The Tao of It and Bit by Cristinel Stoica

Dear Christi,

your essay was an interesting read. I think your realization that ultimately, all we know of the world are relations is very deep, and is in a certain sense at the foundation of my own thinking, as well. However, I am less certain about the 'book containing every truth': this seems to me to run into trouble with the Kochen-Specker theorem (and related ones). In particular, if such a book existed, it would imply the existence of a global probability distribution such that its marginals give the outcomes for every possible set of observations; but this is known to be at variance with quantum mechanics. Put differently, while classically we can identify every object with a list of properties, of propositions true about this object, in quantum mechanics, no such list can exist. Any theory for which such a list exists necessarily obeys Bell's inequalities (and Kochen-Specker and Leggett-Garg inequalities, which are from this point of view just variations on a theme). (I think this connection was probably first worked out by Fine.)

Nevertheless, your big book seems to be very much a 'hot idea' in philosophy at the moment, after having been somewhat maligned after the 'noble failure' of Carnap's "Der Logische Aufbau der Welt"; three books have appeared in the past year dealing in various ways with the possibility of deriving all truths about the universe from some 'compact class' of basic truths: David Chalmers' "Constructing the World" (which is the only one I've read... well, I should say 'almost read'), Theodore Siders' "Writing the Book of the World", and John Heil's "The Universe as we Find It", so you're certainly at the bleeding edge in that respect! (Just in case you're interested.)

In any case, as a fellow PhD student in physics, I wanted to emphasize one point you made, though only somewhat implicitly, and only tangentially related to the main thrust of your essay: that of the necessity for courage in the scientific endeavour. Building on the Kuhnian model of scientific revolution, one might say that the ordinary, stick-to-the-mainstream method of science fails to produce the most important new ideas: it only clusters around local maxima, so to speak. For true innovation, one must sometimes leap beyond what seems reasonable, or even sensible within the current paradigm. Of course, many, if not most, such leaps will lead to nothing, which is why one needs courage to make them---a courage which John Wheeler certainly possessed, as you have shown in your essay.

Cristi

No, it means I have not got the knowledge to explain it, that does not make it a mystery. And no experimentation can differentiate one physically existent state, because of the degree of complexity and duration involved, along with the fact that we only receive a light based representation of it anyway, which makes it more impossible than it already was(!).

So even if I had more knowledge, I would not be inclined to junk what must be how physical existence occurs, for an alternative explanation which cannot possibly support existence, in order to accommodate what appears to be the result of experimentation, when experimentation cannot differentiate existence at the existential level.

Paul

Dear Cristi,

"it comes from experiment, not from a metaphysical theory." Wasn't Wheeler's original experiment just a Gedankenexperiment intending to support his theory?

I understand your intention to not get suspected as someone who questions Einstein's theories while you simultaneously maintain your desire to explain what are so far mysteries to you. Yes, George Ellis and many others were successful trying the same in the contests. However, in reality being a bit pregnant is impossible. I have to admit that I was mislead e.g. by Feist's experiment. The truth is sometimes unexpectedly simple.

Paul,

I am not interested in quarreling with you. We agree in many decisive points. However, I still tell you that in any (stationary) electric measurement the non-ideal impedance of the instrument disturbs the voltage or current to be measured. The instrument correctly measures a quantity that in reality belongs to the disturbed case. Knowing the error, we may exactly calculate the undisturbed reality. The latter possibility also holds for two-way non-Poincaré synchronization.

Eckard

Eckard

I agree with you, as I said in my post. But this practical problem is not what QM alludes to. It does not start with the premise that physical existence occurs independently, in a sequence of definitive discrete physically existent states. And then accept that trying to identify those experimentally is fraught with practical issues. Indeed is it impossible for us to differentiate such states experimentally. Rather QM asserts that there is some form of indefiniteness inherent in phyical existence. Which is quite obviously wrong, because existence cannot occur that way, apart from the fact that observation/measurement can have no effect on the physical circumstance because it has already occurred.

Paul

Jochen

"while classically we can identify every object with a list of properties"

But we cannot. There is no object, physically. That is a conception at a much higher level than how reality occurs, based on certain superficial physical attributes. Which is why the classical/intuitive view has been denigrated, because it has not been followed through to its proper logical conclusion,But left at the ordinary everyday way of seeing things. And usurped by an incorrect view. Physical existence only occurs in one form.

Paul

Christi, yes, I think I missed the importance of your 'global consistency principle'. Indeed, if you intend for the big book to contain truths that include their proper (measurement) context, then you avoid the difficulties with Kochen-Specker etc.

I think I see two ways how this might work: one is a kind of 'superdeterminism', where what measurements are performed is fixed for any given instance; the other amounts to the book containing truths that are conditional on the performed measurements. It seems to me that you advocate the former strategy: the world is, in a sense, given by an action principle; it is like the famous catenary problem, wholly determined by initial and final conditions. The latter strategy is essentially what I've argued for: the book only contains relative facts, of the form 'if such-and-such a measurement is performed, the outcome is this-and-that', which then sort of co-exist peacefully. So maybe our perspectives are not that far from one another!

Also, somewhat amusingly, both solutions have a distinctly Leibnizian character: yours pertaining to his notion of the 'best of all possible worlds', while mine relates to his overall relational philosophy.

Paul, in a classical world, you can certainly always draw up a list of properties, and then clarify by that what you mean when you talk about 'an object'. What happens at the foundational level doesn't really have a bearing on this.

Hi Cristi,

In your essay you have touched the roots of science. Excellent and interesting. I have read it twice and I would like to comment barely every sentence but I don't want to torment you so much. So let me please to leave only a few comments of my choice.

1. You find compelling the idea that our universe is mathematical in the sense of relations. This is widely accepted that only waves or rather wavepackets give an information about the universe, the information which is accessible to observers (e.g. gamma rays, sound waves etc.). Then let us assume that Axiom Zero sounds like that: primordial conformally flat spacetime is the 'fabric' of everything. Everything could be derived from the spacetime and everything could vanish in it. Assuming then that a wave is only a spacetime dynamic deformation (also Clifford's and Wheeler's concepts) then the mother of all possible worlds could be our conformally flat spacetime (details in references to my essay concerning relations between it, bit and reality). Consequently the observer is also a wavepacket (deformed spacetime) so its participatory role is his own wavepacket's interference with another wavepackets. If we assumed that any spacetime deformation is unlimited (to some extent it deforms the entire spacetime e.g. in Gaussian distribution mode, due to its elastic and homeomorphism properties) than we could say that this is our participation without a need for many worlds interpretation!

The geometry is a part of mathematics and is completely about relations. But does the spacetime need a mathematics to exist? Or only we (observers) need a communication tool? This tool helps us to replicate our genes successfully (Darwin's survival of the fittest). I have touched the spacetime / geometry issue truly because my memes (information) try to replicate.

I know that this is only your essay's intro and not the point where you have noticed that Wheeler and his students wanted to obtain the mass and the electromagnetic field as effects of the topology of spacetime. They failed. But I have to comment shortly. Their problem was they were chasing geon solutions to the vacuum Einstein field equation (partially made by Brill and Hartle in 60's). A major issue regarding geon was whether it was stable and it was not a quantum-mechanical entity. This wrong approach has buried the very idea that the mass and fields can be effects of the topology of spacetime. In order to combine statistical nature of QM with geometrodynamics (any kind) we need the general law of survival of the stable. Quanta are just that stable wavepackets so we are able to perceive them.

2. Regarding your version of the delayed choice experiment the most interesting from my point of view is what is going on at the mirror A. I have proposed a simple spin experiment to find out and at the same time to make my concept falsifiable (details in references to my essay).

3. '...it seems very plausible that there may be a (possibly infinite) collection of propositions which contains all the truths about the universe. In this case, we have a theory (of everything). To the theory we can associate a model, in the sense of model theory.'

Such a model would contain propositions that are computable and deterministic. But if the universe is SOC system? The universe evolution (naturally evolving self-organized critical system) is non-computable and non-deterministic.

Jochen

"Paul, in a classical world, you can certainly always draw up a list of properties, and then clarify by that what you mean when you talk about 'an object'. What happens at the foundational level doesn't really have a bearing on this"

Well, apart from the fact that I said the opposite is true, ie there is no 'object', why is it that the 'classical' view does not deal, or could not deal if properly understood, with the foundational level? Indeed, why are there two levels, somewhat wierd isn't it that physics has two explanations for the same thing, ie physical exstence?

Paul

Jacek,

If I may offer up a point about time, ask yourself the question of whether it makes more sense to say the earth exists along a fourth dimension, from yesterday to tomorrow, or that tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates?

As I see it, the problem is that we experience time as a sequence of events, much as we still see the sun moving across the sky, from east to west, yet like the underlaying reality of the earth spinning west to east, it is the events moving through the physical actuality of what is present, as it is constantly changing, not the present moving along some extra-dimensional vector.

Because physics treats time as only a measure of duration, it re-enforces this sequential perception, rather than revealing its cause. Duration is not an external vector to the point of the present, but is the state of the present between events.

As effect of action, time would be similar to temperature, much as frequency and amplitude are features of waves.

So spacetime as causal, is no more real than giant cosmic gearwheels spinning in the heavens, as explanation for the mathematical effectiveness of epicycles.

John

The present becomes the next present due to alteration, and ceases (because it has altered)in doing so. There is only ever a present. There is no existent tomorrow or yesterday, or more precisely preceding or succeeding physically existent state. The 'fourth dimension' is not a spatial dimension, it an aspect of sequence, ie the rate at which the turnover of presents in the sequence occurs. We calibrate it (aka timing) by comparing rates of change and identifying difference. Physcal existence is a purely spatial phenomenon, though it has more than 3 spatial dimensions.

Paul

Paul,

We agree on that. The disagreement is on how it comes about. You seem to see it as fundamentally discrete events and I see it as how we discretely perceive a dynamically continuous process.

This "book" can be thought of in a number of ways. The book might be a set of tables, where these tables contain the states under some set of projector operators. This particular book though is incomplete, for there exist other books of the same form, but the books are not consistent with each other because the probabilities violate Bell inequalities.

We may look at these books as propositions that are connected by a disjoint "OR" operation. In that setting the books become elements in systems of relationships. Within that sense these relationships describe a set of geodesics that have a measure over Hilbert space.

Cheers LC

John

No, we do not agree, because you immediately dispute the concept of discreteness in your next sentence. To which the reaction is:

-how can physical existence be continuous, since it obviously involves difference?

-how can our perception of what is occurring affect it, physically, since it has already occurred in order for us to then perceive it?

Paul

Paul,

We do agree there is no physical existent blocktime, which given the extent this is foundational to a causal geometry of spacetime, is a big step. Where we disagree is the nature of the process. You seem to see it as a series of distinct presents, while I see it as what is present is energetic and thus constantly changing. Since it is what exists that is the constant, not the forms it takes, then it is not really the present moving along some vector, be it physically real, as in blocktime, or a sequence of distinct events, as you propose, but that since this state is constantly changing, it is these forms that come and go, ie. the events going future to past. My favorite example being that it is not the earth traveling some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates.

Now since our actions are every bit as real as the insensate activity occurring around us, they are part of what forms these events, that are constantly receding into the past. On the other hand, yes, if we think of time as a sequence of events and we exist at one point on this line, we cannot go back and change the past, nor reach out and affect the future. It is only when time is an emergent effect of action, do our actions have effect.

Now this is Cristi's thread, so if you wish to continue, go to yours, or mine, otherwise I will reply any further at mine.

Dear Cristinel

I enjoyed going through your engaging essay - every topic you chose was interesting, pertinent, beautifully explained and illustrated and thought-provoking. As a mathematician you should know how fertile and precocious the field is - so many different ways to express the same situation. Combine that with the cleverness and imagination of a Feynman or a Wheeler and you get truly mind-boggling choices in how to represent the Universe. Unfortunately It=It and one feels that the simpler a model is the more probably it is right - a single universe vs. many - one history instead of multiple ones etc, local causality vs. probability.

The delayed-choice beam-splitter experiment is brilliant. Sadly it has been now made meaningless after Eric Reiter's experiments, backed by solid theoretical and historical analysis of the issues involved, with beam-splitters showing that light-quanta do not 'choose' one path or another, but as waves (not point photons) are detected by both detectors simultaneously. Reiter reported about this in his 2012 fqxi essay and on his website unquantum.net . How such an important experimental challenge demolishing the inherent probability in Nature (the Born Rule) can be so neglected by the physics community is beyond me.

With best wishes, Vladimir

Dear Cristi

If I along with many debunkers of QM weirdness are right, Wheeler's delayed choice test being confirmed by experiment does not mean much. Here is a quick-and dirty explanation of how I see the scenario:

Forget point photons, wave collapse and all that. Einstein's 'photon' concept is the font of all the QM weirdness he himself railed against! Compton himself gave a wave explanation for his effect as Reiter explained on unquantum.net - all proving Planck's loading theory in which an atom releases light suddenly but absorbs it slowly until a threshold is reached and the (hv) quantum released.

In other words the light wave passes simultaneously through both slits and creates the wave interference pattern beyond them. In the famous faint-light case when the pattern emerges dot by dot on the long-exposed film the timing of the dot flashes in the film is an artifact of the sensing atoms individually and randomly reaching their energy threshold and has nothing to do with how the light went through the slits!

When the film is removed and two telescopes watch the slits no simultaneous sensing is recorded because of the energies involved. Reiter has shown how a single gamma ray is simultaneously recorded in two detectors.

I have touched on these issues in my 'Fix Physics' paper, and the scenario above plays out nicely in the universal node lattice of my Beautiful Universe theory.

These papers can be read on my website . I am now trying to simulate my theory to show how things like matter formation, gravity, quantum probability etc. all emerge locally linearly and causally. Big job small capability!

Best wishes

Vladimir