A Free Will x Quantum Time Travel Interlude

Get ready for me to butcher Hamerhoff & Penrose's objective reduction alongside Chiribella & Liu's indefinite causality experiment.

If you’re an actual physicist, scientist or mathematician reading this, God help you.

AND remember that Stephen Hawking himself believed the next major breakthrough in quantum mechanics was going to come from a layperson who can’t comprehend the limitations of current understanding. See below, Anyone Can Quantum, so! This is what’s involved - deal with it. You’re going to feel like a real turkey if you’re sitting there judging me and I’m the one who figures it out, or anyone in my local amateur theoretical physics meet-up group, Quantumano Bay, for that matter.

Alright, so, I admit I’m feeling a little defensive. Stuart Hameroff’s white paper seeking to prove conscious free will exists came up at the last Quantumano, I’ve since been grappling with it and have even gone so far as to ask well-published and quite famous Berkeley math professor Edward Frenkel whether it’s legit or not. He says it’s bullshit, which I found myself bowing to because he’s a real guy and I’m just some asshole, but within a few minutes got him to concede that he really has no fucking idea. Because the premise sounds crazy, it’s dismissed by academia without any real investigation. Thanks for hearing me out, Edward!

To me, this feels like the precise moment for amateur physics nerds like me to ACTIVATE! But I’m defensive about free will, I really did fire my white lady shaman as mentioned in Draft #1 after many years working together when I found out she didn’t believe in it, because it’s undermining. Not only does it undermine the entire premise of this story, but it undermines all responsibility we might take for our user experience here on Earth. And, worst of all, it’s terribly boring.

The problem Hameroff seeks to solve for is that human beings respond to stimulus physically before the stimulus registers as activity in our brains, as if our brains are the only consciousness processing center in the body! I mean, are these people even looking in the right place?! This is why y’all need amateurs checking your work! Jesus Christ, anyway, the whole science of it implies that we’re on autopilot all the time and free will is an illusion. BOOOOOOOOOO, HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! Suck my dick, Sam Harris, you are seriously so annoying to listen to, you and Eric Weinstein should go blow each other to infinity. Brilliant douchebags are THE WORST.

Ok, I digress - Hameroff arrived at the conclusion (raises butcher-cleaver) that the microtubules in our brains are little quantum computing devices sending stimulus information BACKWARDS IN TIME, thus enabling conscious response. I know, it’s bonkers. But in the next draft, time is going to become a bit gooey, so I want to get out in front of this, like a giant carrot in front of gas-powered bunny-slipper-car. It also would not be the weirdest thing predicted or proven in the quantum realm.

So I put this next to research that came out of China ten years ago proposing that particles could undergo two different transformations at the same time, which was then demonstrated in an experiment in the U.K. in 2017. Last year Chinese physicists Chiribella and Liu devised a game known as Quantum Time Flip that proved unequivocally the arrow of time and its possible outcomes are not definite.

Between that and what’s going on in our microtubules, I rest my case on free will from an internal and external perspective. Apologies for getting defensive, while Sam Harris would say this is just my ego tripping on “proven science,” I would say how can we pay attention to the present moment if we don’t have the free will to decide what to pay attention to or how? / Thanks for proving my point, Loser.

Anyways… Edward also called me a reverse-snob, a profoundly insightful compliment which feels very true. With this in mind, I’ll wrap up here by dragging science snubbing its nose at phenomena that doesn’t fit into existing world views. Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger shared a Nobel Prize last year for his work on quantum entanglement, which he’d previously stated was “not good for anything.” PSSSSH! Except understanding the deepest secrets of the multiverse, maybe?! Or quantum computing or getting hella grant money forever off that Nobel flex?! Is it good for any of that, Zeilinger?! Put me in a room with ANY of these guys, we’ll have a blast.

Draft #5 coming next week! Probably… maybe. You won’t know til it’s out will you? Because my will is conscious and free.