The Best Argument Against the Quantum Multiverse

Recommended Pre-Reading:
The Quantum Multiverse

Some time ago, I argued in favor of the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, explaining how I had misunderstood it before, and why I changed my mind. I recommend reading that post for the full story, but the short version is, the Many-Worlds interpretation (or more accurately, the Universal Wave Function interpretation) is the straightforward interpretation of quantum physics, explaining the weird paradoxes without adding any extra assumptions to the theory. All other interpretations require adding something; either a collapse condition, where a measurement causes the wave function to immediately change shape all at once, ignoring the speed of light, or some kind of hidden variables we can’t measure. The Many-Worlds interpretation says the wave function described by the Schrodinger equation is correct, and that is all. Everything else, the multiple universes and such, are deduced from that single statement.

However, there is one thing that bugs me, one loose end Many-Worlds doesn’t explain. That is why today, I am going to continue the Best Arguments Against series, and put forth my best argument against the quantum multiverse.

Most people who argue against Many-Worlds don’t understand it. Some dismiss it out of hand as too weird. Others get Occam’s Razor backward and think Many-Worlds has branching universes as a postulate, rather than a deduction. These are not good arguments.

The best argument has to do with probabilities. If we look only at the math, it makes sense that the wave function can split into two worlds, one with an amplitude three times stronger than the other. Think of a pile of sand. Someone splits it into two, one of which is three times bigger than the other. Where there was one pile, there are now two of differing heights. That’s an apt analogy for the splitting of universes, and it’s quite easy to visualize. Nothing confusing or difficult to believe there.

However, when we do an experiment, the outcome with the higher amplitude has a 90% chance of happening, and the outcome with the lower amplitude has a 10% chance of happening. If the universe splits into two equally real branches, as Many-Worlds claims, where does this probability come from? Many-Worlds says there will be two universes, each of which will have an equally real version of us. Thus, before the experiment, it would be natural to think there would be a 50% chance of finding ourselves in each universe after the measurement. But it’s not; it’s 90-10. This is a contradiction, and a currently unresolved paradox in the Many-Worlds theory.

This is important, because we rely on quantum probabilities all the time. The nuclear fusion that powers the sun and gives the Earth energy uses quantum probability. The half-lives of unstable elements, used in various technologies and geological dating methods, rely on quantum probability. And most conspicuous of all, quantum computers work by minimizing the quantum probabilities of the wrong answers and maximizing the quantum probability of the right answer. If there were simply one universe for each possible outcome, our intuition says none of these should work!

There is one way to resolve this conceptually. Suppose instead of two worlds, there are a large number of them, and 90% of them go in the direction of higher amplitude, and 10% of them go in the direction of lower amplitude. Those 90% are completely identical to each other, as are the 10%. This would square off the probabilities. Instead of there being two of you, one in the low amplitude world and one in the high amplitude world, there would be many of you, split between the worlds 90-10.

However, this takes away the straightforward purity of Many-Worlds. The math does not say there will be lots of identical universes, it says there will only be one for each possibility. Resolving this conflict by proposing large numbers of identical universes adds extra fluff to the theory, taking away its advantage over the other interpretations!

This could mean Many-Worlds is the wrong interpretation of quantum physics. Or it could be that we just don’t understand quantum probability yet, and we will find a satisfactory resolution to the paradox. Many-Worlds is still the tidiest interpretation so far, since it explains all the other phenomena of quantum physics, like entanglement and the measurement problem, so neatly. For now, I still rank it as the most plausible, leaving the door open for something else to come in and explain it all.

I don’t like the quantum multiverse. I want there to be only one course of history. It feels cheap if everything that is physically possible happens in one timeline or another. But, as mentioned at the beginning of the post, the fact that it is weird is not valid evidence. I hope Many-Worlds is wrong, but as a truth seeker, I cannot let that hope influence what I believe. The truth is the truth, whatever it turns out to be. Maybe there are a near-infinite number of universes splitting off from one another every moment, or maybe there is just this one. All we can do is follow the logic and evidence where it leads us.

Our Obsession with Giving Credit

When we talk about scientific and philosophical ideas, we tend to attach the names of people who have gotten historical recognition for working on them. This is especially noticeable in physics and mathematics, where it seems like every modern concept is named after someone. Keplerian orbits, Maxwell equations, Riemann tensors, Coulomb force, and it goes on and on. Sometimes, it gets ridiculous, as more and more names are attached to the idea. Just look at the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin method for solving differential equations! On the one hand, it makes sense to recognize the work people contribute to human knowledge, but it can get tiresome when, for example, an old physicist interrupts his train of thought to talk about the individual who did research on the subject, along with details about their life. When discussing how stars explode, I am not interested in which university Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar did his research!

On this blog, I talk about all kinds of philosophy, from the nature of reality to morality to consciousness to philosophy of science. These musings are not simply regurgitations of the ideas of famous names from history, but my own thoughts on each matter. Sometimes I discover that my ideas have been said by famous thinkers, like David Hume, G. E. Moore, or Stuart Russell. But other times, it legitimately seems that I am going into unexplored territory. Yet, unless I somehow publish a bestselling nonfiction book or an academic paper that gets a lot of attention, the credit for my ideas will go to someone else. In order to be recognized, it is not enough to be smart and original, you also have to play the competitive institutional game, and I am simply not interested in that.

Just as my ideas have been said before or will be said in the future by others remembered by history, most, if not all, of the great ideas of history have been said by many others throughout the world and across time. Take for instance the above-mentioned WKB method. If you go to its Wikipedia page, you will find the names of three people who used it a hundred years before Wentzel, Kramers, and Brillouin.

The popular version of this is the one-liner quote. A famous person once said, “Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.” Such a wise quote. We can learn so much by being curious and exploring, and the formal education system can stifle that instinct within us. Do you know who said it? You can google it if you want the name of the historical figure it’s attributed to, but I can guarantee it has also been said by thousands upon thousands of others, many of whom have never heard of that person. Being wise does not get you into the memory of history. Being famous causes the wise things you say to be remembered by history. Thus, quotes are revealed for what they are: memes, granted longevity by being institutionalized into the narrative of history. Instead of using the quotes of others to supplement my discussions, I prefer to explain and argue them in my own words from my own understanding.

Ideas about nature and philosophy do not belong to any one person. The space of thought and reality belongs to everyone. If you’re writing a professional academic paper or book, it is important to cite all of the current research into the topics you’re talking about, so that your readers know you understand your field of study and aren’t making things up. But people can and do think about ideas without becoming experts in the formal structure of their history. Most people aren’t trained, or don’t have the skills, or time, or interest, to engage with the academic institution that way. We should all be able to discuss the Hard Problem of consciousness without having to constantly refer to David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, and Rene Descartes.

When so many academic subjects have term after term named after people, it makes them hard to learn. It would be so much easier if that jargon were replaced with descriptive names. Keplerian orbits could be called classical gravity orbits. Maxwell equations could be (and sometimes are) called electromagnetic field equations. The WKB method could be called the shallow rising potential approximation. In addition to making the subjects easier to learn, it would make writing science fiction easier. As a writer, I keep running into problems when the concepts I am trying to use are named after historical figures from Earth, whereas my characters have no connection to our planet.

Finally, seeing someone’s name attached to an idea can turn people off from the idea before they even know what it is. For instance, Richard Dawkins is a prominent evolutionary biologist, contributing lots of groundbreaking ideas to the field. But he is also a prominent atheist, and not very polite about it. So if I want to talk about something biological, like extended phenotypes, and I mention that they were put forth by Dawkins, a certain number of people are going to tune out right then and there.

These are the reasons why, when I talk about scientific or philosophical ideas, I focus on the ideas themselves, and rarely mention the historical figures associated with them. Sometimes I do, if it makes it easy to look up, or if describing it would cause more confusion than simply using the name. For instance, it is much easier to say, “Dunning-Kruger effect” than, “the cognitive bias where people confidently make a claim, not realizing they know next-to-nothing about the subject they are talking about.” Still, any time I do shorthand like this, I will take time to explain what it means first.

Works of art and creativity are an exception, of course. People who work hard on and pour passion into novels and music and cinema and theater and sculpting and painting deserve recognition for their contributions to exploring the human spirit. I will happily talk about Brandon Sanderson, Isaac Arthur, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Lena Raine, and multitudes of other creators whose unique works I think are phenomenal and worth recognizing. The only times I won’t mention creators are when their works are embarrassingly bad.

There are other reasons not to mention people associated with ideas. When I find myself arguing against something especially ignorant or silly, I avoid using people’s names in order to spare them from embarrassment and loss of reputation, or, if they are historical, out of respect for the dead. For instance, if someone sticks to the argument that biological evolution is disproved by entropy or irreducible complexity, they show only that they don’t understand evolution and thermodynamics nearly as well as other people do. We all believe some amount of strange and unreasonable things, and it is kinder to view the positive in each other, rather than the negative.

I also avoid using names for petty crimes and bad behaviors, because one of the reasons people do shocking and criminal things is because it is a way to be seen. If we don’t give them personalized attention, that is one less incentive to commit these acts. The exception is for powerful symbols of evil, like Hitler and Stalin, from whom the lessons of history do much more to prevent repetition than ignoring them would.

These are the reasons behind when I do and don’t mention people’s names on this blog. Of course, I’m not perfect, and I’ve been known to break all of these rules. Nevertheless, I do my best to focus on the ideas rather than the names associated with them, and to save face for people associated with embarrassing ideas or creations.

How do We Know if Something is Conscious?

Consciousness:
The Hard Problem
Dualism
Physicalism
Idealism
Identifying Consciousness

Vast Minds

Identity, Self, and Other

The Question of Meaning

I know I’m conscious, and you know you’re conscious. But how does each of us know the other is conscious? We have daily interactions with family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. We assume they are conscious just like us. But how do we know? How does any of us know that other people aren’t just p-zombies, robots programmed to behave in such a way as to deceive us into thinking they are conscious? And beyond humans, how can we know whether animals, insects, plants, or AI programs are conscious?

There is a famous thought experiment called the Turing test, put forth by one of the great pioneering minds of computer science, Alan Turing. The Turing test says if a machine is able to fool people into believing it is a human, that machine is conscious. But this idea has not aged well. The first glaring problem is that one person being conscious does not depend on other people believing they are conscious. Whether or not you are conscious is a fact within reality. Secondly, we have programs today that pass the Turing test, but clearly aren’t conscious. For instance, if an internet chatbot writes a comment on a video or conversation thread with a few key words and some profanity, there is a chance that some people will be fooled into believing it is a human. Yet if you know how these bots are programmed, the idea that they are conscious is laughable. The Turing test was a genius visualization of the future, and extremely important to the history of computer science, but it has not turned out to be a useful tool for determining whether someone or something is conscious.

For this discussion, we will draw heavily on what has been discussed in the first three entries of the consciousness series, so if you haven’t read those, you may want to do so before continuing. We will assume Realism rather than Idealism, because answers in Idealism could go a million different ways, and as I have argued many a time, I think it is far more reasonable to believe Realism is true.

If Dualism is true, the answer is simple: develop technology that can precisely measure the processes going on in the brain. If energy and momentum are not conserved, appearing and disappearing in ways that correlate with the person’s choices, it is evidence that a soul is interfering with the brain. If energy and momentum are conserved, then that person has no soul, and, according to Dualism, is not conscious. This is a way Dualism can be tested; you know you are conscious, so if you turn this machine on yourself and find no violation of conservation of momentum or energy, then Dualism is false.

In order to shine light on how we know anybody else is conscious, we should first ask how we know we ourselves are conscious. This is referred to in philosophy as the meta-problem of consciousness. Each of us can say, “I’m conscious, and I know I am conscious, and I know I am not wrong.” It is not an assumption. It is an observation, something that is directly experienced, and requires explanation.

As far as we can tell, the brain follows the laws of physics, without any interference from dualistic soul stuff. This means all knowledge corresponds to patterns of neurons and electricity in our brains. This leads to the illusionist view mentioned above: the brain is aware of its own awareness. It has a neuro-electrical pattern corresponding with the way its own neuro-electrical patterns work. When translating those patterns into language, the brain makes the mouth call it “consciousness.” Thus, consciousness is something made-up by the brain to describe the neuro-electrical patterns that represent neuro-electrical patterns.

If you understood that, and if you’re like me, that explanation is not satisfying. According to the illusionist, we are p-zombies who think we are conscious, but we are wrong. But that cannot be true. You know you are conscious; that is an indisputable fact. If consciousness is an illusion, then we must ask how is it possible for the illusion to exist. It does not solve the problem, it merely changes the word describing the thing we’re trying to explain.

I have a hypothesis. As of writing this, I do not know if any professional philosopher has explicitly put forth the suggestion I am about to make. If the reason we have a concept of consciousness is because of a neuro-electrical pattern of information within our brains, and that is the end of the physical description of what is going on, explaining our outward behavior completely with no holes, then that pattern of information not only correlates with the concept of consciousness, it is consciousness.

More precisely, that pattern is a quale, a piece of conscious experience. In particular, it is the quale of self-awareness. Other qualia include things like colors, tastes, thoughts, concepts, and elements of imagination. If my hypothesis is correct, then the correlation between qualia and their corresponding patterns of information are not correlations at all; they are equivalent descriptions of exactly the same thing! This would be true no matter what material or substrate the patterns exist in.

If this is true, it answers both the hard problem and the meta-problem. How is it possible for consciousness to exist? Consciousness is patterns of referential information acted out by processes within physical reality. How can we know about consciousness, and ask the hard problem? Because knowing about consciousness is one of many things that are consciousness. And finally, we have discovered a way to know from the outside whether someone or something is conscious. The trick is to look at their information processing structure, be it a brain or a microchip, and see if it has conscious patterns.

Of course, this is merely a hypothesis. It answers all the questions and leaves no logical loose threads, at least as far as I can tell, and it doesn’t require postulating any new elusive features to our theories of physics. Speaking of which, it doesn’t even mention the q-word. Still, it is a hypothesis nonetheless. In order to build a theory incorporating it, we will need instruments that can read individual neurons in conscious human subjects, and build catalogs of qualia and their corresponding neuro-electrical patterns. This will stimulate a cycle of hypotheses and experiments, and the science of consciousness will reach maturity. Then, we may feel as comfortable saying we understand consciousness as we do saying we understand electricity, or sound waves, or the rainbow.

Idealism – What if Consciousness is All there Is?

Consciousness:
The Hard Problem
Dualism
Physicalism
Idealism
Identifying Consciousness

Vast Minds

Identity, Self, and Other

The Question of Meaning

We began our exploration of the metaphysics of consciousness by discussing the Hard Problem and the philosophical zombie. We then explored the two routes we could take from there: Dualism, which says consciousness is a substance different from the rest of physical reality; and Physicalism, which says consciousness is part of physical reality, either at the fundamental level or emergent. But these paths both make an assumption: physical reality exists, a stance called Realism. Today, we’re going to question that assumption.

Suppose there is a universe where no life exists. No one and nothing is able to observe it. Does it make sense to say that universe exists? A Realist would say, “Of course, what does observability have to do with existence?” But to some people, the very idea of something existing without being observed seems incoherent, because to imagine it requires imagining oneself observing it. This theory, that nothing exists unless it is being observed, is called Idealism.

Idealism states that without consciousness, nothing exists. Or in other words, reality is a projection of consciousness. Our bodies, the Earth, houses, cars, trees, computers, all these things exist because we collectively expect them to, either consciously or unconsciously. If something is not being observed by a conscious being, then, it doesn’t exist.

The distinction between Realism and Idealism can be seen by considering the old question, if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? According to Realism, it does. The impact of the wood on the dirt causes pressure waves in the air, which are sound. On the other hand, the Idealist would say it does not. In fact, the tree would not even fall in the first place, it would simply manifest into existence as a fallen log the next time someone walked by!

This raises a big problem for Idealism. If nothing exists if it is not being observed, then why do things manifest as if stuff has happened when nobody is looking? Why do trees fall? Why do clocks show the right time? If nothing exists when it is not being observed, shouldn’t there be random inexplicable changes whenever we look away from something and then look back?

An Idealist would say these things happen because we expect them to. When we look at a clock, we know it is supposed to accurately tell us what time it is, so it does.

But what about when things don’t happen as expected? If reality is a projection of our minds and behaves as we expect it to, we should never find ourselves surprised. Not only in our everyday lives, but at the frontier of scientific knowledge as well, such as when Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, or when astronomers discovered the universe is speeding up as it expands. Furthermore, science and technology work for people who don’t know how they work or what they are supposed to do. How can this be so in an Ideal universe?

Various Idealists come back with two possible answers. The first is to invoke a personal God as the all-seeing observer, who keeps the universe from disintegrating into nonexistence by constantly observing every atom. This interpretation is popular with some theologians, because it gives us a universe that is mostly indistinguishable from a Real universe, but provides a mechanism by which God and other supernatural beings can intervene.

The second answer is to say reality is projected from our collective expectations, not our individual minds. In this case, things happen the way they do because most people believe it. Or rather, because most of the available power of belief is aimed toward it. It could be that minds have different strengths, and so the belief of a powerful mind might influence reality more than the belief of a weaker mind. We talked last week about how narratives spread as memetic complexes. If this brand of Idealism is true, then these narratives are not just competing for propagation, but for influence over the nature of reality itself.

This brand of Idealism would also allow for wizards and magic and all kinds of supernatural things. Minds without bodies, super-powerful minds, influential minds; these could obtain some amount of control over the local fabric of reality. Different kinds of powerful minds would bend it in different ways. A strong mind could bend reality to their will, a powerful but weak-willed mind would bend it uncontrollably, and an instinctual animal mind or an ignorant mind would shape it unconsciously around their view of the world. In fact, much of the magic of fantasy and superhero stories becomes accessible under the metaphysics of Idealism.

On the extreme end of Idealism, we find Solipsism, the belief that, not only is reality a projection of your mind, but so are other people. You are the only person who exists. Everyone and everything else is no more than a dream.

By Clarissa Blackburn on Flickr

Of course, the only evidence in support of Solipsism is that we can’t prove absolutely that it’s not true. Any argument in favor of the existence of things other than oneself can be countered with, “but how do I know?” The same can be said of Idealism. A Realist must postulate a quality called “existence,” which is independent of knowledge, perception, and belief, but the Idealist can immediately counter with, “How can you know about something that is independent of knowledge? You can’t!”

The answer to which of these theories is correct, Realism, Idealism, or Solipsism, is by no means trivial. We each might feel strongly toward one of them, but arguing in its favor is a difficult task. My strategy is to use the Anthropic Principle: which of the three theories is most likely to produce the world we find ourselves in?

Let’s start with Realism. Assuming things exist, they obey non-contradiction, acting according to the “way they exist,” their natures. Because of this, we expect absolute coherence. Clocks tell the right time because they work even when no one is looking at them. When they tell the wrong time, it is because they don’t run at a perfect rate, or they are set wrong, or they are broken, or they undergo relativistic time dilation.

In order to understand how things work, we play detective to figure out what they have been doing while no one was watching. This works for things on Earth, in the solar system, in the galaxy, and all throughout the entire universe, every atom and subatomic particle doing its thing, adding up in enormous numbers to yield what we see through our telescopes and microscopes and all or our biological and mechanical senses. It makes sense, because it exhibits the same kinds of behavior while we are observing it and while we are not.

Quantum physics is an exception; particles and quantum systems behave differently if they are being observed than if they are left alone. However, this is because in order to observe systems on the scale of atoms and subatomic particles, we have to disturb them with other particles, like photons. Any photon capable of observing an atom is going to knock the atom around, changing the state of the system. According to Realism, the reason quantum systems behave differently when they are being observed is because of the tools necessary to take measurements, not because of anything special about awareness.

I also want to dispel a myth about quantum physics; it’s not inherently mysterious. A famous physicist once said, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” This is catchy and comes with a flavor of authority, but it is a lie. Quantum physics is consistent and understandable, it’s just different from what we’re used to. Thus, it is perfectly compatible with Realism as defined three paragraphs above.

In Idealism, there is no hard principle keeping everything consistent. Hypothetically, you could turn around to see an apple floating in midair, or a million dollars manifested in a pile on the floor. We can think of this in terms of entropy: the number of incoherent ways we might find the universe to be vastly outnumbers the number of coherent ways. Therefore, if Idealism were true, we would expect to find lots of messiness and inconsistency all over the place, not this ordered world that behaves so consistently according to physical laws.

Of course, Idealism has a counter-argument: to suggest there are inconsistencies, like miracles and haunted houses and other supernatural stuff. The reason they are rare enough that people can live their whole lives without believing they exist is because the narrative of Realism is so powerful; if more people believed in magic and mysticism, such inexplicable things would be more commonplace.

Solipsism does not have this defense, since if it were true, then the only mind with beliefs would be a Solipsist, giving the narrative of Realism no power. Sorry Solipsism, the only argument in your favor is the teenage favorite, “You can’t prove I’m wrong.”

When we look out into the universe, we see billions of stars in the galaxy, each with its own set of planets. Out in the vast reaches of space, we see billions of galaxies, each with its own billions or trillions of stars. To me, it feels extremely self-aggrandizing to suppose we imagined all that into existence within the past hundred years. It has long been our nature to put ourselves at the center of existence, to seek power over nature and reality. To that end, we may find it convenient to believe that if we just believe hard enough, anything imaginable can happen. We also tend to look for rationalizations to continue believing what we already believe, be it ideological, religious, superstitious, or scientific. Thus, we can keep looking for rationalizations to explain how an Ideal universe might come to look exactly how we would expect a Real universe to be. Or, we can acquiesce to Occam’s Razor, and accept the universe as Real.

Interestingly, there are circumstances where things like Idealism and Solipsism can exist within a larger framework of Reality. We’ll explore those in later posts when we get to the Simulation Hypothesis and Boltzmann Brains.

Memetics – How Ideas, Behaviors, and Narratives Spread

By FractKali on deviantart

What is a fruit? It’s something sweet and healthy that grows on a plant. It’s food. It is a symbol of prosperity. At least, that’s what a fruit is to us. But what is a fruit to a plant? It is a vessel for seeds, which are eaten by animals and carried far and wide, so that the plant may have many healthy offspring. All the animals think about is the tasty snack, unaware of what is happening behind the scenes.

The plant, however, doesn’t think anything at all. It’s just doing what it is programmed to do by its genes, which have been designed by evolution to spread and propagate into the future. In doing so, they have hit upon a strategy: you make use of other living things, tailoring yourself to use their behavior to your advantage. Animals like eating sweet, juicy, colorful things, so surround your seeds with sweet, juicy, colorful fruit.

Here’s another question that seems completely unrelated, but as we will see, it is very similar: are we in control of our actions? We consider ourselves, at least in Western societies, as rational creatures, making decisions based on information and logic. But, as we talk about frequently on this blog, that’s not generally true. Rationality is a skill that requires regular practice and exercise. On the other hand, our natural means of determining what to believe and how to act is through our narrative senses.

As we go about our days, we perform routines, talk, hang out with friends, and do all kinds of things. In the background of these actions and interactions, ideas and behaviors are being shared and absorbed, often without us taking notice of them. Some ideas and behaviors are able to use our psychology, notably our narrative senses, to spread themselves. Like genes being selected to use the natural environment to propagate themselves, ideas and behaviors are selected to use the human psychological environment to propagate themselves. It’s evolution by natural selection, and instead of genes, the carriers of information, behaviors and ideas, are called memes.

When you see the word “meme,” you might think of pictures with silly captions found on social media. But those are just one type of meme out of a vast ecosystem encompassing trends and fashions, the arts, sayings, beliefs, opinions, quirks, habits, and more. As genes come together to make biological organisms, memes come together to make memetic organisms. We have talked about one type of memetic organism before: narratives. Philosophical outlooks, religions, ideologies, mythologies. All of these are adapted by natural selection to propagate themselves, and their slightly altered offspring, into the future.

As in biological evolution, the memetic ecosystem has tremendous diversity. There are parasitic narratives that harm those they spread to, like Nihilism and strict moralities. There are symbiotic narratives that have a mutually beneficial relationship with those they spread to, like rationality and some versions of most religions. Some narratives vie for dominance, such as political ideologies and tribal religions. Others spread by showing kindness and bending with the wind. Some appeal to truth, others to trickery.

The memetic ecosystem is similar in a lot of ways to the idea of a spiritual realm. We are being influenced by immaterial forces, which, though blind and unconscious, act as if they have goals. Like the animals who eat fruit unaware of the role they are playing in the domain of the plant, we go about our days acting according to our routines and values, often unaware of the role we are playing in the affairs of memetic organisms.

This may seem troubling, but it’s not bad. The influence of memetics is not something that needs to be fought, but a critical part of the process of culture and the everyday experience of being human. And unlike the animal who is totally ignorant of the game of genes being played by the plants, we can learn about the game of memetics, and by knowing ourselves, our values and how we are influenced, we can become players in that game rather than mere pieces. That is why I eagerly and fervently spread the memes of rationality, narrative senses, and humility. In recognizing that our agency is not as absolute as we may like, we gain more of it.

Artificial Gravity

In most space ships in sci-fi movies, people stand on the ground or sit in chairs. This makes sense intuitively on two levels. For one, we all naturally spend almost all of our lives standing, sitting, and lying down. Space travel seems like just another method of transportation, so it feels like it should be similar to what it is like to travel in a car, bus, train, or plane. Secondly, it’s historically been really hard to depict weightlessness on a movie budget.

The Millennium Falcon is designed for walking.

But we know there isn’t a universal “down,” and we aren’t magically stuck to the ground. Instead, mass attracts other mass with a force called gravity, and we are stuck to the ground on Earth because the planet’s giant mass is pulling our relatively tiny masses toward its center. In space, we don’t have that. Instead, small objects orbit large masses like planets, moons, and stars, being pulled in the direction of all the nearest gravitational forces added together. This leads to “free fall,” also called “microgravity,” (or incorrectly, “zero gravity”) in which occupants of a spacecraft float in the air, pulled along the same currents of gravity as the ship they are inside. There is no up or down, no floor nor ceiling.

This leads us to the question, can we create artificial gravity like in the movies? The answer, which might surprise you, is yes. There are in fact several ways, one of which we might see in ten years or less.

The first is to use acceleration to mimic the effect of gravity on the surface of the Earth. The Earth pulls downward on us with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s², which means if we were freely falling, we would speed up another 9.8 meters per second every second. It is also called 1 g. But we are stopped from falling by the ground, which pushes us upward with the exact force needed to counter gravity, because the Earth is packed full of solid and liquid matter. In space, without this balance of gravity and ground, we could get the same effect by having the ship accelerate at 1 g. The back walls of the ship push on us with the same force as the surface of the Earth, becoming the floor. And there we have it, artificial gravity.

behold my awesome MS Paint skills

Accelerating a space ship at 1 g is really hard. Yes, we do several g’s to get rockets into space, but a rocket’s mass has to be over 90% fuel just to make it to low Earth orbit, so keeping up 1 g even for an hour is beyond us right now, much less the weeks it would take to visit anywhere farther than the moon. A more feasible approach is spin gravity.

Newton’s first law says an object in motion will keep its speed and direction unless acted upon by an outside force. If a force is applied parallel to the direction of motion, the speed will change. If the force is applied perpendicular to the motion, its direction will change. In order for something to move in a circle, a constant force must be pulling it toward the center. Thus, our second method of giving space ships artificial gravity is to make them spin.

The direction of gravity, “down,” is the direction opposite the direction our surroundings push us. The ground pushes us up, therefore on Earth, down is down. A rocket pushes us forward, therefore down is toward its tail. A rotating space station pulls us inward, therefore down is outward. This illusory sense of being pushed away from the center of something spinning is called centrifugal force. So if we set a space station spinning, we get artificial gravity pointing away from the axis of rotation, and can walk around on the rim of the wheel or curved side of the cylinder.

The first problem we’ll have to face is making a ship big enough that standing up won’t make you dizzy. If you’re in a ship with spin gravity, your head experiences less gravity than your feet, because it is closer to the center. The significance of the difference depends on what percentage of the radius your body takes up. The smaller the circle, the greater the difference in gravity between your head and your feet. I don’t know how big it would have to be not to make you sick, but I expect we wouldn’t want a diameter smaller than a 6-story building.

There is one more option, which is much more futuristic. It is, drum roll please, straight up old fashioned gravity. Just cram enough mass into the center of our ship that it has its own gravity. These types of space ships occur naturally, and we call them planets.

Which leads us to the downside of using this type of gravity: it’s really freakin’ hard to get your ship to move. According to Newton’s second law, the more mass something has, the more force is needed to accelerate it. We’re not going to sail Earth around the solar system by pointing a rocket engine at the ground and firing its exhaust into space. We can get around that problem by building our ship around a black hole. A black hole can give an Earth’s worth of gravity to a normal-sized ship, using a whole lot less mass.

Suppose you had a black hole the mass of the Earth, 6*10²⁴ kilograms. How far away from it do you think you would have to be in order to experience 1 g of gravity? The answer: exactly the radius of the Earth. Whether the mass of the Earth is the size of a planet or a marble, the strength of its gravity is the same at the same distance from its center. If we went inside the Earth, gravity would get weaker, because some of Earth’s mass would be above us. But if we got closer to an Earth-mass black hole, the gravity would get stronger, because all of that mass would still be below us. Thus, to have a small space ship with a black hole providing 1 g, much less mass is required.

How much mass? To answer that, we need to know how big our ship is going to be. The tidal force (head-to-foot difference) for a black hole scales differently from spin gravity, so our black hole ship will have to be bigger than 6 stories. Let’s say 10 stories, or 30 meters. Using Newton’s law of gravity (which doesn’t have a number), a radius of 15 meters, and 1 g of gravity, we calculate the mass of the black hole to be 30 trillion kilograms. That seems like a lot, but it is just the mass of a small mountain, 100 billion times less massive than the Earth.

This black hole would be the size of a proton, and give off 400 kilowatts of power in Hawking radiation, which you could use to power your ship’s life support, and have about the same acceleration as an ion thruster on a satellite of normal mass of about .00001 g. So a properly-sized black hole could supply a ship’s artificial gravity its power, and a small amount of thrust.

If we had the technology to make micro black holes, options would become available. The smaller a black hole, the more power it gives off. We could opt for a slow-accelerating ship with a black hole providing gravity, or we could use a much smaller black hole and accelerate at 1 g. Heck, we could even have two black holes in the same ship, one for gravity, and one for thrust. Or more, if we wanted to build a larger ship.

Artificial gravity may seem like pure science fiction, but as we have seen, there are ways to do it in real life, one of which, spin gravity, isn’t even that hard. Someday, perhaps even soon, we will have space stations we can walk around in, almost just like we do on Earth. They won’t look like the space planes or battleships we see in science fiction. Rather, they’ll be something new and unique, wheels and cannisters speeding through the solar system.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Theseus Dilemma – A Short Story

Hello, dear readers. Last week, my writing group wrote and swapped short stories, and from that came this sci-fi nugget. I hope you like it.

The Theseus Dilemma

by Christian Horst

The doctors didn’t wear white.

That was Olander Brice’s first thought as his wheelchair drove him into the Turing Society’s operating room. Funny. Here he was, about to have his soul travel through a wire from his body into a virtual reality on a supercomputer, and what stuck out to him the most was the way the surgeons were dressed. Button-up shirts, a man in blue, a woman in brown. Not white, like the advertisements always showed.

“Hi, Mr. Brice,” the woman said. “I’m Dr. Sutter, and this is Dr. Lars.”

Olander made a series of eye movements, the only motion his body allowed him. From a speaker on his headband, his voice said, “It’s nice to meet you.”

The room was small and cozy, like most doctors’ offices he had been to. A padded operating table lay in the middle, and one side of the room had a counter where various tools and papers rested in a well-organized manner. On the other side stood a large machine with various knobs and bits protruding from it. The walls were lined with posters explaining the science of the brain and consciousness. One of them caught his eye. Substrate-Independence, it was titled.

Consciousness can exist anywhere that can store and evolve its patterns of information. Brains and computers can host consciousness, as can any other substrate that can store memories and process information via neural networks.

Beside the text were two diagrams. The first was a side view of the inside of a human head, and the second was a computer chip. Over top of both of them were two identical patterns of blue lightning, symbolizing the ability of a human soul to exist in either body.

“Okay, Mr. Brice,” Dr. Sutter said, “we’re going to lay you down. Is that all right?”

Olander blinked rapidly three times, and his speaker said, “Yes.”

Four hands lifted him out of his wheelchair and placed him onto the table. As his body settled and relaxed, a deep happiness came over him. After years of paralysis, his life was finally about to change.

“Take a look over there,” Dr. Lars said, his hand gently tilting Olander’s head. “See that camera? That’s where you’ll be viewing the room from in just a little while.” On the desk stood a camera on a short stand, its two adjustable lenses set apart by the same distance as Olander’s eyes, so that when he looked through it he would see in 3D.

Olander felt a dampness on the inside of his forearm as Dr. Sutter swabbed it with rubbing alcohol. “We’re going to give you a full-body pain blocker,” she said. “We can’t give you anesthetic, because that would prevent the procedure from working.”

Olander knew this. The company had made it very clear that the doctors had to connect the mind transfer cable directly to the frontal lobe of the brain, and had him sign several forms consenting to letting them drill a quarter-inch hole in his skull while he was conscious. Though it was a little discomforting, he was reassured by the testimonies of those who had undergone the procedure before him and ended up happily in the simulated world of the Turing Society. Besides, the alternative was to stay trapped in this useless body of his.

“We sometimes administer a paralyzing agent,” Dr. Sutter said, “to keep our patients from moving, but in cases like yours, it is unnecessary.”

Dr. Lars put his hands gently on Olander’s head, fingers resting on his headset. “We’re going to have to take this off. Is there anything you would like to say first?”

Olander thought for a few moments. Once they removed his headset, he would not be able to talk until the operation was finished. He moved his eyes. “I would like some water, please.” That was one of his saved speed-messages. The next sentence took a little time to construct. “To taste it one last time.”

“Certainly.” Dr. Lars walked out of Olander’s field of view, and the hiss of a sink faucet met his ears. The two doctors worked together to prop him up, and Dr. Lars’ hand tipped a small paper cup to Olander’s lips. He felt the cool liquid enter his mouth and slide down his throat, and he savored the sensation. After today, he could drink virtual water, but it would never be the same. Though it was scientifically proven to be an identical experience, many people reported that just the knowledge it was an illusion rather than material caused it to lose something.

“I’m ready to remove my headset.” Olander said.

The doctors laid him down again, and he felt the set’s pressure release, feeling its echo as the cool openness of the air took its place. He marveled at the strangeness of the feeling, as if the headset had been a part of his head, and removing it altered his body away from its natural state.

“Okay, let’s start with the shaving,” Dr. Lars said. There was a click, and a buzz, and Olander felt the tingling of a trimmer as the hair on the front of his scalp fell away.

“We’re going to administer the pain blocker now,” Dr. Sutter said.

Olander closed his eyes and tried to relax. He was excited and frightened. If everything went smoothly, he would be walking around and talking inside a computer within an hour. The sting of the IV needle made him wince, but then it was in and over. He assured himself that the rest of the procedure would go more or less the same.

“Okay, Mr. Brice,” Dr. Lars said, “Your pain sensations should be blocked now. I’m going to test it by pinching you. You should feel a tug, but no pain. If it hurts, blink rapidly.”

Olander felt the doctor’s fingers press on the skin of his other arm. It felt a little tight, but that was all.

“No pain?”

Olander slowly opened his eyes and looked at the doctor, then closed them again just as slowly.

“Okay, it looks like we’re ready to start drilling.”

The newly-shaved part of his head was dabbed with rubbing alcohol. Then, there was a shift in the air pressure, a few clicks and whirs, and the touch of something small and cool.

“Drill in place,” Dr Lars said. He shifted to a softer tone. “Remember, if you feel any pain, let us know. Are you ready?”

Olander opened and closed his eyes, feeling almost as if it were someone else’s body on the table saying yes, not him. He had no choice; there was no turning back. Yes, I am ready.

The sound of the drill began, echoing inside his head. His skull felt tight all over. Then, just like that, it was done.

“Inserting the cable,” Dr. Lars said.

Olander steeled himself for the feeling of something poking around inside his brain. He knew it was perfectly harmless, perfectly normal procedure, but the thought still made his skin crawl. However, when the connector was inserted, he found it wasn’t nearly as bad as he imagined, instead feeling as if the cable had attached itself to the outside of his head. Maybe it was because of the pain blocker, or maybe brains couldn’t feel things directly. Either way, he was relieved.

“Beginning transference.”

What happened next did not follow any pattern of order or cohesion. He experienced a jumble of fragments of the doctors’ speech, a view of the room from outside his body, the feeling of the cable on his forehead, the perception of his body extending to enormous size and complexity, and the redness of the insides of his eyelids.

The sound of Dr. Sutter asking if he could see her brought him back to full consciousness. The two doctors stood looking at him at eye-level. Behind them lay his own body, a green wire plugged into his head, held up by a protrusion from the operating machine. With a swell of elation, he let out a cry. “Yes! Yes, I can see you!”

“How do you feel?” Dr. Lars said.

He felt as if he were floating in a warm emptiness. No, that wasn’t quite right. Thousands of unfamiliar sensations tickled him in ways he couldn’t make sense of. Did he have a face, hands, and legs? It felt like it. That must be the ghost-body sensation he had been told about, his mind not letting go of his body’s shape after decades of learning its nervous system. “Great!” The sound of his own voice, issuing forth with naught but a mental command, filled him with joy. If he’d still had eyes, he was sure he would be crying.

“Can you switch between cameras within the office?” Dr. Sutter asked.

Olander thought about it, and noticed what could only be described as knobs at the edges of his awareness. When he tugged on one of them, his view changed to a view of the reception room, showing a worker on the phone behind the counter, and a few patients waiting in chairs for their appointments. He tugged on the operating room camera knob, which was conveniently easy to find. “Yes, I can. It’s wonderful.”

The doctors smiled. “It looks like the operation was a success,” Sutter said. “Congratulations. If you look behind you, you will find a doorway to the Turing Society virtual world.” An autonomous stretcher wheeled itself into the room. “As you requested in your documentation, we will donate your blood and organs to the National Health Reserve.”

Behind them, on the operating table, Olander’s eyes snapped open.

“W-what’s that,” Olander said.

“What’s what?”

“My body, it’s still alive!”

The doctors looked at Olander’s body, which was now moving its eyes erratically. “That’s nothing to worry about,” Sutter said. “Just a residual effect from the mind transfer. Technically speaking, the body isn’t dead, it just doesn’t have you inside it anymore.”

“He’s talking,” Olander said. “Can’t you see?”

“Olander,” Sutter said, “you’re overthinking things. You’re inside the computer, not your body.”

“But my body is still alive! There’s still a version of me in there! Look at my eyes. They’re saying the same thing over and over: Help me!”

“You’re in post-operational shock. If you go into the virtual reality and regain the experience of having a body—”

“I’m telling you, I’m still alive in my body! Put my headset back on and listen!”

Sutter leaned toward Lars and spoke quietly. Lars nodded, and pulled the cable out of Olander’s head and plugged the hole with what looked like some kind of adhesive. Then the two of them lifted his body onto the stretcher. Olander continued to cry out, but the doctors accompanied the robot platform out the door without giving him another glance.

Olander floated helplessly in the digital aether. They were going to kill his past self, or his duplicate, or—he didn’t have time to be pedantic about the situation. He had to do something. But what? He tried feeling out the hundreds of pathways of his strange new body. Somewhere, a coffee maker started pouring water onto an empty tray. Someone’s PC account was denied access due to an incorrect password. The lights went out in an empty hall. Then . . .

Aha! He gained control of the robot stretcher. With two swift motions, he slammed it forward, then backward, knocking both of the doctors to the ground. Before they could recover their wits, he wheeled the platform back down the hallway, around a corner, and into the reception room, making some of the people waiting jump to their feet. Olander identified his driver, and exclaimed, “Morgan, help!” through the reception room speaker. “It’s a fraud!”

The well-dressed man stood up from one of the waiting chairs. “What is going on here?” he demanded in a booming, authoritative voice.

Sutter emerged from the hallway, followed by Lars. “This man is trying to steal his former body, which he voluntarily signed over to the company when agreeing to the terms and conditions of the transference.”

“And why,” the man said, turning to face Olander—or rather, the room’s camera—“are you doing that?”

“Because he’s—I’m—still alive.”

“That’s just a precaution,” Sutter said. “We have to keep the body’s mental operations intact until we’ve confirmed that the transference is a success. But now that it is, it’s no longer important.”

“So you knew,” Olander said. “You knew all along.”

“It’s only standard procedure—”

“You murderers!” Olander cried.

“As we explained,” Sutter said, her voice patronizingly calm, “it’s just an echo. You, Olander Brice, have successfully been transfered into the computer network. This body is not you anymore.”

The man spoke again. “Are you saying, Mr. Brice, that you believe you were not transfered, but instead copied?”

Sutter lifted her chin. “Who are you to be sticking your nose in company affairs?”

The man looked contemptuously at her. “I am Morgan Stanton, Mr. Brice’s close friend, and a representative of League Neuroelectrics, a significant partner of the Turing Society.” Sutter’s mouth worked soundlessly, and Stanton took the advantage to turn to Olander’s body. “If you would, please blink.”

Olander’s body’s eyes blinked.

“Look to the left.”

He turned his eyes to the left.

“What is five plus two?”

He blinked seven times.

Sutter interjected. “I know what you’re trying to pull. Of course it is going to respond. It is still a living human body, after all.”

“So you admit it!” Olander cried.

“Not at all. It’s a p-zombie, a living body that acts and responds indistinguishably from a human, but has no consciousness.”

Stanton glowered at her. “That’s the kind of thing slave owners and animal abusers say to justify their cruelty.”

“That was hurtful and highly inappropriate,” Sutter said. “You can’t compare us to monsters. That’s immature slander.”

“If you don’t want to be compared to monsters,” Stanton said, “then don’t act like them.” Sutter snarled, ready to retort, but Stanton cut her off. “I have connections with lawyers. Good ones. We will conduct an investigation into this company’s practices, starting with the testimonies of these two instances of Mr. Brice.” He pulled out his phone.

An hour later, the two Olanders sat in Stanton’s car side-by-side, one in the flesh, the other in a robot body. The mood was glum, as if invisible water had filled up the streets around them. Neither of them spoke, but they thought. What would they do now? Who would be married to his wife? Who would own his house, his money? He felt, in his heart and soul, that he was the real Olander Brice. But he couldn’t help but think the man sitting next to him might feel the same way, ruminating about the same questions. What was the soul? Was it something that was unique, or could it be copied so that there really were two of the same person? And if he and his counterpart were two, yet one, what did that mean for the nature of consciousness itself?

Something seemed to nag at the back of his mind, but then it was lost. The questions were so confusing he hardly knew how to think about them, much less what their implications might be. One thing was for sure: from here on out, his life—their lives—were going to be difficult. All he could do was hang on and hope something made sense at the other end.


If you believe thoughts and stories like this are valuable, why not consider supporting this blog on Patreon? Even the smallest gesture would mean a lot to me.