X-Message-Number: 3076
Date: 07 Sep 94 10:55:08 EDT
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: CRYONICS.SCI Quantum Reality
Sept. 7, 1994
Dear Cryonet:
If I can put my two cents in here about the question of
determinism, I have to say that I do not understand the reasoning
behind Dr. Ettinger's comment:
>>Now about Mr. Zimov's points. On the possibility of
irreversibility with determinism, he is technically right-- but
trivially. In the real world, the interconnections are so
numerous and complex that there is hardly ever more than one
solution.<<
On the contrary, it seems to me that a great many examples
exist to the contrary. Each time two gas molecules or liquid
molecules scatter off each other, for instance, we have at least
3 different kinds of problems standing in the way of determining
their former state:
1) The chaos problem: even if the world is completely
Newtonian and totally deterministic (like a bunch of billiard
balls rolling about on a billiard table), it is possible to show
that in a very short time even ridiculously small effects are
magnified by the effects of chaos into very large effects. With
billiard balls, after only 5 or 6 ricochets, we're into the range
where nap of the felt and dust on the balls makes gross
differences, for instance. At longer times, such things continue
to amplify exponentially. We're all familiar with the "butterfly
effect" whereby in computer weather simulations the beating of
the wings of a butterfly (or not) may make or stop a hurricane in
another hemisphere 6 months later. Magnification of chaotic
effects with even realistic Newtonian assumptions cause all kinds
of things like this to happen on time-scales of the kind we deal
with in cryonics.
Remember that the clock does not stop for these kinds of
things when someone is frozen. Imagine, for example, that a free
particle in a damaged brain is driven willy-nilly in a "random
walk" by the Brownian motion of water molecules during ischemia,
and our repair problem a century or two later is to predict where
it came from, by strictly motion analysis criteria. We assume
here (not unrealistically for many situations, I think) that
damage has been so extensive that it is not obvious where it came
from by other kinds of inferences-- in other words, here the
pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are too small for the markings on
them or the shape of them to help us in construction of the
puzzle. Our problem with doing motion analysis is that all the
solvent molecules which formerly moved the fragment or particle
of interest about, have themselves long since been stopped by
outside forces, and are now *also* frozen in place. It is as
though we were required to infer the long-ago motion of billiard
balls in a particular game *after* the balls had been neatly
racked and put away-- or at least stopped.
Now, in principle it might still be possible to do this in a
Newtonian world, but the calculation obviously would have to
include the motions of the agent which stopped the balls, and in
the case of the cooled human body, THAT part of the system would
be the collection of molecules which absorbed the heat when the
body was initially cooled. This means that in order to infer
deterministically what happened in our frozen cryonaut long ago,
we need to know not only about the molecules the cryonaut's body
is composed of and their motions, but *also* we need to know the
motions of the molecules of the coolant nitrogen which was
evolved as gas and lost to the atmosphere during cool-down a
century before-- nitrogen whionian world, but the calculation obviously would
have to
include the motions of the agent which stopped the balls, and in
the case of the cooled human body, THAT part of the system would
be the collection of molecules which absorbed the heat when the
body was initially cooled. This means that in order to infer
deterministically what happened in our frozen cryonaug freely in time since the
freezing and will have spread
over the entire planet, at minimum, by the time we need to look
at it! Butterfly effect indeed! Does all this sound like
something to be optimistic over?
2) The above is a mere problem of practicality, but much worse is
to follow from both Heisenberg and Epicurus. If we can find all
the molecules today that have been affected by the cool-down of a
cryonaut centuries ago, including all that warm nitrogen and
whatever it has come in contact with since, we still need to
measure positions and momenta of all the molecules to a very high
order of accuracy to know what they've been doing. The problem,
however, is that we cannot do this because we are limited by the
uncertainty principle. The basic problem is that the universe is
composed of particles which have a wave nature which limits the
accuracy of where they can be said to be, exactly, according to
how precisely we know their momenta. This is true not only for
the particles that we wish to "see," but also true for the
particles we wish to use to "see" them with. In the end, there
is a limit to available knowledge in this area. Heisenberg and
his uncertainty principle aside, it seems obvious even that the
graininess in the structure of measurement devices imposed by the
fact that measurement devices must themselves be made of atoms,
also imposes fundamental limits on the accuracy of measurement.
3) Finally, there is full quantum mechanical problem of
irreversibility (information loss) in events, which is caused by
collapse of the Shroedinger psi wave function. Quantum mechanics
often hides the past by declaring that outcomes depend
probabilisticly on intermediate states which can be created in
any of numerous ways, as was noted. But this is common, not
rare. Again, when gas or liquid molecules scatter off each
other, for instance, the direction of the outgoing atoms for each
scattering event is not determined completely and uniquely by the
trajectories of the incoming atoms, for the scattering patterns
produced are diffraction-like interference patterns (indicating
probabilistic outcomes for single events), and some of the
information about initial states is lost whenever there is (as
here) more than one possible quantum outcome which satisfies
conservation laws. Every possible scattering possiblity in a
diffraction pattern does.
Dr. Ettinger has said that to him randomness in the objective
sense--partial or otherwise--seems a meaningless term, and that
he has "never read or heard a definition or explanation of
objective randomness that was coherent or intelligible, let alone
persuasive." But randomness in quantum mechanics merely means
that an event may happen one of many possible ways, and not
another possible way, for no reason at all, or at least for no
reason that has anything to do with local physical conditions.
Here "possible" means possible within the constraints of
conservation and other laws, and "local" means conditions at the
point of the event, or within a distance accessible at the speed
of light if a series of events evolves over time. This is a
coherent and intelligible statement about causality, so far as I
can see. Dr. Ettinger may not like it or its implications, but
it is not gibberish.
Moreover, there is something else which we can say about the
a-causal idea since the experiments of Alan Aspect in the early
1980's, as interpreted by Bell: the idea is found to be
experimentally true in at least some circumstances in the
universe we live in. Thus, ultimately, whether quantum mechanics
fails or triumphs as a complete description of nature, either
quantum mechanics or whatever theory replaces quantum mechanics
must still deal with clear experimental results which show that
sometimes experimental results are not determined by local
conditions. At present, we do not know whether these results are
determined by non-local conditions or if they are not determined
by any conditions anywhere and are truly random (i.e., happen one
way and not another possible way for no reason at all). But
experiment shows that it is one way or the other, and either of
these ways bodes ill for the prospect of determining initial
conditions in the past from the results of any measurement in the
present. If there is no strict causality at all, then such
efforts to determine causes in all events are obviously doomed.
If, on the other hand, quantum causality is non-local,
relativistic considerations suggest that it cannot be the kind of
"causality" which we are used to, or which is accessible in terms
of distance, or which is useful in prediction or retro-diction.
Either way, determinism in any useful form is not in the cards.
Or, if you will, in the dice.
----
All of the above problems apply to any interaction in which
quantum effects become important, and quantum events include very
simple things like Brownian diffusion of brain debris in liquids,
chemical breakdown of bonds in synapse molecules, and so forth.
Basically, any damage of memory coding structures to the point
that their reconstruction requires mathematical reversal and
decontruction of primarily diffusional or kinetic changes, has
almost certainly gone too far, and the information once present
will be irretrievable.
Given the demonstrable non-Newtonian nature of the atomic
world, realistic optimism as to the theoretical recoverability of
the memory of cryonically preserved suspended persons must be
based upon this assumption: that all brain damage presently
incurred during ischemia, perfusion, and freezing is of the type
that memory coding structures remain reconstructible on the
robust basis that all significant fragments of neuronal tissue
are large enough, and complex enough, that their
orientation and integration during life is *entirely* inferable
from their final present resting position and remaining
structural features after freezing. Given the blasted lunar
landscape appearance of electron micrographs of even the most
carefully and quickly perfused and frozen animal brains at the
present time, I have some doubts that these criteria will be met
for humans who are preserved even under the best and fastest and
most expensive standby and transport protocols now used in
cryonics---let alone in humans allowed to lie around warm for
hours after death, perfused haphazardly by inexperienced
morticians, put on commercial airliners without special hurry,
and finally flown to some nameless firm's door for freezing at
their convenience.
Yes, I know that Dr. Ettinger disagrees. I understand that he
is actually about to bet his own identity on the matter, by
arranging to subject his own brain in the not too distant future
to man~ana-style cryonics in Arizona, before shipment to
Michigan. <sigh>. I wish him luck, but I suspect that if he
doesn't change his attitude about the elasticity of physical
laws, he may after the penultimate trump be put together more by
coin-flipping than puzzle-solving. That would not be the fate I
would wish for the man who more than anyone else alive is
responsible for the fact that today some of us take the idea of
cryonics-- in any form-- seriously.
Steve Harris
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