The Perfect First Question. by T H Ray

Hi jcns,

I enjoyed reading your papers. I think, as I suspect does George Ellis, that the part -- which is by far the major part -- which is fully relativistic, is the part in which I would fully agree. So I will only take issue with a couple of points that question the completeness of relativity:

You quoted Feynmann: "... nature is telling us that time and space are equivalent; time becomes space; they should be measured in the same units." [Feynman's italics.] I would submit that Feynman's 'trick' was no trick at all, but rather an accurate portrayal of reality."

Doesn't that depend on what one means by "reality?" Feynmann is not trying to trick us -- he is describing a two-dimension (complex) space that is the source of an n-dimension Hilbert space. This is the space of quantum probability predictions. Hawking got imaginary time by imposing this flat complex plane on the surface of a sphere (Riemann sphere); "what happens," he asked, "when one goes north of the North Pole?" Well, of course, there is no such thing -- that singularity, the pole, is the limit of real spacetime, yet one can speak in quantum-mechanical terms, of imaginary time in that context. "Reality" is therefore inherently nonlocal in that picture, which conflicts with Einstein's relativity in which spacetime is physically real and all physics is local.

Elsewhere you write, "It is absolutely crucial to recognize here, and to point out explicitly, however, that the changes which we observe in the configuration of the universe are not caused by, and are not in any way a consequence of, the flow of time. Rather, the changes we observe (as well as those we don't observe) are the flow of time. If the configuration of the universe did not change, there would be no flow of time."

Actually, there can be a flow of time in an unchanging universe, too. A geometric flow does not necessarily change the global geometry; it only changes the local relations between points. I get what you mean -- however, in this statement you are implicitly assigning causality to the observer. A quantum mechanic will agree with you; a relativist won't.

You say, "The universe may be the ultimate example of 'what you see is what you get.'"

Maybe. It wouldn't be a relativistic universe, though. In a relativistic universe, unlike a quantum mechanical universe (if quantum mechanics were mathematically complete), there is no assignment of nonlocality to events not observed; metaphysical realism is local realism.

Few, I think, appreciate the mathematical completeness of relativity (every element of the mathematical theory corresponds to every element of the physical reality) -- so I think it's fortuitous that a whole institute (The Minkowski Institute) is now forming, and dedicated to understanding spacetime. Its esteemed founders include Ellis and Vesselin Petkov, as well as another of my favorites, David Finkelstein.

Just some things to think about.

All best,

Tom

Tom,

Thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to read my various essays and for commenting on them. Greatly appreciated, especially in light of how busy I'm sure you must be. Glad you enjoyed the reads.

As I'm sure is clear from my participation in these blogs, I'm not a professional physicist or mathematician, but I've been thinking (and reading) about the nature of time for something like 50 years. (Regarding which, let me be the very first to add my recognition that credit accrues not on the basis of *duration* of thought given to a topic, but only on the basis of *quality* of thought.)

As alluded to in the essay I've written for the current FQXi competition, I believe my view of time (essentially a presentist view) offers a worthwhile *complement* to the operational definition of time. This view, to my way of thinking, represents a much-needed paradigm shift in our thinking about the nature of time, not unlike the paradigm shift from Ptolemaic to Copernican cosmology. Nothing about the universe is changed, aside from the way we think about and interpret our empirical observations, but that can be huge.

My view is not compatible with block time or with the notion that the flow of time is illusory, both of which are mainstream views of modern physics. Moreover, my view makes the so-called "arrow of time" essentially inevitable. In addition, it absolutely rules out the possibility of time travel (of the Buck Rogers variety at any rate), a claim which certainly is, at least in theory, falsifiable. (Fwiw, I don't consider the "twins paradox" to qualify as Buck Rogers style time travel.)

These are some things to think about, too.

You wrote, "Actually, there can be a flow of time in an unchanging universe, too." In an unchanging universe, how would such a flow of time be observed, measured, or recorded? And if it can't be observed, measured or recorded, what is it?

Again, I deeply appreciate the attention you've given to my ideas, Tom. Thank you! This clearly is a crucially important topic, given the vital role of time in physics. I'm personally in full agreement with Lee Smolin's comment in 'The Trouble With Physics: 'More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time. It is not enough to combine them. There is a deeper problem, perhaps going back to the beginning of physics.' (p. 256)

Fwiw, I've heard from a reliable source that Smolin plans to publish at least one new book on the nature of time later this year. If so, I'll be lined up to get an early copy. And I'm certainly encouraged that so many smart people are looking anew at, and questioning, some of our fundamental assumptions about a wide variety of topics.

Cheers!

jcns

nmann,

The question is not about liking or not liking Bell's theorem, or liking or not liking entanglement, or liking or not liking non-locality. The question is about whether these ideas, or unicorns or UFOs, have any relevance for the real physical world, or for the future theory of physics. We had a perfectly cogent concept known as phlogiston---a truly beautiful concept. Unfortunately it turned out that it had absolutely no relevance for the real physical world. Similarly, Bell's theorem, entanglement, or non-locality has no relevance for the real physical world. As Tom says in different words, in the real physical world what matters are the correlations among a set of measurement events---or among the clicks of a set of detectors.

Now Bell claimed that for local functions of the form

A(a, L) = +1 or -1 with 50/50 chance for any a in R^3

and

B(b, L) = +1 or -1 with 50/50 chance for any b in R^3,

together with

AB(a, b, L) = A(a, L) x B(b, L) = -1 when b = a,

it is mathematically impossible to construct a model that can reproduce the correlation

E(a, b) = -a.b.

It turns out that Bell was wrong (but not trivially so). It *is* possible to mathematically reproduce the correlation E(a, b) = -a.b if we take the physically and mathematically correct co-domain for the functions AB(a, b, L), A(a, L), and B(b, L); namely a unit parallelized 3-sphere. The proof can be found in the attached paper.

It is scandalous to continue to believe in Bell's theorem despite this explicit one-page proof showing exactly what Bell thought was mathematically impossible. Further details and implications of the proof can be found in my book.Attachment #1: 19_disproof.pdf

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your great reply! This is good/fun stuff! You wrote:

"I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what time reversibility in classical physics actually means -- it isn't that we're bothered that we can't see broken teacups reassemble themselves and jump back up on the table (thermodynamic laws prevent that); rather, we need to be assured that the laws of motion apply both backward and forward in time. Even credible theories of time travel based in general relativity, which is a classical theory, only allow time travel under exotic conditions which may or may not exist in nature. So you're right -- a thought experiment (and there have been many on the subject) may rule out time travel of "the Buck Rogers variety" though I doubt that any can rule out time reversibility in principle."

I believe we're in complete agreement about this, Tom. I have absolutely no problem with the concept of time reversibility in the sense in which I believe you're using the term. But "time reversibility" in that sense is totally different from the concept of "time travel" in the sense of "traveling" or being somehow "transported" from the 21st century back to the age of dinosaurs, or vice versa for example. As you probably recall from your reading of my essay Time: Illusion and Reality, I *define* what I call "particular times" (e.g., the 21st century or the age of dinosaurs, for example) as being identically equivalent to particular configurations of the universe. This strikes me as being a very reasonable definition, and one in keeping with empirical observations. Reversing a direction of motion is one thing; returning all the many bits and pieces of the universe to the configuration which they had in what we refer to as the age of dinosaurs is quite another. I think we do not disagree about this, but if I'm misunderstanding your point, and if we do see things differently I'm glad to have clarification.

You wrote: "It's observed and recorded routinely [a flow of time], as Ricci flow. If you wish, I can give you a technical explanation if you're not familiar with it. Point is, though, that local geometric flows can be observed as changing the geometry, without affecting the global topology."

Here, we're clearly talking past one another, Tom. What you're describing is (certainly to my way of thinking) a mathematical abstraction. Referring again to my notion of particular times as being equivalent to particular configurations of the universe, time changes (i.e. "flows") if, and only if, the configuration of the universe changes. You may disagree violently with me on this point, Tom, but it's my firm belief that mathematical abstractions are useful *only* insofar as they ultimately can be shown to have a bearing on things we observe empirically. Flowing times without any corresponding change in the configuration of the universe hold no "meaning" for me. Configurations of the universe are real (albeit intrinsically unknowable and evolving). If we deny the reality of configurations of the universe, what are we left with as a connection with reality and with the universe in which we find ourselves?

A large part of the problems we have in talking about issues involving the nature of time stems from what I see as the "fact" that we have lost sight of the fundamental role and purpose of clocks. Clocks have value and utility only insofar as their readings can be correlated with configurations of the physical universe. Clocks do not measure some abstract chimera known as "time." They are designed to correlate as precisely and accurately as possible with configurations of non-clock portions of the universe. Lacking that attribute, they have no value.

Apologies for rambling on. I'll stop here and let you jump in and explain to me where I've gone wrong. Thanks. I'm enjoying this and finding it stimulating and educational! Appreciate having the ability of bounce ideas off of you.

Cheers,

jcns

Hi Again Tom,

With apologies for back-to-back posts, I'd like to reproduce here some thoughts which I originally posted on Georgina Parry's site. The purpose is to clarify, insofar as possible, my thinking, such as it is, on this general topic.

I recognize that the following ideas about the nature of the universe are very simplistic, but, for better or for worse, that's the way my brain works:

1.) The universe is comprised of a whole big bunch of "stuff" bumping around "out there" (i.e., apart from the bits and pieces which are myself, myself being just an infinitesimally tiny portion of the totality of the stuff).

2.) There is some real, evolving relationship among all the various bits and pieces (and yes, EM data are a part of all the stuff).

3.) The instantaneous nature of these evolving relationships is intrinsically unknowable to me, *not* because the instantaneous relationships do not exist, but solely because of limitations imposed on me by the nature of sensory data for which I'm equipped to be conscious/aware).

4.) The relationships among all the various bits and pieces appear *not* to evolve randomly; rather, this evolution appears to be governed by rules with we strive to understand and which we refer to as the laws of physics.

5.) Regardless of whether this evolution progresses in quantum steps or continuously (still to be determined), this evolution constitutes the "history" of the universe.

6.) Empirical observations available to me lead me to conclude that the universe has one, and only one, real history.

7.) Due solely to limitations imposed by sensory data (as discussed in point 3 above), every observer of the universe will *perceive* its evolution differently.

8.) Observers such as human beings have developed the ability to think about and to interpret their empirical observations and to communicate these interpretations with one another in a way which allows them to form, incrementally, increasingly better understandings of the universe in which they find themselves.

This has been an incredibly complicated way to convey to you what is an incredibly simple view of the universe. But sometimes it's useful to spell things out carefully; we may take for granted that these things are "obvious," but they may not be obvious to others, who may think that what is obvious to them is contradictory to what is obvious to us. The only way to get to the root of it is to use our words carefully.

"The way to converge with each other is to converge upon the truth." (David Deutsch, 'The Beginning of Infinity')

Cheers,

jcns

Hello jcns,

Well, even though it's an assumption of particle physics dating all the way back to Democritus, we don't really know if the universe is made of "stuff" or not. What we do know, is that space and time are essential to recording changes in relative positions of points of the wave function inherent in spacetime evolution. This function is essentially binary -- as in Joy Christian's prediction of quantum correlations from entirely classical parameters, and in John Archibald Wheeler's "it from bit." The unification of these large scale and small scale functions is what my essay is about.

However finely we slice it, any *finite* representation of events ("particles") is ultimately measured by the correlation of complementary valued and observer-dependent measurements that we call "physics." In other words, observation and measurement mean the same thing. For this, we don't need particles. Look at the dialogue between Michael Goodband and Joy Christian in this forum on 14 August. Michael says, " ... quantum field theory can be derived *from* classical physics, on the condition that QT is due to a representational change to continuous variables. This chagne is necessary because the classical physics theory over discrete physically-real variables is proven to be subject to Godel's incompleteness." If one understands what that means, one can readily see that the continuous range of variables in a measurement function continuous from an initial condition has more "reality" than the discrete measures derived from it. Unless we have metaphysical completeness (what in philosophy is called metaphysical realism), we do not have a complete physical theory.

I hope you come to see that the radically empiricist views of Georgina Parry, James Putnam and John Merryman are incomplete and will always be incomplete, because they are dualistic at the foundation. They cannot logically escape the assumption that "stuff" is prior to creation; i.e., that object and observer are independent varieties of interacting stuff living in fundamentally different realities. Quantum mechanics suffers this same flaw of inductive generalization, as Michael so ably explains. Such explanations do not reach the level of rational science that mathematical completeness achieves.

Compare the dualistic view with Joy Christian's continuous sinusoidal function in a topological framework. If you undertake to truly understand the mathematics, I don't think you can find it anything other than beautiful. And please, don't fall victim to the pervasive argument from ignorance that mathematics (or perhaps some other formal language yet to be invented) is inherently incapable of fully describing physical reality. It is no more so incapable, than the words on this screen are incapable of conveying a closed logical judgment on a particular subject. The failure of the practitioner should never be confused with the failure of the art.

Best,

Tom

Hi Tom,

That word 'radical' came across as something like 'strange' maybe even 'narrowmindedness'. But, reminding myself that the dictionary meaning refers to 'affecting the fundamentals' you've got it right. I keep pointing to that first theoretical error concerning the mathematical definition of mass. With regard to incompleteness,

I do not see incompletelness ever being resolved. Not necessarily for the 'stuff' reason that you gave, but, every attempt of completeness that I have seen grabs something important for free without explanation. It is usually denied that that is the case, but, it sure seems clear to me that nothing leads to nothing. Anything that uses something more than its beginning nothing is obviously beginning with something. The mathematical loops that bring ends together is not representative of nothing. It is representative of extensive pre-existence.

My opinion is that we should acknowledge both what we think we know and even more importantly that which we do not know. Anyway, while we see things differently, I take nothing back about my remark and rating for your essay. You are amazing in your ability to comprehend mathematic concepts is a manner that is broader than but is useful for application to theoretical physics.

The conversations that still take place concerning Joy's work are among the best I get to read. It doesn't matter if I personally do not accept spheres and such, especially spheres that are flat surfaces :). Thank you for the responsible role you fullfill during discussions that sometimes become 'radical' here.

I say that your essay is brilliant!

James

Hi Joy,

"PS: Here is how a flat 3-sphere may look like from inside: ..(then there is an image of maybe a ripe tomato)...

I am going to need Tom's help on this one! :)

Tom, Do we live inside three tomatoes or am I missing the point? :)

Thanks.

James

I am dreaming in live there ???

I have already seen a lot of things, but there frankly it is bizare.

In all the case,1 you are there to help me

2 you are there to steal me

In all the cases I come at New York.

ps the picture is false ...the universal entanglement and its rotations imply more than this picture.

Spherically yours indeed.

Tom,

Thank you for your comments. This stuff is extremely fun and interesting! But it also makes me feel so "deprived" and "underprivileged," and even "deficient" for lack of better terms. Whereas you and other are "living large," as it were, in your fancy 9-dimensional or even 11-dimensional universes, I'm stuck here in my lowly, humble, evolving 3-dimensional universe, believing that space-time is a myth perpetuated by a long-standing, faulty notion regarding the fundamental purpose and role of clocks.

These discussions often remind me of the adage that "using words to describe ideas is like using lumber to build a tree." It seems we're all just doing our best with the lumber we find available to us.

Cheers,

jcns

I was being flip, but to be serious I should have said 10 dimensional tomato, where every point is a 3-sphere.

(Yes, jcns, it's fun! Ray Munroe must be proud of us now.)

Best,

Tom

James,

I've got it now. I remember that I wanted to explain Scott Aaronson's argument in simpler and more accessible arithmetic, and then realized that the explanation grows ever more sophisticated and that I couldn't make it simpler.

So let me try again.

Remember, I claim that the answer to the first question *has* to be "yes," no matter what the question is. Here expressed in arithmetic, is why:

1 - 1/2 1/4 - 1/2 1/4 - 1/2 = 0

The important thing is that no value in the sum of these terms exceeds unity. Consistent with Scott's upper bound of probability .75 for a 2-player cooperative game, the first iteration (where the zeroth iteration is 1 - 1/2) is 1/2 1/4 = 3/4. When continued through the second and third iterations, we find 3/4 - 1/2 = 1/4 and 1/4 1/4 = 1/2. To make this easier to read:

(eqn 1) 1 - 1/2 1/4 - 1/2 1/4 - 1/2 = 0

= .5, .75, .25, .5

0 1 2 3 4 iterations

If we were to sum and average all the values of the results of these iterations -- which is what quantum mechanics does by averaging values of a run of experimental results -- we would get 1/2. This is the upper bound of a coin toss probability for sufficient length of n independent Bernoulli trials. When we revese signs for the above, we get:

(eqn 2) 1 1/2 - 1/4 1/2 - 1/4 1/2 = 2

Which is the CHSH upper bound for Bell-EPR type experiments.

What's the problem? The former case is algebraically closed; zero indicates that the computation halts. The Bell-CHSH case does not halt; it will increase monotonically to infinity. This is interpreted to mean that every experimental event not measured has a vanishing but non-zero probability of happening. The non-probabilistic result (the algebraic equation 1 summing to zero) tells us that no event is probabilistic; perfectly random tosses of a fair coin are precisely determined.

The way that quantum mechanics reconciles its probabilism (implying quantum entanglement and nonlocality), with actual physical reality, is by quantum unitarity -- the average of the set of iteration results in eqn 2 (1.5, 1.25, 1.75, 1.5) is unity, or probability 1.0 that the upper bound of any quantum pair correlation experiment obeys the upper bound of CHSH.

Now this is the simple arithmetic that Scott Aaronson, Richard Gill and many others believe without question is at the foundation of a probabilistic physical reality. Look, though, when expressed as the answers to yes-no questions (pairs of binary values):

(eqn 1) 1 - 1/2 (Yes) 1/4 (No) - 1/2 (Yes) 1/4 (No) - 1/2 (Yes) = 0

(eqn 2) 1 1/2 (No) - 1/4 (Yes) 1/2 (No) - 1/4 (Yes) 1/2 (No) = 2

If we allow the first iteration to answer "No" such that all subsequent iterative values exceed unity, we have loaded the dice in favor of an infinite dimensionless range of values that we ASSUME constitutes the sum of perfect information that we can treat by probability theory. This is reconciled to actual physical experiments (in which probability plays no actual physical role) by normalizing to quantum unitarity for any experimental result.

Joy Christian's inspired realization was that ORIENTATION of the topological initial condition determines the experimental outcome which must be ALGEBRAICALLY CLOSED as eqn 1 shows, and which thereby obviates quantum entanglement, nonlocality and probabilistic measure. This initial condition -- if one follows Joy's objective mathematical argument without imposing one's personal beliefs on it -- clearly produces E(a,b) = - a.b. Very straightforward.

I've been playing with the consequences of algebraic closure for topology, for quite a while. I decided to attach a draft of one such effort; section 4.25 relates to the present argument.

Tom