The Case for Strong Emergence by Sabine Hossenfelder

Dear Sabine,

Nothing is basically wrong with reductionism and free will, provided we take to heart some provisions. I think all science begins with natural language (L), because he who does not know what distances, stones, rivers, weights, birds, stars, colors, seasons, etc. are cannot be a scientist. Scientists are people making claims (construct theories) beyond L, e.g. about H2O. In order not to remain castles in the air their theories must be grounded somewhere and the only place to ground them is in L. But L (to stay in the picture) is ignorant of atomic bonds, valences, molecular weights, joint electron orbits, etc. Great! Something has been ADDED to L Absolutely not contained in it - hence it cannot possibly be false. The problem begins only - as unfortunately is the rule - when scientists elevate H2O over L (known as epistemological inversion). What, however, shares no common measure can neither be represented by one of its parts nor can they be equated.

Et voilà! The problem of free will vanishes, because it is no point physics has anything to say about.

Heinrich

It is an interesting essay, and a good essay.

I am thinking, reading your essay, that if there are two fundamental theory, what is the most fundamental? If the results are the same, and there is a complete equivalence like the matrix mechanics and the Schrodinger wave formulation, then it could be the simplicity in use (the mathematical description and the calculations) that sorting the theories.

I am thinking that all the theories that have infinitesimal variation of the free parameters, or using additional infinitesimal terms, could be fundamental because of they are all equivalent in the experimental observations (with sufficiently small variations): the additional parameters are infinite, and the theories are infinite.

Regards

Domenico

Dear Dr Sabine Hossenfelder,

Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Dear Sabine,

I am happy that you still decided to particpate.

Your approach of "weak emergent" and "strong emergent" is refreshing so is the "resolution" of experiments and theories and useful for my own thinking.

Reductionist elementary particles do NOT influence your behaviour is a perception that I can underwrite a good example to underwrite this perception is the essay from Erik P. Hoel from last year about "Causal Emergence" link.

You are right when you say that many physicists don't accept strong emergence because it is incompatible with their ideas. I think mankind need an open mind and even has to accept to say "I don't know" (if you can then you start thinking and searching...)

"Stuff is made of smaller stuff". Indeed but it is possible to start at the bottom then we can conclude that this ultimate bottom is unknown, it is no longer "stuff". so Unknown-Quarks-Atoms-Chemicals-Cells-Organs-Agents. At each step there is a larger choice of possibilities. Each step is a threshold where new entities are emerging.

A correct candidate for a fundamental theory might not reveal itself at "first sight". That is the problem with science. It is like we thought for a long time that the sun turned around the earth, difficult mathematical structures were found to prove it because at first sight it "seemed" as if. Maybe the same for theoretical science in our era.....

Your example of the Chief of CERN is a nice one. My perception is that the agent (chief) is at a specific MOMENT in time where the whole block universe that he is part of (his emergent reality) takes his decision. At that very moment ALL emergent phenomena (including the bottom ones) are simultaneous "existing" and interacting.

(so all are shaking hands).

I am very happy with your conclusion Sabine, because it means that we can think FREE. I hope that you will find time to read and rate my essay where I am also trying to find a strong emergent model.

Best regards and good luck

Wilhelmus

Sabine,

Nicely argued. But do you feel a little like an accountant shuffling last years books into order while there's no CEO to advance the company? You may agree that many times in the past physicists have said "It's all sorted bar a bit of tidying up". Doesn't p.1 repeat that? Sure we need accountants but who if not you steers the ship (and where if not here) into the vast unknowns? Thanks for the free will, but I worry! Hasn't getting to locked into current theory always been the bane of advancing understanding?

So; "A physical theory is fundamental (without qualifier) if it is to best current knowledge". But we know most all are flawed or incomplete at best! Do you really assert we must settle for that as 'What is fundamental' in the universe? Who is who should then search the data and logic for that common solution to the hundreds of fundamental problems, anomalous findings & paradoxes? (and that's just in my own field!) Or, most importantly, who at very least glances at the work of those who do? certainly not fearful editors!

You argue well in your chosen domain, but if we need to advance understanding do you really believe that's that not really just a sideshow? ...Yes, I felt a bit disappointed, and worried. Can you convince me I shouldn't be?

But I have hope!! ..I hope you'll give your view (breaking stony silence) on large scale physical modelling of detection in QM, seeming to yield a classical solution (see also Declan Trail's essay for the code and plot).

Nicely written Sabine. I love your style and you met the scoring criteria well, but was it truly fundamental? Hmmm.

Very best.

Peter

Sabine,

What is will supposed to be free of? Don't most people, willfully and consciously, use their powers of concentration, from prayer in church, to learning in school, to re-enforce, extend and strengthen their prior beliefs and assumptions?

Now if you were to argue our actions are pre-determined, by deterministic laws of nature, then you would be wrong. While effect is determined by cause, the input into any event is only calculated by its occurrence. Time is not a set dimension along which we deterministically travel from past to future, but change turning future to past. As in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.

Time is an effect, similar to temperature. We only naively equate it with space because our thought process functions as flashes of cognition, so we think of it as linear sequence.

Events have to occur, in order to be determined. The past is an effect of the present. As Alan Watts pointed out, the boat creates the wake. The wake doesn't steer the boat.

Time is asymmetric because action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not both.

Different clocks can run at different rates because they are separate actions. A faster clock will use energy quicker, like an animal with faster metabolism will age quicker than one with a slower rate.

Hi Sabine I think you have written a strong, clearly written essay that is aligned with the programme of which the competition is a part. It's nice that, after further analysis of the problem, you end on an optimistic note rather than the opposite conclusion mid way.

There are a couple of places where I disagree with what is written.

1. "If a strongly emergent theory existed, it would imply that "more is different" as Anderson put it [4]. Your behavior, then, would not just be a consequence of the motion of the elementary particles that you are made of. It would mean that believing in free will would be compatible with particle physics. It would mean that reductionism is wrong." The last sentence is not a logical consequence of the earlier statements. Reductionism is looking at what something is and from that how it functions. That is the limit of its inquiry. It does not provide information about how it came to be if that is not via self assembly. Disassembling a clock and working out the function of the mechanism is not a failure because it does not explain how the parts came to be manufactured and how they came to be assembled. We know for the latter occurrences machines or people are needed. Human behaviour is not solely a function of the individual but the environment, and others. External and larger than the executive functioning of the brain alone. Emergence is looking at the how does this come to be not the detail of what is it and how it functions. I like the example of a bird's egg shell. yes the porous structure of calcium carbonate explains what it is and how it can allow case exchange , while keeping contamination out. It does not explain how it comes to be which requires the functioning reproductive anatomy of a bird. Termite mounds and nests of the Edible-nest swiftlet are other good examples of mom self assembling structures. The existence and form of which can not be explained from their constituents alone.

Reductionism and emergence have different explanatory power related to different kinds of inquiry and can not be said to fail when they do not do the job of the other.

2. "The argument - which I have made myself many times - goes like this. We know stuff is made of smaller stuff. We know this simply because it describes what we see. It's extremely well-established empirical knowledge and rather idiotic to deny. No one has managed to cut open a frog and not find atoms" S.H. No one has ever cut open a frog and found atoms unless this is a new meaning of found , where someone can be completely unaware of something and be said to have found it.The inside of the frog that is found is the same scale of resolution as the external surface of the frog that was seen. That the material aspect of the universe is packed inside itself not just at a singular scale or small range of resolution ( as our unaided eyes provide) is an important difference between products of signal processing and independently existing material things.

Kind regards Georgina

I should have said 'Reductionism is looking at what something is and from that how it functions. That is the limit of its inquiry. It does not provide information about how it came to be if that is not via self assembly or comes to be via influence of a cause or causes external to the system under consideration, (as for behaviour).'

Georgina

It is strange for a paper to claim free will can or does exist without defining exactly what free will is. If free will does not need a formal definition because it is self-evident, then its existence must also be self-evident. But I propose that free will is best defined in the context of psychology and neurology rather than physics and mathematics. I will give a practical example to show what free will is as commonly understood by the general population.

A person killed a victim. Is it murder or homicide? Since the latter carries a less severe punishment, the defense lawyer will try to prove it is homicide. One way is to prove that the person is insane. This will require many psychiatric tests and records of past tests that show the same result. What do these tests mean? The person cannot exercise free will because of mental disability.

From this example I give an operational definition of free will - human actions borne out of conscious and rational mental processes. Physicists immediately see a problem here. Molecules in the human brain cannot distinguish between conscious vs. subconscious, rational vs. irrational mental processes. (What color is bitter? It's a wrong question.) This is the futility of trying to explain free will in terms of elementary particles, reductionism and determinism. Despite this glaring contradiction, physicists nonetheless talk about free will without regard of how psychologists define it. It only proves that when physicists say free will, they must mean something else.

Physicists cannot explain how rational thoughts and consciousness can arise. This does not nullify the observations of rational thinking and consciousness by psychologists and neurologists. A chimp looking at the moon is perpetually puzzled what it is and how it came to be. Not knowing the answer to these deep questions, the chimp concluded the moon does not exist. How free will can arise in the human brain is a deep question. A not so deep question is why some physicists insist free will does not exist. My answer to the first is unknown. My answer to the second is chimp brain.

Dear Sabine,

yes, as far as I know the positional/functional neurological studies are still a matter of debate. Recently, The New York Review is publishing an interesting cycle of interviews with Riccardo Manzotti about it, which I quoted in my essay as well.

Anyway, I agree that it is reasonable to think that there are no reason to think that experience requires anything but normal (weakly emergent) physics, but it is also reasonable to suppose that this explanation can't talk about the qualia, as they are stated (also) by the famous essay by Thomas Nagel. It's possible that physics can explain brain states, but not qualia - there's a famous and funny mental experiment about it, the "philosophical zombies".

Thank you for your time, all the best,

Francesco

Dear Sabine,

birds do have patterns, but what is the pattern of a pattern? Isn't that the plight of theoretical physics and pattern generators like LHC, LIGO, etc.pp.

Don't bother to answer this post...

Heinrich

Sabine,

Yes. Knew what you meant. But you missed my question(s) (accidentally?); I think Physics IS important (I include my observational cosmology work, etc.) But are you really happy eschewing real 'advancement' to just shuffle past theories?

I escaped academia, earned more but do MORE research. Yet editors & arXiv increasingly don't like even logging my papers! Is that right when our big hopes to escape this theoretical wilderness (that's YOU Bee!) seem to have dismissed the need and given up! Not long ago ALL our eminent physicists insisted new approaches & breakthroughs were needed. Chatting with Milton Freeman recently almost NONE now came to mind. Have you now given up to?

I know there's a million weird ideas out there, but can you give advice for this scenario;; Say someone just beyond access to journals made a falsifiable theoretical discovery apparently unifying QM (a classical derivation) and Relativity, also resolving a tranche of other including astrophysical anomalous findings. When editors slam the door in fear without even looking.. WHO IS IT in the academic community that would deign to even look, and if correct, help develop it to publication. Is there anybody left who might? That's an important question!

So is there still any sense of responsibility in academia to help advance mankinds understanding rather than just careers when only academics can publish papers in accredited journals?

Do you not agree physics really could help with cures for cancer etc if we really try?

best

Peter

"Time Really Passes, Science Can't Deny That" is a recent essay by Nicolas Gisin (a household name perhaps) published in 2017 and posted on the arxiv [1602.01497]. The title is somehow misleading as he mostly deals with free will. A good deal of ingenuity appears to have been invested in avoiding to mention "Time and Free Will". This is actually the English title of once a famous book by Henri Bergson, the philosopher who dared to contradict Einstein. Of course he is largely forgotten and now people are rediscovering his ideas by their own means.

Dear Sabine,

1. Why is the argument against free will you sketch

in the abstract invalidated by strong emergence?

You just do not tell in the essay. This does not

make sense. Perhaps it would be best if you just

remove the remarks about free will (they appear anyway

only in the abstract and two very short sentence in the text),

and tell the reader what the essay is really about in the

abstract ;-).

2. Who else thought that "effective field theory is

a fool proof argument against strong emergence"?

You do not quote anybody... Is the essay in the

end characterized as:

"(only) I long believed in a mistaken argument

and here I tell you why I was wrong"?

sincerely

Maurice