> zaimoni@ksu.edu wrote:
>
> > > What is an atomic event classed as? Is it something fairly major, or is it
> > > something as simple as decision making?
> >
> > It's fairly small-scale. Actually, some interpretations of Quantum
> > Mechanics seem to exclude decision-making from the domain of study.
>
> This is what I was wondering. A lot of Sci-Fi on this subject uses the
> idea that everytime a poerson (or any living being, I suppose) makes a decision
> then a new universe is created (sorry, comes into being) where the
> alternatives are played out. I was intrigued by the validity of this
> idea. Can, though, the reactions in the brain that cause a decision to
> be made, be thought of as atomic events?
A subtle point. Your last sentence stops the analysis at the
physical/energy implementation of the decision. One divergence between
Many-Worlds and Copenhagen is this:
Many-Worlds represents the arbitrariness of "free-will" as which
time-line one is in.
Copenhagen represents the arbitrariness of "free-will" as an "agent" that
is explicitly NOT described by any axioms, except that it causes wave
function collapses.
[my internal reference frame uses "spirit"; I use this when distinguishing
between mental and spiritual phenomena.]
Once you are looking at the physical implementation of a decision, there
is no distinction between the two interpretations.
There's some interesting psychophysics in the most recent Scientific
American theme issue on Consciousness. "Researcher tries to disbelieve
his own experiments, and *fails*."
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
/
/ Kenneth Boyd
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