Reality, No Matter How You Slice It by Ken Wharton

Hi Ken,

As you know, we agree on a lot of this stuff, although I wish you wouldn't perpetuate Feynman's fallacy that the double slit experiment contains the whole mystery of quantum theory. The double slit experiment, delayed choice, Elitzur Vaidman bomb, and similar phenomena that only rely on basic interferometry can all be accounted for by perfectly sensible local and noncontextual hidden variable theories within the standard framework. Because of this, one cannot derive compelling arguments for abandoning the traditional initial state+dynamics framework from them. On the other hand, you are right that considering the "all in one" framework puts a lot of options back on the table, e.g. locality, noncontextuality and epistemic quantum states, so it is definitely worth considering given that the potential gains are so high.

However, I think there is an important conceptual issue that has not been adequately addressed to date. There is a big difference between a presentation of a theory that makes it look like it is not an initial state+dynamics theory and a theory in which an initial state+dynamics picture does not exist. What we are really looking for is a theory in which the latter is true. After all, Newtonian mechanics can be presented in a Lagrangian form, and one may be tempted to argue that it is an "all at once" theory when it is presented that way, but it also has a perfectly adequate Hamiltonian formalism, so such an argument would be misguided. Now, one can come up with all sorts of fancy quantum-like theories defined on spacetime involving Lagrangians, future boundary conditions and the like, but how do you know that the theory does not also have a reasonable initial state+dynamics formalism?

Part of the problem is of course that all theories do in fact have an initial state+dynamics formalism and it is just that we may view such a formalism as not a good representation of what is going on in reality. For example, there is always the "encyclopedia of the world" ontology wherein the ontic state is just a list of absolutely everything that will happen in the universe and it is replicated at every point in space. We would normally want to reject such an ontology as being superdeterministic. What this indicates is that we cannot reject initial state+dynamics on its own, but if we add extra principles like no superdeterminism locality then we may prove that there is no initial state+dynamics formalism that is consistent with both of them. This is how Huw Price sometimes likes to present Bell's theorem, as an implication from realism+locality to retrocausality. However, the problem with this is that we have not actually established that there are "all at once" theories that are local. This is because the traditional definition of locality only applies to initial state+dynamics theories so we need to generalize it to make this statement meaningful. For specific theories, one can come up with arguments that the theory is local or that "all the action happens in the lightcones", but what we really need is a general statement of what locality is in this context that is at least as general as Bell's definition of locality for initial state+dynamics theories. Indeed, we also need to do this for the concepts from the other no go theorems, such as noncontextuality and epistemic quantum states. Until we have such general definitions, claims as to whether one theory or another are genuinely "all at once" theories or not are question begging in my opinion.

Thanks for your support, Edwin. It was a nice surprise when I came to post this response.

Dear Ken,

Thanks for your response. I'm sorry that I wasn't crystal clear that while I think a strong argument in favour of an absolute frame of reference and true temporal passage takes exactly the same *form* that your essay has, I understand that the *content* of my argument is completely different from the content of your essay. In fact, I'm saying that by the *very same* argument structure that you've used in your essay, your basic premise, as you've argued from the point of view of relativity, does have to be rejected.

I appreciate your misgivings in regard to the no-go theorems, but then, to refer to that same argument structure again, and particularly your conclusion, your analysis would at best provide a reason why it would be better to give up on the passage of time; i.e., at best your analysis finds a means of motivating its premise. As I've argued, the motivation from the point of view of relativity that you've given is false, at least as far as we can trust empirical knowledge.

You also expressed misgivings about how I would interpret relativity, saying that this "would seem to leave no room for anything about nature that would surprise us"; but I already noted the backflip a person's mind would have to do if they were sitting in a room completely blocked off from, and totally ignorant of, what was going on in the outside world, before discovering that they were really moving through it at some constant velocity. This would indeed be surprising, and they'd want to update their frame of reference to reflect the fact that they were actually in motion, though in a way that's consistent with their ability to describe everything that happens in the room as if it were truly at rest.

By taking this interpretation of relativity to be just too in tune with our base intuitions about reality and temporal flow, the argument in your third paragraph therefore seems to oppose the possibility that quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive in a way that *could possibly* make sense if we knew what was *really* going on. But as I understood your essay, I thought you were actually arguing that a real underlying geometry that we could update our subjective description of, as more information became available, is *not* precluded by quantum mechanics; e.g. "It is a subjective process, performed as some agent gains new information".

Finally, I want to say something about your surprise that I'd argue for this realist stance, which you thought would be a show-stopper from the dynamical point-of-view. I never said I thought scientific determinism should be correct--that we should go back to thinking of the past as generating the future in a Laplace's demon sort of way. In regard to relativity, I don't think the Universe should simply be the solution to a great Cauchy problem; and in that regard, I think there's a lot about the supposed meaning of relativity that needs to be updated when one aims to be objectively consistent with the evidence that there *is* a cosmic rest-frame, which is a point I that I argued in my last essay (what I argued, is that standard cosmology actually adds *too much* structure, by assuming that the cosmic hypersurfaces are synchronous in the cosmic rest-frame, when all that's required is the definition of an absolute simultaneity-relation).

But this wasn't the point of my current essay at all. Wheeler's "it from bit" fails outright if there is some real, time-evolving existence, since he attempts to screw it all up by posing bits as fundamental elements that don't come to be in an objective sense. A lot of what I concentrated on was the frequently mixed-up idea that people have of events themselves as existing, in what's really a five-dimensional conception that I was very glad to see you *don't* have, as you wrote that "Arguments such as "But the future isn't real *now*" are no more meaningful than arguing "Over there isn't real right here"." This is literally opposed to statements like "All of space-time simply *is*".

Anyway, my point in commenting here wasn't to start a discussion of my essay. I was just hoping you'd be willing to debate my point that the basic premise of *your* essay is wrong. So much of modern physics seems to stand opposed to the idea that there is an objective reality; but remember that modern physics is really based on the idea that physical states really *are* independent of any such possible reality, which is often taken as a reason that it should be ignored. This is your point in regard to quantum mechanics. I just hoped that because you've stated this point so well in that regard, you might be able to see that your own argument applies equally well in regard to relativity, which similarly derives its denial of an absolute reference frame from the Independence Fallacy--i.e. it stems "from a motivation to describe a slice of a system independently from what lies outside."

Because you at least appreciate that argument, I was hopeful that you wouldn't simply dismiss my argument with a claim that "such a research direction doesn't seem particularly promising". Isn't the whole point of FQXi to support research directions that don't appear to be particularly promising from the points of view of conventional wisdom? For a hundred years, no one's considered it very promising to consider the greater consequences of the cosmic frame of rest that's been realised to exist for *nearly as long*; and now all our ideas about reality are based on abstract thoughts that derive from the premise that there really isn't such a frame.

In Einstein's autobiography, he wrote that after he had come to the principle of general covariance, it took him seven more years to construct general relativity theory principally because "it is not so easy to free oneself from the idea that coordinates must have an immediate metrical meaning". How things have changed! MTW quoted this passage right at the beginning of the book, and these days even though we have all the evidence we need to support the view that there actually *is* an objective cosmic frame--so the coordinates really do matter, no matter how you slice them!--it's impossible to garner any interest in that direction of research, and everyone simply continues on assuming the opposite.

I really hope you'll reconsider your position on this. I don't mean to be overtly contrary or disrespectful in anything I've said. I just think that the point deserves to be taken seriously.

Yours,

Daryl

Prof. Wharton.

I did not mean to be unkind; it is in my nature to be direct, and in that I may seem insensitive; sorry. I will try and chase up "Story of Your Life" and "The Hundred Light-Year Diary" at some point, but it has been a long time since I read science fiction.

Your answer to Torsten suggests you are interested in limiting the impossible infinity of possibilities "choice" brings to a block-universe. A fifth dimension tying future possibilities to past conditions is one way to imagine a suppression mechanism; something imagined many years ago; and while such imaginings are entertaining, I bugged out of that universe a long time ago. I suspect you realized that after reading my essay and some of my replies to relevant posts.

Cheers!

Zoran.

Dear Dr. Wharton,

I completely agree with you about the necessity to consider the universe all at once, and have made the same arguments myself. So, given that we both agree that there is some formal system which can describe the complete configuration of the universe, past present and future, my question to you is this: why are the axioms of that formal system true, as opposed to some other formal system?

An axiomatic system cannot, by definition, derive its own axioms. From an objective standpoint, one cannot claim that one axiomatic system is "more true" than other. All we can do is say that one axiomatic system describes our universe better or worse than another. But suppose we have found this system. Why is that system the one "true" system, and all other systems false?

If there is one axiomatic system that corresponds to objective reality, if that one axiomatic system is objectively true, there must be some way to break the symmetry between other axiomatic systems...some way to distinguish it, to show why this system is realized and others are not.

This question is unanswered by your essay, and I would argue that an honest look at this question leads to just one logical conclusion.

Dear Prof. Wharton,

Nice essay but I will not hide my disagreement that IT cannot come from BIT, a position you hold. The Quantum world has provided a safe haven for all sorts of pet theories and abstract contraptions to hide, so let me discuss and cross-examine you on the cosmic scale. So dear Prof. Wharton, kindly mount the witness box:

1. Is the universe real? If so, is it an IT?

2. If the universe is an IT as we its inhabitants would not be writing and reading essays if it were not, would it have a beginning?

3. If it had a beginning, and that beginning was from "nothing", is nothing an IT?

4. If nothing is not an IT but is rather "an immaterial thing", then has an IT not come from what does not have an underlying reality?!

Whereas, you yourself have testified publicly that: "the only proper rebuttal is to demonstrate that there is some plausible underlying reality, after all" and the possibility of the contrary haven been demonstrated from exhibits 1 to 4 above,

I now put it to you that, at least on the cosmic scale, "It from Bit" proponents can ... claim to have won the argument by default!!

Cheers and all the best sir. You are discharged and acquitted since you were honest in your testimony. MORAL: IT can at the "very deep bottom" come from an immaterial source and explanation! - It from Bit, Wheeler, 1989

Regards,

Akinbo

*You may wish to appeal this judgement after reading and criticizing my paper.

I am an IT, I don't know why the system calls me Anonymous and turn me to a BIT despite being logged in.

Akinbo

Ken,

I gave your essay a first reading last night. I am going to need to read it again. I have this curious sense that you are implicitly arguing for local hidden variables. Of course since you are working within a block universe idea maybe these are in fact nonlocal. I get this sense there is some subtle issue with what you wrote along these lines.

I do get the sense that your argument is that block time is the proper view of spacetime from the perspective of the action principle. I would tend to concur with this. There is the question I think of how one treats Cauchy data for the initial and end points of a path integral. The role of dynamics is I think secondary. Dynamics just tells us what the system will look like along the parameterization or time variable of the path integral. Since we perceive spacetime according to a present moment that is carried along with time to the next moment we are sort of biased to see the world as dynamical. The action principle provides the Euler-Lagrange equation to permit us to convert the action principle into a dynamical principle.

LC

Dear Ken

I am not competent enough to respond to the interesting points you raised about dynamics, it from bit and conceptions of Reality. Your arguments are expressed through the use of space-time. I have long ago concluded there is no time dimension and that observer-based physics (frames of reference, her past and future) should be replaced by one describing dynamics in an absolute universe.

You mention the Born Rule and the double-slit experiment. May I direct you to Eric Reiter's unquantum website where he describes experiments that demolish the Born Rule. This agrees with my own 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory also found here where dynamics in a timeless Universe where propbability is emergent is suggested.

With best wishes

Vladimir

Dear Ken,

I've been reading your article "The Universe is not a Computer" (arXiv:1211.7081).

I share you concern for a lack of physical interpretation that tells us to use Lagrangian principle, unlike Fermat's principle, which has a clear justification for mathematical procedure (talking about light paths, etc.).

What would you think of the following argument. Let's assume that any dynamic process, or system, can be used as a clock. Different states of system a labelled with some values of real variable, called time (t). We need as little change of state as possible between any two labels t_0 and t_1, to have a clock as precise as possible. Infinitesimal change of system state in quantum mechanics is Hamiltonian, which is units of energy. The mathematical variation method constructs entity with units of action (energy times time).

This physical argument for introduction of Lagrangian principle fits nicely with quantum mechanics, which is discussed in http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1597/. Section five actually talks about principle of least action, while the other ones build a ground for it.

In http://physics-essays.birukou.net/principle-of-least-action I describe uneasiness from a student's point of view about LQFT as it is taught at the moment.

Let me know what you think. Do not hesitate to email directly.

Mikalai

Ken,

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

Hello Ken,

I only got part way through your essay before fatigue set in last night, but found the part I did read deep and engaging. Seeing your comments above, about seeking alternatives to the Block Time universe description, I wanted to mention the following.

The possibility has been raised that the dimensionality of spacetime is not a constant, where CDT and Quantum Einstein gravity find that the cosmos was 2-d initially, and spacetime later unfolds to become 4-d. I discuss this somewhat in my essay from last year, but a paper of note just came out.

"Dimensional reduction in the sky" arXiv:1305.3153 has as authors two of last year's essay contest entrants, Giovanni Amelino-Camelia and Michele Arzano, along with Giulia Gubitosi and Joao Magueijo. So how can there be block time, if the dimensionality of the cosmos evolves? Since spheres have maximal volume in 5-d, perhaps that is where things are ultimately headed. Care to comment?

Regards,

Jonathan

I have to support Matthews points, and Daryl's. The so called 'no-go' theorems all have limited domains and rely on assumptions. I've now shown how the last one, Bell's theorem, can be overcome in my essay, the EPR paradox resolved as Bell and von Neumann anticipated using a real local mechanism but by 'unifying' QM and SR! The others then melt away as inapplicable.

And Mikalai, the solution I present predicted an 'orbital symmetry' in the results for each detector if proper comparison of actual pairs was carried out. I assumed Aspect hadn't managed this, but to his credit it seems he had! Did you know he discarded over 99% of his data due to some unexplained "orbital asymmetry"? I only found this after researching the French version of his follow up paper. There was then no theory to explain it, now there is, and it derives a cosine curve at EACH detector, making QM uncertainty far more consistent, but also deriving the SR postulates. And as may imagined more emerges, including simplicity. Gordon Watsons essay provides the consistent mathematics.

This would infer that Ken's assumptions were incorrect, though I still can't help feeling that Ken had a slightly devilish reason for drawing his provocative conclusions. I think I show that if we get dynamics right they overcome all assumptions about giving up reality and obeying imaginary stop signs. QM uncertainty emerges closely analogous to Kalusa's thesis, but I needed more space to develop that.

I do beseech you to read mine very carefully and comment. "The Intelligent Bit"

Ken, I need to read yours carefully again before commenting further, and also your considered comments on mine.

Many thanks

Peter

Dear Peter and Matthew,

Judging by IQit things, one needs a lot of, quote, "axioms". It is a complex thing. Alternative might be a simpler explanation, with potentially different fundamental concepts, then those in classical physics.

To judge between the two, we need an experiment. In absence of experiment, Einstein's razor would have to be used :)

I asked, if there are actual runs for effects due to presence of hidden variables. That shall help.

More so, I think that we may find another suggestion for experiment in the following place. If classically-governed hidden variables is what nature does, then there is no theoretical restriction for tapping into quantum-channel key distribution (man in the middle attack), while QM without hidden variables implies that such tapping is impossible.

Am I right? So, break quantum channel, make a ton of money, and, as a bonus, I will be the first to accept a more cumbersome explanation of reality, cause nature decides through phenomenology (experiment).

Dear Ken,

Have I got a cherry to pick with you ;)

Seriously, though, thank you very much for your detailed and thoughtful response. I'm camping right now for my daughter's birthday, but you bring up a couple of points that I'd like a chance to discuss further when I get back to a computer, if that's okay?

All the best,

Daryl

Dear Ken,

thanks for you interest and sorry for the late answer. I'm on vacatrion with only limited internet access.

My work is more in the direction of quantum gravity then GR. But I understood the arguments for a block universe.

Pro block universe: The arguments are more in the direction of causality. If there is a unique path from the past to the

future for every point then one calls this spacetime strongly causal. This concept forbids time loops etc. but it is to

restrictive. In particular, if you have the Cauchy surface N then the spacetime has to be diffeomorphic to NxR. In this

concept, everything is well-ordered.

Contra block universe: In quantum mechanics and also in quantum gravity, you do have philosphically an open future: there are

the possibility for more than one possible measured value. Now, if one assume that everything (including measured values of

observables) is encoded into geometry than one needs a more complex geometry for the future, a tree.

In my model, a tree appears naturally by the smoothness structure. As explained in the essay (hopefully), one has a complex

quantum state given by wildly embedded submanifold. The resulotion of this wild embedded submanifold is given by a tree anf

the branches of the tree representing the different measured values (the encoding of the probability is not clear to me now).

From the GR point of view, I have a spacetime with naked singularities (the saddle points). In this singularities, some

geodesics went in and some more went out (or you have the branching point of the tree). But this spacetime is now not a block

universe (in the strong sense) andf it is not of the form NxR (but NxR with an exotic smoothness structure).

Hopefully I touched some of your points.

More later,

All the best

Torsten

I wanted to add that Zeeya Merali and the FQXi folks have given this subject a Forum page, for discussion, which can be accessed at:

Dimensional reduction in the sky

Your insights and opinions are of course welcome.

All the Best,

Jonathan