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In the Face of Rising Security Issues and Hacks, GBC.AI Makes the Case for Machine Learning and AI Integration – TechBullion

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

Trustless. The word gets thrown around a lot in the blockchain space. It is one of the principles that decentralized finance is based upon. DeFi, as it was initially envisioned, is supposed to provide users with the ability to interact directly with each other thanks to decentralized technology that eliminates the need for third-party control. Faith can be placed in the blockchain systems that are secure and enable users to engage in financial transactions as they wish without having to trust all-too-corruptible humans.

That is at least how it is supposed to go. In reality, things are quite different. This is not to disparage many of the remarkable developments that have occurred thanks to blockchain technology. Individuals willing to take the plunge into the industry have at their fingertips more possibilities than are dreamt of in traditional banking philosophies, which by and large profit off the individual and throw them back bread crumbs as a reward.

There is no disputing the great promise of the industry. What is uncertainand what needs to be addressedis whether blockchain technology is making good on that promise, specifically when it comes to security and trustlessness.

Chances are you have heard about the Poly Network hack that happened a couple of weeks ago. Poly Network is a decentralized platform that facilitates peer-to-peer cryptocurrency transactions between users across different blockchains. The hacker took the equivalent of over $600 million worth of different cryptocurrencies. That makes it the biggest hack in cryptocurrency history. And yet, in what some have taken as a sign of the industrys strength, the hack hasnt been treated with the same significance that earlier hacksfor lesser sumshave.

This is partially due to the particulars of the case. The hacker responsible has reportedly returned all of the assets in question. Embedded in one of the final transactions is a note in which the hacker claims that their intentions were not to make a profit but rather to expose vulnerabilities and thereby make the network stronger:

MONEY MEANS LITTLE TO ME, SOME PEOPLE ARE PAID TO HACK, I WOULD RATHER PAY FOR THE FUN. I AM CONSIDERING TAKING THE BOUNTY AS A BOUNUS FOR PUBLIC HACKERS IF THEY CAN HACK THE POLY NETWORK IF THE POLY DONT GIVE THE IMAGINARY BOUNTY, AS EVERYBODY EXPECTS, I HAVE WELL ENOUGH BUDGET TO LET THE SHOW GO ON.

I TRUST SOME OF THEIR CODE, I WOULD PRAISE THE OVERALL DESIGN OF THE PROJECT, BUT I NEVER TRUST THE WHOLE POLY TEAM.

Bizarre to say the least. If the hacker didnt intend to take the money for themself, then why take so much? Perhaps they wanted to draw as much attention to the situation as possible knowing that if it was the biggest hack in crypto history, it would surely make headlines. But the repercussions of hacks of that magnitude in the past have led to downturns in the crypto market that have caused assets across the board to depreciate in value. It would be a very risky way to try to strengthen DeFi.

One also has to consider that the hackers hands were tied. Many of the stolen funds had been identified on their respective blockchains and exchanges like Binance had promised to freeze any of them that came within their purview. In addition to that, a significant portion of the stolen funds were in USDT. When Tether got wind of what had happened they announced that they would be freezing the approximately $33 million of USDT that had been stolen, preventing the hacker from making any transfers with them.

Regardless of the hackers intentions and that the funds ended up getting returned to the exchange, there are two issues here that bring us back to where we started. The first is the issue of security. About $1 billion dollars has been stolen from DeFi projects in this year alone. That is a staggering figure that indicates that there are serious issues with the security of blockchain platforms. Hand in hand with that is the issue of trust.

In this case Tether froze the stolen funds, preventing the hacker from transacting with them. While the intentions and outcome here were both good, this kind of power completely flies in the face of the decentralized ethos. There should not be a third party that can act like a traditional bank with complete control over assets that are being exchanged among users. The whole idea behind decentralized finance was to do away with institutions like that.

The problem is that the systems in place are not trustable enough yet. The industry is still young, so from a certain perspective, it is to be expected that there would be growing pains and vulnerabilities. But $1 billion in stolen assets is much more than can be explained away by an industry that is still coming into its own. The unpleasant truth here is that by and large the DeFi industry is falling short of what it promises.

This is where projects like GBC.AI come into the picture. GBC.AI is a company that has been working to apply the benefits of AI and machine learning to the blockchain sector. The project has developed what they call blockchain guardians, AI technology that optimizes blockchain operations while also taking a preemptive approach to chain security.

Once a blockchain is launched, it is very difficult to go back and alter it or improve it. While there are benefits to immutability, there are also downsides. Take the Poly Network case. Once a flaw in the network has been detected and exploited, given that the blockchain is already in operation, there is a substantial risk that the entire chain could collapse under the pressure of further attacks.

What GBC.AI is striving to do is to make blockchains adaptable and dynamic. With a blockchain guardian connected to a network, the AI can assess potential risks before they appear and greatly reduce any threat of dropped transactions. Rather than dealing with a static network, attackers will have to deal with blockchains that are constantly reacting and adapting to internal and external circumstances. As GBC.AI has proven with their work on the Solana blockchain, this kind of arrangement not only bolsters security, but it significantly improves chain functionality.

What is key about this is that it complies with the decentralized, trustless philosophy. By introducing AI and machine learning into the equation, users will not have to place their trust in third partieslike the teams that create and operate exchanges and pseudo banks like Tetherwhen they want to participate in decentralized finance.

While projects like GBC.AI and others working to bring in AI and machine learning to the blockchain space are still relatively new, given the gravity of the security issues, it should be only a matter of time before this becomes a major feature of blockchain development. For a long time people have wondered how the two most significant sectors of technology, AI and blockchain, could operate in conjunction. Circumstances have come together in such a way as to make DeFi the space in which that conjugation is necessary. The future of the industry could very well depend on it.

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In the Face of Rising Security Issues and Hacks, GBC.AI Makes the Case for Machine Learning and AI Integration - TechBullion

What would it be like to be a conscious AI? We might never know. – MIT Technology Review

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

Humans are active listeners; we create meaning where there is none, or none intended. It is not that the octopuss utterances make sense, but rather that the islander can make sense of them, Bender says.

For all their sophistication, todays AIs are intelligent in the same way a calculator might be said to be intelligent: they are both machines designed to convert input into output in ways that humanswho have mindschoose to interpret as meaningful. While neural networks may be loosely modeled on brains, the very best of them are vastly less complex than a mouses brain.

And yet, we know that brains can produce what we understand to be consciousness. If we can eventually figure out how brains do it, and reproduce that mechanism in an artificial device, then surely a conscious machine might be possible?

When I was trying to imagine Roberts world in the opening to this essay, I found myself drawn to the question of what consciousness means to me. My conception of a conscious machine was undeniablyperhaps unavoidablyhuman-like. It is the only form of consciousness I can imagine, as it is the only one I have experienced. But is that really what it would be like to be a conscious AI?

Its probably hubristic to think so. The project of building intelligent machines is biased toward human intelligence. But the animal world is filled with a vast range of possible alternatives, from birds to bees to cephalopods.

A few hundred years ago the accepted view, pushed by Ren Descartes, was that only humans were conscious. Animals, lacking souls, were seen as mindless robots. Few think that today: if we are conscious, then there is little reason not to believe that mammals, with their similar brains, are conscious too. And why draw the line around mammals? Birds appear to reflect when they solve puzzles. Most animals, even invertebrates like shrimp and lobsters, show signs of feeling pain, which would suggest they have some degree of subjective consciousness.

But how can we truly picture what that must feel like? As the philosopher Thomas Nagel noted, it must be like something to be a bat, but what that is we cannot even imaginebecause we cannot imagine what it would be like to observe the world through a kind of sonar. We can imagine what it might be like for us to do this (perhaps by closing our eyes and picturing a sort of echolocation point cloud of our surroundings), but thats still not what it must be like for a bat, with its bat mind.

Originally posted here:
What would it be like to be a conscious AI? We might never know. - MIT Technology Review

U.S. households and small businesses have stockpiled a mind-blowing record cash pile of almost $17 trillion – MarketWatch

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

U.S. households and small businesses have stockpiled a record cash pile of almost $17 trillion a mind-boggling estimate that exceeds the $16 trillion in fiscal action undertaken by governments around the world to keep the global economy afloat during the pandemic.

That domestic cash hoard has grown exponentially since February 2020 due to three factors: direct government stimulus payments to individuals, shutdown-induced savings from Americans working from home, and small-business decisions to hold onto grants or loans, according to Jim Vogel, a Memphis-based manager at fixed-income dealer FHN Financial, which tracks cash flows.

The magnitude of the cash positions being held is surprising considering the tendency of households and businesses to tap their savings during each of the two or three recessions prior to the pandemic era. After the coronavirus pandemic triggered a deep two-month U.S. recession starting in February 2020, what is different this time around is that savings have soared despite the economy reopening. Two reasons have been offered for this: small businesses look to be focused on rebuilding inventories to brace for pent-up demand, while individuals are opting not to spend money on even the more restricted services and experiences that have now become the norm.

Its a sign of an unusual economy in which an awful lot of people are making money or have money, but are not spending it, Vogel said in a phone interview on Wednesday. There are two sides of this coin: A lot of people are doing well, while some people who depend on that spending are not. And the longer the imbalances last, the longer they take to work back down.

FHN Financials roughly $17 trillion estimate surpasses the $16 trillion figure that the International Monetary Fund estimated in July as the amount of fiscal action taken by governments worldwide to prevent economic collapse during the pandemic.

Vogel said his firm reached its almost $17 trillion estimate by taking the Federal Reserves most recent money-supply data, released on Tuesday, and stripping out the estimated level of demand deposits from corporations and institutional money-market accounts. The nearly $17 trillion figure has grown by about $250 billion over the past three months, he says, in a trend thats upended his expectations for declines in the current quarter. In February 2020, it stood at less than $12 trillion.

Most remarkably, the almost $17 trillion represents money that hasnt been deployed into the U.S. stock market just yet, where the benchmark indexes SPX, +0.22% DJIA, +0.11% are moving further into record territory. In addition to representing spare cash that could still come into equities, the money is acting as a barbell allowing investors already in that market to avoid selling off by much, according to Vogel.

The money is acting as a zero-risk anchor, and theres a reduced need to sell. Its also why the pattern of buying on the dips has worked so well, he says. When an outside shock knocks the economy on its heels, the length of time people hold onto cash is surprisingly long.

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U.S. households and small businesses have stockpiled a mind-blowing record cash pile of almost $17 trillion - MarketWatch

Google Health Disbanded; Staff Sent To Other Divisions – Silicon UK

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

The dedicated health unit at Google has been disbanded, with its 570 staff sent to different divisions within the Alphabet empire

Alphabet is reportedly disbanding its unified Google Health division, and instead will adopt a more distributed approach to developing health-related products.

This is according to Business Insider, which claimed to have seen a leaked memo on the matter. The 570 staff at Google Health are apparently being transferred to other teams.

The head of Google Health, David Feinberg, has also left the division and has joined US IT health services provider Cerner as CEO and President.

The fate of the remaining Google Health personnel has been revealed by Jeff Dean, Googles AI head in a tweet, with an undisclosed number moving to

As weve broadened our work in health across Google (Search, Cloud, YouTube, Fitbit, ), we have decided to move some @GoogleHeath teams closer to product areas to help with execution while nurturing some earlier stage products and research efforts, he tweeted.

Google Health had reportedly been founded in 2018 as a way to consolidate Googles fractured efforts in multiple healthcare areas, under a single division.

However the unit reportedly underwent some restructuring since that time.

Google will apparently remain invested in its existing health focused projects, but there will no longer be a single entity at the tech giant focused on health projects.

Google it should be remembered has its fingers in a number of healthcare related projects over the years, including Android fitness apps, medical study apps, and sleep-tracking features for its Nest Hub.

In 2019 Google officially swallowed DeepMind Health and its team into its new health division.

Google had announced in November 2018 that it would transfer control of DeepMind to a new Google Health division in California, as part of its efforts to commercialise its medical research efforts.

DeepMind had been acquired by Google for 400 million in 2014.

The firm has had its moments in the spotlight, most notably in 2017 when a war of words erupted between Deepmind and the authors of an academic paper, which fiercely criticised a NHS patient data sharing deal.

Besides Deepmind and Android apps, Google has also been involved in other health related projects.

Perhaps the most notable was in 2014, when Google and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis agreed to develop smart contact lenses, designed to help people with diabetes track their blood glucose levels.

And in 2019 Googles then London-based DeepMind artificial intelligence unit created a working prototype of what would be its first commercial medical device, the result of the units three-year collaboration with Moorfields Eye Hospital.

DeepMind performed a retinal scan and real-time diagnosis on a patient who had agreed to be examined publicly.

The scan was analysed by DeepMinds algorithms in Googles cloud, which provided an urgency score and a detailed analysis in about 30 seconds.

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Google Health Disbanded; Staff Sent To Other Divisions - Silicon UK

7 Ways to Stop Racing Thoughts at Night and Get to Sleep – Livestrong

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

Jotting down what's making you anxious could help calm racing thoughts at night.

Image Credit: Cavan Images/Cavan/GettyImages

It's like clockwork: Every night, your head hits the pillow, and your brain starts spinning. Whether you're wide awake worrying about work, finances, family or something else, this bedtime ruminating routine can ruin your sleep.

And you're not alone. A whopping 45 percent of Americans report that stewing in stress sabotages their shut-eye, according to the 2017 Stress in America survey by the American Psychological Association.

We spoke with Jodie Skillicorn, DO, a holistic psychiatrist and author of Healing Depression Without Medication: A Psychiatrist's Guide to Balancing Mind, Body, and Soul, to learn why anxious thoughts amplify at night and how we can combat them for sounder sleep.

What Causes Racing Thoughts at Night?

"Anxious, racing thoughts appear at night because it is often the only time during the day that we are not busy or distracting ourselves," Dr. Skillicorn says.

In other words, the silence and stillness of bedtime can bring all your worries, fears and concerns about the past and future to the forefront of your mind.

"All the emotions we left unacknowledged and unaddressed during the day can no longer be pushed below the surface," she says.

How to Stop Your Mind From Racing at Bedtime

Creating relaxing rituals is the key to beating back bedtime anxiety. Experiment with these strategies recommended by Dr. Skillicorn to quiet anxious thoughts before bed.

1. Schedule a Check-In During the Day

Sometimes our brains spin at night because we haven't addressed our daytime anxiety.

"Taking time during the day to pause and mindfully check in with our thoughts, body and emotions allows us to clear space so it does not accumulate and bombard us at night," Dr. Skillicorn says.

2. Give Yourself Time to Unwind

Create a relaxing bedtime routine to tame anxious thoughts.

Image Credit: PeopleImages/E+/GettyImages

"The nervous system needs cues to let the body know it is time for sleep," Dr. Skillicorn says. "If we go from working on a project or watching some adrenaline-pumping show (like the nightly news) to jumping into bed, we can't really expect the body to just tune out the day's stressors and relax."

Before you can drift off to dreamland, your body needs downtime to decompress. Dr. Skillicorn recommends turning off your electronic devices and setting aside at least 30 minutes for relaxing activities before bed (think: meditation, reading or a warm bath or shower).

3. Keep a Notebook Beside Your Bed

Write down your anxious thoughts so you can release them.

"I know that if there is something I need to remember, my brain will go over that list again and again so that I do not forget it, but if I just quickly jot it down, my brain can relax," Dr. Skillicorn says.

4. Start a Gratitude Journal

"Focusing on those things we appreciate about the day shifts our focus away from worries and concerns and drops us into our heart instead of our head," Dr. Skillicorn says.

As a matter of fact, people who practiced gratitude writing demonstrated better scores on mental health compared with those who simply wrote about their daily thoughts and feelings, according to a March 2016 study in Psychotherapy Research.

Sniff a soothing scent to encourage your brain to relax and get ready for sleep.

Image Credit: pilipphoto/iStock/GettyImages

"A whiff of organic lavender oil or a drop on your pillow can shorten time to sleep onset and increase sleep quality and duration," Dr. Skillicorn says.

That's because lavender is known for its sedative and hypnotic properties. Indeed, a July 2015 Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine study found that incorporating lavender at bedtime improved sleep quality for college students with self-reported sleep issues.

6. Practice Deep Breathing and Mindfulness

Slow, deep belly breaths send a message of safety to the limbic system, Dr. Skillicorn says. Here's why: Deep breathing turns off the sympathetic nervous system and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which allows the body to rest, digest and sleep, she explains.

While breathing, notice the belly fill and expand like a balloon as you inhale and contract and deflate as you exhale.

"As you do this, your mind will likely wander that's what minds do but simply acknowledge the thinking and return to the breath again," Dr. Skillicorn says.

It may be helpful to give the mind another focal point, Dr. Skillicorn adds. You can do this by counting the breaths or just saying to yourself "breathing in" as you inhale and "breathing out" as you exhale, she says.

Similarly, "whispering qigong healing sounds as you exhale like 'haaaaa' and 'heeeee' can also aid the body in letting go of emotional residue from the day," Dr. Skillicorn says.

Experiment and see what combination of breathing and sounds works best for you.

7. Reframe Your Ruminating Thoughts

When your mind races before bed, your first instinct might be to make it stop ASAP. But pushing away your worries or trying to control your concerns may not be the answer.

"Being curious about your thoughts, emotions and body sensations rather than judging and seeing them as problems to be solved helps shift us out of a state of hypervigilance," Dr. Skillicorn says.

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7 Ways to Stop Racing Thoughts at Night and Get to Sleep - Livestrong

Zen and the art of fly-fishing in Sweden a photo essay – The Guardian

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

I first learned about fly-fishing in a story by Truman Capote called Handcarved Coffins. In Americas midwest, Capotes help is solicited by a small-town sheriff stumped by a string of diabolically ingenious murders in his remote farming community. The victims have been are killed in ways suggesting intimate knowledge of their habits, yet nowhere is there any apparent motive. In the end Capote has no evidence but meets up with the man he reasons must be the killer. Hes fly-fishing. Waist-high in a stream, he talks about the will of God. As little as I then knew about the sport, it somehow made perfect sense that the killer would be fly-fishing.

In a larger sense, fly-fishing is a discipline of the mind, about things unseen. In the run-up to my trip to Swedens fly-fishing mecca lvdalen, four hours north of Stockholm, I listened to fly-fishing stories on the internet. Many are about technique, or about making the flies, and the tiny lures fly-fishers use; also, oddly, there are a great many tales about fly-fishing as a sort of personal, even spiritual, quest, about people who go to restore a relationship, to help them unravel some knotty issue in their lives or just find peace of mind. Somehow fly-fishing makes that possible.

Clockwise from top: Giulio Marchesi, from Milan, fishing on the sterdallven River in lvdalen. In the fly-fishers armoury are an assortment of flies that attempt to match the natural insect hatch, including the superpuppa, which imitates a Mayfly

Micke Nyberg, a local guide who runs an outfit called Anglerman Fishing Adventures, picked me up at the lvdalen Fishing Center. Micke is a big bear of a man. His family has lived in the area since the 16th century. He is fluent in several languages, including Avdelska, a local language thats a mix of old-English, old-German, old-Swedish and old-Icelandic, and utterly unintelligible to all but a few. He likes it that way. With him is Giulio Marchesi, an architect from Milan who comes to fly-fish with Micke every year.

At Mickes shop, were fitted out with boots and waders and head out on to the highway, turning off on to a dirt track that is soon swallowed by dark forest. I notice theres nothing on the GPS. Were quite literally off the map. If you could find this place, it would be all too easy, and no fun at all, to get lost here. We emerge beside a small river. This area is crisscrossed by rivers. Micke and Giulio stand in silence on the bank and watch. Theyre looking for fish rising to grab one of the mayflies that flit about on the surface.

The next morning we head out, not too early, for a different spot. Its a perfect day. Micke escorts me across the stream to a small island. Im very nervous about slipping on slick rocks which would spell death to my cameras, but Micke is big, stable and has sea legs, and as we go hes instructing me how to walk without falling.

When I was young, he says, it was about catching fish. Then it was about catching many fish. Then it was about catching bigger fish. Now I get satisfaction out of enabling other people to catch fish. Micke and Giulio try the spot for a while but it yields nothing, so we pile into the truck and head to another stretch of the river. Its like this all day.

We stop for lunch at a small shelter alongside a stream. Micke builds a fire, produces a cast-iron pan and begins to make a local favourite called kolbulla. Its an absolutely outstanding pork pancake made with a savoury batter served in the traditional way with lingonberry jam. Asked for the recipe, Micke just laughs. The meal is finished off with some strong Swedish coffee and a bit of dark chocolate. Totally satisfying.

Fly-fishing, says Giulio, is all about focus.

Youre doing only one thing. Youre here and nowhere else, adds Micke.

The angler is acutely attuned to every sight, sound and smell. The stream is still or moving. Fish can sense your presence. A fast current generates sound that can hide you. Insects are flitting about on the surface. Small birds are zooming about chasing the insects. What kind of insects are they? Where are they? Brown trout and grayling, the fish that live here, eat mayflies and other hatching insects. You watch the surface for bubbles and patterns that might betray a fish. With the flick of the wrist, an experienced angler can cast his or her line to the exact spot where a fish is feeding.

The moving current can induce a kind of spatial disorientation, so you have to concentrate. If youre using the right fly, and it lands within the small radius where the fish will strike, and if the fish lunges for it maybe youve got one. But usually you havent and you try again.

Guide Micke Nyborgs family have lived in the lvdalen area for 500 years, and he is a lifelong angler. After a blank spell, he changes his fly to one that is microscopically larger and instantly nets a trout

The intense focus fills your senses. The coolness of the water, the gentle buffeting by the current, the sound of water moving over rock and gurgling up from the hollows, the feel and smell of spray rising from the stream mixing with the smell of pine trees you emerge from it like youve had the best-ever mindfulness meditation. Your mind is clear and feels like it has never worked better, says Giulio.

He adds: It gives energy back. I really need to do it. Back home, I sometimes just go fishing because I want to do it. I want to do something else for half a day but I dont get the same amount of good energy and positive thinking that I get from being here. Once you start fly-fishing you never stop.

For details visit Anglerman Fishing Adventures . Further information at visitsweden.com

This is what makes the quantum world so strange and confusing – New Scientist

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

Particles in many places at once, spooky influences and cats that are dead and alive at the same time these are the phenomena that earned quantum theory its reputation for weirdness

By Richard Webb

Skizzomat

THE pleasure and pain of quantum theory began when an or became an and. Are the fundamental components of material reality the things that make up light, matter, heat and so on particles or waves? The answer came back from quantum theory loud and clear: both. At the same time.

Max Planck started the rot back in 1900, when he assumed, purely to make the maths work, that the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a perfectly absorbing black body comes in the form of discrete packets of energy, or quanta. In 1905, Albert Einstein took that idea and ran with it. In his Nobel-prizewinning work on the photoelectric effect, he assumed that quanta were real, and all electromagnetic waves, light included, also act like discrete particle-like entities called photons. Work in the 1920s then reversed the logic. Discrete, point-like particles such as electrons also come with a wavelength, and sometimes act like waves.

Physicist Richard Feynman called this wave-particle duality the only mystery of quantum physics the one from which all the others flow. You cant explain it in the sense of saying how it works, he wrote; you can only say how it appears to work.

How it appears to work is often illustrated by the classic double-slit experiment. You fire a stream of single photons (or electrons, or any object obeying quantum rules) at two narrow slits close together. Place a measuring device at either of the two slits and you will see blips of individual photons with distinct positions passing through. But place a screen behind the slits and, over time, you will see a pattern of light

Originally posted here:

This is what makes the quantum world so strange and confusing - New Scientist

Quantum Darwinism: Can evolutionary theory explain objective reality? – New Scientist

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

Quantum phenomena wash out as particles interact with the environment, but classical properties survive. Are they selected in a process analogous to evolution by natural selection?

By Philip Ball

Panther Media GmbH/Alamy

IT IS often said that the very small is governed by quantum physics, and the large by classical physics. There seems to be one set of rules for fundamental particles and another for us. But everything, including us, is made of particles. So why cant we too be in superpositions or show wave-like interference when we pass through a doorway, as a photon or electron does when it passes through narrow slits? Ditto any large, inanimate object?

To cut to the chase: we dont know the answer. One of the most intriguing ideas now being tested, however, is that classical reality might emerge through a process analogous to evolution by natural selection.

That notion has its origins in the 1970s, when physicists first came to realise that a particles quantum behaviours of superposition, entanglement and suchlike leak out into its environment, disappearing as a result of interactions with other particles a process called decoherence. The coupling to the macroscopic environment spoils the quantum coherences so fast that they are unobservable, says Jean-Michel Raimond at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. Experiments have demonstrated that decoherence is a real, physical process, albeit one that happens in the blink of an eye.

What it cant tell us, however, is why various definite properties, such as position or velocity, emerge for us to observe. Why do these properties survive the transition from quantum to classical, while some other quantum features dont?

To Wojciech Zurek at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, it looked a lot like there was some sort of selective filtering going on. That filtering, he realised, is

Originally posted here:

Quantum Darwinism: Can evolutionary theory explain objective reality? - New Scientist

Theoretical physicists think humans are screwing up the universe’s plan – The Next Web

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

The universe started with a Big Bang. Everything that was ever going to be anything was compacted into a tiny ball of whatever-ness and then it exploded outward and the universe begin expanding.

At least, thats one way of looking at it. But emergent new theories and ages-old philosophical assertions are beginning to find a foothold in cutting-edge quantum physics research. And its beginning to look more and more like we might actually be the center of the universe after all.

Thats not to say Earth or the Milky Way is at the geographical center of the universe. Itd be arrogant to make such a literal assumption.

Im saying humans are the figurative center of the universe. Because, theoretically, were gods.

This is a two-parter. First we need to establish that the universe is conscious. It might not be, but for the sake of argument lets say we agree with the growing number of scientists who support the theory.

Heres a quote I found in Mind Matters News that explains it nicely. Its from Georgia Techs Tim Andersen, a quantum physics researcher:

The key to understanding Will is in examining our own sense of consciousness. We have, in a sense, two levels of consciousness. The first is of experience. We experience a flowers color and smell. Therefore, we are conscious of it. The second is that we are aware of our consciousness of it. That is a meta-consciousness which we sometimes call reflection. I reflect on my awareness of the flower.

Andersens referring to Will as an underlying force in the universe thats analogous to consciousness.

The gist is that everything is capable of experience. If you kick a rock it experiences force, velocity, and gravity. It cant reflect on these experiences and, thus, the rock itself is capable of changing nothing on its own.

Its conscious because it exists. And, because it sort of doesnt exist. Its not actually a rock, but a bunch of molecules smashed together. And those arent molecules, really. Theyre particles smashed together. And so on and so forth.

Eventually you get to whatever the quantum version of bedrock is, and the whole universe is just an infinite amount of pretty much the same stuff it was the exact moment before the Big Bang happened.

So our rock is a rock, but its also not a rock because we can clearly see its just regular universe material if we look close enough. A tree, a rock, a Volvo, an AI reporter named Tristan: theres not much difference between these things in the quantum realm.

Its kind of like Minecraft. No matter what you build its all just ones and zeros on a computer chip.

Heres where things get cool. The rock, for whatever reason, doesnt appear to experience secondary consciousness. As Andersen explains it, the rock cannot reflect on its experience.

But humans can. Not only can we experience, for example, falling, but we can also reflect on that experience and create change based on that reflection.

Whats even more interesting, cosmically speaking, is that we can internalize the experiences of other humans and use those to inform our decision-making. Were capable of reflecting on the reflections of others.

This implies that human free will is the sole known entity in the universe capable of eliciting change based on conscious reflection.

The rock can never choose not to fall, but humans can. We can even choose to fly instead.

The result of our existence is that the universes entire trajectory is, potentially, changed. Whatever the particles in the universe were going to do before humanity emerged, their course has been altered.

Who knows what changes weve wrought upon the cosmos. Weve only been around for a few million years and our planet already looks like a frat house after a kegger.

What will the galaxy look like when we can travel to its edges in a matter of months or weeks? What happens when we can traverse the universe?

Its possible theres an intelligent creator there somewhere chuckling right now. Or perhaps the universes plan always included the inception and evolution of humans.

But the evidence, of which theres admittedly very little, says otherwise.

Quantum physics makes a strong argument for universal consciousness and, if thats the case, its hard to define the human experience without separating everything capable of reflection from those things only capable of experience.

If it turns out were the only entities capable of producing a secondary reality out of the universal consciousness, well, that would be something.

Im not saying youre the God, Im simply pointing out that youre the only thing in the entire universe that we can show evidence for having free will and the capacity to reflect on its experiences.

Perhaps our ability to reflect on consciousness itself is what allows experiential reality to manifest. We think, therefore everything is.

When the Big Bang Was Just a Theory – The New York Times

August 26, 2021 | Author: admin

FLASHES OF CREATIONGeorge Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang DebateBy Paul Halpern

The universe is changing. But scientists didnt realize that a century ago, when astronomers like Edwin Hubble and Henrietta Leavitt discerned that other galaxies exist and that theyre hurtling away from the Milky Way at incredible speeds. That monumental discovery sparked decades of epic debates about the vastness and origins of the universe, and they involved a clash of titans, the Russian-American nuclear physicist George Gamow and the British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle.

In his new book, Flashes of Creation, Paul Halpern chronicles the rise of Gamow and Hoyle into leaders of mostly opposing views of cosmology, as they disputed whether everything began with a Big Bang billions of years ago.

Halpern, a physicist himself at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, skillfully brings their fascinating stories to light, out of the shadow of the overlapping quantum physics debates between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, which Halpern has written about in an earlier book. Halpern also poses fundamental questions about how science should be done. When do you decide, for example, to abandon a theory? Ultimately, his book seeks to vindicate Hoyle, who in his later years failed to admit his idea had lost.

Until these two bold theoreticians arrived, astrophysics had been stuck at an impasse. Scientists werent sure how to interpret Hubbles observations, and no one understood how the universe created and built up chemical elements. It is clear that the intuitive, seat-of-the-pants styles shared by Gamow and Hoyle were absolutely needed in their time, Halpern writes.

Gamow and Hoyle make for a challenging joint biography, Halpern acknowledges, in part because their parallel stories so rarely intersected. They had only one significant in-person meeting, in the summer of 1956 in La Jolla, Calif., where Gamow had briefly served as a consultant for General Dynamics, the aerospace and defense company. They discussed many ideas in that coastal town, hanging out in Gamows white Cadillac, but for the most part, their debates took place in the pages of physics journals, newspapers and magazines, including Scientific American.

They also frequently appeared on early television and radio programs, becoming among the first well-known science communicators, paving the way for Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Carolyn Porco, Pamela Gay and others today. Hoyle wrote the science fiction novel The Black Cloud and the television screenplay A for Andromeda, while Gamow produced One, Two, Three Infinity and the Mr. Tompkins series, whose main characters predicaments illustrated aspects of modern science.

For years, their dueling theories a Big Bang origin of matter and energy (championed by Gamow) versus a steady-state universe that created matter and energy through quantum fluctuations (championed by Hoyle) remained highly speculative. Initially, the Big Bang theory predicted a universe only a couple billion years old, which conflicted with observations of the sun and other stars, known to be much older. Physicists were evenly divided between the two.

But that changed as more evidence emerged, and a key discovery eventually seemed to settle the debate. In 1964, the astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson noticed a constant signal of radio static with the Holmdel Horn Antenna in New Jersey. After ruling out possible experimental sources of noise (including pigeons and their droppings on the antenna), they deduced that the radio hiss had a cosmic origin. They and their colleagues eventually realized the signal came from relic radiation from the hot fireball of the early universe.

After that, the Big Bang theory quickly became consensus in the field. While Hoyles steady-state idea eventually failed, he made many other significant contributions, especially involving stellar processes and supernova explosions, which he showed could fuse chemical elements into heavier atoms and produce nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and more. In explaining this, and throughout the book, Halpern provides many helpful metaphors and analogies. He also reminds readers that Hoyle, Gamow and their fellow theoretical physicists made these accomplishments well before the heyday of supercomputers.

Halpern doesnt shy away from the characters flaws. In particular, he shows how Hoyles work later in life lay on the fringes of physics, including his controversial panspermia hypothesis, that organic material and even life on Earth came from colliding comets, and his unsuccessful attempts to revive steady-state theory. But this shouldnt cast a pall over his legacy.

Hoyles investment in the theory raises important philosophical and sociological questions about when we should consider an idea proven. Its also the sort of quandary that threads its away through contemporary debates among physicists: about dark matter versus modified gravity theories; about what dark energy is and how the universes inflation happened moments after the Big Bang; and about a persistent discrepancy in measurements of the universes expansion rate, known as the Hubble tension. Halpern unfortunately gives only brief mention to these active areas of research, which owe a lot to Gamow and Hoyle.

At one point in the book, Halpern relates a conversation he had with Geoff Burbidge, a colleague of Hoyles who also continued to support a steady-state model. Cosmology needed alternatives, he argued, not lemmings following their leader over a cliff.

When the Big Bang Was Just a Theory - The New York Times

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