Soltau, Andrew
(2010)
Interactive Destiny.
[Preprint]
This is the latest version of this item.
Abstract
Mitra demonstrates that specific memory erasure causes the observer to be in a different sector of the multiverse, one with a different destiny: events in the future, remote to any possible influence of the observer, having radically different probabilities. The concept only applies to an observer defined by a structure of information, so cannot apply to a human observer as usually defined, as the physical body. However, Everett defines the functional identity of the observer as the contents of the memory, a structure of information. Only such an identity encounters the appearance of collapse. Thus, any observer encountering change of this nature is necessarily of this type, and in principle Mitra's effect would apply.
Alteration to the quantum state of the physical environment effective for the observer merely by deletion of a record of observation would seem to require that the universe is primarily an information system, and that physical reality is secondary to the information defining it. This, however, is only the case with respect to the collapse dynamics. The universe is first and foremost a physical reality, as generally understood, defined by the quantum state, with the concomitant linear dynamics. Thus, at any given moment, the effective physical environment of the observer is a Newtonian, relativistic, physical domain, probabilistically defined throughout four-dimensional space-time by the linear dynamics of the quantum state of the environment effective for that observer: here the quantum mechanical frame of reference. With regard to the collapse dynamics, such a domain is of a first, primitive, logical type, while collapse, the change of the quantum mechanical frame of reference, is of a different, second logical type. As Everett makes clear, collapse is a purely subjective phenomenon, and as Tegmark explains, it exists only on the inside view of the quantum mechanical frame of reference. In this regard, and here only, the information process of the collapse dynamics, the establishment of new correlations with the physical environment, is primary, and, in a sense, 'overrules' the linear dynamics of the physical environment.
| Item Type: |
Preprint
|
| Creators: |
|
| Keywords: |
Quantum mechanics, Mitra, Changing the past by forgetting, Relational interpretation, Time, Measurement Problem, Von Neumann-Dirac formulation, Quantum mechanical frame of reference, Russell, Logical Types, Philosophy of physics, Wave-packet collapse |
| Subjects: |
Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics |
| Depositing User: |
Andrew Soltau
|
| Date Deposited: |
16 Dec 2010 02:22 |
| Last Modified: |
16 Dec 2010 02:22 |
| Item ID: |
8430 |
| Subjects: |
Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics |
| Date: |
2010 |
| URI: |
https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8430 |
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