I am waiting for Superintelligence to build my physically ideal woman and program her to be my soulmate.

Eldras, that’s a very interesting manifesto you have written at
https://sites.google.com/site/quantumarchaeology/ .
It reads a little like a cybernetician’s psychedelic rant. As I was reading it initially, I found myself questioning whether it blurs not the line between science and fiction, but science and psychosis. Many assertions are made for which no evidence is given. For the sake of brevity, let’s eschew red herrings of form, or tarring with the brush of citing science fiction – or no – references, and focus on the viability of the fundamental concept you call “quantum archaeology.”

As applies to calculation based in classical physics, the progressively more acute “blur” in calculational prediction resulting from the uncertainty principle as delta-t increases, i.e. as we proceed farther from “now” into the future – OR THE PAST – is completely symmetric with respect to time. N.B. the word ‘blur’ is carefully chosen. The progressive error of calculated resolution is mathematically isomorphic to resolving detail at increasing distance from the blurred focus of a lens. My favorite way of saying this is, “you can’t predict the past any more accurately than you can predict the future.” But that really only applies to mechanics.

The symmetry of physics with respect to positive and negative time, i.e. the future and the past, is broken by the act of quantum mechanical measurement. The precise description of the future is dependent, by definition, upon indeterminate quantum states. But not so – the past. The measurement problem creates some doubt as to whether the existence of symmetry about “now” is even a valid question to ask. Many physicists prefer that a mechanism be discovered whereby previously determined (“measured,” “observed,” “decohered”) quantum numbers (integers) “dissolve” back into the quantum state described by complex numbers (or in some cases quaternions.) My friends refer to this as an event “unhappening.” Such a mechanism could go a long way toward reinstating the symmetry of calculational acuity with regard to the advancing hyper-surface “time=now,” but at present there is no evidence such a mechanism exists. It is difficult to imagine how one might structure an experiment to detect the phenomena of definite quantum numbers dissolving back into undetermined quantum states, or even if such an experiment is possible.

So the seminal requirement of quantum archaeology for an unlimited resolution of past events – the infinite precision and immutability forever of previously-determined quantum events – appears to be supported by currently-accepted physics. What a head scratcher! Good effort! It’s so seldom I see a defensible new idea introduced!

That being said, Eldras, you describe a datastructure which you imagine to be evolving as quantum archaeology progresses. One can imagine such a datastructure as initially describing all potentially possible past universes, progressing toward internal consistency by pruning the tree, and eliminating sets of conflicting potential histories. In your model, implications of evidence existing “now” (in the form of ensembles of determined quantum states) are projected against a canonical fabric of causality in the datastructure describing all remaining possible past configurations of the universe. Collisions are detected, and any “past” for which a path forward to “now” does not exist is eliminated.

I can’t help but wonder, “what would it be like to exist inside such a data structure?” Would it differ perceptually from the one in which we now find ourselves?

As an addendum, I would like to add a note regarding implementation. You state, “No man is outside nature, and his most private thoughts are solely products of his determinable biology, environment and the laws of physics.” Unfortunately a malicious example of the action of environment on the human brain is its being struck by a cosmic ray (or simply looking at a distant star.) Modeling such activity requires that something on the order of the size of the observable universe – but initially having googolplexes more degrees of freedom – be contained in and simulated by your quantum archeological modeler. The Bekenstein bound would seem to imply that such a modeling facility be larger than the universe it models, and therefore could not be contained within our universe. The resistance to reductionism of the model invokes the holographic paradigm. Do you have a method in mind which will enable decoupling certain subsets of interest (e.g. my brain) from the Universe as a whole?

If we are already living in a simulation such as the zero-worlds interpretation – one in which you can hypothesize negotiating with the “programmer” for information – then all bets are off:
http://youtu.be/dEaecUuEqfc

raising the dead? sure hope they dont mind.. who wants to live forever in this hell hole anyway?

So we’re talking about Ray Kurzweil and Singularity? He’s right?