Dear Amanda,

The New Scientist special issue "WHAT IS REALITY" is very good, the perceptions of Henry Stapp and Matthew Donald have a lot of paralels with my own perception of reality.

I would like to sent my essay to them, is it possible that you give me their e-mail ,

mine is

wilhelmus.d@orange.fr

If not possible, I understand, but a question is always possible.

Thanks

Wilhelmus

Dear Amanda,

Wow! Your essay deserves the highest possible note -- and you got a 10 from me -- because it brilliantly explores (In the right direction!) which of our basic physical assumptions are wrong. Many thanks to Ben Dribus, who told me yesterday evening about your excellent essay.

So I would not argue with you when you "... argue that the basic assumption of a single universe shared by multiple observers is wrong." On the contrary, I fully agree with your perspective, and in my essay From Minkowski's Diagram to the Multispace Model of the Universe I make the first step in the same direction by explaining "why" and most important "how" it happens that this universe is a multispace.

Yes, as you say, "... each observer lives in their own unique universe", but I realized that telling this fact like that was quite scary for some people, and that they had a tendency to disconnect themselves from my subject. Didn't you notice the same thing?

So in my essay, I preferred to use 'spacetime reference frames' instead of 'universes' and 'multispace' instead of 'multiverse,' nicely reminding the audience that this confirms Minkowski's 1908 declaration that the world is composed of an infinite number of spaces, as well as his multispace relativity.

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

On one side, I completely agree. Each observer exists in his own universe. It is not for nothing that we instinctively feel we live in a 'bubble of perception.' And it's also true that we perceive the surrounding reality through our sense organs, filters that project this reality into our 'bubble universe,' our conscious self. So yes, each of us is 'one observer in his own universe.'

Yet, on the other side, it's not so simple. When do we start to talk about this 'own unique universe?' Is it the space surrounding our body? If you and me are ten feet away are we still in the same universe? What if we hug each other? If I look at my hand, is it inside or outside my universe?

Even more, we agree that in a multispace/multiverse world, "... each observer lives in their own unique universe." But each observer -- in fact each of us -- is made out of various organs, cells, and so on until these nagging pieces of matter called elementary particles. Do we have the right to say that quantum spaces are also little universes? After all, besides the size, the only difference between me looking at you through our universes, and seeing you, and looking at an elementary particle through its universe -- its quantum space -- is that I don't see this elementary particle. But there is a simple and very physical explanation for that, which I also advance in my essay From Minkowski's Diagram to the Multispace Model of the Universe.

In fact, what I want to say is that this essay is just the tip of the iceberg. I spent several years to prove the Multispace Model beyond any possible doubt by finding convincing supportive evidence not just in physics, but also in cosmology and in Earth sciences.

I hope you have a moment to check it out and share your thoughts with me.

Best of luck in the contest.

Eugeniu Alexandrescu

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

Please make note of this correction:

In my essay's section on holographic spacetime, I attributed the theory to Tom Banks. However, it should have been attributed to Willy Fischler as well. My apologies for the omission.

Many thanks,

Amanda

5 days later
  • [deleted]

Dear Amanda,

When you say "universe," you appear to mean a classical universe, or a universe described on the basis of finite observations, or a description of a universe recorded using classical information. If this is the case, I believe your statement on p. 7 that "I suspect that this is exactly what quantum mechanics has been trying to tell us all along" is correct - what QM has been trying to tell us all along is that classical descriptions are observer-dependent. This is in one sense not at all surprising: descriptions based on observations could be observer-independent - truly objective - only if the observers involved were effectively omniscient. Classical physics assumes omniscient observers: observers who are correct and complete, up to measurement resolution, in the descriptions that they record.

That said, I do not believe that you can really define an observer as a reference frame. A reference frame is just an abstraction. Reference frames do not accumulate classical information. At the very least, I think you need to attach to your reference frame a list (possibly just one item long) of classical information and a method for updating the list with newly-acquired classical information. You must, in other words, provide some representation of how classical information is obtained and recorded. See my paper in Information 3 (2012), 92-123 for details.

The interesting question that emerges from this line of thought is: Is there any sense in which my impression (for example) that other observers 1) exist, 2) record classical descriptions roughly consonant with mine, and 3) engage in meaningful communication with me is accurate? As a realist, my assumption is that multiple observers exist, and that while our multiple descriptions are in some sense incommensurate in principle - we cannot, as you point out, actually inhabit each others' reference frames, and moreover we cannot observationally determine what caused any of our own or other observers' experiences - we nonetheless are all observing and recording classical information about the same (physical, quantum, real) universe. The interesting questions are whether this realist view is sane or insane, and if it is sane, how one can account, physically, for the apparent consonance of observations that allows different observers to (apparently) share both observational beliefs and the languages employed to communicate them.

Cheers,

Chris

2 months later
  • [deleted]

Amanda: I imagine you were as surprised as I was to win a Special Commendation in this contest. You may recall (above) that I was effusive after reading your essay -- it continues to be my favorite of the lot. So I think it's fascinating, if somewhat unexplainable, that we were both plucked out of the lot and recognized. I believe our essays share profound themes in common, which I didn't get to elaborate upon during the run of the competition. If you might be interested in continuing the discussion, and comparing notes on the contest (I hope you've gotten to read some of the fallout from the winners announcement), feel free to drop me a line at tenrec@pacbell.net. Have a good day.

10 days later
  • [deleted]

Will engineers ever benefit from the denial of one common objective reality?

Already Einstein's special theory of relativity abandoned the at least reasonable common time for the sake of taking the point of view of an individual observer.

This led to many obvious paradoxes. On the other hand, the vehemently claimed and defended, by a Wikipedia task force, benefits are not really so obvious. Opponents argue they can be explained otherwise too or even better.

I see in the essay nothing new but nonetheless the provocative style well suited for tabloid journalism.

Eckard

15 days later
16 days later
  • [deleted]

Dear Amanda

I just discovered your wonderful article on Cosmic Solipsism, which I've found to be profound in its implications, scientifically accurate, and totally free of erroneous assumptions. This is a remarkable achievement.

I wonder if you would allow me to reprint the article on my website:

http://scienceandnonduality.wordpress.com/tag/science-and-nonduality/

Your article makes the scientific argument for what I have to say much better than I can ever say it.

  • [deleted]

Dear Amanda,

"We can use the frame of any observer, and yet, fundamentally, there is only one."

I "is" that "only one" singualrity in all of us.

zero = i = infinity

Love,

Sridattadev.

a month later
  • [deleted]

Dear Ms. Gefter,

I enjoyed reading your essay. I must admit a lot of it was over my head - I'm not a physicist. But I have two questions that I hope are valid anyway. What about the awful ethical implications of solipsism? I realize this is outside the scope of your article, but it is such a heavy consequence of the argument that it begs to be addressed. Second, if every frame of reference gives rise to a complete and singular reality, doesn't your argument say that the distinct frames of reference provided by my two eyes mean that my awareness is suspended between two universes? I'm anthropomorphizing. To state it a little more rigorously, aren't you saying that only a pointlike entity like an electron can define an unambiguous universe?

With best wishes,

Will

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