An Accidental Universe

Paul ,

I understand that Einstein did not think he was dealing with "mere" appearances. He knew his relativity was not a complete theory and I am sure he would be happy to have it retained but thought about slightly differently so that it is compatible rather than contradictory to quantum mechanics. It can be retained and can work with quantum mechanics if general and special relativity relate only to the appearance, i.e. the observed images formed from EM data not the objects with atomic structure.

Re. Your final paragraph: Sensory data has to be processed to make any sense to us at all. Receipt of data with no output is no better than no data. If my eyes were disconnected from my brain, the data would still be received but as it can not be processed by my brain, I will not be able to see. Light that has been focussed by a lens might be capable of producing an image on a screen placed in its path but without the screen there is no see-able image. Its output that gives us knowledge. We can not access Object reality (your existent reality) including the EM Data Pool (your existent representations) without a -Reality Interface- that converts what is there into a form that our sensory system can receive and interpret. Which allows us to do such things as practical physics experiments -involving observations-; and much more besides: )

John,

Mathematics is conceptually easy. What is dense -- or foggy would be a better word -- are statements like "Duration is a property of process. Process is what physical properties, such as light do."

You're unlikely to ever get through to anyone who can clearly see that you're trying to do physics without the benefit of physical content. That should be absurd to you, and will be, once you learn what you're missing.

A second only measures the duration of an *event.* The event -- not the duration, not the process -- is physically real. Light -- electromagnetic radiation -- is not a physical property. It is a physically real event.

Tom

Rob,

"I was not aware that the hypothetical existence of 'equally likely universes', has been elevated to the status of a 'first principle'"

It is, if the wave function does not collapse.

Tom

Tom,

Wave function collapse is itself merely a hypothetical attribute of some mathematical descriptions, "models", of physical reality. Neither wave-function existence, nor its collapse, have ever been demonstrated to be attributes of reality itself.

Rob

Constantinos,

"I show Planck's Formula for blackbody radiation to be an exact mathematical tautology and not a physical law per se. This result explains why the experimental blackbody spectrum matches so perfectly the theoretical curve!"

Then your theory suffers the same flaw as quantum theory -- by assuming what it means to demonstrate.

Planck's result is derived from physical measurement, not from curve-fitting. What makes it a law, is that Planck shows this energy distribution to uniquely correspond to bodies in thermodynamic equilibrium, "black" bodies.

Physical laws prescribe limits. Quantum theory proponents who want to enshrine nonlocality as a physical law -- as purportedly demonstrated by the experimental results of Bell-Aspect -- either forget or ignore this fact.

Let me take a classical example of curve-fitting -- Kepler's first law of planetary motion. "A planet's orbit is an ellipse." Why is it a physical law and not, as you say, a tautology? -- because if we relied on curve fitting to validate it, we could not. I like the way that Leslie Lamport ("Buridan's Principle," Found. Phys. April 2012) framed his argument in those terms: "To understand the meaning of Buridan's Principle as a scientific law, consider the analogous problem with classical mechanics. Kepler's first law states that the orbit of a planet is an ellipse. This is not experimentally verifiable because any finite-precision measurement of the orbit is consistent with an infinite number of mathematical curves. In practice, what we can deduce from Kepler's law is that measurement of the orbit will, to a good approximation, be consistent with the predicted ellipse."

Likewise, you neglect that the agreement of the blackbody curve with your own theory applies only to a system in thermodynamic equilibrium, ignoring the infinity of curves that would be required to generalize it to all possible thermodynamic states.

Tom

Tom,

"The event -- not the duration, not the process -- is physically real."

Are past and future events physically real? If not, why? If so, how are they distinguished from current events?

Rob,

I agree with you that the model is not the theory (someone should explain that to some climate scientists). I do not agree that the wave function is merely a mathematical construct.

A classical continuous wave function is certainly something different than the probability wave of conventional quantum theory -- it is not true, however, that "Neither wave-function existence, nor its collapse, have ever been demonstrated to be attributes of reality itself."

"Reality itself" being the conclusion of measurement results, one has to concede that applying the equally likely hypothesis of probability to quantum events, one realized event implies some "collapse" of probabilities. So that, at least, can be said to be an "attribute" of *our* reality, if not "reality itself."

What I find intriguing about Albrecht's hypothesis, is not only that one need not assume that a collapse of probabilities applies to a multiverse of equally likely universes (Everett's interpretation already says that) -- rather, one need also not assume that equally likely clocks result in one cosmological initial condition. This carries the implication that the physically real spacetime of general relativity does not have a unique origin in time; my own research informs me that the general relativity model -- conventionally described as finite in time and unbounded in space -- holds just as well for a universe finite in space and unbounded in time. This accounts both for classical time reversibility and quantum mechanical unitarity.

Tom

"Are past and future events physically real?"

Has one ever measured a past or a future event? John, dude -- just one word: spacetime. It would open a whole new world to you.

Tom

Tom,

And what is an event anyway? Is my drinking a cup of tea an event, even if it might take ten minutes? If an event is anymore than the situation of the manifesting energy, might any such description fit into it, such as a persons life, or the history of the planet?

"And what is an event anyway? Is my drinking a cup of tea an event, even if it might take ten minutes?"

Who cares?

"If an event is anymore than the situation of the manifesting energy, might any such description fit into it, such as a persons life, or the history of the planet?"

What do you mean by 'the situation of the manifesting energy' that has *something* to do with *physics*? John, what the heck do you even think "physics" means?

Tom

Tom,

I do concede that "one has to concede that applying the equally likely hypothesis of probability to quantum events, one realized event implies some "collapse" of probabilities."

What I will not concede is that the existence of "probabilities", as a useful way to describe certain characteristics of "reality", necessarily implies the existence of a wave-function underlying those probabilities. I concede that wave-functions have been demonstrated to be "sufficient" for describing those probabilities. But they have never been demonstrated to be "necessary." Furthermore, as I described in the various comments under my essay contest submission, other, none-wave-function based descriptions of quantum events are also "sufficient".

What I find intriguing about Albrecht's hypothesis, and others of similar ilk, is that they all seem to be blissfully unaware of Karl Popper's criteria for distinguishing science from pseudo-science.

Rob McEachern

Georgina

But Einstein is not about observation, if you can find a quote from him that demonstrates it is, please post it.

Neither is physical existence impacted by the subsequent processing of the physical input received. If it is, please explain how this happens. How the output which is knowledge or belief, ie has no physical existence, impacts on something which had physical existence, but occurred before that processing anyway. Or indeed, in the case of existential existence, had physical existence, occurred before the interaction, and was not even involved in that interaction.

Paul

Tom,

"measured"

Every event ever measured is past.

"What do you mean by 'the situation of the manifesting energy' that has *something* to do with *physics*? John, what the heck do you even think "physics" means?"

What do you think physics is? Currently, as a discipline it is dominated by two not entirely cooperative theories, which have managed to spit out a fair number of quite bizarre propositions. The purpose of this community is to "question the foundations." One of Einstein's most famous quotes is "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Yet your assumption seems to be that those foundations cannot be questioned.

"Every event ever measured is past."

I see. So your answer to my question as to what is physically real in your musings is "the past."

Got it.

Tom

Paul (feb 22, 06:36),

I understand your point of view. Though I think your aversion to "metaphysical " concepts does relate to the elusive description and not to the existence of the proposed "phenomena".

Henk

Rob

"Neither wave-function existence, nor its collapse, have ever been demonstrated to be attributes of reality itself"

There is no necessity to even go as far as requiring a 'demonstration', because by definition, these concepts are contradictory to what physical existence must be, and how it must occur. In other words, the theory is based on metaphysical premises and the physical existence being analysed.

The first question would be, what physically existent phenomenon corresponds with a wave. A wave implies a sequence of physically existent states, not one physically existent state. What is 'waving', there must be something, otherwise it is non existent, and whatever it is cannot be in more than one physically existent state at a time.

The second question is, what physically constitutes the 'collapse' of this whatever it is. However, whatever is collapsing, whatever caused this collapse, and whatever constitutes a collapse, is all irrelevant anyway in the context of one simple fact. Physical existence occurred before the collapse. So the collapsing just caused the cessation of whatever it was, it had no effect on its physical existence. Indeed, if the concept is associated with sensing, and particularly the sense of sight, ie that act caused the collapse, then the whole notion is even more nonsense. Because the interaction involved in sensing, ie the receipt of a physical input, involves a photon based representation of physical reality. That is, there is no physical interaction between physical existence and observation, so the latter cannot cause a collapse of the former. Another point to bear in mind here is the true physical nature of observation. A brick receives light in just the same generic way that an eye does (ie ignore the difference in the physical constitution of the two physical entities). It is just that a brick cannot then subsequently process this physical input. In other words, observation, or sensing in general, is irrelevant to physical existence.

Paul

Good point, Rob.

I also do not accept that the world is probabilistic. Which forces me to the default position that the wave function does not collapse. Which implies that the wave function is not a quantum probabilistic wave function. Which logically entails a fundamentally unitary reality -- but that militates against what we know, empirically, of quantum mechanics. Probability measures are real.

You write, "What I find intriguing about Albrecht's hypothesis, and others of similar ilk, is that they all seem to be blissfully unaware of Karl Popper's criteria for distinguishing science from pseudo-science."

Also a good point -- although I believe Albrecht's program *can* be made Popper-falsifiable. From Jacob Aron's New Scientist article: " ... in a multiverse with just two universes, you might add a 50-50 chance of being in either one, just as we instinctively assign the same odds to a coin toss.

"Albrecht says that is wrong. Unlike a coin toss, these probabilities do not have a quantum origin. To explain the multiverse scenario, a new theory of probability is required. 'It is not an extension of our everyday experience of probability,' he says. 'It is really a brand new thing.'"

That makes sense to me. In our conventional experience of probability, we have perfect information, or we arbitrarily assign an information boundary, such as that found in an example from the article:

" ... placing a bet on the value of the millionth digit of pi. It is easy to calculate this exactly - it is 5, as it happens - but if neither party knows that in advance, it becomes a probability problem, and conventional probability says there is a 1 in 10 chance of winning the bet."

But we *know* the number is calculable. We have perfect information, or know how to get it. And:

"As Albrecht and Phillips say, quantum effects come into play here too, through the choice of which digit to bet on, either as neural fluctuations, as with the coin flip, or as other uncertainty from a random number generator."

If there is true randomness in the world (and Chaitin's research among other things convinces me that there is), the idea of *perfect* randomness is entirely equivalent to perfect information. That is, most numbers are not calculable -- so it remains to be seen if perfect information in an infinite multiverse implies perfect randomness in our universe. And that leads directly to Albrecht's hypothesis of how the free choice of clock results in different cosmological initial conditions.

Tom

"If you have some factual evidence that physical existence is not independent of us, and does not involve alteration, please state what this is and why that alternate view is justified." We all have of course, and it's well-known. Just to let you know where I'm coming from, I disagree with it, as you do, but unlike you I can give very specific reasons, and related to the mathematical clues, which of course anyone arguing the other way would need to do. But I'm not going to do that here.

Paul,

Too much smoke, too little light! Let me simplify.

You think real knowledge exists independently of mind. I think all knowledge exists in the comprehending mind.

We both 'think'! So which of our respective thoughts is self-evident? The thought that does not think it is thinking. Or the thought that thinks it is.

'Knowledge' comes from the Greek for 'mind'. To your 'closed systems' I see 'closed minds'. But in either case we agree! Knowledge is 'limited' since knowing is 'limiting'. To 'define' IS to 'limit'. But try to have science as we know it without any definitions!

Quoting from my essay, The Metaphysics of Physics., "Though we can agree the Universe exists independent of us, our knowledge of the Universe cannot exist independent of our mind."

To your "self-fulfilling metaphysical tautology masquerading as a physical theory" I propose in the same essay and in my chapter, "The Thermodynamics in Planck's Law", a way out! Namely, that all Basic Law of Physics be mathematical truisms applied to our measurements of 'what is'. What do you propose? Your own 'metaphysical tautology' of "physically existent state at a time"?

Constantinos