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Re: [ontolog-forum] Model or Reality

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Randall R Schulz <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:11:53 -0700
Message-id: <200708111411.53516.rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>
On Friday 10 August 2007 16:17, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
> In quantum physics, ...    (01)

That's the one where if you claim to understand it you're lying?    (02)

I kid, of course, and while I do find it fascinating, I can lay no claim 
to understanding the math of it. If the truth were known, it was my 
first modern physics class and my electrodynamics class that really 
pushed me out of electrical engineering into computer science.    (03)

Anyway, there are some so-called "interpretations" of quantum theory 
that suggest a limited form of backward-in-time influence. I'm thinking 
of John Cramer's "Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" 
and his "Generalized Absorber Theory." In this interpretation, both the 
emitter and the absorber of a vector boson (a photon, e.g.) participate 
equally in the act of transmitting energy and momentum from the emitter 
to the absorber.    (04)

As I understand it, Cramer asserts that the form of backward-in-time 
effect (that carried by the so-called "advanced" waves) cannot be used 
to communicate information, but it does seem to make clear that the 
future configuration of matter and energy in the universe has some 
influence over the ongoing evolution of an earlier configuration of 
some (other) matter and energy.    (05)

Given the chaotic nature of our universe, especially the aspect 
of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions", a slight variation of 
the direction of the emission of a photon (and thus of the momentum 
transferred by that photon) of what we now see as the Cosmic Microwave 
Background could lead to initially very small but eventually vast 
change in the configuration of the matter and spacetime that was in the 
vicinity of the emitting atom way back when.    (06)


Personally, I find it delightfully mind-boggling. It's a bit like the 
movie cliche where the protagonist, his head in the sniper's 
cross-hairs, is spared because he trips, or sneezes, or spots a $20 
bill on the ground and his sudden, unpredictable movement at the moment 
the sniper fires keeps him from being shot. Thereafter, much is 
different than it would have been had the sniper succeeded. So it is 
with our movements (our presumably voluntary movements) and their 
effect on which CMB photons we absorb and hence precisely how momentum 
is transferred from the big-bang era to the present.    (07)


My recommendation? Go dancing! Hmmm... Maybe _that's_ why Feynman liked 
to dance? He was trying to alter the present via the long distant past!    (08)


> ...
>
> K    (09)


Randall Schulz    (010)

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