Visualising Superposition and Entangled Pairs.

Dunno about you but quantum theory makes my head spin.

Sometimes it helps to get the old imagination working, and try to visualize things.

On Superposition:

Superposition seems like magic, but it's not really. Anyway, the first bugbear is the 'seems like nonsense' problem of something being everywhere at the same time, effectively at least.

Don't know about you, but when I was a kid we didn't have all the toys we have these days, but we did have bits of string. One thing you could do with a bit of otherwise mundane string, was to whirl it so fast it became a blur. [You can try this at home kids] In fact, it became a magic shield.

Whooo.

And if you attempted to push a finger through the blurring magic string-shield, no matter where within the area of the 'circle' its revolutions formed in the air, your finger always encountered the string. Basically, because the string, though in reality occupying only a fraction of that area at any one moment in time, was moving so fast, so much faster than your finger, that the probability of your finger meeting the string were nearly absolutely certain.

ie. effectively, with string of infinite strength and infinite lightness, whirled with sufficient speed would become a true 'solid' disc.

Now, think of a hydrogen atom, with a single electron orbiting, and then think of the "string-shield-theory" above, but applied in 3D. Et voila, a single point manages to be everywhere at once, forming an impeneratable shell.

This also puts a limit on the physical size of an atom. If you imagine the 'shell' of the atom [and imagine an electron to be some hyper-fast spider trailing a thread as it rushes around]looks like one of those lampshades made out of string dipped in resin:

Though the string is extremely thin - the thickness equal to the useful repulsive diameter of an electron's electromagnetic field to be precise.

Now, unravel that string and measure the distance, if that distance is suffieciently shorter than the distance something moving at the speed of light could cover very, very, very quickly, then a single electron could successfully form a shell around that total orbital distance.

God I love this stuff. :)

The same principle, scaled up though reduced in speed, applies to things like balloons. Even though the actual density of the matter within the balloon is very little, it's moving very fast, and in doing so hits the inner surface of the balloon effectively everywhere at once, fast enough that any elastic contraction during a localised non-impact phase is minimal.

Heating the air inside increases the frequency/momentum of these impacts, expanding the circumference of the balloon until an equilibrium between the elastic strength of the balloon material [which contracts the surface of the balloon in the intervals between collisions] and the extra momentum is achieved, and a new 'stable' state is found.

On Entangled Pairs.

The way I understand the whole thing is by visualizing a coin spinning on a table. Spinning so fast you can't actually make out the faces - the heads or the tails.

Now, I have to hand a super-dooper lazer cutter - so fast and so powerful that it can slice the coin into two separate discs half the thickness of the 'mother' coin so quickly that though the two halves spin away some distance from each other on the table, they still remain spinning so fast that you cannot see which half bears the tail, and which the head.

These two can be called 'entangled'.

ie. we don't know which is which, but we do know if one of them is one thing, the other must be the other.

Now, I reach out and pick up the nearest disc. It's tails. I instantly know that the other is heads, not 'should be' not 'must be' I simply and absolutely know. Well, either that or the universe runs on magic bean power and collapses into a golden goose egg every twenty squintrillion years.

That's is kinda the situation with quantum entanglement. Except in quantum, the two half discs really *could* be either heads or tails, and until you look, they really are both heads and tails.

The instantaneous bit comes not at the moment of my perception "Ah - this one is tails therefore the other must be heads" but slightly before my slow-as-mud mind makes that distinction. You see, because the disc I examine's state is not determined until its probability field is collapsed by my act of observation into one of two equally stable states - a head state, or a tail state - neither is the other's, however far away that other might be - a millimeter or a light year, in principle it doesn't matter.

So, when I collapse the one in my hand's field, somehow that information as to its assumption of a particular stable state jumps the gap - however wide - between the two, and the other far away one collapses too into the opposing stable state.

And that is the faster-than-light info-teleportation bit.

Freaky.

...Continued...

Generic Rear Pose - Charcoal on Paper

The Playdoh of Life.

I think I've been trying for a long time to see where everything is going with Life™, where it must go, where it has always had to go.

Imagine we are watching a game being played by unseen hands. We reckon we understand the basic rules of play, sometimes we can even predict moves before they're made, but because we've never actually seen a game completed, we cannot be sure we know each rule that governs it. Nor can we be absolutely sure of the purpose of the whole business, nor if indeed there is an end or a purpose involved.

So. The game of life.

Life is a game played by one player. The Life-player has pieces of finite existance which can produce copies of themselves, if they can aquire enough resources to do so. The game is played out on a multicoloured board, the enviroment, the universe. The aim of the life player is simply to continue to play for as long as possible.

The handicap is that the life-player's pieces are consumers, not producers - the resources they consume they cannot replenish.

And that is it. Simple. But like any game that is superficially simple, underneath, the strategies of play are infinitely complex. Too complex for us to fathom anyway. But perhaps, rather than attempt vainly to chart each rock in the river of the world, and map the absolute path of each living molecule in it, we can instead just use what little we know, and take a brave guess.

So, what do we know..?

You know those kid's toys - there are different shaped holes - A'a and B's and numbers and stars etc. And blocks to push through..? You remember them. Throw the blocks away. Now - take some child's play-doh, a good irregular fist-sized lump, and push it through a hole. Then take another fistfull, and push it through another, different hole.

The play-doh is undifferentiated-life. The rack of holes is the enviroment/universe and the physical laws that govern it, like gravity, for example. The impetus of your hand pushing the doh through, was time.

You have now two new forms - let's say a star-shaped piece of doh, and a C-shaped piece. They are different, they have different properties - the C-shape rocks naturally in place for example, whereas the starshape stands still. But the important thing to remember is that these traits are only temporal - tomorrow perhaps the doh exhibiting them will be pushed through another hole and be changed completely - and that the play-doh, whatever shape it may be at any particular time is still just play-doh underneath.

I mean to say that - For all our differences, our inter-species fighting and competition, myself and the bacteria that kills me are the same. If the bacteria wins, and fills the universe, we have all won. Because when one form exists, however great or small... When one form exists, we all do. Or can do, in time.

But I don't think it will be bacteria-shaped play-doh that takes over the board. Why..?

The properties that can be aquired in the course of the game are not equally temporary. Not all of them are finite in nature, when some are aquired, they stay. Some forms are better than others.

Pushing play-doh into another shape requires time and energy. Imagine pushing a square block through a hole only a millimeter wide. It would be better if you found another square-shaped hole somewhere else on the rack and pushed it through that instead. This is what life does when faced with enviromental difficulty. It moves.

A method of mobility is a property that stays.

But what if there are no square holes..? Then you find one that is the nearly the same shape - a slight rectangle perhaps, and squeeze yourself through that. Imagine though, a piece of play-doh that could switch between two forms without much effort - square or rectangular, as required..? Let us then say - square=carnivore / rectangle=herbivore / shapechanger=omnivore

Diversity of food-source is a property that stays.

Imagine now a great, lumbering super-lump of play-doh. It is indomitable and terrifies all the other types of play-doh around. All quake in fear beneath its shadow. Tyranno-doh. Then of course, another rack of holes comes along, and unfortunately, none of them are big enough for Tyranno-doh to fit through. In fact, as luck would have it... They are all really, really small. Shit. Tyranno-doh gets stuck. And passes into history.

However, there was another type of play-doh that, rather than press itself into one great ball, kept itself separated, each blob of doh only ever so slightly different from its brothers... And when the holes come, as many of them as possible leap through the same hole one after another, keeping as much as possible of the species alive. Each, though different, works as one. And survives, where a larger form of comparable bio-play-doh-mass, would not.

The ability to form a cohesive society is a property which stays.

Imagine now a type of play-doh which has grown great burrowing teeth, like those huge mole-machine tunnel-diggers from extreme-machines on the Discovery Channel. This time, when the mole-play-doh is faced with a different shaped hole to itself, rather than alter its own dimensions, it digs straight through. It alters the rack to suit itself.

This is us. With our technology. Changing the world to fit our shape.

Being and active shaper of the enviroment, rather than simply a passive conformer, is a property which stays. Technology is a propety which stays.

This is getting way too long.

Basically, I am trying to show that 'natural' evolution, and 'social' evolution are the same. And that though we think we are creating our own path, we are simply being made to obey the same rules on a different level.

Our technology and our hard-wired instinct that human life is innately valuable ensures that as soon as we are able, we begin to prevent natural death. At this point, many 'unfavourable' genetic factors that would have furthered the evolution of our species naturally, are circumvented, compensated for by science.

Natural evolution naturally hits a stumbling block of its own making.

...Continued...

Women, Fire and Dangerous Things

Notes on:
"Women, Fire and dangerous things" By Lakoff.

Pg.xi We make sense of experience by catagorizing. The catagories into which we differentiate the things we percieve are traditionally thought to be characterized soley by the common, literal properties of the members - making reasoning transcendental in that it in no way is biased by the physical form of the thing which makes distinctions, and reasons with them. (AKA - Objectivism)

Newer theories however, suggest that reasoning, and the methods by which we catagorize things are both fuzzier and more embodied than was once thought.

Prototypes (Eleanor Rosch), metaphor, metonymy and mental imagery - used in both catagorizing and reasoning, are closely tied, not only to the form that is doing the thinking, but also its needs, and its surrounding enviroment. (AKA - Experiential Realism)

Pg. Xii-Xvi - Summary of positions.

Objectivism:

• Thought is the manipulation of abstract symbols, which, though arbitrarily assigned and devoid of innate meaning - are lent meaning by virtue of their capacity to refer to 'real' things in actuality or possibilty.
• The mind is essentially an organic machine, using algorithmic computation to think.
• Symbols - inviolate of the perciever/thinker - get their meanings by corresponding to things in the external world, becoming internal representations of external things (ie: without internal 'photoshopping').
• Thus the internal world of the mind is the 'mirror' of nature, and correct thought a mirror also, of the logic of the external world.
• Thought therefore is disembodied - conclusions are the same for any peceptual set, regardless of the physical form of the thinker.
• Objectivist axioms allow hard AI.
• Thought is atomistic - and can be thoroughly deconstructed without loss of meaning.
• Thought is narrowly logical subject to philosophic laws of falacy.

Experiential Realism:

• Thought is embodied, ie. we use our bodies as a template/interface with which we build complexes of meaning and conceptual models to relate ourselves to the external world, in a useful and stable manner.
• Thought is imaginative - providing a stylized, rather than a literal internal representation of the world.
• Thought is gestalt - holding recursive emergent properties of meaning - which are lost if atomistically deconstructed.
• Thought is ecological in nature - the overall structure of a conceptual process is just as important as the symbols of meaning they hold within. The medium imprinting itself on the message.
• AI, unless embodied, becomes unlikely/impossible.

Pg.6: Catagorization. We do so largely automatically, employing conscious thought only in paradoxical cases of "What the hell is that..?"

We catagorize not only concrete objects but everything else from spacial relationships to emotional connotations; Abstract concepts and outright fantasies.

Pg.16: Problems with Objectivism 1 - Wittgenstein noticed that catagories possess central and noncentral members - ie. some examples of a catagory are 'better' or at least more intuitive than others - which should not occur if classic objectivist theories of mind are true - all should be equal.

Pg.20- : Body projection as locator algorithm. "The foot of the mountain" "Footnotes" "The head of the queue" "Headlines" "The heart of the forest" etc.

Holistic structures - when overall structure is more important than its parts - example golf or cricket - cricket bat, golf club, balls, wickets, in/out etc. - all parts, but none actually encapsulate the entire meaning of 'cricket' as an entity - but it is impossible also to discuss the meaning of cricket without resorting to the description of its parts - cricket as a word remains elusive, it's more of a general prefix.

Fuzzy sets - catagories blur into each other as members overlap in different sets - eg. duck billed platypus. Is it a bird or a mammal, a duck or a vole etc. (Leading naturally to prototypic and metonymic examples within suppposedly equal sets).

Pg.24: Colour sets. Though different languages from different places around the world have different names for the colours, and in some cases, no specific names at all - the 'focal colours' are the same for all humans. ie - if you have a colour sheet and ask someone to pick out the best example of X colour, they will choose the same shades. ie - everyone sees colours the same, but do not weight them equally linguisitically.

The language hierarchy for colours in relation to number of language terms available to describe colour:

• Black, white (sometimes synonymous with cool/warm). 2 words.
• Red. 3 words.
• Yellow, blue or green. (interchangeable for 4/5 colour-word languages). 4-6 words.
• Brown. 7 words.
• Purple, pink, orange, gray (again - interchangeable dependent on word number). 8 - 11 words.

English uses all eleven, some languages only two. The above hierarchy is not arbitrary however - the set obeys fuzzy logic - each strata holding the next inside it.

Pg.31 [see also pg.46]: Catagorization levels: We have a basic level of complexity - which we 'intuitively' are happy with - and learn first as children. It is the levels of distinctive actions. - Dogs go 'bow-wow', what noise does a quadruped make..?

We also give objects at that level shorter, simpler names, remember them more readily, give them higher cultural significance and perceive objects at that level holistically without having to focus on details, nor with the fuzziness or actions of logic required by higher, less distinct levels.

It is a 'natural' level - requiring little or no imagination. ie. Dog, not quadruped. A balance of useful properties vs. prohibitive info-load.

Three-year olds have mastered basic level sorting, superordinate and subordinate (higher/basic/lower - animal/dog/spaniel) come later, at four and five.

Pg.45: Catagory structure plays a role in reasoning. [Rosch 1975/1981] Prototypes act as cognitive reference points forming the basis of inference/theorizing.

Pg47: Part-whole divisions and basic level knowledge:

The way an object is divided into parts determines:

• Parts are usually correlated with functions, and hence our knowledge about functions is usually associated with knowledge about parts.
• Parts determine shape and hence the way an object will be percieved and imaged.
• Most importantly - We usually interact with things via their parts - therefore part/whole divisions play a major role in determining what motor control programs we can use to interact with an object.

ie: there is no disembodied knowledge, unreliant upon the knower, and we catagorize at a basic level not in a way dependent soley on the objects themselves, but in the way we interact with them. We, physically, are at the heart of everything we know, and every concept we use to reason with.

Pg.54: Prototypic Causation.

This is our intuitive (and sometimes fallicious) grasp of causation the gradient being from most general to most detailed:

1. there is a [single definite] agent that does something.
2. there is [single definite] patient (target of 1) which undergoes a change into a new state.
3. 1 & 2 are a single event - overlap in time and space - they come into contact.
4. Part if not all the agent does precedes the change of state in 2.
5. 1 is a source of energy, 2 its target - there is a transfer of energy.
6. 1 is human, and wills/controls/is responsible for both his actions and the change in 2.
7. 1 uses his hands body or some other instrument, and is looking at the patient, whom is percievable. 1 also senses the change, which is also percievable.

Pg.60: Neutralization and asymetric pairings.

For example "tall/short" - "How tall is Harry" - we are not suggesting Harry is tall, simply asking about his height. "How short is Harry" - however here we are implying Harry is a shortarse.

ie. Of this pairing - "Tall" is neutral, prototypic, intuitively used.

Pg.63: "Nouny" Nouns. Some nouns are easier to process grammatically than others. Nouny nous - like Toe for example - obey all the different grammatic stiutaions in a general manner, but less nouny nouns - Way for example - either prove exceptions, or require extra words and special cases to conform.

ie. All nouns and names are not born equal.

Pg.77: Metonymy. The very common practice of cognition of taking one (well understood) example to stand for the whole set of related situations or objects. It is the basis of the process of levelling and generalization.

Pg.83: Radial Structures: Subcategories all derive from a central case (eg. Mother) but not all possible variations exist.

Pg.85/6/7: Social stereotypes are used as metonyms for whole catagories - though they mutate over time and are sometines subject to intense public scrutiny.

(proto)Typicals are usually subconscious 'best examples' from a catagory. "Saws and hammers are typical tools" etc.

Ideals - abstract concepts usually combining all the best traits of a catagory - the "ideal man" "ideal home" etc.

Paragons - single [real] members of a catagory used to represent the best of anything in that catagory - "He's the Genghis Khan of corporate takeovers" etc.

Pg.93: Classification methods. There is no pan-criteria scheme among languages governing classification methods. Locale enviroment, myth-cycles, religion and simple association are all used indiscriminately. Usually chains of associative traits run out from central members of a catagory. Eg in Dyirbal (language of aborigines) Women are linked to the sun - the sun to sunburn - sunburn to rash/pain - rash/pain to the hairy mary grub. By this tenuous logic, women are placed in the same catagory as irritating bugs.

Pg.104: Shape and trajectory used in catagorization. Japanese 'hon'.

Pg.444/5/6: perceptual schema, conscious imagery, kinesthetic imagery. Basically, where you are, and what you do, has an effect on language, metaphor and metonymy. Differing catagorization methods and prototypes lead to a different 'culturo-linguistic' mind-set. The concept of 'desert menatality' for example, is real.

General Note: Remember: "Not what 'ball' means in abstract, but what 'ball' means to Bob." Wholistic meaning - any individual term in our personal lexus is linked to all terms, all of experience - we are our own living dictionaries.

...Continued...