientists.

Yet another leap. Cambridge. The XVII century.

The reign of clocks is "absolute". A man looks at the stars at night. He has got it! The Universe is a clock and he, the great Newton, knows the laws of the Great Watchmaker. All things "work" like gears and time is only the clock weight that goes down ad infinitum.

The XIX century. In an "old-fashioned" cabinet, an unknown worker is discovering (without knowing it) a new kind of time. He is trying to pass electricity through a quartz, just to see, science, you know.

Suddenly the rock seems to come to life, it pulsates! Like a heart made of stone! It's the return of the elemental clocks, the vengeance of the fettered elements, the time of the atomic era (and also of the atomic wars, but this is only a collateral damage, who cares?!).

Then, the time machine seems to "work" badly. It jumps speedily thorough the XX century. New clocks, new lives, new times. Everybody has its own time. Circular ones, linear ones, fusion ones... and also, you can't believe it, computer times. There are even people who talk about a special kind of time: space- time. All times are re-visited except one: human time. Finally the machine goes crazy.

What to do? Well, there is nothing better - I mean, against le chateau - than a good dream, so you shut your eyes.

All is past. You are again in your old, familiar room. In your hands there is a book: Fractal Nature (Benoit Mandelbrot). A strange flashes through your mind: a fractal time!?

Finally, you think: "well, never mind". You let go of the boring book, go to the library and take another one: "Through the Mirror" (Lewis Carrol). "Time? uhm!, Here it is". Its growing dark on Earth. You smile: "another marvellous night of good literature is just starting. Let's do it slowly, let's take our time".

The end (of Time, or not!?)

It was the normal custom, in the old days, that a fairy tale had a little moral. "Well, never mind". This is mine (sorry if it is a bit cryptic; matters of copyright, you know).

If an Amazonian thinks that the clock of the "man of the outer world" has inside a demon, he is probably (very) right. But, if he breaks the clock with a stone, he is then committing a great error, for demons live in another place.

Wishing you the best and hoping you have had a good TIME with my small fable

roberto

(continued)