Readers' Choice: Cheating the Causal Game

Nature presented me a random example of quantum causal probability recently when I had shoveled almost a ton of no. 9 gravel onto my little old Gimmie p-u and spread it on the off street parking area allotted my eff. apt. so I would have about half to one inch of cover over bare clay for parking and a little pleasant "patio" under the trees at the back of the lot.

9's are smaller than pea gravel and not as uniform in size and tend to be flatish. When soil is wet they tend to float to the top as the mud finally dries. Walking on such skim cover is like a fine pebbled beach. They stay generally in place but are of course unstable. A couple weeks after application and able to sit and have a cigarette with my coffee ( I'm an old guy ) work on my truck and otherwise disturb the surface, I was sitting, sipping and licking my wounds while admiring the nonhomogeneous carpet of stone. There, three feet in front of me were seven tiny pebbles all in a line as if a child had arranged them at play. Smaller first of four left to right in ascending size and all flat and elongated, barely touching, then a tiny one roundish, then the longest oblong and the string ending with a large flat roundish pebble slightly less in diameter than the oblong.

Effectual causality? as Manuel Morales has just termed it. And yes, a second order effect. But of What?!

OOPS. I neglected to note that in the random arrangement of pebbles the long axis of the oblongs were all perpendicular to the line of sequence, and though tiny in size it was visible that the centers of all pebbles were in close alignment. It was not as if the edge of a shoe had dragged them all into end to end alignment.

Cheating the Causal Game.

I personally like causality. But causality is in most cases the wrong word to use because we mean only the ordering of events, some unrelated. This ordering is done by the observer. It has nothing to do with how the universe works by itself. Causality should be understood as a propagating driving force. Kick the ball! Light a match! But these examples too may confuse the issue because in these examples we are the cause via some mechanical force. The real causality is the one internal to events that we do not control and that have made this universe. By this I mean "causal spontaneity". What is the phenomenon behind this causal spontaneity? Because it is spontaneous, causal spontaneity is irreversible. Best example is the gravitational fall. Events related by causal spontaneity have a specific ordering in time because time is the driving force for their ordering.

We think about ordering in time and assume time just as a convenient metering device. But time, or more specifically its rate, is the cause for the ordering rather than just a silent metering partner. In gravitational fall, the object spontaneously moves towards the ground, following a path of decreasing time rate. In other words, it tends to exist more where time runs slower. The internal cause for this spontaneous fall is that existence is more probable where time is running relatively slower. In a sense, something "exists more" in one place if it stays there longer than anywhere else. Given access to slower time, this is where it is going to exist more or go. We may clock the fall of the object, but the time that matters to the object is the rate of passage of time. In superposition, the electron is not in two places at the same time; it just spends more time in two specific places than anywhere else including travel time. We may say that the electron's existence is spread between these two places and the probability of finding it will be greater in these two places. In the case of the falling object, and because of the time rate gradient it is in, its existence is non-uniform and more probable toward the ground and less probable toward the sky. Spontaneous events show us an irreversible ordering based on the passage of time, itself spontaneous and irreversible.

In conclusion, cheating causality may do good for computing but it is not the way to quantum gravity. For me, the differential probability of existence of a particle (quantum) in a time rate gradient (GR) is as good as it will get for quantum gravity.

Marcel,

Marcel-Marie LaBel

A splendid incite! Thank-you for your post on 8/25. Now if you can persuade the relationists to look inside the Glass Onion, the quants to pause dicing it, and the neo-classicists to understand that it is THE ABSORPTION LINES that Doppler shift! we might get on with solving the zero point particle problem.

Marvel,

Gravity is a curvature of more energy vs. less volume. Ideal gas laws as applied to mass. What if it is an effect of the electromagnetic attraction of electrons and protons en mass? As they start to attract positive and negative in bulk, it builds up energy, but it reduces volume. So gravity would not so much be a force in itself, rather the vacuum effect of opposite charges coming together to first create hydrogen atoms and then more complex chemistry. Consider that when you break the atom, it creates pressure, like a bomb. This pressure isn't considered a force in itself, but an effect of releasing the energy in the atom. So the opposite, getting the energy into the atom, would have a naturally opposite effect.

That way, you don't need gravitons and gravity waves, etc. And it models geometrically as a curve.

Regards,

John

Marcel,

You wrote, " ... causality is in most cases the wrong word to use because we mean only the ordering of events, some unrelated. This ordering is done by the observer."

Yes, the ordering is done by the observer; however, an observer cannot order unrelated events. All events -- i.e., the interaction of physical influences within causal range of the observer, are related to the observer. Events that are timelike separated are not related to each other, yet the observables are always related to the observer ("All physics is local," according to Einstein's relativity).

"It has nothing to do with how the universe works by itself."

If physics is observer-dependent (which is true of both relativity and quantum mechanics) it has everything to do with how the universe works by itself. The question is whether the observer creates the universe by the act of observing (becomes entangled with the quantum wavefunction) or passively observes physical interactions. This is the problem that Joy Christian has solved, by explaining quantum correlations in a classical framework; the moon really is there when no one is looking.

"In a sense, something 'exists more' in one place if it stays there longer than anywhere else."

Not according to relativity. Anything with mass exists longer the faster it moves -- the truth of which which is borne out by experimental evidence; highly energetic cosmic ray particles (muons) live longer than their Earthbound cousins. Massless particles are always in "one place" -- the universe -- and not affected by time inetervals.

Tom

Tom Ray,

I think you are missing the point of departure in Marcel's comments, in fact you are paraphrasing his criteria of deduction rather than direct observation.

Please look again, his insight (gad! incite! duhh) is nicely succinct and goes to relativistic time being essentially the prime mover in gravitational fields. The expression has the form of linear algebra rather than curvilinear geometry.

"The expression has the form of linear algebra rather than curvilinear geometry."

No difference between the two, John C., for a relativistic model. We know that space is mostly Euclidean and that curvilinear motion is constant. Some day, I am going to give up correcting the astounding lack of knowledge of people who continue to hold forth on relativity in this forum. Being the OC dyslexic I am, though, it's hard.

Tom

That's what I said, Tom. "Rather than" not different from.

If you take a great circle arc from GR and roll it out flat on the workbench you have a linear function which is the same relationship. Like a common bi-metal spring with the same energy content as would be necessary to apply to straighten it out. What Marcel points to is a linear projection which would resemble a spiral in energy distribution instead of a continuous curve.

Further, e=mc^2 @ c. 'Infinite mass' is the math line of reason to explain the limit of acceleration to classical mechanics which does not have interconvertability of mass and energy. Relativisticly at light velocity mass is no longer mass to be 'infinite', its energy. Don't need that much education to understand that, Sheldon.

John C,

From Marcel's post;

"But time, or more specifically its rate, is the cause for the ordering rather than just a silent metering partner."

What if time is not this primary cause, but is simply a form of measure? As I argued previously, the earth is not traveling some fourth dimensional Newtonian flow from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Change creates time and time measures change.

Sequence is not causal, whether it's done by the observer, or by nature. Yesterday doesn't cause today. It is the sun shining on a spinning planet which causes this sequence of events called days. Just as one wave doesn't cause the next, but wind blowing across the water.

It is that we, as single points of perspective, experience action as an equally singular narrative and human civilization is largely a function of the fact we manage to remember the more notable experiences of that sequence of events. But the narrative and causality are only minimally related.

Contrary to Wheeler, causality is due to exchange of energy, rather than the descriptive qualities of information.

The issue then becomes how to explain gravity as something other than caused by a mathematical model in which the measure between events is somehow more foundational than the processes creating those events.

Regards,

john M

"Don't need that much education to understand that, Sheldon."

Well, I'm already in for a penny so I might as well be in for a pound. I'm afraid that one does need "that much education" to learn what the special and general theories of relativity allow and disallow, if one wishes to invoke those principles.

One of the disappointments in my years of participating in these FQXi forums, is that the affiliated experts -- some of them Nobel laureates at that -- stay away from the blog and forum discussions. It isn't hard to understand why -- once they give a proper explanation of solidly known physics, they are assaulted, bombarded, with all manner of nonsensical explanations for why "mainstream" physics has it all wrong. Who has time for that?

Although not a member of this group, Robert M. Wald is one such esteemed expert. I think the link evidences his talent as an educator as well -- he explains among other things, the common misapplication of linear algebra to general relativity. If I had my wish, every first year teacher of college physics would write his or her syllabus from Wald's outline, preferably for a two-semester course. At the top of his list of teaching resources is Einstein's classic, *Relativity: The Special and the General Theory*, which I have myself recommended several times in this forum. I deem it essential to understanding the more sophisticated material of Wald, Ellis, Hawking, Geroch, Thorne, et al.

Tom

Tom,

I, for one, am eternally grateful for your patience in taking the professional side of this argument. I can well understand why others in the field don't see it as worth the considerable time and effort. It is difficult to be in for a penny and not be in for a pound.

Only had the time to glance at that paper, as today is the day the child is to be dumped off at college.

I still see it as a situation where the intense focus has resulted in a form of myopia, to where some significant problems are being brushed aside, but eventually they will have to do a real bottom up review. If not this generation, then the next. As they say, change happens one funeral at a time. This amount of change might take a number of funerals.

Regards,

John M

Tom

Thanks for the link to Wald.

Thanks, John. I would like to say that my patience is a result of intellectual discipline rather than a mental infirmity. That's just the way it is, though.

I'm no physicist, and I know I make mistakes that no professional physicist is likely to make. I do read and research continually, though, and I try to keep up. And yes, leading edge knowledge and mathematical techniques do progress over the generations -- that's just more reason, in my opinion, to get fully grounded in the fundamentals of classical mechanics and field theory, up to relativity.

Best wishes for your daughter's college career. Hope it's not too hard on your wallet. :)

All best,

Tom

You're certainly welcome, John. It may be the least technical piece from Robert Wald that one will ever read. :-)

Tom

All

Perhaps it's in the more technical extensions that I'm not equipped to digest,

but in all my reading whether QM, S&GR, and Classic (Galilean to modern) I have never found a graphic representation of the structure of electromagnetic waveform, other than of Maxwell's equations plotted on perpendicular planes.

I think its important because without some physical structure I can't see how interference can occur in interferometers but not in spectrometers, and in mass spectrometry of distant sources the shift of absorption lines doesn't get filled in. Seems there would have to be a very distinct coherence. Any links?

Aristotilian logic yes, but please no neoclassic rays shooting out of my eyes.

Tom,

Mine probably has something to do with trying to overcome mental infirmity. Having run though my share of cat's lives, there have been a fair number of head bangs and when you have to put your own hard and software back in order enough times, the basics are on speed-dial, even if the complex all runs together.

The kid is a wiz in her own right. Full scholarship(per year) to Johns Hopkins. Wants to be a pediatric neurologist. (Nothing personal, but it really is nerd city down there. I find I'm becoming even more of a homebody up here on the farm.)

Regards,

John M

I will have to read it. The country going to war again, as the financial crisis seems ready to heat back up, is diverting though.

Tom,

While I've only given the paper by Wald one compete read through and a little reviewing, a few points;

Most of it is an entirely reasonable description of how to mathematically model complex actions; curvatures, vectors, tensors, etc. But then it breaks from this and doesn't clarify how one gets to ideas like block time, black holes, singularities, etc.

So the only real point of significance it makes is that General Relativity refutes the notion of simultaneity. Yet simultaneity is a notion, intuition if you will, based on the idea of a Newtonian universal flow of time, which really isn't applicable if we view time simply as an effect of action. There is no universal flow, as every action is its own clock. There is only the presence of a lot of activity and any measure of universal rate of change would be proximate or statistically averaging, at best.

So in order to refute a flawed intuition, we must be forced to accept that all events exist in some "blocktime" vector? One which is clearly, in Wald's exposition, only a modeling of action in the first place.

Earlier you seemed to agree that quanta are not just dimensionless points, but as specific amounts of energy, can expand, or contract. Now if you were to mathematically model the space described by masses of such quanta, then in areas where their volume is contracted and their energy correspondingly is elevated, the effect of gravity wouldn't be a "force," but the vacuum resulting from less volume/concentrated energy. Just as the pressure resulting from dispersed energy/expanded volume is not a force in its own right.

This would curve light just fine, as it is also composed of quanta, as well as explain why clocks run at different rates.

Would you have any source which does try to explicate exactly why this mathematical treatment of action requires physical blocktime? This one doesn't cover that and that is where my problem with the premise arises.

Regards,

John M