Thanks Tom.

I would characterise my strategy as extending and complimenting Bell's hidden variable theory approach because his indirect assumptions preclude certain physical possibilities. His main target seemed to be the EPR desire to banish probabilities from physics and restore determinism. My hidden propagator dynamics approach reaches exactly the same conclusion on this point - determinism in experimental predictions is gone forever. I don't have any problem with what Bell did; the issue is that his conclusion doesn't have the status of universal generality claimed for it - it is on this that we agree.

My HPD approach extends Bell's analysis in a new and interesting way that leads to inevitable conclusions when the logic is followed in physics. My intention was to reach for those conclusions, of which one is that a "unified theory" is inevitably extra-dimensional. The other big conclusion that I didn't have room to discuss in my essay is to do with the nature of locality in underlying reality and experimental reality.

All the best

Michael

Michel

Unfortunately the essay length restriction prevented me from getting to the issue of locality, which is that causal propagation (i.e. less than/equal c) in underlying reality doesn't necessarily always result in time-like separation of experimentally measured events. In empty space, it does necessarily follow. But that is one of my points - the space of a spin singlet is not empty. In physics, SU(2) is the rotation group of physically linked objects. A non-quantum theory origin for physical objects with SU(2) rotation group is as spatial topological defects in a higher dimensional space, where the physical linkage between the objects is through the higher dimensional space. In 3+1 dimensions the space around such objects will have a characteristic feature that alters the relationship between causal propagation and space-time separation - namely the signature of the space-time metric changes sign (see Kerr metric).

After the HPD section I then discuss the form the HPD theory would have to take in order to reproduce other experimental results: namely that a particle would have to be described as a self-referential particle reaction network in underlying reality. For the scenario of topological defect/antidefect pairs that all possess a region of space-time where the sign of the temporal part of the metric changes sign, this would result in a difference in how locality in underlying reality looks in experimental reality. If you add up a path of causal propagation that goes through equal paths in space-time where the sign of the temporal part of the metric is +1 and -1, then the result is a space-time separation of simultaneity between the beginning and end of the path. Thus strictly causal propagation in underlying reality can lead to apparent simultaneity in experimental reality. This is what underlies the locality issues with quantum theory, where we cross over between the underlying causal reality and the world of experimental measurements.

This is conceptually the tricky bit, and could fill a FQXi essay itself. With this last feature, a HPD theory will reproduce all the features of quantum theory. The point I have been making in my 2012 FQXi essay, Agent Physics and this paper is that quantum theory is inevitably how you have to describe the underlying physics for the purposes of experimental predictions in physics.

Michael

Dear Chidi

We have a fundamentally different metaphysical view of reality: maybe the difference between physics and philosophy of physics. In my essay I take the physics of the running coupling constants and the relations between the physical constants h-bar, c and G at face value as saying there is new physics on the Planck scale. Since the Planck time is far less than the interaction time of any experimental measurement, we have the condition that there is effectively an underlying reality that happens on a scale too small and fast to be measured - thus our experimental reality is not directly measuring underlying reality. So my distinction is a conclusion of the physics realism view that there is such a thing as physical reality - independent of our definitions and observations of it - and we measure it: underlying reality is reality, we just don't see it directly as it is.

Michael

Dear Michael,

Thank you, I cannot escape understanding your 2012 essay and other writings from you. I like eccentric ideas as soon as I consider them scientifically sound. Then "it is the rule of the game" I will try to be honest in rating your essay.

Best regards,

Michel

21 days later

Dear Michael,

I think Newton was wrong about abstract gravity; Einstein was wrong about abstract space/time, and Hawking was wrong about the explosive capability of NOTHING.

All I ask is that you give my essay WHY THE REAL UNIVERSE IS NOT MATHEMATICAL a fair reading and that you allow me to answer any objections you may leave in my comment box about it.

Joe Fisher

5 days later

At it its core, math is about numbers. Natural number arises from counting orders and naming convention for the uniqueness of a places in a sequence. In that sense, the physical world is a book written in natural numbers.

Using an analogy, the English alphabet has 26 letters, and with the alphabet infinite books can be written. We examine the books and find that each book consists at least one of the five vowels, and each word is less than 100 letters long, and so forth.

We are puzzled by how a random book can be that way. But need not be so, if we realize that the rule of writing a book is quite simple although the end product is somewhat complex. We start with a letter, then a word, and then a passage, a chapter and so on. Each step has some simple but irreducible rules. This process masks the simple relationship between a book and the alphabet, if we simple look at them without the steps in between.

rujing_tang at yahoo com

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