"I never said "reality is probabilistic". Seemingly you must consider that there are only 2 possible options for the nature of reality: probabilistic or 100% deterministic."

At its foundation, nature is one or the other, or your belief is logically inconsistent. The problem is one of cosmology; the initial condition either had 100% potential for every observed physical outcome, or a probabilistic structure of which the slightest interference predicts 'no determinism.' Classical probability (binary outcomes) only answers the question of existence/nonexistence, and existence implies the continuous function of binary probabilities from the initial condition.

"I might as well ask you : 'And your belief that reality is 100% deterministic is objectively based on' what experimental evidence?"

An expanding universe. Self limiting chaotic phenomena. Strong quantum correlations (and if Joy Christian is right, strong quantum correlations at every scale). Want more?

"Do you have anything to say about, or any ideas about, what it is that NUMBERS represent about the nature of physical reality, or are you a platonist?"

I think you don't understand what a Platonist is. The best two modern examples are Kurt Godel and Roger Penrose. A Platonist avers that mathematical structures live objectively in a world of their own, even if they have no relation to the physical world.

My personal view is closer to Max Tegmark's -- that coherent mathematical structures always describe some physical phenomenon, even if we do not recognize the utility; there are numerous examples, the most dramatic of which is Einstein's adoption of Riemannian geometry for general relativity.

In the science of physics, mathematics is the language that compactly symbolizes the phenomenon it corresponds to. We may get the description wrong, just as we do in natural language, in a statement whose syntax is correct while its meaning is wrong. For example, we can say "The moon shines black" is syntactically correct though the phenomenon is not witnessed in physical reality. That doesn't imply that the alphabet and the rules for making sense of its combinations are not objective. Same with our mathematical tools -- meaning precedes construction, if the construction describes something physical. Meaning is the product of a coherent mathematical theory.

You say "In the science of physics, mathematics is the language that compactly symbolizes the [physical] phenomenon it corresponds to.". But seemingly you have no idea what physical phenomenon might be compactly symbolized by a number in a physics mathematical equation. Numbers are a common everyday thing. If a view of reality is not able to explain numbers, then perhaps it is too superficial, or just plain wrong.

Re your belief that reality is 100% deterministic: even Joy Christian wouldn't claim he had evidence that the time and space parameters for every individual particle outcome are predictable beforehand.

If there were grey aliens made of dark matter abducting humans for their research, or alternatively if there were lifeforms made of quantum fields that were occasionally terrifying humans, the scientific community would be totally unaware of it. Atheists-skeptics are the snobby unimaginative branch of science who play around with trivial things, but then express disdain for very real phenomena. None of you are in search of truth. You are all guilty of protecting your reputation by calling grey aliens, spirits, ghosts, and all these things woo, when it is really scientific theorism that is woo, devoid of imagination, and does not fit with either established physics or the observations of millions of intelligent and reliable human beings. There are more reliable witnesses to ghosts and grey aliens than there are to super-strings, time travel and many-world interpretations combined.

Come into the light of enlightenment.

Who knows, you might have some fun if you try to reconcile UFO technology and ghosts with what we know about quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Maybe there is a way to apply top down engineering to a quantum system, quantum field theory and quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a correlations between two or more particles. Maybe there is a way to reinforce the entanglement, and then remove the particles. If it worked, you would be left with an invisible mesh that could be used as a template to organize new particles that it comes into contact with.

" ... seemingly you have no idea what physical phenomenon might be compactly symbolized by a number in a physics mathematical equation."

E = mc^2

"Numbers are a common everyday thing. If a view of reality is not able to explain numbers, then perhaps it is too superficial, or just plain wrong."

You have a quite innocent view of mathematics, of which 'number' is but a semantic element. What do you mean by number? Counting numbers? Rational numbers? Transcendental numbers? Complex numbers? R, C, O, H?

"Re your belief that reality is 100% deterministic: even Joy Christian wouldn't claim he had evidence that the time and space parameters for every individual particle outcome are predictable beforehand."

He does, however, have the measurement framework for a theory with potential to explain all quantum correlations. Do you understand what that means?

Thomas,

There is clearly no evidence that reality is 100% deterministic/classical: there are only theories and proposals for experiments that might result in such evidence, and unquestionably these experiments must be performed. However I think that there will be no such evidence: "spooky action at a distance" and other seemingly strange quantum mechanical outcomes are the true nature of reality. I think that these outcomes will never be tamed, but they will eventually have a better explanation. In any case, I will be interested to see the results of Jon Barrett and Matt Leifer's work (and hopefully Joy Christian will someday test his theory via experiment).

Re numbers:

The numbers found when nature is measured are some sort of ratio relating to the "measuring sticks" used. There are seemingly no questions about that aspect of these numbers.

If reality is 100% deterministic, the above numbers are seemingly ultimately derived from laws-of-nature and initial conditions. Law-of-nature relationships are represented by equations which may contain numbers e.g. a form of the Einstein field equations contains the numbers 2 and 8, and also the non-algebraic number pi. Initial conditions are represented by a number assigned to each parameter/category in the equations.

If reality is not 100% deterministic, then one implementation of this might consist of windows of opportunity where new information is injected into the system (by subjects), representable as numbers assigned to parameters/categories of information. These numbers are not derived from any laws-of-nature, and they are like a resetting of an initial condition for that parameter.

So what is the physical reality behind these two types of "initial condition" numbers, and what is the physical reality behind numbers like pi?

Lorraine

Hey, Lorraine, I'm all for you believing whatever you wish. I'm just trying to give you some facts to help inform your opinion.

You really need to know the difference between determinism and probabilism:

Determinism doesn't mean that every event can be predicted, and probabilism doesn't mean that no events can be predicted. This, however, has absolutely nothing to do with your idea of the role that numbers play, or don't play, in science.

You ask, "So what is the physical reality behind these two types of 'initial condition' numbers, and what is the physical reality behind numbers like pi?"

None. Numbers don't have physical reality. No pi in the sky.

Peter,

I agree. "the theory which they established aimed only to describe systematically the response of the apparatus".

Physicists could learn a lot about the nature of information and entropy, if they would study modern communication systems, starting with techniques such as Decision Feedback Equalization. Such techniques are the means by which modern communications systems remove "the response of the apparatus" as well as "interfering information, coming from sources of no interest", leaving behind only the information from the source of interest. This, and this alone, is what has made it possible to, for the first time in history, reliably recover information, at rates very near the Shannon Limit. One cannot get any better than that.

Rob McEachern

Even if the laws of physics are 100% deterministic, that does not mean that reality is. Deterministic laws are a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for reality to be deterministic.

In order for reality to be deterministic, all the initial conditions (positions, momentums etc.) must also be deterministic (pseudo random, rather than random). There is no evidence that that is the case. Indeed, the existence of free-will provides a good piece of evidence that it is not the case.

Rob McEachern

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Rob,

DFE means: "the distortion on a current pulse that was caused by previous pulses is subtracted". I see a main problem of theorists like Tom and many physicists already in their lacking readiness to accept that the distinction between earlier and later is more fundamental than their trust in a mathematically constructed world. We EEs don't operate with undirected arrows between boxes that symbolize transfer functions while theorists like Wheeler admit the wheel of history rotating back.

That's why I question Minkowski's spacetime and the necessity to integrate over future time too when analyzing past data.

Eckard Blumschein

Thomas,

What on earth is up with you? It's very obvious that, because of complexity, "Determinism doesn't mean that every event can be predicted"!! However, with the physical outcomes of quantum events, the question is whether the probabilistic outcomes are due to determinism+complexity or whether something else is happening. For close to 100 years physics has been struggling with this issue, because presumably if "something else is happening", it might mean that a different nature of reality would have to be posited.

Re numbers: I'm surprised that you have never noticed that THERE REALLY IS an issue with numbers.

Lorraine

Eckard,

You have hit one of the big nails, squarely on its head; "the necessity to integrate over future time too when analyzing past data."

I have pointed-out the problem with this previously, in the mathematical techniques at the foundation of QM, namely the use of Fourier Transforms, that integrate over all of time. How can one integrate over all of time, if one does not know the future?

Well, one can indeed know the future, for systems devoid of information, the very systems at the heart of classical physics. It is easy to predict the future of a conserved (constant) quantity, and it is easy to predict the future of a perfectly periodic function (idealized orbits). So, in those cases, one can indeed integrate over the future values, by integrating over the predictions.

Unfortunately, this does not work for unpredictable, high-information-content phenomenon, such as human observers. Unwittingly assuming that it does is THE problem. But this fact is not apparent in the Fourier transform formulation, and, consequently, has yet to be appreciated as a central problem in the mathematical formulation of QM, when it attempts to make claims about how observers behave and impact observable results..

Rob McEachern

Why quantum mechancs? We really do not know. As I have been studying this it appears that quantum mechanics is really a logical system of gates where there are certain topological properties to the lattice operations that deviate from Boolean logic. The two slit experiment is a sort of topological problem with loops that are not contractible to a point. There is homotopy associated with this. Well then why this? Why could not the foundations be and L^4 measure space instead of L^2, or why could it not have been ... , instead of this? The questions have no conceivable answer.

Quantum mechanics is completely deterministic as it is. Quantum mechanics predicts the evolution of probability amplitudes that sum into a wave function or state vector with complete determinism. That quantum mechanics is unitary is equivalent to saying it is deterministic. The probabilities emerge when one makes a measurement, for the modulus square of those amplitudes give the probability of a certain outcome. This is the bit that is not deterministic --- the measurement process. This forms the basis of the so called measurement problem.

I maintain that a quantum outcome is not objective, but is rather subjective. From the perspective of the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) a measurement outcome is a splitting of the world according to the amplitudes of the system. The reservoir of states in the measurement process form an eigenbasis corresponding to the entanglement with the system measured. This in a nutshell is the so called einselection mechanism, which is just a massive entanglement process. We can then tell how the outcomes emerge as classical-like probabilities. We can't however determine which outcome actually obtains. In a subjective perspective the observer is carried off into the various split worlds, and our conscious world line simply takes along one outcome. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon that generates this illusion. The illusion is carried off along the other eigenbranches of the world, but our particular conscious narrative does not include them. These are included on other conscious narratives or world lines.

Why quantum mechanics exists is somehow tied into the question of what is the relationship between mathematics and physics. Tegmark has a very speculative conjecture about this, but I am rather skeptical. I am not sure how one can determine if mathematics is an ontological aspect of physics. There is no mathematical proof of it, nor is there a prospect for some empirical verification of it. The idea is permanently a metaphysical conjecture that is hopelessly outside of both science and mathematics. The same of course holds for the converse of this which is for a Platonic reality or mathematics as an objective system outside of physical reality. This matter is extended further if consciousness is included as something fundamental. No matter which take you have on this the question or proposed ideas are metaphysical. So far there does not exist a decision procedure system for metaphysics.

In the end we are left with Garrison Keillor's take on this as "life's persistent questions." --- " In a city that knows how to keep its secrets, at the 12th floor of the Atlas building one man searches for answers to life's persistent questions; Guy Noir, private eye."

LC

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    Rob, LC,

    I guess Eddington was correct when stating: "experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."

    Maybe, the recently claimed at Havard evidence for the BB was premature? Maybe, at least a few of the unwelcome argument I uttered aren't unfounded? My primary concern is to possibly reveal very basic mistakes affecting the relationship between mathematics and physics.

    Yes Rob, application of Fourier transformation is to blame.

    "How can one integrate over all of time, if one does not know the future?" Heaviside's analytical continuation cheats us: The mirrored past is similar to but essentially different from the open future. I beg for getting aware of what we are doing.

    Yes LC, "That quantum mechanics is unitary is equivalent to saying it is deterministic". I see the property to be unitary closely related to the likewise unphysical ideal property to be infinite. While a point, a line, the number pi, etc. are strictly speaking just ideals they are nonetheless common prectice as to describe physical systems. Scruples a la Hjelmslev are unfounded. Moreover, history shows that even slightly dirty mathematics adopted from Leibniz, Cauchy, Dedekind, and Heaviside proved utterly useful. Quantum theories obviously led to valuable applications in contrast to SR which merely created paradoxes. Maybe, some oddities that occur with quantum theories will vanish when we accept that the real-valued cosine transformation may in principle fit better than the complex Fourier transformation.

    Eckard Blumschein

    Isn't it much simpler just to say that wave-functions are real things, and that they have energy states and momentum states? That way you don't have to split the universe into an infinite number of branches to represent the eigenstates. Isn't it easier just to say that wave-functions exist?

    As fun as a many world interpretation might be to some people, it would flagrantly violate conservation of energy if every universe in the branch is real and solid. For that reason, the MWI might be literally impossible.

    In contrast, if wave-functions are assumed to be real things, then there could be this nebulous aether of wave-functions that is completely undetectable, unpredictable and mysterious. Physicists will hate it. But it being very subtle, it also want cause any big problems for physicists to have to explain.

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    The second Law of Thermodynamics holds in a CLOSED system, which does not necessitate that universally spacetime is itself closed. Given the irrationality of pi, if we accept our mathematics to be true enough to reality, it is quite acceptable to conjecture that the only differernce between time and space to be that deficit of radial length resulting from the circumference of a sphere never quite being exactly proportional to any radii constructed to ascertain that a change in volume is physically uniform. If the elusive 'Quantum' realistically exists, it might be found in that relative difference. Energy could then be the creative result of such a physically coherent, yet distinct stress of spatial difference and the relative covariance would be the source of a continuous sustaining creation of energy. This is simply a matter of treating Energy rather than Time as emergent. It is a long way from the laboratory of Lavoisier in yesteryear, to the frontier of inflationary cosmology tomorrow. Bye, now. jrc

    Please forgive me for saying the obvious, but some of these explanations of reality sound like a mathematical snowstorm that doesn't actually mean anything. The best explanation for everything that we observe, the quantum fields, the Higgs fields, the encounters with ghosts, is that the quantum vacuum is made of wave-functions that really do exist in some ethereal way, and that the ghosts that people witness are probably real things.

    Wave functions are real things!!! That is the simplest and best explanation for quantum mechanics.

      I'm not the only one who thinks that wave functions are real things.

      http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/11/the-insanely-weird-quantum-wave-function-might-be-real-after-all/

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      Jason,

      "Wave functions are real things"

      I tend to agree, energetically of course. jrc