Quantum World Models
Consider a population of organisms that harvest free energy in the form of photons, energetic molecules, etc. from their quantum environment to reproduce. I show that if the organisms’ reproductive rates are proportional to the amount of physical free energy that they can convert into reproductive work, then the implicit probabilities/density matrices that the organisms assign to environmental states are updated according to Bayes’ rule. Natural selection plus thermodynamics causes the population to evolve effective quantum world models of their environment.
Bio: Seth Lloyd is professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and co-founder of Turing Quantum. Lloyd’s research focuses on problems on information and complexity in the universe. He was the first person to develop a realizable model for quantum computation and works with a variety of groups to construct and operate quantum computers and quantum communication systems. Lloyd has worked to establish fundamental physical limits to precision measurement and to develop algorithms for quantum computers for pattern recognition and machine learning. His work on complex systems currently focuses on transitions between stability and instability in complex dynamical systems. He is author of over 200 scientific papers, and of “Programming the Universe,” (Knopf, 2004).