Undecidability and unpredictability: not limitations, but triumphs of science by Markus P Mueller

Dear Professor Markus

Hope you will have a visit to my essay, before time expires

Best

=snp

The idea of actual, physical randomness is an odd one. If it isn't meant to be due to a complex of unrelated extrinsic causes, to be extrinsically uncaused, and intrinsically foundationless, would be the best explanation for nothing happening at all.

Dear Markus Mueller,

I just tried to elaborate on what I directly indicated with be careful when calculating as if. Please find possible implications concerning QM yourself.

Incidentally, I live for many decades in Magdeburg.

Best, Eckard

Dear Markus,

Brilliant essay, I liked the structure of arguments, the ideas, and the general gist of it. The sensation is that of regaining a freedom considered lost. It may be enough that always exists in a mathematical sense a possible structure that fits all the data, like in Wheeler's version of the twenty questions game. It may also worth trying to fit a solution that is unitary, i.e. unbroken by projections, this is one of the things that interest me (such a solution can't be fixed just by any initial conditions at a given time, it depends on future experimental settings). Best way is to keep open all possibilities. Thanks for the essay, it was a pleasure to read it!

Cheers,

Cristi

Dear Markus,

I very much enjoyed your thoughtful, masterfully written essay. It was so refreshing with its message of hope in comparison to all the usual discussions that want to turn back the clock of quantum mechanics to something more akin to classical physics or, metaphorically, Hilbert's program.

Years ago (22 or so!), I wrote a job application which I've just looked up. It started with these words, "The world we live in is well-described by quantum mechanics. What should we make of that? In a way, the answer to this question was once less positive than it is today. For although quantum theory is a tool of unprecedented accuracy ... the intellectual lesson we have come to

derive from it has been one ... of limitations. The best place to see this attitude is in a standard presentation of the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. It is almost as if the world were holding something back that we really had every right to possess: The task of physics, or so it was believed, is simply to sober up to this and make the best of it. ... In contrast to this ... the last ten years have seen the start of a significantly more positive, almost intoxicating, attitude about the basic role of quantum mechanics. This is evidenced no more clearly than [with quantum information and computing]. The point of departure in these disciplines is not to ask what limits quantum mechanics places upon us, but instead what novel, productive things we can do in the quantum world that we could not have done otherwise. In what ways can we say that the quantum world is fantastically better than the classical world?" Your paper brought back to me the romance of those lost days, but you did it so much better!

I had never previously thought about Goedel's incompleteness theorem in the positive way that you do, even though some other writers should have led me close to it. When I read your words on that point, I immediately thought, that's got to be right! "It is not a fundamental limit to what we can know, but a precious piece of knowledge about a non-property of the structure that we have discovered"--Beautiful!

Incidentally, in this paper of mine,

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.04360.pdf

I transcribed an entry from one of John Wheeler's notebooks that blew me away when I first ran across it. I don't think it's exactly what you have in mind, but here's the little story I wrote when introducing it: "Despite the dubious connection to anything firmly a part of QBism, I report Wheeler's idea because it seems to me that it conveys some imaginative sense of how the notion of 'birth' described here carries a very different flavor from the 'intrinsic randomness' that [Adan Cabello] and others seem to be talking about. ... Imagine along with Wheeler that the universe can somehow be identified with a formal mathematical system, with the universe's life somehow captured by all the decidable propositions within the system. Wheeler's 'crazy' idea seems to be this. Every time an act of observer-participancy occurs (every time a quantum measurement occurs), one of the undecidable propositions consistent with the system is upgraded to the status of a new axiom with truth value either TRUE or FALSE. In this way, the life of the universe as a whole takes on a deeply new character with the outcome of each quantum measurement. The 'intrinsic randomness' dictated by quantum theory is not so much like the flicker of a firefly in the fabric of night, but a rearrangement of the whole meaning of the universe."

You caused other thoughts in me as well. In the paper linked to above, I emphasized in a small piece of it that QBism shares *some* of its elements with a structural realism. But most philosophers of science I've told this to have been (predictably) dismissive. It's hard to say what stands in their way, except possibly that if an idea is associated with QBism, it's got to be bad! Upon reading you, however, I got a vision on how I might break the impasse: Make up a new name, a new distinction! Thus, from here out I will dub QBism's distinctive flavor "normative structural realism." But I will discuss this with you offline sometime.

In any case, I write all of this to let you know, in my eyes your essay has everything that should be expected of a winner of this contest. I learned a number of things from you, but mostly your essay caused me to think over and over about its contents all week. It hasn't left my mind, and that's a mark of distinction in an old doddering mind like mine!

All the best,

Chris Fuchs

Hi Markus,

"To say what a pattern is, you have to choose a compression algorithm, or a universal machine (which is analogous to a choice of language). For finite data, the notion of compressibility will depend on this choice. Any ultimate definition of a real pattern will have to deal with this issue in some sense..."

I can see how this might be a practical problem in choosing what predicates/basic concepts you might use as a basis for the construction of different sorts of compression algorithms for resolving simplified but predictive patterns from complex data sets ... I'm just not sure that an ultimate definition of a 'real pattern' can be derived from that algorithmic perspective.

Could it be the case that an ontological (natural language) definition of a 'real pattern' derived from one's own observational experience is precisely what you would need as a basic concept for the construction of algorithms that might then more or less model that observational reality? But if you already define a 'real pattern' as something that's derived from a background of raw data vs noise, then your ontology is already Quinean at best, and at worst an externalist realism of mere pattern appearances weakly emerging from the external data/noise background. Thus a definition of a 'real pattern' is derived from the 'data' (patterns)...

From a phenomenal (empirical) perspective, we don't observe raw data and noise but rather we observe the patterns that we call 'raw data' and 'noise' ... pattern recognition as the basic form of phenomenal experience is in this sense a priori, and the concepts of data and its inverse in noise, are both derived from that basis. What else is structural realism than intuiting structure within real patterns, where there is nothing beyond or behind the real patterns themselves?

And is a definition of 'reality' then nothing more or less than the degree of correlation observed between different algorithmic pattern recognition systems? Non-correlated systems would be orthogonal systems incapable of the communication of any recognisable pattern, whereas 'we' obviously already exist in a world of observable and very concrete pattern correlations. At least, that's how I understand a perspectival (intersubjective), observer dependent reality.

Cheers,

Malcolm

Dear Professor Fuchs,

There is no experiment that contradicts quantum mechanics to date. However, quantum mechanics has been tested and verified only upto TeV energy scales or so. Thus when we try to make theories of quantum gravity valid at the Planck scale, we can make them by assuming that quantum theory holds at the Planck scale. Or we can make them by assuming that quantum theory is violated at the Planck scale, but recovered at lower energies. Then, if the predictions of the two approaches are different, experimentalists can try to find out which approach, if either one, is correct.

I hope we can agree on this much.

It could well be that dynamics at the Planck scale is deterministic; yet the emergent low energy dynamics, being QM, is indeterministic:

Nature does not play dice at the Planck scale

But of course this deterministic Planck scale dynamics is not a return to Newtonian days: it is a non-local, non-unitary matrix-valued Lagrangian dynamics. There is no space-time here: space-time, along with quantum mechanics, are emergent.

Thanks and best regards,

Tejinder

Dear Professor Mueller,

thanks a lot for these great insights and new viewpoint!

While reading, I was tempted to compare your viewpoint to objective programming. If your structure S defined in Fig. 1 is an abstract class, we cannot derive specific instances from it and thus, without an instance at hand, we cannot give answers to certain questions about S.

I hope to be able to apply your ideas to my special case of under-constrained problems in cosmology as well.

All the best for the contest and your future research!

Jenny Wagner

Hi Markus,

I really liked your explanation of the philosophical significance of the incompleteness theorem, namely, that incompleteness of a theory signals that there are statements that cannot be proven nor disproven simply because the axioms that would allow one to generate such proofs are not present (or, equivalently, the theory can be differentiated and the status of the statement is different in the different subtheories). That certainly sounds right to me! How prevalent is this way of thinking about the incompleteness theorem? I haven't studied the literature on incompleteness, so I have no sense of whether or not this is "conventional wisdom" in some circles. Hofstadter, at least, does characterize the theorem in this manner in Godel, Escher, Bach (among the many ways that he characterizes it). Similarly, it seems to me that Chaitin does so as well. Did Godel think of it in this way?

In any case, very nice essay! I enjoyed it a lot.

A minor point. When you get to the analysis of quantum theory, you contrast your own view with the view that quantum states are states of knowledge about some kind of hidden variables. You call the latter "Spekkens-like interpretations". Presumably, that's because I've written many papers about subtheories of quantum theory and foils to quantum theory (such as my toy theory) that admit of such an interpretation. But the terminology makes me uneasy insofar as it may suggest to some that I endorse the view that such an interpretation might be possible *for the whole of quantum theory*, which I certainly do not. A better name for this type of interpretation of quantum theory would be "psi-epistemic hidden variable models". There are certainly some researchers who have made proposals of this type, but I am not enthusiastic about the research program because all such proposals have the same deficiencies as psi-ontic hidden variable models insofar as they necessarily fail to offer satisfactory causal explanations of quantum correlations. To grant that there are hidden variables to be discovered is to buy into the framework of ontological models, and I'm of the opinion that the correct interpretation of quantum theory must reject that framework. It seems to me that we need to pursue a rather different sort of realism, which is more "structural", exactly in the sense in which you use the term in your article (i.e., in the sense of "ontic structural realism"). In particular, I'm fond of the idea that the structure of causal relations might somehow capture everything about reality, without there being causal relata in the form of classical hidden variables (this idea was described in an FQXI essay I wrote a few years back). It seems to me that a denial of this kind of causal relata might in fact constitute a denial of the possibility of answering a question such as "what is the actual configuration of the world?" If so, then our views are not so different, at least in terms of the status of this sort of question.

I am reminded of my favourite quote by the pragmatist John Dewey: "The conviction persists, though history shows it be a hallucination, that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact, intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume, an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitalism and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them, we get over them."

Congratulations Markus...

In that your essay focuses attention on the necessity for one's choice of a Space-Time Energy "theoretical structure" to be associated with Space, as a precisely defined and specified "Geometric Structure", it is pivotal, and I can concur with FQXi's acknowledgement of its significance.

"Geometric Structures" as 3D CAD environments, in which geometry specific fundamental Q-mechanical functions... e.g. emission and distribution mechanix... can be digitally simulated (CAD SIMs), augment visual verification of fundamental foundations, to facilitate precise definitions of semantic terminologies that become embedded in subsequent "theoretical structures".

REF: Directionally Unbiased Point Source Emission Mechanix www.uqsmatrixmechanix.com/UQST-TVNH.php

Is a minimum/indivisible quantum of Potential for Motion a "thing"?

A quantum Point Source Emission "theoretical structure", which is inclusive of Physics and Meta-Physics, is potentially viable, but one must first make a distinction between the term Physical and the term Meta-Physical.

To make a distinction between Physical and Meta-Physical, requires a precise definition of Physical that facilitates its identity as a subset within a larger set that is inclusive of other than Physical.

PHYSICAL entities are uniquely defined in terms of what?... spatial occupancy??

If one defines PHYSICAL "things" as discrete entities having spatial occupancy, one will need to define Space as a "Geometric Structure"... i.e. preferably as a 3D quantized CAD spatial environment... that facilitates an emission and subsequent spatial occupancy distribution of Physical entities, which is consistent with observation... i.e. recognizable "patterns" of spatially quantized Potential for Motion emerge.

A minimum/indivisible pulse duration... i.e. a Q-Tick...is required to facilitate a Timeless Intermittent Calculation State (ICS) in which to repeatedly resolve spontaneous, harmonious, directionally unbiased emission and subsequent spatial occupancy distribution, of all pulsed Single Point Sourced discrete minimum/indivisible units of spatially addressable Potential for Motion... i.e. emission and subsequent spatial distribution of pulsed, spatially discrete Energy quanta (QE)... within the entire field.

To digitally SIMulate emission pulse sourced motion, as CAD environment, x,y,z discrete Physical entity location incrimination, in a theoretical, temporally minimum/indivisible duration, one needs to define the SIM frame rate as the emergent Physical entity emission pulse count... i.e. pulse count as the minimum/indivisible quanta of discrete Time (QT)... and doing so, implies that a perception of time is spatially dependent.

If Meta-Physical is differentiated from Physical by means of a spatial occupancy criteria, then Meta-Physical operatives require a Spaceless Logic Structure.

Does a feeling of spatial occupancy, occupy Space?

To define META-PHYSICAL as other than that which occupies Space-Time, a dimensionless logic environment in which Spaceless-Timeless operatives/mechanix... e.g. a feeling.... are consistent with observation, is required to coherently integrate Physics and Meta-Physics in a quantum "theoretical structure".

From a Space-Time Geometry Singularity... i.e.. a 3D "geometric structure" which encapsulates a single dimensionless point... the root architecture for an intelligent network... i.e. Cosmic Consciousness... emerges as the logic codec between the Spaceless-Timeless Logic framework and the Space-Time Logic framework, and given a logic codec integration of these two discrete logic evaluation frameworks, the ability for Meta-Physical operatives to resolve Physical entity emission mechanix, and for Physical entities to influence Meta-Physical operatives, are potential fundamental mechanisms, and justify investigation.

In which logic framework is Space-Time Energy quanta (QE) distribution resolved by Laplace's demon?

If from a Spaceless-Timeless logic framework, Laplace's demon could "feel" the QE occupancy of each individual minimum/indivisible unit of discrete Space (QI), within the entire field... i.e. "know" Space-Time as a Spaceless feeling of Timeless now... and utilize the Spaceless-Timeless/Space-Time codec... i.e. cosmic intelligence,.. to spontaneously, harmoniously resolve the QE/QI re-configuration for the entire field, within each pulse interval of one timeless Q-tick.

If a CAD modeled "geometric structure" in which QE emission and distribution SIMs verify a fundamental PROCESS that resolves spontaneous, harmonious QE/QI occupancy for the entire field, on each Q-Tick, and facilitates a codec for Space-Time entities to query cosmic intelligence at any Time "now", is installed as an upgrade to prior concepts of Demon, and/or God ENTITIES, a structural change in human consciousness is facilitated.

Can one "know" the QE occupancy configuration of the entire QI space-Time Energy field on any Q-Tick?

If the analysis structure constrains one's query, a "question without an answer" does NOT dissolve the question, and although Physical limits on current CAD SIM computability restrict the field frame, the "geometric structure" and initial state emission mechanix are verifiable within those constraints... i.e. available QI address path dictates and valid mechanix to facilitate unprecedented solution reduction in Quantum Energy (QE) analysis within any subsequent purturbative... i.e. without verifiable unbroken kinematic logic chain to the Point Source Singularity... frame of the QE/QI field, can be inferred.

One can not dismiss the possibility to "know" the individual QE/QI occupancy configuration for the entire field, on any QT, without first eliminating any possibility of resolving a CAD "geometric structure" in which QE emission and subsequent distribution SIMs verify spontaneous, harmonious QE/QI resolve on each QT, and the impossibility of knowing whether that is possible, can only be dissolved by doing so.

Geometry analysis of fundamental motion mechanix, without resolve of a Geometry Singularity... i.e. point source encapsulation... is inherently purturbative.

Fundamental PROCESS resolved QE/QI choreographies/patterns, as logic circuits which are infinitely scalable within the field... e.g. humans... that purturbatively monitor and data process Space-Time Energy observations are unable to verify a cosmic intelligence, and with regard to a fundamental PROCESS, are tolerating "Undecideablity, Unpredictability, and Uncomputability".

Given a causality model that is neither deterministic nor random... i.e. one in which on every pulse, the QE/QI configuration of the entire system must be resolved on the basis of internal agent/circuit monitoring... if the functionality of the monitoring circuit is inhibited by "Undecideablity, Unpredictability, and Uncomputability", the agent/circuit will experience confusion, and may induce local disharmony.

"Can one "know" if event A and event B are simultaneous?"

Not if one's analysis is constrained to a rubber sheet "geometric structure" in which Space and Time are continuous, and Energy is a numerical representation of a qualitative physical property measurement... e.g. heat... associated with an observable event in which neither Space nor Time is discrete... i.e. Energy is NOT a spatially defined entity.

As inferred by E=mc^2, PHEnomenal Energy (PHE) as an accelerated Mass observation quantifier, does NOT facilitate an analysis of an "event" as motion, in terms of CAD environment x,y,z location incrimination of a minimum/indivisible spatially defined entity, within a theoretical minimum/indivisible temporal duration... i.e. PHEnomenal Energy (PHE) must be differentiated from spatially discrete Energy (QE) in a quantum model.

A visual comparative of two temporally sequential snapshots, of discrete QE occupancy within discrete QI, is required to verify motion A and motion B are simultaneous... i.e. both occur within 1 Q-Tick.

If one utilizes a "geometric structure" in which static Space is quantized by QI, Time is measured in Q-Ticks (QT), and Potential for Motion is spontaneously, harmoniously distributed as continuously pulse sourced QE... i.e. Space, Time, and Energy are discrete elements of the model... simultaneous QE motion events are inherent.

To "know" that a motion event experienced by spatial entity A, and a motion event experienced by spatial entity B, are simultaneous, is facilitated by a visual comparison of two sequential freeze frames... i.e. 1 Q-Tick... of the emission SIM.

Utilization of "statistical patterns" as a semantic unifier to achieve "integration of both views"... i.e. probabilistic entanglement and discrete functionality... evades the necessity to acknowledge observations of Meta-Physical operatives influencing Physical entities, and vice versa.

As currently practiced... i.e. without verification of an unbroken kinematic logic chain to the Point Source Singularity... FUNDAMENTAL investigation by means of statistical analysis, escalate "Undecideablity, Unpredictability, and Uncomputability", inducing a credibility barrier, and inhibit utilization of observable Meta-Physical operatives to resolve inability to "know".

I have repeatedly recorded an experiment that verifies the outcome of a flip of a coin is influenced by a sufficiently enhanced QE choreographed logic agent's/circuit's... e.g. human's... binary query of the cosmic intelligence, which suggest that the root architecture of the cosmic intelligence, as the network element of the PROCESS, allows Physical entities and Meta-Physical operatives to interact, and a valid FUNDAMENTAL PROCSES model must facilitate this exchange functionality.

In that a demonstrable CAD SIM resolve of spontaneous, harmonious, directionally unbiased emission and subsequent spatial occupancy distribution, of pulsed Single Point Sourced discrete minimum/indivisible units of spatially addressable Potential for Motion, promotes creditability for Physical and Meta-Physical integration, and visually resolves fundamental mechanix which enable statistical analysis of FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES as required to enhance human Physical and Meta-Physical design and functionality, thereby accelerating technological developments and applications, an upgrade from prior reliance on statistical purturbative analysis as a means to explore FUNDAMENTAL territory, is justifiable.

In that the dynamics and functionality of QE choreographies... i.e. Physical "patterns"... which emerge as a result of spontaneous, harmonious resolve of a pulsed emission and subsequent distribution of Potential for Motion, within addressable,... i.e. uniformly defined, static and discrete... minimum/indivisible spatial units (QI) of a quantized "geometric structure", are inherited from a FUNDAMENTAL PROCESS.. i.e. the initial state emission mechanix as dictated by the QI address path potential of the Point Source Singularity quantization... all dynamics and functionality of subsequent QE choreographies, postulated by "theoretical structures" must map to the quantization of the associated "geometric structure".

Given that "correct" implies Physical and Meta-Physical integration, "to discover the correct geometric structure", requires resolve of a Geometry Singularity quantization which as the root architecture of a networked intelligence, facilitates a codec... i.e. logic unification... between the Spaceless-Timeless and Space-Time logic structures, and resolves continuous emergence of dynamic "patterns"... i.e. QE choreographies... which are consistent with observations both Physical and Meta-Physical.

"3D physical bounded spaces in motion render 'space-time' and 'wire frame' Cartesian systems inadequate modeling tools. Yet we agree Minkowski; "Everywhere there is substance". (1906)." ~ 2019 FQXi Essay REF:TOPIC: Blondes, Brunettes & the Flaw of the Excluded Middle by Peter Jackson

Consensus with regard to a "hole" in a "theoretical structure" is difficult to obtain, and a "hole" in a "theoretical structure" does not necessarily imply a "hole" in an associated "geometric structure".

As a means to validate theoretically postulated immeasurable Physical elements, as elements within the "geometric structure", the ability to see broken kinematic logic chains as discontinuities in SIMulatied PROCESSES within the CAD "geometric structure", is pivotal.

The question "What are the properties of aether?", if analyzed within the constraints of a "geometric structure" in which Space is continuous, may have no answers, but if aether is the quantization geometry of the "geometric structure"... i.e. the intelligence element of all FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES... aether properties can be associated with the uniform minimum/indivisible discrete quanta (QI) of fixed addressable spatial QE containment.

In that digital CAD SIMs analysis facilitate virtual visual verification of theoretically postulated immeasurable Physical elements, if as above, Physical is differentiated from Meta-Physical by a spatial occupancy criteria, ambiguities emerging from Meta-Physical entities and operative as indistinguishable from immeasurable Physical entities and operatives, is resolved.

"We can know what there is to be known.", but Physical limits do not infer a limit on what can be extracted as knowledge from an integration of Physical and Meta-Physical functions of "knowing", and therefor I can not agree that questions not yet solved, dissolve.

Sue Lingo

UQS Author/Logician

www.uqsmatrixmechanix.com

Ha ha, I can tell this is sheer bullshit just by reading the abstract alone.

You write:

", I argue to replace this perspective by a worldview in which a structural notion of 'real patterns', not 'things' are regarded as fundamental"

Now, epistemically this is identical to saying:

", I argue to replace this perspective by a worldview in which "Jesus Christ is my saviour" should be regarded as fundamental."

And they give first prize to such nonsense? Its pathetic. Why dont people make way for people who actually know something about these subjects? That would be a radical change woukdnt it?

Hi Alec,

I'd be very interested to hear why you think an experimentalist commitment to a form of objective realism based on Dennett's notion of 'real patterns'--or notions of ontic structural realism, or wave function realism for that matter--is 'epistemologically identical' to a profession of faith in the gospels' Yeshu.

I take it you place your faith in a metaphysics of 'objective reality' based on discrete things/particles in a classical spacetime as opposed to ... a faith based empirical belief in an information/theoretic 'it from bit' reality? Or somesuch?

I personally can't see the religious connection, but then I'm a philosophical agnostic who also upvoted Mueller's excellent essay on structural realism in quantum foundations.

Regards,

Malcolm Riddoch