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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

1. A CoCreative Participatory UniVerse

Fuchs, Christopher. QBism, Where Next?. arXiv:2303.01446. The UM Boston polyscholar and main conceiver of this theory about possible influences that human observers may have upon physical realities offers a latest array of notable features. We also include since into the 2020s and this year a real presence of individual agency through evolution to ourselves has gained a wide and deep recognition.

This paper expresses how refreshing it has been since a few philosophers have started to engage with QBism. The aim of this exposition is to lay out the structure of QBism as clearly as possible for that phenomenal audience. In regard we state eight tenets: 1) A quantum state is an agent's personal judgment. 2) A quantum measurement is an agent's action upon its external world. 3) Quantum measurement outcomes are personal to the agent performing the action. 4) The quantum formalism is normative rather than descriptive. 5) Unitary evolution too expresses an agent's degrees of belief. 6) Even probability-one assignments are judgments without ontic content. 7) Subjective certainty about what an outcome will be does not negate that unperformed measurements have no outcomes. And, 8) quantum theory is a single-user theory for each of us.

Fuchs, Christopher and Andrei Khrennikov. Quantum Information Revolution. Foundations of Physics. 50/12, 2020. The University of Massachusetts, Boston and Linnaeus University, Sweden theoretical physicists introduce a special issue which is mostly a 21st century retrospect of the Quantum Bayesian, aka QBism, endeavor to appreciate and factor in the participatory presence of late observers such as ourselves. As this reconception goes forward, within its universe to human trajectory it is vital to understand our phenomenal agency.

Fuchs, Christopher and Blake Stacey. QBism: Quantum Theory as a Hero’s Handbook. arXiv:1612.07308. UM Boston physicists, with colleagues, continue their efforts toward a 21st century synthesis of quantum phenomena with J. A. Wheeler’s participatory universe via Bayesian probability methods (search eprint site). The endeavor, mainly conceived and prolifically advanced by Fuchs, is gaining validity and supporters such as David Mermin, along with Hans von Baeyer’s book (2016) by this title. The incentive and insight is that our late human presence and agency may gain a deep significance by way of an observation and recognition of physical cosmic phenomena. But by way of the second quote, one may wonder if a “heroine’s” integral, organic vision is also needed for the full picture and story. See also by CAF the paper Notwithstanding Bohr, the Reasons for QBism at 1705.03483.

This paper represents an elaboration of the lectures delivered by CAF) at the International School of Physics "Enrico Fermi" in Varenna, Italy, July 2016. Topics include the meaning of subjective probability; no-cloning, teleportation, and quantum tomography from the subjectivist Bayesian perspective; the message QBism receives from Bell inequality violations (namely, that nature is creative); the import of symmetric informationally complete (SIC) quantum measurements for the technical side of QBism; quantum cosmology QBist-style; and a potential meaning for the holographic principle within QBism. (Abstract)

May not the creatia of a quantum observer’s actions likewise be such additions to the universe as to enhance its total value? And on this view, is not the QBist quantum observer—the agent—a kind of superhero for the universe as a whole, making extra things happen wherever and whenever he is called to duty? (4, Figure 1)

The universe, far from being one big nonlocal block, should be thought of as a thriving community of connubial, but otherwise autonomous entities. (13) Certainly QBism has creation going on all the time and evertywhere; quantum measurement (observer participation) is just about an agent hitching a ride and partaking that ubiquitous process. (32)

Gould, Roy. Universe in Creation: A New Understanding of the Big Bang and the Emergence of Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018. A Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer and educator surveys cosmic and human evolution, but within a minority vista. It opens with a question by John Archibald Wheeler Is the universe so set up from the beginning, that it is guaranteed to produce intelligent life at some long-distant point in its history to be? (8) A participatory universe with an informational Bit to It trajectory courses through the text, along with Andrei Linde’s ascendant consciousness. Gould surmises early on: … the available evidence suggests the universe may well be set up for the emergence of intelligent Life. (11) He is aware this is counter to the pointless accident crowd whereof people are not “written in” (which other reviewers chide him for). But he further braces with a notice of much fractal self-similarity and a convergent evolution. All told, the effort is a good example of how a change in mindset and perspective, keeping hope alive, can shifts from nothing to something, a phenomenal genesis that seems to require our witness and acclaim.

We know the universe has a history, but does it also have a story of self-creation to tell? Yes, in Roy Gould’s account. He offers a compelling narrative of how the universe―with no instruction other than its own laws―evolved into billions of galaxies and gave rise to life, including humans who have been trying for millennia to comprehend it. Far from being a random accident, the universe is hard at work, extracting order from chaos. Making use of the best current science, Gould turns the universe on its head. The cosmos expands inward, not outward. And the universe seems to defy entropy as it becomes more ordered. Universe in Creation explores whether the emergence of life, rather than being a mere afterthought, may be written into the most basic laws of nature.

Goyal, Philip. From Information Geometry to Quantum Theory. New Journal of Physics. 12/023012, 2010. In this online journal of the Institute of Physics IOP, a Perimeter Institute physicist contends, by way of usual dense, cross-referenced, mathematics, that while quantum formalisms are a deep arbiter of reality, the approach has been impeded by not adequately recognizing nature’s fundamental semiotic quality.

In this paper, we show how information geometry, the natural geometry of discrete probability distributions, can be used to derive the quantum formalism. The derivation rests upon three elementary features of quantum phenomena, namely complementarity, measurement simulability, and global gauge invariance. When these features are appropriately formalized within an information geometric framework, and combined with a novel information-theoretic principle, the central features of the finite-dimensional quantum formalism can be reconstructed. (023012)

Haken, Hermann and Juval Portugali, eds. Special Issue “Information and Self-Organization II.”. Entropy. Online September, 2019. The lead Stuttgart University physicist, now in his 93rd year, is a premier pioneer of complex system theories since the 1970s. He again joins with the Tel Aviv University geographer to provide a space for these vital studies. The closing date for entries is January 31, 2021.

In the first Special Issue — “Information and Self-Organization” — (Haken and Portugali 2016), the aim was to deal with the different ways processes of self-organization are linked with the various forms of information. In the present Special Issue — “Information and Self-Organization II” — the aim is to extend the discussion by adding studies exploring further aspects and domains of information and self-organization, such as principles of self-organization based on information theory, social neurology, and coordination dynamics, the ‘free energy principle’, or their conjunction, and special topics such as cities, language, economy, culture, and society as self-organizing systems, etc.

Hoehn, Phillipp. Reflections on the Information Paradigm in Quantum and Gravitational Physics. arXiv:1706.06882. We cite this posting by an Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences physicist as another instance of the 2000s – 2010s conceptual revision as this foundational realm becomes distinguished by a textual, prescriptive essence. With some 100 references it is a collaborative work in progress whence sortings and clarifications of abstract terminologies is a main aspect, e.g. first and second quote.

We reflect on the information paradigm in quantum and gravitational physics and on how it may assist us in approaching quantum gravity. We begin by arguing, using a reconstruction of its formalism, that quantum theory can be regarded as a universal framework governing an observer's acquisition of information from physical systems taken as information carriers. We continue by observing that the structure of spacetime is encoded in the communication relations among observers and more generally the information flow in spacetime. Combining these insights with an information-theoretic Machian view, we argue that the quantum architecture of spacetime can operationally be viewed as a locally finite network of degrees of freedom exchanging information. (Abstract excerpt)

2. Quantum theory from rules on information acquisition In this section, we shall argue that quantum theory can be understood as a law book, governing an observer’s acquisition of information from physical systems. The idea behind this is not new. It appears in various guises in various informational interpretations of quantum theory, such as Hartle’s interpretation [3], Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics [4], the Brukner-Zeilinger interpretation [5–7], QBism [8], and many others. However, here we shall restrict attention to a reconstruction of quantum theory [9–11] which manifests this perspective perhaps most concretely. (3)

Jaeger, Gregg. Quantum Information: An Overview. Berlin: Springer, 2007. A Boston University physicist describes qubits, measurements, nonlocality, classical and quantum communications, entanglement, multipartite systems, decoherence, computations, algorithms, and more as this deepest, arcane realm gains novel, useable 21st century qualities.

This book is a comprehensive yet concise overview of quantum information science, which is a rapidly developing area of interdisciplinary investigation that now plays a significant role in physics, information technology and engineering. It is a handy reference for practitioners and students covering quantum mechanics, quantum key distribution, quantum computation and quantum communication, as well as explicating foundational issues of these topics. Specific protocols for quantum coding, quantum teleportation, quantum key distribution, quantum data compression and entanglement purification are discussed, as are quantum algorithms, including the Deutsch-Jozsa, Shor and Grover algorithms.

Josephson, Brian. Biological Observer-Participation and Wheeler’s ‘Law without Law.’. arXiv:1108.4860. Online October 2011, the Cambridge University, Nobel laureate, physicist philosopher continues his project to recast science, and the resultant cosmos, from dead to alive, from vested mechanist reduction to openings to its fundamental biological fertility. Hard to say, difficult to carry off, but significantly, bravely, going forward with this imperative correction. Once again, John Archibald Wheeler’s self-selecting model is most apt. And as many have tried to express, nature is to be seen as deeply textual in kind, here in a semiotic way. A further clue is the fractal self-similarity of life’s emergence.

It is argued that at a sufficiently deep level the conventional quantitative approach to the study of nature faces difficult problems, and that biological processes should be seen as more fundamental, in a way that can be elaborated on the basis of Peircean semiotics and Yardley’s Circular Theory. In such a world-view, Wheeler’s observer-participation and emergent law arise naturally, rather than having to be imposed artificially. This points the way to a deeper understanding of nature, where meaning has a fundamental role to play that is invisible to quantitative science. (Abstract, 1)

The idea that nature at some deeper level has biological aspects is not fundamentally absurd, and has been previously explored by authors such as (Lee) Smolin and (Harold) Pattee. The above analysis has explored some aspects of the ‘biological logic’ applicable to such a scenario, in particular the mechanics of development, which could lead to what might be termed ‘extended mind’. (8)

Krizek, Gerd. The Conception of Reality in Quantum Mechanics. arXiv:1708.02148. We cite this paper by a University of Vienna postdoc because after a 36 page review of Reality in Contemporary Physics, Philosophy and QM, it goes on to a cogent appraisal of Quantum Bayesianism (QBism), not easy to do, which leads to proposal of a “doxastic structural realism.” To wit, a Greek word to represent how relative “beliefs” by curious agents may succeed by way of better guesses.

Lewis-Swan, Robert, et al. Dynamics of Quantum Information. Nature Reviews Physics. 1/8, 2019. We cite this entry by University of Colorado, Center for Theory of Quantum Matter physicists in coauthor Ana Maria Rey’s group (second quote) as one more good example of these revolutionary quantum frontiers. As entries herein note, referrals to strange intractability are gone, rather this phenomena with its special properties is can lately be treated and availed as another accessible, macro complex realm, similar to everywhere else.

The ability to harness the dynamics of quantum information and entanglement is vital to the development of quantum technologies and the study of complex quantum systems. On the theoretical side, this is a topical field helping us to unify and confront common problems in physics, quantum statistical mechanics and cosmology. Experimentally, an ability to now manipulate neutral atoms and trapped ions help reveal their quantum dynamics. Here, we discuss progress in characterizing quantum entanglement and information scrambling in quantum many-body systems. The level of control over both the internal and external degrees of freedom of individual particles in these systems serves to join entanglement and thermodynamics, and the information transport and computational complexity of interacting systems. (Abstract)

My research interests are in the scientific interface between atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics and quantum information science. Specifically, I seek to develop new techniques for controlling quantum systems and then using them in applications ranging from quantum simulations/information to time and frequency standards. My group wants to engineer controllable quantum systems capable to mimic desired real materials as well as to create advanced and novel measurement techniques to probe atomic quantum systems at the fundamental level. (Ana Maria Rey)

Lewton, Thomas. Black Holes will Eventually Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue. Quanta. March 7, 2023. A science writer describes the novel physicist theories of Daine Danielson and Robert Wald, University of Chicago, and Gautom Satishchandran, Princeton University, which are seen to accord with John Wheeler’s 1970’s participatory model, who was then Wald’s doctoral advisor back then, see quote below. The main reference in the latest verbiage is Killing Horizon Decohere Quantum Superpositions by the authors at arXiv:2301.00026.

At Princeton University in the early 1970s the physicist John Wheeler would draw a big “U” at seminars. The letter’s left tip represented the beginning of the universe, where everything was uncertain with quantum possibilities. The letter’s right tip, sometimes adorned with an eye, depicted an observer looking backward, so as to bring the left side of the U into existence. In this “participatory universe,” as he called it, the cosmos expanded and cooled around the U, forming structures and eventually creating human-like witnesses with measuring apparatus. He would say things like “No phenomenon is a true phenomenon until it’s observed.’”

Into these 2020s as we study how quantum theory behaves on the horizon of a black hole, Wald and his collaborators have calculated a new effect that is suggestive of a participatory universe. The mere presence of a black hole, they’ve found, is enough to turn a particle’s hazy “superposition” being in multiple potential states into a well-defined reality. When Wheeler first drew the “big U” in the 1970s, Wald said that the idea struck me as not that solidly grounded.” And now? “A lot of the stuff he did was enthusiasm which later turned out to be really on the mark.” “He saw himself as holding out a lamp light to illuminate possible paths for other people to follow.” (Lewton, et al)

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