The Tao of It and Bit by Cristinel Stoica

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

Vladimir

This explanation might be correct, but the danger is that there is then an argument over alternatives.

Whereas in fact:

-QM is an invalid theory because its base presumptions are contrary to the way in which physical existence must occur

-there is no way in which any form of experimentation can identify the 'bottom line', the degree of alteration and duration involved is too vanishingly small of itself, let alone that, in terms of observation, we receive a representation of it. So the effect known as light would have to be capable of capturing and transmitting accurately and comprehensively exactly what occurred. We are kidding ourselves. Not that there is any problem with experimenting, but we must understand what is possible and then interpret the results accordingly.

Paul

Cristi

Your point about emission in quanta need not cotradict the loading theory. After all it was Planck himself who proposed it and fought Einstein's point photon concept all the way!

Obviously I am not an expert on this but I really think it is worth studying the material Reiter has collected because it will clear a lot of questions and open new lines of thought.

Cristi: your argument that from the Zero Axiom and the principle of logical consistency is puzzling in puzzling. The Zero Axiom is just the axiom that there. Is at least one contradictory proposition, namely itself. But of course there isn't one such proposition, there are infinitely many. There are round squares is another self-contradictory proposition. There is a tortoise that is not a tortoise is another. I could go on. So the Zero Axiom is really a triviality. All you need to say is that there exist contradictions.

This brings me to a more fundamental problem: which is how you try to use the Zero Axiom and principle of logical consistency to argue for a mother of all possible worlds. Although you *say* that any proposition can be derived from a contradiction, and thus that the *existence* of an entire mother of all worlds can be derived from it, this peculiar feature of the law of logical consistence is only an implication of classical logic: one that has long struck many logicians as absolutely unjustifiable -- which is why there is such a thing as Intuitionistic logic which does *not* permit the derivation of any proposition from a contradiction. Thus, if Intuitionistic logic is correct, your argument fails. It's fine if you want to say, "Well, I'm only interested in classical logic", but unfortunately that's not an argument. It just assumes that classical logic is correct, despite its having a bizarre implication that Intuitionists reasonably deny. Unless you can give an argument for classical over Intuitionistic logic, it's not clear why anyone should accept your argument.

Cristi: your argument that from the Zero Axiom and the principle of logical consistency is puzzling in puzzling. The Zero Axiom is just the axiom that there. Is at least one contradictory proposition, namely itself. But of course there isn't one such proposition, there are infinitely many. There are round squares is another self-contradictory proposition. There is a tortoise that is not a tortoise is another. I could go on. So the Zero Axiom is really a triviality. All you need to say is that there exist contradictions.

This brings me to a more fundamental problem: which is how you try to use the Zero Axiom and principle of logical consistency to argue for a mother of all possible worlds. Although you *say* that any proposition can be derived from a contradiction, and thus that the *existence* of an entire mother of all worlds can be derived from it, this peculiar feature of the law of logical consistence is only an implication of classical logic: one that has long struck many logicians as absolutely unjustifiable -- which is why there is such a thing as Intuitionistic logic which does *not* permit the derivation of any proposition from a contradiction (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic). If Intuitionistic logic is more defensible than classical logic (as I and many other people think it is), your argument fails. It's fine if you want to say, "Well, I'm only interested in classical logic", but unfortunately that's not an argument. It just assumes that classical logic is correct, despite its having a bizarre implication that Intuitionists reasonably deny. Unless you can give an argument for classical over Intuitionistic logic, it's not clear why anyone should accept your argument.

Hi Cristinel,

Looking at Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, do you get the sense that there are real wave-functions that are being created (by opening the slit) and collapsed (by closing the slit), such that the waves-functions appear/vanish faster than the speed of light? In other words, wave-functions are the mathematical "bit", but they also exist as the "it", and are not restricted by the speed of light.

Has anyone thought of toggling between particle and wave (particle-wave duality) using the Wheeler delayed choice experiment for use in FTL signalling? In other words, opening/closing the second slit creates/destroys the second wave-function. The second wave-function is what is interfering with the first wave-function and causing the interference pattern.

Creating/destroying wave-functions can be done to transmit, not information, but patterns, faster than light. On the receivng end, you need a way to determine (a) is it a particle pattern = 1 or (b) is it a wave-pattern = 0.

There is no reason why you can't place the photon detector a distance of several light hours away. Then, you open and close the second slit to transmit a digital code: 1010 0110...

If delayed choice is true, then the wave-particle-wave-particle pattern should be transmitted instantaneously (faster than light).

Anyone?

Cristi

The underlying point here is about context. We can only consider existence as manifest to us. Nothing more, because we cannot know more. There is always the possibility of alternatives, if A there is always the possibility of not-A, but these are irrelevant for science. Always watch for an argument which presumes these alternatives.

Paul

Hi Cristinel,

I'm trying to follow you. I could take a laser and shine it on two slits, and the light waves emerging from the slits will produce interference patters. But if I cover one slit, then the interference pattern disappears. I can do this experiment one photon at a time. In principle, I could open and close the second slit in some binary code fashion such that someone at the back of the wall could look at the pattern of (interference pattern),(particle pattern) and know that I'm trying to send a message SOS (for example).

Now I'm trying to understand how the Wheeler delayed choice experiment works. I still think there is a wave-function involved in the geometry somehow. Sorry, I gotta go. I'm just trying to understand how this works.

Cristi

"and then our last moment choice affected them"

Leaving aside what was there, just assume something for the sake of this point. How does observation/measurement/whatever affect that physical circumstance? It must have already occurred, otherwise you cannot observe, etc, it. Apart from the fact that you do not observe the something anyway, you receive a photon based representation of it, eg light (which is not affected either), and the process of subsequent processing of what is received is not a physical process , as it involves the conversion of physical input to a perception of that, not a physical output.

Paul

Hi Crist,

While reading the article, the particle-wave duality reminded me of something I learned in biology. Predators (unlike prey) have two eyes facing forward to give a sense of depth perception. As it pertains to quantum waves, the idea is that one "eye" looks at the real part, the other "eye" looks at the imaginary part, and as we all know, the phase = arctan (real/imaginary). I'm not sure if that analogy is accurate or not. I guess the "brain" would be the observer, the scientist trying to figure out what the two eyes (real & imaginary) are saying.