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Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability Essay Contest (2019-2020)
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Interpreting Quantum Mechanics and Predictability in Terms of Facts About the Universe by Andrew Knight
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Author Andrew Knight wrote on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 01:37 GMT
Essay AbstractA potentially new interpretation of quantum mechanics posits the state of the universe as a consistent set of facts that are instantiated in the correlations among entangled objects. A fact (or event) occurs exactly when the number or density of future possibilities decreases, and a quantum superposition exists if and only if the facts of the universe are consistent with the superposition. The interpretation sheds light on both in-principle and real-world predictability of the universe.
Author BioAndrew Knight has degrees in nuclear engineering from MIT and the University of Florida as well as a law degree from Georgetown University. He is the sole inventor on 17 U.S. patents on technologies including rocket propulsion and information compression. After starting several small businesses, he retired at age 41 to pursue, full-time, fundamental understandings of physics and consciousness.
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Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 04:56 GMT
Wonderful essay Dr Andrew Knight,
Wonderful opening of the essay. That should be the spirit of any physicist. He should not be stopped by any old theory like Aristotle said that way we should go only that way in any science. You are correct in saying.....
.....It’s time to kill Laplace’s demon. And while we’re at it, let’s put to rest the age-old notion that, given enough processing time on a sufficiently large computer, it is possible, in principle, to fully predict the future. It’s not.......................
Lets kill Laplace's Demon!!! I will be with you to the last drop of my blood.
With a same spirit We proposed "Dynamic Universe Model" , Now we find that this model solves many problems that are not possible by Bigbang based cosmologies ....
I hope you will spend a little of your valuable time on my essay “A properly deciding, Computing and Predicting new theory’s Philosophy”
Best wishes for your essay.....
=snp.gupta
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Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 05:35 GMT
You did a very good analysis using quantum Mechanics principles for questions like....
“Will the bullet from a rifle hit a certain target?”
“Will it rain on our wedding day?”
“What will the stock market look like next month?” and
“When and where will the next pandemic begin?”
Answering these questions depends heavily on two features of the universe: chaos; and amplification of quantum events.
And finally your conclusion: "it is a foregone conclusion that every chaotic system – weather, populations, markets – is inherently unpredictable."
I am giving highest appreciation to your essay...!!!
But some predictions are possible in some other field of science Like cosmology. We used "Dynamic Universe Model" for predictions, and thy came true after 8 or 9 years in some cases. You can have a look at my essay....
Best
=snp.gupta
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 18:23 GMT
Dr. Gupta,
Thank you for your comments and enthusiasm! I look forward to reading your essay and I wish you the best of luck in this contest.
Andrew
Jochen Szangolies wrote on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 08:23 GMT
Dear Andrew,
Your essay is well written and engaging, and draws the reader in from the start (after all, who doesn't want to be a demon slayer!). You start by rehearsing some familiar history of quantum mechanics to set the scene. I'm not totally on board with citing Heisenberg's thought experiment as the origin of the uncertainty principle---these days, it's generally recognized that...
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Dear Andrew,
Your essay is well written and engaging, and draws the reader in from the start (after all, who doesn't want to be a demon slayer!). You start by rehearsing some familiar history of quantum mechanics to set the scene. I'm not totally on board with citing Heisenberg's thought experiment as the origin of the uncertainty principle---these days, it's generally recognized that that's really a bit of a red herring. Uncertainty isn't caused by our 'clumsiness' in measurement (although there exists a related phenomenon, the so-called 'error-disturbance relation'), but ultimately by the structure of the quantum mechanical operator algebra (as you do note in footnote 2). But no matter: a bit of heuristic motivation is fine for an introduction.
I'm not quite sure I understand the problem you see with a quantum object being described in configuration space, while classical objects are described in phase-space. The (Hamiltonian) description of classical objects in phase-space is fully equivalent to the Lagrangian description in configuration space, and the Groenewold-Moyal description of quantum mechanics in phase space is fully equivalen to the more common Hilbert-space picture. (Indeed, the Koopmann-von Neumann formulation even allows you to put classical mechanics into Hilbert space!)
That said, your reconceptualisation of quantum mechanics utilizing a kind of 'totalitarian principle'---anything not expressly forbidden by the facts is mandatory---is an intriguine one (and not too far from my own, viewing quantum mechanics as essentially being given by the limits of decidability for a given system's properties). Conceptually, it seems to me your interpretation is quite close to the 'consistent histories'-picture of quantum mechanics. There, too, the quantum history of a system is given by what's consistent with a given set of events, represented by projection (measurement) operators.
I also relate to the point you raise in the end: that quantum events may have consequences in the everyday world. The quantum is treated too often as just that weird stuff that happens to microscopic particles, but in fact, it can be estimated that every time an event in the classical world can only be predicted with a certain probability, that uncertainty has a quantum-mechanical origin (https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0953).
All in all, a very enjoyable essay, and a good exercize in the banishment of demons.
Wishing you the best of luck!
Cheers
Jochen
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 18:21 GMT
Hi Jochen,
Thank you for your very thorough and well-thought-out comments. It is a compliment and honor to receive such attention.
First, let me address the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Even though this is not what the essay is about, my characterization of it was very intentional. I very strongly disagree with you that uncertainty is caused by QM algebra or wave mechanics. ...
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Hi Jochen,
Thank you for your very thorough and well-thought-out comments. It is a compliment and honor to receive such attention.
First, let me address the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Even though this is not what the essay is about, my characterization of it was very intentional. I very strongly disagree with you that uncertainty is caused by QM algebra or wave mechanics. As I addressed in Footnote 4, this characterization of HUP (e.g., σx σp ≥ ℏ/2) is merely a mathematical tautology that follows from the assumption that an object is fully described by a wave and that the momentum wave packet of a particular quantum state is equal to the Fourier transform of the position wave packet for the same state. Heisenberg was attempting to give some realistic explanation for WHY the commutator [X,P] is nonzero (and hence why the order of measurement matters). You can certainly argue that his explanation was wrong. However, HUP, like any principle in physics, is an empirical question that is always subject to falsification (and in fact only a handful of empirical verifications have been performed, beginning in the 1960s). HUP cannot be proven or derived from the underlying assumptions that form the foundation of wave mechanics... instead, empirical verification of HUP can lend further credence to those assumptions.
The reason I went out of my way to explain this is because the goal of the paper is to introduce a new interpretation of QM that may contribute to our understanding of measurement, superposition, and predictability, and it would be very easy for someone to summarily dismiss it on the basis that it doesn’t follow from the QM formalism. And I agree – it doesn’t. But it is important to underscore the fact that QM itself is based on two very big assumptions (that a system can be described by a superposition of waves and that momentum is quantized by p=ℏk), and that the purpose of those assumptions and resulting QM formalism is to make predictions. However, there are clearly problems with QM, leading many of the smartest physicists and philosophers, over the past century, to develop and defend over a dozen distinct interpretations, and none of them provides any
a priori explanation for QM. It’s quite possible that QM itself is an emergent phenomenon, in which case the assumptions and equations of QM follow from the underlying ontology.
An interpretation or model of physics that makes the same predictions as QM (e.g., interference, the photoelectric effect, etc.)
cannot be disproven by the mathematical formalism of QM. And that was the point I was trying (but perhaps failed) to make in my discussion of HUP. By not realizing that HUP is an empirical question, and that Heisenberg was trying to make physical sense of an abstract QM commutator relation, it is easy to forget that physics is always about experiment, falsifiable hypothesis, and prediction. Math is its servant, not master. (Actually, Sabine Hossenfelder makes an interesting and related case in her essay.)
I knew it was a risk to discuss HUP. I fully expect many readers to glance at my paper and dismiss it. “This guy doesn’t understand uncertainty and I can easily disprove his interpretation with the following equations...” If there is a fundamental problem with QM, we won’t find the solution by starting with QM equations. Instead, we will have to do what Heisenberg did and try to figure out, on a physical level, what might be happening that could give rise to those QM equations. He might have been wrong, but if so, it’s not because he was “disproven by math,” but rather that there is some underlying physical reason why position and momentum (for example) cannot be measured simultaneously.
Very quickly on your other points. Yes, the Lagrangian formalism is written ostensibly in configuration space, but it also assumes the timed rate of change of each generalized coordinate... e.g., each object has a position and velocity. OK so maybe that’s not phase space, but it allows classical predictability. This isn’t true in QM (except in Bohmian mechanics... see my footnote 6.)
Thank you for bringing up Consistent Histories. Part of my motivation in submitting this essay was to hear comments on how my interpretation might relate to others. I’m well versed in most QM interpretations, but for some reason CH continues to elude me conceptually. There’s little discussion of it in the philosophy of science literature. Can you recommend a resource? Your characterization of my interpretation as “anything not expressly forbidden by the facts is mandatory” isn’t quite what I was saying, as nothing is mandatory.
I recently printed out your essay and very much look forward to reading it. I have already read the first two pages and enjoyed it... clearly we have something in common if we are both discussing QM from the point of view of information! (My footnote 16.) Also the topic you address and your means of addressing it are clearly important and competent.
Best of luck to you in this contest!
Andrew
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H.H.J. Luediger wrote on Mar. 22, 2020 @ 21:44 GMT
Hi Andrew,
in his paper "On the quantum-mechanical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations", in Zeitschrift für Physik, 1925, Heisenberg stresses: "This question [of discretisation] has nothing to do with electrodynamics, but is, and this is important to us, of a purely kinematic nature." And in his 1927 'indeterminancy' paper, his emphasis is on pointing to the 'Anschaulichkeit' (intuitivity) of this 'kinematic'.
Doesn't he say that quantum-mechanical indeterminancy is not a physical theory, but an (actually the only!) a priori means for the qualification of QM measurement outcomes? So, I agree with you that 'indeterminancy' is to be regarded as an assertion in the context of physics, but not that it describes some physical reality whatsoever. At this point in time (1927), in my opinion, everything that can reasonably be said about quantum mechanics had been said.
Heinz
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 23, 2020 @ 18:36 GMT
Hi Heinz,
Thank you for your comments! I think you are probably right that very little (or perhaps even nothing new) has been said about the mathematical formalism of QM and its predictions since 1927. My first reaction when I read that was to object and mention the violation of Bell's inequality, but then again that's really just a test of the nonlocality of entanglement, and entanglement is an inherent feature of the QM formalism.
Andrew
Stefan Weckbach wrote on Mar. 23, 2020 @ 18:02 GMT
Dear Andrew,
i like your attempt to interpret QM in terms of consistent facts. A similar line of reasoning brought me to write an essay in - i think it was in 2012.
You wrote
"Further, the characterization of a superposition as the absence of a relevant fact may help to explain why we never observe superpositions: we cannot observe the lack of a fact."
In my current essay I infer a similar conclusion. Nonetheless the absence of a superposition is also a fact, independent of whether or not in the future there may be experiments that can bring about some macroscopical superpositions.
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 23, 2020 @ 18:42 GMT
Hi Stefan,
Thank you for the note! I just downloaded your essay and look forward to reading it. Best of luck to you in the contest.
Andrew
Gene H Barbee wrote on Mar. 25, 2020 @ 19:32 GMT
Hi Andrew,
I was particularly interested in your concept of a fact being required for a QM system to develop. It supports observer based reality. The information change you discuss makes this more specific and meaningful.
Your statement regarding FAPP required some research. Apparently it refers to “For All Practical Purposes” and specifically means that a wave function for a...
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Hi Andrew,
I was particularly interested in your concept of a fact being required for a QM system to develop. It supports observer based reality. The information change you discuss makes this more specific and meaningful.
Your statement regarding FAPP required some research. Apparently it refers to “For All Practical Purposes” and specifically means that a wave function for a many particle system is either too difficult or perhaps non-meaningful. I wonder what you would think about a Schrodinger based wave function exp(iEt/H)*exp(-iEt/H)=1, where 1 is interpreted as the information the observer receives. Of course probability 1 represents no information even if it is the multiplication of wave functions for a many particle systems consisting of 1*1*1*1. But each 1 could be a combination of probabilities. A set of probabilities I found important was: Excerpt from my essay:
The sub probabilities multiply to 1 for each quad (example P=1=exp(-15.43)*exp(-12.43)/(exp(-17.43)*exp(-10.43)).
Each of the probabilities is the ratio p=e0/E where e0 is a constant or E=e0*exp(N). The N’s above on the top of P=1 above represent positive energy and N’s on the bottom represent negative energy. This separates (creates) energy but it obeys E-E=0. I found probability values that represented mass, kinetic energy and field energy of one of the quarks in a proton and then went ahead and constructed the whole four particle proton with probabilities from NIST data.
I believe this represents a wave function for a many particle system. It is limited to E-E=0 and probability 1 (the point where the Schrodinger equation collapses) but it represents our perception of the proton at unity. It is what you call a fact “there are protons in nature that we observe”. The remainder of the protons are produced by duplication of P=1 for the proton. But this again is where your concepts help. The protons are correlated by their duplication and become an observation system. This suggests that QM is the math that supports perception of separated energy.
I would like your thoughts if possible.
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 29, 2020 @ 15:05 GMT
Hi Gene,
Thanks for the post and comments. I didn't fully follow your point so I'll have to take a closer look at your essay. Best of luck to you in the contest!
Andrew
Steve Dufourny wrote on Mar. 27, 2020 @ 17:45 GMT
Hi Mr Knight,
A very relevant general essay I must say, one my favorites also.
You tell "In fact, this assumption underlies the very foundation of wave mechanics. Note that for any ? = ??(), ℏ ? = ℏ?? = ?? only if ? = ℏ?. It was realized that the mathematical operation −?ℏ could be defined as the momentum operator ? (in one dimension) and utilized on its own. If ? acts on eigenstate ? then it yields eigenvalue ? = ℏ? multiplied by ?, which is another way of saying that ? has a distinct momentum, while the superposition in equation (1) may not. 4 The fact that the quantum state of a system can be described in configuration space is often ignored in the typical textbook “proof” of HUP. In fact, given the assumptions that an object is fully described by a wave and that the momentum wave packet of a particular quantum state is equal to the Fourier transform of the position wave packet for the same state, HUP is a mathematical tautology that provides no further information"
When you tell us "in one dimension", what is it really because if the informations are particles coded and that the Waves are just due to fact that these particles oscilate and imply fields and Waves in a kind of superfluid vacuum in contact of particles , in my model, 3D spheres in motions oscillations and if the 1D is just a mathematical extrapolation not really existing, and that the strings and the 1D main field are not real, so how can we really understand that all is Waves instead of particles ? The problem seems philosophical about the main causes of our reality and its geonetries, topologies and properties of matters, if we take the strings or geonetrodynamics , so we have strings or points at this planck scale and a 1D Cosmic field, but if all is made of particles and that the codes are inside the particles, how can we be sure about the main philosophical essence of our universe?
Regards
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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 28, 2020 @ 11:33 GMT
I have shared it on Facebook, regards
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 30, 2020 @ 15:02 GMT
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the comments. I'll take a look at your essay. It is an interesting question of whether waves by themselves describe the ontology of the universe. QFT asserts this, and Art Hobson in his excellent recent book (Tales of the Quantum) makes a very strong case that there are only waves, no particles. Best of luck in the contest!
Andrew
Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 30, 2020 @ 20:12 GMT
Hello,
You are welcome. I am not sure that I will do this essay s Contest, my English is not perfect and I have difficulties to resume also.
Thanks for sharing also about the bool of Art Hobson, maybe I will read it. But if I can, I beleive that we cannot prove what is the main cause, I prefer personally the particles but it is just my opinion of course. It is logic :)
I...
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Hello,
You are welcome. I am not sure that I will do this essay s Contest, my English is not perfect and I have difficulties to resume also.
Thanks for sharing also about the bool of Art Hobson, maybe I will read it. But if I can, I beleive that we cannot prove what is the main cause, I prefer personally the particles but it is just my opinion of course. It is logic :)
I consider 3D coded spheres and a super fluid , space , vacuum also made of coded 3D spheres and I beleive that all is the same but coded differently, that is why I have considered mainly 3 E8 and I have replaced the points or strings by finite series of 3D spheres having the same number than our cosmological finite serie of 3D spheres, they are coded and play between the zero absolute and the planck temperature, I have considered also the deformations of spheres and the Ricci flow and an assymetric Ricci flow also to explain the unique things, the lie derivatives, the euclidian and topological spaces and the poincare conjecture also.
Now you are going to encircle , the space disappears with a specific serie and primes with a central biggest sphere after we decrease the volumes and increase the number, 3 around the center, after 5 around the 3, after 7 around the 5 and we continue with this finite number the same than our cosmological serie, oddly we approach the dirac large number.
So I consider one main E8 coded for the space and after two others E8 and these spheres , one for the photons and one for the DM, they are just fuel permitting so the gravitation and the electromagnetism, I have reached this quantum gravitation even in changing the distances and mass because the standard is just emergent but we have a deeper logic, main codes farer.
So I respect also this Waves particles duality because we have a superfluid gravitational aether and these 3D spheres are in motions but they oscillate also and all is in contact, these series in my model of spherisation, an optimisation of the universal sphere or future sphere, are sent from the central cosmological sphere, it intrigues me a lot because for me it is there that something transforms the E in matters, coded.
You see like that the philosophical difference with the strings and the fact to consider only Waves and fields. For me it seems more logic because the strings and this 1D main Cosmic field and the 1D strings at this planck scale don t take into account the evolution. Best Regards and good luck for your essay that I liked a lot,
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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 31, 2020 @ 09:48 GMT
I thought about the primordial fractal of spheres and the number 2 is incredible when we consider 2 smaller spheres around the central one and not 3 , that create the dipoles and the distances can be assymetric even , we continue the fractal with the primes and when we consider the two fuels, photons and DM encoded in this fractal of space with the number finite corelated with the finite number of cosmological spheres, wowww that becomes intriguing and universal, this prime the number 2 is fascinating considering this primordial serie
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Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 31, 2020 @ 12:45 GMT
personally I don t understand why the majority of thinkers are in this prison like if we had only photons like main piece , I understand why they insist on strings even to create this reality, it is odd for me because we have still many secrets to encircle and add, I doubt that this universe beyond the physicality is an infinite heat you know that this thing oscillates the photons to create our topologies, geonetries, matters and properties, I see an infinite energy but totally different than a heat, I beleive that it is an energy above our understanding able to create with the matters all the energies inside the physicality, the energy is more than we can imagine, Einstein and Witten have created a prison, philosophical and physical for me and now all try to understand only this photonic reality forgetting to Think beyond the box, in 100 years of relativity , frankly it is odd , like if we had understood with this the generality of this universe??? is it a joke , the universe is more than this simply and it seems logic.
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John David Crowell wrote on Mar. 27, 2020 @ 21:21 GMT
Andrew I enjoyed your essay. Thanks for presenting a different viewpoint of QM and their fit within the universe. I especially enjoyed your pointing out - there is currently “no apriori” explanation of QM My essay is an attempt to provide that explanation. What you may find interesting is that I was able to “map” most of the major points of your new interpretation of QM to my new SSC model of creation. Three examples —1. your facts correspond to stable SSCUs and their progeny 2. a consistent set of facts (SSCUs) become the physical universe. 3. QM is an emergent phenomena from an underlying ontology- note the C*s to SSCU transformation described in the appendix of my essay. I think you will find it interesting how the SSC mathematical model can show how your ideas can be quantized and related to the measurements of Planck’s constants, H atoms (atomic structures), the galaxies and the universe. Hope you find the essay useful. I would appreciate your comments. John Crowell
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 30, 2020 @ 15:22 GMT
Hi John,
Thanks for the note! I'll take a look at your essay and ideas on SSC model.
Andrew
Avtar Singh wrote on Mar. 27, 2020 @ 21:37 GMT
Hi Andrew:
A very engaging and thought-provoking essay; I enjoyed reading it gave it high marks.
Interesting to know your MIT background; when were you there? I finished my Sc.D. in mechanical engineering there in 1974.
You correctly point to the fundamental deficiency in QM interpretations in that - "...If our intuition is correct that predictability of an
object depends on its description in phase space, but if
the state of an object is entirely specified in
configuration space, then the information necessary to
predict the object simply does not exist. On this basis
alone, many argue that the universe is fundamentally
unpredictable."
You may be interested in my essay - "Unravelling the Missing Physics behind Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability" by Avtar Singh, wherein I point to the fact that uncertainty and unpreditability are artifacts of measuring or predicting an inherently relativistic (V~C) phenomenon in classical fixed space-time coordinates.
I would deeply appreciate your feedback comments/rating on my essay integrating the relativistic effects into the well-known DeBroglie and HUP equations. Then, the universe also could be predicted as described in my referenced papers (see attached pdf files) in the essay.
Looking forward to hear your feedback,
Best Regards
Avtar Singh
attachments:
2_Published_Paper_in_Phy_Essays_Origin_of_Motion_Part_2_4Singh.pdf,
2_Published_Paper_in_Physics_Essays_Origin_of_Motion_Part_1_14Singh.pdf
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Mar. 30, 2020 @ 15:24 GMT
Hi Avtar,
Your essay sounds very interesting. It would be fascinating if you are correct that HUP is a relic of measuring relativistic phenomena. I'll take a look. Best of luck to you in this contest.
Andrew
Fabien Paillusson wrote on Apr. 11, 2020 @ 17:31 GMT
Dear Andrew,
This was a nice and thought provoking essay.
It seems naive but I really liked your definition of a fact!
I would have a couple of questions though, as it seems that some things are escaping my understanding:
- First, it is not clear to me what really constitutes a superposition. From the example you gave I do not see the difference between superposition (with possibility of interference) and simply not knowing all facts (tossing a coin). Can you please clarify on this?
- Second, at the very end you discuss the fact "it rained yesterday" and the various traces that would follow even many years after. I appreciate that this is a microscopic world view but what of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
- Third. It is more a comment but your definition of fact and the following detailed example with particles reminded me of simulation method called Event Driven Molecular Dynamics (https://academic.oup.com/ptps/article/doi/10.1143/PTPS.178.
5/1869834) which literally implements what you describe in your essay. Are you familiar with this method? Do you see any way of using it to emulate the kind of things (e.g. entanglement, superposition) in your essay?
Many thanks.
Best,
Fabien
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Apr. 21, 2020 @ 15:49 GMT
Hi Fabien,
Thank you for your great comments!
Your first question: if my paper is right, then a superposition exists when a fact does not exist, unrelated to knowledge. When an event occurs, then there is no longer a superposition. When I toss a coin but don’t look at the result, there is still a fact about the result, a fact that is embedded in correlations with other facts about the universe. But that is different from the lack of a fact.
Not sure I get your second question. The 2nd law is not actually a “law” in the sense that classical processes are in principle reversible, so the increase in entropy appears as a statistical result. Whereas if there is a fact that “it rained yesterday” then this fact will be embedded in correlations with photons that speed outward to the night sky and can never, even in principle, be caught and “uncorrelated” to reverse the fact.
Third – THANK YOU!! I just downloaded the paper and am extremely excited to read it. One of my goals in writing and submitting this essay was precisely to see if anyone had done related research.
Thank you again for your notes and thoughts!
Andrew
Fabien Paillusson replied on Apr. 22, 2020 @ 18:29 GMT
Andrew,
Thank you for your reply.
I suppose my 2nd question was precisely on the blatant incompatibility between the reversibility of the microphysical laws (based on Hamiltonian mechanics) and the irreversibility of macrfphysical observables such as "raining".
This is not at all an original question. It reminds me of the objection from Loschmidt to Boltzmann's H theorem relying on uncorrelated velocities where Loschmidt observed that you could in principle reverse all velocities and the entropy should decrease accordingly (since it was increasing with time for the "forward process"). Boltzmann would have allegedly replied "go on reverse the particles velocities".
What I am saying is that I am not convinced that, even in principle, events leave measurable traces of their happening at all later times.
Even a three body problem is already not reversible even when people try hard (https://www.sciencealert.com/three-black-holes-orbiting-eac
h-other-can-t-always-go-backwards-in-time).
This is just a thought if you think that can help you improve upon your argument against this concern.
Cheers.
Fabien
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Author Andrew Knight replied on Apr. 23, 2020 @ 20:12 GMT
Hi Fabien,
This is a fascinating reply and I had to think twice before replying.
First, I think that every event MUST leave traces/evidence of their happening and I base this on the quantum eraser experiments. Are you familiar with them? I had originally discussed them in my essay but I had to cut it out to keep the length within the requirements.
Second, reversibility is not the same as events leaving traces. Yes, if an event is reversible, then it obviously must leave traces, but not the other way around. If an event leaves traces, it may or may not be reversible. For example, if some of the evidence of an event is in a correlated photon moving toward the black night sky... it is not retrievable in principle and therefore the event is irreversible.
Thanks for the reference to the article... I'll look at it now!
And thanks again for your comments... please let me know if you have more or if you disagree with my reply.
Andrew
Kwame A Bennett wrote on May. 1, 2020 @ 20:33 GMT
There is a theoretical model that can compete with both quantum mechanics and Newtonian mechanics
Please take a look at my essay A grand Introduction to Darwinian mechanic
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3549
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Vladimir Nikolaevich Fedorov wrote on May. 18, 2020 @ 07:39 GMT
Dear Andrew,
I greatly appreciated your work and discussion. I am very glad that you are not thinking in abstract patterns.
"A fact (or event) occurs exactly when the number or density of future possibilities decreases, and a quantum superposition exists if and only if the facts of the universe are consistent with the superposition. The interpretation sheds light on both in-principle and real-world predictability of the universe".
While the discussion lasted, I wrote an article:
“Practical guidance on calculating resonant frequencies at four levels of diagnosis and inactivation of COVID-19 coronavirus”, due to the high relevance of this topic. The work is based on the practical solution of problems in quantum mechanics, presented in the essay FQXi 2019-2020
“Universal quantum laws of the universe to solve the problems of unsolvability, computability and unpredictability”.
I hope that my modest results of work will provide you with information for thought.
Warm Regards, `
Vladimir
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