Automatic Updates to Your Spacetime Matrix

You would think something as universal as time would be less susceptible to major changes like revised definitions or refined measurements. But no, that's not how it works. 

Awareness without time? A deep look into timelessness in deep meditative states

Dec 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-awareness-deep-timelessness-meditative-states.html

Some good distinctions on "coherent conceptualization of deep meditative states, focusing in particular on phenomenal temporality during meditation", dubbed the Extended Now Interpretation.

On Duration - According to Extended Now Interpretation, deep meditation occurs over an interval that the person perceives as an extended present, with no awareness of change, succession, temporal order, beginning, or end. Thus, "timelessness" refers to a lack of temporal structure but not a lack of duration.

On Alertness - Since the option of staying alert or not presents itself anew for each passing moment, the meditator is aware of time passing, and thus aware of a period of time, Dr. Frischhut argues. This does not require the meditator to consciously keep track of a succession of moments, as maintaining alertness during meditation may be enough to give them an awareness of duration even without an awareness of succession.

On Memory - Meditators report having no access to memory during deep meditative states, which would present a problem to her argument. She proposes that the experience of being alert at any given moment has a particular phenomenological character that would be different had it not been preceded by an essentially identical experience of alertness - a second knock on a door wouldn't be experienced the same without the first knock. Thus, even without engaging memory, a meditator still experiences duration in the form of instances of momentary alertness that each flows seamlessly from a previous one.

via Akiko Frischhut at Sophia University in Japan: Akiko Frischhut, Awareness without time, The Philosophical Quarterly (2024). DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqae081

https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqae081

Image credit: Atomic clock - JILA Ye Group - 2024

Study claims all observables in nature can be measured with a single constant: The second

Dec 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-nature-constant.html

The group argues that the number of fundamental constants depends on the type of space-time in which the theories are formulated; and that in a relativistic space-time, this number can be reduced to a single constant, which is used to define the standard of time.

Okun stated that three basic units—meter (length), kilogram (mass), and second (time)—were necessary to measure all physical quantities. In other words, he reaffirmed the so-called MKS system (M, for meter; K, for kilogram; S, for second), which was later incorporated into the International System of Units (SI). Veneziano, for his part, argued that in certain contexts two units would suffice: one for time and one for length. Duff was equivocal, stating that the number of constants could vary depending on the theory in question.

According to their criteria, the number of fundamental constants is related to the minimum number of independent standards needed to express all physical quantities. To repeat, in Galileo's space-time, all observables can be expressed in terms of units of time and space, which are usually the "second" and the "meter." In relativistic space-time, the unit of time—that is, the "second"—is sufficient to express any observable.

And the definition of "second" is currently based on a natural constant: the energy difference between two specific levels of the electronic layer of caesium-133. One second (1s) corresponds to the time of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation emitted when an electron passes between these two states of caesium-133.

via Institute of Theoretical Physics at São Paulo State University, Institute of Mathematics Statistics and Scientific Computing at the State University of Campinas, São Carlos Institute of Physics at the University of São Paulo: George E. A. Matsas et al, The number of fundamental constants from a spacetime-based perspective, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-71907-0

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71907-0

Scientists observe 'negative time' in quantum experiments

Dec 2024, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-scientists-negative-quantum.html

Don't get too excited: The researchers emphasize that these perplexing results highlight a peculiar quirk of quantum mechanics rather than a radical shift in our understanding of time.

via University of Toronto: Daniela Angulo et al, Experimental evidence that a photon can spend a negative amount of time in an atom cloud, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2409.03680 , arxiv.org/abs/2409.03680

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03680

Superhuman

Is this why some people see the cheap LED lights flicker and some don't?

Scientists discover speed of visual perception ranges widely in humans

Apr 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-scientists-visual-perception-ranges-widely.html

There is considerable variation among people in their temporal resolution, meaning some people effectively see more "images per second" than others.

To quantify this, the scientists used the "critical flicker fusion threshold," a measure for the maximum frequency at which an individual can perceive a flickering light source.

Some participants in the experiment indicated they saw the light as completely still when it was in fact flashing about 35 times per second, while others were still able to perceive the flashing at rates of over 60 times per second.

via Department of Zoology in the School of Natural Sciences and the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience: Clinton Haarlem, PLoS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298007

https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298007

Image credit: AI Art - Holding Hands 1 - 2023

Brain–computer interface experiments first to decode words 'spoken' entirely in the brain in real time

May 2024, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-05-braincomputer-interface-decode-words-spoken.html

The electrodes were implanted in the supramarginal gyrus, a part of the brain that recent research suggests is involved in subvocal speech.

via California Institute of Technology: Sarah K. Wandelt et al, Representation of internal speech by single neurons in human supramarginal gyrus, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01867-y

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01867-y

Also: Brain–machine-interface device translates internal speech into text, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01869-w

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01869-w

This Ecuadorian forest thrived amid deforestation after being granted legal rights

Jun 2024, BBC News

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240614-how-los-cedros-forest-in-ecuador-was-granted-legal-personhood

Rights of Nature Movement - In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to change its constitution to state that nature has the same rights as people. The change was led by Ecuador's Indigenous movement, and marked one of the first major steps in what has become known as the 'rights of nature' movement – a movement centred on a legal framework that recognises the inherent right of the natural world to the same protections as people and corporations.

The rights of nature movement "is a move to transform natural entities from objects to subjects, in courts and in front of the law", says Jacqueline Gallant from New York University's School of Law's Earth Rights Advocacy Clinic. "But in a much broader sense, it's been a movement to reanimate and recentre nature as a subject of intrinsic worth," Gallant explains. This is in contrast, she says, to the Western view of nature as "an inanimate backdrop against which the drama of human activity unfolds".

Step Away From the Machine

First, the image seen above is from a series of protest photos by a man named Chauncey Hare. That's him in his own photo, sitting in his cubicle at the EPA. He thinks big business and their big owners are taking over the world, and he's probably right. 

One thing that's pretty certain -- we are not in control, not of the world at large, and not even of ourselves. 

Image credit: Chauncey Hare - Self Portrait at EPA - 1980 [Protest Photos]

Chauncey Hare, "Self Portrait at EPA" (1980), from Quitting Your Day Job: Chauncey Hare’s Photographic Work by Robert Slifkin (MACK, 2022), Chauncey Hare Photograph Archive, BANC PIC 2000.012.14:023- 024—ffALB. This photograph was made by Chauncey Hare to protest and warn against the growing domination of working people by multi-national corporations and their elite owners and managers. (© The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley) https://hyperallergic.com/741181/chauncey-hare-quitting-your-day-job/

Researcher offers new explanation for consciousness

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-explanation-consciousness.html

Deepak Chopra's pissed:

"In a nutshell, our theory is that consciousness developed as a memory system that is used by our unconscious brain to help us flexibly and creatively imagine the future and plan accordingly," explained corresponding author Andrew Budson, MD, professor of neurology. "What is completely new about this theory is that it suggests we don't perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them."

"Even our thoughts are not generally under our conscious control. This lack of control is why we may have difficulty stopping a stream of thoughts running through our head as we're trying to go to sleep, and also why mindfulness is hard," adds Budson.

via Boston University School of Medicine: Andrew E. Budson et al, Consciousness as a Memory System, Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology (2022). DOI: 10.1097/WNN.0000000000000319

https://dx.doi.org/10.1097/WNN.0000000000000319

Scientists identify pathway that triggers mice to scratch when they see others do the same

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-scientists-pathway-triggers-mice.html

"Contagious itching" is controlled through a visual pathway, that surprisingly, operates independently of the visual cortex.

You can see without a visual cortex. What else do we not-see?

via Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis: Fang Gao et al, A non-canonical retina-ipRGCs-SCN-PVT visual pathway for mediating contagious itch behavior, Cell Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111444.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111444

A handful of universities seem to control flow of ideas, people in academia

Oct 2022, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-universities-ideas-people-academia.html

Just network science telling us what to do, as usual:

The structure of the American professoriate -- five U.S. universities have trained 1-in-8 tenure-track faculty members serving at the nation's institutions of higher learning.

(University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University; University of Michigan; Stanford University; and University of Wisconsin-Madison)

via University of Colorado at Boulder: Daniel Larremore, Quantifying hierarchy and dynamics in US faculty members hiring and retention, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05222-x

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05222-x

Post Script:

Scientists obtain effects through virtual reality comparable to those of psychedelic drugs

Sep 2022, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-scientists-effects-virtual-reality-psychedelic.html

They design virtual reality intersubjective group spaces where participants experience together the collective emergence, fluctuation and dissipation of their own bodies, and which produce responses similar to those triggered by psychoactive drugs.

Something about this says Robert Heinlein to me. A social science fiction perhaps. 

via Intangible Realities Laboratory at the Citius Intelligent Technologies Research Centre, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; and ArtSci International Foundation in Bristol: David R. Glowacki et al, Group VR experiences can produce ego attenuation and connectedness comparable to psychedelics, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-12637-z

Pattern 240 - Half Inch Trim

It's a kind of bible of architecture, A Pattern Language came out in 1977, and in over 1,000 pages codifies the language of the built environment, or how it ought to be. It's a guide to livable cities and livable buildings. Maybe it's a bit Cali-centric, with all it's recommendations for outdoor space design, but it serves nonetheless as a builder's guide to making nice places to be in. 

The book is over 1,000 pages, and not until page 1,112 do we see Pattern 240 - Half Inch Trim. It is the most beautiful, simple, and airtight explanation in the whole book.

Pattern 240 - Half Inch Trim

Totalitarian, machine buildings do not require trim because they are precise enough to do without. But they buy their precision at a dreadful price: by killing the possibility of freedom in the building plan. 

A free and natural building cannot be conceived without the possibility of finishing it with trim, to cover up the minor variations which have arisen in the plan, and during its construction. p1112

The principle goes on to explain that it is essential that cuts be inaccurate within a half-inch or so, to avoid waste, but also to allow subtle adaptations.

And it goes on to explain why the modern practice of using precision building components is a bad idea:

"This one aspect of construction has by itself destroyed the builder's capacity to make a building which is natural, organic, and adapted to the site." p1113

But this is not the real argument for Half Inch Trim. The real argument is more deeply psychological, and underlies a quantitative, and universal, feature of aesthetic sensibility:

Our own bodies and the natural surroundings in which we evolved contain a continuous hierarchy of details, ranging all the way from the molecular fine structure to gross features like arms and legs (in our own bodies) and trunks and branches (in our natural surroundings).

We know from results in cognitive psychology that any one step in this hierarchy can be no more than 1:5, 1:7, or 1:10 if we are to perceive it as a natural hierarchy. We cannot understand a hierarchy in which there is a jump in scale of 1:20 or more. It is this fact which makes it necessary for our surroundings, even when man-made, to display a similar continuum of detail. 

Most materials have some kind of natural fibrous or crystalline structure at the scale of about 1/20 inch. But if the smallest building detail dimensions are of the order of 2 or 3 inches, this leaves a jump of 1:40 or 1:60 between these details and the fine structure of the material. ... [and 1/20 inch is 1:10 to a half inch] p1114-1115

Notes:
A Pattern Language - Towns, Buildings, Construction
Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein. Oxford University Press. New York. 1977.

Color Conspirators

Anybody remember when triangles brainwashed the entire world for like three years? And galaxy print, i.e. indigo-purple-pink.

The people who know what colour you'll like in 2019
Apr 2017, BBC

For those of your who like conspiracy theory, maybe you should know that there are people, in fact entire incorporated business ventures, who's sole purpose is to "offer information on current and future trends in fashion, interior design and lifestyle."

"Know what's next" is the tagline of WGSN, a London-based company. And one aspect of their prescience regards color. And in this linked article above, the woman spotlighted is working on 2019. So yes, there is a global conspiracy to predict and affect the colors you will like years from now.


A couple snips from the article:
Popular colours often reflect what's happening culturally and socially.

The growth of the sharing economy, in which people rent beds, cars and other assets directly from one another, means lighter colours such as pale blues could come into fashion.

"Sharing means lightness, you don't want to be bogged down so you're not looking at a heavy palette." -Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute

Colours such as brown, which a couple of decades ago was linked to the earth and dirt but is now associated with coffee and chocolate, reflects the growth of those industries, she says.

---No idea 'sharing was light-colored' but I do remember the world getting browner for a minute, like the whole back-to-the-earth movement, actually, the one that followed the green movement, when people were feeling all guilty that they couldn't live up to their sustainability expectations, and they decided to make all white things brown, to make it look like they were using shitty detergent. jk. But really, even Starbucks changed their paper cups from white to very, very, off-white.

A "vast movement of grey" began to emerge after the 2008 financial crisis.
-Mark Woodman, a product consultant and a former president of US-based colour forecasting trade body Color Marketing Group

The color purple became more popular circa the 2012 US presidential election, when undecided and neutral states began to be identified as purple by the media.


Further, about the practicality of choosing a color-of-the-year:
"Making sure the colours are easily achievable is critically important" -Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute

---What does she mean by this, "easily achievable?" I reviewed a book on the birth of color in the modern world, called the Color Revolution, which explains how we take for granted that products are colored consistently. For example, when you buy a telephone (haha) you don't think twice that the hard plastic handset and the flexible rubberized cord are the exact same color, but that was really, really hard to do, because all these things are made with different base materials, so the coloring agents interact differently with each of them.


Finally, favorite:
The names are important too. They (Pantone) almost chose "pea soup" as the color for 2017. Settled on "greenery" instead.


And some research for good measure:
ice hockey teams wearing darker-coloured tops were more likely to be penalised for aggressive fouls
-study link

wearing the colour red could increase the probability of winning sporting contests
-study link

Note that ultimately any link between color and behavior is bound to be culture-specific, because colors mean different things in different parts of the world. (And across time as well; don't forget that the pink/blue dichotomy was originally reversed.)


POST SCRIPT

Book Review of The Color Revolution
ReginaLee Blaszczyk, MIT Press 2012

Culture as Learned Probability System
2012, Network Address

Seeing Red
2013, Network Address

Cultural Evolution of Basic Color Terms
2013, Network Address

To See Better

The automation of artmaking - Adobe's Project Felix

The automation of artmaking - Adobe's Project Felix

Adobe’s Project Felix Uses AI to Help You Craft Hyper-Realistic 3-D Renderings
Nov 2016, WIRED

This thing is nuts, and makes me scared for my job. (But not really; I used to be an art teacher, but am no more.)

A New Way of Seeing

image source

New imaging system uses an open-ended bundle of optical fibers—no lenses, protective housing needed
Feb 2016 phys.org

In Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants 2011, he mentions how seeing always makes eyeballs, and digestion the gut.

***
cool blog about eyes
and a video about the The Evolution of the Human Eye

Eyeborg

The first person in the world to become a government-recognized cyborg
Annalee Newitz, io9.com, 02 Dec 2013

Neil Harbisson is the first person on the planet to have a passport photo that shows his cyborg nature — in his UK passport, he's wearing a head-mounted device called an eyeborg. The color-blind artist says the eyeborg allows him to see color [by translating it into sounds], and he wants to help other cyborgs like himself gain more rights.

totally unrelated

The Panopticon is Among Us

via heliocentra tumblr

Ultra tiny camera has no lens – uses algorithm to develop pictures
Mar 28, 2014, phys.org 

An extremely tiny lensless camera, developed by Rambus, has been slowly making waves over the past year. Researchers for the company, David Stork and Patrick Gill won a Best Paper award at last year's Sencomm 2013 for describing what the company has created. They spoke again at last month's Mobile World Congress, describing their new type of camera—one that might someday soon be used to give virtually any digital device, some degree of vision.

Instead of a lens, a pattern is etched into the glass above the chip—the imager reads the light that is received, processes it using an algorithm developed by Rambus and converts it into a recognizable image. What's amazing is that the etched pattern on the glass and the chip are both roughly the size of a period at the end of a sentence.

Particular etched patterns allow for light to be intentionally refracted in different ways as it passes through the glass—images made from them would appear unrecognizable to the human eye, but the algorithm makes use of refraction properties to reconstruct the light received into a recognizable image.

Trying to grind ever smaller lenses has reached its limits, thus something new had be developed.

Making a camera so tiny opens the door for its use in a whole host of new applications, allowing them to become aware of their physical surroundings, all at a very low cost—perhaps just pennies per chip—that means they could be embedded in clothes, toys, mirrors, security systems, etc., bounded only by the imagination of device makers. On the other hand, such tiny cameras could also open a Pandora's box if they are used to invade privacy or for control purposes.

More information: Lensless Ultra-Miniature CMOS Computational Imagers and Sensors
PDF paper
PDF presentation

New surveillance technology can track everyone in an area for several hours at a time
Craig Timberg, Washington Post, 5 Feb 2014

Maurizio Galimberti_photographer

[This system, stationed miles above an area, can watch many square miles, for hours at a time, where 'targets' are single blips on the area below, being followed for the duration of time. All data can be stored indefinitely.]

Now You Can See Which Websites Are Tracking You in Real-Time
vice, 25 Nov 2013

On Closeness, Distal Perception, and the Medium

grandma's got a point

When people say, about the weather, “It’s close out”, meaning, “It’s humid”, it’s because some things, in a relative way, actually are closer.

Deep sounds, with longer wavelengths, like a rumbling train; and “base note” smells, with larger molecules, like the mercaptans of cigarette smoke, are – relative to our ‘normal’ range of distal perception – closer to us, because they can travel more easily on the excess moisture in the air.

Mind Hacks

The guy on the right magically removes a red wallet with one hand, while distracting his subject with the other
[source] National Geographic Test your Brain
[via] Moving Through the Waters of Human Attention

Pay Attention

There is a simple distinction between 'active' attention via the prefrontal cortex, and 'passive' attention in the sensory cortices; humans are so easily tricked...

Why Not Both

QUANTUM I

a hard look…

Toward a Fully Relativistic Theory of Quantum Information

Christoph Adami

Michigan State University, Depts. of Physics and Astronomy/Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Dec 8, 2011

Entropy and Information are statistical quantities describing an observer’s ability to predict the outcome of the measurement of a physical system. Because an observer’s capability to make predictions is not a characteristic of the object the predictions apply to, it does not have to follow the same physical laws as those befitting the object. Thus, the arrow of time implied by the loss of information under standard time-evolution is even less mysterious than the second law of thermodynamics, which is just a consequence of the former.

[mentioned in reference to the information loss paradox of the black hole]

Entropy…Shannon Entropy

Entropy quantifies the ability of observers to make predictions; in particular how well an observer equipped with a specific measurement apparatus can make predictions about another physical system.

[a measurement of measurements]

For Shannon entropies, or uncertainties, we only need to quantify our uncertainty about the possible outcomes of a measurement [read: quantification] of that system. (No need to consider the impossible outcomes.)

i.e. “An observer’s maximal uncertainty about a system is not a property of the system, but rather a property of the measurement device with which the observer is about to examine the system.”

By subtracting the uncertainty given by a measurement device from the maximum potential uncertainty for the measured system, we get information.

The maximum potential uncertainty is potential information (how much is knowable).

“If my actual entropy vanishes, then all of the potential information is realized.”

Quantum Entanglement Theory

-occurs between the system being measured and the measuring apparatus, which makes them one system, not a composite.

“Selves do not exist anymore after entanglement.”

After entanglement, the system grows to QA (not Q). Thus the detector is asked to describe a system (Q) larger than itself because by its very measuring-of-the-system (A) it makes the system (Q) include itself: (QA).

This non-separability of a quantum system and the device measuring it is at the heart of all quantum mysteries.

A quantum measurement is self-referential, since the detector is asked to describe its own state, which is logically impossible.

QUANTUM II

a wider view…

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
-The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 1964, Ch. 6, “Probability and Uncertainty"

All Things Quantum – duality, The Observer, the Uncertainty Principle, the simultaneous occurrence of all possible worlds, the renunciation of causality – are counter-intuitive. It is a world where certainties have been reduced to probabilities.

Quantum, the word, comes from ‘quantity’, or ‘how much’. Quantum Satis: “The amount which is needed”. It refers to the smallest quantity by which we are able to measure things. It only relates to things which happen to subatomic particles, or at extreme temperatures. The Photon, for example, is a single quantum of light, called the “light quantum”. In neurology, it refers to a fundamental unit, or discrete component, of physiological response.

In general, but still from a scientific view, ‘quantum mechanics’ helps us to categorize certain phenomena that cannot be explained using classical physics, those being both Newtonian and Relativistic, (as the latter is for big things, not small).

The Dual Processing System of Memory and Perception

In brain science, the idea of ‘quantum mind’ has been mostly cleared up and given way to ‘quantum cognition’. The neurons of the brain do not function by way of quantum mechanics; the software, however, seems to. The cognitive system can be seen as using non-probabilistic, or quantum decision-making processes, resulting in emergent properties of concept accumulation/combination, memory, judgment and perception.

QUANTUM III

the hall of mirrors…

"If all potential ‘things’ stretch out infinitely in all directions, how does one speak of distance between them, or conceive of any separateness?"

-Zohar, p. 17-18

Vector States_kevindooley-flickr

Quantum is neither here nor there. The electron is not here; it’s in this general area. Chances are, if you look in this area, you’ll find it. Quantum is fuzzy. It’s about not-knowing for sure. Quantum is not about measurement, and that is the confusing part. Is it or not? And under what conditions will it be more likely to be, than not?

knots

Too many people are making up their minds about what ‘quantum’ means, in their own ways, in crystal clarity, or tangled knots, all of them. Whatever it is – this word, this thing – it is only what everyone says it is.

The impact of quantum physics, it seems, comes from its measuring not of things dimensional, like sub-atomic particles, but of information. Discrete, or small, is a reference to the amount, not of space or time, but of information: yes or no, on or off. To reduce a system – an information system – to this resolution – two possible answers – allows us to measure it discretely. It’s not even a measurement of things anymore, but things yet-to-be!

This word, then, that which makes it so mysterious and so misinterpreted is its reference to things not of our world.

“Nothing is fixed or fully measurable, everything remains indeterminate, somewhat ghostly, and just beyond our grasp”

-Zohar, p. 11

We aren’t measuring things-that-are anymore, but the potential possibilities of things. Experiments of this nature, in both lab and mind, are conducted in the future; they are a simulation of a future (not the future). It is experimentation with potentialities, not with things.

Here is the fixation – this premise that we not only can predict, but create the future, is suspicious, to say the least. But we do this all the time. If a brick is sailing towards your face, you predict it will hit you, and you move aside. You look at the probable futures, and you choose one. But even analogy is dangerous in this prospect of questioning the quantum world.

“The world doesn’t exist until you say it does, and somehow that means you can make it whatever you want.” How did we get here? From measuring data to flexing superpowers? But there is a tempered middle becoming less ignorable. Creeping into our social behaviors and our everyday technology alike, forcing us to make sense, not of what quantum theory means, but what it means to all the people who don’t know what it means.

Zohar, D. (1990). The quantum self: a revolutionary view of human nature and consciousness rooted in the new physics. London: Bloomsbury.

POST SCRIPT

Quantum Superposition
 ...fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that holds that a physical system—such as an electron—exists partly in all its particular, theoretically possible states (or, configuration of its properties) simultaneously; but, when measured or observed, it gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible configurations (as described in interpretation of quantum mechanics).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition

Networks are scale-free:

On the extreme separation of scales at which both quantum mechanics and relativistic gravity work.

Quantum teleportation between atomic ensembles demonstrated for first time

Lisa Zyga, November 19, 2012

One of the key components of quantum communication is quantum teleportation, a technique used to transfer quantum states to distant locations without actual transmission of the physical carriers. Quantum teleportation relies on entanglement, and it has so far been demonstrated between single photons, between a photon and matter, and between single ions. Now for the first time, physicists have demonstrated quantum teleportation by entangling two remote macroscopic atomic ensembles, each with a radius of about 1 mm.

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-quantum-teleportation-atomic-ensembles.html

Quantum teleportation between remote atomic-ensemble quantum memories

Xiao-Hui Bao, et. al. Edited by Alain Aspect, Institut d'Optique, Orsay, France, and approved October 11, 2012

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/11/08/1207329109

Will we ever understand quantum theory?

Philip Ball, 25 January 2013, BBC Future

Many outsiders figure that they don’t understand quantum theory because they can’t see how an object can be in two places at once, or how a particle can also be a wave. But these things are hardly disputed among quantum theorists. It’s been rightly said that, as a physicist, you don’t ever come to understand them in any intuitive sense; you just get used to accepting them. After all, there’s no reason at all to expect the quantum world to obey our everyday expectations. Once you accept this alleged weirdness, quantum theory becomes a fantastically useful tool, and many scientists just use it as such, like a computer whose inner workings we take for granted. That’s why most scientists who use quantum theory never fret about its meaning – in the words of physicist David Mermin, they “shut up and calculate”, which is what he felt the Copenhagen interpretation was recommending.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130124-will-we-ever-get-quantum-theory


Physicists propose measure of macroscopicity; Schrodinger's cat scores a 57
Apr 26, 2013 by Lisa Zyga

The size of an object can be measured in many ways, such as by its mass, volume, or even the number of atoms it contains. And when it comes to quantum physics, "macroscopic" objects are considered to be larger than "quantum" ones, since the former are usually described by classical laws and the latter by quantum laws. However, physicists have been challenging the boundary between these two realms by performing experiments that show that multiparticle objects can exist in quantum superpositions. But there has been no standard measure of macroscopicity until now, as a team of physicists has proposed that the macroscopicity of an object can be measured in terms of certain parameters of the experiment used to probe its quantum superposition, rather than as a single property of the object itself.

Physicists Stefan Nimmrichter of the University of Vienna, Austria, and Klaus Hornberger of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, have published a paper on the new definition of macroscopicity in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters.
Macroscopicity of Mechanical Quantum Superposition States, link, arxiv


just the intro to a relevant article:
One of the most basic laws of quantum mechanics is that a system can be in more than one state – it can exist in multiple realities – at once. This phenomenon, known as the superposition principle, exists only so long as the system is not observed or measured in any way. As soon as such a system is measured, its superposition collapses into a single state. Thus, we, who are constantly observing and measuring, experience the world around us as existing in a single reality.
Researchers suggest one can affect an atom's spin by adjusting the way it is measured
phys.org, Mar 18, 2013

New scheme for quantum computing

phys.org, Jun 25, 2013

The trick is to design algorithms so that wrong answers cancel out and correct answers accumulate. The nature of those algorithms depends on the medium in which information is stored.

Meyer and Wong considered a computer based on a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. These are atoms caught in an electromagnetic trap and chilled so cold that they "fall" into a shared lowest quantum state and act as one.

Tom Wong, graduate student in physics and David Meyer, professor of mathematics at the University of California, San Diego

Uncovering quantum secret in photosynthesis

phys.org, 20 Jun 2013

Watch the process of photosynthesis closely enough – at the femto-scale – and it appears there are little packets of energy simultaneously "trying" all of the possible paths to get where they need to go, and then settling on the most efficient.

In an article published in the journal Science, researchers from ICFO- Institute of Photonic Sciences, in collaboration with biochemists from the University of Glasgow, have been able to show for the first time at ambient conditions that the quantum mechanisms of energy transfer make photosynthesis more robust in the face of environmental influences.

Preconceptions Blinds Perception

Sorayama Gynoids (Sexy Robots), circa 1980's

"We have preconceptions about how an intelligent robot should look and act, and these can blind us to what is already happening around us. To demand that artificial intelligence be humanlike is the same flawed logic as demanding that artificial flying be birdlike, with flapping wings. Robots will think different. To see how far artificial intelligence has penetrated our lives, we need to shed the idea that they will be humanlike."

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs
KEVIN KELLY 12.24.12, Wired

Retro-Contaminating Memetic Transfer

Crazytown, "Butterfly"

You can try it yourself. Go ahead, ask someone,

“Remember that song – You my buttafly, shuga, baby…?”

They will say one of two things:

1. Yeah, who was that, Linkin Park?
2. Yeah, that band that sounds like Linkin Park?

Actually, it’s Crazytown, “Butterfly” (2001).

Linkin Park wasn’t that bad. But then there was Crazytown. They came after, but they influenced what came before. (Not the thing-in-itself, but our idea of the thing, enough such that the thing might as well have changed.)

This is also known as the DnB/Dubstep effect. Dubstep came almost directly from Drum n Bass. Those who had found in Drum n Bass a surging, forcibly punctuated rhythm, would have certainly seen contrast in Dubstep’s disjointed, seemingly arhythmical quality (or meta-rhythmic, as it could be called). It is this particularly unusual rhythm that draws its strongest criticism. Its other dominant element – wobble-squashing bass modulation – ties, and for some people camouflages Dubstep as Drum n Bass.

As overheard recently by some teenagers as Digital’s Dubzilla played in the background:

-What is this?

-Idk, some crappy Dubstep song.

A case of retro-contaminating memetic transfer, indeed.

Incestual Ideation:

The Map's Gone

AUGUST 17, 2012

Notes:

Crazytown

Linkin Park

Dubstep

Drum n Bass

Retrocausality

More MusicologicalSynchronicity

OCTOBER 6, 2012

On Value and the Palimpsest

palimpsest - origin

What we see is actually another overlay on the palimpsest of a personal history of art-viewing. When the work, coming through the eyes, presently, combined with the palimpsest coming from the memory, produces a new sensation, glowingly harmonious, or alarmingly disjointing, then, a work ascertains value.

Then, it is an achievement. 

palimpsest - iteration

And when enough individuals experience this and communicate it through a network until it fixes itself in the cultural matrix, it becomes another layer itself of the palimpsest, adding more standards and complexities to the criteria of any future work.

inspired while reading
The Forger’s Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art
Denis Dutton, ed.
Berkeley, 1983

partially unrelated internet imageDetails of Perception

Time Perception Disorder

Cary Wolinsky-Aurora-Getty Images

The following clip retells a very simple experiment that shows us just how easy it is to induce time perception disorder in normal people:

Back in 2006, David Eagleman and his team conducted an experiment in which subjects were simply asked to press a button. Doing so would instantly cause a nearby light bulb to blink. The researchers then added a slight tenth of a second delay between the press of the button and the light coming on and asked subjects to continue pressing the button. For the grand finale, the researchers removed the delay and watched as something completely perplexing happened. The subjects, utterly flabbergasted, insisted that the light would come on before they even pressed the button!


-posted by Ross Pomeroy at Thu, 30 Aug 2012

"Why Do Schozophrenics Hear Voices", Real Clear Science

The Dual Processing System

Dealing with Difference: From cognition to semiotic cognition

Barend van Heusden. Department of Arts, Culture, and Media Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

BIOSEMIOTICS vs. ANTHROPOSEMIOTICS

Cognitive Semiotics, Issue 4 (Spring 2009), pp. 116–132

I have clipped what I consider to be some interesting parts of a very powerful article on the nature of thought:

In this paper, it will be argued that semiotic cognition can be conceived as a distinctive form of cognition, which evolved out of earlier forms of non-semiotic cognition. Semiotic cognition depends on the use of signs and it will be shown that a sign is not a ‘thing’, but rather the name given to a specific organization, or structure, of the cognitive process. Once semiotic cognition was available to humans, its structure may have provided the ground for an evolutionary development that was no longer strictly Darwinian, but followed its own semiotic logic. Semiotic cognition confronts humans with a difference that cannot be eliminated, and it is in the ways in which this difference is dealt with that we may discover a logic of cultural evolution that determines the course of long term cultural change. (p116)

If we want to explain this absence of meaning and with it the emergence of a specifically human sense of reality, of time, space, and self, we have to assume that human cognition is based upon a very peculiar system of representation (or ‘pattern matching’) which allows us to process what is seen and heard at the same time, both in terms of stable patterns and of global, concrete and necessarily ‘fuzzy’ patterns. This double processing generates a difference between the stable pattern, which corresponds to what we have called memory, on the one hand, and an instable, always changing pattern corresponding to what one could name the ‘here and now’ or the ‘present’, on the other hand. In a conscious human mind the two patterns never merge completely. (p122)

[Difference] may have freed humans from immediacy, from the continuous ‘now’ in which most, if not all, other organisms live and it probably enabled us to deal with our environment independently of what is simply ‘the case’ in fantasy, myths, religion, technology, the arts and sciences, philosophy. These worlds that we construct in our imagination allow us to cope with change in a more sophisticated way than other organisms do. It does not take long to figure out the profit. What distinguishes human cognition and culture from that of other organisms is not meaning, but the absence of meaning. (p123)

If the assumption put forward here is correct we may investigate further in two directions. ‘Backward’, in order to try to find out and explain how such a double processing could have come about in the evolution of hominids, which is the subject of evolutionary psychology. And ‘forward,’ to find out if and how the peculiar structure of human cognition may have influenced the evolution of human culture. Let us first try to go ‘backward’, finding out about the possible evolutionary development of the human capacity for double processing. It is highly probable that this development made use of the strong lateralization of the human brain. I do not want to suggest that lateralization caused human culture, but what I do suspect is that a lateralization, which was already present (and which is related in primates to handedness*), allowed for the double processing, in terms of stable and changing patterns, of visual and acoustic information in animals with full stereoscopic vision, resulting in a 100% identity of the visual input in the two hemispheres. The coordinating process required a substantial enlargement of the equally present ‘comparator’ or ‘cockpit’, according to the term coined by Elkhonon Goldberg. (p123)

The double processing of the stream of incoming information results in a combination of two types of patterns: stable structures, on the one hand (which we can now identify as ‘schemata’, ‘scripts’, ‘concepts’, ‘structures’, or ‘signs’) and a changing situation, on the other hand (identified as ‘reality’, ‘substance’, ‘object’, ‘the thing itself’, etc.). Memories can now be stored and worked upon independently of the actual situation. Evidently, the most could be made of this development if the set of available memories were considerable. Both factors (a large set of memories and a strong comparator) required brain space. This could be that ‘compelling reason’ why the human brain got so large between 2 and 1.5 million years ago and why the costs of such a large brain were worth paying. (p124)

The stable pattern (memory) is related to a changing pattern (an occurrence). It is this activity of relating that turns the stable patterns into signs, which are used to recognize (to give form to, to interpret, to signify) that other more floating set of patterns constituting actuality. The here and now of the situation, in turn, is what is not a sign. It is ‘reality’, ‘the world’, ‘the object’. Although we immediately admit that this too is a construction based on memories. But the difference between the two is not a construction of our memory, and that is crucial. Thus cognition becomes intentional or semiotic. (p124-5)

The first step in the evolution of culture, as we have seen, must have been that of the doubling of the information processing system: basically the doubling of the representation of perception. (p126)

Semiotic mimetic actions are fundamentally different from imitations, as imitation involves the copying of behaviour, whereas mimesis comes with a new way of representing behaviour, namely without actually performing it (cf. Donald 1991, 2006). Through mimesis, the stable memories, or signs, are acted out and become audible and visible.*

*This corresponds to Piaget’s (1962) notion of “representative imitation”, which according to him emerges out of sensory-motor imitation, via deferred imitation (cf. Zlatev 2007).

Human culture is the process in which more or less stable memories are used to deal with the difference that the world forces upon us. (p127)

Our identity as human beings is thus a process in which we continuously invest energy. […] We exist as a set of memories and as a process in which these memories are used to deal with a dynamic environment. I am, we are, ‘in the making’. Viewing the self as a process rather than as an object therefore becomes more natural (Noble 2006). (p128)

Self-consciousness, both individual and collective, is thus a form of recursion; not formal, but semiotic recursion. Whereas in formal recursion a form consists of elements that reproduce that same form (as in a triangle consisting of three smaller triangles, each of which again consists of three smaller triangles, etc.), in semiotic recursion the process of representation (of ‘aboutness’) is about that process itself. This is what we call reflexivity, meta-representation or meta-cognition. The self is always a constructed self as well as a remembered self or, rather, a self ‘under construction’. (p128-9)

Moreover, the process as such is again remembered, which gives us a strong feeling of being, and having been, alive (cf. Metzinger 2003). […] Art and philosophy are two important forms of meta-cognition in modern and in contemporary culture. Whereas art reflects our life in concrete images, sounds, and stories, philosophy does so through abstract conceptualizations. (p129)

The ‘double processing’ hypothesis presented in this paper would allow us to shed light on the evolution of human culture and on cultural evolution as well. Semiotic cognition became possible because of a change in the primate information processing system. Once this system was in place, a new logic of development could emerge. The logic of cultural evolution seems to be based on what is, in the end, a very simple criterion, namely: whether a sign or sign system offers better chances of dealing with the difference arising in a specific personal, social and natural context, and in so doing also offers better chances of prediction and survival. Which brings us back to biology. This search for better solutions to the problem of difference can explain individual, social, and geographical variations in culture, as well as the steady increase of both abstraction and cultural complexity. (p129-30)

Even though culture certainly is a fact of human biology, what makes it so interesting is the fact that out of biology, in this case, emerges a form of cognition that became free, at least to a certain extent, of the laws of biology by adding a new dimension to these laws, namely the dimension of the semiotic. (p130)

The approach is deeply and truly Darwinian, in the sense that it applies Darwin’s perspective where it can and should be applied, and uses it to explain how and why a non-Darwinian evolutionary system, though nested in biological evolution and fulfilling the same goals, could emerge. Neo- Darwinism is fruitful, but only up to a certain point – which is that of the semiotic. Beyond that point, the laws of development change: instead of ‘BVSR = Blind Variation + Selective Retention’, the logic of the semiotic process, involving mimesis, imagination, conceptualization, and analysis will determine the course of human evolution.* Whereas selective retention may continue to function as it did in animal life, cultural variation is not blind, but informed by semiosis and driven by semiotic strategies.**

* Lassègue (2007) develops a related ‘alternative’ view (to neo-Darwinism, that is), strongly oriented towards the work of Ernst Cassirer. See also Wolfgang Wildgen’s (2003) work on the evolution of human language.

(p130)

** See Wheeler, Ziman & Boden, eds. (2002) on cultural evolution and neo Darwinism. See also David Premack’s review article ‘Human and animal cognition: Continuity and discontinuity’ (2007) where the significant differences between human and animal cognition are stressed.

(p130)

notes:

Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind. Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Donald, M. (2006). Art and cognitive evolution. In M. Turner (Ed.), The artful mind.

Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain. Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lassègue, J. (2007). Une réinterprétation de la notion de forme symbolique dans un scénario récent d’émergence de la culture. Revue de métaphysique et de morale 2 (2007), 221–236.

Metzinger, T. (2003). Being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Noble, D. (2006). The music of life. Biology beyond genes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Premack, D. (2007). Human and animal cognition: Continuity and discontinuity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104 (35), 13861–13867.

Wheeler, M., Ziman, J., & Boden, M. A. (Eds.) (2002). The evolution of cultural entities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, for The British Academy.

Wildgen, W. (2003). The evolution of human language. Scenarios, principles and cultural dynamics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Zlatev, J. (2007). Embodiment, language, and mimesis. In T. Ziemke, J. Zlatev & R. Franck (Eds.), Body, Language, Mind. Vol. 1: Embodiment (pp. 297–333). New York: Mouton de Gruyter.