Reality, No Matter How You Slice It by Ken Wharton

Dear Ken,

Kindly indulge me. Probably no better place to clarify things with the experts than this forum.

Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?

You can reply me here or on my blog. And please pardon my naive view of physics.

Accept my best regards,

Akinbo

Dear Ken,

Thank you so much for your posts. It means an awful lot knowing that you feel you've benefitted from this exchange, as I certainly have. Honestly, I really hope we can continue to agree to disagree, because for me it's all about getting things right, and being precise and careful at every step is such a huge part of that. In that regard, I don't know if it could be more beneficial than to have an opponent who truly understands and can appreciate both sides of the argument for what they are.

I have some specific responses to what you wrote. Copying isn't working on my phone, so I'll only quote a few words.

>if there is a cosmic rest frame...

Is a whole 3d space that exists any more non-local than a 4d block that 'exists'? Also, Shelly Goldstein sure gave a persuasive argument last night in favour of Bohmian mechanics.

>And it would seem to be rather convoluted...

Do you have Hawking and Ellis handy? Can you flip to the section on spherically symmetric gravitational collapse? It refers to observers O and O', and there's an E-F diagram... Consider the implicit definition of time that's being used--I.e. the variable they use to refer to time's passage. You know I think there's an objective time variable for the whole universe. It's not the E-F advanced time parameter. In any case, I think we both agree that descriptions of actual temporal passage are inconsistent with einsteinian notions of the relativity of simultaneity, which is what they're implicitly assuming--I.e. they give a dynamical account of temporal passage while assuming a physical definition of simultaneity that's inconsistent with that.

Now look at the statical coordination of de sitter space in the images I posted above. The r coordinate becomes imaginary at the coordinate singularity. It's simply no good after that, for all t. I talked about this with Gordon Belot today, and he thought Felix Klein showed that this was the right way of interpreting the line element. I actually think the Schwarzschild 'event horizon' is also such a coordinate singularity. Remember, I think space-time is globally hyperbolic at a fundamental level.

Now, to get back to the E-F description. Do you have Kip Thorne's black holes and time warps? He recalls a conversation with Lipschitz, where he called Finkelstein's paper a revelation that lifted a fog (or something like that). It was what convinced Wheeler that black holes exist, etc.

Personally, I find all of this convoluted. I think you can only have my sense of existence or your sense of 'existence' and neither admits of the dynamical emergence of black holes in the universe. I think it's entirely inconsistent.

>I'll note without comment...

Ah, but I'm allowed to conduct my thought experiments assuming absolute simultaneity in the Earth's rest-frame due to the principle of relativity. The important thing in assuming a cosmic rest-frame is whether the empirical evidence supports that. Right?

>Finally, I will caution... (whole paragraph)

:) Can I say I feel justified to be just a little snobbish about these things, insofar as I personally think a non-existential definition of "exist" (and all other verbs) is a convoluted and misleading way of speaking, which has led to a mountain of confusion (by the way, a good chunk of my essay is devoted to discussing this)?

Again, thank you so much for discussing all of this. I can't tell you how much it means to have the opportunity to debate with you. It's been very clarifying. By the way, do you think Greene is really thinking non-existentially about the block? It seems to me in the quote I posted below, that he's really emphasizing the block's existence.

Best regards,

Daryl

Dear Ken,

Replying to post on physical basis for introduction of principle of least action (dated Jul. 13, 2013 @ 10:41 GMT)

Having (time x change), or (time x energy) comes naturally by way we introduce the principle of least action. But this introduction is done on the level of effective systems, i.e. not at fundamental level at all. The bigger picture, with places to introduce spacetime as one piece on both low and effective levels, is painted in http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1597 Notice there that notion of time is connected to the system, i.e. it is not a global time (can we call it local time?). And since it is not a global time, a little special place of time in Lagrangian method does not produce global problems, which none of us want :) .

De facto, when we look for a new theory (i.e. suggesting new Lagrangian), we watch out not to have bad things like negative energy. And, although it is beautiful to have complete time-space (t-x) symmetry, we avoid certain theories specifically based on this aspect of time being experimentally a little different.

Sincerely,

Mikalai

Hi Ken,

OK, a little more in the way of a response to your response:

1. I'm still not sure that what Eddington is talking about is unphysical. He's just talking about probability theory. Chains of probabilities are naturally asymmetric. It's just the way they are. Which leads me to...

2. Again, I think relativity is mis-interpreted. The arrow of time is built into it via the very fact that the sign of time in the metric is opposite that of space. It's easier to see if you work through relativity graphically using diagrams, but once you see it you can't "unsee" it, as they say. The only way to make time perfectly symmetric in relativity is to either drop the basic notion of cause and effect or allow for things like complex-valued masses and strange things like that. So, in short, I think it's incorrect to say that all the laws of modern physics are time-symmetric. They're not.

Ian

Hi Ken (and Howard),

As an addendum to the things I mentioned above, what occurred to me while reading Howard's comments was that, in a nutshell, I think we're overcomplicating things by missing the obvious. I know the retrocausal approach has become quite popular, but, again, it seems to be based on a certain set of notions that we seem to be clinging to for dear life --- the time-symmetric nature of modern physical theories, the absolute correctness of the Standard Model, etc. --- and I have no idea why. Again, I don't think the Standard Model needs replacing. I just see it like I see most theories: it is a highly accurate description of a limited set of phenomena. [And for the sake of people who don't want to go digging for my other comments, relativity is simply not time-symmetric. There's a neat little gedankenexperiment that you can do with a type of light clock that shows that if you run it backwards you don't get the Minkowski metric. You only get it if you run it forward in time.]

Ian

*Lifshitz. Sorry. I think it was him and not Landau, but he was talking about Landau as well, I believe. It's been a while since I read that, though. By the way, I'm not thinking of geodesic incompleteness, anymore than there is geodesic completeness past the coord singularity in dS space, described in those coords.

Hi Wharton,

I like the trend that this essay encompasses about not dwelling on the spacetime view of things and also its emphasis on returning to the big picture. It put some critical controversies in history in a more viewable, and relate-able, light.

Thanks,

Amos.

Dear Professor Wharton

Do you have opinion about my essay?

Yuri

Ken,

We agree. In my "It's Great to be the King" I tend to satirically rebuke the Anthropic Principle, especially "It from Bit.

For example, you say, "where everything about the present was encoded in some initial cosmic wavefunction," I deny the existence of consciousness w/o a body during the BB and bodies not possibly existent until 1 billion years after the BB after heavier-element stars.

The connection between consciousness and reality and the subatomic and the macro worlds I say are philosophical / metaphysical with their arguments. They are confused in attributing similar behavior to micro and macro, much like your concept: "case quantum information can plausibly be about something real . Instead of winning the argument by default, then, \It from Bit" proponents now need to argue that it's Better to give up reality. Everyone else need simply embrace entities that fill ordinary spacetime - no matter how you slice it."

Thanks for a well-thought-out read. I am interested in seeing your thoughts on my essay.

Jim

Dear prof. Wharton,

Your statement, "with no objective 'now', there is no objective line between the past and the future", indicates the causality of "microhistory", and implies discrete-time.

With this, dynamic time evolution in configuration space is adapted in string-matter continuum scenario, in that one-dimensional observer for one-dimensional source is ascribed to express the emergence of other dimensions with realistic information continuum rather than probabilistic that indicates the observational plausibility of real-time information continuum on molecular dynamics of simplex in linear time with reference to holarchical discrete time.

With best regards,

Jayakar

Dear Ken Wharton,

Just to let you know I have read your essay which I found really interesting and very clearly explained.I like the way you linked your discussion with the essay question making it highly relevant. Nice helpful diagram too

Good luck, Regards Georgina

Dear ken,

One single principle leads the Universe.

Every thing, every object, every phenomenon

is under the influence of this principle.

Nothing can exist if it is not born in the form of opposites.

I simply invite you to discover this in a few words,

but the main part is coming soon.

Thank you, and good luck!

I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

Please visit My essay.

Hi Ken,

I hope the familiar greeting is OK. We met during the program review for SJSU a few years back maybe more than 5 years now). Anyway I may be back at SDSU this fall since Alej and I have agreed to exchange colloquium talks.

A very nice and deep essay -- not all parts of which I agree with -- but it bears careful reading and thinking about.

At the beginning of the essay you take a holistic view that one must view space-time in 4D blocks rather than 3D slices which one dynamically evolves forward. (By the way if you are teaching intro algebra based physics don't let your students get their hands on this essay since otherwise when you move from kinematics in the first few weeks of the course to dynamics some student will misrepresent your point and say "But Prof. Wharton in your essay you say dynamics isn't important".) This is reminiscent of a Wick rotation where one goes from Minkowski to Euclidean space by letting t-->it. One question I had in this regard is that there is some real difference between Minkowski and Euclidean space or more directly between spatial and temporal coordinates. Given enough time it is always possible to reach any spatial coordinate starting from x=0 -- either x=-N or x=+N. However starting from t=0 one can only access t>0. There are some subtle issues with this as your figure 1 indicates in terms of the relativity of simultaneity but essentially an observer can equally access left and right (unless one breaks parity symmetry) but past and future are not so equally accessible. I'm not sure if this is crucial to your argument or if it is already addressed in some way but it was something that I thought about.

Next I had a technical question in regard to you example in figure 2 (I did not see where this example was going until the nice connection with the two slit experiment in figure 3). In the example in figure 2 you use 3 colors, but it seems you could use either 4 or 2. 4 colors would seem to work in the following way: blue for H-H, green for T-T, red for H-T and yellow for T-H (i.e. the order of the opposite pair matters). 2 colors would seem to work in the following way: blue for H-H and T-T (i.e. the same color for both like pairs) and red for H-T and T-H. Would this change anything or would it simple alter the numerical values of the different probabilities you calculate?

Actually I have a few more comments/questions but will stop here. I should say the point that I disagree with is the statement "photons behave in a way that disagrees with the dynamical Maxwell equations". Actually this statement is correct but also we know that classical Maxwell's equations are superseded by the quantum version of Maxwell's equations i.e. QED. And in regard to QED there has yet to be any deviation between experiment and theory -- photons as far as we have tested behave exactly as predicted by QED. Some time ago there was some excitement when it appeared that there was a deviation between the calculated g-2 for the electron and/or muon and the experimental value. The deviation was jumped on as evidence for supersymmetry (supersymmetric particles were ignored in the calculation and including them with some given mass made the agreement better). However in the end it was found there was a mistake in the calculation which involved 5 or 6 loop Feynman diagrams!!) which when it was fixed brought agreement between theory and experiment. This does not really have too much bearing on your main thesis which deals with foundational issues rather than using the structure of quantum field theory to make calculations.

Anyway a thought provoking essay.

Best,

Doug

Dear prof Ken,

Am wondering if you could find the time to read What a Wavefunction is It probably looks like a wild claim. But it just may not be. I have a download and am going to read your essay. And i'll be back here to rate. But I'll appreciate if you could read and comment on mine. The text may be hard-going. The physics should interest you.

I define the observer as "wavefunction" or "configuration space".

Best,

Chidi

Ken - I have downloaded and am reading your other paper now. I am very familiar with Huw Price's work, and especially the book "Times Arrow and Archimedes' Point".

I would be honored to hear your thoughts on the potential unreality of Minkowski space in my essay, and perhaps the novel perspective of entanglement in 1 dimension of time/space. Please make sure to download the corrected version (V1.1a) - from the comments section. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1897

I look forward to an on-going dialog.

Kind regards, Paul