D4 S1 Don Page - Possibilities for Probabilities
Okay, so welcome, everybody. I suggest we start the session. So
it's my honor to introduce the first speaker.
Yeah, thank you. It's, it's a great joy to be back here. It's
my fifth trip, trip to Israel. I think I first went to conference
79 to 80 about
well, some quantum cosmology stuff. Jim Hartle was giving a
talk about and he first talked about the Hartle-Hawking
no-boundary wave function. And then he decided he was going to
talk about some others. He said, well, the Hartle-Hawking one is
an ordained by God. So let's also consider another one. So I
spoke up and said, well, if it's not ordained by God, does that
mean it's not correct? And then Stephen Hawking spoke up and
said, it's the only one not ordained by God. So anyway, I
don't know. Okay, and then this anyway, just a scene from a top
of Mount Temple, which is near not about five hour, five hour
drive from Edmonton. So anyway, we got some nice scenery in
Alberta. So welcome to come sometime to the Canadian Rock.
Okay, today, I want to talk about
well, first mention what I call the complete theory of the
universe. But this is the same as what Eddie Chen was talking
about a strongly deterministic theory. It would not only give a
complete set of dynamical laws, what has been misleadingly
called the theory of everything, it's not until you get other
parts, but also the quantum state of the universe, which
Hartle-Hawking have made one proposal for it. And Eddie Chen
had some other proposals, and the so far unknown rules for
extracting the probabilities of observations from the quantum
state. I'm going to distinguish that from the probabilities of
the branches, which Everett and Hartle and Saunders and others
have have given for that I'm saying the probabilities of
observations is not the same because you can have in one
branch, you could have different numbers of one kind of
observation from another. So the probabilities of observation can
do can can differ. Now I'm going to propose a basic framework for
these rules. Rules, you could say of psychophysics, well, for
these rules that the measure for each observation is the
expectation value in the quantum state of the universe of a
corresponding positive quantum operator for each possible
observation, which I shall call an awareness operator. Now, one
needs to say what observations are, and I propose that they are
fundamentally sentient experiences, each being the
entirety of a conscious awareness, all at once
consciously aware of at once. And I often use conscious
perception as a synonym for sentient experience. So if I say
sentient experience, I mean the same as conscious perception, all
at once consciously aware of at once. And I shall point out, but
I don't have time in this talk to explain that for a large
universe with indistinguishable copies of observers, the quantum
awareness operators cannot be projection operators, as one
might have assumed from Born's rule. So Born's rule does not
work in a large universe, or as one of my papers had it, the
Born rule dies. Now, Bayer quantum theory describes the
universe in terms of quantum states, operators, expectation
values, wave functions, amplitudes, path integrals, etc.
But it is not by itself connect these to observations. So Bayer
quantum theory is not directly testable. To make comparison
with observation, Max Born proposed, suggested that the
wave function gives probabilities. Later, it was
proposed that the probabilities are given by the absolute
squares of amplitudes. And these can be taken to be the
expectation values of projection operators. So in this talk, I
shall take the mathematization of Born's rule to be the idea
that the probabilities of observations are given by the
expectation values of projection operators. So I'm going to
reject that view. But that's what I'm, if I if I say Born's
rule, I mean that expectation by that, that the that the
probabilities are given by the expectation by projection
operators, but I'm going to deny that that's the case. Okay, now
let's consider a Bayesian analysis for probabilities of
theories. So consider theories T sub i, that for each possible
observation, O sub k, each theory T sub i gives a
probability for that observation, P of, P of O sub, O
sub k, and that bar means given, given T sub i, given T sub i
what's the probability of the observation. Now to get to, but
we want the posterior probability, which is the
probability of the theory given the observation. And for that
we use, need to use Bayes' theorem. If we said, assigns
what seemed to be inevitably subjective prior probabilities,
P sub T to the theory C sub i, presumably higher for simpler
theories by Occam's razor. And if we use an observation O sub
k to test the theory, then P, the probability of the
observation given the theory is what's called the likelihood of
the theory. But remember, that's not the probability of the
theory. It's, it's called the likelihood, but it's the
probability of the observation given the theory. And by Bayes'
theorem, we can calculate the posterior probability of the
theory, the probability of the theory given the observation as
the product of the prior probability times the likelihood
and then, and then normalize by dividing that, that same
expression, but summed over all theories. So we would like to
get this posterior probability as high as possible by choosing
a simple theory for high prior probability, that gives a good
statistical fit to one's observation, so high, high
likelihood. Now, since a complete theory of the universe
should completely specify all properties of the universe, one
might think it has no room for probabilities between zero and
one. So all likelihoods would be zero or one. Then the posterior
probabilities of these theories, given the observation, okay,
would just be proportional to the prior probabilities of the
theories that give that observation as having one
instead of zero. But for observations, even though I'm a
theorist, I do think science is fundamentally, or maybe
primarily, I don't know, observational physics,
observational science, so I want observations to play a bigger
role. So we'd like a way of getting a range of likelihoods
between, between zero and one. So now, if the theories can give
normalizable measures for the observations, then the
normalized measures can be interpreted to be used as if
there are likelihoods that can vary between zero and one. So
even if this this complete theory determines everything, so
it's deterministic, there's no room for uncertainty or
probability within the whole theory. But if there are these
measures, they could be used as if they were the likelihood. So
in a classical theory, for example, the measures could be
functionals of the phase space trajectory, such as the amount
of time that a system spins in each different region of the
phase space. In quantum theory, the measures could be certain
functionals of the quantum states or maps from the quantum
states to non-negative, non-negative numbers. Now, let
me give another argument against likelihoods all zero or one. If
a specific theory leads to the definite existence of more than
one observation, O sub k, as indeed many worlds does, or even
the single universe does, because there's lots of
observations going on, one might be tempted to say that the
likelihood, the probability of the observation given the
theory is one, since it exists for all these observations. That
would give unit likelihood for any theory predicting the
definite existence of the particular actual observation
used to test the theory. However, this procedure, this
assumption would mean that you can construct a theory of
maximum likelihood, which is one, I mean, the likelihoods
can't be bigger than one, no matter what the observation
turns out, just by having the theory predict that all possible
observations definitely exist. But this seems to be too cheap,
supposedly explaining everything, but actually
explaining nothing. So I mean, some people say, well, the
multiverse, since everything exists, it explains why we see
it. No, we need more, we want, we want to get the probability
of our observation, and then multiply by the prior and get
the posterior probability, which it's not sufficient just to say
that the theory predicts that our observation definitely
exists. So therefore, I'm proposing the normalization
principle or meta theory, that for each theory T sub i gives
normalized, quote, probabilities are really measures, but quote
probabilities for the different possible observations or
predicts. So for each theory, the sum of these likelihoods
over all O sub k is unity. So there's a trade off between
prior probabilities and likelihoods. There's prior
probabilities for the theories, that's the intrinsic
plausibilities of them. Before, in this case, for the whole
universe, before you have any observations, which is really
impossible for us within the universe, then there's the
conditional probabilities or measures for observation given
the theory. So what are called likelihoods of the theory for
fixed observation, and then the posterior probability, the
probability of the theory given the observation proportional to
the prior probability times that and then of course, normalize.
So the prior probabilities are subjective, usually higher for
simpler theories. So in my mind, the highest prior probability
might be the theory T sub i, that nothing concrete or
contingent exists. But then since our observations are
certainly contingent, I mean, they don't logically need to
exist, then the simplest theory would predict that there are no
observations. So then the probability of the observation
would just be zero. And of course, that then, by this up
here, it leads to zero posterior probability. I think I can say
there's zero probability that there's zero probability that
nothing concrete exists. T sub 2 might be the theory that all
possible observations exist equally. But then since surely
there's an infinite number of possible observations, to
normalize it, you'd have to take the one divided by the number
and that gives zero and normalize. So that would be my
argument against, if you extended modal realism of David
Lewis and Novak or whoever else proposed that everything
logically possible actually exists, if you augment that by
saying that everything actually exists with equal measure, all
possible observations, then this rules it out, because it says
that the probability is diluted among an infinite number. So
there's zero likelihood for any, for our observation. Now, the
other extreme would be a maximal likelihood theory, giving the
probability of the observation given the theory of one, for
one's observation of k. But of course, since it's both, since
I'm saying the sum over all observations has to be one, that
means there's no measure for any other observation. So it's saying
that only one observation exists. And this, if I put, if I
imagine my own observation, and it's got a lot of order and
complication, and there's a lot of details in it, it would, I
would think it would require a very complex theory to predict
that only my observation exists and not any, not any other ones,
not any of yours, or not any of my mind that I think I had in
the past, and so on. So, okay, so that would, that's, that
would, I would assign that an extremely tiny prior probability
giving a very low posterior. So this is a trade off between
prior probabilities and likelihoods, that is between
intrinsic plausibilities and fit to observation. Okay, so
probabilities of observations, I'll take an Everettian view
that the wave function never collapses. So in that sense of
Everettian, at the end, I might ask you to see based on my talk,
whether you consider me an Everettian or not. But anyway,
for now, I'm Everettian as far as I believe there's no collapse
of the wave function, the wave function never changes. So in
the Heisen picture, there's only one single fixed quantum state
for the universe. And the universe might be a multiverse
might have different parts with different effective coupling
constants, and so on. I assume that instead of, quote, many
worlds are instead many different actually existing
observations or sentient experiences, O sub k. But they
have different positive measures, mu sub k, it depends
on its function of the O sub k, which are in some sense, how
much the various observations occur, but they're not determined
by just the contents of an observation. The measure of a
tooth, the sense of a toothache is not how painful it is or
anything. It's not the content, but it's a measure. It's kind of
a primitive concept. I don't have some other analogy. But I
mean, if you wanted to think of an analogy, not that I'm doing
it, but you might think that, okay, maybe God and his time is
is is thinking in a sequence of all the possible observations
that he the amount of time he spends on each one is is is
proportional to this measure. I'm not taking that picture
literally, but I'm saying the measure is kind of a primitive,
primitive notion here. So what the measure of observations, I
can't say it's it's like an electric field or a scalar field
or mass or energy or anything else. It's just a measure. It's
just a fundamental concept in here. Now for simplicity, well,
to avoid having to bend things, I'll show soon there's a
countable discrete set O sub k of observations. And the total
measure is normalized to unity for each possible complete
theory that gives the normalized measures for each for all
possible observations. So then in a Bayesian analysis, I shall
interpret the normalized measures, each theory as the
quote probability of that observation given the theory,
which for one's observation O sub k is the quote likelihood of
the theory. I'll use those as likelihood. Okay, now we get to
the my framework for what these what these measures are. The map
from the quantum state to the measures of observations could
be nonlinear. And I think in some sense, if you required some
definite proposal for what the what the branches are, that
would be nonlinear in the thing. So I think you'd end up with
nonlinear measures. But I'm going to assume a linear
relationship and what I call sensible quantum mechanics. I
also in a paper for layman, I called it mindless sensationalism
because it proposes what's fundamental is not minds. It's
not a many mind series like lower and others, but conscious
perceptions, which crudely might be, well, I stretched it to make
the title might be called sensations. Oh, of course, a
conscious perception includes more than just the sensations.
It has includes memories and emotions and thoughts and, you
know, a lot of other things besides sensation. But anyway,
just to get that phrase. Okay, so the measure for the
observation is the expectation that sigma is a quantum state
that gives expectation values to operators. So it's there for
each observation is a positive operator. And or I could just
say the operator, I can condense this to say a sub k is the
operator corresponding to that observation. And the brackets
are expectation by it's the expectation by most of K, which
is the same as this. So sigma is the quantum state of the
universe, interpreted as a positive linear functional of
quantum operators. And a sub k is a non negative awareness
operator corresponding to the operator observation or sentient
experience, or in other words, conscious perception of K. So
the quantum state of this could be a pure state, it could be a
mixed state given by density matrix, or it could be C star
algebra state, it basically just needs to give expectation values
of operators. And the awareness operators along with the linear
relation above and a complete description of this, the theory
would would also have to say what's the content of each of
these observations, they're all would all be given by this
complete theory. Of course, we don't have the theory, but I'm
trying to give a framework for what I would believe could be a
complete theory. Now I've shown elsewhere, I don't have time to
describe it here, Born's rule does not work in a universe
large enough that there may be identical copies of the observer
at different locations. If you have one here with a part with
spin up and another one with spin down, they should assign
probabilities between zero and one for that, because they're
not certain which one they are. But there's no projection
operator that would give that at least if you could allow fixing
the projection operator first and then and then having the
state change. In other words, I think it's what's called non
contextual, I guess, projection operator. Okay, so the failure
of Born's rule means that in this theory tasted by the
awareness operators whose expectation value in the
quantum state sigma, the value of the universe give the
probabilities or norm, quote probabilities or normalized
measures for observations of sentient experience as this
formula here, they cannot be projection operator. However,
they could be weighted sums or integrals over spacetime of
localized projection operators, p sub i, but depends on x that
denotes the location in the spacetime. Say on the brain
states there that would produce the observation. So if so part
of it, one of it might be a projection operator on what's
going on in my brain, and well, a suitable state of my brain
that would lead to my present conscious awareness, for
example. So now there is, okay, I would not expect it that the
theory to say exactly where each one of these is. So I'd expect
to be some integral or some it could be looking, you know,
maybe if it's looking in here, if that contributes a
significant part to the expectation by if it looks over
here, it would be, you know, exponentially enormously
suppressed. I mean, I suppose there's some quantum amplitude
for brain to appear here, both from brain, and so on, but very
negligible. And then so on and so on. But if you if I if I do
the integral overall space, eventually somewhere, if it
catches a brain somewhere, then it will get contribution there.
But now there is a problem because our universe seems to be
expanding exponentially or asymptotically exponentially
and make might go on forever. That in local quantum field
theory with definite globally hyperbolic spacetime, any
positive localized operator such as a localized projection
operator will have a strictly positive that is non zero, but
and non negative positive expectation value and any non
pathological quantum state including the vacuum. So such a
positive localized operators integrated with uniform weight
over a spacetime with infinite for volume, it will give an
awareness operator with infinite expectation value, I won't be
able to normalize. So integrating up over all these
regions, even though after the stars have all died out, and us
ordinary observers, or OOs as people call it have died out,
there's still in some region of space, it's even no matter how
empty, there's still possibility of a quantum fluctuation. So
this operator will have a positive expectation value, maybe
very small, maybe 10 to the minus some huge number, but non
zero. And if you integrate that over infinite for volume, you'll
get infinity. Now you can say, well, we'll cut it off at some
finite cutoff time T sub c, and then you normalize it. Then for
universe, it continues forever with a three volume bounded
below by positive value. So in other words, the four volume is
growing indefinitely, the intervals will be dominated by
times of the same order of magnitude as the cutoff time.
And so at these late times, the probability, if it's
sufficiently late, that the probability for four volume
ordinary observers is very low, then most of the measure will be
contributed by thermal or vacuum fluctuations, which are
so called Boltzmann brains. That is, Boltzmann brains will
dominate the measure for observations, if you put if you
just do a uniform integration over spacetime, and then cut it
off at some place and then normalize it after that. Now, if
Boltzmann brains dominate the measure for observations, one
might ask, so what? Couldn't it be their observations are those
of ordinary observance? Or couldn't be their observations
really are Boltzmann brains, but they look like things look
ordinary. However, my argument against that is that since
Boltzmann brain observations are produced mainly by thermal or
vacuum fluctuations, it would be expected only a very tiny
fraction of their measure would be for observations so ordered
as ours. It would be very rare for Boltzmann brain observation
to have all the order that I have in mind of seeing faces
that I recognize and correlate with memories of how I remember
you looking yesterday, or in some cases, even decades ago.
So anyway, so there's very tiny fraction of the ordered
Boltzmann brain probability plus the even smaller fraction of
ordered ordinary observer observations, assuming that
they're dominated by the Boltzmann brain, in comparison
with the dominant disorder Boltzmann brain would be only a
very tiny fraction of the measure of all observations.
That's the normalized probability of one of our
ordered observations, which we would use as the likelihood of
theory would be highly diluted by the other because remember,
I'm requiring that the sum of these of these measures adds up
to one. And so if there's if most of it is for the Boltzmann
brains, then it only leaves a small, well, most of it for the
disordered leaves only a very small part of the probability
for the ordered one. So be much smaller than alternative
theories in which Boltzmann brains do not dominate. So if
you could come up with alternative theories do not have
prior probabilities that are too small, they would dominate
the posterior probability over the naive ones that have this
Boltzmann brain domination.
Now another observation that other observations that seem at
least naively difficult to explain by Born's rule, include
our observation that we are humans rather than ants, despite
the much greater number of ants on Earth. Again, if that if each
ant had as much measure of consciousness as as we do, then
the probability would get diluted by all the the math, you
know, if we had to sum up the unity, and so we would be, you
know, it'd be improbable that we find ourselves to be human,
very important. Now, not as bad as the Boltzmann brain. I mean,
the ants don't outnumber as near as much as the volume of space
time, compared to the early time. So it's not near as severe
problem as that, but it still seems to be somewhat of a
problem. Okay, as we shall see, modification of Born's rule can
explain the probability of observation by copies of the
observers. Well, okay, I won't get into that part here, I
guess. But the fact that we apparently do not observe
ourselves to be Boltzmann brains is the fact that we do not
observe ourselves to be ants. However, it's not yet known when
the correct modifications are. So there's many logical
possibilities for the probability. I do think the
universe really does have one particular rule. It has one
thing and I'm conjecturing it has this this this form, but
exactly what the awareness operators are, I don't know. So
there's many logical, many possibilities that seem to be
logically possible. And it would, you know, of course, we
would like to learn which is the actually the correct one. So,
yeah, the main open question in the sensible quantum mechanics
framework in which the probabilities of observations
are the expectation values of positive awareness operators,
one corresponding to each observation is what these
awareness operators are. So this SQM framework does not assume
there's a space time. So it could be valid even in
formulations of quantum gravity when space time is not
fundamental. However, to kind of tie it a bit to what we
presently know, rather than what we don't yet know, if we if the
part of the quantum state that gives the dominant contribution
to expectation values of the awareness operators can lead to
an approximation of an effective space time or of a quantum
superposition of space times. One idea is that the
contribution to the expectation value of an awareness operator
from each space time in the superposition was first the
expectation by the existence of this space time that would be
similar to the probability for the branch, if each space time
has its own branch, multiplied by weighted sum or integral over
the space time of localized projection operators for each
region of the space time. So to avoid both the brain domination
and the sum, it seems necessary to choose weight factors that
get convergent integrals that are not dominated by the
asymptotically empty regions, where almost all observations
would be by bolts and brains. So for space time with preferred
spatial hyper surfaces, such as proper time t from a Big Bang,
or from a balanced minimal hyper surface, that each at each time
have finite tree volume, though perhaps tending to infinity
asymptotically with time. One simple procedure for avoiding
divergent integrals over space time is to divide the
contribution over each of these preferred spatial hyper surface
by its tree volume. Then that gives the taking the contribution
each time to be the volume average of the expectation by
the localized operators there. So that would mean that that
each time later would would would only give a finite and at
late times a very tiny contribution to the awareness
operators. But there's still a problem with the thing diverging
if you integrate from t going to infinity. So here I propose
something even more ad hoc, to replace the integral over dt
which diverges by an integral over dt over 1 plus t squared. I
call this Agnesi weighting, because that curve, well it's
the Lorentz line shape or the Cauchy distribution, but in old
times it was called, the curve is called the Witch of Agnesi.
I'll tell you later the story about how I got the thing named
Witch, but but anyway, Agnesi was a female mathematician, but
there's no suggesting that she was a witch, but but the curve
got called the Witch of Agnesi. Well, I can say it's due to a
confusion between the Italian words for witch and for curve.
So I guess witch is a twisted person. So I guess the words I
guess were similar. I don't know Italian. Okay, now this last
part is admittedly ad hoc. The other is a little bit ad hoc,
but less so than this. So it should be a more elegant
formation should be found. So then to explain why we observe
ourselves to be humans, despite the much greater number of ants
it seems plausible to postulate that human brains are much more
efficient in producing sentient experiences than ants. So the
total probability of human conscious perception is not far
below that of ants to make human observations much less
probable. If it's just half, if it's half and half, I don't care,
doesn't make much difference if the probability is reduced by a
factor of two, but if it's reduced by a factor of millions,
then I start worrying about it. Therefore, one might postulate
that the localized projection operators the human brain can
figure should be much given weights, W sub k, then the
localized projection operators, the ant brain configuration,
perhaps part of this weighting factor should be the complexity
of the corresponding human brains. So it's human brains
seem to be much more complex than ant brains. But I'm
skeptical of the process is simply getting high complexity
or high information processing is itself sufficient for getting
large weight multiplying the corresponding localized
projection operator for the corresponding awareness
operator. So just making a computer as complex as the human
brain, I don't think that that implies it's conscious, or it
has a significant measure of consciousness. I think
everything has some exponentially tiny measure of
consciousness, because there's always some some amplitude for
the region in there to be a human brain configuration. Okay,
so to suppose the expectation value of a given space time is
E sub L, is S sub L is E sub L, that might be if you if you say
that each different space time is one of the branches, then
that might be the probability for the branch. And that in this
space time, the expectation value of the localized
projection operator is this, that the expectation value as a
function of the space time position, goes further that this
space time, the weight factor for the integration over four
volume is capital W, the function, for example, it could
be one divided by the volume of the space at that time, and one
plus t squared to avoid the integration, and that the
intrinsic weight factors for the observation is little w sub k,
that's the one that makes humans better than ants, then the
relativity of probability could be the relative that's before I
normalize it, the weight factor for human ones, a sum over all
the space times with their expectation values, and then
over each space time, an integral over the four volume,
but then with this weight, this position dependent, but
diffeomorphism invariant, I mean, it's, it depends on the
actual properties of the space time. So it's diffeomorphism
invariant, but it's a non local, because it depends on, for
example, the time since the Big Bang or the volume, this, this
weight factor, and then the, and then the, the, the density of
the expectation value. Okay, so then this formula shows because
we don't know what the w, little w is, or the, well, the ELs,
maybe you can calculate and the capital W is. So there's a lot
of logical freedom in the modification of Born's rule for
cosmology, even within the restrictions of sensible quantum
mechanics, with the relative probabilities of observations or
expectation values of the quantum operators, or the
awareness operators corresponding to the
observation. There'd be even more logical freedom if you
abandon this and allowed the relative probabilities to be
nonlinear in the expectation values, such as these
expectation values raised to a power s, that is different from
unity, or to be even more general nonlinear functionals of
the quantum state. So therefore, in sensible quantum mechanics,
what can be used instead of, quote, probabilities of
observations are instead measures for many actually
existing sentient experiences, each given by the expectation
value of the quantum state of, in the quantum state of the
universe of a corresponding positive awareness operator.
The awareness operators cannot be projection operators as
suggested by Born's rule. But in a spacetime picture, they
might be given by a suitably weighted integral of localized
projection operators within each spacetime, and then summed
over spacetimes weighted with their quantum expectation
values. There's considerable logical freedom in these
weightings, so we are far from knowing what's actually the
case for our universe or multiverse. So this talk was
largely a summary of this paper. And I was grateful to
discussions with Sean Carroll and his idea of the Huff
where some of these ideas were developed. And I want to ask
you whether he's right in saying this, he emphasized that by
sensible quantum mechanics framework with the relative
probability of observations being the expectation values of
positive awareness operators is not ever ready in quantum
mechanics, which he says assumes a particular branching of the
quantum state and probabilities of observations depending on
this branching. And that would be highly nonlinear functionals
of the quantum state, you have to specify how the branching is
going. So, okay, so that's my conclusion. I might ask, how
many of you think, having heard these sort of radical ideas, or
whatever, how many would say that I'm an Everettian? How many
was, okay, one, two, three, four, four, four, yes. Or how
many would say I'm not an Everettian?
One, maybe one.
Okay, okay, well, I hope people excuse me if sometimes I say I'm
an Everettian, I'm certainly never an Everettian, this is no
collapse. And the other thing, of course, I'd certainly
appreciate it. I know these ideas are very speculative, and
they're not going to be able to be fully developed, you know,
probably within my lifetime. Anyway, but if anybody knows of
some way to show that they're definitely wrong, I would
definitely appreciate being shown if, you know, if
something is, if something is wrong, well, and any suggestions
on how to go further in this direction. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
There is one thing which I like very much, what I believe we
need formalism, the first year assumption, there is no
collapse. And then we need additional rules, which is
connected to our experience. Right? Which I think you believe
is, you find it as a theory.
As a what?
Theory, you have some theory, your theory is this rule.
The theory, the theories which you discuss, different
theories, these are these rules connecting the universal
functional experience. And then we need this awareness, right?
But what I think all your troubles, there is a standard,
I am a local person, I need only local awareness operation. And
I think in one moment, you said, if you put it local, then
everything is okay, there is no problem. There's no problem.
Just put it local. There is no awareness operator, it's
projection, of course, local projection, that I'm here, I
have particular experience. And this will help me in only the
special cases, when somehow I'm in the situation that I'm aware
where I was before, now I have two rooms to be, then I will
use my expectation here to make my prediction. And then if it's
local, there will be no problem with the boardroom, no problem
with everything. So just this, this idea that the beginning
you said your awareness operator is global, the same for
everyone. No, awareness operator should only for us, it's
subjective. So you have to make it very, very local. And then
and then of course, Ant will have his awareness operator, and
he will, he will use it, it will be a born rule, which is your
probably calculation will show that the born rule is the best.
This is a bit beside the point, just make it subjective for
every sentient being. Don't put it everywhere, don't make
integral, don't put this Boltzmann brain all over, they're
not important.
Well, partly this is motivated by problems in cosmology, the
measure problem in cosmology, how to get finite probabilities
for observations from in a multiverse, if the universe is a
multiverse, and you have different space times that have
infinite volume, how do you how do you, I mean, there's problem
of how you regularize that. And even if you said, well, we'll
take some some fixed for volume. But then if you compare it to
some other universe that has entirely different coupling
constants, what do you do? Well, maybe you could do it in plank
units and that. Anyway, it's they're very difficult problems.
And I think I'm not necessarily saying I'm going to be able to
solve these problems. But I think you need some framework
like this that in the to calculate because you'd like to
see what's the what's the probability of different
cosmological theories to predict our observations, not just
what's the probability that we get result A or result B from
some local experiment, I agree that the born rule is a very
good approximation for that sort of thing. Because these, you
know, this, this integral of the weight factor is not going to
change much on the on a human time, on a human time scale. But
but if we're interested in cosmological problems, of what's
the quantum state of the universe and, you know, and
what's it, which may have maybe a multiverse not only having
different Everett branches, but also different, different
effective coupling constants, then, you know, we we need more
to explain that. And I'm just trying to say this is a
framework for trying to explain it. Of course, it's not a
theory until we have the awareness operating.
So exactly, just to mention, there is this conference about
many words. And that's, and that is multiverse, cosmological
multiverse, which, you know, I also have many words, this
completely different story, different subject, and it seems
that you put them together. And then I think it's to be clean to
be separated clearly. What we discussed, we don't discuss
cosmological and other things. You say Born Rule is dead. This
is because you talk about multiverse, cosmological
multiverse. People talk about many words in one without
cosmology, as in it doesn't work, but your papers look like
the Born Rule died.
Well, it doesn't work.
It died.
Not it died.
Yeah, it died with composite, but you don't need but you only
need a single universe large enough, which had to be
enormously large to get, you know, copies of observers, and
then it doesn't work there.
Then it's, again, we need probability in each one of them.
This was a really rich and provocative talk. And there are
a lot of things that I want to ask you about, about the role of
sensation and the role of cosmological no hair theorems in
the cosmological setup you're using. But I think that would
that those are really long conversations. So I want to
actually have a follow up on what you just were one of the
things you were having said in response to love about them
about the measure problem, right? You don't just want to
normalize measure. You also want to be the case that that small
perturbations don't change, don't change measure very much.
So in some sense, you want something like a translation of
a measure, right? You also want to be the case that like large
measure corresponds to open sets in some reasonable topological
sense and small measure corresponds to meager sets or
something like that. So you also want to borrow measure. And you
also want these two to play nicely together. So what you
really want is a translation of a normal, that's not, I mean,
forget it, forget normalizable. But I mean, on these big spaces
you're talking about, there are there are very powerful theorems
that tell us that you just can't have a non trivial translation
So I'm, I'm, I'm very, I'm very skeptical of these kinds of
arguments in cosmological settings that say, well, we
don't know how to define a measure. Let's just assume there
is one. I don't think we are, I don't think it's legitimate to
say, let's assume there is one, given these very powerful
mathematical theorems that tell us there aren't, at least of the
kind we really want. So I think I think I really would like to
hear more about how you how you think we can get around these
Well, that was the thing. I'm assuming it's not translation
invariant, particularly in time.
No, I mean, I mean, translation invariant in the sense that when
I want to make small perturbations to my space time
model, so translation invariant in the space of models, not in
the space time, so that if I make a small perturbation and
get and get a model that is in some sense, very close to the
original one, I'm not, I'm not changing the measure.
Okay, I'm a little confused why I need that. If there's one
correct, if there's one correct theory, why can't you use, in
principle, the correct measure for that and not, you don't have
to worry about. In fact, I would I would hope that the ultimate
theory would not have any continuous parameters. String
theory doesn't have any continuous parameters. I would
hope that the ultimate theory doesn't have any continuous
parameters. So there's a discrete set of these of these
possible theories. So I don't think you have to worry about
small perturbations of the of the theory.
You don't even worry about that small changes in your awareness
operators to give you things that are closer measures?
You don't even want that?
Well, I, no, no, I'm not, I'm not denying that. But I, it
seems like that you're getting into a problem that, of course,
it's not normalizable if you have uniform over some infinite
space or something. And I'm saying, I'm saying that was the
point of these, these admittedly present, not very elegant
proposals. Well, the volume averaging is not too inelegant.
The easy weighting, of course, is it's just the simplest
function that gives a finite integral. So but those were
things that specifically designed to get to get the
measure of finite, even after integrating over infinite t.
There's something that, if we go back to the very beginning of
all this, that you put up that many people put up, I'm not
pointing you out. People do it all the time and put a Bayes
theorem. And you've got conditional probability of O on
T. And there's this idea that, well, gee, the P of O on T,
that's that I can kind of calculate. What I'm really
interested is, in some sense, P of T on O. Right. But Bayes
theorem is just a theorem about conditional probabilities. And
the O's and the T's are just letters. Now, what happens, I
think, is what also happens in the way you presented this,
in the normal sense of the theory, like Newtonian
mechanics is, say, with gravity is in the normal sense of the
theory. It does not assign any probability to any obstacle.
Because the theory just gives you the dynamics.
Right. See, I'm talking about a more complete theory.
It's inconsistent with the theory, no measurement, no
conscious means.
Yeah, that's precisely my point. That you not only need the
dynamical laws, you also need the quantum state and the rules
for extracting it. So the theory, in my sense, the
complete theory is not just the dynamical law. So Newton's
theory is not a complete theory.
But then Bayes theorem, as you've written, it doesn't
really apply. What, what Newtonian theory will give you
is something like conditional probability, or, as I said, two
balls to hit the ground together, conditional on the
theory and on the initial condition, which is earlier in
time, they will let go at the top of the tower. Now that
requires, and this is why I said, I didn't think you were
a many worlds person. That requires there being a temporal
transition from the initial condition. This is the way we do
experiments, right? Okay, I know this, this much about how
the experiment is set up. I have the theory, I use that now to
make a prediction about how the theory will come out. And that
requires, of course, that you have something like a branch,
even in standard Everett, you've got branches that connect the
state at one time to states at earlier times. Without that
branching, I don't even know how to make sense of a probability
like that, right? There's the Bell many worlds, where you're
kind of jumping around in those conditions. Okay, you know, so
I think there's just a tremendous amount that goes into
how we extract what we call predictions for observation,
maybe statistical for various reasons, from a theory that are
not represented well in Bayesian. And therefore, if you
start with Bayesian and say, well, I'm going to start with
that deterministic theory, I mean, you said it was a
deterministic theory, they're all ones and zeros. Well, no.
Even if you give me an initial, I mean, I don't know. So I think
the connection between that very first ansatz and the way
predictions are actually made and tested, there's a lot more
detail in there that is not represented.
Well, that admittedly, this is using Bayes theory for the for
the whole theory, not just for some conditional probability of
something, you know, within the universe. So admittedly, you
know, this is usually but I don't see any particular reason
why Bayes theorem couldn't be used for, for the, you know, for
piece of tea being the entire complete theory that completely
specifies everything and brand, you know, all the branches of
everything and, and, you know, when in all the all the
awarenesses. So I don't know if there's, if you have some strong
reason for saying that Bayes theorem, I agree, this is not
where it's usually used, usually it's used in, in partial, we
make some, some observation in our branch or something. And we
see something, and then we make some prediction, and then we
test it, we get conditional probabilities. I agree that this
is a much broader use of well, I don't know, it's broader, it's,
it's, it's a much more global use of it, because I'm applying
it to the, the, the complete theory out of us out of some
countable set of complete theory. Okay. Yes. Oh, the, you
know, the settings were this, and there were these currents
and right, right. Usually, that description is consistent with
many different descriptions at the fine grained physical level
that the theory operates on, like the Newtonian mechanics of
precise space. Okay, so what do I have to do, I go from the
initial description, I then go by some probabilistic map, from
that to a distribution over, say, phase space point, then I
use the theory to evolve those phase space points, maybe
deterministically, maybe stochastically. And then from
that, I extract a probabilistic prediction about the outcome.
Okay. And that's clearly what we have to be doing. And a lot of
probabilities get in there that don't even have to be
dynamical, right, going from the macro description of the
initial state, to the micro description that I need to feed
into the dynamics, then evolve it by the dynamics, then extract
from that a macro description. It's just there's a lot of, you
have to do all that stuff, to actually make predictions in the
way that nobody has ever said, Oh, this theory just says,
there's a probability of 8.5, that there'll be a sentient, you
know, a sentient experience of such and such a time, right?
Yeah, so I agree, if you want to do probably, I mean, once, say,
once you focus on a particular theory, and then you want to
test within it, you say, conditional upon my being aware
that I set up the apparatus and such and such, what's the
conditional probability that I got this result? So I could, I
could, I could put that in there, what I'd have to do is
then I'd have a particular theory, then I'd have the, I'd
have the probability of, of my of the observations in which I
have a memory of having set up the thing apparatus and such and
such a thing. And then so that that's a whole bunch of things
that have some probability. And then in the numerator, I take
the smallest set of perceptions where I perceive not only that
memory, but also a particular result of the experiment. So
it's true, you I could do something, I, in principle, I
could do something like that, once I have a theory for inside
the theory, here, I was doing it in just the broader sense of
trying to decide which of trying to get posterior probabilities
for the theory.
And indirectly related to that different way of asking Tim's
question in some ways. And what's, how would you think
about deriving just some sector of ordinary quantum mechanics on
this?
Sorry,
how would you think about deriving some ordinary section
of quantum mechanics? I mean, if this is a complete cosmological
theory, we'd better better be able to get out of it as
appropriate special case situations, mundane things like
two-spit experiments and magnetic moments. And there is
Tim says, the things we seem to want to get out would end up
being conditional probabilities, rather than unconditional
probabilities. I mean, I can, I can see the internal coherence
of the scheme, and I'm just trying to work out how to
relate it to the extent empirical data for quantum
mechanics.
Well, I think similarly, by I was trying to answer Tim that
you could, if you did it in this scheme, then you'd have an,
you'd have some observation, well, you do the experiment, and
then because you want to be aware of the result, at the end,
you'd assume that you're aware of the result, but also how you
set it up. And then and then so so there's a whole, there's a
set of different because I could be aware of other things, too,
like whether I'm hungry or not. So there's going to be, there's
going to be a measure of a whole bunch of things that, you know,
they include the awareness of how to set up. So that's good.
That's going to give me, you know, some measure in the
bottom. And then on the top, I put the, the, where I also have
aware of the results of the experiment.
You're sort of flattening the conditionals down to absolute,
absolute probabilities and memories.
Yeah, yeah. So so so yeah, yeah.
Thank you very much.

