How to Prepare for Jedi VS Empire ‘bots’

A friend just posted something interesting related to both of the two talks I gave about Identity and Artificial Intelligence, “It’s the crossroads of Human history.  One road leads to A.I. and it’s merging with humanity and the other leads to evolution of average people to X men without using machines.  At some future destination there will be Empire and Jedi among the ‘Bots.'”

So how do we prepare for Jedi VS Empire ‘bots?

I was struck by two pivotal moments when I was interacting with the audience while giving the keynote talk at the West Coast Dowsers conference at UC Santa Cruz this month.  In the first moment, one person after another came up to ask a question at the microphone along the lines of, “Can just one person really make a difference?”  And time and again I replied, “Yes.  One person really can make a difference.” Much of the key to this realization involves recognition that the classical view of reality consisting primarily of physical “stuff” cannot truly be the actual nature of the world.  We’re learning that classical physics is a special case within the larger set of quantum physics–and within quantum physics, Observers can and do influence events.

In the second moment, people came up to talk to me after my keynote presentation, expressing a sense of newfound hope that despite current social atmospheres of division seeming to segregate people into groups of “Us” and “Them,” it really can be possible for us to be respectful with one another, rather than assuming ‘others’ to be untrustworthy, profane, oppressive, offensive, guilty, primitive, or evil.  We stand to benefit from listening to what others have to say, rather than shouting over them.  We can overcome artificial divisions by appreciating that we are not our thoughts, and we are not our feelings–we are the one who sees and hears and feels these thoughts and feelings.   

When we appreciate that we can look for–and find–evidence of quantum jumps and reality shifts on the macroscopic scale, we can see the world with less fear and greater appreciation for the miraculous way we experience living in such a remarkably fine-tuned universe.  We see scientific evidence that:  our cognitive processes behave according to quantum logic, where relationships between events and observers matter.  We see that there has been a doubling of the placebo effect over the past 30 years.  We see the field of embodied cognition is taking off, with our abilities rising to support our actions as, for example, we feel happier because we smiled.  We see scientists having trouble reproducing their experiments in what’s been called a “reproducability crisis.”  We see evolutionary jumps, rather than slow gradual change in our fossil records.

Physicist Dr. Henry Stapp provides us with a clue as to how we are connected to Nature with the questions we ask: “The Quantum Zeno Effect says that the answers follow your questions–that by posing the questions fast enough, you can make the answers agree with what the questions are you ask.” 

Jedi VS Empire ‘bots

I feel that one of the reasons humans love stories like the Star Wars movies is that we find in our stories a sense of meaning and purpose for our lives.  When we view the world of Jedi knights and Empire soldiers from a viewpoint of the importance of retaining the essential spark of our humanity, we can feel grateful that we are always able to take an imaginary step back from any situation and constellation of events, to view it from the point of view of Observer who is observing the observers.  And when we ask optimizing, open-ended questions from this vantage point–such as, “How good can it get?” we truly can see just how much more wonderfully unlikely a world we and our future generations can live in.

You can watch the companion video to this blog post at:

 

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Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Gaia TV, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra and on the Living the Quantum Dream show she hosts. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

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Observation, Identity and Influence

Quantum physics depends on observers selecting how and where measurements are obtained–unlike classical physics which has no such requirement for an observer.

The idea of observation and the role of the “Observer” are key to the study of quantum mechanics, since the selection of how and where a measurement is made affects what is subsequently observed.  There is a special meaning to the word ‘Observer’ in quantum physics, in which selection of a method of measurement of a quantum system influences what is subsequently observed.  Methods of measurement include people at some point, so we play the role of Observer when we choose what we look at and how we look at the world.

This aspect of quantum physics is sometimes referred to as “the observer effect” and “the measurement problem.”  The so-called ‘measurement problem’ is related to the Observer and has been called the most controversial problem in physics today, because in the realm of Quantum Mechanics, there appears to be no singular fixed reality that is exists when nobody is looking.

Intriguingly, there can exist layers upon layers of observers–such that it can be possible for someone observing an observer to ultimately influence events–such as Schrodinger observing a cat inside a box of poison (such that the cat can be envisioned to be existing in some state of being both alive and dead)–or someone observing someone observing the cat inside the box with the poison.

Quantum Steering

Many physicists have recently been discussing the idea of quantum steering–of how one observer might be able to influence the outcome of an experiment being observed by another observer.  The concept of quantum steering, or EPR-steering, was first proposed by physicist Erwin Schrodinger as a thought experiment in which remote observers of a quantum system share entangled particles.  In such a scenario one observer might then be able to direct–or steer–the state of another’s system when performing a measurement on their system.

In hypothetical experimental quantum steering situations, one individual who is often called “Alice” for purposes of these discussions might influence the observations of of a quantum system by another observer, “Bob.”  Related areas of research involve determining if this kind of influence is one-sided; whether Bob can tell when he is being influenced; whether such influence can occur even if Alice is known to Bob as ‘untrustworthy’; and how strong such influence might be.

What I find especially intriguing about these topics at the dawn of this new Quantum Age is awareness of ways that each of us actually can remotely influence others we are entangled with.

Turtles All the Way Down

Once we recognize the possibility that each observer’s questions–and subsequent measurements–can influence what is happening, we come to realize we’ve entered into a situation where someone observing someone observing can have an effect on the outcome of what is being observed.  This concept was popularized by the physicist Eugene Wigner, who presented a variation of Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment, “Wigner’s Friend,” in which an observer watches an observer of a cat enclosed in a box with a vial of poison that could be released by a quantum mechanism–thus trapping this hypothetical feline in a state of quantum superposition–of being simultaneously alive and dead.

The issue in this case of observers influencing other observers’ observations is that it’s easy to see how there might be no end to the chain of observations.  We thus can find ourselves in the unenviable position of not really knowing the ‘true observer’ of an event.d

These topics are important because some of the most interesting conversations getting to the heart of consciousness recently are happening where multi-disciplinary fields of science meet technology to create artificial intelligence and quantum computing.  Such discussions are necessary for designing how our next generations of computers and robots will operate.

You can watch the companion video to this blog post at:

 

___________________________

Cynthia Sue Larson is the best-selling author of six books, including Quantum Jumps. Cynthia has a degree in Physics from UC Berkeley, and discusses consciousness and quantum physics on numerous shows including the History Channel, Coast to Coast AM, the BBC and One World with Deepak Chopra and on the Living the Quantum Dream show she hosts. You can subscribe to Cynthia’s free monthly ezine at: http://www.RealityShifters.com

RealityShifters®