Why Quantum?

Hi Akinbo,

I extrapolated from the Higgs field that there is a range between particles and fields; I expect there to be more fields that we haven't discovered, with bosons that are even harder to detect (if not impossible). So in my view, reality is made out of particles and fields.

Now as far as ghosts are concerned, and the fact that nobody really knows for sure, I decided that the great cosmic answer should look like this. There is only one observer, one infinite observer, and that infinite observer is God. God creates universes and then wants to experience them by subdividing his consciousness into something that can incarnate (or reincarnate) into bodies, called souls. So you have a soul, you reincarnate, and you are part of this Infinite consciousness that we call God.

When a soul incarnates into a biological body, that soul takes on additional layers, like interfaces; think of a Russian doll. When we die, we're supposed to shed our astral body and go into the light. A ghost forgoes going into the light which results in not shedding the astral body (which experiences entropy). Ghosts will wander the lower astral plane in pursuit of whatever motivates that ghost. Sometimes they get stuck in old insane asylums, prisons, hospitals and often the residences where they lived when they were alive. Ghosts can sleep for decades until disturbed by the living. Ghosts can be male, female, human or other. Ghosts do not make babies because a ghost is just a soul that has not shed its astral body after death of the physical body. The soul evolves and grows by having experiences in the physical body; while biological evolution is driven by environmental pressures (survival, etc), the soul evolves by experiencing life.

The existence of a spirit world would suggest a second timeline. The first timeline is from the physical space-time continuum. When a soul passes into spirit, there would have to be another timeline for that, but details are sketchy at this time.

Thanks Jason for being forthright and honest in saying, "Now as far as ghosts are concerned, and the fact that nobody really knows for sure...". I believe in establishing truth with old method of reductio ad absurdum so I have more questions for you to enlighten my soul (I am happy to have one) and to prove and establish the existence of ghosts, spirits, etc.

"There is only one observer, one infinite observer, and that infinite observer is God. God creates universes and then wants to experience them"

What was God doing before creating the universe, and for how long was he doing that? Where was he living? Is there a place called heaven and is it in this universe or another one?

"Ghosts can sleep for decades until disturbed by the living. Ghosts can be male, female, human or other"

Do cockroaches, ants, bacteria have souls and ghosts? What of viruses and plants? I ask because I want to know whether they share in the sub-divisions of God's consciousness you mentioned since they are living things.

"and the entities that I've personally witnessed, and my fiance who was assaulted by a ghost (shoved down the stairs)"

Please convey my sympathy and hope no serious injuries? For a ghost to shove her, firstly it must be wicked and so capable of thinking and it must be able to exert force, and to do this from Newton's second and third laws, ghosts must have Mass. And what has mass must be matter. What sort of matter could this be, dark matter?

Regards,

Akinbo

One of the reasons why I like the ghost-spirit hypothesis is because it's the halfway point between "gross matter" and nothing at all. Spirit is like a nothingness that is too subtle to notice, yet it does something. An Infinite Consciousness might be able to imprint upon this nothingness a set of rules, release it, and watch what happens. As these creations become more complex, it might become harder to see what happens.

"What was God doing before creating the universe, and for how long was he doing that? Where was he living? Is there a place called heaven and is it in this universe or another one?"

I liked Dr Ebon Alexander's explanation (the neuroscientist who had the NDE experience), Dr. Ebon had experienced that God has created many universes, like grapes on a vine. I like that representation. If you were an Infinite Being, Creator of universes, wouldn't you create a heaven, a paradise for souls who love you and want to be with you? I think that God can manifest a heaven on earth, I think of legendary places like Shamballa and the book: Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East. It's very magical. Everlasting life is possible. As for time scales, I'm not sure how to estimate time beyond the space-time continuum.

"Do cockroaches, ants, bacteria have souls and ghosts? What of viruses and plants? I ask because I want to know whether they share in the sub-divisions of God's consciousness you mentioned since they are living things."

I've heard of the idea of a group soul where hives, ant hills, and other clusters of insects share a single soul; and that soul evolves over a long time, across many species and eventually incarnates as a human. But one must be careful about thinking about such things because you will have realizations that are troubling. I guess God wanted an adventure, and guess what! You're it. lol

"Please convey my sympathy and hope no serious injuries? For a ghost to shove her, firstly it must be wicked and so capable of thinking and it must be able to exert force, and to do this from Newton's second and third laws, ghosts must have Mass. And what has mass must be matter. What sort of matter could this be, dark matter?"

Apparently, she was able to made peace with this spirit until she eventually moved out. The way I understand it, a ghost can store energy in the energy eigenstates of a wave-function (created by the spirit). How much energy does it take to push someone off balance? 10 Newton-meters maybe? That energy can come from the victim, from cold spots, from batteries, from other sources. Just a passing thought, a ghost might be able to absorb a tiny amount of momentum from it's victim over a long time (a few hours maybe) and then give it back all at once. It's just an idea. Could dark matter be at play? I don't know. I had imagined a scenario where the grey aliens are dark matter lifeforms who are aware of us, but we're not aware of them. So they occasionally abduct us just to check us out, or perform bizarre science experiments on us. There are possibilities that are freakish that could actually be true. In fact, if they know about us, but we don't know about them (other than the crazies who say they've been abducted) that gives the grey aliens a significant advantage over us as play-things.

Akinbo,

By the way, given all of the unknowns that still cannot be resolved by physics/philosophy, I think that we should entertain ideas of God, ghosts and grey aliens because, first, it's fun. Second, there could be some truth to it, and third, it might lead to some interesting new ways of looking at the physics.

"Peter M, if a 'robust' reason for the belief that (conventional) quantum theory is 'inevitable' turns out to be an infinite dimension Hilbert space, it predicts its own death -- because then the problem will have reverted to an analytical solution." -Tom

I've said that I think that the best interpretation of quantum mechanics is that wave-functions really exist as a manifestation of spirit. If wave-functions can be higher dimensional objects inside of a Hilbert space than that means that wave-functions can be higher dimensional objects. That works for me. What's wrong with that?

Jason, what one means by "function" is that operation which transforms a set from one value into another. So there is a set of coordinate points describing dimension -- like the 6 points of 3 dimension discrete space and the 10 non-redundant points of 4 dimension continuous spacetime -- making the 16 points of the Minkowski space matrix which includes the redundant set. A continuous wave function in 4 dimensions accounts for the discretely measured result in 3 dimensions, evolving in time.

As even Einstein averred, there is nothing to prevent the extension of physical reality to higher dimensions than 4, " ... so long as there are good physical reasons to do so." That's what quantum field theory and its extradimensional extension, supersymmetric string theory, is all about.

The wave function of conventional quantum theory is a mathematical, probabilistic, function. Not physically real.

The continuous functions of classical physics assume the 4 dimension limit, such that all measurement results are described within that matrix as physically real results (Einstein ~ "All physics is local."). The probabilistic function of quantum mechanics assumes the 3 dimension limit, in which the classical observation is dependent on at least one result orthogonal to the observer -- therefore, for every local physically real measure, there is a "nonlocal" result that isn't real, and continuous time evolution drops out of the equations in favor of the state vector evolution.

So it doesn't matter whether one chooses a continuous model or a probabilistic model, the wave function cannot be physically real if the upper limit of all measurement functions is 4 dimensions.

To ask whether the wave function is physically real in dimensions > 4, however, still begs the question of locality; i.e., because a local observer is always positioned at the origin, or singularity -- therefore, only if the measure space is simply connected can we guarantee that all measurement results are local and the function is continuous. This is because the probabilistic functions of an n-dimension Hilbert space are all discrete rolls of the dice that beg a nonlocal result for every roll regardless of the dimensionality of the space, and the wave function collapses -- converges on -- the local result. On the other hand, a continuous wave function in any number of dimensions does not collapse, and so we get the quantum interpretation of Hugh Everett III -- wherein classical probability (event bifurcations) predicts an infinite set of "verses" independent of our own. This saves quantum theory from having to abandon the infinite-dimension Hilbert space formalism, in order to explain why all our results are local (classical) yet discontinuous with the classical measurement schema. It makes the quantum solution equal to the analytical solution; boundary conditions are randomly generated by event bifurcation, yet not continuous with the spacetime of our measure space.

If you want your ghosts to be both local and real, you should prefer the continuous functions of classical physics, in which all fields of the measure space affect, and are affected by, the states of all other fields -- continuously. This is what general relativity teaches us. Unfortunately, general relativity only applies "up to diffeomorphism," because boundary conditions for continuous physical functions have to be arbitrarily assigned. Therefore, one cannot be sure of a point of origin that satisfies locality because every origin satisfies locality -- there is no privileged observer frame, no dependence on coordinate geometry.

A model of locally real ghostly phenomena, therefore, is not differentiable from any other physics, i.e., phenomena that we can measure and for which we can deterministically record a position and describe an effect. So "ghostly action at a distance" is ruled out, meaning that no field is discretely disconnected from the simply connected classical field influences.

Conventional quantum theory rules out any classically real -- that is, local -- effects from ghosts, meaning disembodied spirits with causal abilities. What the conventional theory does allow, though, is far more problematic than interfering spirits; "action at a distance" avers that disconnected fields assert causal influence on local phenomena in a much more mystical way than can be imagined by the existence of ghosts.

Best,

Tom

Tom, excellent post!

Perhaps your most concisely worded explanation with great clarity, thank-you.

Would you elaborate a bit on how the two extra non-redundant points are obtained in 4 dimensions, to create 10 rather than 8 points? Thanks again. jrc

Tom,

Ghosts have been observed by multiple witnesses. They have attacked and made people sick, they have knocked people down, they have scratched and bitten people, they have appeared as an apparition, they have been caught on video, and they have proven there existence beyond explanations of "tricks of light". I don't think it's in our best interest to try to analytically understand ghosts until we have some data. If it were up to me, I would treat ghosts as a form of intelligence, and then build equipment that might attract ghosts. As silly as this sounds, I would build "ghost toys", toys that ghosts can play with. I want to treat ghosts as a virtual photon disturbance with an intelligence. If the ghosts exist as a virtual photon disturbance, then we should be able to build equipment that is sensitive to virtual photons. In other words, ghosts can create electric and magnetic fields. If they exist, then I want to invite them in and give them a chance to play with the equipment. The result will be that we will have evidence that the equipment is being acted upon by an invisible intelligence that can manifest electric and magnetic fields.

jrc,

Does your model contribute to FT in QM? As long as you didn't provide a paper with illustrations and equations, I cannot grasp your idea.

While off-topic, I would like to ask you what you meant with "... the point to be made is that ANY model that provides the mechanics which allows velocity to be measured from the waveform itself rather than an observer position can explain the constancy of light velocity and the null result of Michelson-Morely."

Incidentally, you are certainly aware that Michelson's 1881 Potsdam experiment was merely improved together with Morley in 1887 after essential but misleading criticism in Paris and by Lorentz. Weren't Michelson's discussions with Thomson more stimulating than Morley's technical support?

Eckard

Thanks, John R. To briefly explain, just as there are 6 coordinate points that fix the location of the observer's origin in 3 dimension space (up, down, left, right, forward, backward) -- and symmetry assures us that only 3 are required for an observer to describe a vector from the origin -- a 4 dimension set (Minkowski spacetime) requires 16 coordinate points of which 6 are the redundant points of 3 dimension space, leaving 10 of which 2 are vectors of opposite sign. That leaves 8 coordinate points to fix the origin with one vector reversible to the origin.

Clear as mud?

As applied to physics, the Minkowski formulation is conceptually easy and operationally hard -- the vector algebras (Hamilton's quaternions and Clifford algebra, Cayley-Dickson octonions, Hestenes' spacetime algebra) are operationally easy and conceptually hard. I mean, the linear and complete vector formulation of a continuous spacetime is much easier to calculate with, than one built of partial differential equations.

What we gain in simplicity, however, we lose in the possibility of analytic continuation to higher dimension physics. Because time is vectorized in the linear model with symmetric reversibility, there is no true scalar value -- or rather, the scalar is identical to the sum of vectors. In my own research, I characterize this result: "The four dimension horizon is identical to the ten dimension limit." There is no calculable scalar value to account for the evolution of the time parameter beyond the horizon of observability.

Though we often speak of "vector analysis" as if it were truly analytical, it is not. Higher dimension theories beyond the Euclidean R^3 have the advantage of explaining in a mathematically complete way, how hidden variables affect results in the continuous function physics that we experience. Whether these hidden variables can be explained as nonlocal, as in conventional string theory (which is extended from quantum field theory), or local, as allowed by Joy Christian's measurement framework, is the next big question.

Best,

Tom

Last was mine.

Jason,

I don't have the interest in ghosts that you do. I am only making the point that if such spirits exist, they require a continuous field model of physical reality. Evidence by itself doesn't mean anything to science, in the absence of a theory that incorporates it.

Best,

Tom

Thanks Tom,

I can follow the general idea, but I'm the muddy character here. Much food for thought, though I think it also illustrates why there is a growing appreciation for topology and its simple connectivity to make space algebraic. Not that I have yet gotten much of a handle on it, but it's fascinating in contemplating how given the finite ('astonishingly low' - Fitzgerald) velocity of physical communication possible, that space can be connected at all. I'm taking a little break at present. Somewhere I tripped on the Hopf Fibration and fell headlong into an impossible image of a one dimensional continuous line being turned inside out like a sweater sleeve that got caught on a cufflink. Wish me luck.

I'm not much for ghosts pushing fiancés down the stairs either, doesn't hold up in court. jrc

Tom,

It's OK not to be interested in ghosts or experiments performed to detect ghosts. They don't really lend themselves to mathematical descriptions.

John Cox,

"I'm not much for ghosts pushing fiancés down the stairs either, doesn't hold up in court. jrc "

A court of law would consult a physicist; but physicists require a theory along with the evidence. Therefore the physicist would call it "pure buncomb" because they don't have a theory. Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that it actually happened.

Eckard,

Despite any criticisms of Michelson's methodology, it was Maxwell and the refined apparatus results by Michelson and Morely that are pre-eminent is proving that light velocity is constant in ideally empty space. Any arguments to the contrary are just that, contrary to all physical chemistry and electronics.

My naïve model is purely classical so I doubt it would be applicable to Fourier Transformations applied to the purely mathematical probability wave function in QM. I only mentioned it because it incorporates a classical continuous function that resolves to a discrete particle, and as such contributes to why we have a universe that follows Quantum rules. If I were to publish I'd want some modern electronic media technical help, this computer world slays me.

My point about measuring from the waveform is simply this; ideally, empty space does not contain an observer, nor a position for an observer. If we accept M&M, we should look to the wavelength of light in empty space as the only location available to find a benchmark from which to measure its velocity. I hypothesized density varying directly with velocity. Another approach might be found in the rectified length of curvature in the sinusoidal curve in relation to Planck's Constant, or in relation to the proper time span of that wavelength. This is an admittedly empirical approach because we would firstly accept a priori that the velocity of light is constant in our arbitrary system of unit measures. And Einstein didn't establish that constancy, he worked from it. jrc

Yes we are that great.

1. America provides an amazingly good life for the ordinary guy.

2. America offers more opportunity and social mobility than any other

country, including the countries of Europe.

3. Work and trade are respectable in America, which is not true

elsewhere.

4. America has achieved greater social equality than any other society.

5. People live longer, fuller lives in America.

6. In America, the destiny of the young is not given to them but is

created by them.

7. America has gone further than any other society in establishing

equality of rights.

8. America has found a solution to the problem of religious and ethnic

conflict that continues to divide and terrorize much of the world.

9. America has the kindest, gentlest foreign policy of any great power in

world history.

10. America, the freest nation on earth, is also the most virtuous nation

on earth.

http://www.phillytalkradioonline.com/comment/10-great-things.html

But more to the point, America guarantees my right to free speech and freedom of religion, freedom of press. Also, without us, neutral nations Europe would be gobbled up by Muslim countries and other predatory nations.

New Physics! And strong support for the causal QM of my essay, well timed!

Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time?

The only thing that doesn't really do, and the key to everything, is show how 'non locality' can be produced classically. I recently lodged a short (2 page) 'summary' resume of the fuller derivation in my essay, consistent with the above, here;

Classical reproduction of quantum correlations.

Paradigm changes can't be instant but my original 2020 estimate now looks more realistic; 2020 Vision. A model of Discretion in Space' http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/803

The same electron (Compton/Raman) scattering mechanism at c in the electron C of M rest frame ('discrete field dynamics' or DFM) appears able to coherently rationalise both SR and QM without paradox to allow convergence (see the other 3 essays). If anybody can spot any apparent flaws do please flag them up. Thanks.

Could this be a red letter day for fqxi? Hmmm.

Peter

Eckard,

I should have added that I agree with you about the interpretation of Lorentz which in any which I have read, requires Lorentz invariance to mean that any acceleration to light velocity results in 'infinite mass'. I have long thought that an absurdity. My argument about energy density varying in direct proportion to velocity is that as density diminishes, greater applied energy would be necessary to maintain continued acceleration. Also, Lorentz can be treated as an exponential function within the limits of the mass-energy equivalence. With your practical knowledge in mathematics, is that defensible? I do not mean to question your arguments as to SR being unnecessary, I think you have a good point. I'm just looking at a rationale for Lorentz covariance rather than invariance. Thanks, jrc

It is simply impossible to say with certainty that a wavefunction exists or does not exist because of the very nature of language. Existence is a question of the nature of matter in either of the two realities of gravity and quantum universes. Without a complete and self consistent set of axioms for the universe that we have, you cannot state with certainty what existence really means and therefore whether a wavefunction exists or not. In other words, the patchwork of gravity and quantum action within mainstream science means that there are at least these two somewhat inconsistent meanings for existence of matter.

Does matter exist? Certainly. Does matter exist with both amplitude and phase? Once again, I say yes. Does a wavefunction represent the existence of such a matter wave? Most certainly.

You say that since there is no measure of a wavefunction, a wavefunction does not exist. But science infers that a great many things exist from just indirect evidence. There is no direct measure of a quark, but quarks exist and we cannot directly measure a Higg's boson but science still argues that it exists. And of course there is by definition no measure of a black hole, and yet science presumes black holes exist from much indirect evidence. Since we also have much indirect evidence for the existence of matter waves, it therefore seems useful to suppose that wavefunctions also exist and represent those matter waves.

In fact, it is very useful to use the concept of matter waves to represent the stuff that makes up objects. This is because matter waves not only make up atoms and molecules, the exchange of matter waves is the glue that bonds those matter particles together. Quantum electrodynamics associates vacuum oscillators with the propagation of light through space by exchange of photons. Light is a matter wave and that is self evident and light's movement occurs by a particle exchange that excites and deexcites those vacuum oscillators in space.

Correspondingly, matter waves evolve by a similar process of matter exchange with the same boson matter that is the basis of the entire universe. When a particle gains velocity, it gains mass and when a particle loses velocity, it loses mass. If a particle accelerates due to a force, the particle's mass evolves continuously. In fact, a particle's mass is then due to its absolute velocity, which is the speed of light and is the rate that the universe shrinks. Since the universe shrinks at the speed of light, light itself is stationary in the frame of reference of our shrinking universe of matter.

In other words, all motion of a particle is equivalent to a change in its mass. Everywhere in the universe is subject to acceleration due to gravity force, so it is therefore convenient to associate a boson matter exchange with a change in mass to describe both gravity and charge forces. The vector potential of Maxwell's equations becomes a matter acceleration and now is the unification that drives both gravity and charge forces.