Is this description of physical reality complete? by Gordon Watson

Hello again Hai.Caohoàng, and thank you for your good question.

1. The purpose of my Essay is to answer the FQXi 2013 question: "It from Bit or Bit from It?"

In that we are responding to the creative challenge issued by John Archibald Wheeler in 1986 -- for the question is his -- I give a creative reply.

2: To creatively demonstrate "the hard part" -- It from Bit -- I refute Bell's famous theorem to show that an important family of particles (ITs) emerges from critical analysis of Bell's information (BITs). This is a nice result because this family of particles also refutes a host of nonsensical Bell-inequalities. So that's the hard part done, so to speak.

3. In the interests of completeness, I then deal with the commonly accepted FACT: BIT from IT. Here I show that an important BIT of information -- "our common knowledge of physical disturbance" -- emerges from the IT of our daily experiences. That is, correcting EPR by extension: Some physical properties change interactively!

4. So, with Bell corrected as in #2, and with EPR corrected as in #3, I go on to eliminate the BOUNDARY between classical and quantum mechanics: A result in line with the hopes of many ordinary folk; as well as many famous physicists like Planck, Einstein, Born, Bell; even Wheeler. (On this interesting subject, I'll put an Addendum in a new post.)

5. All of this brings us to an area where I trust that you and I have a strong common interest:

I give ABSOLUTE answers!

I do not say, "Maybe realism must go OR maybe locality must go." I say NONSENSE must go:

For -- properly understood -- a wholly local and realistic philosophy is AFFIRMED by my work.

AND, of equal importance: LOCAL-CAUSALITY is restored as a fundamental principle in physics.

6. So, dear Hai.Caohoàng, hoping that I have clearly answered your nice question: I would welcome further discussions here with you to see if the following is true, in your opinion:

I strive to put into practice your idea -- the focus of your own interesting Essay -- as captured in your very important title:

"With each question, the absolute will only have a single correct answer!"

With my thanks to you again for encouraging me to talk further about my Essay, please feel free to ask more questions if you would like to know more about my thinking; Gordon

PS: In your post you have the word "deduct" while in modern English we would say "deduce." In olden times these words were very similar because they come from the Latin "deduct" -- "taken or led away" -- from the verb "deducere." If you look up "deduct" and "deduce" you will see how they have now come to be used differently. With best regards; Gordon

Dear Hai.Caohoàng, here's that ADDENDUM: Another way to look at my Essay:

1. Read the carefully crafted Essay by Mark Feeley here -- http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1819 -- thinking of it as an INTRODUCTION to my Essay.

Then note Feeley's conclusion:

"... We must not believe in magic. We can be optimistic that a physical theory underlying quantum theory can be found -- that "It" can be restored to primacy. Indeed, it is Wheeler himself who best inspires us to continue the search:"

"Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it -- in a decade, a century, or a millennium -- we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise?" -- John Archibald Wheeler (1986).

2. Read Max Born -- "The statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics" (Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1954; freely available on-line) -- thinking of it as another INTRODUCTION to my Essay.

Then note Born's conclusion:

"The lesson to be learned from what I have told of the origin of quantum mechanics is that probable refinements of mathematical methods will not suffice to produce a satisfactory theory, but that somewhere in our doctrine is hidden a concept, unjustified by experience, which we must eliminate to open up the road."

3. Then please consider this: Given the core problems and mysteries of modern quantum theory, I am not aware of any approach that is as straight-forward and as effective as that taken in my Essay: After Wheeler, "surely an idea so simple, so beautiful." Using what is essentially highschool maths and logic, we find: Bell's theorem and Bell-inequalities refuted; EPR corrected; the so-called boundary between classical and quantum mechanics eliminated: After Born, that boundary eliminated "to open up the road."

What's more, I am not yet aware of any error there.

4. Thus, based on the experience reflected in my Essay, I trust you understand why I so happily endorse the title of your Essay.

For here's my conclusion:

"With each question, the absolute will only have a single correct answer!"

With best regards; Gordon

Dear SNP, thanks for contacting me; I look forward to some good discussion. BUT let us first clarify your Essay, for it looks as though you have an ACCIDENTAL CONTRADICTION.

It appears that you have also misunderstood my Essay and have rated it incorrectly. For I think that we agree re the nature of IT and BIT. Let's see:

In your Abstract you write: ""Material objects are more fundamental" is being proposed in this paper; or in other words "IT from Bit" is true."

In your Essay you (similarly) conclude: "Hence we will conclude IT from Bit !!"

But you also have this powerful claim: "It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material."

So, to avoid a contradiction and maintain your claim, your Abstract and your Conclusion should read: "BIT from IT." For BIT = information, IT = material things.

Have I read your Essay correctly? With best regards; Gordon

Jim,

I enjoyed your essay and its far horizons, though I baulked at this: "Utilizing scientific attributes of quantum entanglement for consciousness and putting it in a philosophical Neverland of quantum non-locality enables an otherworldly spiritual connection, including telepathy, and cosmic wisdom. These are directions mainstream reason-based science doesn't tend to go."

You'll see from my Essay that many physicists continue to go in the direction of non-locality. However, as my Essay shows: Non-locality is nonsense.

Moreover, that demonstration, pitched at the level of high-school maths and logic, is certainly within the reach of all good systems engineers. So, as one engineer to another (and noting your claim to be no mathematician), I'd be happy to help you follow the reasoning and results in the Essay.

When taking a break from your interesting writing, why not come on back to some hands-on (pen-and-paper) thinking? Elementary maths is still a sound logic.

With best regards; Gordon

Dear Sreenath BN,

Your enjoyable Essay, with its focus on information and reality in the context of physics, biology and maths, gives me much to think about. Indeed, I'm re-examining my own experience in the light of some of your ideas!

However, that examination also leads me to question some of your phrasing. Consider the following sentence of yours: "Thus Reality is mind dependent, at least in the initial stages of framing hypotheses and Theories."

This sentence may be re-interpreted and understood in its context (at least that's what I attempted), but IMO it exemplifies the need to clearly distinguish between the REALITIES that are out there ... and those within. Here, it seems, the need is to be clear about the PHYSICAL and the MENTAL: the objective and the subjective?

Also, there may be some truth in this: "For a classical physicist, the Reality is 'out there to be discovered', whereas for a quantum physicist, the Reality is 'out there to be Invented' because the quantum Reality simply depends on the measurement outcomes and hence there is no The Reality but only circumstantial Reality."

For one might say that some quantum physicists are off with the pixies (with their nonsense inventions); yet from such thoughts better thoughts sometimes emerge. And thus we arrive at better mental pictures of the real objective (even pristine) physical reality that is independent of our thoughts and experiments.

However, for me, an engineer, most Reality is out there ... to be discovered and understood. So I very much agree with this: "... we find that this journey is full of surprises and joy, and is endless."

But I would differentiate wisdom from knowledge! For, alas, the following is nowhere in sight: "Consequently this provides us with limitless wisdom."

With thanks for the stimulating ideas, and the good wishes; you here have the latter too, from me directly.

Trusting that you'll find more of the former in my Essay; Gordon

Hi Dipak,

Thanks for making contact and thanks for your best wishes.

I've read your Essay and am intrigued by the consequences that you develop from our digital nature. I trust that you will continue to successfully refine your ideas and your mathematics.

As you have seen, my own research has a very different focus. However, in its simplest form, it does derive from the digital nature of orientations in 3-space.

With best regards; and thanks again; Gordon

Dear Michel,

Thank you for making contact. I look forward to a good discussion here, bypassing any questions of your laziness or my age.

For it seems to me that the essence of one significant difference in our thinking relates to Bell's Theorem and your analysis of the CHSH inequality.

The beauty of this difference is that it can be discussed at the level of high-school maths and logic. Thus:

On page-5 of your Essay we find an unnumbered equation representing the TRUISM: C = ±2.

Since this is a TRUISM, we must wonder how it could ever be subverted by any experiment?

So let us expand the truism using Bell's ABCD notation:

B(A+C) - D(A-C) = ±2 = AB + BC - AD + CD. (GW-1)

Let us now recognise this FACT: Entangled photon-pairs are tested one pair at a time; with no two pairs the same.

So: Let the sets of pairs used in evaluating RHS of (GW-1) be identified as i, j, k, l respectively. (The pairs, of course, may be tested in any way -- and in any order -- that you wish.)

Then your experiments (as well as my theory) can yield:

[AB]i + [BC]j - [AD]k + [DC]l >2; (GW-2)

where [.] denotes an average.

What then has gone wrong with the truism that your Essay endorses? For, here, both theory and experiment refute it!

I suggest that your difficulty lies in (GW-1) -- that unnumbered equation of yours with C = ±2 -- where you employ each Bellian outcome twice: 2(ABCD).

For here's a major problem: How can you ensure that the B-result in AB is the same B-result in BC; etc?

Alas, you cannot. So the fault (I suggest) is not with the TRUISM but with naive-realism on which Bellian-Inequalities are based. Please see my Essay: Sections 4-5.

If you refer to my Essay: Equations (21) and (22), there's an even shorter refutation of CHSH and your TRUISM; along the same lines.

Looking forward to your response; with my thanks again; Gordon

Hello Xiong,

and thank you for your comments.

As for the EPR mystery, I believe any "mystery" there may be removed by studying that brief Section 7 in my Essay.

To put it even more briefly, it's my view that EPR does not allow for measurement-perturbation: though the fact that a "measurement" perturbs the "measured" system was known from the earliest days of quantum mechanics.

Recommending that you understand EPR correctly -- and remove the EPR "mystery" from those others that you consider in your own nice Essay -- I'm happy to discuss it further if you wish.

As for the interesting ideas in your own Essay, I'd like to mention this: In an EPR-Bohm or Bell-test set-up, when the Stern-Gerlach devices (SGDs) are displaced so that their symmetry is broken, MUCH NEW INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE.

Especially the neat result in EPRB: [AB] = -a.b; where [.] denotes the expectation.

If the SGDs are independently displaced but their symmetry is maintained (say, accidentally), the symmetry of the particle-pairs again provides an outcome-correlation of +1 or -1: which is not very informative when compared to [AB] = -a.b.

So while my focus is on the study of correlations, I still ask the question that is presented in Footnote 2, page 2, of my Essay: "Isn't information all about correlations too?" For, if "information" does not correlate with facts, is it really information?

With thanks again; and wishing you the best of good luck: Gordon

Hi Antony,

with thanks for your very welcome comments.

And though I'm inclined to see the ITS as more fundamental, my Essay is certainly based on some interesting BITS and the important ITS that they lead us to.

I've read your own Essay several times and have enjoyed the lively discussion that you've generated. And while your subject ranges far afield from my own specialities, you are to be congratulated on the bold and forthright speculation that you deliver.

One thought: I note, in your discussion with Tejinder, that the subject of quantum superpositions arose in the context of your Fibonacci analysis.

In Sections 9 and 10 of my Essay you will find a local-realistic analysis that delivers the correct EPRB result without recourse to "quantum superpositions" or "collapse" -- which is certainly the way that I see the world -- such mathematical devices being convenient mathematical short-cuts.

So (to my thought): Your analysis might not need to address such entities?

With my thanks again, and wishing you every success in the contest and with the development of your theory; Gordon