Psychic Phenomena as seen by a Nobel Laureate

Among the hundreds of messages in today's email in-box was a message from Nobel Prize winning physicist Professor Josephson.

Professor Josephson's message included a link to a paper he posted at the physics website arXiv.org:

String Theory, Universal Mind, and the Paranormal

Authors: Brian D. Josephson

(Submitted on 2 Dec 2003 (v1), last revised 9 Dec 2003 (this version, v3))

Abstract: A model consistent with string theory is proposed for so-called paranormal phenomena such as extra-sensory perception (ESP). Our mathematical skills are assumed to derive from a special 'mental vacuum state', whose origin is explained on the basis of anthropic and biological arguments, taking into account the need for the informational processes associated with such a state to be of a life-supporting character. ESP is then explained in terms of shared 'thought bubbles' generated by the participants out of the mental vacuum state. The paper concludes with a critique of arguments sometimes made claiming to 'rule out' the possible existence of paranormal phenomena.

A brief bio of Brian Josephson is provided by Wikipedia:

Brian David Josephson (born Cardiff, Wales, UK, 4 January 1940) is a Welsh physicist whose discovery of the Josephson effect as a 22-year-old graduate student won him the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever. From Fall 2007, he is a retired professor at the University of Cambridge where he is the head of the mind-matter unification project in the Theory of Condensed Matter research group. He is also a fellow of Trinity College.

Backwards Time Arrives at arXiv.org

According to the National Science Foundation Website, Dr. Paul Werbos is "NSF Program Director for the Adaptive and Intelligent Systems (AIS) area with in the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks (PCAN) Program of ECS, and for the new area of Quantum, Molecular and High-Performance Modeling and Simulation for Devices and Systems."

Dr. Werbos has released a new paper at the Physics Archive arXiv.org that explores the possibility of backwards time flows and a 'backwards time telegraph' concept:

Bell's Theorem, Many Worlds and Backwards-Time Physics: Not Just a Matter of Interpretation

Authors: Paul J. Werbos

(Submitted on 8 Jan 2008)

Abstract: The classic "Bell's Theorem" of Clauser, Holt, Shimony and Horne tells us that we must give up at least one of: (1) objective reality (aka "hidden variables"); (2) locality; or (3) time-forwards macroscopic statistics (aka "causality"). The orthodox Copenhagen version of physics gives up the first. The many-worlds theory of Everett and Wheeler gives up the second. The backwards-time theory of physics (BTP) gives up the third. Contrary to conventional wisdom, empirical evidence strongly favors Everett-Wheeler over orthodox Copenhagen. BTP has two major variations -- a many-worlds version, and a neoclassical version of partial differential equations (PDE) in the spirit of Einstein. Section 2 discusses quantum measurement according to BTP, focusing on how we represent condensed matter objects like polarizers in a Bell's Theorem experiment or in tests of Hawking's cosmology. The Backwards Time Telegraph, though speculative, is discussed.

Biography:

Dr. Werbos has core responsibility for the Adaptive and Intelligent Systems (AIS) area within the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks (PCAN) Program of ECS, and for the new area of Quantum, Molecular and High-Performance Modeling and Simulation for Devices and Systems. He is the ECS representative for the CLEANER initiative, for biocomplexity (MUSES), and for Collaborative Research in Computational NeuroScience. He is one of the two ECS representatives for cyberinfrastructure. He has special interest in efforts to exploit higher levels of true computational intelligence in these areas, and in efforts which can seriously increase the probability that we achieve global sustainability. In 1994, he initiated an SBIR topic on fuel cell and electric cars which he coordinated for several years. He was part of the group which proposed and led NSF's earlier initiative in Learning and Intelligent Systems, and assisted the follow-on in Information Technology Research. He has at times handled the ECS areas in electric power and wireless communications when there were gaps in those areas.

Dr. Werbos is an elected member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, which he represents on the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee. (See www.ieeeusa.org/policy/energy_strategy.ppt.) He also serves on the AdCom of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, and the Governing Board of the International Neural Network Society (INNS). He was one of the three original two-year Presidents of INNS. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has won its Neural Network Pioneer Award, for the discovery of the “backpropagation algorithm” and other basic neural network learning designs. He also serves on the Planning Committee of the ACUNU Millennium Project (see www.stateofthefuture.org), whose annual report on the future tends to lead global lists of respected reports on the long-term future. In 2002, he and John Mankins of NASA initiated and ran the NASA-NSF-EPRI initiative on enabling technologies for space solar power (search on “JIETSSP” at www.nsf.gov). In 2003, he participated on the interagency working group for the Climate Change Technology Program. At the 2005 Space Development Conference in Arlington, he was invited to present a new strategy for sustainable exploration and development of space, drawing in part on previous work funded by NSF.

In addition to his core interests at NSF, Dr. Werbos has interest in larger questions relating to consciousness, the foundations of physics, and human potential; see his personal web page, www.werbos.com for details. His 1974 Harvard Ph.D. thesis has been reprinted in its entirety, along with related papers, in his book The Roots of Backpropagation: From Ordered Derivatives to Neural Networks and Political Forecasting, Wiley, 1994. Some of work on high performance computing is described in P. Werbos, Backwards differentiation in AD and Neural Nets: Past Links and New Opportunities. In Martin Bucker, George Corliss, Paul Hovland, Uwe Naumann & Boyana Norris (eds), Automatic Differentiation: Applications, Theory and Implementations, Springer (LNCS), New York, 2005.

Prior to arriving full-time at NSF in 1989, Dr. Werbos worked since 1979 at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the Department of Energy. He initially worked in the evaluation of energy models, forecasts and analyses; this required spanning the gamut from decoding undocumented FORTRAN to evaluating the implications for the future of humanity. He later became lead analyst for long-term energy futures, and developed the econometric models used in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook for industrial and transportation energy demand and for oil and gas production. He served on Carter’s Global 2000 Phase II interagency task force. His model of industrial energy demand played a major role in the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum study of industrial demand, and resulted in several papers, including two in Energy: The International Journal, March/April 1990. Before that he spent a year as an IPA at the Census Use Research center as a mathematical statistician, and taught for 3 and a half years at the University of Maryland in the public policy area. Before teaching, he spent two years at the MIT Cambridge Project adding new capabilities for data mining and modeling to a user-oriented software package written in FORTRAN and PL/1 for the Multics operating system.

He holds four degrees from Harvard and the London School of Economics in: (1) economics; (2) international political systems, emphasizing European economic institutions; (3) applied mathematics, with a major in quantum physics and a minor in decision and control; (4) applied mathematics for an interdisciplinary PhD. Prior to that, during high school, he obtained an FCC First Class Commercial Radiotelephone license, and took undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

Is the Universe a Virtual Simulation?

Here's a new paper that expands on the theme that life, the universe, and everything we experience is a simulation:


The Physical World as a Virtual Reality

Authors: Brian Whitworth

(Submitted on 2 Jan 2008 (v1), last revised 5 Jan 2008 (this version, v2))

Abstract: This paper explores the idea that the universe is a virtual reality created by information processing, and relates this strange idea to the findings of modern physics about the physical world. The virtual reality concept is familiar to us from online worlds, but our world as a virtual reality is usually a subject for science fiction rather than science. Yet logically the world could be an information simulation running on a multi-dimensional space-time screen. Indeed, if the essence of the universe is information, matter, charge, energy and movement could be aspects of information, and the many conservation laws could be a single law of information conservation. If the universe were a virtual reality, its creation at the big bang would no longer be paradoxical, as every virtual system must be booted up. It is suggested that whether the world is an objective reality or a virtual reality is a matter for science to resolve. Modern information science can suggest how core physical properties like space, time, light, matter and movement could derive from information processing. Such an approach could reconcile relativity and quantum theories, with the former being how information processing creates space-time, and the latter how it creates energy and matter.