Universal Darwinism: the path of knowledge by John Campbell is a book that I bought the minute I found out about it and it moved to the top of my reading list, then got buried under paper.
Started: August 2019
Completed: 6/19/2020
Recommendation: Just the first half (Quantum Darwinism)
Recommended By: Nobody
Review:
I got bogged down about half way through this book. It was at the very end of the description of Quantum Darwinism when there was a heavy dependency on the Hamiltonian Operator which I simply did not understand. Having said that, I really, really like Quantum Darwinism. I think it explains a lot.
The Basic Premise of Quantum Darwinism:
It is a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics that the real world (in particular the quantum world, but this rolls over into the world we all experience) is based on probability. This idea is extremely counter intuitive and flies in the face of our everyday experience: there is not a probability that I am typing this up...it is a certainty. So, how do we get from probability to certainty? Scientists are fond of saying that we do not until we take a measurement (like Schrodinger's Cat). Quantum Darwinism argues that probabilities are linked through Bayesian statistics. Bayesian statistics says that one event is linked to another event. Scientists are already predisposed to see this in the quantum world (the measurement is linked to the wave collapse). The brilliance of Zurek was to point out the obvious: everything is interrelated and the more things that are interconnected the fewer the probable outcomes until only one is possible from a macroscopic level. Applying Bayesian statistics to quantum mechanics means that the different possible states atrophy into only a single reality as more and more quantum events interact. Boom! At a quantum level everything is probabilistic, but because so many quantum interactions occur before it is visible in the world we experience there is certainty.
Isn't Everything Bayesian?
Maybe, but if feels like Campbell is a boy with a new toy. He views everything (and I mean everything) through the same lens. Surely, the examples he chooses jive well with a Bayesian view, but it does not feel comprehensive in each field. Maybe this is just too small a book for that or maybe it is cherry picking. I am not really in a position to discern but the "universal" applicability feels forced. That made it hard to read the rest of the book.
References:
This book referenced other works that I really should read and then go back and reread the front half of this book:
- Zurek, Wojciech; "Quantum Darwanism"; This explains how classical reality emerges from quantum processes
- Deutsch, David: "Quantum Theory, The Church-Turing Principle, and the Universal Quantum Computer"; This explains how the class of computable functions is defined by the law of nature
- Hamiltonian Operator
- Zurek, Wojciech: "Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum to Classical"
Personal Conclusions:
I think that this analysis of Quantum Darwanism holds in it the explanation of the arrow of time. Interactions occur in an order and the order of those interactions determines the outcome. I have not figured out how to formalize it mathematically, but I think that the order of interactions matters so we have time.
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