Cognition 2.0

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment allowed a new concept to enter in the realm of physics, namely entanglement. By entanglement it is understood the effect of correlation on the wave function of a system consisting of 2 or more particles when they interact for a very short period of time in a given region of space and then they part ways. The fact that the two particles interacted with each other in the past has an effect on their individual wave functions today, hence the particles share now a piece of information from their past, and what's more important from the other particle through the interaction. If today we were to extract the information from one of the particles about that interaction, we would automatically know the state of the other particle instantaneously, which would violate the principle of non-locality as we would be measuring the state of the other particle at the same time but in a very different, potentially large distance of space. The violation happens in the fact that information is being "transmitted" to the person or system doing the measurement instantaneously irrespective of the distance, rather than through a signal being sent from the distant particle at the maximum possible speed, namely the speed of light.

So, if we accept that the universe was created in the big bang, then all matter in the universe has the same origin. The state of everything in the universe at this moment is then the result of the accumulation of interactions and exchanges between all particles.

Since all the particles in the universe have a common origin, the quantum wave function has been factored into more and more terms during the course of the evolution of the universe. However, the overall state of the wave function has to be a constant, or rather remain invariant with time and space. This means that despite time and space being added to the equation, the overall wave function should be identical to the original function that gave rise to the big bang. This could be illustrated with the analogy to a concept in game theory called a "zero sum game". In this case, all the participants share the same set of resources such that a win to one player means an equivalent loss to the opposing player.

The zero sum game concept in quantum mechanics and cosmology would mean that all particles in the universe are entangled. This entanglement means that the big bang is a quantum process that produced a very large set of entangled particles. Each particle resulting from this process is correlated with every other particle out there, hence any change to any particle's state would have to be reflected on all the other particles. Nevertheless, as macroscopic systems that we humans are we are usually unaware of changes to quantum state of any of the particles in our body, however we do perceive changes in our person when interacting with another. A discussion, a game, even love are changes in us that are triggered through the interaction with others. The same change in us must correspond to another change in the person we interacted with. This is how social networks work and are built.

As a final remark, many academics have lately associated thoughts to quantum processes in our brains and bodies. Why can't we assume that all our thoughts have a correlated thought in the universe?