Universe is a computer-generated simulation-A Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

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A Cybernetic Interpretation of Quantum MechanicsRoss RhodesRhodesRAbstractThis paper surveys evidence and arguments for the proposition that the universe as we know it is not a physical, material world but a computer-generated simulation -- a kind of virtual reality. The evidence is drawn from the observations of natural phenomena in the realm of quantum mechanics. The arguments are drawn from philosophy and from the results of experiment. While the experiments discussed are not conclusive in this regard, they are found to be consistent with a computer model of the universe. Six categories of quantum puzzles are examined: quantum waves, the measurement effect (including the uncertainty principle), the equivalence of quantum units, discontinuity, non-locality, and the overall relationship of natural phenomena to the mathematical formalism. Many of the phenomena observed in the laboratory are puzzling because they are difficult to conceptualize as physical phenomena, yet they can be modeled exactly by mathematical manipulations. When we analogize to the operations of a digital computer, these same phenomena can be understood as logical and, in some cases, necessary features of computer programming designed to produce a virtual reality simulation for the benefit of the user.© copyright 1999-2001 by Ross Rhodes.Ver. 2.0 July 11, 2001http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/argument/Argument4.PDFI. The Appearance of WavesA. Waves with no medium, as though they were mathematical formula onlyIn our everyday experience, waves are formed by motion within a medium. Waves come in different varieties. Ocean waves and sound waves roll outward from a source through the medium of water and air. A violin string waves back and forth along its length, held in place at the two ends of the medium, which is the violin string. A jerk on a loose rope will send a wave rolling along its length.In 1802, Thomas Young demonstrated fairly convincingly that light had the properties of a wave. He did this by shining light through two slits, and noting that an interference pattern formed on a projection screen. Interference patterns are one of the signature characteristics of waves: two wave crests meeting will double in size; two troughs meeting will double in depth; a crest and a trough meeting will cancel eachother out to flatness. As wave ripples cross, they create a recognizable pattern, exactly matching the pattern on Young's projection screen. If light were made of particles, they would travel in straight lines from the source and hit the screen in two places.If light traveled as waves, they would spread out, overlap, and form a distinctive pattern on the screen.For most of the 19th century, physicists were convinced by Young's experiment that light was a wave. By implication, physicists were convinced that light must be traveling through some medium. The medium was dubbed "luminiferous ether," or just ether. Nobody knew exactly what it was, but the ether had to be there for the unshakably logical reason that without some medium, there could be no wave.In 1887, Albert Michelson and E.W. Morley demonstrated fairly convincingly that there is no ether. This seemed to imply that there is no medium through which a light "wave" travels, and so there is no medium that can even form a light "wave." If this is true, how can we see evidence of waves at all? Ordinary waves of whatever sort require a medium in order to exist. The Michelson-Morley experiment should have had the effect of draining the bathtub: what kind of waves can you get with an empty bathtub? Yet the light waves still seemed to show up in the Young double slit experiment.Without the medium, there is no wave. Only a *klunk*.In 1905, Albert Einstein showed that the mathematics of light, and its observed constancy of speed, allowed one to make all necessary calculations without ever referring to any medium. He therefore did away with the ether as a concept in physics because it had no mathematical significance. He did not, however, explain how a wave can exist without a medium. From that point on, physicists simply put the question on the far back burner. As Michio Kaku puts it, "over the decades we [physicists] have simply gotten used to the idea that light can travel through a vacuum even if there is nothing to wave."[1]The matter was further complicated in the 1920s when it was shown that objects -- everything from electrons to the chair on which you sit -- exhibit exactly the same wave properties as light, and suffer from exactly the same lack of any medium.The First Computer Analogy. One way to resolve this seeming paradox of waves without medium is to note that there remains another kind of wave altogether. A wave with which we are all familiar, yet which exists without any medium in the ordinary sense. This is the computer-generated wave. Let us examine a computer-generated sound wave.Imagine the following set up. A musician in a recording studio plays a synthesizer, controlled by a keyboard. It is a digital synthesizer which uses an algorithm (programming) to create nothing more than a series of numbers representing what a sampling of points along the desired sound wave would look like if it were played by a "real" instrument. The synthesizer's output is routed to a computer and stored as a series of numbers. The numbers are burned into a disk as a series of pits that can be read by a laser -- in other words, a CD recording. The CD is shipped to a store. You buy the CD, bring it home, and put it in your home entertainment system, and press the play button. The "music" has traveled from the recording studio to yourliving room. Through what medium did the music wave travel? To a degree, you might say that it traveled as electricity through the wires from the keyboard to the computer. But you might just as well say it traveled by truck along the highway to the store. In fact, this "sound wave" never existed as anything more than a digital representation of a hypothetical sound wave which itself never existed. It is, first and last, a string of numbers. Therefore, although it will produce wave like effects when placed in your stereo, this wave never needed any medium other than the computer memory to spread itself all over the music loving world. As you can tell from your CD collection, computers are very good at generating, storing, and regenerating waves in this fashion.Calculations from an equation [here, y = sin (x) + sin (2.5 x)] produce a string of numbers, i.e., 1, 1.5, 0.4, 0, 0.5, 1.1, 0.3, -1.1, -2, -1.1, 0.1, and 0.5.These numbers can be graphed to create a picture of the wave that would be created by combining (interfering) the two simple sine waves.By analogizing to the operations of a computer, we can do away with all of the conceptual difficulties that have plagued physicists as they try to describe how a light wave -- or a matter wave -- can travel or even exist in the absence of any medium.B. Waves of calculation, not otherwise manifest, as though they really were differential equationsThe more one examines the waves of quantum mechanics, the less they resemble waves in a medium. In the 1920s, Ernst Schrodinger set out a formula which could "describe" the wave-like behavior of all quantum units, be they light or objects. The formula took the form of an equation not so very different from the equations that describe sound waves or harmonics or any number of things with which Isaac Newton would have been comfortable. For a brief time, physicists sought to visualize these quantum waves as ordinary waves traveling through some kind of a medium (nobody knew what kind) which somehow carried the quantum properties of an object. Then Max Born pointed out something quite astonishing: the simple interference of these quantum waves did not describe the observed behaviors; instead, the waves had to be interfered and the mathematical results of the interference had to be further manipulated (by "squaring" them, i.e., by multiplying the results by themselves) in order to achieve the final probability characteristic of all quantum events. It is a two-step process, the end result of which requires mathematical manipulation. The process can not be duplicated by waves alone, but only by calculations based on numbers which cycled in the manner of waves.From Born, the Schrodinger wave became known as a probability wave (although actually it is a cycling of potentialities which, when squared, yield a probability). Richard Feynman developed an elegant model for describing the amplitude (height or depth representing the relative potentiality) of the many waves involved in a quantum event, calculating the interference of all of these amplitudes, and using the final result to calculate a probability. However, Feynman disclaimed any insight into whatever physical process his system might be describing. Although his system achieved a result that was exactly and perfectly in accord with observed natural processes, to him it was nothing more than calculation. The reason was that, as far as Feynman or anybody else could tell, the underlying process itself was nothing more than calculation.The Second Computer Analogy. A process that produces a result based on nothing more than calculation is an excellent way to describe the operations of a computer program. The two-step procedure of the Schrodinger equation and the Feynman system may be impossible to duplicate with physical systems, but for the computer it is trivial. That is what a computer does -- it manipulates numbers and calculates. (As we will discuss later, the computer must then interpret and display the result to imbue it with meaning that can be conveyed to the user.)Wave summary. Quantum mechanics involves "waves" which cannot be duplicated or even approximated physically; but which easily can be calculated by mathematical formula and stored in memory, creating in effect a static map of the wave shape. This quality of something having the appearance and effect of a wave, but not the nature of a wave, is pervasive in quantum mechanics, and so is fundamental to all things in our universe. It is also an example of how things which are inexplicable in physical terms turn out to be necessary or convenient qualities of computer operations.II. The Measurement EffectMore-Our universe is a computer-generated simulationhttp://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/argument/Argument4.html