Posted on 09/11/2020 12:08:16 PM PDT by Kalija
Futurism: Your paper argues that the universe might fundamentally be a neural network. How would you explain your reasoning to someone who didn’t know very much about neural networks or physics?
Vitaly Vanchurin: There are two ways to answer your question.
The first way is to start with a precise model of neural networks and then to study the behavior of the network in the limit of a large number of neurons. What I have shown is that equations of quantum mechanics describe pretty well the behavior of the system near equilibrium and equations of classical mechanics describes pretty well how the system further away from the equilibrium. Coincidence? May be, but as far as we know quantum and classical mechanics is exactly how the physical world works.
The second way is to start from physics. We know that quantum mechanics works pretty well on small scales and general relativity works pretty well on large scales, but so far we were not able to reconcile the two theories in a unified framework. This is known as the problem of quantum gravity. Clearly, we are missing something big, but to make matters worse we do not even know how to handle observers. This is known as the measurement problem in context of quantum mechanics and the measure problem in context of cosmology.
Then one might argue that there are not two, but three phenomena that need to be unified: quantum mechanics, general relativity and observers. 99% of physicists would tell you that quantum mechanics is the main one and everything else should somehow emerge from it, but nobody knows exactly how that can be done. In this paper I consider another possibility that a microscopic neural network is the fundamental structure and everything else, i.e. quantum mechanics, general relativity and macroscopic observers, emerges from it. So far things look rather promising.
The Mind of God is a magnificent thing!
Or maybe there’s some Intelligence underlying it all. Hillbilly talk, I know.
We’re all part of the mind of God.
It’s just one big holodeck.
perhaps we were created in God’s imagination... and the transcription dictation was cut off.
That has been my theory for many years
“Well that certainly explains it clear as mud.”
And that was from Dr. Sheldon Cooper !
Maybe God’s imagination is another word for reality.
“I am” the most profound statement ever made in my opinion.
“Can I buy some pot from you?”
Old-time physicist: Every gold atom contains 79 protons. And here’s my experiment to prove it.
Modern physicist: It’s possible that the universe is a two-dimensional bubble wrapped in a six-dimensional blanket. I have no real evidence to support that. In fact, I just made the whole thing up yesterday.
Well it appears that in our particular location the synapses are all funked up currently. :-)
How much do ancient astronaut theorists make in a year? Asking for a friend.
I am the walrus.
It’s all quantum waves. Everything you see and touch.
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