Dear Mikalai

Thank you for your comments and questions.

When I began this work, I simply considered a casually ordered set of events. It wasn't clear to me what an event was either---in Sorkin's approach or even Einstein's for that matter. This is one thing I have tried to clear up.

The way I think about it at present is that entities can influence one another. The act of influencing and the act of being influenced are two events that can be ordered by virtue of the fact that there is a difference between influencing and being influenced. What is this influence? I don't know, and I am not sure one could know. Its like asking what an electron is.

What I do think is that different patterns of influence is what gives rise to forces (perhaps all the different forces?). Here is why I think this. As I explain in the essay, the energy and momentum of a particle reflect the rates at which the particle influences others. Now if during this process, the particle is itself influenced by another, this necessarily changes the rates, which changes its energy and momentum. Hence this influence has the effect of a force. Its a very different model that has the aim of actually elucidating the nature of these fundamental properties that we have become so familiar with that we feel we understand them.

I had not read Giovanni Amelino-Camelia's essay. But he is right, no empty point in space has ever been observed. This idea of space as reflecting relationships among entities is an old idea that goes back to the muslim theory of Kalam and later Al-Ghazali. This was actually the idea that was held by scientists, like Leibniz, on the continent during the time of Newton. The problem is that no one really knew how to do anything with a theory of space that is defined by the entities themselves. This is similar in spirit to the idea proposed by Wheeler and Feynman when they considered direct particle-particle interactions. Since the particles set up the fields, why do you really need the fields. Their program was abandoned because they needed interactions that went backward in time.

I have not given particle creation and annihilation much thought in this context. I have some ideas on how to arrive at something like field theory, but these are half-baked at present. As for self-energy loops, I am not sure what these would look like in this context either, or even if they are necessary.

I will check out your forum entry.

Thanks again!

Kevin

Hi Ian

Thanks for your comments!

Thank you also for showing me the paper by Coecke & Martin. I need to get myself a copy.

I too like that the particle physics signature comes out as being the correct one. The mass-energy relationship is closely related to the Minkowski metric. But one thing that confuses me is why does the mass-energy relationship assumed to hold in curved spacetime when the Minkowski metric has to be modified? There is something funny going on here.

Last, spin and space go hand-in-hand.

I would like to understand this better myself, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cheers

Kevin

Dear Vladimir

Thank you for your kind words and comments.

The essay really isn't just about electrons. The influence concept gives rise to Fermions in general, which are the particles that make up all of matter.

I would like to know where you think my essay wavers. There are many missing details that one can fill in by looking at the referenced papers, or by going here:

http://knuthlab.rit.albany.edu/index.php/Program/Foundations

But it is not a lattice of energy. I attempt to show in the essay that energy is merely one of several descriptions of what a particle is doing. I do believe that spacetime is an emergent description of relationships among entities. Probability is simply a means by which one consistently ranks logical statements.

BTW I enjoyed your essay.

Thank you again!

Kevin

Dear Adel

I will try to get a chance to read your essay.

Thanks

Kevin

Dear Sreenath

I will try to get to your essay soon...

Good luck to you as well!

Cheers

Kevin

Dear Akinbo

Thank you for your kind words, I hope to get to your essay soon...

The dx that appears is discrete and has a minimum value.

Regarding existence/non-existence, there are two mutually exclusive exhaustive choices, so binary would be a good classification. As for "i.e. information", I am not sure what you are asking. I view information as that which constrains my beliefs.

Cheers

Kevin

Kevin - do you have a reference for the Feynman / Wheeler program which "was abandoned because they needed interactions that went backward in time"?

Are you talking about this paper:

John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Phillips Feynman, "Interaction with the absorber as the mechanism of radi- ation", Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 17, no. 2-3, pp. 157-181, Apr. 1945

or some other paper? I'm very interested in this reference.

Kind regards, Paul

Kevin - excellent paper. I'm delighted to see someone develop the concept of an embedded observer.

I'm not sure how to think about the poset model. The Hasse diagram seems to have the same problem as Feynman diagrams (time is up). Makes it difficult to represent reversible quantum flow (unless you fold the paper ;-)

This is related to the point you make in the Mass, Energy and Momentum section - "This makes time an excellent parameter for indexing observations" - It seems to me that this is true only for irreversible, monotonically increasing time.

Although I am intrigued by your reference to Feynman's factor of i during helicity traversals. [I don't have a copy of Feynman & Hibbs]

Kind regards, Paul

    Dr. Knuth

    Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

    said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

    I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

    The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

    Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

    Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

    I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

    Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And you have touched some corners of it.

    With regards,

    Than Tin

      Dear Paul

      Thank you for your kind words and comments.

      The poset model is very nice in the sense that posets have a duality where one can simply flip the ordering relation (it is arbitrary after all), and this is what results in time-reversal symmetry. Literally just flip the paper upside down!

      Time is simply an index. You can count backwards if you wish and you will get the same laws of physics.

      Feynman and Hibbs doesn't have much to say as its literally left as a homework exercise. There have been a host of papers on the Feynman checkerboard model showing how one can derive the Dirac equation. However, in those papers one starts by assuming the factor of i in amplitude during the helicity reversals. In my paper on Fermions, (http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2332) I show how you can derive it, which is quite satisfying.

      Thank you again for your comments!

      Kevin

      Dear Than

      Thank you for your comments!

      I especially liked the quotes from Feynman.

      I am aiming for simplicity.

      How simple can the description be and yet result in the observed physics.

      I believe it is far simpler than we have been able to imagine.

      Thank you again!

      Kevin

      Hi Paul

      You have one of them!

      These are the two papers:

      Wheeler, J. A.; Feynman, R. P. (1945). "Interaction with the Absorber as the Mechanism of Radiation". Reviews of Modern Physics 17 (2-3): 157-161.

      Wheeler, J. A.; Feynman, R. P. (1949). "Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action". Reviews of Modern Physics 21 (3): 425-433.

      This line of investigation was abandoned in favor of QED.

      But I still find it very interesting.

      Cheers

      Kevin

      Dear Kevin,

      In continuation to above comment on having fundamental particle events as points (dated Jul. 16, 2013 @ 20:08 GMT).

      Influence, or, analogously, force in a framework of Newtonian mechanics, is a useful concept for an abstract level of bigger systems that are maid of some smaller things. And probably, like Newtonian force, which already has a problem with simultaneity in Special Relativity, an abstract influence concept will leak in the similar fashion, either at SR or at quantum level, or in the intersection of the two.

      All of known interactions (influences), except gravity, at a fundamental level are described by QFTs of Standard Model, which do not have a concept of force between particles. The force is an emergent thing on a sea of elementary particle events. Quoting Anderson, "more is different". And these QFTs of Standard Model, the concepts used in them, produce the best fit to experimental data, besides having done spectacular predictions, one which has been confirmed just recently. So, it might be humble to embrace QFT concepts, following Newton's own example: "I was able to see further only by standing on the shoulders of giants".

      I agree that, for example, producing electromagnetic force out of particle events in Quantum Electrodynamics (QFT) sounds highly non-intuitive for our gut-feeling, that have evolved in classical mechanical world. My own experience, when studying QFTs, was having conversations with fellow students, where we had to say that a notion of "force", or "how does particle knows where to go" are not present at QFT level. These notions arise as interpretation of integral quantities, but are not present at QFT level. This is how mass arises, all of it, out of massless fundamental (naked) particles.

      QFTs were introduced historically at intersection of Special Relativity and Classical Quantum Theory, as notion of one "long-lived" particle breaks already at SR level. And even today, when we have a problem with QM picture, we fall back to QFT description. This shows that QFT does contain concepts that serve as low-level description better, than anything else we have been using these last couple of centuries. I'll also quote your words that "This line of investigation {Feynman/Wheeler program with E&M interactions} was abandoned in favor of QED.", noting that QED is currently used as a textbook example of a good QFT.

      Cheers,

      Mikalai

        Dear Mikalai

        Thank you for your comments.

        The direct particle-particle interactions approach taken by Feynman and Wheeler was different in that they imagined these influences to be carrying the electromagnetic force. They also assume that this is going on in a pre-existing independent space-time background. There were some very interesting successful features in this model. But it was abandoned in part because they required their interactions to travel backward in time.

        The approach taken here is different, and rather than pointing at the essay, it would be better to discuss things at the level of detail in the referenced papers. The influences give rise to a causal set, which when described by an embedded observer results in an emergent concept of spacetime. There are no issues with influences and simultaneity. SR is built from the influences. This is worked out in detail in the following paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0881

        The influences are not necessarily forces. What I discuss in this paper is that describing the ways in which a particle influences others gives rise to several important well-known particle properties: position, speed, energy, momentum, mass and even helicity. Its a simple model that has the potential to explain what these relevant parameters actually are. We throw around these words, especially "energy" and "conservation of energy" as if we know what we are talking about. But no one knows what energy or mass are, nor force nor space and time for that matter. We can discuss their interrelationships until we are blue in the face, but in the end, we still have no idea what we are talking about. This is what I am aiming to elucidate.

        I have found a favorite quote to be important to remember:

        "Familiarity breeds the illusion of understanding"

        Now these influences may be related to forces. Perhaps forces emerge from this picture. That would be nice, but at this point it is merely hopeful. Consider the free particle in the essay. Its energy and momentum describe the rates at which the particle influences others. However, if someone were to influence this particle, those rates would change. An influence on a particle has the potential to change its energy and momentum. It sure smells like emergent force.

        From this picture, one can derive the Dirac equation as a description of the free electron: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2332 That is nice, but its not the end of the story. Its a 1+1 dimensional picture. Charge does not appear in 1+1 dimensions, but theory had better support it or there is a problem. But that is why its called research.

        As you note, QED is a lovely theory. And any theory that gives you anything that makes notably different predictions than QED is worse than suspect---its wrong. However, as Than Tin noted earlier in the comments, Feynman (along with many of us) was struck at how the same physics could often be arrived at from a variety of perspectives. Than Tin notes the Schrodinger and Heisenburg pictures of QM as an example. Perhaps this is related to what the famous mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota refers to as the "robustness of the theory" when he discusses mistakes in his essay "Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught".

        But my essay is not about deriving QED and quantum gravity and so on. It is about information that observers can possess about the universe and the consistent descriptions and inferences that result. I demonstrate that a simple model of influence has the potential to provide a framework for describing particle (electrons) properties and behavior. In doing so, the role of information is elucidated. Rather than discussing BIT from IT from a philosophical perspective, I decided to demonstrate how BIT and IT could be related by example. I can only hope that I have succeeded to some degree.

        Kevin,

        Simple models can help us to understand what we know and what we don't know about the macro and micro world. I firmly believe that we will discover the paucity of our knowledge of physics when extraterrestrial visitors are discovered -- as surely they will be.

        I think your focus on what the electron does than what it is will in itself be a reminder of utilizing what we know rather than what we think we know. I am a non-physicist but no less intrigued by cosmology and physics late in life. I would like to see your views on "It's Great to be the King."

        "Rather than thinking about the universe as a computer, perhaps it is more accurate to think about it as a network of influences where the laws of physics

        derive from both consistent descriptions and optimal information-based inferences made by embedded observers."

          Dear Kevin

          "The average human being is a naive realist: i.e., like the animals, he accepts his sense impressions as direct information of reality and he is convinced that all human beings share this information. He is not aware that no way exist of establishing whether one individual impression (e.g. ,of a green tree) and that of another (of this tree) is the same and that even the word "same" has no meaning here."

          Max Born My life & my views p.53

          Regards

          Yuri

            Dear Kevin,

            Reality is made both wave and particle.

            Why not « Quantum and Wave Mechanics » ?

            Accordingly to eDuality, see my essay which is less scholarly.

            I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

            Respectfully, and good luck.

            Please visit My essay.

              Kevin,

              This is a very fascinating approach that looks at what we know, rather than what we think. If I may, I would like to offer up the premise of my last year's entry and suggest ways it might bring together various of the points you raise; The dynamic reality we all inhabit, the vectors of influences it is usefully reduced to and the issue of the reality of time and space.

              We experience reality from the perspective of a theoretical point and so we model time as a sequence of events and space as a three dimensional coordinate system.

              Given the temporal sequence is foundational to humanity, as the basis of narrative and linear logic, it is natural to assume it is foundational and physics incorporates this as measures of duration. The reality though is that it is the changing configuration of what is, that turns future potential into past circumstance. For example, the earth is not traveling some vector from yesterday to tomorrow, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.

              This makes time an effect of action, similar to temperature. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. The faster clock doesn't travel into the future quicker, but it (thermodynamically) ages/burns quicker, so it recedes into the past more rapidly.

              Spacetime is correlating measures of duration and distance, but duration doesn't transcend the present. It is simply what is happening between events, such as the wave cycling between peaks, or the earth rotating between sunrises. So there is no "fabric of spacetime," any more then there are giant cosmic gear wheels.

              This leaves space without any physical properties to allow it to be bend/warped, or limited/bound, etc. Which does give it two attributes; Absolute and infinite. Absolute because it is inert, which we can measure as the cause of centrifugal force. Infinite because you can't limit nothing.

              Now consider those two foundational human features arising from time; narrative and linear logic. Naturally we would consider them one and the same, so that temporal sequence is cause and effect, but that is not so. Yesterday doesn't cause today, anymore than one rung on a ladder causes the next. Exchange of energy is cause. As you develop in your theory of influences.

              Now, as you well know, this is not a particularly linear process. While the laws of physics might determine the outcome of any situation, the cone of input is fundamentally incomplete prior to the occurrence of any event. Even if information could travel faster then light, then so would input and the problem persists. At best, time is a tapestry of interlocking threads, not any singular history and that gets to your description of there being no universal "it."

              In fact, as I develop in this years entry, information defines energy and energy manifests information, so since energy is conserved, old information has to be erased, in order to create new information, thus giving rise to the "arrow of time." Therefore eventually the past becomes as unknowable as the future, so we cannot reconstruct any real history, thus making the concept of determinism even more problematic. Considering past and future do not physically/ontologically exist, even the concept of determinism(set past and future) is effectively epistemic.

              I think this inherent subjectively of reality is where your essay is going, at least reading it from my particular set of references/influences!

              Regards,

              John Merryman

                Dear Physician,

                Mass ratio of neutron/proton is fundamental in physics.

                Maybe you do not have time to read essay of unknown authors. I encourage you, therefore, allow you to comment on the very essence of following formula:

                [math]\gamma= 2^{(cy+p+3t)/(2+2a^{2}m)}=1.0013784192[/math]

                Where mathematical constant are:

                [math]2\pi=6.2831853, t=log(2\pi,2)=2.6514961295, cy=e^{2\pi}= 535.4916555248 [/math]

                Physical constants:

                [math]a=1/\alpha=137.035999074, \mu=1836.15267245,m=log(\mu,2)=10.8424703056[/math]

                [math]p=cy/2-(\mu/a+1)/(\mu/a+2)-1=265.8107668189[/math]

                An important physicist said it was a coincidence, or perhaps just a curiosity. Perhaps you feel the same. My opinion is opposite. I think that in terms of, such a significant relationship physicist should have an attitude.

                I find your article really interesting, and I rated you fairly.

                Greetings Branko