It from Qubit by Giacomo Mauro D\'Ariano

Dear Giacomo,

It was a pleasure reading your contribution.

There are really a lot of paralels between my essay "THE QUEST FOR THE¨PRIMAL SEQUENCE" including the "deamterialisation" and Plato's cave.

I have a different way of expression of course and my deductions are pointing in another way, but basicly we are parting on the same point.

I hope that can spare some time to read/rate and commenet my essay.

best of luck and regards

Wilhelmus

Dear Professor D'Ariano,

Beautiful essay! You said "But the clash between the two is logically solved only if we admit that they are not both correct: at least one of them must hold only approximately, and emerge from an underlying more fundamental theory. Which one of the two? The answer from It from Qubit is: relativity theory."

Good question: which theory has to be changed, general relativity, or quantum mechanics? It seems to me that general relativity can be conceived in many ways as an approximation, a limiting case, an emergent theory (like your very nice approach based on Gromov's geometric-group theory). On the other hand, the most rigid seems to be quantum mechanics. One can interpret it, if we wish, in many ways, none of them satisfactory for our classical brain, but it is hard to be modified, despite some attempts like Bohmian mechanics and GRW. So it seems that, if one of them has to be changed, it has to be general relativity. I still hope that there's a way to combine them with minimal concessions from any of the two. The problems are huge, but the day is early.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

Hi Mauro,

I found your essay very interesting, but one thing has always puzzled me about your approach to quantum field theory. At the beginning of your essay you argued that, if we are to take realism seriously, then it has to be a realism based on operationalism. Now, the crowning example of operationalism in physics is Einstein's derivation of special relativity from his two postulates. It is the example that we always use to argue that quantum theory needs to be derived from more physically meaningful principles, and it is the example that led Bridgman to invent operationalism in the first place. The derivation of quantum theory that you developed with Giulio Chiribella and Paolo Perinotti seems to me to be the closest thing that we have come to such a clean operational derivation of quantum theory.

Now we come to your approach to quantum field theory. Instead of just taking realtivity as is, you want to derive it from a more fundamental quantum theory of discrete systems, which is not itself fundamentally Lorentz invariant. This is of course a possible way things could go, and I will have no hesitation in accepting your approach if its predictions are someday confirmed. However, from a philosophical point of view, it strikes me as an odd approach for an operationalist to take. Here we have the paradigmatic example of an operational theory, namely relativity, to be combined with a slightly more problematic example of an operational theory, namely quantum theory, albeit one we have come to understand a bit better in recent years. Your approach is to throw out the paradigmatic operational theory and stick with the problematic one, and then to try and rederive the operationalist's favorite theory as emergent. Does this not strike you as a bit bizarre?

Also, it seems to me that your approach to field theory more or less ignores all the insights to be gained from the contemporary derivations of quantum theory. One of the main reasons why we try to reconstruct quantum theory from clear physical principles in the first place is that doing so should make it obvious how those principles can be applied or modified in new contexts to which we have not yet successfully applied quantum theory. Therefore, to me it would seem more natural to start with your axiomatization of quantum theory and ask how it can be applied in the relativisitc context rather than just starting with quantum theory as given. If you are just going to do the latter then what was the point in axiomatizing quantum theory in the first place?

This is not intended as a criticism of your theory, which I do find intriguing. As I am not an operationalist myself, I can find different motivations for it that make it look quite appealing. It is just that it looks to me that you have a kind of philosophical schizophrenia. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to how your approach to quantum field theory is compatible from your operationalist credo?

Giacomo,

I too feel we need to change our perspective of reality and so I find myself rating your essay highly. One thing, if you agree with John Bell's theorem then you must also agree with the alternative that he proposed that being of super-determinism, if and only if, empirical evidence of absolute determinism is obtainable.

On that note, I believe you will find the evidence of absolute determinism as presented in my essay of interest and I hope you will take the time to review and rate it accordingly. I believe you will find it relevant to your efforts as well:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1809

Good luck with your entry.

Regards,

Manuel

Respectfully Professor D'arino,

You actually directed your essay to an imaginary realist. Durr may have stupidly said that "matter is not made of matter," what he ought to have truthfully said was, abstract matter is not made of real matter. Like Duh!

Do allow me to increase your knowledge of reality and real realists.

One (1) real unique Universe can only be eternally occurring in one real here and now while perpetually traveling at one real "speed" of light through one real infinite dimension once.

One is the absolute of everything. (1) is the absolute of number. Real is the absolute of being. Universe is the absolute of energy. Eternal is the absolute of duration. Occurring is the absolute of action. Here and now are absolutes of location and time. Perpetual is the absolute of ever. Traveling is the absolute of conveyance method. Light is the absolute of speed. Infinite dimension is the absolute of distance and once is the absolute of history.

Dear professor D'Ariano,

In response to your interesting Essay, I would like to discuss Bell's theorem. For in my Essay, Bell's theorem is refuted.

For example, you write: "The lesson spelled loud and clear by the Bell theorem is that we should trust observations, even against our intuition, and ground our knowledge on the logic of the experiment, focusing theoretical predictions on what we actually observe. In a word: being operationalist."

But with Bell's theorem refuted, this justification for your "operationalism" is invalid.

The case might change if I have erred. But no error has yet been identified in my Essay. So, to resolve our differences, I would welcome discussions with you and your team of collaborators.

With best regards; Gordon Watson.

Dear Giacomo Mauro

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

So you can produce material from your thinking. . . .

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.

Dear Giacomo,

Congratulations- well done - you have taken the materialistic "It" particle bull by the horns, armed with an impressive array of philosophical and mathematical weapons, knowledge of the relevant physics, in addition to having the rare courage to adopt new approaches bypassing Einstein. As I read your essay I was mentally cheering you on, since my own essay concluded that our theories of physical reality should not be confused with reality itself. More importantly I conclude that It=Qubit (see my fqxi essay THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING & THE ITSY QUBITSY UNIVERSE).

Permit me to say a few words about my Beautiful Universe Theory (BU) which led me to the quibit conclusion, and to agreement with you on several, but not all points raised in your essay. Without quibbling about whether the Universe is made of information or a 'thing' we both agree that a cubic lattice of quibits can describe relativity and quantum mechanics. In (BU) the nodes have angular momentum in units of Planck's (h) and orientate in any direction in 3-space. The interactions are all local and linear creating a self-developing cellular automata, much like the ones you describe in your paper. In (BU)chirality emerges from the qubits because they have polarity, and there is no time dimension - nevertheless relativistic effects such as those in SR and GR occur naturally from the elementary quibit-qubit network. In (BU) I supposed a Face Centered Cubic lattice, mainly because in addition to its being a dense packing, it agrees with the FCC lattice used by Norman Cook to describe his theory of nuclear dynamics - described in his 2012 fqxi contest essay. Is the difference between your BCC and FCC crucial?

I do not agree with you that only Relativity needs revision - QM needs drastic conceptual re-examination, based on abandoning particle-wave duality and probability as fundamental. These are naturally emergent from the exquisite order of the lattice in (BU). I discussed this and other issues in my 2012 fqxi contest essay "Fix Physics!"

I am in the LXX age category, besides being an non-academic autodidact, so I can only take my ideas so far. I hope that younger and smarter researchers will examine (BU) and if possible develop it to whatever promise it may possess.

With best wishes

Vladimir

Sorry I was not logged in - that 'Anonymous' was my post above.

Vladimir Tamari

Dominico

The 'an artificial delay in each point of lattice' Exactly!! That means a slower speed of light (a natural result of curvature, as Einstein himself admitted, contradicting his SR.) Eddington(1920) suggested treating the gravitational field as an optical medium with a gradient index of refraction. With that, and forgetting about SR because Lorentz transformations occur naturally in an absolute lattice, GR reduces to a ridiculously simple theory. I adopted this idea and incorporated it into my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory .

With best wishes.

Vladimir

Hi Prof D'Ariano,

First, may I congratulate you on your well structured and thought provoking essay. I really enjoyed reading it.

Teleportation as you describe could be flawed by the very QM theories that make the idea feasible, I am thinking of entanglement. Suppose that the process of living, growing, and learning entangles groups of atoms; then when we assemble these in the growing or duplication and learning phases. Would you envisage that when restoring two atoms taken from a pool of atoms, that by duplicating their QM states that you also entangled them?

By entanglement, I understand that two particles are part of the same wave-function and I cannot envisage the possibility that two particles belonging to two different wave-functions with unknown entanglement to replicate to the desired. Furthermore, during the teleportation preparation, for each atom that is remotely entangled to another atom outside the human you need to teleport that remote atom as well and taking that process to its conclusion you need to teleport the whole universe.

Change of subject: Regarding special relativity and quantum mechanics please refer to my comment to Mathew Leifer's earlier comment above.

Regards - Anton

Giacomo,

From the first words of your abstract, I was prepared to resist having my mind changed about realism. My fear was laid to rest early in the body of the essay:

"What matters is our ability of making correct predictions, not of describing what is out there as it is -- a nonsense, since nobody can check it for us."

Exactly. This is the metaphysical realism that Popper espoused, abstracted from Tarski's correspondence theory of truth and aimed at settling the Demarcation Problem.

Yours is an excellent essay, packing a lot of careful thought into one elegant package. It's a stroke of genius to associate quantum mechanics with an operational type of realism -- I don't agree with it; however, if the anti-realism of QM could be rehabilitated, this is probably the only path available.

Best wishes for deserved good luck in the contest.

Tom

I don't dispute the idea that it might be a good idea to derive relativity from something more fundamental. I am simply querying how this is compatible with D'Ariano's explicitly operational philosophy.

Dear Prof D'Ariano,

While you focus on predictions, as opposed to "what is out there as it is", you postulate a group of agents with "buttons to push". I've yet to see an argument for "information only" reality that did not, at some level, rely upon objective reality. Even though you may consider throwing away the buttons in the end it appears impossible to get software off the ground without hardware at some level. So, beginning with real physical buttons, you finally abstract your way to a mathematical 'group'. This is the nature of abstraction, but it did not occur without physical buttons [or your physical brain]. Only by assuming the Platonic nature of math as existing in a separate realm or reality does this seem relevant, and then one must show how to derive physical reality from mathematical abstractions. Belief in the Platonic reality of math seems no different from any other religious belief in unseen things -- simply a product of the imagination. Even your 'feedback' seems to require a medium.

I would also point out that, while the utility of quantum field theory is unquestionable, the assumption of the 'reality' of 'electron fields' and 'neutrino fields' is quite a large assumption. There are other approaches to particle physics that do not assume a 'field per particle'.

And, as Gordon Watson implies above, the key to your whole approach seems to rely on "Bell's theory coming to help us." I wonder if, had Bell never lived, is there ANY other argument by which physical experiments would "prove" non-locality (which I think is really the basis of your attack on local reality). I don't think there is. I have looked at Gordon's first arguments that Bell made an error, and do not find a problem with Gordon's logic. [I haven't had time to analyze his main arguments.] I would hope that you and perhaps Matt Leifer would look at Gordon's attack on Bell's logic. He does not start off with a topological argument as did Joy.

As for teleporting humans, I failed to see how you can capture both position and momentum, let alone the phase of the wave function, and restore each 'particle' to its original state. I view the phase as critical. As Anton Lorenz asked above, how will you "entangle" the atoms, which were almost certainly entangled in the original human? In other words, this fictitious argument is not very convincing.

I will not repeat the arguments about relativity made by earlier commenters, but I am very interested in your answers to them.

I recall being extremely impressed by your previous FQXi essay. This essay is not very convincing, except to those already convinced, which, judging by your high score, are many. No one can argue that it is not important to focus "on what we observe and not on what we believe is out there", but you have not given us any thing to 'observe' except a web of relations based on questionable assumptions. Somehow, kicking a hard rock, or jumping off a tall building still seems much more objectively "real" to me than your mathematical 'groups' or other abstract 'web' of interactions from which 'space-time' supposedly emerges.

Looking forward to your response,

With best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Giacomo and Domenico

Following the discussion above of gravity as a gradient optical medium:

I forgot to add this interesting reference from my (BU) paper about an Italian gradient index of refraction experiment, demonstrating the Hamiltonian Analogy between light and gravity. In this paper it is mentioned that a renown Italian physicist said the H.A. goes back to an idea to Al-Hassan Ibn Al-Haytham. Any information about that connection would be appreciated as I am a fan of Ibn Al-Haythm.

Ambrosini, D., et al, Bouncing Light Beams and the Hamiltonian Analogy Eur. Journal of Physics. 18 (1997) 284-289

Best wishes

Vladimir

Dr. D'Ariano,

Hi. I enjoyed reading your essay and think your type of reasoning where you try to develop "subroutines" for the universe that "stringently derive from few very general principles" is exactly the type of minimum assumption, start-with-the-basics type reasoning that I wish more physicists and philosophers would use. That's what I advocate in my essay as well. I do have some comments and questions but don't want these to distract from my overall very favorable impression of your essay. The comments are:

1. In regard to holism:

A. I completely agree. My view is that a thing exists if it's a grouping defining what is contained within. Based on this, a cloud, for example, is not just the component water molecules inside the cloud. Each of these molecules exists on its own, but the grouping of them all together creates an entirely new existent state called the cloud. So, the cloud as a whole and the component water molecules are different existent states. Because of this, the properties of the cloud are not necessarily the sum of the properties of the component water molecules. This is as you said for the holism idea.

B. I think that our universe must have some kind of a most fundamental existent state as its foundation. Whether this is called an it, a bit, a particle, a quantum field, etc. doesn't matter. They're all just different names for an existent state. Also, the most fundamental existent state would have no subunits and no component parts (otherwise, it wouldn't be the most fundamental existent state). In this case, I think the properties of the whole (holism) are the same as the properties of the parts (reductionism) because there is only one part.

2. In my thinking, I don't distinguish between "physical", "material" objects and "immaterial support", "abstract" states. "Physical" and "abstract" are just words for existent states existing outside the mind and inside the mind, respectively. Even the "immaterial support" quantum systems and their probability distributions that you mention are existent states in that they are embodied in or derived from existent states. Also, if they didn't exist, why are we talking about them? So, I think it's more useful to focus on the idea that there's an existent state at the heart of our universe, and whether this state is called a quantum system, probability distribution, physical object, etc. doesn't matter; instead, we should try to derive a physical theory from the properties of this existent state. And, you did this with your qubit idea. This type of reasoning is why I like your essay.

3. In regard to objects:

A. You mention on page 5 that "an object must be located in space and time", which seems to imply that different objects have different locations in space and time. This then seems to answer the question raised by the Theseus' ship and teleportation paradoxes. The copied ship and person are not the same objects as the originals. They exist in different spatial locations and times. Also, the statement on page 6 that "matter is everywhere the same" isn't quite accurate, I think. A particle of matter may have the same properties in all locations, but if two seemingly identical particles exist in different spatial locations and times, then they're still different objects. Or, I'd prefer to say that they're two different existent states. Every existent state exists within a certain domain (location).

B. Also, about the phrase "an object must be located in space and time", I think that the existence of the most fundamental of existent states/objects is what creates space. That is, space is just a collection of existent states/objects, each of which would then specify a location within this space.

Anyways, very good essay. Thanks!

Roger Granet

Dear Giakomo,

You are a master as a lector and writer!

You will be surprised perhaps but I am seriously thinking that holy fathers had burned heretics not in vain! I find very simple justification to it. When some stupid was killed, others have sighed with relief - the Glory of the Lord, now we got rid of malicious person!

When they killed a talented thinker (which was more often), he consoled himself before death - Glory to Lord I will rid of the stupids forever!

It will be pleasure to fight with you in open discussion, although I am very afraid it will be dialogue blind with the dumb. Anyway please just try read my history. I have smallest hope: after reading, you will go to nearest Church to pray for sins, I mean spoiling of future of your young students!

Sincerely,

George

ESSAY