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The definition of randomness is that which is statistically unpredictable. There would still be randomness if we could remember the future because we don't have
by marxidad 10y ago
The definition of randomness is that which is statistically unpredictable. There would still be randomness if we could remember the future because we don't have perfect information about the past, and the universe is inherently random at the quantum level.
- lmm 10y agoNot necessarily. Perhaps we live in a many-worlds universe, with no collapse.
- marxidad 10y agoConsciousness depends on decoherence (collapsing into one possible universe), which happens randomly (there's no way to predict which states you observe).
- lmm 10y agoOur subjective experience feels like being in one Everett branch, sure. But if you really were in a superposition, what would you expect to experience differently?
- marxidad 10y agoI don't know if subjective experience is possible while self-coherent. You need to entangle with only one of your states to have any experience.
- lmm 10y agoI don't understand your claim. Interacting with something in a superposition creates entanglement. In practice most of you is in contact with most of the rest of you, so any superposition quickly spreads to your whole body and more generally the wider universe. At that point we can call it "decoherence" but there's no collapse. Just your wavefunction becomes cleanly separable into distinct pieces. But the subjective experience of being in either component would feel, well, normal.
- marxidad 10y agoYes, it's normal so long as you are in one component or the other. I don't think that you can experience a superposition of being coherent among both components—of existing in both worlds. I think that we're always unconscious in a Schrodinger state.