Tal, a conversation with an alien (17 page)

I can see
how these effects create random action in life forms. Do they just not manifest in non-living systems in any significant way?

Quantum effects influence everything, though
they are especially influential in natural chaotic systems such as the weather. In a chaotic system, tiny changes in the initial condition can create massive changes in the long term. Very small variations at the beginning create very large differences at the end. Hence the infamous Butterfly Effect, where a butterfly flapping its wings helps to create a hurricane far away.

That is a very popular reference though it is hard to believe that a butterfly can make such a dramatic difference.

The Butterfly
and the Cat

Your scientists call this branch of science Chaos Theory. As explained in the butterfly effect, it is actually pretty simple, and indeed dramatic. A very large and complicated system like the earth's weather, will develop differently with even the smallest change in its initial condition. If we were to map the weather from this moment, there is some set of conditions. Now imagine that only one small change is made. One butterfly that is sitting on a flower, decides to fly to a different one. This tiny change, the butterfly at rest or the butterfly flapping its wings is significant enough that in a chaotic system, it will change the outcome of that system. In some cases weeks later causing a hurricane where there would otherwise not be one. The effect is usually not so dramatic, but it will always lead to two different weather patterns: one where the butterfly chose to fly and one where it did not. To the inhabitants in both universes the results will seem completely natural. And remember, there are millions of butterflies and billions of other things, great and small that will influence the system. The subtle differences we do not notice that influence chaotic systems are generated by even subtler quantum effects. You can think of chaotic forms as quantum forms amplified. Remember the idea of the super computer that could predict the future? If you still tried to use one to predict the future in many worlds, no matter how powerful, the small uncertainties in the motion of particles will start to create errors, and soon the errors will multiply, creating larger errors. At some point, the future predicting machine will predict a world so different from the one it probably occupies, that its predictions will be worthless.

But if we somehow knew the positions of all the butterflies and all the insect
s and humans and everything, would we not get an exact result? Is chaos perceived randomness or true randomness?

Remember that in chaos theory, any change in the initial state of the system will create differ
ent evolutions of that system. What do we know as a fact from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle? That you cannot know the initial state of any system. All things, great and small have a wave function, hence their position and momentum is not precise. You would have to believe that it is impossible for quantum effects to have any influence over what you would call a larger system. Even to this day some scientists believe there is a real dividing line between quantum and classical worlds. This has been a big source of argument for a long time, and it started with an interesting experiment regarding a cat.

I think I know the cat you are referring to.

It is a pretty famous cat. In the early stages of thought about quantum mechanics, scientists really didn't see much link between quantum effects and real world results. That unsavory concept of God playing dice. Quantum effects worked at an unspecified micro level, but larger objects behaved predictably. This didn't create a big philosophical crisis immediately. Humans created an imaginary line that divided quantum and classical effects. But there was a famous thought experiment that brought crossing that line into the greater imagination of the scientific community and the general public. That was the thought experiment called Schrödinger's cat.

I knew you were going there,
and I particularly like that thought experiment. Though I don't think I really understood it as clearly as I think I do now.

The experiment was thought up, with input from Ein
stein, by Schrödinger in 1935. It was initially created in an attempt to show how ridiculous quantum theory, especially Bohr's interpretation of it really was. In the cat experiment, Schrödinger proposes a problem. What if quantum effects really do influence a macro object? You know the details?

Yes I do. A
cat was placed inside a black box. A cyanide capsule was placed in the same box. A radioactive material that had a 50% chance of decaying within an hour, and by decaying releasing a particle was placed outside the box. If the material did decay and lost a particle, that particle would hit a fuse that released the cyanide, which would kill the cat. While if it did not decay within the hour, the cat remained alive.

Correct, a 50/50 quantum dice roll decided the fate of the cat.

Yes, so the question was, until you opened the lid to observe the results an hour later, was the cat alive or dead?  According to
the Copenhagen interpretation, the cat had no fate; it was neither dead nor alive, until you looked inside. Or perhaps it was both dead and alive?

There are some interesting implications
no matter how you interpret it. First, that in a single universe, a cat could be both alive and dead, or neither alive nor dead. Then there is the implication that since you are the measuring device, by opening the lid, you somehow have control over the fate of the cat.

Maybe the cat, obviously knowing if it was alive or dead before you opened the box, already collapse
d its own wave function?

All of this speculation about the cat's fate is a moot point. As you understand now, from the start of the experiment there would be many univ
erse variations created. In some worlds the cat would have died almost immediately after you started the experiment, because the radioactive material decayed almost immediately. In some worlds the cat died after 30 minutes or right at the end, and in approximately half of the worlds, it would not have died at all. To me this experiment is pretty meaningless, but to you, since you cannot see coordinates in the future, this experiment is quite dramatic.  First, it shows that there are scenarios where micro objects can affect macro objects. Thus there is no black and white division between micro and macro worlds. Moreover, this shows that even at a very close coordinate in time, say a few seconds, quantum mechanical effects can create two dramatically different universes, one in which the cat is dead and one in which it is alive. 

This
type of situation doesn't happen too often in the real world though.

It is true that
the situations where quantum uncertainty can make such a huge impact on macro objects, almost immediately, like a single particle instantly killing a cat, are not very likely. But these processes, at a subtler level are occurring all the time, everywhere within the multiverse. It is just that these fluctuations do not usually result in a living or dead cat at such close coordinates in time. Yet over time, small changes at the micro level through a long chain of events, leads to large changes at the macro level. Thus I do not need a fancy contraption and cyanide to kill the cat, but I do need time, and some options. I can observe a relatively likely possibility, a simple molecule that influences a larger molecule, which influences yet a larger group of molecules, which influences some water molecule, which influence a raindrop, which hits a butterfly, which influences the butterflies motion, which influences a hurricane, whose winds collapse a house on top of a cat. The results are the same, one dead cat. The difference is simply a matter of time. Another way for me to kill the cat would be to choose to observe a world in which the internal working of the butterfly's brain influences the butterfly to fly off, instead of staying on its flower. It flies off, starting the long chain of events that create the hurricane that leads to the death of the cat. In the end, I have many ways to skin a cat.

But to decide which initial situation is best, you would need to see into the future to see the result.

A good insight. Without the ability to see what you would call future coordinates, the fact that I can observe multiple variations at once would do me little good. I must be able to see where these variations will lead. Otherwise I would be like a blind person who has the ability to choose which fork in the road to take, but can't see where the road will lead.  It is similar to having no choice at all. I would be just as helpless as you; like a fish flopping around in the river of randomness. Or like Robert Frost, sighing about making a choice, then looking back and wondering what the other choice may have lead to. The poem after all is titled 'The Road Not Taken', not 'The Road Less Traveled'.

So you can
see many possible events and also see where they will lead.

Yes
, but to a limited extent. Again, I liken my developed ability to see other coordinates in time to your developed ability to see coordinates in space. The farther into the future or past the event is, the less clearly I see the event. This is a very common ability for beings who can observe many universe variations. Life forms that can observe many worlds, but who have no idea where those worlds will lead, do exist, but are not that common. These beings have no concept of time outside of their current moment.

So they see many events at onc
e, but not their consequences. This would seem very confusing.

Of course their mind will make sense of
the confusion for them. They might think of your single event consciousness as extremely dull.

Perhaps they
could observe multiple worlds and have a mental image of what the future could be. Using their imagination, as we do. 

This is actu
ally one of my research areas. I am curious to see how these abilities evolved from more primitive sources like yourselves. Creatures who have a more limited understanding, a more limited ability to observe time and the variations of the universe. Did one ability come from the other organically? For instance after a species developed the ability to observe future time did it only become natural that at some point, it would also develop a sense for the variations of the multiverse?  Perhaps it did not internally evolve but only happened once a species migrated to locations in the multiverse where time or universe variations become easier to observe.

What do you mean by locations
where they are easier to observe?

Your location in the universe effects what type of information you can receive
. You live on the surface of a planet bathed in information in the form of light. The sun's energy illuminates the space around you and gives you a detailed understanding of the spatial dimension as light reflects off of objects and onto you. So it is no accident that you have developed very sensitive organs, your eyes, which allow you to interpret that information.  But if you lived deep inside a planet, or on an asteroid far from any stars, your concept of space would be completely different, and you wouldn't have developed eyes at all, since you would have no need for such things.

So you are saying there are places where you can see time or many worlds?

Yes, that is exactly right, different places in the universe have different types and quantities of information. There are places where time or variation information is readily available and it is only natural that a life form will create organs to process that information. Even though humans lack the gross organs to process such information, as your brain became more complex, it developed the ability to consciously simulate the dimension of time, and the dimension of universe variation. It is an entertaining ability because you can imagine some very unlikely worlds while living in your more predictable one.

Is this world, the one I am experiencing,
a likely variation?

Well, what seems likely to
you may not be so likely. How likely did you think it was going to be, when you were walking home today, that you would be having a conversation with an alien? You have an intrinsic desire to feel that you world was meant to be. Your scientists pretty much only take theories seriously that establish your world as very likely, as it is not so pleasant to think that you are some sort of fluke. But in fact, if you think about it, you yourself are not likely. You would not exist if your parents had not met, and decided to copulate at the exact moment that they did. They would not exist if your grandparents didn't happen to meet and do the same. Going back further, every one of your grandparents needed everything to go just right for them to be born. Every successive generation depends on the prior to do the exact correct thing. If in this chain going back billions of years, any tiny single event is different, any butterfly, any bird or bus; then in your current form, you do not exist. If you look at your own unique existence, it is, and I will use this term just once for dramatic effect though we know there is no such thing; a near infinite sequence of coincidences. In a finite single universe, the chance of this exact you existing is less than one in a googol of googolplexes. You do not exist because you got so darned lucky. You exist because all that is possible, is.

The Best of All Possible W
orlds

-- I sat thinking about this for a few seconds as he took another drink. The rain had subsided and I heard voices from the street. I had not noticed earlier, but the lights below were out now.