Cause – Harmonia Philosophica

Quantum mechanics. Time. Causality. Irrational. Hiding the meaning of life…

Watch a movie backwards and you’ll likely get confused – but a quantum computer wouldn’t. That’s the conclusion of researcher Mile Gu at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University and collaborators.

In research published in Physical Review X, the international team showed that a quantum computer is less in thrall to the arrow of time than a classical computer. In some cases, it is as if the quantum computer doesn’t need to distinguish between cause and effect at all.

The new work is inspired by an influential discovery (known as causal asymmetry) made almost ten years ago by complexity scientists James Crutchfield and John Mahoney at the University of California, Davis. They showed that many statistical data sequences will have a built-in arrow of time. An observer who sees the data played from beginning to end, like the frames of a movie, can model what comes next using only a modest amount of memory about what occurred before. An observer who tries to model the system in reverse has a much harder task – potentially needing to track orders of magnitude more information.

“If causal asymmetry is only found in classical models, it suggests our perception of cause and effect, and thus time, can emerge from enforcing a classical explanation on events in a fundamentally quantum world”, researchers say. (1)

Look at the cosmos through the lenses of the irrational.

And you will discover a thrilling new perspective.

You are seeing…

Because you used to be blind…

You are alive…

Because you were dead…

You do exist.

Only because you never did…

You are everything.

Just because there is nothing…

Causality debunked.

Researchers at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences develop a new theoretical framework to describe how causal structures in quantum mechanics transform. They analyze under which conditions quantum mechanics allows the causal structure of the world to become “fuzzy.” In this case, a fixed order of events is not possible. The results were published in the journal Physical Review X.

The idea that events occur one after the other in a fixed causal order is part of our intuitive picture of the physical world. Imagine that Alice can send a message to Bob via a wire that connects them. Alice decides to have a barbecue and can invite Bob via the wire connection. If he gets invited, Bob decides to prepare some Ćevapčići to bring along. This is an example where the event in which Alice decides to invite Bob to the barbecue influences the event in which Bob decides to prepare food. Such an order of events characterizes a definite causal structure. However, research in the foundations of quantum mechanics suggests that, at the quantum level, causal structures may be “indefinite”. In an indefinite causal structure there might not be a fixed order in which events happen, i.e. whether Alice influences Bob or Bob influences Alice might not be defined.

“Our results demonstrate that under physically reasonable assumptions of continuity and reversibility a world with definite causal order will never become a world with an indefinite causal order and vice versa”, says Esteban Castro, one of the authors of the paper. This insight may lead to a more complete understanding of what the role of causality is in the quantum world. (1)

In the beginning there was chaos.

And then the cosmos was born.

We like to look into patterns.

We like to indulge into our hallucinations.

But every night, when we fall asleep, we remember.

It is not the Sun we celebrate.

What exists cannot change.

We are not scientists.

We are poets.

Admiring the Moon…

DNA. On the edge… Breath in…. Breath out!

For a skin cell to do its job, it must turn on a completely different set of genes than a liver cell — and keep genes it doesn’t need switched off. One way of turning off large groups of genes at once is to send them to “time-out” at the edge of the nucleus, where they are kept quiet. New research from Johns Hopkins sheds light on how DNA gets sent to the nucleus’ far edge, a process critical to controlling genes and determining cell fate.
A report on the work appeared in the Jan. 5 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.
“We discovered a DNA sequence and a specific set of protein tags that send DNA to the edge of the nucleus, where its genes get turned off,” says Karen Reddy, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Picture the nucleus as a round room filled with double strands of DNA hanging in suspension as they are opened, closed, clipped, patched and read by proteins that come and go. At the edge of the nucleus, just inside its flexible walls, the lamina meshwork provides shape and support. But accumulating evidence from the past few years suggests that this meshwork is not just a structure, but is crucial to the cell’s ability to turn large segments of genes off in one fell swoop. It’s as though certain stretches of DNA feel a magnetic pull that keeps them clinging to the lamina in a state of “time-out,” inaccessible to the proteins that could be working on them. (1)

Great! Just great!
A great mechanism.
Doing things in order to achieve things.
Or are the things which that mechanism achieves the things we a posteriory believe it was designed to achieve?

What is a plan?
What is a result?
What is a cause?

We are confused.
We do not have an objective criterion to set the mark.
We do not know what “normal” is.

So let’s accept there is not.
Let’s accept that there is no plan. And that there is.
Let’s accept that these is no cause. And that everything have one.
Let’s accept that there are no results. And that everything is one.
Let’s go craaaaazy ese!
Let’s pound our heads to the wall. (not hard enough, you know)
Let’s just accept there is nothing.
Let’s understand that everything comes from our mind.
Let’s open our selves to the nothingness of the world.

Let’s inhale the cosmos.

One deep breath.
And we will be One…
Inhale…

I fly because I have feathers! (not… vice versa!) I think because I don’t think!

The bladed, quill-like feathers of modern birds are essential for flight, and over millions of years they have become highly specialized for this purpose. But this may not be the reason they first evolved, say researchers studying an unusually complete fossil of the world’s first bird, Archaeopteryx. Instead, the team believes birds first grew these feathers for other purposes, such as insulation or mating display. The discovery raises the intriguing prospect that flight may have developed multiple times in the ancestors of birds. (1)

An ancient Greek philosopher had said that a long long time ago.
We walk because we have feet.
We do not have feet because we need to walk! 😉

What is the purpose?
How can there be one without any cause?
What is the cause?
How can you seek it without any purpose?

Oh, you shallow man.

Relying too much on your eyes…
Believing too much your mind…
Be free from thought.
Be free from your mind.
Be ready to fly!