Visualizations and Extrapolations 3

The following is a thought experiment about the superposition of a thought experiment onto another thought experiment

Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket

After Schrodinger heard Einstein say there “God does not play dice with the Universe”, he decided to test probability theory by buying some lottery tickets. To make the test viable, Schrodinger used several methods of choosing the lottery numbers and administrating the physical tickets he purchased. Being an astute mathematician and originator of probability waves as the underlying reality.

The first method would be called informed choice. Schrodinger studied the last thousand winning lottery combinations and determined that there was a pattern among the winning picks. Based on this information, he formulated am algorithm which indicated the likeliness of certain numbers and determined the lowest priority numbers in terms past history. The ticket was purchased at a location which had a high incidence of producing winners.

Schrodinger entrusted his informed choice selection ticket to his colleague Georges LeMaitre, a Catholic priest and the originator of Big Bang Theory. In his cosmology, God is the Prime Mover and First Cause for the Big Bang, thus scientifically justifying Saint Augustine’s Ontological Proof of God. LaMaitre assured Schrodinger that “God’s will be done” and placed the envelope in his copy of Bertrand Russel’s Principia Mathematica for safekeeping.

The second lottery ticket Schrodinger purchased using the popular and common Favorite Lucky Number method. Numbers which appealed to his emotions along with a sense of indeterminate determinism of fanciful chance informed the numbers selected. He chose numbers from a favorite street address number from his youth, the birth date of his current woman friend, and from the license plate of his prized 1934 BMW 303.

This Favorite Lucky Number ticket he delivered to Hugh Everett, physicist, mathematician and cosmologist who informed Schrodinger that even if the ticker was Not A Winner in this world, it would be a Winner in at least one of the many worlds which unfold from every fleeting moment. Schrodinger did not buy into Everett’s hypothesis, but in the interest of “failing to fail” to be a winner, it seemed like it was worth a try. Schrodinger’s worst character flaw would turn out to be having “too open” a mind.

The third method Schrodinger used would be known as stochastic randomness. Knowing full well that there is no such thing as a pure random number generator, Schrodinger tried an on line app which claimed to be even chance-fair coin toss method of deducing the six lottery numbers. Theatticket was purchased at a gas station picked at random while driving a stretch of road infrequently traveled.

This Stochastic Randomness ticket was turned over to polymath and trickster of science Jon VonNeuman, who had debunked the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics and Schrodinger’s own cat experiment using a “sharpshooter “critique. John intimated that use of instrumentation implicated an Infinite Chain of Automatic Observers can only be resolved by a human observer. This was a problem close to Schrodinger’s heart: does machine learning or in modern techno-speak “artificial intelligence” provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for scientific observation of a thing or event? After all, no one has ever seen an electron or a quark, only representations of such fundamental entities from electronic instrumentation devices which are operated in accordance with some mathematical constructs. Even so, two of the outer planets were discovered using calculations based on a theory of gravity. Atom bombs and quartz wristwatches came from advanced scientific theoretic.

The last lottery ticket Schrodinger bought in the most impersonal way. Always a skeptic, there was forethought that perhaps a lottery selection made by a machine might be affected by the programmer of that machine. In other words, quick pick selections might be rigged. Nevertheless, Schrodinger knew that a quick pick won one of the biggest jackpots in history. So, he bought a quick pick selection from a vending machine located in a mega-supermarket.

He did not look at the numbers of this ticket; instead he placed in inside an envelope and put the envelope into a chamber box of an apparatus used in his laboratory. This apparatus had a second chamber which included a scanner which could read the bar code on the ticket. The two chambers were connected by a variable aperture that was controlled by an artificial intelligence robot he called “Maxwell’s Demon”.

The two chambers of the apparatus were evacuated of air. The first chamber where the envelope was placed remained a vacuum; the second chamber was filled with hydrogen gas to a pressure of one atmosphere. The first chamber featured a spark generator which was coupled to a source of electricity which was active for exactly one second every day at precisely the occurrence of the announcement of Official Lottery Results.

Maxwell’s Demon was an information receptor tuned to respond to the “Zeitgeist” or “Spirit of the Times”. Numerous factors about interpersonal, social, cultural, political and ethnological states of affairs were coded into an algorithm. Factors such as the doomsday clock, stock market trends, nationalism and wars, social media, popular music and fashion trends formed the basis for this demon to make decisions about how much and how often to open the aperture between the two chambers.

Schrodinger called this Zeitgeist sensitive valve “Maxwell’s Demon” since it was not only variable but also decisive: it is capable of micro managing the amount of hydrogen gas to be sent into the First chamber. This Demon valve was imbued with an artificial intelligence understanding about the quality of life and human nature. It was programmed to open the valve in the event of the quality of life degenerating past a certain threshold and to remain closed whenever a threshold value of expectation for improved quality of life was trending. These non-neutral and seemingly subjective observations were entrusted to machine learning and thresholds were set by inter-subjective agreement on a sociology- cultural level.

The timing of the Demon’s decision was to be at the exact time of the Official Lottery Draw Break, nominally 10:02 PM, CST. The spark generator installed in the first chamber was arranged to emit one spark at the exact time of the announcement of Official Lottery Results, nominally 10:12 PM, CST.

Now the physical fate of the lottery ticket has been is linked to a simultaneity of seemingly random events at the sociological-cultural level (rather than the sub-atomic) and which may or may not occur. By this scenario, one of at least four possibilities would obtain:

1. open the aperture so minutely and instantaneously that only one hydrogen atom could pass

2. allow a minuscule amount of hydrogen to pass, the threshold of which could possibly ignite

3. open the completely and initiate the possibility of a flash inferno

4. the aperture does not open at all

Since whether the Lottery Ticket is a Winner or Not A Winner is inextricably linked to a random future event, the lottery drawing, it can be considered both Winner and Not A Winner simultaneously for the duration that it is in the box and the Official Lottery Results have not been announced. According to Quantum Hypothesis, this would be “Superposition” of Winning and Not Winning wave forms, or Possibilities. As long as Observation does not take place, and Knowledge of Information is not available, there is no Certainty of the Outcome or Resolution of Possibilities into a Fact or Event. This is the problem Schrodinger tried to obviate in his cat experiment.

The Paradox of Superposition that Schrodinger wants to find non-trivial information about amounts to “when or whether (or not) do wave-forms of possibilities “collapse” (Schrodinger’s term amounts to “resolve”) into fact/event/actuality/reality? In the original cat experiment, events at the sub atomic level involving the decay of radioactive elements triggering a poison flask may or may not kill the cat. In this Lottery Ticket experiment, events at the Sociological and Cultural level are the Instigators of Fate for a probability wave sequence involving consciousness and perception.

Schrodinger’s dilemma, the Superposition paradox, results in conclusions which challenge intuitive and seemingly established assumptions about “what is reality?” Can it be that “possibility is the only reality” when every sequence of facts and events resets into more stochastic myriads of possibilities as each waveform is observed and “collapses” each fact/event transpires and evolves into new scenarios.

Superposition of macro structures such as sociological trends in the quantum context means the outcome of a scenario takes on a myriad of possibilities. In the case of the lottery ticket, it is not just “Winner” or “Not a Winner” but everything in between: “Could possibly be a winner” and “probably will Not be a Winner”. Add to this the conscious element of expectations and the subjectivity of intentions: “You have unrealistic expectations about the outcome of this ticket” and “Your intention will not influence the outcome of this ticket”.

There is more: physical limitations and boundary conditions which even Schrodinger might not have taken into full account: “the odds of winning the jackpot of this lottery are one in three hundred million”. Add to this hypothetical, indeterminate and stochastic randomness scenario the probabilistic factor of Maxwell’s Demon making an adverse decision, opening the hydrogen valve and the certainty of the spark generator going off, causing a flash fire, destroying the ticket, Winner or Not!

Furthermore, does probabilistic automata in the form of machine learning have credibility as interpreters of the objective reality of things, facts and events? Remember that it was Schrodinger himself who devised the experiment and constructed the apparatus. The components of the apparatus were designed and manufactured according to specifications and procedures which came from human interaction even if they were scientists and engineers.

The materials used and components of the devices installed in the apparatus were direct products of a human workforce. A human programmer, a human originated graphic interface, analytics and published white papers: all requiring human and operation of and interaction with and intervention to “inanimate objects” however sophisticated and lifelike they are presumed to be. And what good would all the Knowledge Information about this scenario be if it existed only in cyberspace.

So, at least four outcomes present themselves regarding the mortality of the lottery ticket:

1. The ticket Wins the Lottery and remains undamaged

2. The ticket Wins the Lottery but is destroyed in a flash fire

3. The ticket is Not a Winner and remains undamaged

4. The ticket is Not a Winner and is destroyed in a flash fire

Yes, there is a very long shot contingency:

5. The ticket is scorched but readable enough to be verified as Winner or Not A Winner

So, the mortality of the lottery ticket depends on Knowledge of Information about whether the number selection corresponds to the official Lottery results, and this Knowledge is time based. Between the time the ticket is purchased and the official results are disclosed, there is probability (however low) that it is a Winner, and probability (however high) that it is Not A Winner. There are also the gradations of likelihood of winning considering odds facrors and yes, the effect of sociological-cuktural circumstances! At the time of the announcement of the official results, that “probability wave collapses” is reduced to a (binary) certainty of Winner or Not A Winner.

All this implies, just as in scientific inference from hypothesis through experimentation, that Knowledge of Information does not have to be perceived by a human consciousness. Scientists use Radio Telescopes, Particle Accelerators and Electron Microscopes to make observations, so why not use mechanized automata to discern and analyze stochastic randomness in a Lottery Drawing? Schrodinger has delegated the perception of Knowledge Information to a system of automata, scanners and code readers; finely articulated devices capable of “automatic comprehension” from specific inputs through receiving transmissions of, and the decoding of data.

So the Lottery Results exist in space and time having supposedly immutable physical properties such as “Bits and Bytes” of information: codes and data which can inform a properly articulated machine. Human awareness is not necessary for that machine to interpret the results. Knowledge of Information is the variable in discerning the mortality of Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket and that Information is dependent upon whether it was a Winner or Not A Winner, Undamaged or Destroyed. That Information also has a temporal component.

There are several kinds of Randomness inherent in the Knowledge of Information about this ticket. Remember that Schrodinger has not looked at the lottery number selection, and it is a machine originated quick pick; presumably, his consciousness would not be involved in resolving the Official Lottery Results. Having accumulated wealth by winning Nobel prizes, the destruction of a winning lottery ticket is secondary to finding out something important about informational stochastic systems to Schrodinger.

When the day of the Texas Lotto rolled around, it was a typical Wednesday in the world, no terrorist strikes, no invasions of sovereign countries, no riots in the streets, no tsunamis of devastating hurricanes. The destruction of tropical rain-forests continued unabated, as did the melting of the polar ice shelves and seven kinds of air pollution. Among the general population there was a fair complacency and reasonable enjoyment of the quality of life. In terms Abraham Maslow poplarized, people were “self-actualizing” even if not having “peak experiences”. There wasn’t any reason to expect that the Maxwell Demon at the gas valve would open it fully.

Sure enough, when 10:02:00 PM arrived on that draw date, the valve remained shut and at 10:12:00, when the Official Lottery Results were announced, the spark generator did not ignite any hydrogen gas.

The results of the Lottery draw were known to anyone who would be interested. Typically, Schrodinger was working on a thesis and neglected to open the hermetically sealed chamber containing the envelope which held the quick pick lottery ticket.

By his own account and as VonNeuman, would agree this meant that the outcomes of Winner and Not A Winner were still superimposed. By other accounts, the resolution of the ticket result was a done deal, The Texas Lottery Commission has an electronic record of all transactions included Schrodinger’s quick pick. It also has a record of which numbers were selected automatically by Lottery software for Schrodinger’s quick pick and of course it has Knowledge Information about the winning set of numbers. By this recorded information it would not matter whether the ticket was in a box with no human observer. Personally, obtaining Knowledge Information about the contents of that box would not change the final results, nor would it change the probability of those results.

When Schrodinger ended his procrastination and retrieved the envelope, he went to the Lucky Food Market, a small shop in a strip mall, to use the lottery ticket scanner there, Schrodinger does not trust the scanner since there would be a possibility for error or even fraud on the part of the programmers. He was also aware that the Knowledge Information he sought was not fresh and might even be diluted or somehow obfuscated due to information entropy from the passage of time and due to procrastination. Nevertheless, he scanned that quick pick ticket and got (read it and weep) predictable results: Not A Winner.

Disgusted with his efforts to at least find out something about when superposition ends and “reality” begins, Schrodinger trudged in desolation through an empty parking lot back to his BMW. He turned up his coat against a high wind. There were pieces of paper being blown around the lot, one of them was at the curb beside the driver’s side door of his car. A Lottery ticket? Yes, it was a lottery ticket! Talk about stochastic randomness! Go ahead and devise elaborate experiments, try to circumvent high uncertainties with probability theory, all to find that windblown debris provides another randomness experiment. Schrodinger picks up the ticket and merrily takes it to the Lucky Food Store scanner. The result: Schrodinger, the winner of Nobel prize, has won a free lottery ticket!

So, in a very real way, the legal find of the winning ticket was an extension of the possibility wave (or set of waves) that Schrodinger set into motion with the effort to find out something non-trivial about stochastic randomness and intentional action. His non-trivial discovery is that sequences of events are inextricably bound by “potential for becoming” which resolves into “myriads of possibilities” that become “realities or actualities” when certain circumstances obtain. One of those circumstances is intentional, another circumstance would be expectation, both leading to the becoming of facts or events through conscious interaction, otherwise known as Intentional Observation with Expectations.

The takeaway from Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket experiment invokes the interpenetration of all things, facts and events through intention, and expectation, both are cognitive aspects of the consciousness of a sentient being. However complex they may be, neither expectation or intention are features of quantum supercomputers or of artificial intelligence. By this analysis, conscious human interaction is requisite for “pure potential” to become a “myriad of possibilities” to become “optimal alternative” which inevitably becomes a fact/event/reality/actuality that a human can experience. The question is whether this spectacular realization is Trivially or Non-trivially true.

Fred Jay Ross fredjayross@gmail.com

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Visualizations and Extrapolations 1

What is the Popular Understanding of Infinity?

Visualizations and Extrapolations 2

Does the Speed of Light Limit the Propagation of Information?

Visualizations and Extrapolations 3

Schrodinger’s Lottery Ticket

Visualizations and Extrapolations 4

Living on the Cusp

Visualizations and Extrapolations 5

The Surreal has Become the New Real