Dear Matt

QT has no logical coherence issues, but only interpretation problems, which are matter of personal opinion, and do not affect the logical foundation of the theory.

On the other hand, the relativity principle has a huge inherent logical problem, which is the simple fact that the most basic notion, i.e. the inertial frame, is not operationally defined, but is theory dependent, and, even worst, it depends on external theories. In order to know what are apparent forces you need to know which are the "real" ones, and, for that, you need to rely on an external theory. Unfortunately such a theory must be a TOE, since you must exclude any possible force. There is no single way of establishing that a system is inertial without referring to the fix stars reference system, and indeed this is what we do all the time. Einstein was well aware of this issue, and he was Machian at the beginning, and believed that his GR being Machian would have solved the problem. But, unfortunately, GR is not really Machian.

As most cosmologist admit, we have a preferred frame: the background radiation.

The issue of inertial frame makes the notion of inertial mass circularly defined. The second book of Max Jammer on mass provides a very thorough history of all attempts in defining inertial mass, all of them failed, for various reasons. Jammer concludes that there is a logical gap between kinematics and dynamics, and which can be closed only with a kinematical definition of inertial mass.

Quantum Theory does not have such a huge foundational problem. The logical apparatus is complete and coherent. Moreover SR can be derived as emergent from QT (and this is now proved), whereas nobody in my knowledge ever succeeded in doing the converse.

Cheers

Mauro

Mauro,

Thank you. I look forward to studying and discussing your Pavia axiomisation. Ref your query about my conclusions, I re-post my response here for your convenience; A single 'toy theory' does emerge, with the mechanisms. My previous two essays discussed other relevant aspects (both 7th in the scoring but both overlooked for an award).

Giacomo,

Thanks for looking. A number of conclusions emerge, possibly too dramatic to even 'see' at first, like the suggestion of our flat earth being spherical, but becoming entirely self apparent and logical once understood and assimilated.

1. Some fundamental assumptions are wrong. Nature is non-commutative (no A=A!)

2. A qubit caries more information than we ask of it, hidden in a higher order.

3. The EPR paradox may then be resolved as Bell believed, without spookyness.

4. Relativity and QM are then unified with only adjusted interpretation of both.

I agree with you the change to relativity is slightly greater, but only to the assumption that the QV can only have one 'absolute' rest frame. The postulates are proven via the quantum mechanism of scattering (CFS) at c. Close analogies with all QM interpretations seem to exist, including Copenhagen, via the proper definitions and logical application of 'detection' and 'measurement'. But you may hopefully advise on that?

Best wishes

Peter

Dear Mauro,

Let me just chip in a few lines here since you propose above... "My ontology is a space-time being a huge 3d digital screen made of quantum pixels".

Will the quantum pixel have 3d as well? What are the two states that the quantum pixel can occupy, that can give either a yes-or-no answer to? Do these two states lie at the "very deep bottom"?

By making up your huge space-time 3d digital screen, would the quantum pixel not have extension and 3d along with time attributes in one form or the other?

In short, though I hesitate to do so, will your quantum pixel not be 'monads', an idea that has crossed the minds of the Pythagoreans, Leibniz and even Wheeler (International Journal of Theoretical Physics June 1982, Volume 21, Issue 6-7, pp 557-572), who coined the term "elementary quantum phenomenon"? Or what can your quantum pixel do that monads or elementary quantum phenomenon cannot? I am looking at the possibility that each theoretical physicist refrains from using his own choice words to describe the same thing. Rather let us give the thing a name and discuss what and what it is or can do.

All the best. Found myself writing more than I planned.

Cheerio,

Akinbo

    Dear Mauro,

    Thank you for the above response. You are correct, I am a matter-realist (no offense). But I am not sure you understand how I conceive of matter. Rather than use your blog space to explain my theory, I will simply invite you read my essay. It may offer you a different perspective on matter.

    But you did not address my questions, except for the first. I do recognize that one needs to tell a tale to set the context. But you ask what is substance? In my theory the gravitational field is substantial (quite a few relativists agree with this) and it is not a pure abstraction as you indicate, but a reality that I feel this moment, as do you. Jump off a roof, and tell me that's abstract!

    You focus on Bohm's theory, but my theory is not Bohm's so the criticisms are only indirectly relevant. You are criticizing your understanding of quantum theory, not mine. You also ignored my point about quantum field theory.

    You say "we shouldn't be obsessed by our matter-realism, and we should keep our minds open to simplification of theories, and to a corresponding change of our intuition of how the world is made." My essay treats the simplest possible assumption of how the world is made. You might find it interesting, and I would be very interested in your comments. It looks at a new angle, as you suggest, and might provide you new insights. The Bell perspective is almost 50 years old now.

    From your essay and your answer, I conclude that Bell's theory is the basis of your view of reality. So I once again ask: Had Bell not lived to create his (possibly erroneous) inequality, is there ANY other argument by which physical experiments would "prove" non-locality?

    To sum up: you can 'peek inside this realist's mind' by reading my essay, and you can 'enrich your arguments' by answering the question about whether there is anything other than Bell's inequality that justifies your theory.

    Thank you for your patience and good humor.

    My best regards,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Giacomo,

    John Bell's use of the term 'super-determinism' is another way of saying that determinism is predetermined. The findings of a 12 year experiment I have recently concluded has provided empirical evidence to substantiate that nature is absolutely deterministic in that its construct is predetermined.

    The evidence infers that no experiment can be conducted without a selection first being made. I find that physics focus on observed or measure effects and not its true cause. This tiny detail is what has prevented us from understanding reality. I hope you find time to review my findings:

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

    Best wishes,

    Manuel

    Dear Akinibo,

    the quantum pixels are quantum systems, such as qubits, without space-extensions, nor space-dimension, nor filling space in between. Space must emerge, not pre-exist. I really don't care much of introducing fancy names for impressing the audience. Quantum systems are quantum systems, that's it.

    Thank you also for the reference of Wheeler, I think I don't have it.

    My best regards

    Mauro

    ciao Mauro

    I wondered in the essay pages and I noticed that your essay was generating much discussion.

    After now looking at the essay I can see why: a particularly thought-provoking essay!!

    Unfortunately on this occasion I literally could not find time to produce an essay to contribute to the debate, but even from the essay I produced for the previous competition you can imagine that I am in resonance with the assertion

    that the notion of "physical object" is no longer logically tenable.

    I would perhaps slightly rephrase. The luxury of relying on a naive axiomatic notion of "physical object" is no longer affordable on the current frontiers of fundamental physics. At the very least it needs a proper scientific definition. I am happy to keep, at least as long as we are on the current frontier, an axiomatic notion of "detector" (or perhaps "detection"), but all other luxuries,

    first of all the spacetime-abstraction luxury but also the physical-object luxury, must be abandoned.

    Congratulations on this excellent essay!

    The debate might further heat up when/if Olaf Dreyer's essay will be posted: he told me he was thinking of possibly contributing an essay and from Olaf's description I would say it could be stimulatingly complementary to yours.

    Giovanni

    Dear Giovanni

    it is great to hear from you!

    Yes! it seems that the idea of the physical-object-as-logically-untenable is gathering consensus. It seems that I succeeded in convincing many people at least to have a try of our different view of the world. The "It from Bit" is now much more than just an ideology. It is a fact! With Paolo Perinotti we succeeded in deriving the Dirac equation as emergent from just quantum systems in interaction, with the only obvious requirements of homogeneity, isotropy, locality, and unitariety. And, at the same time, we hit two pigeons with one stone, getting a unified theory including also the super-relativistic regime and the Planck scale, a theory that embodies in a single unified framework your Doubly Special Relativity with an additional invariant energy, and yours and Smolin's relative locality. With Bibeau, Bisio, Perinotti and Tosini we are now writing a paper only on these topics. It is really very exciting to see how much new physics and phenomenology can emerge from just a bunch very general of principles.

    I'm sure also Olaf will like this a lot.

    My best regards

    Mauro

    Mauro,

    Thank you for your curiosity and for having an open mind. I found John Bell's 'super-determinism' description well worth exploring. The findings show that the 'metaphysical' reference you mention is derived from our 'interpretation' of reality which turns out to be culprit preventing us from obtaining the Theory of Everything as presented in my essay. I trust you may want to review the initial findings of the Tempt Destiny experiment as presented at the April, 2011, APS convention which served as the basis of my essay: PHYSICS OF PREDETERMINED EVENTS Complementarity States of Choice-Chance Mechanics

    I look forward to your review.

    Regards,

    Manuel

    Mauro,

    If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

    Jim

      Dear Giacomo,

      I agree with you, very interesting. I knew it partly because of my interest for hyerbolic geometry.

      Thanks

      Torsten

      Dear Mauro,

      With respect, but with Bell's theorem refuted, you need to examine the history of how it came to be called "a theorem." That was not Bell's fault.

      And, without deeper analysis of Bell's "theorem," I suggest that any "interpretation" by you and your team is likely to be ill-founded and just another addition to a growing list of such. For we must always recall that all Bell inequalities are refuted by experiments.

      In that my theory is wholly local and realistic AND non-contextual, you can see that it is a challenge to many interpretations, not just yours.

      About this from you,"let's judge people from outside." I would prefer to avoid a popularity contest and have you and your team address the high-school maths and logic on which my theory is based. Given that my results are fully supported experimentally, such action would of course challenge your opinion "that Quantum Theory is too rigid to be changeable just a little."

      But it is from such challenges that science progresses -- and the change that I make to Quantum Theory is very small indeed.

      Yet it is enough to eliminate the postulate that you suggest distinguishes the Quantum from the Classical; for that change relates to entanglement (after Schroedinger) and the measurement process (after von Neumann).

      PS: Whilst I much prefer open discussions, I am happy to continue this discussion privately if you or any member of your team so wishes.

      With best regards, and looking forward to your reply; Gordon Watson.

      Dear D'Ariano,

      One problem I have with the idea of "It" emerging from "Qubit" is that it presents a Zeno scenario, putting us in pain of infinite regress.

      How can you perform observation on THE PARTS of a holism for then it yet has parts:"local discriminability". For me you either arrive at "locality" (the parts) via non-locality (the whole) or vice versa.

      I assert that you cannot actually have the notion of a field without having the notion of an object for the field is only LESS OBJECT than some reference object.And vice versa.

      It does not seem to me that we can get anywhere without actually defining the wave function (for it is that blur between the it and the bit). Hard problem, but it IS the problem. Check me out on this if you can at: "What a Wavefunction is"What a Wavefunction is.

      Do your best to prove me wrong on this. It helps everyone think clearer.

      Chidi Idika

        Dear Giacomo and Matt,

        Very interesting discussion! I'm sorry to butt in, but I've been trying to have some discussion about the relativity of simultaneity, preferred frames, absolute time, etc., through the last couple of contests, so I was hoping you'd let me join you here.

        As one raised on cosmology, I have to give my support to Giacomo's comment that "As most cosmologist admit, we have a preferred frame: the background radiation." Cosmic time is one of the basic assumptions of modern cosmology, although it's not commonly spoken of as being opposed to the spirit of relativity (which it obviously is). Actually, my previous essay argued that standard cosmology goes a step too far by remaining true to the Einsteinian definition of simultaneity as synonymous with synchronicity, albeit only in the cosmic frame.

        I tried to discuss the distinction between simultaneity and synchronicity that needs to be made in a realistic version of relativity on Ken Wharton's page, because of a funny inconsistency I see in his essay. He based his essay on the implication from the relativity of simultaneity, that we live in a block universe where all of space-time is real at once. But his analysis makes use of what he calls the Independence Fallacy, which, if you agree with it, provides a very strong argument *against* the relativity of simultaneity (actually, it goes roughly as Giacomo has stated it above). Since the issue has come up here as one that interests you, I'd be interested in any response you might have to my posts there.

        Thanks, Daryl

        Dear Dr.Giacomo D'Ariano,

        I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

        Regards and good luck in the contest.

        Sreenath BN.

        http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

        The egg was long before the chicken:

        the chicken is a bird and birds evolved during the Mesozoic Era.

        While eggs were laid by reptiles long before this era.

        (If instead the question regards "eggs laid by a chicken", then clearly chickens come first.

        If instead the question regards "eggs from which a chicken is born", then clearly eggs come first.)

        In all cases, the question has simple and unproblematic solution. I never understood what is the issue about eggs and chickens.

        Mauro, I find your criticism of the notion of object fully convincing.

        Just a point for reflection: if you consider that at some level quantum gravity is relevant, you cannot even rely on a three (or four)-dimensional background over which you qbits can live.

        Carlo

          Dear Mauro

          This is an interesting essay, and I continue to be surprised (as you have been) about how similar, and yet different, our lines of thinking have been.

          Your demolition of object is interesting. However, rather than allowing us to talk about existence of an object, an operationalist viewpoint only allows us to define an entity, such as an electron, in terms of what it does to our measurement apparatus. I do not know, nor can I know, what an electron is. I can only discern a pattern of influences that I can choose to call an electron.

          I am confused by your statement . I am not sure what "pure information" is, nor am I sure how to distinguish "kinds" of information. In my way of thinking, information is something that constrains one's beliefs. In this sense, I am not sure how "quantum information" is different than "classical information". Indeed in the paper that Philip Goyal and I wrote, (http://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/3/2/171 ), we rely on regular old probability theory to derive the Feynman path integral formulation of quantum mechanics. The difference that QM plays is that one uses amplitudes to assign priors.

          It also seems that your quantum elements need to sit in some kind of array or lattice. How does this lattice come about? Can there be dislocations? Or is it perfect? If so, why? In my approach there is no such lattice. In the case where one imagines a special situation where two observer chains may agree on the lengths of each others' intervals one gets a Minkowski metric and so on (as discussed in my essay).

          Now I do like the fact that you come up with a BCC lattice as being important. You may be interested in a paper by Bialnycki-Birula which did not appear in your references (PRD 49(12), 1994, pp 6920-6927). He *reverse engineers* a complex-valued cellular automaton that reproduces the Weyl and Dirac equations. I'd be interested in learning more about your approach to see how similar or different your findings are to his.

          I myself have found BCC lattices to arise naturally when I rely on three pairs of observers. I have not put this in any of my papers yet, but this was presented in my slides from my 2012 APS talk (http://huginn.com/talks/knuth-aps12-final.pdf).

          Another difference here is that your approach relies on a concept of energy and mass (as coupling). In my essay I try to get an understanding of what these quantities represent in terms of what electrons do.

          I continue to be surprised at how our parallel our paths are given that our foundational ideas are so different. Perhaps we are both at a point where we realize that the object we are exploring is a mammal belonging to the genus Proboscidea.