Cosmic Solipsism by Amanda Gefter

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

Hawking assumes the speed of light is constant in a gravitational field (and so contradicts both general relativity and Newton's emission theory):

Stephen Hawking: "Both Mitchell and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like cannon balls, that could be slowed down by gravity, and made to fall back on the star. But a famous experiment, carried out by two Americans, Michelson and Morley in 1887, showed that light always travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, no matter where it came from. How then could gravity slow down light, and make it fall back."

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Chapter 6: "Under the theory that light is made up of waves, it was not clear how it would respond to gravity. But if light is composed of particles, one might expect them to be affected by gravity in the same way that cannonballs, rockets, and planets are.....In fact, it is not really consistent to treat light like cannonballs in Newton's theory of gravity because the speed of light is fixed. (A cannonball fired upward from the earth will be slowed down by gravity and will eventually stop and fall back; a photon, however, must continue upward at a constant speed...)"

Do you agree with Hawking? Is the speed of light constant in a gravitational field? Did the Michelson-Morley experiment show "that light always travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, no matter where it came from"?

Pentcho Valev

Thanks for this provocative and persuasive argument. The notion that reality may be observer-dependent by virtue of it being tied to perception which is necessarily user-specific leads me to wonder if what actually IS can ever be truly known. Also, I wonder if what actually is could be subject to the Hawthorne effect (from the social sciences, I think) whereby that which is being observed changes as a result of efforts to observe it. And then what?

Dear Amanda,

a very relevant, well written essay. Good luck.

Dear Amanda:

What a nice and provocative essay.

I have one, very basic, question: For concreteness I will focus on the question of observer dependence of the notion of particles. If one looks at Unruh's calculation that gives a thermal spectrum of particles for the accelerated Rindler observer and no particles for the Minkowski observer isn't it true that the calculation starts from the same state in the same space-time for both these observers? While it is true that the two descriptions by the two observers are different it is also true that there is one description from which both of these can be derived.

So why shouldn't I call this one description (Minkowski space R^4 together with vacuum state |0>) the one universe? If you want the description for a particular observer just tell me how she moves and I will tell you what she sees.

I think what I said here for particles remains true for the other examples you cite (with the possible exception of quantum mechanics).

All the best.

Olaf

With not long to the end of community voting your consideration of my own would be very much appreciated. Kind regards Georgina.

This is a very original and thought provoking idea, good luck.

Did you rate my essay?

Dear Amanda

Very interesting essay! Thanks for the suggestion! Now I could for the first time understand some of the basic ideas about the problem of information in black-holes. But I have a question, if the universe is not shared by all the observer, what is shared by all observers?

I have some ideas about it that can possibly give you some insight, well I hope so... One of the main problem was that apparently there was information being cloned if you look from to observers at the same time. However, there should be some correlation between any two observers. In this case, the total entropy (or information) will not be the sum of each observer's entropy. Actually I think two observers are completely correlated such that their total entropy equals each one' entropy. This might explain why "we can never speak about more than one at a time." and also why "according to which each observer's reference frame defines a complete universe, and anything outside the frame is considered merely a redundant description.". In information theory, if you add a redundant description the information content is not increased!

I also agree that the existence of more than one reference frame can lead you to non compatible Boolean logics, each frame has a Boolean logic but the comparison cannot be done using a Boolean logic. But I think this notion is different from the notion of quantum mechanics. I mean, your ideas add something new to quantum mechanics (general relativity reference frames and observers), so they cannot be explained by pure QM, we'll need something new, probably quantum gravity or quantum general relativity.

Wish you all the best! And good luck on this contest!

Frederico