This essay hopes to persuade its readers that science ought to take the notion of deism a lot more seriously. The rise of the artilect in this century makes the notion of a hyperintelligent designer and creator of our universe far more plausible. It suggests the creation of a “hyper-physics” (as distinct from a traditional metaphysics that poses the deepest of questions) that would “investigate” the tree of universes that a branching set of artilects may have created.
Motivated by recent developments impacting our view of Fermi’s Paradox (the absence of extraterrestrials and their manifestations from our past light cone), we suggest a reassessment of the problem itself, as well as of strategies employed by the various SETI projects so far. The need for such reassessment is fueled not only by the failure of SETI thus far, but also by great advances recently made in astrophysics, astrobiology, computer science and future studies. As a result, we consider the effects of the observed metallicity and temperature gradients in the Milky Way galaxy on the spatial distribution of hypothetical advanced extraterrestrial intelligent communities. While properties of such communities and their sociological and technological preferences are, obviously, unknown at present, we assume that (1) they operate in agreement with the known laws of physics and (2) at some point in their history they typically become motivated by a meta-principle embodying the central role of information-processing; a prototype of the latter is the recently suggested Intelligence Principle of Steven J. Dick. There are specific conclusions of practical interest to astrobiological and SETI endeavors to be drawn from the coupling of these reasonable assumptions with the astrophysical and astrochemical structure of the spiral disk of our galaxy. In particular, we suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are the most likely locations for advanced SETI targets, and that sophisticated intelligent communities will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of information-processing increase, for both thermodynamical and astrochemical reasons. However, the outward movement is limited by the decrease in matter density in the outer Milky Way. This can also be regarded as a possible generalization of the galactic habitable zone (GHZ), concept currently being investigated in astrobiology.
Keywords: Astrobiology; Galaxy: evolution; Extraterrestrial intelligence; Physics of computation; SETI
Professor Duff recalled sitting in a conference in Tasmania where a colleague was presenting the mathematical formulae that describe quantum entanglement: "I suddenly recognised his formulae as similar to some I had developed a few years earlier while using string theory to describe black holes. When I returned to the UK I checked my notebooks and confirmed that the maths from these very different areas was indeed identical."
We study the quantum measurement problem in the context of an infinite, statistically uniform space, as could be generated by eternal inlfation. It has recently been argued that when identical copies of a quantum measurement system exist, the standard projection operators and Born rule method for calculating probabilities must be supplemented by estimates of relative frequencies of observers. We argue that an infinite space actually renders the Born rule redundant, by physically realizing all outcomes of a quantummeasurement in different regions, with relative frequencies given by the square of the wave function amplitudes. Our formal argument hinges on properties of what we term the quantum confusion operator, which projects onto the Hilbert subspace where the Born rule fails, and we comment on its relation to the oft-discussed quantum frequency operator. This analysis unifies the classical and quantum levels of parallel universes that have been discussed in the literature, and has implications for several issues in quantum measurement theory. Replacing the standard hypothetical ensemble of measurements repeated ad inifnitum by a concrete decohered spatial collection of experiments carried out in different distant regions of space provides a natural context for a statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics. It also shows how, even for a single measurement, probabilities may be interpreted as relative frequencies in unitary (Everettian) quantum mechanics.
We also argue that after discarding a zero-norm part of the wavefunction, the remainder consists of a superposition of indistinguishable terms, so that arguably “collapse” of the wavefunction is irrelevant, and the “many worlds” of Everett’s interpretation are uniifed into one. Finally, the analysis suggests a “cosmological interpretation” of quantum theory in which the wave function describes the actual spatial collection of identical quantum systems, and quantum uncertainty is attributable to the observer’s inability to self-locate in this collection.
AN IDENTICAL copy of you is also reading this story. This twin is the same in every way, living on an Earth and in a universe that looks exactly like our own. And there may be an infinite number of them. Such doppelgängers could be a natural consequence of our present conception of the universe. Now, some physicists say they could pose a serious problem for quantum mechanics. But a possible fix may also be in sight, and it could help tie abstract quantum concepts to concrete physical causes.
Michigan State University (MSU) researchers have developed “digital organisms” called Avidians that were made to evolve memory, and could eventually be used to generate intelligent artificial life and evolve into symmetrical, organized artificial brains that share structural properties with real brains.
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