Ask A Genius 1330: Quantum Information, Life’s Computations, and the Usability of Information in the Universe
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/04
Rick Rosner: All right, you sent me a paper on quantum information—precisely, the number of computations performed by life on Earth over its history, right? These people—maybe women too, I do not know—ran some calculations.
The trouble I have with it is that I have not thought about it much or for very long, and I have not completely read the paper. But my question is: Where is the useful information? And who would be using it?
The information generated by all life on Earth and what it has left behind is not usable by anything or anyone. As individual humans, we do not get much usable information from all the algae on Earth—or even from all the other people on Earth.
Did Archimedes say, “Give me a place to stand and a lever, and I can move the Earth”? Some guy said that.
All right. For information to be information, some entity has to be using it. Just because many quantum flips have occurred does not mean the result is usable information.
I do not think the information on a planet—the quantum physics of a planet—is accessible to any overarching system, including the universe itself.
Sure, the universe contains a massive amount of information. But how much of that information is usable, in the sense of being processed or accessed, by the universe itself?
We are talking about two different things here. One is that all the quantum interactions, all the interactions of all the particles across the universe, define the universe—the shape of space, the scale of space, and the precision with which its constituent particles are defined.
In that way, all the information the universe contains is usable in the sense that it defines itself. But that information is black-boxed. You can extract some information from the universe, but most of it is hidden—opaque—to any entity that embodies the universe.
If the universe is an entity, most of its own information is probably opaque to it, in the same way that the information structures in our minds are only partially accessible to us and not in great detail at any given moment. Our brains and minds contain vast information, most of which we cannot access.
This paper demonstrates that we still do not have a good understanding of what information truly is. For something to count as information, it has to be usable by some kind of entity.
But now that I am saying that, I do not like it because it echoes the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. That was an early attempt in the 1930s to deal with the collapsing wave function, where—was it Bohr?—one of those guys suggested that what collapses the quantum wave function is parts of the universe being observed by conscious beings.
That is not the case. No one buys the Copenhagen interpretation anymore.
But I am just saying that information is not information unless it is usable by an entity—that throws things off. I do not know. Anyway, I do not like it.
It may be true-ish, but I still do not like it.
So, you have a bunch of information in all the particles in the universe, which results from creating information over the universe’s lifespan.
Does the additional information accumulated on the Earth’s surface via evolution add relevant information to the information already embodied by the particles? These particles are arranged in increasingly complex ways on the Earth’s surface because the Earth is an open thermodynamic system, which means it can exhibit the opposite of entropy over time.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about migratory birds with a cryptochrome protein guiding their navigation? So they see Earth’s magnetic field and use olfaction, with the theory being that they can detect odours through spectroscopy of molecules involving quantum effects.
Rosner: Okay, that’s fine. I mean, quantum—subtle quantum effects—if biology can exploit them, can do some cool stuff. It makes birds better able to navigate or makes wolves better able to sniff.
But they are just physical processes. Even though they involve quantum effects, they are still physical processes, and biology is made of bodily processes.
Just because they are fancy and cannot occur under classical physics does not mean they are magical or somehow imbued with consciousness.
That bird magnetic sense thing is another sense that birds have, and we do not. It would be nice to have it.
This is off-topic, but Daredevil.
Do you know Daredevil?
Jacobsen: He’s a Marvel character. He’s a second-stringer. Blind guy.
Rosner: Right. He is blind. Okay, so he crashed into a toxic spill that blinded him but also enhanced his other senses to such an extreme that he developed blindsight.
In the Netflix show, we see what he perceives via his other amped-up senses, and he sees the world the way we do.
Sure, he is missing colours. He might not perceive, say, the pattern of a fancy dress.
But he sees the world.
If he sees an attractive woman, he will perceive her attractiveness as we do.
So, what is the big deal about him being blind?
Why does he even carry a cane?
Why does he not just wear sunglasses and walk around like a cool guy?
It is a weird thing.
And I know—I said this to an actual comic book guy—and he explained why I am off-base on this.
If quantum effects can give you extra sense or amplify an existing one, that’s fine.
But it is not the juice that powers consciousness.
The interaction of information is what powers consciousness.
I suspect that information, if you could map it, would probably look like a quantum system—like a little quantum universe.
Within that system, you would have all sorts of tacit understanding and tacit generation of information.
But just because you can apply quantum analysis to a system does not mean that the quantum physics of the particles comprising that system are doing something magical.
You can apply quantum analysis to cars and traffic, as discussed.
Like, the car most likely to be driven by a jerk right now is a Tesla truck.
Almost everybody driving a Tesla truck is some fucking asshole.
You could find exceptions.
Someone may have a good reason to be driving one. I do not know.
But you could assign a probability package to a Tesla truck in traffic—some kind of Hamiltonian, or other wave-function model—that will tell you the truck’s wave function as it approaches a multi-lane stoplight.
Where its probability package, based on Bayesian analysis of all Tesla truck operators, is going to be: “dick move” as it comes up to the stoplight.
It’s going to abruptly change lanes or not be paying attention when the light changes or whatever—compared to, I do not know, somebody like a Latino person, if you could see the driver, in a Toyota Camry.
Because Latinos in L.A. are among the most law-abiding drivers on the road—they do not want to get messed with by the authorities. So they drive under the speed limit.
They do not drive like jerks. They drive from one difficult job to another, just trying to keep themselves and their families above water. They do not have time for dick moves.
So the probability wave of a Camry coming up to that same stoplight is much less dickish than the Tesla wave package.
And that is quantum analysis.
This does not mean that some weird quantum physics is at work in the Camry or the Tesla that makes them behave that way.
It is just the mechanics of the drivers’ brains—brains that may or may not have some quantum activity among all the other biological and electrical processes.
And it is a big, fun world that has yet to be figured out—how all the information exists as an essential component of the entire universe.
Whether it is the universe or the little universe in our brains.
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