Fwd: Proposal for a psi experiment

Jeff Epstein

Let me know if you don't want to receive these and I will restrain myself

Deepak Chopra

Super Genes: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNAfor Optimum Health and Wellbeing

Begin forwarded message:

Sender: Deepak Chopra
Date: August 8, 2016, 7:11:35 AM EDT
Recipient: Stanley A. KLEIN
Cc: Brian Josephson, Henry Stapp, Dean Radin, Christopher Cochran, JACK SARFATTI, David Kaiser, Jim Johnston, Bernard Carr, "Stuart R - (hameroff)", John Horgan, George Johnson

Subject: Re: Proposal for a psi experiment

Cosmic Mind is acausal , non local and quantum mechanically interrelated across space and time . Local interactions are from the point of view of individual mind , a temporary activity of non local mind .

Deepak Chopra

Super Genes: Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Wellbeing

On Aug 8, 2016, at 7:06 AM, Stanley A. KLEIN sklein@berkeley.edu wrote:

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Dear Brian (and others),

You asked what I meant by measurement. For present purposes, I would like to narrow that word to be objete measurement such as what takes place with psychic experiments with statistical analyses. I'm including Henry Stapp on this list since in recent months (if not years) he and I have been discussing his proposal for a particular type ofprecognition experiment that can totally change which of the interpretations of QM is correct. I'm also adding Dean Radin for reasons you will see at the very bottom. It is an experiment that is based on a binary quantum random number generator (QRNG). The experiment is very simple:

Step 1: Alice guesses the future QRNG number

Step 2: The QRNG does its thing.

Step 3: Alice is informed about the number

These steps are done repeatedly, on at least 100 subjects.

If "Alice" does significantly above chance then the laws ofQM need revision as will be discussed below. Henry's clever suggestion is that at Step 2, 50% of the time Charlie looks at the QRNG output before the information is sent to Alice who may be in another room. Consider the following 3 outcomes:

Case I: Whether Charlie looks or not, Alice guesses above chance. Case 2. If Charlie looks it is at chance and if he doesn't look it is above chance. Case 3: If Charlie doesn't look it is at chance, independent of what happens if he looks.

The rationale for these outcomes is based on the following mechanism for psi.

Case I would be the chosen option ofmost psi researchers. Alice does it using psychokinesis (PK) to influence the QRNG. or precognition. It is independed of Charlie.

Case 3 would be chosen by most mainstream scientists who don't believe in psi.

Case 2 is Henry's (and my) preferred choice since it would implicate a violation of the Born rule ofQM and thus require a slight modification to the measurement aspect of QM with no change needed for QED.

Let me explain Case 2. The Born Rule says that the QM measurement step of going from probability to actuality is totally random. Case 2 works because Alice has made a deal with Nature to keep her happy by a minor violation ofBorn rule. So in Step 3 of Case 2 if Alice is the first human to view the QRNG outcome Nature can help her out. If Charlie is the first human to look at the number then the probability outcome would be random since Nature didn't get the chance to help Alice. It should be pointed out that to our knowledge the Born Rule has never been tested with for a collapse mechanism that requires a sentient observer (Orthodox von Neumann).

Case 1 has the following problems. The problem with precognition is that it violates causality so it is forbidden by QED. The problem with PK is that although it doesn't violate QED the mechanisms for how Alice's brain is able to influence the QRNG would be most challenging to implement using what we know about brain mechanisms.

A cosmic Mind or caring Nature could do the job much easier by violating the Born Rule at the step in going from probability to actuality. Maybe Alice has made a deal with Nature to give her what she wants. The rationale for that sort of deal is what takes place in the Bem/Radin/Bierman sort of experiments that involve erotic or other emotional stimuli other than just random numbers. The full details are in Henry's and my submissions to the AAAS Pacific Division conference on Retrocausation in June. I'll attach the paper Chris Cochran and I submitted. Any comments would be welcome. It has lots of gory details about QM and about psi that go beyond the brief summary above.

The problem with he specific Bem/Radin/Bierman experiments is that they weren't done with the careful oversight needed to convince an open-minded skeptic like me. Dean Radin, Henry and I would like to repeat the Bem experiment with the Charlie intervention. What is needed is to get funds to support the experiments to be done by Dean Radin (and some done in my Berkeley lab). The new element would be the encrypted communications and other controls to convince skeptics that proper methods were used. The experiments would need to be done in a psi friendly environment to avoid the "experimenter effect" that occurs when done in a skeptical environment. The reason I'm sending this message to this large list is to get suggestions for funding sources. We are eager to do the experiements with Henry's suggestion about Charlie that could well eliminate most of the interpretations ofQM. Orthodox von Neumann could come through with flying colors because of that Charlie intervention.

Stan

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 2:21 AM, Brian Josephson wrote:

On 8 Aug 2016, at 04:41, Stanley A. KLEIN wrote:

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Could Jack or Brian clarify what is the problem that you think you have solved. I presume it isn't anything measurable since I haven't heard what measurement needed a different solution than what standard methods give.

It depends what you mean by measurement. It is a well-established fact, I suggest, that experienced mathematicians regularly come up with solutions to difficult problems, even if we don't measure this in the way that we measure physical things. I don't accept Penrose's view that the brain can't do this because of limitations what algorithms can do, since physical processes are not necessarily reducible to an explicit algorithm, but on the grounds that learning from experience doesn't seem adequate as an explanation, higher maths being way beyond ordinary experience. You could argue instead (cf.

http://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1813962) that nature has had infinite time to learn what works and what doesn't, and this knowledge is what we can connect with to do maths. Yardley's point that symbols are what we use to connect with mind is relevant here:

We invented [symbols] so we could have some way of articulating the hidden reality we know as mind.

The concepts involved go beyond back-action, which in Peirce's terminology is Secondness, and include his Thirdness, which corresponds to Yardley's 'pi'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Semiotic elements and_classes_of signs#Semiotic elements for details about these concepts. This, I argue, makes possible a kind of ordering process unknown in regular physics, but is manifested in phenomena such as the emergence and development of language, whose existence shows that this is in principle a valid concept rather than just an idea. The challenge is to describe all this more rigorously.

Brian

Brian D. Josephson

Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge

Director, Mind-Matter Unification Project

Cavendish Laboratory. JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 OHE, UK

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