Alternative Models of Reality

Steve Agnew

As near as I can discern, we are simply using different words to describe the same thing.

"The[re] is nothing even remotely approximating an instantaneous (digital) jump, at the output of the proper, lowpass, reconstruction filter.

Free will has nothing to do with the uncertainty principle. The principle is simply the limiting case of the Shannon Capacity Theorem."

There is no such thing as an instantaneous quantum jump either in time dependent quantum. You say free will is due to the Shannon Capacity theorem, which of course includes noise. Since the limiting noise is the uncertainty principle, I agree with everything you say, which is everything I said as well.

There is nothing to argue about.

Steve Agnew

I have a basic dualist approach that differentiates between objective and subjective knowledge.

"You argued:"Someone's knowledge is objective if it agrees with other people's knowledge". Cannot groups of people disagree with each other? To me there is only one objective reality and this isn't just a question of semantics."

There are many different objective realities, not just one. But we like the objective reality of science and measurement even though we still argue incessantly about it. To say there is only one objective reality, though, is a little bit of a reach.

There is only one subjective reality for each person, which is the reality of our senses in contact with the world. Ironically, this is the only true reality, but it is a reality that we can never truly know.

In the end, our objective reality is all about predicting the futures of objects and the better we do that, the better we survive. Agreeing on an objective reality is very useful for cooperative survival. The one true reality that is out there is the one that we sense but can never really know. The objective realities that we agree on with others are all convenient and useful, but not really true.

Eckard Blumschein

Steve A,

"The one true reality ... is the one that we ... never really know." Indeed, the conjecture of only one eventually correct interpretation of what we sense, measure, and predict is indispensable.

Your "many different objective realities" are acceptable in the sense of many pieces or aspects of that single ubiquitous reality which means the correctness of our trust in the mentioned basic conjecture in any case. In other words, even agnostics like Michelson and proponents of dualism like you must not tolerate destructive mysticism.

You seem to refer to "many different objective realities" as to "many claims to be in possession of correct interpretation" when at best only one can be true.

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Robert McEachern

Objective knowledge means the knowledge in question can be obtained directly from the object in question. For example, if the knowledge in question is about whether or not a mathematical theorem is true, then the answer to that question (the knowledge) can be obtained by examining the theorem itself (the object) and nothing else; it does not matter who created the theorem or who is doing the examination of the theorem.

As another example, consider two works of art, that appear to be absolutely identical, to all possible methods of examination; but one is an original known (via its provenance) to have been produced by a famous artist and the other is a forgery (also known via its provenance). The two have very different values attached to them. But, since there is no observable difference between the two objects, the difference in value is not due to any objective property - property of the objects per se. The difference is entirely due to the subjective valuations of the two different creators; something that cannot be determined by examining the objects.

Rob McEachern

Eckard Blumschein

Isn't an object's provenance to be understood as a property of the object per se too? I don't trust in Frege's use of Hume's principle. I am rather a fan of Wittgenstein.

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Robert McEachern

The provenance may not be colocated with the object, so it is a separate object. At best, it may be considered to be an extrinsic property of the object.

Rob McEachern

Eckard Blumschein

The provenance of something is the place that it originally came from. It is definitely located in the past. I disagree with Steve A's statement "we can know the present as a Fourier transform of the certain past and probable future." While I agree with Wittgenstein when he condemned set theory, Wittgenstein didn't reveal the weakness of block universe.

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Robert McEachern

I was using the word "provenance", as it is used in the art world; evidence that exists in the present, documenting the past ownership etc.

The problem with Steve's claim, is that different probable futures for our lives, would result in different lives at present. Any disparity between the computed "present" and the observed present, serves to indicate that the "probable future", was not so probable after all.

Rob McEachern

Eckard Blumschein

Steve A wrote: "Fourier transform in time involves ... the probability of many different futures".

I consider a Fourier transformation of a given real-valued function of time f(t) decomposing it into a sum of components with even and odd symmetry and representing their coefficients F(omega) as positive and negative frequencies in complex domain.

Given functions f(t) or F(omega) might be either actually measured or they are constructed ones that belong to deterministic models of reality. While I am not aware of more or less probable functions of time or frequency, they could be imaginable to me. However, I don't see any way to reasonable combine them with measured ones. So Steve (and Einstein) seem to be horribly wrong. Time has both a direction and a reference point at the now. Einstein wasn't in vain worried.

By the way, the word provenience (=origin) comes from Latin provenio (=occur). The question of (claimed last) ownership is secondary. Who does ultimately own the shares of a snowball system like Amazon?

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Steve Agnew

Boy, you guys really get into this stuff. The philosophy of dualism and subjective versus objective realities can get to be really tricky. Once again, you seem to use different words but we seem to mean the same thing about our objective reality. It is one that we can agree with others about, like the paintings you describe and the theorems.

Without common agreement among a lot of people on the meaning of measurement and quantification, there is no meaning for either paintings or theorems. You act like the common and agreed knowledge of painting and theorems does not contribute to their objective natures when you examine a painting or a theorem. If there is common agreement about the value of provenence, that too becomes objective. Provence is just as objective and measurable as any other property as far as I have ever been able to tell. Our feeling about the painting is subjective because it is ours alone and that feeling may or may not depend on provenance.

I have heard this example many times and am always surprised when it is used. There is no such thing as exact and duplicate in the universe and so the whole example is confusing since it does not explicitly include all of the other implicit people in the allegory. And provenance is a very objective and measurable property and if it is not, then there is really no point to the allegory at all.

The bottom line with FT's is all about both understanding the past and predicting the futures of objects. Since FT's help us better predict the future of an object, they are useful and I think that is exactly what they do.

Are there many possible futures for an object? That seems self evident to me...of course. Can we predict exactly which future will happen? No. Can we predict a very probable future? Usually, and those predictions are never exact but good enough to survive and dominate the planet with humanity.

I am at a loss to know what it is to disagree over. Where is the noise in the Shannon function coming from? Chaos or uncertainty?

Eckard Blumschein

Steve A wrote: "Provence is just as objective ..." Well, it is a territory in southern France.

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Georgina Woodward

Mmm ratatoille provencale.

A thought -what is the provenance of the manifestation of an object seen by an observer in his present? Is it not newly formed from the processing of sensory data and recognized by virtue of the stored synaptic arrangement allowing memory and hence association with like forms. Not pre-existent within a future self awaiting the present of the self under consideration to coincide with it.

And what is the provenance of the sensory data in the environment prior to receipt. Isn't the -signal- formed by the emission of light during the interaction with substantial matter, made of atoms, (the surface of which will be resembled by processing of the signal's data.) Rather than having a provenance that claims origination in the formation of the visible universe during Big Bang and inflation.

Prior to the interaction of the light with the substantial object the produced EM signal, one can conjecture, did not exist in the Object or visible universe. But after production of the signal there can be argument as to when it was produced relative to other events according to different observers. This allows non simultaneity of events but does not require a block time universe.

The world is always moving and as a result the Earth is moving away from the distant observed past (seen in the observer's present) We are always looking at a construct that has more distant manifestations also being older due to signal transmission delay and all semblance of former configurations. Like looking out of the rear view window of a car. We can never see ahead into the future, watching the future approach but always see 'the past' receding. Thus expansion of the visible universe seems a product of continual motion of the observer within a data pool from which manifestations of former arrangements can be produced and not necessarily product of an original omni-creative event.

Robert McEachern

Steve wrote:

"You act like the common and agreed knowledge of painting and theorems does not contribute to their objective natures when you examine a painting or a theorem."

It does not contribute to their objective nature. It contributes to their subjective nature. Objective means the "same for everyone" - even aliens that have no knowledge of the cultural significance that everyone on earth happens to attach to some symbol in a painting.

Objectivity demands universal agreement, not just "common" or majority agreement.

"Without common agreement among a lot of people on the meaning of measurement and quantification, there is no meaning for either paintings or theorems."

There does not need to be any such agreement a priori. That is what relativity theory is all about. You can measure things any subjective way you want. But you cannot compare your measurements, directly, to any other measurements, that used a different subjective system; all subjective measures have to be transformed (after the fact) to a "common" reference (not the same as an objective reference).

"The bottom line with FT's is all about both understanding the past and predicting the futures of objects." FT's are all about exploiting the mathematical (not quantum mechanical) principle of superposition, in order to solve differential equations. It is one thing to say FTs are useful for solving equations used by physicists. But it is quite another to say that reality is a FT (i.e. superposition).

"Where is the noise in the Shannon function coming from? Chaos or uncertainty?"

The uncertainty principle is simply a peculiar way of stating the limiting case of the Shannon Capacity theorem; The absolute limit on the minimum number of bits of information, that can ever be recovered from a measurement, is identically equal to one. (That is the uncertainty principle - it has nothing to do with "uncertainty".) Any fewer and you have not made a measurement containing information. Any more, and it is not the minimum.

This minimum corresponds to measuring a wave-function that is so short and so band-limited, that there is no possibility of ever obtaining more than one independent measurement - any additional measurements will be entirely correlated (dependent) with the one independent measurement. If this one independent measurement has only one significant bit (due to "noise" inherent in the wave-function itself (the noise is an unavoidable result of the process that created the wave-function, i.e., if there can be no wave-function, without the noise), then, as far as the wave-function's information content is concerned, the entire thing consists of a single, one-bit sample. That is the uncertainty principle.

Rob McEachern

[deleted]

Thank you Rob for some clarifications and largely sharing my view. What about wave functions of time, I would like you to help me out.

Is it correct if I question the use of a symmetrical with respect to zero Gauss distribution in terms of time because it obviously contradicts to causality which I understand as the direction from past to future and the logically belonging actual border the "now" between them?

I don't have any problem with such bilateral Gauss distribution extending between minus infinity and plus infinity in terms of frequency since the complex Fourier transformation of an analytically continued unilateral function of time yields mirror-symmetrical negative as well as positive frequencies.

Incidentally, I maintain that superposition of cosines functions provides in principle an equivalent to the superposition of sines and cosines result except for the option and necessity of an arbitrary shift. Even if I am not yet sure whether ++++ instead of -+++ is correct, I don't see the matter a trivial one.

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Steve Agnew

Exactly. This is why objective and subjective terminology can be really tricky.

Is provenance a subjective feeling that is ours alone or is provenance an objective value that other people can then agree to pay. It appears that the term is used in both subjective and objective nuances.

Two electrons from different sources are identical, but if the electrons can have very different costs to produce. An electron that comes from Picasso would presumably be worth much more to someone than an electron that comes from me, that is for sure. Is that a subjective or objective value?

The definition of subjective as due to individual feeling and objective as that which many people agree to much more useful than the allegory about the provenance of a painting...

...and the province of Provence is a very pleasant province of France...I especially like Aix, but Avignon and Marseille are also nice and the Roman amphitheatre in Nimes is close by as well, but just outside of Provence.

Eckard Blumschein

Steve A,

When Dr. Crowell wrote "Einstein's anus mirabilis", he didn't know the meaning of anus. I was sure you are familiar with the meaning of Provence. I just was short of time. Please accept my apology.

What about the meaning of provenience (= origin, occurrence) I would like to distinguish between objects that were definitely created for instance by a painter and objects without the scientifically reasonable possibility of attribution to an act of creation, e.g. mankind. While Rob's understanding is certainly the typical one, I intended to remind of the wider meaning because I am arguing that anything somehow originates from real processes in the past.

I agree on that people tend to blur the meaning of notions. You might be aware of how generously altruists in Germany and Sweden interpret the notion refugee. Those who fled from boms in Syria were genuine refugees inside Syria and also in Turkey where their life was safe, they got refuge even if they were tempted to see a better perspective as asylum seekers elsewhere. Some of those who were hoping for a better life stopped a train in Germany that was provided for them as asylum seekers. They pulled the emergency brake in order to escape expected unpleasant asylum conditions in Saxony-Anhalt and to get illegal instead. They were again genuine fugitives, however in the sense of escaper.

In an other case, police forcefully dispersed a sitting blockade of protesters against the prepared use of a particular building for asylum seekers. When the "refugees" came, they refused accepting the building. It was not good enough for them.

Refugees welcome. We will manage to fulfill the dreams of millions of employment seekers. Will we? America seems to be ready to absorb up to 10,000 from Syria after careful time-consuming check for possible terrorists among them.

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Robert McEachern

Eckard,

The reason I do not share your concern about the use of a "Gauss distribution in terms of time", is because, being a pragmatist, I always envision a truncated version of the infinite function. The truncated version may accurately describe observations; what happens to the "tails" of the distribution, lost in the noise, has little empirical significance.

There are many orthogonal functions, including polynomials that can be used to describe data as a "superposition" of basis functions. To me, the choice of complex exponentials, used within Fourier Transforms, is simply a matter of convenience. The problem comes when one presupposes that there is more to it than that. In other words, when one presupposes that the superposition being used to conveniently describe a phenomenon, actually exists as a real phenomenon in and of itself.

As I have stated previously, confusing the properties of a description of a phenomenon, with the properties of the phenomenon itself, is the source of a great deal of the paradoxical "interpretations" in physics.

Rob McEachern

Steve Agnew

Common complementary words can indeed have blurred meaning and sometimes the meanings seem to reverse. The meaning of intensive versus extensive is opposite between philosophy and thermo, for example.

To define objective as that reality to which everyone one agrees would seem problematic. I simply do not know of anything that everyone would agree is true and so that would mean that there is no objective reality. Once again, these words are very slippery and must be used with care.

Allegories that show art as an expression of feeling versus art as a market commodity seem quite clear to me and there is subjective feeling art along with art's objective value. But there are two distinct ways we look at all objects; as we objectively agree with others (but not everyone) the way objects really are and as we subjectively feel ourselves about objects. As far as art communicates feeling, it is subjective. As soon as art becomes a commodity, though, it becomes objective.

The only reason to represent objects at all, either objectively or subjectively, is to predict their futures. To me, the only difference between a convenient representation of an object as a superposition of some kind and the real nature of that object is in how we happen to feel about the object, not in any finite infinity. There is no way that everyone or even very many people will ever agree about the real nature of any object.

For goodness sake, science cannot even agree within itself about the real nature of an object. Therefore, science is only about representation and prediction of object action. Feeling, ironically, is the only way that we are even very close to knowing anything like a true reality for an object. However, it is also true that we simply cannot know everything about our feelings and therefore there are things about reality that are unknowable.

The subjectivity of art, since it addresses feeling, is ironically much closer to the true reality of an object than the ever more useful and objective methods of science.

Eckard Blumschein

Steve A,

I don't see serious objections to what I wrote on Aug. 20. You need not invoke e.g. "complementary words", "finite infinity" and the question of "the real nature of any object" as to take either Shannon's or Wheeler's position.

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Eckard Blumschein

Rob,

You got my concern, and I share your pragmatism. I also don't see questions concerning the tail, non-causal theories, etc. as reasons to abandon FT. Maybe, you heard of Nimtz who claimed having measured propagation of signals with a speed in excess of c. Others are still offering back-propagation in physical reality, and various increasingly exotic and even irrefutable models of the world.

I was facing distrust when I uttered my suspicion that unwarranted generalization of approximately correct description like FT might be to blame for such strange "phenomena".

What about the tail of Gauss' bell-shape, I already gave an answer myself in my IEEE paper: The tail can be mirrored at the now and either added to or subtracted from the existing part of the bell-shape. You know, there are either Neumann or Dirichlet (?) boundary conditions. Certainly, the now is a boundary.

Which boundary condition applies and why?

I am still looking for what led to ict and ih_bar. What about ict, Poincaré used +++- years before Minkowski. Did Jackson's textbook give an explanation and possibly a hint to Lorentz who came up with local time or to someone else?

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