Fortune telling, free will
Today is Chinese New Year. I feel inspired to write a piece about my musings about time. Most of these ideas are not mine, but taken from several sources. But this is not a scientific paper, so I can't be bothered with citations.
I used to think that fortune telling is useless. Think about it - when someone tells you your fortune, it is either correct or incorrect. If it is correct, then you cannot change it anyway, so what is the point. If it is incorrect, then it is even more pointless.
But what if the fortune teller MAY be right?
At first glance, this statement sounds nonsense. For anything may be right. It may rain tomorrow. Or it may not. Etc... OK. But what if he says - there is a 90% chance that it will rain, and 10% chance that it will not? Now that is more useful, right? And even more useful - the possibility of rain will decrease if you do such and such...
And with that in mind, I present my postulates:
Postulate #1: Free will exists.
Postulate #2: The entire space-time of the universe can be described as an entangled quantum mechanical wave function.
By definition, a postulate is something that cannot be proven, but just assumed to be true. Many physical theories have them. Though unprovable, these postulates need to "make sense". And so people do things to justify them, by doing experiments for instance.
So why does free will exist? Because I believe love exist. We are alive so that we can learn to love. And love cannot be compelled or forced. 感情是不能勉强的。 Forced love is not love. If free will does not exist, that means in our lifetime it has already been decided that we will marry such and such a person, etc... If so, there is no such thing as love, for how can love be decided before hand? Hence, free will exist (sounds flakely, but then, postulates cannot be "proven" anway, so...).
If there is free will, then there is no way that the future can be pre-determined? Well, it seems more complicated than that.
Quantum entanglement was observed between small systems, eg. 2 electrons or 2 photons with spins. When a spin of a photon is measured, it will instantly determine the spin of another entangled photon, which can be a long distance away. This has been demonstrated for distances up to a mile. It used to be assumed that quantum effects cannot be observed in macroscopic systems, but recently objects as large as C60 molecules are shown to be quantum mechanical. Nobody really knows now what is the limit where quantum effects end.
Enter my second postulate - that the WHOLE universe can be described by a quantum mechanical wave function, and everything in the universe is entangled. After all, the whole universe starts from a point during the big bang, and we were all at the same point in space and time. If we existed as an entangled state then, we can still be entangled.
Which means - everything that you say or do will affect everything else in the universe. You are the universe, and the universe is you. (Hmmm, what does that mean? Sounds like quantum weirdness)
Alright, back to the point about time. What distinguishes the past from the future? If I accept that the universe is quantum mechanical, then I can provide a mechanism. It is known that when a measurement happens, the wavefunction collapses. So we know for certain what the state of the system is at that time. Hence, the past refers to all the parts of the wavefunction that has collapsed, ie. has already happened, and cannot be change.
But from this point onwards, the wavefunction evolves. All we can know is the probabilities of certain things that can happen in the future. But because the wavefunction is well determined NOW, it is not totally random what can happen in the future. And because we are part of the entangled wave function, what we do can influence what will happen. So free will prevails.
Which means: it is possible to know (in principle) various future outcomes with their probabilities, and it is also possible to change these outcomes and their probabilities.
Phew! That was a lot of stuff. I don't quite understand all that, but somehow, I FEEL that is how the universe operates. I continue to think and ponder. Perhaps someday I will understand.
I used to think that fortune telling is useless. Think about it - when someone tells you your fortune, it is either correct or incorrect. If it is correct, then you cannot change it anyway, so what is the point. If it is incorrect, then it is even more pointless.
But what if the fortune teller MAY be right?
At first glance, this statement sounds nonsense. For anything may be right. It may rain tomorrow. Or it may not. Etc... OK. But what if he says - there is a 90% chance that it will rain, and 10% chance that it will not? Now that is more useful, right? And even more useful - the possibility of rain will decrease if you do such and such...
And with that in mind, I present my postulates:
Postulate #1: Free will exists.
Postulate #2: The entire space-time of the universe can be described as an entangled quantum mechanical wave function.
By definition, a postulate is something that cannot be proven, but just assumed to be true. Many physical theories have them. Though unprovable, these postulates need to "make sense". And so people do things to justify them, by doing experiments for instance.
So why does free will exist? Because I believe love exist. We are alive so that we can learn to love. And love cannot be compelled or forced. 感情是不能勉强的。 Forced love is not love. If free will does not exist, that means in our lifetime it has already been decided that we will marry such and such a person, etc... If so, there is no such thing as love, for how can love be decided before hand? Hence, free will exist (sounds flakely, but then, postulates cannot be "proven" anway, so...).
If there is free will, then there is no way that the future can be pre-determined? Well, it seems more complicated than that.
Quantum entanglement was observed between small systems, eg. 2 electrons or 2 photons with spins. When a spin of a photon is measured, it will instantly determine the spin of another entangled photon, which can be a long distance away. This has been demonstrated for distances up to a mile. It used to be assumed that quantum effects cannot be observed in macroscopic systems, but recently objects as large as C60 molecules are shown to be quantum mechanical. Nobody really knows now what is the limit where quantum effects end.
Enter my second postulate - that the WHOLE universe can be described by a quantum mechanical wave function, and everything in the universe is entangled. After all, the whole universe starts from a point during the big bang, and we were all at the same point in space and time. If we existed as an entangled state then, we can still be entangled.
Which means - everything that you say or do will affect everything else in the universe. You are the universe, and the universe is you. (Hmmm, what does that mean? Sounds like quantum weirdness)
Alright, back to the point about time. What distinguishes the past from the future? If I accept that the universe is quantum mechanical, then I can provide a mechanism. It is known that when a measurement happens, the wavefunction collapses. So we know for certain what the state of the system is at that time. Hence, the past refers to all the parts of the wavefunction that has collapsed, ie. has already happened, and cannot be change.
But from this point onwards, the wavefunction evolves. All we can know is the probabilities of certain things that can happen in the future. But because the wavefunction is well determined NOW, it is not totally random what can happen in the future. And because we are part of the entangled wave function, what we do can influence what will happen. So free will prevails.
Which means: it is possible to know (in principle) various future outcomes with their probabilities, and it is also possible to change these outcomes and their probabilities.
Phew! That was a lot of stuff. I don't quite understand all that, but somehow, I FEEL that is how the universe operates. I continue to think and ponder. Perhaps someday I will understand.
posted by Yifan at 8:19 PM
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