The Case for Strong Emergence by Sabine Hossenfelder

You are being unfair to Sabine and physicists in general, Peter. The system is far from being perfect, and our knowledge is limited, but it is completely not true that physicists are accountants "shuffling last years books into order", "eschewing real 'advancement' to just shuffle past theories". We know very well what we know and what we don't know. I can understand your frustration, and why it would resonate to other "outsiders", but it is just not true that the doors are locked for them.

I know because it happened to me. My first PhD advisor was very happy to have me, but he got angry when I showed him my papers, and he didn't even read them because I didn't work at his problems. I understand him, he wanted me to follow the "safe" path, but I didn't care, so I left and stayed without advisor for 2 years. Without any support, without mentioning the affiliation in some cases, I continued. I put my articles online, and got favorable emails from a few experts in the field, and invitations to some great conferences. I got my first job invitation at a great institute before my first paper was accepted, even if they thought that I was unaffiliated. With publications and the thesis written, I could find a new advisor and get my PhD. Before getting my PhD I already had 10 publications in peer reviewed ISI journals, single author, and without any support. This simply shows that the system is open to the outsiders, you can publish even without PhD. And none of my articles is in mainstream approaches, if you think that this is why they accepted them. I work at my own projects, even if this means more difficulties and less financial support. I am aware that only a few experts see me as more than a minor league player, but I play by my own rules. And I am not a unique case, many articles are published by people who left academia. The system may be imperfect, but if you have viable ideas, you work very hard to formulate them well, both mathematically and physically, and obtain relevant results, then the doors are open. I hope you'll take this as good news :)

Dear Sabine

You assumed that consciousness is a low resolution phenomenon, thus it causes only down causation. But there are the model connected with pansichism, One of them is my model: quantum consciousness .

Do you accept any bet about existence of quantum consciousness? But, argumentation would be still better.

Yet another argument that seems different at first sight but is wrong for the same reason as the example with the chain is that entanglement realizes top-down causation [12]. The argument here is that entanglement is a non-local property of a system. Hence, if you have information only about a small part of a system, you have no way of knowing whether the system will begin to show novel effects due to entanglement if you look at the full system. Again, though, it is clearly possible to derive the behavior of the whole system if you have information about its entire microscopic constituents which, of course, includes entanglement between them.

I do not understand this. "if you have information only about a small part of a system," Why it is necessary to have only information about a small part of a system?

But it is interesting that Stoica agrees with you. What Zeilinger or Brukner think?

But independently what you think about free-will, I like what you think about top-down and down-top causation. It is so simple, I hope that it is true.

Please visit the My essay .

Hello Sabine,

Thanks for the opportunity to read your mind.

Let us start with a few words about what we don't know.

Insofar as 'free will' is simply the ability to make decisions in the context of multiple choices, we have to admit that free will exists, but it comes at the high price of uncertainty.

Concerning 'strict laws' we are moving towards a collective understanding that what we have called strict laws in science in the past are better represented as 'principles'. Strict laws demand compliance whereas principles are more liberal in the sense that they accommodate deviations within limits. Nature accommodates deviations either side of its statistical norms which deviations conjure up extraordinary variety, which variety enables a few of many variables to persist in an environment undergoing constant change.

Your claim that 'Large things are made of smaller things, and if you know what the small things do, you can tell what the large things do' - requires re-thinking. There is an adage that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you put the parts of an aircraft together in their intended relations, you still have no idea what an aircraft can do! Reductionism only works well when it works well - i.e. to one's advantage.

Picking up on your statement that 'no one understands how gravity works' rings a bell.

In 1916 Einstein declared gravity a misconception, an effect rather than a cause. While he elaborated to state that the cause was brought about by the uneven distribution of mass in the universe, his 'cause' is open to question as to whether the dominant constituent of the cosmos, vacuum, is the direct cause of what we call 'gravity'.

In matter we find an exhibition of defiance against vacuum, the exception that proves the rule. What is the rule? The rule is that vacuum (unfilled void or space) abhors nature, and flows to fill its absence.

Regarding the question of 'curved space', if space is unlimited in its extent, how can it be 'curved'? Where space describes a discrete volume, then yes, the space within a banana skin is curved.

On to your subject of the moment: 'Emergence'. I hope that I am alone in your readership in saying that I don't understand your concept of emergence. Perhaps my limited skills in mathematics accounts for my difficulties, but if this is so, reliance upon mathematical linguistics may be stretching the evaluation criterion stipulating that essays should be 'non-specialist'. Suffice to say, I don't know what I don't know! пЃЉ

I think that we all, upon occasion, make mistaken assumptions that each question only has a single correct answer. This error often arises due to the temptation to reduce all issues to mathematics for resolution.

Circumstances are constantly changing, which changes enable other acceptable answers to surface. Truth is thus revealed as being conditional rather than absolute.

It is important for all specialists to communicate with the public in non-specialist languages because we need the support of the public to further advance each specialty.

Thanks again Sabine for the present of your presence of mind.

Gary.

Dear Sabine,

Fantastic essay - well-written, clear, entertaining, and I think genuinely profound! You do indeed put a strong case forward for strong emergence.

Before reading your essay, the only reasonable example I knew of a theory that might require strong emergence was that of consciousness: effective field theories cannot even in principle tell me how the collection of particles in my brain makes me, for example, experience the colour red in the way that I do. This is of course no proof that strong emergence is playing a role, but it is certainly a case where weak emergence is far from providing the answer. I wonder if you have an opinion on this?

I will honour the tradition of shamelessly advertising one's own essay in

a comment. Mine is almost completely unrelated to yours, but you might enjoy it nonetheless! https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3091

Best of luck,

Paul

Cristi,

I know you're right, again. Nothing's impossible. A string of rejections from editors at first glance is wearing but I can improve quality and am tenacious. I recall one great advancement followed ~40 rejections.

My 'shuffling' comment was about Bee's essay specifically. I admire Bee's blog entries and approach but was very disappointed she seemed to have abandoned that incisive 'abandon' in this essay to descend into old embedded mire.

Yes, It's "far from being perfect", but it could improve in the right direction with a little effort. I think those with established authority also have a heavy responsibility which most don't recognise. Maybe Bee feels she doesn't have such authority, but she quickly would with more effort to properly analyse and help promote replacement theories. (I recognise 'quickly' in physics is subject to relativistic adjustments dilating and quadrupling the normal passage of time)!!

I recognise the issue that there are hundreds of flawed theories out there so the easiest option is to study none!

Do argue or defend your position on advancement please Bee, I apologise if I just seemed to have suggested it's in a mud bath!

Very best

Peter

I don't take a reductionist view but I still have trouble accepting the argument for strong emergence. If I have some theory I can run a simulation, and given enough computer power I can observe the implications of the theory in the simulation. If I do the experiment and see something else emerge then either the theory is wrong or there is some other influence I did not account for in the simulation. If the theory has a non-deterimninstic element different things will happen but the statistical behaivior in many trials will be the same in a simulation as it is in the real world. I don't see any room for strong emergence.

As for free will, the answer depends on the exact definition of the terms in the question. If those are clearly given then people will only answer differently depending on whether or not they hold a pluralist belief for mind and matter or not.

Dear Sabine,

Because you are by far my favorite author on the curious state of current physics, and because I would love to have your comments on my essay, I'm a little at a loss how to respond to this beautifully-written piece. Though I don't disagree with you at any point, what was in my mind throughout was your blog-post from a couple years ago on "The Unbearable Lightness of Philosophy." Actually (as a philosopher) I'm very pleased that you take philosophical arguments seriously. But really - free will?

Surely the conscious decisions we make are the result of neurons firing in our brains, or more generally, the result of things going on beneath the level of our self-awareness. That seems like a very good thing to know about ourselves, if it makes us a little more humble. And if there were any meaningful issue about our choices being "free" - which I doubt - you'd think this is where it would arise.

But I can't see why it makes any difference to anything whether the behavior of neurons is predictable from physical principles. It's hard to see how it could be, if it's not even possible to predict when an atom will emit a photon. But what does it matter whether or not what happens in my brain is computable?

I have no problem with reductionism - except for the "ism" part. That seems to imply that this is the only kind explanation science needs, which is obviously wrong. Take biology, for example. I see no reason to doubt that everything that happens in a living cell is done by the laws of physics. On the other hand, none of these very complex molecules and patterns of interaction would exist if it weren't for the ability of cells to replicate themselves and so evolve. Nothing like this happens in physics or chemistry, so it's clearly "emergent." But that's not because it's independent of the laws of atomic physics. On the contrary, if those laws weren't so precisely uniform and reliable, self-replication would be inconceivable.

So my question is, how does distinguishing between "weak" and "strong" emergence contribute to our understanding of situations like this? I wouldn't call self-replication a "truly new fundamental law," but it is a truly fundamental functionality, on which a whole new world of possibilities is founded. It's completely new, and also completely dependent on lower-level functions.

In my current essay I try to imagine the foundations of physics in a similar light, asking about the functionality of a universe that's able to define, measure and communicate all its own information. It would mean a lot to me to know if the argument of my first three pages makes sense to you.

Conrad

Dear Sabine,

I looked for your paper because I read and enjoy your backreaction blog, so I felt your astute science writing would be insightful.

Although you acknowledge that modern theoretical physics "is almost certainly incomplete" you avoid venturing into "what" it is that is more fundamental than the well-known 25 fundamental SM particles.

The discussion of how "emergence" is defined in this context was enlightening, and the examples in condensed matter 'verrry interesting (but not fundamental)'.

Here I think that the examples of strong emergence should consider cosmology, i.e. General Relativity. This is a relevant issue for insight into the research topic. I am certain that causality is a fundamental property of particles, as Seiberg has found. So I began my essay by considering the well-founded causal formulation of particles as given by the No-Boundary Wave Function.

I also discussed the fundamental requirements to establish consistency between GR and (causal) particle theory. But in your essay you suggest (without evidence) that non-renormalizable theories are "sick". But the only reason that renormalization is used is that L'Hopital's Rule doesn't work- the mathematical singularity assumed forces an infinity/infinity situation. Of course, the singularity also compels one to arbitrarily assign quanta and scalar metrics (mass and energy).

In short, the current theory violates mathematical 'laws' which there is thus strong motivation to correct... a very good starting 'point' is to not assume a particles representation geometry is a point.

It turns out that all of these criteria can be met at once, but yes, you have to let go of renormalization. The traditional approaches that keep it and seek unification via new particles just don't work out.

That said I invite you to read and comment on my essay: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3092 and hope that its insights spark an interest.

Best,

Wayne Lundberg

p.s. as a footnote, I am sure that a person's perception of free will is best discussed in the context of particle theory by considering the scale of space-time averaging. Clearly weak-scale particle theory has little bearing since the quantum algebraic states average out at micro-condensed matter scales, long before a human scale. Consider again, if you will, to be fair, just how much free will really means when you use a space-time average of say, 2 Earth orbital diameters and 10000 years. That yields a rather different result, no?

The analogy to particle theory works pretty well when you compare a human's decision tree at, say, an intersection. Compare that to a particle interaction's "channels".

Dear Sabine,

This is a well-written essay that uses examples and a sense of humor to let the reader "in".

First a small technical point, when you say "energy" you really mean "energy density". The person who says, "go" and the person who pushes the bottom use more energy than the collision between two protons at CERN, but energy density is far higher with the protons.

Now the major problems: Radioactive decay is independent of atomic interactions (except for cases like electron capture). There is a disconnect between the first two energy density or resolution levels, namely: nuclear and atomic. There is a difference between sound, wind and thermal vibrations, which cannot be seen at the atomic scale, collisions due to sound and thermal vibrations would be the same without information of a collective mode. Any sound or electromagnetic wave that is orders of magnitude larger wavelength than the atomic scale would have the same problem. The conservation of linear and angular momentum seen in fluids would have a similar problem. At the atomic level all is reversible, a hydrogen atom at the ground state returns to a hydrogen atom in the ground state with no record of the thermal dynamic state of the collective.

Sincerely,

Jeff Schmitz

Hi Dr Sabine Hossenfelder

Wonderful start... "As everyone knows, physicists have proved that free will doesn't exist. That's because we are made of tiny particles which follow strict laws, and human behavior is really just a consequence of these particles' laws. ..... nice flow and good logic.... Best wishes to your essay

Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed................ yours is very nice essay .... I highly appreciate hope your essay and hope for reciprocity ....You may please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

-No Isotropy

-No Homogeneity

-No Space-time continuum

-Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

-No singularities

-No collisions between bodies

-No blackholes

-No warm holes

-No Bigbang

-No repulsion between distant Galaxies

-Non-empty Universe

-No imaginary or negative time axis

-No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

-No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

-No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

-No many mini Bigbangs

-No Missing Mass / Dark matter

-No Dark energy

-No Bigbang generated CMB detected

-No Multi-verses

Here:

-Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

-Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

-All bodies dynamically moving

-All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

-Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

-Single Universe no baby universes

-Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

-Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

-UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

-Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

-Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

-21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

-Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

-Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

- Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

Best

=snp

Dear Sabine Hossenfelder

Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.

My essay is titled

"Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin". It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.

Thank you & kind regards

Steven Andresen

Dear Sabine Hossenfelder,

i am glad and amused that you came to the conclusion that it mustn't be the case that the behaviour of particles completely reigns over your thoughts.

It is funny what people are able to believe when extrapolating some knowledge about nature. And your introductory sentence from your abstract is funny too, in my humble opinion.

Reminds me of a kind of self-conversation like this

"Once I thought my thoughts about particle physics were completely determined by particle physics... but then I realized that my toughts about mathematics were completely determined by mathematics, because I realized that mathematics and particle physics are one and the same".

"So, now I know that my toughts about mathematics are completely determined by particle physics and vice versa, since I realized that my toughts about rules are completely determined by rules.. but then I realized that my thoughts about thoughts are completely determined by my toughts ... and now I conclude that particle physics is completely determined by my thoughts and that solipsism is true."

Hi Sabine,

very interesting essay.

I have two comments though:

First I disagree that reductionism means that "Large things are made of smaller things", I would argue that more fundamental things can actually be bigger than less fundamental things, see my essay.

More important, though, your essay got me started to rethink what really is meant by „strong emergence". So while I initially agreed with your definition of strong emergence meaning physical laws that can not be derived from a more fundamental theory I'm now wondering how this corresponds to the extreme case of strong emergence I'm dismissing in my own essay, namely that the emergent theory could allow for phenomena that are strictly forbidden in the more fundamental theory, as, for example, the occurence of a biological organism being able to run faster than the speed of light. Could such a case of strong emergence be justified by the example you are providing? Am I misunderstanding „strong emergence"? Are there different kinds of strong emergence? Or is your example actually a subtle case of weak emergence? One may argue for this conclusion by objecting that your argumentation is purely mathematical, for example there might exist a physically (albeit not mathematically) equivalent theory which would allow for the continuation from higher to lower resolution missing in the original model.

Best regards! Heinrich

quote

Effective field theories work with quantum field theories, that is the type of theory that we

presently use to describe nature at the highest resolution probed so far. The key equations of the

framework (the "renormalization group equations") connect a theory at high resolution with a

theory at low resolution. That is, the theory at low resolution is always weakly emergent. It can

be derived - at least in principle - from the theory at high resolution.

In practice the derivation of the low-resolution theory can only be done for simple systems,

but from a philosophical standpoint this isn't relevant. Relevant is merely that physicists do

have equations that define the theory on low resolution from the theory at high resolution.

Effective field theories can fail [9] in the sense of methods becoming inapplicable, and there

are certain theorems that can fail (such as the decoupling of scales), and there are some approximations

that might become invalid (such as weak coupling), and so on. These are practical

problems for sure. But in principle, none of this matters. Because even if we don't know how

to do a single calculation, the theory is still there. It doesn't go away

end of quote

Please describe how you would apply these criteria to the early universe, i.e. the pre Planckian to Plackian regime

I did an essay due to these considerations, too

You can review it, and I welcome your comments. I put it in December 21st

thanks for your essay. it was a good read

Andrew

Hi Sabine,

Nice essay! I'm a bit skeptical that anything we tend to call "free will" has anything to do with any of this, but you still make many interesting points about strong emergence and reductionism. (For a nice modern take on Free Will, I highly recommend Jenann Ismael's new book, "How Physics Makes us Free". )

Two questions for you:

1) The only vague overlap between our essays is the paragraph where you argue that boundary constraints aren't a counter-example, because in the case of a conducting plate you can replace the boundary constraint with the microscopic details of the plate. But you seemed to imply that the same argument would go through for *cosmological* boundaries. To me, this seems like a very different issue. It's not at all clear that one could talk about the microscopic details of the cosmological boundary in the same way. What would you say to a claim that the cosmological boundary is both fundamental and an example of top-down causation?

2) You finesse the question about the "size" of a quantum system by talking about center of mass energies, which I suppose is fine from an operational perspective. But near the end, when you try to dispute that entanglement is an example of top-down causation, you imply that there is such a thing as the "microscopic constituents" of two entangled particles. What do you have in mind here? We've recently had a conversation about this, and how there's often no way to come up with a spacetime representation of the pieces of an entangled state, so there's really no way to assess whether it's "microscopic" or not, living in a higher dimensional configuration space as it does. For example, for a two-qubit state, there are additional parameters (such as the "concurrence", a measure of entanglement) that don't seem to live anywhere at all, or have any size associated with them. So you might need to sharpen up this argument, using your operational language from before, if you don't want to have to defend and define the two "microscopic constituents" of an entangled state. (Or else help me figure out what those constituents might actually be! :-)

Cheers! -Ken