Many worlds for sure!

This from NS about new successes of the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM (my emphasis) :

“The trick is to examine a quantum experiment while excluding probability theory and accepting the many-worlds interpretation.

The multiverse has a branching structure, created as the universe splits into parallel versions of itself. The thickness of the branches can be calculated solely using deterministic equations, getting around the uncertainties usually associated with quantum physics. What the Oxford gang found is that the branching structure exactly reproduces the peculiar probabilities predicted by the Born rule. The branching also gives the illusion of probabilistic outcomes to measurements.”

…which ties in nicely with what Stephen Wolfram (founder of Mathematica and general physics/maths/computing guru!) has been saying for some time and talks about in a recent article:

“The alien feeling doesn't stop there. Another thing that seems alien is the idea that our whole universe and its complete history could be generated just by starting with some particular small network, then applying definite rules.

For the past 75+ years, quantum mechanics has been the pride of physics, and it seems to suggest that this kind of deterministic thinking just can't be correct.

It's a slightly long story (often still misunderstood by physicists), but between the arbitrariness of updating orders that produce a given causal network, and the fact that in a network one doesn't just have something like local 3D space, it looks as if one automatically starts to get a lot of the core phenomena of quantum mechanics--even from what's in effect a deterministic underlying model.”

Basically Wolfram’s ‘hobby’ is hunting for the right axiom + inference rules pair (to use words from “I am a strange loop” where Hofstadter’s talking about symbolic logic and other foundations of mathmatics. More about that book at a later date!) to generate our exact universe (or set of parallel universes) for scratch!

Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science” (that’s been sitting very heavily on my bookshelf for a couple of years now) is devoted to the study of the behaviour of very simple rules applied to simple starting conditions. This field Is basically the generation and analysis of computational chaos.

Look into John Conway’s “Game of Life” if you’re unfamiliar with it: a beautiful example of emergence from simple rules. It’s analogous to our universe in that it’s a microcosm the kind of starting point and rules Wolfram’s searching for.

This stuff might all seem obtuse, but I think it’s amazingly, fundamentally important (to everything literally). And just as Chaos was (arguably) the 3rd major revolution in Physics of the 20th century (and by that I mean the 3rd most important sea change at all; as we all know Physics underpins all the physical sciences, which in turn found society) so the integration of the computational universe with our understanding of our everyday surroundings will be a massive modification to fundamental thinking in the coming era...



[A New Kind of Science appears to be fully available online in a less likely to break your desk than the 1200 page hardback version! Honestly, it’s worth just dipping into it randomly! Here: http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html ]

Alastair Reynolds - Galactic North (review with spoilers)

Galactic North is, as he puts it, is a future history in the Revelation Space universe. Nice to hear about the escape of the Conjoiners (Great Wall of Mars). Glacial was a dull murder mystery. Spy on Europa was a ‘Goose Bumps’ style horror twist.



I liked the love interest in Weather (literally), mostly because I’d like a Conjoiner girl of my own! The plot’s pretence was a little iffy and it’s justification came up in Nightingale (?) too (I forget if it came up in the main novels): the Conjoiners consider forcing AI’s to consciousness (to perform complicated tasks for them) would be slavery. Ok, it allows a non-Singularity fictional universe, which is inherently more possible to explore (sci-fi wise), but it sounds awfully lame!; They ‘force’ their children to consciousness and then allow them (if they’re good enough) to fulfil revered roles such as being the computational core for their interstellar drive units! Why not spawn baby AIs, ‘encourage’ (or sculpt) them towards certain abilities and ‘allow’ them to do that kind of complex, yet very limited job? Like a sheep dog that’s as happy as anything and being very useful simultaneously. Sounds suspiciously like a the Conjoiner’s whole anti-slavery story is just an excuse by AI racists!

You can tell Dilation Sleep is an early piece by Alastair; concentrates hard on the big twist, but doesn’t entirely make sense to read the end (maybe I was just too tired). Grafenwalder’s Bestiary twist I didn’t manage to figure out, so I consider quite clever and the ties with a previous story were kind of rewarding.

Nightingale did give a reasonable concept to ponder: when a Gamma level AI (full human equivalent) running a neutral hospital orbital ship for soldier casualties from both sides of a long running war reaches a high enough level of understanding of it’s role in the world, it decides that it is only perpetuating suffering by healing people, only to return them to active service. In this story, the ship decides to take itself out of the picture, faking it’s own destruction and slinking off. Personally I would have thought that it could (and would likely) have pursued a more direct intervention than sculpting living human shock-art sculptures: with access to the head of military operations for one side and countless other high ranking soldiers on both sides, I’m sure it could have started co-opting them and holding the strings to a planet side puppet show. But then I’m just a fool hardy “put all your trust in AI to save the world” type evangelist!

I expected Galactic North to be a fair sized piece taking back up with the Conjoiners et al from the end of Absolution Gap, but it’s vehicles are new characters (with guest star appearance of Remontoir). It seems rushed with dubious logic, but anyway pertains to be more of a tragic space ballet. Greenfly aren’t really fleshed out any more than being a nonsensical, super-capable but inexplicably unimaginative, homogenising swarm.

Bit disappointing, a few things to think about for sure, but either way another book bites the dust.