Thanks, Michael! I'm glad you pointed that out. Your model is an excellent example of the sort of thing I'm talking about, and I wish I'd included a reference in my essay.

Steve

Thank you, George. I had not thought about the connection with your top-down causation ideas, but am now going to delve back in and refamiliarize myself. I've referenced your work many times, but not (yet) in this context!

Steve

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  • Post #19

Not only faster than light, as well as slower than light.

I'm glad you enjoyed my essay. I did take a look at yours, and I would say that one of the reasons people may not have commented is that it seems largely metaphorical, and so it is not clear exactly whether and how current fundamental assumptions in mainstream physics are implicated.

By "properties at a point", I mean things like the values of the electric and magnetic fields at a point in space (at a given time). Particle properties are more obviously "point" properties, because particles are by localized, pointlike objects to begin with.

Hope that makes sense.

Dear Steve,

very interesting essay. The role of nonlocality especially in quantum mechanics troubles me also for a long time. I always thought that a solution has a strong connection to the spacetime structure.

I studied very intesive the theory of manifolds (differential topology). Two linked curves in a 3-space are also a non-local phenomenon: the properties of the two curves are strongly influenced by the linking. Some of these non-local properties are discussed in my essay (but with a stronger focus to quantum gravity)

Best

Torsten

PS: I have to read your essay once again.

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    • Post #25

    Glad you like the essay. Could you be more specific about entanglement? There's a sense in which a theory with a nonlocal constraint inevitably demonstrates entangelment, but there's no speed of entanglement.

    Steve

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    • Post #26

    Thanks, Torsten, I'l check out your essay!

    Steve

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    • Post #27

    Superdeterminism and free will not contradicted itch other.

    As Yakir Aharonov's says: "...is somewhat Talmudic: everything you're going to do is already known to God, but you still have the choice." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/aug/03/can-the-future-affect-the-past

    See also my essay 1413

    Dear Steve:

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

    it explains the whome idea.

    Wilhelmus

    Hi, an addendum:

    you state "there are correlations between spatially separate degrees of freedom," This occurs at the lower levels of structure because of the relations that exist at higher levels in the hierarchy of structure. At least that's one way of describing it.

    George

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    • Post #30

    Dear Steven,

    great piece of paper, easy to anticipate and to read, but nonetheless well-elaborated. Partly very speculative, nonetheless your approach is surely fully worth to be followed further. My own essay here gives a somewhat similar picture of the puzzles in QM. If you like, check it out. It is speculative too, but i think it's consistent with the known facts. I in any way would be happy about a comment for my QM-interpretation from a professional, be it critics or other statements.

    All the best,

    Stefan

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    • Post #31

    Dear Steve

    What is your attitude to Gerard 't Hooft

    Discreteness and Determinism in Superstrings ?

    arXiv:1207.3612 (replaced) [pdf, ps, other]

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    • Post #32

    Dr Ellis

    What is your attitude to Gerard 't Hooft

    Discreteness and Determinism in Superstrings ?

    arXiv:1207.3612 (replaced) [pdf, ps, other]

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      • Post #33

      Slower case

      http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1209/1209.3765.pdf

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      • Post #34

      I think you may have meant to send this to George Ellis?

      Hi Steve,

      Nice essay! I was glad to see that you've also entered an essay into this competition. I can certainly sympathize with the possibility of non-localities lurking in the fabric of spacetime. What I'm trying to understand is what precisely you mean by "non-locality" or even "non-local constraints". For example, your opening statement, taken literally, is not true: many (or most) theories have derivatives, which couple neighbouring points in a manifold. But I assume that a finite number of derivatives is suitably "local" by your definition. However, in shape dynamics, we have a Hamiltonian that has powers of the inverse Laplacian, which is highly non-local in some sense. Yet, shape dynamics is dynamically equivalent to GR.

      I've always found locality in GR a tricky issue. The field equations and the constraints can be written "locally" (i.e., with a finite number of derivatives) but observables are non-local. So how "local" is GR really? As you know, constraints can expressed locally but may have global obstructions for solving them. Would this kind of non-locality be good enough or are you looking for something deeper?

      Cheers,

      Sean.