Mar 31, 2025 08:51 PM
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/nature-canno...122c81311d
EXCERPTS (Avi Loeb): The physical reality did not have to be that strict, but it is. There is no free will in the elementary particle domain. However, it is well known that when human societies decide about a set of laws, some of their members choose to violate these laws. This outcome is surprising because the human body is made of elementary particles which do not possess that freedom.
One way to understand the unpredictability of human behavior is through the complexity of the human brain. [...] That the behavior of a large collection of elementary particles appears unpredictable should not be surprising given that even a three-body system in Newtonian dynamics shows chaotic behavior, with small deviations in initial conditions causing divergent outcomes. Free will may just be an amplified representation of the “butterfly effect” in the highly nonlinear architecture of the human brain.
The ability of humans to violate societal laws has two implications. First, societal laws are optional and spacetime dependent. They could be different on Earth than they are on an exoplanet. They are different today than they were a thousand years ago. In fact, these laws did not even exist 400 thousand years after the Big Bang. Second, as these laws can be violated, there is a need for a judicial system that assigns punishments to criminals who violate societal laws. There is no need to police electrons because they never violate the laws of quantum mechanics.
Our court system disciplines individuals based on eyewitness testimonies. However, science relies on repeatable measurements by instruments. If a new phenomenon represents new physics, then by repeating the same circumstances that led to it, any observer would find the same outcome. There is no need for a court, because the physical reality can be reliably characterized by data from instruments which avoid the weaknesses of the human mind, such as wishful thinking and hallucinations.
For this reason, I was surprised to be contacted yesterday by a group of people who would like to vet the physical reality in the courtroom. They wish to hear eyewitness testimonies about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) and let a judge rule if these phenomena truly exist in the physical reality that we all share. They argue that if multiple witnesses repeat the same story, the jury might find the evidence compelling. In my conversation with a representative from this group, I tried to explain that this is not the correct path for figuring out physical reality... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS (Avi Loeb): The physical reality did not have to be that strict, but it is. There is no free will in the elementary particle domain. However, it is well known that when human societies decide about a set of laws, some of their members choose to violate these laws. This outcome is surprising because the human body is made of elementary particles which do not possess that freedom.
One way to understand the unpredictability of human behavior is through the complexity of the human brain. [...] That the behavior of a large collection of elementary particles appears unpredictable should not be surprising given that even a three-body system in Newtonian dynamics shows chaotic behavior, with small deviations in initial conditions causing divergent outcomes. Free will may just be an amplified representation of the “butterfly effect” in the highly nonlinear architecture of the human brain.
The ability of humans to violate societal laws has two implications. First, societal laws are optional and spacetime dependent. They could be different on Earth than they are on an exoplanet. They are different today than they were a thousand years ago. In fact, these laws did not even exist 400 thousand years after the Big Bang. Second, as these laws can be violated, there is a need for a judicial system that assigns punishments to criminals who violate societal laws. There is no need to police electrons because they never violate the laws of quantum mechanics.
Our court system disciplines individuals based on eyewitness testimonies. However, science relies on repeatable measurements by instruments. If a new phenomenon represents new physics, then by repeating the same circumstances that led to it, any observer would find the same outcome. There is no need for a court, because the physical reality can be reliably characterized by data from instruments which avoid the weaknesses of the human mind, such as wishful thinking and hallucinations.
For this reason, I was surprised to be contacted yesterday by a group of people who would like to vet the physical reality in the courtroom. They wish to hear eyewitness testimonies about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) and let a judge rule if these phenomena truly exist in the physical reality that we all share. They argue that if multiple witnesses repeat the same story, the jury might find the evidence compelling. In my conversation with a representative from this group, I tried to explain that this is not the correct path for figuring out physical reality... (MORE - missing details)
