Is a Mathematical Definition of Observation Possible? by Daniel Wagner Fonteles Alves

Very well done, and the title of your essay sold replace "measurement problem" in our language.

My essay looks at a more nuuts and bolts attempt to define observation, attempting to recreate the physical process of a measurement occurring, bit by bit.

Your strategy is to sidestep the mind which is different from mine. Jus a point of interes.

Again, nice work.

Dear Daniel,

Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon.

I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.

I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.

Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .

Best

=snp

snp.gupta@gmail.com

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/

Pdf download:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf

Part of abstract:

- -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .

Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .

A

Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT

....... I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT

. . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .

B.

Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT

Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data......

C

Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT

"Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT

1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.

2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.

3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.

4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?

D

Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT

It from bit - where are bit come from?

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT

....And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?-- in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.

Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..

E

Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT

.....Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.

I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.

Hello Daniel,

A worthwhile attempt to define observation mathematically. You can further improve on this but I will not join you at lunch just yet. Maybe later.

You say: ...the nature of space and time. Let´s go back to where everything begun

I beg your pardon, but the problems with the nature of space began further back. Not with Newton or Mach, but with Plato and Aristotle and is yet to be resolved. Instead, theories are being built on top of that problem.

You say: Starting by questioning the concept of space and time in classical mechanics, we were led to replace Newtonian absolute structures with relative configurations

I beg of you not to discard of Newton before reading my essay.

Finally, your essay also dwells on motion. You may find my quotes of Newton on motion complimentary to your ideas. I also make an initial (digital) attempt in resolving aspects of motion.

Good luck,

Akinbo

Daniel,

A well written essay and interesting idea. The latter may be fraught with assumptions and not provide solutions, but the problem certainly needs identifying and addressing as so many in mainstream science claim it doesn't exist. Great value exists then in just pointing this out, and you have done so and analysed at lease one area of study in a very clear and easy to read way.

However can I ask you to give me your views on a close relative to the theory which does seem better able to overcome the issues. Recognise that all boxes have limits, then reduce the size of one box and put it WITHIN the other, but always in relative motion. If it stops? then it just becomes part of the larger space.

We then have Einstein's "small space 's' in motion within larger space 'S'", and may then have "infinitely many spaces in relative motion". (1952).

The 'spaces' and boundary 'bands' may contain a few particles, or/and infinitely many particles as a two-fluid plasma boundaries (particles in both states of motion) to implement scattering to local c in all cases.

Each and every box then represents inertial system, giving a 'discrete field' model (DFM). We then have EM propagation at c within and with respect to each and every box. All matter may have its own tiny box, and all 'systems' of more than one particle at rest relatively (as your scenario) are inertial systems.

This works well empirically, spontaneously localising c, but can it be represented mathematically?

"Observation" would then be defined as a multi part process involving "detection" (physical interaction), "channelling" a signal (to a processor), then "computing" (new wavelength against time) to output a "measurement".

I'm interested in your view. I also run an application using this underlying mechanism in my own essay, which appears to be very powerful offering a resolution of the EPR paradox.

Peter

Hi Daniel,

I enjoyed your essay, your insight, and your acknowledgment of the challenges that lay ahead. Your recognition that GR and QM cannot (and will not) be united is correct, something is either missing in our tool kit, i.e. mathematics or our core theories are incorrect; I believe it to be a case of both.

As a graduate student in physics your approach is correct in looking and developing alternatives. You have your career in front of you and should now digest all that is available to you. Please remember that many physical theories are based on assumptions and depending on where an author of said assumption is ranked on the who-is-who list of physics, places that assumption as fact or fiction. Physics

Please study my very short essay, engage your supervisors and try and answer it - it may make a difference to your career.

All the best and good luck with the competition - Anton

Hi Daniel - the above post is by me - regards Antob

Dear Daniel,

Great approach to the subject. I like the idea of using the measurement problem and you've used this well. Also nice diagrams.

Perhaps you'd find some common ground with my essay, if you get a chance to read.

Best wishes for the contest!

Antony

Dear Daniel,

very interesting essay. I think our point of view is very similar (or as Pauli express it in a letter to Heisenberg: boring agreement).

Maybe you will also find my essay inetresting.

Her I describe a concrete (topological) realization of your idea.

All the best for you

and good luck for the contest

Torsten

Olà, Daniel,

I like your central point that one should define measurement in terms of Prof. William Lawvere's "semantic functor". I appreciate that the limitations of space kept your exposition of the semantic functor to a minimum, although I would have liked to see more of those details, perhaps at the expense of the mathematical details of the examples you presented at the beginning of the essay. Perhaps in this way it would have been clearer how this definition of observation could be applied to the measurement problem, that is, that the Hermitian operator associated with measurement is not unitary or, otherwise put, why the wave function seems to "collapse". Your examples in Section 3 concentrated on aspects of Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics, which were of course good inspirations for the Category Theory approach, but I would have liked to see the idea applied more directly to the question you started with.

In any case, the essay flowed nicely, first pointing out the main problems to be solved, and then presented the start of a possible solution. Although Category Theory is occasionally used in physics, it would be nice to see a wider application, as you propose.

All the best with your exams Daniel - look forward to discussions next week!

Best wishes,

Antony

Hi Daniel

It is nice to read you again. You are presenting an excellent entry. The last year we have a discussion about absolute and relative issues. Now that I read your essay, I have some points that I'd like to discuss and clarify. I could notice some conceptions in your essay that reflect what I think are misunderstandings of the actual Newton's view about space, time and motion. So, I'd like to open a discussion about this.

You say: Positions, by their own definition, are always expressed in relation to something and the q_i(t) are expressed in relation to absolute space. But since absolute space cannot be observed, how could this theory be tested?

However, instead of creating a theory where only observable data (relative distances) appear, Einstein still used invisible coordinate systems by presupposing a spacetime manifold.

There are several issues I could see here. First we need to make clear one thing. Newton held that space was a substance and that celestial bodies were connected by a material medium (Descartes' ether). So, for Newton space was not emptiness as many people still believe. Newton had a similar vision of space as Descartes but he realized that Descartes' view was so complicated to model mathematically and so he decided get rid of the ether in his formulation of gravitation (non fingo hypothesis). In this sense, he left his theory with an empty space mathematically represented by Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry represents the notion of an EMPTY STATIC CONTAINER from which Newton distinguished two concepts: Absolute and relative. He was aware that for practical purposes, what we measure with our instruments are relative motions relative spaces and relatives times, but behind these relative quantities there was also true motion, true space and true time. So, contrary to what most people erroneously believe, Newton was also a relativist. Newtonian mechanics is relativistic, why? Because all spatial quantities are defined relative to a system of reference --the exception is of course time. Which is assume to be equal for all frames. There are an infinite set of frames of references, among these we can find space itself as the absolute frame (space as substance not as an empty container). This is truly relativism because Newtonian mechanics doesn't exclude the absolute system of reference as special relativity (SR) does. So, if you have understood this, then you should understand that the quantities q_i(t) are not measured relative to absolute space but relative to a system of reference. Now, the fact that absolute space cannot be observed doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And this depends on what is our notion of space. For Newton space was the substance mediating between objects (in the contemporary view, we call it field). For this reason Newtons' notion of space is called among philosophers of science SUSTANCIALISM. A different conception was due to Leibniz. He held that the notion of place and position arise from the configuration of objects. According to him, space was no other thing that a mesh of relationships created by the relative position of bodies (objects embedded in what thing?). In philosophy this view is called relationalism. So relationalism and relativism are not the same thing. Newton was absolutist and at the same time relativist but not relationalist.

As far as can see, Mach, Barbour and you can be classified as relationalist, because you consider that what mediates between bodies is not space. Einstein tried to follow Mach and Leibniz but as you point out he only came up with another kind of INVISIBLE FLEXIBLE CONTAINER, i.e. a more complex version of Euclidean space (pseudo Riemannian manifold).

You: It is a strange coincidence the fact that it turns out that no physical process actually depends on absolute position and absolute velocity.

My argument to refute this is based on the measurement of the one-way speed of light (OWSL). Einstein proposed that the OWSL was isotropic in all frames of reference. However, we have realized that no experiment can measure it, experiments only measure the two-way speed of light. Despite this, it is necessary, for purposes of consistency, to assume in any theory that, in at least one frame of reference, the OWSL is isotropic. This means that despite that instruments don't measure OWSL we assume that the OWSL is isotropic. Thus, despite that we cannot measure absolute quantities we have to assume for purposes of consistency that object not only move relative to another object but also relative to the background of space (or vacuum). According to your arguments, you and Barbour reject space because you consider that it is superfluous and redundant. I agree that it can be superfluous but when you denied the absolute space we arrive at logical contradictions (such as the twin paradox in SR, please see Daryl Janzen essay for a deep discussion of this topic, perhaps you will realized how paradoxical SR is)

When you say that we have a configuration of particles I have to ask you: in what physical thing do you think those particles are embedded? What is the physical thing that mediates between those particles?

In relation to your formulation, you introduce a parameter of change called gamma. My question is: what is the physical meaning of gamma? In practice, how is this parameter measured? As far as I can see, this formulation is an attempt to get rid of the notion of time, but in this attempt you have to introduce a new parameter. In this sense, I only see an exchange of one parameter (t) for another (gamma).

Finally, I'd like to invite you to read my essay and leave some comments. There I discuss about Wheeler's dream and propose a potential way to get out of the present crisis in physics. I'll be looking forward to hearing any comments you may have.

Regards

Israel