Meeting the alien

Suppose I think: I think so I am. This thought is my existence at that moment, it is me. Of course it could have been a feeling too instead. Then I feel so I am, the feeling is me at that moment, although the feeling doesn't describe anything in a language like English.

We believe the thought as well as the feeling is carried by. The carrier of my thought as well as my feeling is in a superposition of all kind of carriers that possibly could carry thoughts or feelings. At this page we stick to the opinion that thought and feeling is carried by neuron activity of the brainpart that is thinking this or feeling that. Each of such brainparts consists of an enormous amount of elementary particles.

The brainpart T (the T of Thought) that thinks I think so I am couples to all possible surroundings where this neuron activity, this thinking, could have been present too and all these surroundings are in superposition as experienced by T.

What can the surrounding be? Most usual it are other brainparts. But physically possible existence is the only demand - apart from other brainparts it might be anything. The other brainparts may be larger, smaller or even non-existent providing our brainpart T can exist there, including a history how it came there. The surrounding is in a superposition of all possible surroundings. However subsequent couplings rule out more and more possibilities in the course of time.

In my old mobile phone it was called T9. There were 8 buttons on it with the 26 letters of the afphabet, that is 3 or 4 letters printed on each button. When you key in a message, each button summones 1 out of 3 or 4 characters on the small screen. With T9 engaged you push the button that has printed on it the character you have in mind and then go for the next character. T9 soon guesses the word as if it could read your mind. In fact the chip in the phone considers the following:

Take the first character out of t-u-v;

The second out of t-u-v too;

The third out of m-n-o;

The fourth out of d-e-f;

And then stop.

How many words do obey this path? And then the phone knows it must be - well, what word is it? The answer is there aren't so many words with this path of characters and often there is only one. I think it works the same with signaling from one brainpart to the other.

A signal, coming from the surrounding (be it a neighboring brainpart), reaches our brainpart T via a connecting axon. Now all surroundings (neighboring brainpart states) are in superposition where this signal reached T. And when a second signal reaches T then in superposition are all surroundings where these two signals reached T. These are lesser possibilities. And in the course of more and more signals reaching T the brainparts from where they are originating from are in superposition of still fewer and fewer possibilities and the superposition takes shape more and more. As experienced by T within far less than a second the neighboring brainparts will establish themselves as a well-defined unique collection of brainparts. Our brain, our whole body, is too connected to internally experience superpositions for an observable length of time.

Apart from the brain-signaling there are the physical effects from the physical interior. Transmission of temperature from brainpart to brainpart, pressure waves via the bloodstream, push-and-pull pressure waves from brainpart to brainpart caused by small skull movements. The rapidly growing list of subsequent arriving temperatures and shockwaves from the border at all its different spots, soon reduces the number of all possibilities causing this precise disturbance pattern to one. Well, not precise one. There always are the uncertainty relations of Heisenberg leaving a large group of nearly identical states for each particle involved. These groups exist because the outcome is identical, as far as the observation of that moment can judge.

The possibility deterioration time could be as short as the time needed for a ray of light to cross your brain: 15 cm divided by the speed of light = 0.15 / (3 * 10^8) = between 10^-9 and 10^-10 seconds. (The area of the involved brainparts might be 10 times smaller than 15 cm, while the signaling speed - electrons - might be 10 times smaller too, which tends to cancel each other out.)

The brain signaling plus the physical effects is called the decoherence effect, the effects that spoils the superposition and forces you in a decission all too soon.

Well, let's make another attempt. You choose an existence, e.g. a thought (your existence, you). The existence experiences its interior in superposition of all possible interiors. In this case the interior is the precise physical state of each atom it consists of. And it experiences its outside in superposition of all possible surroundings. But a specific interior out of the superposition will always exist along with the matching surrounding out of the superposition of surroundings. Outside temperature defines the temperature of the brain - at least after some time; an external magnetic field affects the shape of the orbitals of all atoms the brain consists of; a punch on the head causes shockwaves through the braintissue; and so on. Observation make both possibilities (interior plus matching surrounding) to be entered, or none.

Observation holds as a choice of existence (collapse of the wavefunction). Then the extend of the act of observation determines the size of the chosen existence. The smaller and simpler you can take the existence, the more possibilities there are for its outside and the lesser possibilities for its inside, the interior. More surroundings fit the same interior. The simpler and smaller the inside, the more pasts can lead to it, each past accompanied by its matching future.

BertLeandra

This neuron activity, this thinking, couples to all possible pasts that could have led to it, each possible past accompanied by a consequently suiting future following from it. This thinking couples too to all possible surroundings, all my now-spaces, that possibly would fit around it. The question is whether localities D in my now-space outside me necessarily have to suit to all corresponding localities E outside myself in my past + suiting future cone. Events in D and E might be logically contradicting, is the message from the previous page.

BertLeandra

Suppose you imagine an appearance in front of you - an alien from outer space - that in reality isn't there.

We presume imagination is carried by the brain, but we don't know how imagination works in the brain. When we are imagining sounds or images, it is known the audio and visual brainparts are active. Here we state that an imagination is complete when the sensory brainparts in your brain produce all activity belonging to the perception: the vision into all its details, eventual sounds, temperature, wind-perception, etc. If these perceptions fit in completely with those caused by a really existing appearance then the situation of just imagining and the real existence are indistinguishable possibilities for you. Whether your perceptions are just imagining without an appearance or the consequences of the real existence without an imagination, these are undistinguishable possibilities for you. Quantum mechanics then demands both possibilities to go into superposition.

Would you split then, one you entering the it's-just-an-imagination state and one you meeting the alien?

The sensory brainparts are specific regions in the brain. However, part of the visual processing is already carried out in the eye and part of the taste (and maybe smells too) is processed in the stomach. There definitely go signals from the stomach to the brain that determines how things in the stomach taste, sometimes with irreversible results for the tastes of those things. Therefore the eye and the stomach, amongst others, belong to the distant parts of the sensory brain.

It is unknown in how far imagination causes observation-processes in the eye, the ear, the stomach and so on. When there is no photon from the alien to observe, imagination will not be able to excite a rhodopsine molecule in the eye, I suppose. But in fact we know little about these things.

What is you? You is what thinks and feels Here I am. We don't know what is you in the brain. For convenience, let's suppose there is a you-brainpart and that it has no overlap with the sensory brainparts.

BertLeandra

Brain part overlap (a part of the brain participating in two different brain functions) has specific problems. When the overlap-part is activated in one function, it will readily activate the other function as well. You will see while smelling something at the same moment. You will think a thought and unavoidable feel simultaneously. So I presume evolution mainly prevented brain-overlap.

There are indications that brain functions, especially things like emotions, are not localized in the brain. Everything is everywhere, seems to be the message. However, we just assumed there seldom is overlap between the brain functions. So the functions MUST be localized. In principle every brain cell belongs to one specific brain function, one specific brain part. Only the shape of the brain part can differ then.

When it are separated pointlike parts I not immediately see a way how it could function as a whole. So I guess it are not pointlike parts. It can be lines, a lot of dots on a row. It can also be planes, layers, that are a number of lines next to each other. Could it be tiny lumps of space? No, I guess not, because then it would be localized.

Just layers one upon the other will make each layer interact directly with only two other layers, one above and one below. So it might rather be stretched patches, only partially overlapping to be able to have overlap with other patches too.

There is one specific way how a brain part consisting of lines and cross points only, can fully connect with another such brain part consisting of lines and cross points too if the brain part resembles soap bubbles that coalesce to a heap. (This is also the way I describe for the spread of galaxies and anti-matter galaxies in Dark galactic mechanics at page 3 of EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE.) Start with the points, small heaps of cells belonging to the brain part under consideration. Then lines connect the points and span planes (the boundary planes that neighboring bubbles share). The lines also consist of cells belonging to the brainpart, but the planes are empty, that is, the stuff in the plane does not belong to the brain part under consideration. Those planes envelope spaces, the bubble interiors. In the center of each of those spaces can reside 1 point of a specific other brain part, called brainpart2. Call the points of brainpart2 point2. The points2 can be connected by lines2 that go precisely through the middle of the planes1, the planes spanned by the original lines1 we started with. In doing so the brainpart2 structure forms a precise mirror image from brain part 1. Brainpart1 and brainpart2 are pervading each other completely without touching, not even at one single point. (A tiny universe in neuron shape, when comparing with galaxy distribution). The disadvantage is that only two systems can be intertwined in this way, not three or more. It especially suits linelike brain functions that are not fit to be shaped in planes/layers.

BertLeandra

For you to perceive the imagination/appearance, signals go from the sensory brainparts to the you-brainparts. It is the only source of what's going on outside. We assume the signaling of the imagination and of the real thing to be identical. The imagination-signaling is there first and calls in the real appearance of the same signaling, without any fine-tuning. This costs no extra time. Worlds in superposition do not cohere. If summoned by the wavefunction they have no space to cross and no time to pass.

The world with the appearance must be able to exist physically and it must have a physical possible past (eventually a completely different one). By entering it, no physical laws - mind esp. no conservation laws - may be violated locally. That is, when a possibility with a different past is entered, the total energy-mass, charge, leptonnumber, baryonnumber of the universe may be changed, but this must have no local consequences.

There holds:

Imagination without a real appearance
=
Observing the real thing without an imagination


These are identical brainstates with a different origin.

We assume normal brain doesn't produce such imaginations. If there isn't anything there, a normal brain doesn't sense anything, except from some sensory noise. If there doesn't happen anything special the brain will not sense anything special. There must be a source causing the imagination.

a) You pull down the retractable staircase to the attic. A stored rubber or plastic model of an alien stands there too near to the entrance. Suddenly it looses, it falls down and bounces in upright positioned beside you on the last step of the the stairs.

When necessary - e.g. in case of sudden danger - the brain can produce quite realistic predictions of your situation in the form of immediate sensory perceptions. You see pictures and films, hear sounds and feels things quite as if you are really experiencing them. But it is not: it are artificial observations made by your brain to make you react immediately and adequate. For a short time a loop can appear: the predictions are taken for real and form new predictions that are experienced, and so on. Self-strengthening predictions we can call them, loop-like self-strengthening.

Signaling of self-strengthening predictions then is the same as a continuous input stream of observational data from the real alien. Once again has to be stressed it is not a question of the sensory perception being accidentally the same as the appearence of the alien. Physical existability is the only demand.

b) Pure willpower creates the necessary signaling to the brain. Is the will in a separate brainpart?

c) An activity from a specific other brainpart commences the imagination and keeps on steering and strengthening the imagination process. (Is b) a special case of this?)

d) A short but intense (eventually unaware) process of random, chaotic functioning of parts of the brain initiate the imagination and subsequent self-strengthening predictions keeps improving and adapting the imagination for a short time.

e) Strong drugs start and enhance strongly the imagination by the process of self-strengthening. It might elongate its duration.

f) Millions of flat nanorobots enter the braincells involved by perception, one nanorobot per cell. Then each robot spreads out over the inner surface of its cell and gauges where the axons are. It masters the firings of each axon of the braincell it is in. It does so in such a way it simulates to the connected cells around it the imagined observation. For those nanorobots, see next page in THE DIRECTION OF TIME storyline.

g) Dreams.

In the case of the real appearance (right side of the equation) we may expect all of the activities mentioned above, causing the imagination in your brain to be absent. No shocks & scares, no self-strengthening predictions in progress, no unaware process of random, chaotic functioning of brainparts, no drugs circulating in the bloodstream, no determined-steering brainparts, no nanorobots in braincells, no dreams.

Now regard all states a up to g in terms of existence, interior and exterior. By example possibility e). The existence is at least the experiences-of-an-existing-alien. The starting state for the exterior is the outside-without-the-alien. The interior is the carrier, the brainpart that experiences the presence of the alien; that is: all the atoms your brainpart consists of, including the drugs molecules. Where are these molecules exactly? In the bloodstream: yes. But then IN the cells too or only at their outer surface, or in the synaptic gap?

Key is the experience of Imagination without a real appearance is indistinguishable from the experience of Observing the real thing without an imagination. This would mean that the-exterior-without-an-alien along with an-interior-of-all-the-atoms-of-your-brain-with-drugs-molecules-all-over is interchangeable with the exterior with a real alien along with an interior of all the atoms of your brain without drugs molecules. In other words, the experience-as-existence clicks to two different cases of interior-with-matching-exterior in superposition. We assume both possibilities to be existable. Question is whether both possibilities have equal contribution to the resulting wavefunction.

Also a question is how abundant this superposition is amongst other divisions. It other divisions outnumber the described posibility here too much, then the chance of finding yourself back in it is too low.

Meeting the alien doesn't mean you disappeared from the possibility where you didn't meet the alien. In this site is assumed you, and with you subsequently the world around you, split in as many worlds as there are possibilities. So in one world you met the alien, in the other you didn't.

Suppose next to you, in fact part of you, is some memory in which is stored the alien wasn't there all the time.

Suppose you enter the possibility in which the alien is present. And further suppose the newly entered possibility has a different past in that the alien had already been present there: it could have been there all the time, it could have just arrived by flying saucer, but it definitely hadn't appeared just like that. It has had its origin somewhere just like aliens have origins. If so, can a piece of memory go along with you when you enter a possibility with a different past?

You, and with you your memory, have to obey the laws of physics and in that laws it is conventional that everything must have a source, a preceding row of events that has lead to it. So in the newly entered world there must be a source of the brought-along memory. The brought-along memory is that there are no aliens and that this alien had appeared just like that. One moment it wasn't there, the next it was. So at first glance the answer seems to be that in this new universe there is no row of events causing this memory. So the memory if being present like this, must be judged as a kind of false memory, a fantasy, a dream, a mistake. In daily life it is often enough observed that people, you, can have erroneous memories. To me it regularly happens that I say to myself I should swear that... and then follows a situation as I really remember it - but it isn't really. So from observation we may infer the existence of wrong memories, although we do not see directly how they came there.

But wait, the origin can be that you have brought the memory along with you from a different universe, a universe with a different past where the alien hadn't been present up until now. The alien hadn't observed your memories yet. So for the alien your memory is still in a superposition of all possible memories.

Once again I wonder if this is possible. The molecules of memory are small. The difference between the molecules of the memory the alien wasn't there a few moments ago and the molecules of the memory the alien had been observed arriving there along an acceptable way, is this difference being observed by the alien, although it hadn't quite a notice of this observation? A photon passing through the layers of brain that covers it from the alien and betrays the difference? A gravitational wave that makes this difference clear? These spoil a superposition just a little bit.

For the moment we assume the precise state of the memory molecules is well hidden from observation by the alien. The alien is aware of the possibility the memory of you is in a state brought in from a different universe. The alien is confronted with a superposition of a number of possibilities in which some of them the alien didn't exist before. This is logically contradicting but we have met a thing like this in the preceding page. Logically contradicting contributions seem to be allowed.

The only absolute demand is the laws of physics must be obeyed.

As is hinted at in paragraph Changing the links between local environments at page 3 of this storyline, the shift to another possibility, the entering itself of another world, not necessarily have to obey the conservation laws. In the world of the alien that you had entered with your memory about the alien, the laws of physics must be obeyed: the presence of your memory about the alien when made clear to the alien may not violate a conservation law in the alien's universe. The sudden appearance of the alien in your world may not violate any conservation law in your universe. The local environment of you and your memory is copied to each of the entered universes - in this respect these local environments are identical in each of the entered worlds. As long as these demands are satisfied there is no reason why the link between these universes have to obey any conservation law.

Do I see this well?

To be an indistinguishable possibility the real appearance has to have the same laws of physics: the same observed 3-dimensionality of space as us and locally the same elapse of time; the conservation laws must be obeyed when appearing and the setting of all fundamental constants must remain the same. It must have a physically possible existence. Its past eventually might be a quite different one, as long as it is a physically possible past that leads to the current state.

BertLeandra

There also is another possibility for you to go into superposition: the appearance is just a floppy mask hanging in the air. The next moments will make you enter one of the following possibilities.

1) The fantasy continues with the necessary strength without a real presence being there. It is not likely you will realize that for a long time. If there isn't anything real there your fantasy will give in to reality sooner or later. Maybe the nanorobot-possibility gives the longest-lasting results, if the supercomputer steering the nanorobots from the outside can handle it. Then in fact the information got rayed in from the outside.

2) It turns out to be nothing there.

3) A floppy mask falls to the ground.

4) An alien will be standing there in front of you.

Decoherence effects are the first to make you split and each of you to enter one of the possible worlds. And in each of those worlds there must be a way to have arrived there according to the known laws of physics, not the least of them the conservation laws. It doesn't have to be the original past line of events: you may have changed your past, entering a world with a different past-line.

There is a second person just next to you. The appearance is in real matter just in front of him or her. The possibility of the presence being there goes in superposition with the possibility of just imagining all involved perceptions.

Us, the outside observer, lack that imagination. We experience the superposition mentioned above only if we don't observe you and your environment where the presence appears. Decoherence effects permit this only for the very short time needed for light to reach us from first signs of difference between the superposed possibilities. Then we enter a world of an appearance present or not.

It is unlikely all this happens to you. And when it happens to you, you might have shifted to a different past without a remembrance to the state without the alien. But it might happen to others. Others entering the world with the alien and that world happens to be your world.

Well,
Very Unfinished and To Be Iinvestigated Too.