Cosmic Solipsism by Amanda Gefter

Dear Amanda,

I really enjoyed your essay. It is one of the most thorough and clearly focused contributions on the subject of covariance (i.e. observer dependence/independence) in the contest. I share your deep interest in this important subject. A few itemized remarks:

1. One of the most important points, in my opinion, is the absolutely crucial role of spacetime structure in constraining "particle states." As you point out, such states arise in Minkowski spacetime via the representation theory of the Poincare group, and altering (or removing) this background changes the picture completely. Many approaches to quantum gravity involve very complicated spacetime microstructure, and this makes the use of covariance in the form of spacetime symmetry to determine particle states problematic even locally. There is another possible interpretation of covariance, however, and this interpretation is much more general than group symmetry. It is based on order theory, and is related to the relativity of simultaneity. In this interpretation, different frames of reference are, in general, no longer related by a group action, but by different refinements of the causal order. I describe this in more detail in my essay here: On the Foundational Assumptions of Modern Physics.

2. You discuss several different types of horizons (black holes versus cosmological horizons, etc.) I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but there is some disagreement about the equivalence of different types of horizons and the implications for observer independence. There is an essay by Tanmay Vachaspati in this thread called "Preferred observers in quantum gravity" that discusses this and may interest you... along with yours, it was one of the more interesting submissions on covariance.

3. You mention Rovelli's relationism; if you look at my essay you'll see that I have a lot of sympathy for this point of view. You might be interested in some of the submissions here on that topic; for instance Jorge Pullin's essay on the measurement problem.

I particularly appreciate your broad point of view and synthesis of several different problems that are usually considered separately. Take care,

Ben Dribus

Hello thinkers,

Indeed but the determinism is the determinism. We can have indeed different points of vue, that will not change the universal determinism and its evolution spherization. In fact an apple is an apple. An flower is a flower, a paraticule also, and this and that, a star, a planet, a water drop, a wave,this or that, brains, eyes, hands, in fact the mass is the mass and we perceive it with relativity but the mass is the mass, and the light is the light. We contemplate just due to these two main gauges, the m and the hv. a photon is a photon, with its serie of uniqueness.So we can interpret diffrently but the Universal3D sphere is the same for all in a pure physical coherence of course. All roads do not go to Roma at my knowledge, so the determinism is an essential parameter permitting to sort the bad convergences.

It is a simple evidence of our universality in evolution. We arrive at the uncompleteness due to our relativistic limits of understanding and perception of all the 3D scales.

It is important to make the difference between our limits, physical, deterministic and rational, and the bizare hidden variables, irrational. The real understanding of this uncompleteness is in accepting opur young age at this universal scale. The time like a pure constant of evolution, duration implied by the rotations of spheres at all scales !

Best Regards

What is your opinion about my essay?

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

Amanda

i think you are reincarnation from George Berkeley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley

Thank you. Very interesting comment.

Have you read my essay?

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

Dear Amanda,

you may have a look to my essay (and rate it). It is related to many aspects with yours.

Ioannis

Hi Amanda,

I thought your essay was very well written and clearly argued.

I have two questions: What is an observer - a particle, an atom, a molecule, a cell or a larger living thing like a human being? If a particle is a type of observer with its own reference frame, would a molecule or a cell etc. be viewed as a type of composite reference frame?

Lorraine

Dear Amanda,

(Replying down here because the subthread above got a bit long.)

I think Tom Banks starts with a lot more structure than I do... which might, incidentally, be necessary. The most obvious criticism of my ideas is that they may be too parsimonious to achieve sufficient explanatory power, but I do have some reasons to be hopeful that I can get somewhere worthwhile from this direction.

"Made of information" is a good description of my approach, although I wouldn't choose that terminology myself simply because it's already been used to describe a lot of theories that really involve a lot of auxiliary structures. The information is observer dependent, but not the laws of physics.

I have my doubts about a lot of aspects of recent black hole physics, simply because we know that it resides near the horizons of validity of the theories involved (no pun intended). I view it as worth taking seriously, and it's certainly worthwhile to explore the consequences, but I would not be surprised if certain aspects of it turn out to be artifacts of theory stretched beyond its bounds. Take care,

Ben

Dear Amanda,

If you have found the time to read my essays you would note that our thoughts coincide apart from the different way of expression (due of my amateur education in physics). Each observer has his own reference frame and we can not examine any phenomenon taking two (or more) reference frames at the same time. However I propose that the deviating views by different observers is resemblance of their different frames and it does not mean a difference in Reality. It is like a view from an open window. Every observer has his own view that depends from his position and not to another Reality out of the window. Each observer can see a different part of the only one Reality because of his own position in relation to the window and the Reality out there.

The expression inside and outside of a Black Hole (BH) resembles mine real and virtual part in any universe. It is evidence that real observers can realize only the real part of their universe while the virtual observers only the virtual part. It is time however to try to resolve the rules of the virtual part of our Universe (if we consider ourselves as real observers).

During the BH's inhalation the information "lost" is transferred to a new universe which may be of different or the same dimensionality (hence the black holes' jets).

The quantum part of your essay can be related to World Line (WL) individuality of each event through spacetime that for many instances there are equivalent different paths close to the WL of events (see fig. 1).

Thank you for the "Experimental evidence of solipsism?" that is a straight evidence of NCS as well.

Best wishes, Ioannis

Amanda -- Wow! I've read a lot of FQXi essays over the years, and this is one of the most interesting I've seen. One thing I didn't notice you tackling, though, was an explanation for the consistency among observations. I have an idea on that: The kinds of observers familiar to us -- biological and technological ones -- share a topological connection which makes inconsistent observations impossible. That idea is central to my essay, "Toward an Informational Mechanics," as is Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics (which I was thrilled to see you mention -- Rovelli just doesn't get enough love).

In my essay's comments section, there is some discussion about solipsism. I explained my thought that collective reality is a kind of "collective solipsism," but you're absolutely right that each observer frame corresponds to its own universe. It's just that topologically connected observers necessarily observe common informational features of the universe, and I think it is precisely this commonality and consistency that creates the appearance of a single universe. I hope you have a moment to check it out.

Great work again, and best of luck in the competition.

Hello Ms Gefter,

I beleive that you speak about the interpretations of this Universe. You know the Universe is the same for all.That said we perceive it with our own emotions correlated with our education. The universe is the same sphere for all. In fact I beleive that you cannot say so your conclusion about the universe. We cannot confound an interpretation with a pure determinism.

Let's take a simple example.Imagine that you like the color of the planet mars, red. and that a friend , him does not like the red color of this planet. It does not mean that this planet mars does not exist or that it exists two planets mars for example.

1+3+5+7+11+13=40 I don't see an other number :)

Best Regards

Dear Amanda

in last issue of Russian magazine

http://ufn.ru/en/articles/2012/9/

you can read

Letters to the editors

"Einstein Moon"

http://ufn.ru/en/articles/2012/9/h/

It seems to me soliptic view.

Dear Amanda.

Your thesis first sounds shocking, as intended, but; 'the truth will first look wrong as it will be unfamiliar.' (Feynman) so it's in with a shout. I think you find much of the path to truth, but suggest you then drift off to hypothesise and question. I hope you may read my essay which suggests a direct mechanistic and deterministic path in a similar direction, and some causal answers to co-variance. This nevertheless agrees or has analogies with your views;

"...we must never speak of more than one observer or universe at a time."

the "...observer-dependence of the vacuum."

"...multiverse cosmology will have to give way to a new kind of cosmology, one that is radically frame-dependent."

"...it is equally valid to describe reality from any one of an infinite number of possible reference frames."

"...each observer's reference frame defines a complete universe, and anything outside the frame is considered merely a redundant description"

I agree your identification of the low quadrupole, 'axis of evil' and the other CMB anisotropies, to which a solution emerges (consistent with electron twin vortex spin). A consequential recycling mechanism is more referred in the end notes, last years essay and elsewhere. ("...the black hole evaporates and eventually blinks out of existence, presumably taking all internal information with it."). But then returns.

A very well written, courageous and well argued essay. I really do look forward to your comments on the 'hard reality' analogies underlying the theatrical surface of mine.

Very best wishes

Peter

Amanda,

Your thesis vitally depends on miraculous theoretical results like this one:

"...Hawking particles objectively exist according to observers outside the black hole and objectively do not exist according to the unlucky observers who fall in."

In my view, juggling with such results, without questioning the underlying assumptions, leads you nowhere. The miraculous results may simply be absurd consequences of false assumptions. Let me give examples of an opposite approach:

Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics: "Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on two postulates: One is the relativity of motion, and the second is the constancy and universality of the speed of light. Could the first postulate be true and the other false? If that was not possible, Einstein would not have had to make two postulates. But I don't think many people realized until recently that you could have a consistent theory in which you changed only the second postulate."

Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

Pentcho Valev