Alternative Models of Reality

Er^2-p^2c^2Xl^2=m^2c^4X^2l^4

Er^2-(pcl)^2X=(m0c^2+Xl^2)

Er=Root(m0c^2+Xl^2)^2+(pcXl)^2

If my equation is correct, E=mc^2+Xl^2 , so how can we take this enormous energy in our nuclei if this energy is different than our actual nuclear logic. I consider the cold correlated with this cold dark matter encoded in our nuclei but how to check this, what is the method and technology to arrive to take it ? I search a road but not easy considering the energy matter tarnsformation.

We have a big philosophical problem with the strings and the photons like only one essence of our reality, like if a kind of God created vibrations, oscillations to create our physicality. In fact that don t take into account the evolution, it is the meaning of my theory of spherisation, why we evolve ? it is important, why we have all these problems on Earth and so why this infinite eternal consciousness don t change the oscillations, Waves, fields to create the harmony? you see well that there is a big problem , philosophical, if we evolve there are reasons, and for this infinite consciousness, it needs to code and transform the energy in matters and create an evolutive system, that is why we have particles coded and not Waves like origin.

How might one go about modelling our observable universe as a subsystem of the wavefunction of the universe, Ψ(U), which is itself a subsystem of the wavefunction of a multiverse that is the superposition of all possible universes, Ψ(Ψ,U)?

1. This model would assume universal entanglement and gross nonlocality ala Bohm & Hiley.

2. Its wavefunction realism however, would assume that Ψ(U) mathematically describes an abstract continuum of constantly evolving information rather than an external spacetime reality of physical structures.

3. The observable universe is to be modelled as a single 'world particle' in flux which is the instantaneous product of the intersection of the four fundamental force vectors.

4. The world particle is also an instantiation of one relative state vector of the branching wavefunction of the multiverse.

5. The world particle exists in multidimensional Hilbert space.

6. The world particle has as many degrees of freedom as needed to encode the observable universe. Its degrees of freedom with respect to the multiverse would be non-finite.

7. This encoding would be a function of the world particle's entanglement entropy.

8. The world particle exists only for a Planck second before it is annihilated in a new alignment of the four force vectors that form a new world particle.

9. The speed limit of entangled information (such as a photon) is to be derived from the speed of the four vector flux, as in 1 bit (world particle) per Planck second.

10. Space and linear, calculable time would also be relative properties derived from this world particle flux.

My interest is philosophical and focused on the metaphysics of quantum foundations and its various 'pictures' of physical reality. Any suggestions, criticisms or queries are welcome.

In regards to (2):

The wavefunction does not describe "an abstract continuum of constantly evolving information", rather it describes a real "drug test" - see my Jan. 6, 2020 @ 15:58 GMT comment

In other words, like a "drug test", the wavefunction is not describing any "substance" at all, but rather, is only describing the detection statistics for determining if some substance is actually present, right "here", right "now" at the detector, that (rightly or wrongly) happens to match the detection criteria built into the detector. The problem is, such a theory utterly fails to deal with the reality of that fact that all such "drug tests" produce some "false positives". As a direct result, all the standard interpretations of quantum theory result in absurdities, because they have all assumed that "bit errors" (false positives) never occur. And that assumption completely distorts (via a systematic bias) the view of reality, embedded into all such interpretations.

Rob McEachern

@Robert, sorry this forum software is rather obtuse and I couldn't find your "drug test" comments.

So as regards to (2), you can't operationalise the wave function of the universe can you? Any 'drug tests' you perform will be with its subsystems whereas, as I understand it, Ψ(U) is more an ontological concept.

And for your average mad dog Everettian there is only the branching wave function of the universe in Hilbert space isn't there? Ψ(U) defines fundamental reality, and such is wave function realism as opposed to more operational or experimentalist notions of what a wave function is useful for.

The reference to information is my simple attempt to clearly delineate this approach from more classical minded notions of an external physical spacetime. Inasmuch as it remains meaningful to talk of an 'external reality' somehow propping up our observable universe, that externality is 'It from Bit', or Qubit, which again is an ontological proposition. I like the information picture of physical reality that is slowly emerging from writers like Deutsch etc., as it seems appropriately abstract to me.

How we get from a multiverse of information to the encoded reality we experience as observers at the centre of our observable universe is what I'm interested in. This is a philosophical question concerning empirical reality, and my model outline is an attempt to align that with some of the more esoteric metaphysical pictures coming out of quantum foundations--From Bohm, Everett, Bell and Wheeler to Deutsch, Mermin and Tegmark... I very much enjoy reading scientists uncovering their natural philosophies. Don't you?

It is unfortunate that there is no easy way to "show all replies", so that a link will go directly to a comment that is hidden. To see my comment, click on the "show all replies" under this comment

Your interests coincide with my own. You might find my work on the misunderstandings regarding information in physics to be of some interest:

What is Information?

The limiting case of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle corresponds to a single bit of information

The behavior of that single bit, is the ultimate cause of the seemingly weird correlations observed in Bell-tests

Discussion with Barry Plotkin: How this relates to "It from Bit"

The concepts of "Many-Worlds" and a Multiverse, originated from a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the nature of superpositions, in Fourier Analysis

Rob McEachern

@Robert, thanks for those links. And again in regards to (2):

Personally I tend to try and simplify the term 'information' to mean a more general and abstract concept as opposed to its instantiation in empirical data.

So on the one hand, empirically we can see 'real patterns' (cf Dennett) in/as our observable world, or data streams or symbolic representations and so on. This is information actualised, as a fact of whatever matter is at hand, and something that we can at least try to make sense of.

On the other hand, information in the general sense is more an ontological concept about how our sense making arises, if that makes sense? Information is then the whole potential from which we can empirically derive actual knowledge, actual form, actual data and so on.

As I understand it, it's this abstract potentiality that is amenable to mathematical formalisation in theorems such as Shannon's entropy or the Nyquist theorem etc.

Philosophically, potentiality is what gives (or allows or constrains) form to actuality, it 'informs' in the old Latin sense of the informare.

So with information as pure potentiality there is by definition no fact of the matter of its actuality, it has no actual place of occurrence, no time or space, and no materiality. And that's how I'd like to understand the wave function of the multiverse, as a mathematical formalisation of purely potential physical realities where the total potential includes all possible universes.

Somehow, we observers are such that we actualise one subsystem, a cross section, of that multiversal potentiality.

This then follows onto (3) and the quasi-Bohmian proposition of modelling the actual observer/observed universe as a multidimensional 'world particle' entangled with a constantly evolving multiverse of potentiality (this latter is also how I understand Tegmark's notion of the Level IV multiverse, as a totality of mathematical/informational potential).

Fundamentally speaking, we're each of us a subsystem of the wave function of the multiverse that has evolved to reflect back on itself and so adapt to and modify its flux of entanglements.

Basically I'm here to pitch for a collaboration with a physicist although it's probably far too late for the current FQXi grants round and I'm just an itinerant philosopher!

In Shannon's conception of information, unlike any other, information has nothing to do with empirical data per se. It has to do with the innate properties of all mathematical functions, under certain conditions. Hence, when a physicist attempts to describe empirical data via any mathematical functions at all, the properties of the functions themselves, will be transferred to the data, where they will very probably be mistaken for properties of the data (physical phenomenon), rather than properties of the description of the data. This conception can easily be extended to any possible description of reality - along with the consequence of mistaking the properties of the descriptions, for properties of the things being described. Such is the case with both wavefunctions and interpretations of wavefunctions.

So, as you have observed, "with information as pure potentiality there is by definition no fact of the matter"; except one - information is not about "facts of the matter" at all. Rather, it is about the maximum number of "facts of the matter", that can ever be discerned/determined/derived from within any set of observations, or any set of descriptions of observations, such as a set of mathematical equations describing "laws of nature". The quantum realm exists, precisely because that maximum number of "facts of the matter" can be exactly equal to one - the lone fact that something, rather than nothing (the "drug test"), can be determined to exist, right here, right now. That lone fact, is what a single bit of information either is, or can ever represent. Wavefunctions merely describe the statistics of multiple "drug tests", that merely test for "something rather than nothing", right here, right now, at some testing site. And as is the case with all such drug tests, there is no guarantee that the "something" you managed to detect, is the same sort of thing as the "something" that you were hoping to detect. That is precisely why quantum theory seems so weird; what is being detected, is frequently quite different (the exact opposite - a bit-error, or false-positive) than what was meant to be detected.

Rob McEachern

@Robert: "Wavefunctions merely describe the statistics of multiple "drug tests""

This is a statement of your own fundamental assumption regarding what wave functions are good for. And your interpretation of Shannon's concept of information would appear to devolve from that basis.

As already mentioned, I'm not particularly interested in those sort of more operational or experimentalist arguments regarding the utility or otherwise of wave functions but rather I'm trying to follow the logic of 'wave function realism' concerning the possibility of a wave function of the universe/multiverse.

This latter, Ψ(U), can't describe a 'drug test' can it? It could only describe you and your lab world entangled with your 'drug test'. As far as I can see this is a purely conceptual setup that is useful for considering things like Everett's relative state formulation of QM for example. Or some multiverse cosmologies and so on.

Whether or not you want to ascribe the mathematical regularities uncovered by wave function 'drug tests' to an artefact of the mathematic formalism itself, or to the objective properties of the phenomena you're 'drug testing', is for me beside the point.

I'm interested in the real patterns we see in the world, the empirical totality of the regularities of our sense perception, and mathematical regularities are certainly part of that observable world, especially if you're a mathematician! But that's just my Husserlian bias speaking of course.

So I think we can safely agree to significantly diverge with respect to what a wave function is describing as well as the definitional distinction between information and empirical data. Our ontological assumptions would appear to be orthogonal branches in this observable universe!

That said, do you have any other suggestions, criticisms or queries relating to my post?

"This latter, Ψ(U), can't describe a 'drug test' can it?" For that very reason, it also cannot describe anything else. In other words, it cannot even exist.

"Our ontological assumptions would appear to be orthogonal branches in this observable universe!"

Unfortunately, your assumption that orthogonality even exists, as a property, of "the real patterns we see in the world", is no longer even a logical possibility, when those patterns manifest only a single bit of information; because the very concept of orthogonality, then becomes self-contradictory. There is nothing for a single bit, to be orthogonal to. That is why entanglement exists; You can never make uncorrelated measurements of two independent variables, when only one exists. When the information content drops below two bits, something strange, analogous to a "phase change", occurs in the mathematics (not physics) of multi-variable functions - like water freezing into ice - two or more frozen-together water molecules can no longer move independently - And neither can two or more, formerly independent variables, that have become "frozen-together" as the consequence of mathematical conditions, that result in only a single bit of information being manifested - within the entire entangled system.

Think of a test for "humanness". The condition of "being human" cannot be determined by measuring a single variable, like mass. Detecting such a condition, is a complex combination of many "entangled" variables - that yield a single (possibly erroneous) yes/no (single bit) answer to the question "Is there a thing, near the test setup, that matches the "entangled" condition for being human?" When that thing is also so "dirty" and "blurry" that nothing else, other than its "humanness" can ever be reliably detected, then you have just entered the twilight-zone, known as the quantum realm. That peculiar condition, is what Shannon's conception of information, is all about.

That said, I have no other comments.

Rob McEachern

@Robert: ""This latter, Ψ(U), can't describe a 'drug test' can it?" For that very reason, it also cannot describe anything else. In other words, it cannot even exist."

Your statement that a wave function of the universe "cannot even exist" is not a statement of fact though is it?

At most, your statement is a simple proposition regarding your own interpretation of the (im)possibility of 'wave function realism' that you might then argue for based on your ontological assumptions and various other definitions, like what you might mean by the term 'to exist' for example.

For me, 'existence' means actuality but that gets us back to the notion of potentiality, for only what is potentially actual can then become actual.

And Ψ(U) is an actual concept in quantum foundations concerning the whole universal set of potential phenomena. Actuality arises out of this potentiality, and constantly dissolves back into it as well. At least that's the premise.

Are there any Everettians or other wave function realists on this forum? It seems rather quiet here.

"At least that's the premise."

That's the problem.

"the theorems that failed to survive are ones that certainly served as apparent starting points for all theoretical developments, but only because they were thought to be so self-evident that it was usually considered unnecessary to mention them specifically, or they were completely forgotten." Max Planck

The EPR paradox and Schrodinger's Cat were meant to serve as Reductio ad absurdum warnings, that some truly fundamental premise of quantum theory must be false. That famous claim, has finally been demonstrated to be true.

"Your statement that a wave function of the universe "cannot even exist" is not a statement of fact though is it?" Unfortunately for existing quantum theory, it is, if by "wavefunction", you mean anything other than a computational device for predicting the results of "drug tests."

"Are there any Everettians or other wave function realists on this forum? It seems rather quiet here."

And it will eventually be getting a lot quieter in that regard, now that the false premises underlying all of quantum theory, have finally been identified. Dead man walking. And all those men are not happy about their fate. But that is why they were warned.

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Max Planck

Rob McEachern

@Robert, sorry but I find your claim that non-realist interpretations of Ψ, such as your 'drug test' notion, have "finally been demonstrated to be true", to be ludicrously unfounded. It's basically just a statement of your own faith based belief in whatever ontology you have assumed that then more or less logically upholds that belief.

And it's your ontology that is questionable, just like the rest of us. In philosophy we start with questions rather than absolute certitudes. The trick then is how far can you go in questioning your certainties?

You are free of course to keep believing in your certainty, but as far as I know the contemporary debates in quantum foundations are still ongoing precisely because there is a total lack of consensus, and empirical evidence, concerning the relation between our experience and what the wave function mathematically describes. This is an ongoing metaphysical debate and any belief that you might have somehow grasped the absolute truth of the matter is, frankly speaking, philosophically naive.

But you've made your point more or less clear: You do not believe in the 'existence' of a wave function of the universe because you assume a utilitarian concept of Ψ as a fundamental premise of your various arguments. Given that the very first sentence of this post assumes 'wavefunction realism' as a basis for its arguments then as I've already said, we can agree to disagree on our basic assumptions.

So thanks for the opportunity to work through some notions of information, potentiality, and actuality. If you have any further suggestions, criticisms or queries relating to the 10 points of this post concerning my proposed alternative model of reality, please feel free to join in!

Do you believe that wavefunctions can be used to compute the probability of finding some particular, real entity at some particular point, at some particular time, as is commonly believed?

If so, then how would you go about computing the probability of finding me, at some particular place and time? Let me be perfectly clear about what I am asking. I am not asking if you can use wavefunctions to determine the probability of finding some mathematical abstraction, such as my center-of-mass, at some given point, but of finding me myself, the real thing, at that point. And even if you did find something, at that point, what would ever induce you to believe that you had just found me, rather than my twin brother, with every last atom, exactly where it should be? How did you go about confirming my Identity as being absolutely identical to ME - down to the very last atom? Or do you believe that it is acceptable to simply assume in every instance, that the things you manage to detect, are absolutely identical to the things that you believe you have detected, so that there is never any need to confirm the identity of anything, ever?

As a philosopher, I am sure you are aware of the question debated by the ancient Greek philosophers "Can you find something, without knowing exactly what you are looking for?" That is the nature of the problem.

Rob McEachern

@Robert, thanks but I'm not interested in discussing your notion of identity, I'm much more interested in getting feedback on my 10 points I posted above. Which I would assume was at some point the purpose of this now apparently abandoned forum. You know, discussing other people's ideas as they post them.

So is this forum dead? I can't see much activity since 2017 or so. Do you know where the physicists went? Is there a more modern version of the FQXi forum somewhere?

"Do you know where the physicists went?" Apparently, the same place as all the soldiers...

"Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards every one..."

"It is enough to make poor William of Ockham turn in his grave... little appeal to professional scientists, whose instincts are to seek for a tight and economic understanding of the world. Very few of them indeed have espoused the Everett interpretation. It has, however, been more popular with what one might call the "gee-whiz" school of science popularizers, always out to stun the public with the weirdness of what they have to offer."

My, my, how the world has changed, since John Polkinghorne wrote those words a generation ago. Real physicists seem to have all died-off, like the dinosaurs, and the stunned public (now grown into "virtual" physicists, earnestly devoting themselves to studying the "gee-whiz" that so excited them in their youth) has inherited the earth... only to abandon it, flitting about, preferring to inhabit a metaphysical swampland they themselves created, from nothing more than one of their own quantum vacuum fluctuations, via an act of sheer will-power; Actuality arising from potentiality.

"Is there a more modern version of the FQXi forum somewhere?"

It would seem probable to some... in one of Everett's alternate universes.

Personally, I've been trying to find a less modern version, like back when theoretical physicists actually studied the properties of nature, rather than only studying the properties of their speculations. You have yet to perceive, that I have been referring to an actual, independently-replicated, quod erat demonstrandum, that has been viewed by thousands and refuted by none (silence speaks volumes); not just more of the same-old-same-old "gee-whiz" speculation.

Rob McEachern

@Robert, I take it you are the troll lurking under the bridge of this abandoned forum and you have no interest in actually engaging with my or anyone else's ideas except your own.

That's not a question just a statement of apparent fact.

I take it you can also not resist the urge to have the last reply, thus burying this and other threads in an inaccessible stream of your doctrinaire non sequiturs.

Oh and by 'modern forum' I meant in terms of software that allows ease of navigation, editing of posts and so on, as opposed to this tedious sub-forum of posts and buried replies going back to 2013 on just a single slow loading page. Have you tried accessing this on a mobile platform? Hopeless!

Given the amount of money they're disbursing in 2020 grants you'd think they might afford a moderated forum on a modern platform that would encourage discussion while stomping on trolls like yourself. Or are the moderators here just on holiday?

IS THERE ANYBODY HOME AT FQXi?

I envision myself more as a gadfly, than a troll; as a self-professed "itinerant philosopher", you ought to be cognizant of the distinction.

Moderated Forums? You mean like those of peer-reviewed physics journals, that provoked Julian Schwinger to declare "The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors' rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."? In the thirty years since that was written, the situation has only deteriorated further. Do you really suppose that the inhabitants of such a world, have any desire to "encourage discussion" between themselves, and the likes of either you or me?

"That's not a question just a statement of apparent fact."

I have said that "Your interests coincide with my own." You simply have yet to realize how that can possibly be true. Are you yourself so "philosophically naive" that you did not understand the notice at the top of this page? This page was created precisely to quarantine the likes of you and me, so that "real" physicists don't ever have to sully their shoes, while "stomping on trolls" like you and me.

"IS THERE ANYBODY HOME AT FQXi?" Just the likes of you and me. Real physicists are only to be found, "on holiday" at one of FQXi's "invitation only" conferences - free from all annoying philosophers, gadflys, trolls and all other manner of persona non grata. I sincerely do hope that I have not rained too hard on your parade. But perhaps you might now at least understand why this "abandoned forum", like all of fundamental physics, has come to exist in its present state. Oh and Welcome to the forum. Not much left to it these days, other than a few old gadflys, still trying to revive a moribund steed, known by the proud sobriquet "modern physics", back in its glory days. A few, as yet, still undeterred by the "hopeless" interface, now serving only to keep us at bay.

Rob McEachern