Classical Spheres, Division Algebras, and the Illusion of Quantum Non-locality:

John Merryman

Tom,

"Does nature act?"

If it isn't nature acting, then it's....God? Plato? If nature didn't act, what would there be?

"What is a "lightcone of input?"'

I assumed you understood the use of the term. That of all potential input, ie, what is within range of affecting an event. Given in a three dimensional space, the 'lightcone' is actually a sphere of input, it could be coming together from opposite directions at the speed of light. So there is no way to have total information about all input into an event, prior to that information actually coming together and the limits of this are set by the constraints of the energy carrying that information. Since that information only come together at the event in question, there would seem to be a practical and theoretical limit to the determinism of particular outcomes.

"To whom?'

To any observer. As we have discussed before, knowledge is not objectively absolute, since too much noise cancels signal. Memory, framing, focus, direction, prior input, etc. are many of the components of knowledge. Without them, it's all just noise. If we wish to make a prediction about noise, it is that it will continue. Conservation of energy.

"Light possesses inertia?"

Inertia being the tendency of something in motion, to stay in motion, unless affected by something else????

Given its ability and tendency to propagate for billions of lightyears, quite a lot of inertia. Now if it is absorbed by some form of mass, ie. affected by something else, then that energy/inertia, becomes heat energy.

"Computation = physically real? Is your computation "0+0+0+0 ..." physically real?"

Were you able to read it?

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Tom,

"What's space made of?"

What properties does space have that require creating?

Creation implies some form to bring into being and potentially disperse eventually. The issue with space is the lack of form. It doesn't have anything to move, limit, bend, etc. Geometry seeks to give space form, so it is geometry which needs creating. Geometry is made of points, lines, planes, volumes, curves, etc. It seeks to define and thus limit space. Space doesn't even act. It would seem to be the ultimate postulate.

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Tom,

How is it that geometry, a product of our powers of reason, could be more fundamental than space, that void in which this little planet floats?

Is it hubris?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"What properties does space have that require creating?"

I don't know. What properties does space have that require length?

Thomas Ray

How does something float in a void? What's a void, anyway?

Akinbo Ojo

John, Tom,

I thought someone said gravity curves space? If that is so, then John your statement, "Space doesn't even act" cannot be correct. It is a basic principle of physics that something can only be acted on (curved and caused to vibrate in gravitational waves), if it is also capable of acting. That is the action-reaction principle.

And Tom, be careful not to walk into my dialectic trap here. I know you are expert in escaping traps, even if this may be a sign of cowardice. However, as they say discretion is the better part of valor.

Akinbo

John Merryman

Tom,

"What properties does space have that require length?"

I suppose infinity would be one.

"How does something float in a void?"

By not falling.

"What's a void, anyway?"

A space occupied by minimal mass.

Akinbo,

It's not so much space that's curved, but 'spacetime.' That's because space and time are treated as measures of distance and duration, so that anything moving through space and thus through time, follows curved paths, due to gravity. The argument is there is this four dimensional 'fabric of spacetime' and gravity is because it curves. Possibly though, it is the other way around and gravity is an actual effect of mass and energy relating to one another. For instance, when mass turns to energy, E=mc2, it creates pressure, for the simple reason that the equivalent amount of mass occupies less space than an equal amount of energy. So turn that around and what would you have, if energy were to condense into mass? A vacuum. And that basically is what gravity does, pulls everything together.

Another issue is as to what is time. We experience it as a sequence of events and since science loves measurements, it treats time as a measure from one event to another and then thinks of this as some universal flow from past to future, since we all seem to exist in this one present, yet there is the minor problem that there is no way to measure that universal flow, since all clocks run at their own rate. So relativity ingeniously correlates how measures of duration and distance vary in different situations and treats that as evidence of this foundational property, called spacetime.

My own particular argument against it is that while we experience time as a sequence of events and so view it as the present moving from past to future, the actual physical process is that what physically exists, is constantly changing configuration and thus turning future into past. For example, the earth doesn't need to travel some metaphysical extra dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, rather tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. So time is an effect of action, similar to temperature, rather than the basis for it.

You would think that if time is simply a progression from past to future, that a faster clock would move into the future more rapidly, but the opposite is true. It ages/burns/processes quicker and so recedes into the past more rapidly.

This then leaves space as that eternal background of reality, in which mass and energy dance.

Measurements, models, theories, etc. are the lens through which we see reality, but some insist they are the only reality.

Regards,

John M

Eckard Blumschein

John's "issue with space is the lack of form." My issue is the lack of a common to all preferred point to refer to in 3D space. While at least in practice the actual moment, the "now", has reasonably been assumed common to the whole world, any view of 3D space necessarily refers to a chosen object under consideration. Mathematics cannot reflect a lack of form. It has even been adapted to the notion of bilateral extension instead of unilateral values of distance.

Akinbo: In mathematics, spacetime is also a space, an enforced 4D space that deviates from reality by brutally ignoring the now.

I can also tell you who already claimed that a bar of infinite length has exactly as many points as the whole 3D universe: Albert of Saxony in the middle ages and only about 120 years ago again G. Cantor. Galileo would agree on that there are not more points within the latter than within the former because he showed by bijection that infinite manifolds must not be subject to comparison. Infinity is not exhaustible. Infinity plus or minus anything remains infinity.

Usually we need not bothering much about this and about the now. Joy Christian's turmoil in a teapot might be an exception.

Eckard

Akinbo Ojo

John,

You said, ...this four dimensional 'fabric of spacetime', if a fabric is substantial since it can be acted upon and thus also act, can a substantial thing be made of insubstantial elements? And when you look at the combination of space and time to form so called space-time, which of these two ingredients is more likely to have the attribute of substance.

Tom, Eckard, et al

Joy Christian's use of the words same and contain as a foundational preliminary statement and assumption to his work is what I wanted clarified to everyone's satisfaction. But in order not to distract attention from the computer simulation discussions of his work I should probably allow sleeping dogs to lie for now. But I can bet my bottom dollar that those words were incorporated in the computer simulations in a different way from how Tom and Joy make out ab initio that we should accept their geometry.

As Galileo said in one of his quotes which I cant readily find now, he who attempts natural philosophy without geometry is lost.

Akinbo

John Merryman

Akinbo,

I see space as an infinite, inert frame. Inert in the sense that it has no physical properties to otherwise move. It is the vacuum which constrains the speed of light. Otherwise, there would be no meaning to light having a constant.

Efforts to define space in other terms only use location, ie. the point, as a replacement, but location is a function of space, not space a function/measure of location. Much as distance or area are functions/measures of space, not the other way around. Multiple locations are defined within space, in terms of their relationship to one another.

Regards,

John M

pjackson

John,

See the link on "Faster than..". Space can't be just ONE 'frame'. Light propagates at c wrt those gas clouds, each is it's own background frame and they all move, so always LOCALISING c. Space is then an infinite hierarchical tapestry of frames. (or 'discrete fields' = DFM).

That is the 'simplest of ideas' that resolves all the apparent mysteries. Can you as a sensible guy explain to me why this seems so difficult to 'see'? What don't people think it solves? I'm becoming completely bemused!

Best wishes

Peter

[deleted]

John,

'What properties does space have that require length?'

"I suppose infinity would be one."

You do? Is space infinitely long or infinitely short?

'How does something float in a void?'

"By not falling."

In what direction? If every direction, it isn't floating; it isn't moving at all. It isn't even "something."

'What's a void, anyway?'

"A space occupied by minimal mass."

What's the limit of that minimum and how do you know? Is the mass discrete or is it divisible? If not divisible, how does one know it exists it all?

John, I have gone on this long merely to demonstrate the naivete of "just so" assumptions that are not really foundational, and demonstrably not foundational. Not yours -- I already know about those. Believers in Bell's theorem make the same sort of assumptions about "reality" and take them to the same absurdly mystical lengths, trying to justify them, as you and some of the other respondents.

I will give the answer to the bags-of-coins puzzle from an episode of "Columbo" that I referenced earlier:

I made the solution easier, because I specified 3 bags -- I could have said choose any number of bags you please, with any number of coins in them that you please. The small finite number, though, makes the solution easier to explain:

Label the three bags, A, B, C. From bag A, remove one coin. From bag B, remove two coins. From bag C, remove three coins. Place all six coins on the scale.

Suppose the weight you assign to the real gold coins is 1 oz, and to the fake coins, .90 oz.

If the scale reads 5.1 oz, the fake coins are in bag A. If 4.2 oz, the fakes are in bag B, if 3.3 oz, in bag C.

Rob is absolutely correct that the quantum theorists don't know what information to look for. They assume that of an infinity of "bags" there are in each a uniform number of uniformly entangled "coins" so that no matter which bag is "weighed," it will always be a uniform multiple of the finite number of coins prepared for the weighing. In our puzzle example, the scale will always read 6 oz.

Assume on the other hand, that one has a number of bags of space and one bag of time. The bag of time, like the bag of fake coins, has to differ in weight from the bag of space (explained in relativity by a change of sign in the metric signature), such that for a continuous weighing of cumulative units chosen from an infinite number of bags of space, there will be somewhere a bag of time that tells us the single true measure of time we're looking for in any *finite* observation. This bag of time will be present in every finite measure, because if it weren't we could not choose units of space discretely; we couldn't assign any weight to units of space, because it's the move of time that facilitates the choice function.

The Bell-Aspect choice function assumes entangled units of space and no time parameter. The finite measure of a continuous function, however, acknowledges the move of time that in fact forces the measure to be finite. Only continuous spacetime guarantees a *scalar* result - a.b from n number of measures in the N finite set of measurements -- because the weight of the time vector differs from the weight of the space vector. Without a time parameter in fact, no scalar result is possible. And because there is only one true time measure in any sequence, the correlated "quanta" of continuous measurement functions in spacetime have minima and maxima that are self similar at every scale.

The simulation of Joy Christian's topological measurement framework shows this to be true. One should feel privileged to have seen the wave function of the universe.

Best,

Tom

Thomas Ray

Lost my log-in. Last was mine.

Thomas Ray

"If nature didn't act, what would there be?"

Least action.

Thomas Ray

Akinbo,

"It is a basic principle of physics that something can only be acted on (curved and caused to vibrate in gravitational waves), if it is also capable of acting. That is the action-reaction principle."

True. In *The Meaning of Relativity* Einstein took pains to explain that absolute physically real spacetime is "independent in its physical properties, having a physical effect, but not itself influenced by physical conditions."

He resolved the problem with the Equivalence Principle. Click "Chapter 3" to learn how.

Best,

Tom

John Merryman

Tom,

Least action and no action are not the same thing.

REgards,

John M

John Merryman

Tom,

"Without a time parameter in fact, no scalar result is possible. And because there is only one true time measure in any sequence, the correlated "quanta" of continuous measurement functions in spacetime have minima and maxima that are self similar at every scale."

The larger point is that we cannot process a non-linear dynamic. We need to assign it some sequence and thus the rate of that sequence. Otherwise no scalar result is possible because it is chaotic. As Robert says, we have to define the signal to extract it.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

'Least action and no action are not the same thing.'

Do you know the difference?

Thomas Ray

"The larger point is that we cannot process a non-linear dynamic."

You may not be able to. However, it doesn't follow that what you can't process in your mind does not exist.

John Merryman

Tom,

It very much does exist, but it's the reality and we can only process the model.

Regards,

John M

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