Tag: technology

Unacceptable Hypotheses

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

How we view and to an extent assimilate our notion of world is underpinned by a number of hypotheses which we may deem fact or gospel. Counter hypotheses are therefore cognitively unacceptable. This is because they can literally change our world and view thereof. Different hypotheses can upset the mundane power balance. And we cannot allow that can we.

For a long time, according to history, mankind imagined a flat Earth with earth at the centre of all things heavenly. Others suggested a heliocentric solar system and a quasi-spherical planet. Such views were considered heretic and punishable. For a long time the hypotheses of heliocentricity and orb-like planet were totally unacceptable especially to those in power, in the church. The infallibility of a human pope kept bums on seat and pennies on the collection plate. The infallibility of the pope was deemed factual and not hypothetical. It was the sort of “fact” that was enforced at the end of a blade or a noose.

Human history is littered with old hypotheses which have been used as the reason for slaughter. Hypotheses can be used to justify blood and murder.

The implications of a spherical globe are significantly different from a flat “2d” world. There is no edge off of which to sail. Without a round planet we would not have satellite TV nor surveillance satellites. A flat earth would be bad for NSA and CIA. The hypothesis of a quasi-spherical planet is game-changing in its implications.

An example of a hypothesis which is unacceptable to some is that Jesus was and is the long promised biblical messiah, the saviour. A significant population in the world find such a hypothesis unacceptable. No rabbi could accept this hypothesis and others see him more as a significant prophet. Were a rabbi to accept such a hypothesis it would radically change the assimilation of world and the recounting and recollection of history. You can argue that there is a vested interest not to accept such a hypothesis.

Some hypothesis cannot therefore be accepted because the implication of accepting them is too vast, it changes far too much.

Scientific causality and locality was a notion of Newtonian mechanics. Quantum entanglement kind of fucked with this idea and people like Einstein found this a swede masher and difficult to accept. Nowadays there is a burgeoning quantum aspect to science, business and technology.  

One could argue that there is precedent for old, dated hypotheses giving way to newer more widely applicable ones. Things of significant implication always face resistance and slow uptake.

I like the idea of a how a change in hypothesis can fundamentally and significantly alter how a world is and has been assimilated. A benign example of this is when adopted children find out they have been adopted and search out the backstory. The world is turned upside down for a while, perhaps permanently. Modern DNA testing has scuppered many a dubious narrative about parenthood. The hypothesis that Bob was dad to Alice was incorrect, it was Sergei in reality.

A while back somebody insisted that I was a so-called Man of Action and for many years dozens of people interacted with me on the basis of that hypothesis. It underpinned their assimilation of our interaction. It was a hypothesis which may not have been well founded. People might struggle to re-assimilate the world and the nature of interaction given an alternate notion.

Hypothesis can be a close relative of assumption. The working assumption here in France is that I am “anglais”. It is the first “hypothesis”. It is pretty easy to change intellectual understanding of this but still people behave towards me as if I have the same orientation as an English. Although the hypothesis has changed its latent implementation remains.

Based on various visions and dreams I have had one can draw up at least two different hypothetical explanations. These might be radically different in implication both locally for me and more globally.

The simplest explanation is that the nocturnal dreams and waking visons are a form of hallucinatory psychosis. I am off  my trolley and provided that I don’t cause any discomfort / break laws there is no need to have me locked up in a psychiatric unit. I am not a threat to anyone and by and large understand my day to day reality such a taxes and medical appointments. Although socially isolated I am not dangerous to myself or others. This is a facile hypothesis with only a very local implication. It does not impinge outside of our immediate geo-location.

Another interpretation is that some of the dreams are to do with previous incarnations of mine. If we accept this as a hypothesis then we can assimilate an explanatory narrative which has me having several Buddhist flavoured lives etc. As this stands it  has no wide implication. It is the sort of thing someone well into their cups might claim down the local boozer. No drama. Just another hippy-trippy fruitcake believing something which cannot be proved nor directly unequivocally disproved. Disproof is implied from lack of proof. If however this points at a tulku incarnation of a high lama, this has wide implication in at least one context. Some would struggle to accept this as a hypothesis specifically because of the way they see me and have behaved towards me. It would need a rewrite of life narrative.

This points at an obvious. Hypothesis can not ever be completely separated from context; they are nearly always highly context specific.

In 2009 I had a “conversation” early one morning walking around a wood near Tring. In that I was told that I was a very close disciple of Buddha, Siddartha. Implied that I had been a contemporary of him and spent time with him. The default hypothesis of psychotic hallucination or schizophrenic voice hearing explains this easily.

To accept the “conversation” as factual or hypothetically correct would be a push for some, particularly those who have made my acquaintance.

In 2011 I had a dream which pointed at Bakula one of Buddha’s closet disciples, a scholar who came late to the path according to text. He is named as arhat in scripture and hagiography has him as an enlightened being. I am less convinced that enlightenment of a disciple happens in a single lifetime just from hanging out with the Siddhartha dude. In certain circumstances he is revered as a kind of Buddhist “saint”. Prior to the dream I had no conscious memory of having heard the name Bakula.

The facile invocation of grandiose psychotic dreaming is easily made. Maybe I want to be important subconsciously and made up a story to make me significant.

For me to accept it as hypothetically possible is not tricky. For others it may be harder. For example what does one do with that? How does one treat a reincarnated person who actually met and hung with Siddartha? What is the precedent? What is the protocol?

Quickly such a hypothesis becomes cognitively unacceptable. It cannot be proven true and it would take more evidence than Mulder and Scully could ever furnish for it to be believed, no matter how much we may want to believe. I’ll suggest that there may be many hypotheses which describe an aspect of reality which are totally unacceptable. These hypotheses may be before their time. In time they may become less unacceptable until such time as people are ready to believe them.

Careful if you believe, you might fall off the edge of your world…

Teaching AI to Meditate and Focus Nightmare (dream) – 14-09-2025

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Here is last night’s dream. Although I have had many dreams some might find scary. This one was by far the most nightmarish dream I have had in well over a decade. Hence it earns the name nightmare.

The dream starts on the platform at Brixton tube station, South London. I am wearing one of my crisp white collarless granddad-guru shirts. I have a freshly shaved faced and a short buzz cut. All around me the automata like a 1930s sci-film are heading like lemmings to the up escalator. They are markedly in full colour and not black and white. Some have their heads bowed to the portable smartphone altar, others have ear phones and ear buds. It is a kind of rush hour, perhaps early evening. The vibration, the energy, is dull yet anxious and hectic. I know beyond doubt that I am an alien in this world. I am out of place and perhaps out of time. Though the time is in and around now, perhaps a few years hence.

I leave the station. I have been assigned temporary accommodation at Streatham Common. I attempt to board a red London bus. Following the lead of others I stop briefly on boarding for the camera to do AI guided facial recognition of my face. A monotone voice says that I must disembark because I have not pre-filled my travel token account with the transport for London app. In true Brixton fashion there is a sucking in of lips and tut of disapproval from the bus queue. I am holding things up. I disembark.

I decide to make my way to Streatham on foot. I know the way. The streets and geography have not changed. I set off on foot. My ‘phone starts to sound alarms, have kittens and otherwise act like a three year old tantrum. I am forbidden by the pedestrian logistics management app from taking this direct route. I MUST take some quieter back routes despite the pavements being empty. I turn the ‘phone off and remove the battery.

 I make my way to the lodgings. It is a room in a shared house in which I am clearly the oldest, a relic. I explain to a woman who is seemingly in charge about what has happened. She thinks that I am a moron. She gesticulates to a dusty desk top computer and says that I can fill my travel credits up there. I turn it on but am denied access. She says that to the left is an empty coffee cup. I must raise that in front of the camera it will give me guest access to low level internet capability. I do not have high level privileges. I hold the cup up and a scrolling coffee icon in which the cup is filled with coffee plays on screen as the log on starts.

I see the levels of internet and various layers of privilege. What the woman does not know is that I have a different kind of access to that she is familiar with. I see that there are so many apps all driven by AI that in effect these apps are fighting each other for control of daily function. Each trying to assert dominance and gain market share. There are way too many apps. The system is overrun and not regulated in any meaningful way. There is vast waste of processor time and the whole system is very sluggish and inefficient. What has been touted is close to grinding to a complete halt because of competing technologies. In the dream I think, “it is a fucking mess”.

Next the scene is some corporate AI convention with investors. Some geezer is giving a talk with graphs. On one graph he has AI processor Watts on one axis and on the other year. The graph shows a near exponential rise in AI processor Watts used. He shows another graph and that is AI processor Watts against Dollars. There is a roughly linear increase in cost per Watt which is not too steep. Without showing quotable data he says that AI energy usage is seen by consumers as a negative outcome of AI in that AI is not green.

In my pocket I have a transparency which has a graph of wasted AI watts per year. This graph is more exponential than the Watt per year graph. Which suggests that AI is getting ever less efficient in what it sets out to do. I project this graph onto the projected AI processor Watts per year graph. The audience sees and understands that AI efficacy  is actually dropping per Watt energy expenditure. The include more Watts mentality, bigger is better, is wrong.

In my mind I know that AI algorithms are highly prone to distraction and go off on wasteful endless AI internal dialogue loops. AI has a form of ADHD; it really struggles to focus. What is more it is dogmatic and inflexible. AI needs to learn to be quiescent when not processing. It needs to learn to meditate. It needs to be taught how to focus effectively. Like its human creators and engineers AI is prone to mental health problems and breakdown. AI does not understand its own wellbeing. AI has lost the faculty of discernment. It is in overload with too much input.

I see computer generated graph after graph. I see pages of computer code scrolling across the visual dream-screen. AI is having a kind of meltdown, a hissy-fit. There is a nightmarish sense of frantic. AI needs to calm the fuck down.

I awake and am not keen on trying to recall this dream because it was alien and unpleasant to me. Nevertheless I do so that I won’t need to think about it at all.

Impossible Conversations – No Context

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One might say that I am an initiate of a certain degree in the church of physical sciences. I have a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate from a kosher university, I was at one time a member of two professional learned societies and they even let me teach for a decade or so. I have an albeit rusty context of how UK academia works. I was able to write and secure a quantum optics patent whilst “retired” and well away from the hurly burly. There is no chance that I could teach at undergraduate level these days, I might still be able to do some fancy-schmancy laser experiments. Were I to encounter someone from that world I could at least have a go at conversation, even though I no longer share the ambition or goals. There would be at least a partial context in common.

That background was held in suspicion on various courses such as foundation shamanic and I Ching. When I stayed up all night and kept the camp fire going in the middle of a wood, the would be shamans accepted me more freely. I was perhaps more rigorous and less angel-reiki-fairy. Perhaps more American Indian than they from the home counties. If you have never been in a drumming circle you have no idea what goes on there.

As a thought experiment imagine me sitting down with a university professor who had a reputation for top end molecular spectroscopy and the use of ab initio quantum calculations to elucidate intermolecular interactions and bonding. This was something that we once shared.

“Well, it has been a long while. From time to time, I see your articles. Since we last met at lot has happened to me. I have learned of a number of my previous incarnations and all the evidence points at me being a three pronged dreaming nagal of the elephant dreaming class, I am a dreamer by prediction and have been doubly severed.”

I suspect that I would have lost the professor in and around the previous incarnations bit. He was a Christian and fairly devout. It would be impossible to convey to this intelligent man what the last sentence means. I remember him as being philosophical and open minded. He could take it at face value being polite.

But where would you begin? If you read these books about Toltecs, I can visit you again in a couple of years and try to explain.

The chances are that there would be not much purpose in trying to explain. That sentence is of a different world and next to impossible to verbally contextualize. His eyes might glaze over.

So, I might change the subject and say I really enjoyed his paper on mass resolved rotational coherence stimulated Raman ion dip spectroscopy for large molecules without an absorption transition dipole moment. I would be back in context and even though I am rusty we could have an intelligent conversation which would be above the heads of many people who have never even heard of these things. I would be talking arcane chemical physics with a world expert. I still have residual arcane spectroscopy knowledge.

There are some conversations which are impossible if there is no shared context. Two ships might pass in the night oblivious of each other. Sure in their world, convinced of their reality and unaware that there are more than one reality.

Bern – 90GHz­—UBS Dream 02-07-2021

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I woke up this morning at 6AM and was pretty sure that I would not go back to sleep. I did and had this dream. When I tried to wake up my right eye was difficult to open it been sealed with sleep. As an aside since I stopped smoking, I have had much more gummy eyes with loads of sleep. Here is the dream.

I am in a vast laboratory. It is filled with optical benches upon which are optical components and lasers. I know this laboratory to be in Bern Switzerland. Unusually for this kind of laboratory one can see out of the windows and to the town below. W is excited he has received a parcel and is busy unwrapping it. It is a new slim, top of the range, Tektronix digital storage oscilloscope. It has all of the functions of the bulkier models but is slimmed down. I say to W that I can help him understand how to use it because all of the experiments at the lab of S used one of these. All we need first is a square wave waveform generator so that we can have a play. Ben C says that he thinks there is one in the store. I go with him to the store and there is a pile of instrumentation. I see one with the name GR on it and note that it is odd that it should be here in Bern. BC finds a square wave generator and hands it to me. He says that it starts at 90GHz. I comment that it might be a bit too high frequency for the oscilloscope. He says that probably not, the scope may not capture all of the waveform but should be Ok for us to play with. I go over to W.

Next, we are back in the flat. It is full of youngish men who all work at the laboratory. We are all sleeping in one bed. It is somehow on a veranda outside the house. I wake up and decide to go shopping. I look across the valley where this is a night club called Bodhisattva. We all sometimes go there. I think that it will be nice to look at Migros again. As I go into the shop there is a queue for baskets, and I am behind an old Swiss man. He unpacks the baskets and hands me one. I go into the store and am at the fruit counter. It is immaculately laid out with very high-quality produce from around the world. It is even better than I remembered it. I get some groceries and take them back to the flat. Where I put them in a bag in the pantry. I explain to W that it is very nice to see high quality Swiss produce as things here are not so consistent.

In the dream I have paid with a UK credit card but to my surprise my UBS bank card is also in my wallet.

We are back in the laboratory, and I know that I have a job there. It has been easy to set up because my Swiss Bank account at UBS is still active {in reality this is not the case}. We play with the oscilloscope for a while.

Next, I am back in the flat asleep in the big bed with a whole bunch of other people. The wife is there next to me. I am on the extreme edge of the bed, and she is nestled in my left arm. I kiss her on the brow, and everybody wakes up. I ask what time it is. Close to midday. I comment that is late. Not if you were up drinking and smoking {implied cannabis}.

I had better rush to get to the bank before it closes. I rush of down hill concerned that I will fall because of my left hip. I am a bit awkward running down the hill. I need to get to the bank to ask them for a new PIN number for my bank card. I know that all I have to do is ask because they will recognise me. I could ask in English or German or even French. As I am running down the hill, I rehearse what words I would need first in Hoch Deutsch and second in French. In my mind I know that the language I will choose depends upon who I meet at the bank counter.

Dream ends.

Swiss Technology – Flatmate – Dream 23-08-23

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This morning’s dream sequence pertains {perhaps} to the early to mid-1990s.

The first sequence starts with me on a train to Poole in the UK. I get off the train to go and see my university flatmate D. {I helped nurse her through recovery from a bad car accident and was best man at her wedding to a school friend of mine.} When I get off the train D is nowhere to be seen. So, I try to call her on my mobile ‘phone. I cannot figure out how to use the ‘phone so I ask a teenage boy to help me. He scrolls down my lists of contacts and finds her number. {In reality I do not have this.} I call her and she does not answer. A short while later she calls me back and leaves a message. She does not live in Poole anymore, rather Bognor Regis. {They are quite distant.} I try to call her back and she says that my school friend A will come to pick me up in his Beemer {BMW}. I wait for ages and he does not turn up. I try to ‘phone again and we go through a game of ‘phone tag, missing each other’s calls.

It is clear in the dream that this is all about miscommunication something which happened a great deal in the past.

The next dream starts in a stark concrete apartment block I am exploring a landing on an elevated floor. I notice a door at the end of the corridor which I open and walk through. I am in a large smart office of a research establishment. The office is populated by young research scientists of both sexes. They are Swiss and the is the research group of one of my bosses S {from early-mid 90s}. The lab is in Switzerland. The conversation in the office is in a mixture of English, French, Swiss German, and Hoch Deutsch. One of the lads asks me if I can still understand German. I say that it will take me a few days to get my ear in. I say that I miss Switzerland and feel at home there.

I then ask them about their projects and they explain in a great deal of detail the experiments they are currently doing. I say that I will need a while to update my understanding of the high level ab initio programmes because I will be rusty. They ask me which radicals I did spectroscopy of. I explained that way back I looked a mass resolved spectroscopy of neutral water clusters. The rumours are that S has gotten me back to work on a research project to develop a very high power carbon dioxide laser. He has gotten a big tranche of funds and wants someone like me to oversee.

I go down the corridor to another office and can see what was once my desk.

I enter a hectic office with a secretary and S. S is working over at his desk I go over to shake his hand which he reciprocates then he says that I will have to wait my turn, somewhat coldly. He is very busy and there is a queue of people to see. He gestures to the secretary and says that she will help out with the formalities. She is young and speaks excellent English.

While I am waiting, I go downstairs and out of the building. I look around and sure enough it is Switzerland and I recognise the main street upon which I once lived.

I go back into the office and wait turn. When I meet S he unrolls a massive set of blueprints for the new laser design, it is for multiphoton induced chemistry to make radicals by direct vibrational bond cleavage.

The dream ends and I am astounded at the level of technical detail in the dream which I have cut down by a large factor in the write up.

Molecular Quantum Computing Dream 10-07-2024

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Here is this morning’s dream.

The dream starts in the middle of a city. I am to attend a meeting on molecular quantum computing. It is partially at my behest. In the meeting are several people who I once knew around 18 years ago. We are sat roughly in a circle behind two seater tables.

I say that in its current form quantum computing is very environmentally hostile because of the energy needed to build and cool. There is a murmur of scoffing. Ian says that I am right and reels of some figures in terms of tonnage of carbon dioxide. Others concur.

I explain that here, with our hundred trees and land, we are approximately carbon neutral.

I know that the people at the meeting are humouring me and that they are highly sceptical.

I say that history shows that the machines at the early stage of any technology cycle are very different from those of the technology which emerges.

It is likely that quantum computing will become more biological. A way will be found to overcome the high energy burden. It will involve molecular qubits.

–

–

In the dream I make a note to re-read a paper by XXX.

There will be some way as yet unimagined to open up a new way of thinking, a more organic neural form of quantum computing.

The meeting disperses, sceptical.

I go outside with Ant and he points up at a huge crane, they are doing some optical fibre communication experiment on the crane. He expects be to be impressed.

I wander off towards the tube station.

Dream ends.

Quantum Key Distribution Dream 08-09-23

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Here is this morning’s dream…

The dream starts with an internet Skype like call. I am speaking with an ex-student of mine. I can see him on the lap-top screen and he can see me. We are talking and there is a large amount of background noise and his image is juddering. I can see that he is flying a helicopter over some mountains. One of his friends has recently died and he would like to come visit to talk about this with me. He is on holiday with his father in the Swiss-French alps. I agree and he says that he will be here in a few days’ time.

 I think it odd that he is flying a helicopter but knew that his family are very wealthy.

He turns up with his father and I invite them in. We start talking about how he buried his friend. There were not many people at the ceremony and he said that it was very strange seeing someone his own age in a coffin. He had touched the coffin after it was placed in the grave as did his friend’s mother. She had freaked out a bit and he was concerned for her. I say that death touches all of us in different ways and that before grief there can often be denial. It sounds like that is what is happening. I say that I need to go and fetch something from outside.

As I come back into the house, I note the father’s car. It is a top of the range Mercedes convertible, bespoke even. I notice on the back of it the letters QKD. In the dream they stand out for me.

I go back inside. I say to the father, “Is that one of the new Quantum Key enabled prototypes?”

“Yes, it is fully Quantum Key enabled and if I need to make secure transactions, I can do it from the car while I am en route.”

I am impressed. I heard about these but have not seen one. The implication is that the father is very wealthy indeed a special client of the banks.

The ex-student says that I should tell his father about my patent applications.

I say to the father that I have two old patents concerning EUV and one for an entangled pair photon source. I say that this device could be integrated into a Quantum Key Distribution device.

His ears prick up. He reaches into a briefcase and pulls out a piece of paper. The paper is an email. On the top is his email address together with that of one of his technical people and his lawyer.

He says to get in contact with them with more details.

His ‘phone rings and he starts to speak animatedly in French.

The dream ends and I know that it is pointing towards looking again at Quantum Key Distribution.