Patterns in the Fabric of Nature by Steven Weinstein

Hi Steve, congratulations with your essential essay. The only thing I am strugling with is that information does not exeed the speed of light, what about entanglement ?

I would be honoured if you could read (and rate) "THE CONSCIOUSNESS CONNECTION"

Wilhelmus

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.

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

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

Steve

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

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

Dear Steve

What is your attitude to Gerard 't Hooft

Discreteness and Determinism in Superstrings ?

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

Dr Ellis

What is your attitude to Gerard 't Hooft

Discreteness and Determinism in Superstrings ?

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

Slower case

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

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.

Dear Steve,

I cannot agree more with you about your statement: "...the possibility that there is a more fundamental theory possessing nonlocal constraints that underlies our current theories. Such a theory might account for the mysterious nonlocal effects currently described". I have a different approach that I am investigating. It appears only in the "Disuccsion and Conclusion" of my essay but hope to see if you think it is possible.

In my essay Is there really no reality beneath quantum theory?, I am able to show that the properties of a boson can be reconciled by assuming matter has vibrations in space and time. The system has an unusual propery that the vibrations are generating a probability and not real energy at the deterministic level. The Einstein's mass-energy relation is a constriant that matter field must be quantized and follow all laws of relativity at the standard model scale. However, the properties of the vibrations at the high energy level may not be local. I hope I can get your feedback.

Sincerely,

Hou Ying Yau

Thanks, Sean. I've just printed your essay, and am looking forward to reading it.

As for your questions, the primary concept in the paper is that of a nonlocal constraint, not about "nonlocality" in general. The Gauss Law constraints are local, by my usage, even though they are expressed in terms of derivatives. E.g., the Gauss Law for the electric field insists that the charge density at a point is equal to the divergence of the electric field at that point. What makes it local is that all the quantities we're concerned with have to do with an infinitesimal neighborhood around each point. On the other hand, if the electric field were sensitive to charges a finite distance away, we would have an example of a nonlocal constraint.

There's a somewhat more interesting example of a nonlocal constraint in the paper, in which one has a universe with timelike compactification. Spatial compactification will also do, and has in fact been studied. Either way, the periodicity one finds in these models means that the matter configuration at one point may determine completely the matter configuration at other points. That is a kind of nonlocal constraint.

In GR, I think the nonlocality is of a different sort, though I'm not sure I follow the question entirely. Offhand, I'd say that the nonlocality of the observables has to do with the diffeomorphism invariance (hence the physical meaninglessness of talking about properties "at a point"), but that the solvability of the constraints would be distinct. In any case, I'd say that GR is local in that if you're giving data on a Cauchy surface, it can be freely varied from point to point (at least as long as it's sufficiently differentiable).

Dear Steven,

Splendidly written! You discuss many important issues from a very original perspective. A few comments and questions:

1. I am wondering what, if anything, the possibility of nonlocal constraints says about causal structure. Quite naively, it seems as if making a local change to a system involving a nonlocal constraint would "cause" suitable adjustments elsewhere to satisfy the constraint. I'm not sure if this would have any implications for signaling, etc., since the "effect" might be distributed in such a way as to prevent any conclusions from being drawn at any particular remote point.

2. I wonder if you have read Ken Wharton's essay. I believe the type of constraints he invokes is somewhat different, but there seem to be some analogous points.

3. Have you looked at Donatello Dolce's submission? He uses a timelike compactification. (For instance, compare his figure 4 with your figure 1).

4. Since many approaches to quantum gravity involve breakdown of manifold structure at small scales, it seems worth considering how locality should even be defined in such a context, since the definition usually involves metric structure.

5. For example, a model (such as a graph) with less structure than a manifold might have a single "short path" between two points, while every other path between them is "long." At large scales, the two points would seem distant, and interaction over the "short path" would seem "nonlocal" when in fact the effect arises from a nonmanifold microstructure. It seems that this sort of consideration might be relevant to the horizon problem.

Thanks for the great read! Take care,

Ben Dribus

Okay, I understand what you mean by non-locality. It was in the text but it didn't pop out at me right away (probably my fault)! Do you have a particular model in mind for cosmology (like the quantum graphity stuff)?

I can see that the non-locality in GR is definitely a bit different from what you're talking about so I don't want to distract too much but I would say that the FREELY specifiable data (i.e., non-gauge) on a Cauchy surface is non-local. That's because you have to solve the constraints which are partial differential equations and the inversion of a partial differential equations does depend upon data over the whole manifold. I can't tell if this is something deep or trivial.... maybe trivial?

Hi Steve,

I really enjoyed your essay - it's a fascinating topic.

I'm curious how the kind of nonlocality you discuss fits in with the nonlocality that results from the holographic principle, for instance in AdS/CFT?

Thanks for a great read!

All best,

Amanda

"Cosmic Solipsism"