Rescuing Reality

Some things are much easier to define by what they are not, than by what they are. Scientific theories, for example, cannot be proven or verified under any circumstance - later observations may necessitate revisions. But they can be falsified. And so can their interpretations. The long-standing claim that no classical system can reproduce Bell-like correlations has now been falsified. See the link at the top of this page; note also that there is no reference to any physical laws at all, either quantum or classical - it is pure math. As I noted in a FQXI essay contest several years ago, physicists have been mistaking the properties of the mathematical symbology that they use to describe reality, for properties of "physical reality itself" for a long time.

As for what exists, as Descartes noted centuries ago, the only thing that we know exists, with certainty, is our own thoughts. Hence, applying the point made above, "physical reality" might be best defined as that which exists, independently of our own thought.

Rob McEachern

There is no "filtering out" in the Bell tests. Every particle that is ever detected is detected. The detection is the measurement. Where there has been no detection, there can be no measurement.

Rob McEachern

What "exists, independently of our own thought" is, most obviously, the set of rules governing those experiences. There's an independent framework to our reality in terms of what can and can't happen. There is consciousness, there is experience, there are laws governing that experience. I don't recall making those laws or specifying the initial conditions, so I regard them as existing independently.

But to me the word "physical" adds nothing to the discussion, it's an empty concept, it's just sounds in the air. What exists between observations is apparently wave function, a probability distribution of what those observations might turn out to be. It makes little sense to debate whether it's "physical"; we might as well say it's "divine". Physicists would find the latter claim meaningless and unscientific, but they don't apply the same skepticism to the former.

Robert, sorry for being unclear once again. My second paragraph was just about polarizers not Bell's tests.

The polarizer is interesting because it is both providing a selection and a provocation, it seems to me. By provocation I mean it is inciting a response rather than being inconsequential inert measuring apparatus.

Hi Jim ,

you mention thought, experience, consciousness but you don't mention the thinker or any other material thing,the necessary "Beables". There cannot just be the measurement information without the measuring apparatus and its actual settings. There cannot be a thinking, experiencing, conscious observer providing that (output)information without the beable apparatus that perpetuates him/her/it's function/ viability (I mean a working body). Physical is perhaps too broad as it refers to both existing and seen things. But it seems to me to distinguish between the theoretical and the actual. Beable is a good word though it applies not just to material objects but also things like the settings of apparatus. Not the measurable but still an important, not irrelevant part of an experiment.

Jim,

The debate is only indirectly about if something "physical" exists. A physical cause for the observed behavior exists, by assumption (it is assumed there is no divine intervention etc.) The debate is about what "causes" the observed behavior. Is a wave-function causing it, or, by using math-identities, can the wave-function be totally rearranged, so as to completely disappear from the equation, thus leading one to reinterpret the equations as having a completely different, cause. I vote for the latter: it has already been done - the reinterpreted equation has no wave-function in it at all - it describes a histogram, which is why the whole process results in a probability distribution. Consequently, there is no reason to suppose that wave-functions are any more physical than unicorns - they exist - but only as conceptions within our thoughts. Being based on a math-identity, the wave-functions necessarily yield the identical result as the histogram - but provide only an absurd interpretation of the cause.

In this sense, "wave-function" is a term that is no different than "dark matter"; it is merely the name for an unknown cause, for a known behavior - the probabilistic behavior of a histogram process/operation.

Rob McEachern

I wasn't trying to present my inventory of what exists. Clearly I exist, my perceptions and observations exist, some framework of law, possibility and initial conditions exists. These things make up reality.

My intent was to try and separate the words "exist" and "physical"; one has meaning, the other does not. It's true that definitions of both are circular, but "exist" has intuitive meaning on which we all must to some extent agree. "Physical", in my opinion, no longer does.

To be fair, the word "physical" doesn't appear in this article, but it does present these ideas as a way to restore "realism". And I think in this context, realism implies "physicality" which I'm asserting is just a redundant word, not a meaningful concept.

Clearly things like thoughts and numbers exist. But if the sky and the earth exist, they are clearly a different type of thing than "insubstantial" thoughts and numbers. So what would you call such "substantial" things, if not "physical"? Realism and physicality are not the same concept. The laws of physics do not apply to numbers or thoughts or ghosts, but they do apply to the substances making up the earth and sky etc. "Rescuing Reality" is about identifying "substantial" rather than "insubstantial" (mental or spiritual etc.) causes for the behaviors of observed "substances".

Bear in mind that the etymology of the word "physical", derives from terms meaning "of or pertaining to material nature". Consequently, if one believes in things like Platonic forms and supernatural entities (as most early scientists did), then material nature does not encompass all that exists.

Rob McEachern

Robert,

If I were to continue in this vein I'd feel like I was hijacking the discussion thread and moving too far away from the original article. From this point forward we'd really be discussing idealism vs. materialism and my point of view is basically that of George Berkeley. In my dreams, I'm his disciple and interpreter for the 21st century.

Being seen is one of the criteria that can be used to say something is physical. However that definition does not take into account the sensory process. Both information source and observed output are actual' existings/happenings'and not merely theoretical. Both can be included as physical and may be usefully differentiated as physical actualisations and physical manifestations.

Tom,

Attraction as well as repulsion are mutual phenomena. That's why I cannot imagine unilateral propagation of them like propagation of light. Steve A's biphotonic argument sounds appealing to me.

Elsewhere I found an other possibly good idea of him concerning decay.

Did you deal with it? Did you deal with Rob's opinion concerning entanglement?

Admittedly I didn't read all postings, and I am still suspecting that phase in QM might be elated to a mathematical artifact of complex representation. Nature hardly exhibits perfect mirror symmetries.

Elsewhere I am waiting for your reply concerning my Fig. 1. While the ordinary time scale is best suited for ubiquitous not yet local comparison, the scale of elapsed time is the natural one for local description.

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Tom,

Hopefully you didn't overlook my questions.

Considering retrocausality one more unnecessary attempt to rescue silly speculations, I quote Jim: "initial conditions exists". Do initial conditions really exist on the same level as do observable physical quantities? Definitely not. Rob is correct. Someone who used to operate with initioal conditions knows that they are arbitrarily chosen starting points of mathematical models. Strictly speaking, there are in reality no starting points. Adam and Eve are fairy tales.

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I think Berkeley's ideas on perception were interesting in their time. But he overlooked the same minimalist case being overlooked by today's physicists: if there is only a single bit of information present, to ever be perceived within something, do you really think you can form multiple, independent perceptions of it? Such a minimal perception only requires a minimal mind (no mind at all) in order to perceive it - simply behaving as if it even exists (exhibiting any behavior at all, even just being deflected by its presence), is all that it takes. If you cannot detect that a substance even exists, then phenomenon like "quantum tunneling" right through it, is not only possible, but inevitable.

By the way, are you familiar with the Closer To Truth website? There are a lot of interesting philosophical interviews, in addition to scientific ones.

Rob McEachern

Yes I've seen the Closer To The Truth site. My initial impression was one of yet another attempt to sell the public on the view that science and traditional (i.e. Christian) religion are somehow on an equal basis and that some sort of amalgam is the way forward. I don't agree.

Forgive me if I am missing something subtle here but it seems as if this article is presenting Leifer's idea thus:

Quantum entanglement violates local realism, as it appears to require faster-than-light messaging. Rather than accept the non locality required (and mathematically verified by Bell's theorem), let us rescue local realism by invoking backwards in time messaging. The obvious problem is that backwards in time messaging is also prohibited in a local (material) framework. Photons, or any other kind of material medium, do not travel backwards in time. So a quantum experiment in which the result is achieved via backwards in time is just as nonlocal as one achieved by FTL messaging.

Seems like yet another attempt to sidestep quantum non locality, and not a very sophisticated one at that.

Jack Sarfatti,

From my message above: "Which kind of time is involved in your view of 'timelike'? In case there is any uncertainty about what I mean by 'unique fundamental time', it is not a measure of object activity. The unit of second does not measure it. The unit of second is a measure of object activity. It is defined as such. My reason for asking this question is that I find [theoretical] physicists' claims that a measure of object activity is the property of time, as being empirically unsupportable. The empirical evidence for object activity contains an indefinable property of time as part of its basis. What time is your time?"

What kind of time are you using when you say: "FTL violates relativity. Back From The Future does not." Can you please give your definition of time, and, compare your definition of time with your understanding of the continued indefinable status of time as a property of empirical evidence? Thank you.

Lots of people have missed something rather subtle. Einstein was correct - "Subtle is the Lord." Bell's Theorem is based on a well-known assumption. That assumption has now been demonstrated to be false - and demonstrated the old-fashioned way - by actually constructing a simple, classical system that produces the same correlations as the so-called Quantum Correlations. See the link at the top of this page.

Rob McEachern

This is a very subtle point indeed. The mistake is in the presumption of instantaneous time, which is a useful but ultimately limited approximation. Time only emerges from action, not the other way around, and so time really does not exist independent of the matter and action from which it emerges. Since actions are finite, moments are also finite.

Action is what transmits information and action is limited to something that science calls the speed of light in space. However, quantum phase is also a part of action as well and so entanglement or phase correlation is a part of quantum but not classical action. It is therefore the emergences of both time and space from the actions of matter that is what orders the universe and limits information transfer. Although photon transmission through space is a very useful approximation of reality, it is just an approximation.

Thus it is the very words that science uses like quantum jump or simultaneous or local that are the very impediments for understanding the way the universe works.

Gavin William Rowland,

That's sure what I got out of the article. I'm not a mathematician or a physicist, so I'm simply left wondering: what could backwards in time "messaging" even mean, when the concepts of "sending a message" or "affecting" imply causality, an interval of time, a now-and-then sequence? If you simply gut the meaning of those words and can only show me a page of incomprehensible math, I will not feel that realism is being restored. To be fair, I'd like to hear what the people working on this concept might try to offer in the way of a natural-language explanation.