Hi Armin,

Thanks a lot for your explanations. The difficulty which I met reading your essay was on my side - your essay is certainly perfectly written. Only in some cases when I tried to digg details more carefully the length of sentences was an obstraction to me. Simply, I am not good enough in English.

Regarding superposition etc. I think I understand what you mean, mathematics is a little help here; but still the difference between just collection of pictures (call it superposition) organized in higher dimensional object, and the QM superposed object can be relevant. I mean that if it is not the case we could call any collection a superposition. Even we use a probability on instances it is not enough to have QM superposition. OK, you say that this is solved by considering the collection as merely potential and the instant picture as actual. Do you mean by this anything different than the relation between an operator and its eigenvalues? If not can we represent the potential collection by an self-adjoint operator and (somehow) the instances by its eigenvectors? If yes, does it reduce to the ordinary Hilbert space QM? I ask because I am realy interested in understanding of your work.

Thanks for your explanations.

Good luck,

Jerzy

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If we understand the two-dimensional world, we realize that all?

Dear Jerzy,

I want to give you a fuller response, but my work week starts today (I work midnights 7 nights on and 7 nights off while going to school) so a more elaborate version will have to wait until next week.

For now, let me just say that you are basically correct. The QM operator corresponds in my analogy to the operation "add an interval of length z" and the eigenvalue corresponds to the length of the side of the cube wherever it 'actualizes'. I did not mention probabilities in my paper, except very indirectly when I said that being 'actualizable' corresponds to an intermediate state of existence. Some time ago, I replied to another person what I meant and for the sake of time I will just paste my response because it may help understand better. (The person to whom I responded was an educated layperson, not someone like you who understands the implications at a very deep mathematical level, so the tone of my exposition was meant for a different audience).

here it is:

"The more challenging concept to understand is what I have called 'actualizable'.

Before I attempt to explain it, let me acknowledge that it is not your fault for having this conceptual difficulty. In all of my papers about my theory and the talk, I have so far described the concept of actualizability only within a very limited context, namely how it is different from "actual". But to get a deep understanding of what this concept really means one needs more than an understanding in terms of what it does not mean. The fact that I have not been more specific is not entirely an accident.

You see, I have found that when in discussing my ideas with others I introduce too many unfamiliar ideas at once, the risk that they will be dismissed as being too far "out there" dramatically goes up (you can even see that in this thread), so I have tried to be strategic about it: I try to introduce just enough so that it becomes evident that one can reframe quantum mechanics in a novel way that no longer seems mystical (as in my talk), leaving more subtle clarifications of the conceptual basis which have truly radical implications for later, after the basic picture painted by my theory is at least somewhat understood and it becomes clear how the radical implications of the novel concepts are required in order to form a self-consistent worldview (which is different from the present one). Describing precisely what I mean by "actualizable" is one of these concepts (but unfortunately not the only one).

I take it that you have perused the references I provided and that therefore you are ready for the more precise definition:

My concept of 'Actualizablity' refers to an intermediate state of existence.

I mean it in the following way: According to our current worldview, existence is a binary concept, which means you can assign one of two values to the ontological status of anything

0- it does not exist

1- it exists

end of story

The notion that something could have an ontological status somewhere in between, which is what I mean by "intermediate state of existence", at first sight seems absurd. If one is going to claim such a thing, one better have a darn good reason for doing so. Well, my reason for doing so is that this definition is required to provide a consistent conceptual basis for a framework that seems to make sense out of a lot of the seemingly mysterious parts of QM.

So, does that mean that something could have an ontological status of, say, 0.3? Yep. 0.6? Yep. And that the latter in this sense twice exists "twice as much" as the former? Yep.

I can appreciate how bizarre this must seem to you, but I would argue that a large part of this is just due to the fact that since you were a little kid you have been conditioned to think of existence as binary and you are reading this for the first time. If this idea is generally accepted, future generations will find it a lot less strange. If you doubt this, just ask yourself how strange you find the idea that the earth goes around the sun? Well, today almost nobody finds this strange, even though it is exactly opposite to what our sense experience tells us. That is why if you had suggested that to someone in the 16th century before Copernicus, they would have considered it an extremely bizarre idea.

We actually already have way for quantitatively expressing actualizability, but we have not yet recognized it as such. It is called the Born Rule. I am certain that you don't see the connection, so I will try to be more specific.

First, let me review how the need for "squaring the wave function" arises in my theory. As you should recall, I postulate a symmetry that serves as a mechanism by which the passage of time for an areatime object (its proper time) can be matched or "translated" into the proper time for each actualizable object that traverses an actualizable path in space. Upon a simple transformation, the symmetry can be decomposed into two complex conjugate phase factors which are associated with each actualizable path, and upon appropriate substitution become e^plusminus(iS/hbar). Since the areatime object manifests itself in spacetime in terms of a superposition of all possible actualizable paths, and each is associated with the phase factors, the proper representation of the areatime object in spacetime is the Feynman path integral.

Now, in transforming from the Lagrangian to the Hamiltonian Formulation, the exponent of the phase factor changes but there is still a direct link between it and the phase factor of the Wave function Psi. This implies that Psi only represents the square root of all the spacetime manifestations of the areatime object in a specified region of space (Each phase factor represents 1/2 of the symmetry associated with the angle in the exponent, and 1/2 in the exponent is the square root). To represent it fully, you must multiply it by its complex conjugate, which is to say that you must take the absolute square.

But just as in my Euclidean analogy a point in 2-space manifests itself as an infinite line in 3-space, the representation of the areatime object in terms of the squared wave function extends over all of space (in the non-relativistic limit at least. In the relativistic limit, I believe, it extends only to the boundaries of the light cone originating from where the paths started).

So if you integrate the absolute square of the of the wave function over all of space, you have finally obtained a complete spacetime representation of the underlying areatime object under the Hamiltonian formulation. Under the Born rule, this is set equal to one and interpreted as a probability.

Let us suppose that the the wave function represents a particle. One often finds a statement to the effect that the above reflects the fact that the particle is certain to be somewhere in space. Under my interpretation it means that if a "measurement" is performed everywhere in space, one is certain to detect a particle somewhere (Since a "measurement" is the mechanism by which a spacetime object emerges out of areatime).

At first glance, the two statements might seem equivalent but they are not: The first assumes that there is a particle out there, independent of whether you are trying to measure it, whereas the second does not. Prior to a measurement, you still have merely the representation of an areatime object in spacetime, not a particle in space. You can hopefully see my interpretation comes closest to the Copenhagen interpretation, but unfortunately the CI tends to substitute mysticism for genuine gaps in understanding.

Alright, after this basic review, let me now get down to how the Born rule can be interpreted as a reflection of "partially existing objects" ('actualizable' sounds much better to me) .

Suppose a quantum state in a particular basis consisted of only two eigenstates. Each of the eigenstates has a coefficient which tells you how much it contributes to the total state. In standard QM, the coefficent has a purely operational interpretation. What I mean is this: The coefficient is ideally determined by running measurements on a large number of identically prepared states, and the frequency of the two different possible outcomes is recorded. Since the calculation of the expectation value for the measurement outcome involves both the wave function and its complex conjugate in a product, the coefficients are the square roots of the relative frequencies. For example, if both outcomes are equally likely, then, the coefficients become sqr (1/2)=1/sqr(2). Since, as far as I know, there is in standard QM no "deeper" interpretation of this, the coefficients must be interpreted purely operationally, as mentioned.

In my framework, the coefficients have an ontological interpretation: The coefficients tell you how much each actualizable eigenstate contributes to the total representation of the areatime object in spacetime, and their contribution is a measure of the extent to which the areatime object "fractionally" exists in spacetime in that particular manifestation.

The problem is that when you do 'measurement', you cannot detect "fractionally existing" objects, only ones that fully exist in spacetime, hence the ontological status of the eigenstate you detect upon a measurement must change from some value less than 1 to 1. This is consistent with the fact that if you immediately repeat a measurement, you will obtain the same outcome, and directly connects this to the probability interpretation, since under a the latter, being certain of obtaining a particular result is equal to a probability of 1.

So let us now examine the bizarre notion that one eigenstate could exist "twice as much" as the second. Well, it just means that the coefficient of the first is sqr (2/3) and the coefficient of the second is sqr(1/3). Because both states are associated with some form of existence, in a small number of runs you might measure one or the other in some different proportion, but in the limit in which the number of runs on identically prepared systems goes to infinity you recover the fractional existence of each state. This is essentially the definition of the (frequentist interpretation of) probability.

"Conservation of probability" then is really conservation of existence. Unfortunately, existence is not currently considered a physics concept but I strongly believe it needs to be. As you might imagine, this makes the idea all the more difficult to accept. I had written a paper a while back called "Ontology and the Wave Function Collapse" where I hinted at this problem.

Alright, if you have really read my papers and watched my talk, I hope that you will see how this fits in with everything and have a better understanding of what I mean by actual vs. actualizable, but if you have not done so, I doubt that the above will make much sense to you. "

hope you found this useful,

Armin

Dear Roger,

thank you for your kind comments.

You said:"Actually, I'd say that a 2-DFR square that is not associated with a z coordinate in 3-space is not yet in 3-space. Only after it appears in 3-space does it seem to us "after the fact" that it could have been in any z-plane before it appeared. But, none of these z-planes existed for the 2-DFR square before it appeared. So, we're retroactively putting a continuous column of possible z-plane locations onto the 2-DFR square even though none of these z-planes existed for the square before it appeared. "

Yes, I think this is basically equivalent to the idea I was proposing that should be applied to QM.

You said: "I think this relates to quantum weirdness. For instance, with the cat in Schroedinger's Box, it's assumed that before the box is opened, the cat exists in all possible states. But, I'd say that the cat doesn't exist in the box at all. Once we open the box, this is equivalent to actualizing the cat (causing it to come into existence), and then we go back "after the fact" and say the cat could have been in any possible state. But, none of those states even existed until after we opened the box."

If you are using the cat example metaphorically, then I agree with you. I think that QM is basically a theory of objects in areatime observed by spacetime observers before such objects have emerged in spacetime, and I believe that macroscopic objects like cats are far beyond the limit where the emergence occurs, so I do not think that QM literally applies to the cat example.

I will take a look at the paper you mention in the near future.

All the best,

Armin

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Armin

I cook metatheory of nature on last essay contest

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/946

On the base this essay i cook my wrong assumption food

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413

Dear Armin,

i have now begun to read your essay, but i am yet not fully through the text, because at the moment i have very less time and i had to finish some other comments and experimental descriptions.

As soon as possible, i will post again. But for now, our writing style is excellent, combined with deep specialist knowledge.

Greetings,

Stefan

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Dear Armin,

i am now half through your essay, but already at this point i am exited about what i read in your essay. Many authors claim "read my essay, your lines of thoughts are somewhat similar to mine". But your promised similarities are such interesting, i will also watch your video on youtube and afterwards give you a detailed feedback!

Best wishes,

Stefan

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Dear Armin,

i took a look at your publishing date and found that you published your ideas roughly 2 weeks earlier than i did with my essay. If i had read your essay prior to my publication, i surely had made a reference to your work!

There are several point in your essay which are interesting:

First, it is assumed that the speed of light limit can only be attached to the light in our 3D-spacetime. In lower dimensions, this limit cannot be attached to the dimension, because there simply is no "mass" defined by our standard physical theories.

Second, this could be the reason, why in your areatime, the "time" is of different "duration" than ours in 3D-spacetime - our formulated explicitely, what is connected in areatime, is separated in our spacetime. This fits very well into my own explanation scheme you wrote in my essay.

Third, your idea of relativity for dimensional differences is very engaging.

Fourth, you mention infinity when explaining the z-axis. I alluded in my older posts concerning the last two essay contests, that "infinity" can be thought as something that is not "finite", not "de-finite" and therefore not "defined".

I simply understand infinity as the "undefined", as outlined in my actual essay (the empty containers that haven't yet definite properties - they yet belong to the realm of areatime!).

Armin, you wrote:

"the notion that the concepts of mass in general relativity and in quantum theory are the same; that lower-dimensional objects should necessarily appear

lower-dimensional to us; that an object can either exist or not exit and nothing in between; that our current concept of an observer frame of reference is complete, and that spacetime encompasses all of nature."

The first declaration was outlined in your essay very precisely. The second declaration is very clever and attests you a very bright mind (i have yet to think about the implications of that possibility). The third declaration is one that i too have in mind for a very long time (due to pondering about the fundamentals of "everything"). The fourth statement is in direct congruence with my own lines of reasoning described in my essay.

You wrote:

"What hubris to think that the description of nature in all its richness would

be exhausted just by unifying a few types of interactions in our small corner and calling this a `theory of everything'."

Exactly - if we treat the whole issue with logics and less with emotions! (This does not mean that human nature has NO meaning, it only means that there could be more than one reference frame!).

"But perhaps this is the beauty of approaching an understanding of nature at the deepest level: the objective distinctions between physics and metaphysics (and possibly even mathematics) simply vanish as they have now become dependent on the frame of the observer. For example, to an observer with a 4-DFR, Newtonian mechanics is not physics but mathematical metaphysics. In this

very di erent sense, the metatheory could even be argued to be more uni ed than our current conception of a theory of everything.""

Wow, very intelligent in my humble opinion!!

In my humble opinion you've done a very good job and this deserves a high ranking.

I wish you all the best in the current constest, Armin.

Stefan

    Armin,

    Yeah, I came out OK... usually hurricanes turn out to be false alarms. On the music front, I have a bunch of recordings from a few years ago on CD's, but I never posted anything online. I particularly liked your Toccata and Fugue, by the the way. Take care,

    Ben

    Dear Armin,

    I have some addition to the idea of separation of quantum mechanics (QM) and general relativity (GR).QM uses wave function, summing of probability of events, quantization of physical values and so on. QM studies amount of similar atomic systems in order to find probability of events. GR can work with a single system and give right answer about it without any probabilities. The methods of both theories are different. On the other hand we can use quantum approach on the other levels of matter, for example, at the level of star. See my essay about the theory of Infinite Hierarchical Nesting of Matter and Similarity of matter levels. Also it is possible to use theory of gravitation in the atomic world. For it we must use Strong gravitational constant. From here I am not sure that QM and GR have mutually exclusive domains of validity.

    Sergey Fedosin

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      Dear Stefan,

      Thank you so much for your detailed feedback and kind comments. I actually think that most of my ideas are rather very simple, certainly much simpler than many of the sophisticated presentations I have seen here. In part, this may be due to an inherent bias in my worldview, according to which nature at the most fundamental level is simple. While this may or may not be true, it guides how I think about fundamental problems.

      There is a specific comment of yours on which I'd like to give feedback. You said: "First, it is assumed that the speed of light limit can only be attached to the light in our 3D-spacetime."

      Although I did not directly talk about the speed of light as a limit in this paper, I did say something very similar in the discussion section of my entry to the first FQXi contest. If you are interested, you can have a look, it is topic 329. I also hope to soon post a series of youtube videos in which I present some of my ideas in a more conversational way, beginning with the speed of light invariance.

      Again, thank you very much and I also wish you all the best,

      Armin

      Dear Sergey,

      Thank you for your comments, I have looked at your paper, and I will give honest feedback at your thread.

      All the best,

      Armin

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      Mr Witten has a stringit , small disease about 2d. :)

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      Dear Armin

      I am replying here to say thank you for your comments on my essay because there because, for some reason, there was no place to make a comment there. I will make my comments on your essay separately after I have had the opportunity to read it.

      Best wishes

      Peter

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        Dear Armin!

        You were kind enough to comment on my essay, and thereby lead me to your own - even though I would have found it anyway, because of its interesting title. I have now read and re-read your essay - and will have to read it at least once more before I - hopefully - will be able to come up with some concrete comments/questions. I have much to learn here - and it makes me happy! Just to mention one of my many underlingings and exclamation marks, when reading you ressay: You reasoning about actual and actualizable is fascinating, to say the least.

        Au revoir!

        Inger

          Armin,

          Doesn't superposition say that a net effect is equal to the sum of the individual effects. Common belief says that gravitational forces must be added vectorially to account for the total effects on an object. How does this figure in your concepts? Certainly gravity will have different properties if it can be cancelled as my essay asks.

          Jim

            Dear Peter,

            Thank you for your remarks and I look forward to your comments (should you be inclined to make any), especially since you have a particularly broad perspective on the history and philosophy of physics.

            Armin

            Dear Inger,

            Thank you for your kind remark, you are of course under no obligation to make any comments or ask any questions, just the fact that you read it twice is an indication that some of my ideas were found to be worthwhile and I find that is a reward in and of itself.

            Thanks again and all the best,

            Armin

            Dear James,

            Well, in the generality you stated it the superposition principle could already be applied to the classical physics, such as Maxwell's or Newton's theories. In fact, your second sentence indicates to me that this is what you had in mind.

            What makes quantum superposition quite distinct is the fact that a state of a system is a linear superposition of 'measurement outcome states', and this something you just don't find in any classical theory.

            There is a quantum mechanical version of 'Force' which you can either derive in terms of a change in the expectation value of a system's momentum over time using Ehrenfest's theorem, or (in certain cases only) as as the change in the expectation value of the Hamiltonian of which the wave function is an eigenfunction with respect to a coordinate using the Feynman-Hellman theorem but these are nothing like classical forces because they do not refer to definite objects.

            I don't dispute the validity of either General Relativity or Quantum Theory, which actually makes my stance the most conservative one could take. The entire point of my essay was to show that if we realize that quantum theory and general relativity are fundamentally about different objects, then the seeming contradiction between them vanishes.

            As for your paper, I will leave an honest comment on your thread.

            Thank you for your remark and your question.

            All the best,

            Armin

            Dear Armin Nikkhah Shirazi,

            I completely agree with your statement of that a theory of everything is a myth. Precisely, I started my essay with a short historical introduction on how physicists, from Laplace to Witten, have claimed that they were close to obtain a theory of everything, but Nature has shown how wrong they were!

            Regards