The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine

Scott Aaronson’s take on this is certainly worth a read for anyone interested in consciousness , quantum mechanics, comparability theory, etc: https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

Scott Aaronson's "Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine" tackled this question in a way I found enlightening. It's a bit of a dense read (I needed a plane trip to sit down and focus on it), but it presents a compelling case for the possible reversal of time arrows when it comes to the effects of quantum indeterminism on macro scale interactions. In short: what if humans, somehow, someway, have the ability to "influence" the resolution of unobserved universal start-state quantum noise in order to affect our "will" onto the universe? Furthermore, what experiments could be done to validate or invalidate aspects of this hypothesis? https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

>In the most basic sense, to believe the mind a box that can output things not based on input is inherently to believe it "irrational" in the truest sense of the word. No, it believes that the mind has an internal state. We have many physical cases of state which is in practice undecidable. Moreover, in many formulation of quantum physics one can have a state which is unreachable even in theory (not just hidden variable style QM theory, there are ways to get unreachable state even in 'regular' QM[0]). >And if that's the case, the question is where does that irrationality come from? The universe itself. The linked PDF - you might be familiar with the author, he features often on HN - provides one method this is possible (though, I'm not saying this is true, I suspect it may not be). [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

> Quantum mechanics can be simulated classically with an exponential slowdown. This is actually quite subtle. For example, I don't see how you can "simulate" bell non-locality. Is it even possible to define the word "simulate" here? The whole status of quantum randomness is unsettled, I don't think it can be settled, but anyway it is not as straightforward as you suggest. Scott Aaronson has a nice paper where he discusses related ideas: https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

Scott Aaronson has a cool paper taking about the relationship between the two questions. Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

Yeah, if you liked diaspora then permutation city will have you picking your jaw up off the floor in a similar manner. Schild's Ladder is the third in the unofficial trilogy (he denies any connection, but I definitely reckon they form a nice trio) and it's pretty hardcore: lots of quantum mechanics and graph theory actually driving the plot. A fascinating thing about diaspora: if you read reviews of it, opinion is split between those who see it as a story about nerd-heaven, which to me is how egan wrote it, and those who see it as a dystopia, basically a vision of hell. Apparently to a lot of people, the book reads like pitch-dark satire. I'm guessing there aren't so many of those people here. EDIT: Bonus scott aaronson quantum conciousness essays! Wooooo! Egan fans will like these: http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1951

I suspect that, for many physicists, the de Broglie-Bohm medicine is worse than the disease itself. It reminds me of Scott Aaronson's work "The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine" [1] where he sets up the boundary conditions of the universe to somehow encode free-will. But then, even the author doesn't seem to want to take this medicine. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159

Here's the paper he wrote on it, I think it'd be good to take a look at it directly. https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159 Scott is making a pair of claims: If it's possible to build a fast, noninvasive, perfect predictor then what more can science say to show that people don't have free will? If it's impossible to build such a predictor, for some fundamental reason, then what more can science say to show that free will exists.