Related papers: The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine
The origin of the uncertainty inherent in quantum measurements has been discussed since quantum theory's inception, but to date the source of the indeterminacy of measurements performed at an angle with respect to a quantum state's…
Both deterministic and indeterministic physical laws are incompatible with control by genuine (non-illusory) free will. We propose that an indeterministic dynamics can be $weakly$ compatible with free will (FW), whereby the latter acts by…
Quantum Mechanics, the physical theory describing the microworld, represents one of science's greatest triumphs. It lies at the root of all modern digital technologies and offers unparalleled correspondence between prediction and…
The basic problem posed by free will (FW) for physics appears to be not the \textit{physical} one of whether it is compatible with the laws of physics, but the \textit{logical} one of how to consistently define it, since it incorporates the…
Deutsch, Feynman, and Manin viewed quantum computing as a kind of universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can simulate an arbitrary unitary transformation on a…
I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our…
The main mystery of quantum mechanics is contained in Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, which shows that the past is determined by our choice of what quantum property to observe. This gives the observer a participatory role in deciding…
Free will is an old philosophical enigma that has been recently revived by neuropsychology. We restrict ourselves to the problem that determinism seems to allow only an illusion of freedom but random decissions do not contain any freedom…
Why does such a successful theory like Quantum Mechanics have so many mysteries? The history of this theory is replete with dubious interpretations and controversies, and yet a knowledge of its predictions, however, contributed to the…
When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, almost all researchers today revert to the quantum language, accepting the verdict from the Copenhagen doctrine that the only way to describe what is going on will…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
Manin, Feynman, and Deutsch have viewed quantum computing as a kind of universal physical simulation procedure. Much of the writing about quantum logic circuits and quantum Turing machines has shown how these machines can simulate an…
The abstract concept of indeterministic free will is distinguished from the phenomenon of free will. Evidence for the abstract concept is examined and critically compared with various designs of automata. It is concluded that there is no…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…
Not only did Turing help found one of the most exciting areas of modern science (computer science), but it may be that his contribution to our understanding of our physical reality is greater than we had hitherto supposed. Here I explore…
We consider the paradoxical concept of free will from the perspective of Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), a branch of mathematics concerned with understanding the underlying principles of computation and complexity, including the…
Beginning with Turing's seminal work in 1950, artificial intelligence proposes that consciousness can be simulated by a Turing machine. This implies a potential theory of everything where the universe is a simulation on a computer, which…
The basic question in the long-standing debate about free will (FW) is not whether FW can be demonstrated to exist nor even whether it exists, but instead how to define it scientifically. If FW is not dismissed as an illusion nor identified…
The canonical answer to the question posed is "Yes." -- tacitly assuming that quantum theory and the concept of spacetime are to be unified by `quantizing' a theory of gravitation. Yet, instead, one may ponder: Could quantum mechanics arise…
We present a logical proof that computing machines, and by extension physical systems, can never be certain if they possess conscious awareness. This implies that human consciousness is associated with a violation of energy conservation. We…