I A new realistic stochastic interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

[lightarrow]

To me it seems indivisibility is non-local, what I'm having a hard time is understanding what the indivisible process means.

I can't formalize it but I have a bit of intuition about it. I can use an analogy (or a metaphor?): when a light ray propagating in the void enters a material medium, as a glass plate, the em fields inside the glass "adjusts" themselves after a short transient, establishing the propagation laws we know from the optics books, e.g. phase velocity reduced to c/n. This because the incoming fields overlap with the "induced" fields generated by the glass' charges motion, due to that incoming light ray. So, if the light ray propagates from sx to dx, you cannot exactly say that what happens to a point inside the glass is a direct consequence of what happens to another point in the glass which is to the left of it: actually is a consequence of what has happened in *all* the glass in the surrounding points: those at left and those at right.
Sorry, it's just an image I have, it doesn't want to be any more than this.

--
lightarrow

 

[iste]

Sure but can you or Barandes provide a simple example of INMS processes? What does it look like?

I don't know if this will help but about 27 - 36 minutes he goes through a kind of example. But he makes explicit near the end of that segment, about 34 onward, how the indivisibility manifests as interference which is just the fact that the probabilities of the paths don't sum. Note that the depiction of the paths around 34 mins is a transparent depiction of the equation written in post #446. You see later around 45 - 48 minutes he talks about how the measurement devices are required for the predictions of quantum system in the stochastic one so it is implied these path probabilities are only probabilities when the system is measured.



At the same time, even though you only get explicit quantum statistical predictions from measurement (because clearly this is the best quantum mechanics can do regarding the Born rule), the stochastic system should always have definite outcomes even when not measured.

Could the formulation be advanced to describe what happens when not measured? Possibly. Bohmian and stochastic mechanics seem to be able to do this because the velocities in these formulations correspond to weak values in conventional quantum mechanics that seem to carry (I think complete) information about the system when it is not being measured.

I actually posted a paper earlier in this thread whcih I believe has pictures of simulations of both Bohmian and stochastic trajectories for double slit without being measured (i.e. between the slits and screen at end) Obviously the Barandes formulation is much more closely related to stochastic mechanics than Bohmian mechanics:

https://arxiv.org/html/2405.06324v1

Seems to me that the Barandes depiction of interference in the video before would be analogous to just talking about how the probabilities for particle behavior hitting the screen at the end when both slits are open will be different to when either one of slits is either closed or explicitly measured. The probabilities don't sum in the different contexts and so if you are faced with the two-slit scenario and decide to measure one slit, the probabilities just won't match up because the context has changed. The trajectories are indivisible - in terms of probing intermediate parts of trajectories (e.g. did it go through left or right slit?) because when you do so, the statistics change similar to what is said in #437.

I think maybe a big difference regarding the theories in the arxiv paper vs. Barandes is that stochastic mechanics and bohmian mechanics seem much more closely fitted to actual quantum mechanics in physics while Barandes' one iso generao it might apply to just about anything. Anything indivisible can be turned into a quantum system!

Ergo - Quantum cognition:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=15009658932835314398&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

Which has been around for 20 years.

There is an interesting quote in the section on quantum dynamics:

"In such tasks, the Markov and QPT models are similar, but there is a critical difference when successive measurements are taken across time. The Markov model obeys a type of law of total probability across time, called the Chapman–Kolmogorov equation, but the QPT model allows violations of this law."

The equation 35 in post in #446 is a Chapman-Kolmogorov equation. They seem to be talking about the same thing as Barandes' model in that quote. And interference has a similar kind of statistical interpretation too. From Khrennikov.

 

[pines-demon]

Not sure what you are implying but the left side of equations 35 and 77 are the same. 77 implies 35 does not always hold.

I am trying to understand what you wrote:

p(3 | 1) = Σ2 P(3 | 2) (2 | 1) + interference terms

If there is an equivalence between the quantum and the INMS version? Should both follow this equation or not?

 

[pines-demon]

I don't know if this will help

Thanks for at least trying

Could the formulation be advanced to describe what happens when not measured? Possibly. Bohmian and stochastic mechanics seem to be able to do this because the velocities in these formulations correspond to weak values in conventional quantum mechanics that seem to carry (I think complete) information about the system when it is not being measured.

I think stochastic quantum mechanical interpretation suffer from the same problem as Barandes. Do these stochastic interpretation imply non-local forces?

I am sorry if I am not commenting to the rest of what you are saying. Some of it is clarifying for the formalism but I am just trying to reply to what I find compelling for the Bell issue.

 

[iste]

I am trying to understand what you wrote:

If there is an equivalence between the quantum and the INMS version? Should both follow this equation or not?

The probilities of measurements in quantum theory will violate that equation which renders the statistics of these measurements as an INMS. The second link and following quote in my post #437 are describing how the measurements in quantum mechanics directly violate it by measurements disturbing statistical behavior.

I think stochastic quantum mechanical interpretation suffer from the same problem as Barandes.

Which problem? That Barandes' indivisility isn't easily visualizable?

Do these stochastic interpretation imply non-local forces?

The major formulation has instantaneous non-local behavior but it is not clear what this means. Some recent physicists have interpreted it as just epistemic in the sense that the instantaneous non-local behavior may not represent an actual physical event but just the updating of information. But this isn't rigorously justified.

However, it has been shown the non-local behavior disappears if the Markovian assumption in stochastic mechanics is rejected. There is actually one formulation of stochastic mechanics by Levy and Krener which is explicitly non-Markovian and it doesn't have any instantaneous non-local forces at all. Its obviously then nicely coincidental that the Barandes formulation is non-Markovian and also doesn't hace explicit non-local force - memory instead.

 

[Fra]

Sure but can you or Barandes provide a simple example of INMS processes? What does it look like?

Again a simple example of how that memory effect emerges would be great.

Depends on what you think is simple, but I think finance agents is simple and graspable.

Lets say we consider the dynamics of the market value of a stock. Then a simple model is that the market value is somehow determined by the collective expectations of the agents. And each agent can have different levels of sophisticated predictions, but an agent with memory will somehow have a memory depth and use part of history, in it's evaluation of the expectation. This means that the probability of a given value tomorrow, does not depend only on what it is today, but alsowhat is was in the past. But realistically an agent does not remember or know ALL of history, it consider or retains only part of it. This can be called "memory depth", but one can also imagine agents where the memory depth relates to its capacity, and thus every agent as a lossy retention of the past; which influence the expectations of the future.

So the market memory is this collective effect where the agents memory of thet past affects the valuations. This makes the transition from value to another emergent and non-markovian.

Non-divisible is because the emergent dynamics depends critically on the collective behaviour of agents including feedback loops. Arbitrarily dividing it into individual possible strategies and them just average them will miss the feedback between agent; and agents vs the collective.

This naturally has a cooperative element, as any part of the system is dependent on it's immediate surrounding. So even a "selfish agent" cant ignore that it depends on its environment. This is where emergence and selforganisation comes in.

are you proposing some sort of "hard" emergent macroproperty that cannot be explained from the micro theory?

The above is the simple idea. But the critical part to take this to next level is HOW the agents revise their expectations based on the history. This is a more deep water that goes beyond the basic question of getting a handle on what "indivisibility" and non-markovian can mean. If we mix this discussion with the meaning of non-disible and non-markobian i think it will be a mess. The agents memory can a simple model as an explicit actual memory or it can be implicit as in i the agents doe reinfored learning; thus the agent itself may well evolve and change behaviour (learn), this is an "implicit memory". But still makes in non-markovian.

a random references... but finance papers arent asking the ame questions as we do, so the analogies are never perfect...
Non-Markovian Dynamics for Automated Trading

Edit: Forgot to mention the obvious as well, that the "memory" of the agent, is in a sense "subjective hidden varibles" that does not satsfiy bell assumptions. And one can IMO very well consider hte agents actions even to be partly stochastic. But the market dynamics is an interaction of these processes. That si the point.

I think this is "easy" as it requires no "weirdness". the only challenge, is to "translate" agent processing, agent encoding, agent phenomenolgoy to "physics". But this is just a "framework". no mistakes needs to be done to think that any of this implies that particles "think" like human, or process inforamtion like humans. It can be "implicit", and even related to evolutionary learning, and thus "memory effects".

/Fredrik

 

[JC_Silver]

Another noob question, as always, how would QFT look under a INMS interpretation? If particles have definite position/momentum, how would field theories behave? The same? Different? Better? Worse?
I ask because QFT is a powerful tool that assumes particles are a result of disturbances on a field and not classical particles, as far as my education took me.

 

[PAllen]

Another noob question, as always, how would QFT look under a INMS interpretation? If particles have definite position/momentum, how would field theories behave? The same? Different? Better? Worse?
I ask because QFT is a powerful tool that assumes particles are a result of disturbances on a field and not classical particles, as far as my education took me.

Barandes has claimed, but to my knowledge, never published on this, that his approach generalizes to infinite configurations, and that then his dictionary approach maps to QFT.

 

[Lord Jestocost]

I'm not gonna lie, this is what gets me about the non-Markovian process, because the dice rolls isn't a non-Markovian process, it's a regular stochastic process. Since I'm not well versed in stochastic processes of any kind and I can't find good sources on non-Markovian processes online that are not by Barandes (as we used to say in the long past, my Google-fu isn't strong enough), I'm left not understanding exactly why the particle has definite positions between division events, because as far as I understand, the dice roll also doesn't exist between one roll and the next.

Again, sorry for bothering >.<

When modeling a physical system, one should reflect whether the physical model was restricted to a subset of the system’s phase space to analyze its behavior. When only a subset of the system's coordinates was examined, the system's behavior might appear "non-Markovian", thus the notation “apparent non-Markovian” would be more suitable.

 

[jbergman]

Depends on what you think is simple, but I think finance agents is simple and graspable.

Lets say we consider the dynamics of the market value of a stock. Then a simple model is that the market value is somehow determined by the collective expectations of the agents. And each agent can have different levels of sophisticated predictions, but an agent with memory will somehow have a memory depth and use part of history, in it's evaluation of the expectation. This means that the probability of a given value tomorrow, does not depend only on what it is today, but alsowhat is was in the past. But realistically an agent does not remember or know ALL of history, it consider or retains only part of it. This can be called "memory depth", but one can also imagine agents where the memory depth relates to its capacity, and thus every agent as a lossy retention of the past; which influence the expectations of the future.

So the market memory is this collective effect where the agents memory of thet past affects the valuations. This makes the transition from value to another emergent and non-markovian.

This still sounds markovian to me if each agent has a finite memory. Markovian processes aren't necessarily just one step conditionally independent.

Non-divisible is because the emergent dynamics depends critically on the collective behaviour of agents including feedback loops. Arbitrarily dividing it into individual possible strategies and them just average them will miss the feedback between agent; and agents vs the collective.

This seems like the more important point than the non-markovian claim you made above.

.
This naturally has a cooperative element, as any part of the system is dependent on it's immediate surrounding. So even a "selfish agent" cant ignore that it depends on its environment. This is where emergence and selforganisation comes in.

The above is the simple idea. But the critical part to take this to next level is HOW the agents revise their expectations based on the history. This is a more deep water that goes beyond the basic question of getting a handle on what "indivisibility" and non-markovian can mean. If we mix this discussion with the meaning of non-disible and non-markobian i think it will be a mess. The agents memory can a simple model as an explicit actual memory or it can be implicit as in i the agents doe reinfored learning; thus the agent itself may well evolve and change behaviour (learn), this is an "implicit memory". But still makes in non-markovian.

a random references... but finance papers arent asking the ame questions as we do, so the analogies are never perfect...
Non-Markovian Dynamics for Automated Trading

I have to read this paper and reply back. So far, I haven't found much of this discussion that illuminating. I found Barendes own video much more grounded and interesting. One comment that I found stimulating in that video from a colleague of Barendes was that indivisibility does fundamentally imply non-locality. Barendes said that may be true but that we just don't have an intuition about indivisibility.

 

[pines-demon]

Which problem? That Barandes' indivisility isn't easily visualizable?

Yeah I mean how are other stochastic intepretations describing the entanglement experiments?

The major formulation has instantaneous non-local behavior but it is not clear what this means. Some recent physicists have interpreted it as just epistemic in the sense that the instantaneous non-local behavior may not represent an actual physical event but just the updating of information. But this isn't rigorously justified.

When I insist on nonlocal forces or non-local interactions for Barandes I truly insist on the idea of FTL or action-at-a-distance. Clearly the weak "nonlocality" has to be a feature of any QM interpretation.

 

[pines-demon]

Lets say we consider the dynamics of the market value of a stock. Then a simple model is that the market value is somehow determined by the collective expectations of the agents. And each agent can have different levels of sophisticated predictions, but an agent with memory will somehow have a memory depth and use part of history, in it's evaluation of the expectation. This means that the probability of a given value tomorrow, does not depend only on what it is today, but alsowhat is was in the past. But realistically an agent does not remember or know ALL of history, it consider or retains only part of it. This can be called "memory depth", but one can also imagine agents where the memory depth relates to its capacity, and thus every agent as a lossy retention of the past; which influence the expectations of the future.

So the market memory is this collective effect where the agents memory of thet past affects the valuations. This makes the transition from value to another emergent and non-markovian.

Non-divisible is because the emergent dynamics depends critically on the collective behaviour of agents including feedback loops. Arbitrarily dividing it into individual possible strategies and them just average them will miss the feedback between agent; and agents vs the collective.

This naturally has a cooperative element, as any part of the system is dependent on it's immediate surrounding. So even a "selfish agent" cant ignore that it depends on its environment. This is where emergence and selforganisation comes in.

The above is the simple idea. But the critical part to take this to next level is HOW the agents revise their expectations based on the history. This is a more deep water that goes beyond the basic question of getting a handle on what "indivisibility" and non-markovian can mean. If we mix this discussion with the meaning of non-disible and non-markobian i think it will be a mess. The agents memory can a simple model as an explicit actual memory or it can be implicit as in i the agents doe reinfored learning; thus the agent itself may well evolve and change behaviour (learn), this is an "implicit memory". But still makes in non-markovian.

a random references... but finance papers arent asking the ame questions as we do, so the analogies are never perfect...
Non-Markovian Dynamics for Automated Trading

Edit: Forgot to mention the obvious as well, that the "memory" of the agent, is in a sense "subjective hidden varibles" that does not satsfiy bell assumptions. And one can IMO very well consider hte agents actions even to be partly stochastic. But the market dynamics is an interaction of these processes. That si the point.

I think this is "easy" as it requires no "weirdness". the only challenge, is to "translate" agent processing, agent encoding, agent phenomenolgoy to "physics". But this is just a "framework". no mistakes needs to be done to think that any of this implies that particles "think" like human, or process inforamtion like humans. It can be "implicit", and even related to evolutionary learning, and thus "memory effects".

Yeah that's why I insist in simple. I want some toy model. Clearly many socio-economic problems, if modeled naively, will predict nonlocal correlations. In trying to understand the "memory effect" I would like to understand the most minimalist version of it. For example is it because we cannot trace every e-mail between stock analysts (instant messaging)?

Edit: for clarity I can conceive many ways to reproduce entanglement using classical analogies. For example if you give FTL walky-talkies to the electrons you can reproduce the non-local correlations. I can also explain the experiments with some conspiracy between sources and devices. That's what is happening in the stock market. What I am missing so far is why do we need the stochasticity to explain this non-local aspect, what does stochasticity add here?

 

[JC_Silver]

Yeah that's why I insist in simple. I want some toy model, clearly many social and economic problems if modeled naively will predict nonlocal correlations. In trying to understand the "memory effect" I would like to understand the most minimalist version of it. For example is it because we cannot trace every e-mail between stock analyst (instant messaging)?

Edit: for clarity I can conceive many ways to reproduce entanglement using classical analogies. For example if you give FTL walky-talkies to the electrons you can reproduce the non-local correlations. I can also explain the experiments with some conspiracy between sources and devices. That's what is happening in the stock market. What I am missing for far is why do we need the stochasticity to explain this non-local aspect, what does stochasticity add here?

Stochasticity is already in QM, so I assume you mean the indivisible non-markovian stochasticity.
If Barandes is right, INMS gives us the Born rule out of pure math. It would be important considering MWI argues it derives the Born rule from branch counting and textbook QM just imposes it.
On non-locality, I don't think we NEED INMS to explain non-locality, but rather we cannot get away from it even with INMS. Non-locality is very well tested after all.
However how that indivisibility translates into the physical reality is unclear.

 

[pines-demon]

Stochasticity is already in QM, so I assume you mean the indivisible non-markovian stochasticity.

No. I mean stochasticity as in the so-labelled stochastic interpretations of quantum mechanics. Referring to interpretations that imply that QM can be understood as a stochastic process. Specifically I am interested on to how these interpretations explain entanglement (including INMS).

 

[iste]

Yeah I mean how are other stochastic intepretations describing the entanglement experiments?

When I insist on nonlocal forces or non-local interactions for Barandes I truly insist on the idea of FTL or action-at-a-distance. Clearly the weak "nonlocality" has to be a feature of any QM interpretation.

I will try to make another thread now describing a possible model for photon correlations.

 

[gentzen]

I will try to make another thread now describing a possible model for photon correlations.

Another thread about Barandes‘ INMS?

After thinking about Barandes (and trying to understand a bit his background and earlier work), and discussing Einstein‘s letters to Born with a friend, I came to the conclusion that he is most of all unhappy with the existing interpretations. And for similar reasons as Einstein. You might object, that Barandes is proposing a new formulation, while Einstein did not. OK, then let us look at DrChinese for a moment: Just like Einstein, the results of those experiments he keeps citing indicate to him that most existing interpretations cannot be right. Peter Donis believes that DrChinese has some interpretation relative to which his statements can be understood. But whether or not this is true is not important, because this is not the part which is important to DrChinese. And in a similar way, the interpretation currently developed by Barandes is not the important part for him. He is much closer to Einstein, in thinking about many different aspects of QM, and in his belief that there must be a simple solution.

 

[JC_Silver]

Another thread about Barandes‘ INMS?

After thinking about Barandes (and trying to understand a bit his background and earlier work), and discussing Einstein‘s letters to Born with a friend, I came to the conclusion that he is most of all unhappy with the existing interpretations. And for similar reasons as Einstein. You might object, that Barandes is proposing a new formulation, while Einstein did not. OK, then let us look at DrChinese for a moment: Just like Einstein, the results of those experiments he keeps citing indicate to him that most existing interpretations cannot be right. Peter Donis believes that DrChinese has some interpretation relative to which his statements can be understood. But whether or not this is true is not important, because this is not the part which is important to DrChinese. And in a similar way, the interpretation currently developed by Barandes is not the important part for him. He is much closer to Einstein, in thinking about many different aspects of QM, and in his belief that there must be a simple solution.

If they are making their own model, even if using Barande's work as inspiration, I agree it should go on a different thread.

(Happy holidays)

 

[iste]

Another thread about Barandes‘ INMS?

Nope, it is stochastic mechanics, albeit somewhat related to the Barandes' formulation at least in the sense of saying that quantum systems are actually stochastic systems.

 

[Fra]

As for the simplicity, I honestly think it is really difficuly to see things from a new perspective when current theories are cast in a certain paradigm. I think it's some conceptul grip or intuition to these things you seek right? Then I would say that this might required, stepping outside the current "system dynamics" or "newtonian schema" paradigm. It is at least how I see it. I have been thinking in terms of a different paradigm for at least 20 years, by it is clear enough that "most physicists" still think withing the existing paradigm; which is of course necessary as that is where our current theories work, but when it comes to makeing progoress... I think we need to find new perspectives. And Baranders is sniffing in this direction.

In trying to understand the "memory effect" I would like to understand the most minimalist version of it. For example is it because we cannot trace every e-mail between stock analysts (instant messaging)?

I'll try to just my view on the things Baranders notes, but from a a bigger perspective. This IMO makes it simple, but also more abstract.

"In trying to understand the "memory effect" I would like to understand the most minimalist version of it. For example is it because we cannot trace every e-mail between stock analysts (instant messaging)? "

In a very abstract sence, and in ther perspective of inferences made by agents, memory effect is conceptually related to a kind of inertia of opinon. In a way, NEW information always has to be valued and merged with the prior information of the agent. This leads to inertia in revising opinion, and this in itself is the memory effect.

That every agent in the game, should have been amble to infer with perfect confidence ALL information about ALL other players is of course not possible. If you think about that, then one is missing the whole point of what constitutes a "game of expectations". The game IS that you have to interact without knowing! That is the game. And very interesting things happens in these games! And seen from a distance (say weakly interacting remote agent) you can study the emergent system dynamics of this system composed of interacting agents. This is the conceptual paradigm I have.

The memory depth of agents would have to relate to the agents choice of modelling or inference sytem, but also somehow be bounded by it's totaly information capacity (probably contrained by it's mass at some point). So how would a smaller and smaller agent be able to survive? It needs to "copperate" with the environment, and thus evolve and adapt. This is evolution, and also constitutes a kind of collected "implicit" memory, that is defined in relation to the environment. So the agents and their evironment would have a close relation on that they both influece each others evolution.

When a collection or population or such agents (whatever they are, lets not speculate now - it's just an abstraction at this point) then this will spontanously lead to "herding behaviour". This has IMO nothing to do with conspiracy; it is about "spontanous cooperation", no fine tuning required.

Edit: for clarity I can conceive many ways to reproduce entanglement using classical analogies. For example if you give FTL walky-talkies to the electrons you can reproduce the non-local correlations. I can also explain the experiments with some conspiracy between sources and devices. That's what is happening in the stock market.

I don't see what you are talking about, in the thinkgs I envision and try to describe above, there is absolutely NO "FTL stuff". There is no conspiracy in the stock market? The only way you can conclude FTL stuff, is IMO if you insiste on viewing things in the wrong perspective. Or if you also reinvent those words similar to how bell reinvented other words.

Another thread posed the question wether bells notion of locality is even helpful in understanding QM? My opinion is that it is definitely not.

What I am missing so far is why do we need the stochasticity to explain this non-local aspect, what does stochasticity add here?

IMO, the function of "stochastics" is that it is a process that can not be further resolved from the perspective of an agent. Randomness is in my view of things always relative the the agents/observers information processing capacity and thus "memory depth".

This is how I view that the actions of agents are "stochastic", but the probability space where this stochastic takes places is not a global one, and it is also constantly evolving as the agents "learns", and cooperates with the environment. This is why I early in the thread asked to see Baranders explain the PROCESS and context of where these transition probababilitites emerge. But this is IMO what may is "begind" all this, and this is still missing, and this is why it is hard to understand. But what I tried to convey in simplex conceptual terms is at least for ME as simple as it gets. But this is admittedly a confused position if you insisten on the understanding in terms of an "effective system dynamics" model. And then YES; you are probably right that one could interpret this as a "conspiracy of fine tuning modelparamters"... but for ME, this whole thing is the supposed SOLUTION to the finetuning problem... that is mosy readily know from the string theory landscape for example.

None of this is clear from Baranders papers, but this is my view of this; and it's from this perspective I see things.

To make this a real theory we need many things that does not exists:
- explicit mathematical framework for hos to computer and simulation evolution
- explicit mathematical starting assumptions of agents structure
- explict mathematial ideas of how agents structure and dimenstionality can transform/emerge
- explicit mathematical model for the relatrinal structure between agents (that should lead to spacetime as we know it)

So Baranders papers is scratcing the surface by suggesting a way to stop thinking in terms of hilber spaces and "wave interference", and instead thing of "interfering" stochastic systems!

Edit: perhaps I could describe it like this: I do understand that the "emergenct system dynamics" at some steady state, will LOOK like a "conspiracy of fine tuning", if you used the current paradigm. And this is thus not a plausible explanation. But this is because we do not understand the importance of the emergence, and sellf-organisation, and here the "memory effect" is the key mechanism.

/Fredrik

 

[pines-demon]

In a very abstract sence, and in ther perspective of inferences made by agents, memory effect is conceptually related to a kind of inertia of opinon. In a way, NEW information always has to be valued and merged with the prior information of the agent. This leads to inertia in revising opinion, and this in itself is the memory effect.

That every agent in the game, should have been amble to infer with perfect confidence ALL information about ALL other players is of course not possible. If you think about that, then one is missing the whole point of what constitutes a "game of expectations". The game IS that you have to interact without knowing! That is the game. And very interesting things happens in these games! And seen from a distance (say weakly interacting remote agent) you can study the emergent system dynamics of this system composed of interacting agents. This is the conceptual paradigm I have.

The memory depth of agents would have to relate to the agents choice of modelling or inference sytem, but also somehow be bounded by it's totaly information capacity (probably contrained by it's mass at some point). So how would a smaller and smaller agent be able to survive? It needs to "copperate" with the environment, and thus evolve and adapt. This is evolution, and also constitutes a kind of collected "implicit" memory, that is defined in relation to the environment. So the agents and their evironment would have a close relation on that they both influece each others evolution.

When a collection or population or such agents (whatever they are, lets not speculate now - it's just an abstraction at this point) then this will spontanously lead to "herding behaviour". This has IMO nothing to do with conspiracy; it is about "spontanous cooperation", no fine tuning required.

As far as I know we are talking about "realistic-like" interpretation and not on how observers should interpret their the statistics as degrees or belief or something like that (like Qbism), right?
If we stick to realistic-like interpretations what I am asking is much more simple. Explain somekind of Mermin device using some classical analogy. Bohmians explain it by removing the conditions that particles cannot talk to each other. We should be able to do the same with stochasticity or the "memory effect" if these are valuable interpretations.

I don't see what you are talking about, in the thinkgs I envision and try to describe above, there is absolutely NO "FTL stuff". There is no conspiracy in the stock market? The only way you can conclude FTL stuff, is IMO if you insiste on viewing things in the wrong perspective. Or if you also reinvent those words similar to how bell reinvented other words.

I do not say that in the market people use FTL devices. What I am saying is that in the market, people have many ways to communicate including instant messaging which is very quick in regards to some of the dynamics. Also there is conspiracy in the market, which is not as clearly possible for elementary particles.

Another thread posed the question wether bells notion of locality is even helpful in understanding QM? My opinion is that it is definitely not.

I agree that here we disagree...

IMO, the function of "stochastics" is that it is a process that can not be further resolved from the perspective of an agent. Randomness is in my view of things always relative the the agents/observers information processing capacity and thus "memory depth".

I am under the impression that you want to reinterpret everything in terms of a theory of knowledge by agents, in that case we are no longer arguing in the same grounds. That's why I asked my first question in this comment. When you say agents you mean particles or do you mean the person doing the experiment?

 

[Fra]

As far as I know we are talking about "realistic-like" interpretation and not on how observers should interpret their the statistics as degrees or belief or something like that (like Qbism), right?

If you mean the kind of "realism" that bell speaks about then, it's not what I talk about.

But yes I speak of a less native version of realism, meaning that we should be able to explain what happens at microlevel - at least to the extent possible tunil the resolving power is out and there is an residual "randomness".

So by realism I mean that each view or interpretation has it's own "ontological elements" that are considered "real", in terms of which all else is explained via some processes.

But I think(??) with some exceptions, most agree that the "naive realism" that is impicit in bell theorem can not work. I think we agree here but aren't sure? For sure the "hilbert abstractions" and "wave interference of complex waves" are not "realistic" unless we can anchors these things in some microsctructure. But that may wll involve qbist like stuff... but see below

If we stick to realistic-like interpretations what I am asking is much more simple. Explain somekind of Mermin device using some classical analogy. Bohmians explain it by removing the conditions that particles cannot talk to each other. We should be able to do the same with stochasticity or the "memory effect" if these are valuable interpretations.

In the original description of the mermin device, the "fallacy" is in place already in the description, just like it is already in place in Bells anzats, which is exactly what Baranders points out, but gave it some new fancy names such as indivisility. (I called this myself equipartition fallacy before, but it the same ting)

The problem is that the dividing the process into hypothetical explicit relations to hte environment (such as polarization angles) is a conceptual fallacy with the assumption of isolation. At least it is; withing the framework of inference that I see this from. If it is truly isolation; there is no way we could make both a state tomography and process tomopgraphy of this - if you disagree, please explain how. So the construction is IMO not "inferrable" - thus invalid. This is how I see it, Baranders just says it does not "logically follow from marginalization rules". I think he thinks in different terms than I do, but the conclusion is the same. It is a fallacy.

I do not say that in the market people use FTL devices. What I am saying is that in the market, people have many ways to communicate including instant messaging which is very quick in regards to some of the dynamics. Also there is conspiracy in the market, which is not as clearly possible for elementary particles.

Not sure I understand. Can you give a simple conceptual example of what kind of conspiray in the market you think about? (Not I am not saying there are not human conspiracys, I am saying that i do not think this is a necessary to explain the memory effect, unless you label the same think as conspiracy).

I am under the impression that you want to reinterpret everything in terms of a theory of knowledge by agents, in that case we are no longer arguing in the same grounds. That's why I asked my first question in this comment. When you say agents you mean particles or do you mean the person doing the experiment?

I mean a coherent subsystems of the universe, that interacts/observers with the rest of the universe, so sure a particles, is an abstract agent, although the word "particle" leaves an unnecessary classical tang to it.

It does not mean then know math, or have built in semiconductor computers or have bgrain, but they have a microstructure and and microstate, whose state and evolutions in effect are the precursors of learning and implicit memory, and via cooperation of memory may increase it's memory. This is maybe best seen abstractly in terms of algoritmic learning reinforced and evolutionary.

But the realism here is this: it is not human information process, but it is limited by physics. The simple information processing an agent such as a particle can do, is likely highly constrained. It seems unreaslboe to to think that that the iformaion available in the macroscopic environment of say the copenhagen interpretation can be encoded and stored explicity in an electron, right? Thus the memory depth of the agent limits, and influiences how it acts. Which forces it to act stochastically, not because of "ignorance" buy becuse of limited memory depth.

I think this illustrates the perspectie that I thinnk helps understand some of the concepts for me at least. I can't explain it more without getting into explicit speculations, and it was never the purpose. The purpose was to try to convey one possible perspective where indivisibility and the memory effect are easy to understand (no quantum magic, flt or weird stuff needed; all we need to evoluiontary reinforced learning in agent based models, so very real imo)

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

I am under the impression that you want to reinterpret everything in terms of a theory of knowledge by agents, in that case we are no longer arguing in the same grounds. That's why I asked my first question in this comment. When you say agents you mean particles or do you mean the person doing the experiment?

I now see another thinkg what you mean. You seems to think the "knowledge" is not physical.

The trick is then; the "knowledge" of a particle (as an abstract agent) would of course be physically encoded both explicitly in its microstate, and implicitly as its microstructure would in some sense have a relation to the environment. But similar to a neural network, there are inputs and outputs - these define the relation to the environment - probably spacetime and the inter-particle forces, and there are internal hidden layers, that are not directly accessible to other agents, only indirectly via learning from interactions.

I hope this clarifies that agents or knowledge can be thought of as "real", and that it unifies also observations and physical interaction. The difference between a measurement and an interaction is just one of perspective. This relates also to another unsolved issue, the measurement problem. but there is still no agreed upon solution to that either.

We have decoherence theory, but in my terms, that solution corresponds to suggesting; there is always a "big enough" agent where decoherence explains things. And while I think this is partly correct for most part, it runs into problem still when you consider cosmology and unification.

For me all these open problems are closely related. I think many of then will be solved together once we get a better understanding of quantum mechanics. There are so many things I think motivates trying out some unorthodox perspectives. Interference of complex waves and hilbert spaces does not seem to offer a good understanding of "reality". It offers however a good desciptive analysis of small systems, from the perspective of macrolevel agents - which is what the QM was made for. But to understanding the framework in a bigger picture is missing.

/Fredrik

 

[pines-demon]

If you mean the kind of "realism" that bell speaks about then, it's not what I talk about.

Bell does not speak of "realism" but that's another story. Realism as in local realism was not used by Bell he preferred local causality. Realism as local realism these days seems to be something related to pre-xistence of values before measurement. I was using realism in a more broad sense, that there are actual mechanisms in nature that we can describe and not that probability is kind of subjective to the person doing the math/observation like in qbism.

But yes I speak of a less native version of realism, meaning that we should be able to explain what happens at microlevel - at least to the extent possible tunil the resolving power is out and there is an residual "randomness".

So by realism I mean that each view or interpretation has it's own "ontological elements" that are considered "real", in terms of which all else is explained via some processes.

Something like that...

In the original description of the mermin device, the "fallacy" is in place already in the description, just like it is already in place in Bells anzats, which is exactly what Baranders points out, but gave it some new fancy names such as indivisility. (I called this myself equipartition fallacy before, but it the same ting)

I do not see the fallacy... You want to make a device the produces certain results, you have classical ways to do it but that are not allowed by the rules, and the true solution that involves quantum mechanics. However you can always argue that quantum mechanics is doing one of these not allowed rules behind the scenes. The question is which.

The problem is that the dividing the process into hypothetical explicit relations to hte environment (such as polarization angles) is a conceptual fallacy with the assumption of isolation. At least it is; withing the framework of inference that I see this from. If it is truly isolation; there is no way we could make both a state tomography and process tomopgraphy of this - if you disagree, please explain how. So the construction is IMO not "inferrable" - thus invalid. This is how I see it, Baranders just says it does not "logically follow from marginalization rules". I think he thinks in different terms than I do, but the conclusion is the same. It is a fallacy.

Sorry I do not follow. What do you mean that we cannot do state and process tomography?

Not sure I understand. Can you give a simple conceptual example of what kind of conspiray in the market you think about? (Not I am not saying there are not human conspiracys, I am saying that i do not think this is a necessary to explain the memory effect, unless you label the same think as conspiracy).

Conspiracy in the sense that two variables that you thought were independent, were in fact managed by the same corporation but not very transparently to the public. Detectors that had some extraneous correlations from before the experiment began could explain entanglement.

I mean a coherent subsystems of the universe, that interacts/observers with the rest of the universe, so sure a particles, is an abstract agent, although the word "particle" leaves an unnecessary classical tang to it.

It does not mean then know math, or have built in semiconductor computers or have bgrain, but they have a microstructure and and microstate, whose state and evolutions in effect are the precursors of learning and implicit memory, and via cooperation of memory may increase it's memory. This is maybe best seen abstractly in terms of algoritmic learning reinforced and evolutionary.

But the realism here is this: it is not human information process, but it is limited by physics. The simple information processing an agent such as a particle can do, is likely highly constrained. It seems unreaslboe to to think that that the iformaion available in the macroscopic environment of say the copenhagen interpretation can be encoded and stored explicity in an electron, right? Thus the memory depth of the agent limits, and influiences how it acts. Which forces it to act stochastically, not because of "ignorance" buy becuse of limited memory depth.

I think this illustrates the perspectie that I thinnk helps understand some of the concepts for me at least. I can't explain it more without getting into explicit speculations, and it was never the purpose. The purpose was to try to convey one possible perspective where indivisibility and the memory effect are easy to understand (no quantum magic, flt or weird stuff needed; all we need to evoluiontary reinforced learning in agent based models, so very real imo)

/Fredrik

My problem with encoding stuff into the environment is that given everything in a volume of space it should still only be influenced by whatever is in its light cone. If we accept this and we accept that we have independent measurements devices that do not have hidden correlations, then quantum mechanics is predicting a type of correlations that we cannot explain using realistic theories (hopefully realistic in your sense). I still think a Mermin's device solution even if naive of how the memory effect could work against that conclusion would be enlightening.

 

[Fra]

Something like that...

Then we seem to roughly agree on that part good.

I'll think and see if I can explain more clearly in some other way and still keep it general.

But the conceptual framework I try to convey are supposed to have these properties

- EXPLAIN the correlations even with arbitrary independent detector settings (requires ISOLATION)
- it escapes bells theorem, beacuse the premise of the theorem does not apply (divisibility assumption)
- it does NOT bring back determinism, the hidden varible can never be used by any agent to predict the future outcomes, the residual randomness is there
- all causal influence are local, and by local I mean here that the stochastic actions of any agent is influenced(guided) ONLY by what in its own limited memory. So the memory effect is is essentiall. Without explicit or implicit memory, there would be not self organisation or emergence.

But let me think if I can find some other "simple" made up example to explain the concepts of the framework without making speculations of physical interactions. I think there are too many things at once perhaps to discuss, but unfortinately they are connected, so isolated one thing from other problems, always misses a point.

I do not see the fallacy... You want to make a device the produces certain results, you have classical ways to do it but that are not allowed by the rules, and the true solution that involves quantum mechanics. However you can always argue that quantum mechanics is doing one of these not allowed rules behind the scenes. The question is which.

Sorry I do not follow. What do you mean that we cannot do state and process tomography?

These terms are used also for normal QM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tomography

But in the general sense it means also, if an agent has an internal model with initial states and a dynamical law of a subsystem. I think it is not possible to infer that statespace and that dynamical law without beeing able to, first learn both the initial state with confidence, and the dynamical law (hamiltoninan) with confidence. To do this you typically need repeated interactions with "similarly prepared" systems etc. For example, it is impossble to find a regularity in something that happens once and claim it is more likely than some null hypothesis.

So to make sense of the divisibility ansatz in Bells theorem, you need a method to determine the hidden variable; so that you can describe how the causal relation is for each such variable; THEN sum it to get the average. But the premise is that it is isolated. And it is not a logical conclusion at all to assume that the dynamical law is unchanged once the isolation is broken. So you will never be able to infer the "mechanism" by which a given hidden variable gives a certain result; because it's isolated. And if its not isolated we know it immediately decoheres.

Even without QM, but just assuming a framework where hamiltonians are also required to be "measured" indirecetly in terms of historical inferences, leading to an implicit memory in the observing agent, the anzats is not sound and not general enough.

These ideas on tomography relates to other existing ideas of "unifying state space" and state of dynamical law. I mean in system dynamics, we tend to think of the initial information as the STATE. And this evolves as per some dynamical law. But I think that in the perspective of learning and inference, the information implicity in the dynamical law, is essential, and it is just as physical. But it's not encoded explicitly, but implicitly, via evolved learning and tuning. This is related to the memory effect as well.

/Fredrik

 

[GentDave]

TL;DR Summary: I attended a lecture that discussed the approach in the 3 papers listed below. It seems to be a genuinely new interpretation with some interesting features and claims.

These papers claim to present a realistic stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics that obeys a stochastic form of local causality. (A lecture I recently attended mentioned these papers). It also claims the Born rule as a natural consequence rather than an assumption. This appears to me to be a genuinely new interpretation. I have not delved into the papers in detail, but figured some people here may be interested.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.03085
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16935

I tried to read most of the first paper. I will take his word that the new math duplicates the old math, which we still then need to interpret. In that part I observed something of a contradiction or slight of hand or unclarity, however you'd like to describe it. By saying there is fundamental stochastic behavior, this says that the probabilities we are dealing with are objective probabilities, and that no information exists that could resolve the probabilities. However, it also states that in the two slit experiment the particle actually goes through only one slit. And also says that the measurement process is an example of conditional probability. This is a process by which we update our probabilities with information we did not previously have, in other words we seem to be explicitly dealing with subjective probabilities here. So, again, I assume the math is an equivalent formalism, but as an interpretation, I think it fails to keep clear what type of probabilities objective/subjective are involved. How can it be both stochastic and have definite hidden values at the same time?
Another way to put it - where exactly is the stochastic event in the two-slit experiment? If it is well before the interaction with the slits then why is the wave collapse in a different location, with the observation?

 

[gentzen]

By saying there is fundamental stochastic behavior, this says that the probabilities we are dealing with are objective probabilities, and that no information exists that could resolve the probabilities.

Well, he intents to deal with objective probabilities. However, the second part is your own attempt to make „objective probability“ more rigorous. But if this second part should lead to contradictions, then this is your problem, not his.

However, it also states that in the two slit experiment the particle actually goes through only one slit.

But it is of no consequence at all in his formulation through which slit it goes. If it would have a discontinuous trajectory and spend some time near both slits, nothing would change. In fact, since he assumes discrete states (for simplicity), the trajectories are actually forced to be discontinuous.

And also says that the measurement process is an example of conditional probability. This is a process by which we update our probabilities with information we did not previously have, in other words we seem to be explicitly dealing with subjective probabilities here.

Most importantly, the measurement process corresponds to a (local) splitting event. And because of that, you actually can have more or less information about what happened. So that you can have subjective probabilities here is not in contradiction to the fundamental stochastic behavior.

… I think it fails to keep clear what type of probabilities objective/subjective are involved. How can it be both stochastic and have definite hidden values at the same time?

Just because there are objective probabilities doesn‘t mean that you always know everything that can be known. And it would be strange if you didn‘t learn new information from a measurement. So my impression is that you are confusing yourself here.

Another way to put it - where exactly is the stochastic event in the two-slit experiment? If it is well before the interaction with the slits then why is the wave collapse in a different location, with the observation?

The stochastic event is after the interaction with the slit, when it has actual consequences. Barandes is free to postulate as much stochastic effects as he likes before, but they have no consequences at all in his formalism.

 

[GentDave]

Well, he intents to deal with objective probabilities. However, the second part is your own attempt to make „objective probability“ more rigorous. But if this second part should lead to contradictions, then this is your problem, not his.


But it is of no consequence at all in his formulation through which slit it goes. If it would have a discontinuous trajectory and spend some time near both slits, nothing would change. In fact, since he assumes discrete states (for simplicity), the trajectories are actually forced to be discontinuous.

Most importantly, the measurement process corresponds to a (local) splitting event. And because of that, you actually can have more or less information about what happened. So that you can have subjective probabilities here is not in contradiction to the fundamental stochastic behavior.


Just because there are objective probabilities doesn‘t mean that you always know everything that can be known. And it would be strange if you didn‘t learn new information from a measurement. So my impression is that you are confusing yourself here.


The stochastic event is after the interaction with the slit, when it has actual consequences. Barandes is free to postulate as much stochastic effects as he likes before, but they have no consequences at all in his formalism.

I'm using "objective probability" to mean that the information needed to resolve the uncertainty does not exist and "subjective probability" to mean that the information to resolve the uncertainty exists, but we don't have the information. He does explicitly say that it goes through a single slit, but a discontinuous path makes more sense (at least to me), so maybe that was a slight misstatement on his part or maybe I misread what he meant there. Page 11 "the particle really does go through a specific slit in each run of the experiment". And I agree that when you measure, you get more information of course. This happens regardless of what sort of probabilities were involved until then. And placing a stochastic event after the slit makes sense as well. So really its just that one line that sounds like Bohm that is confusing. Although - when he says the measurement even is an example of conditional probability. Page 18 "wave function collapse therefore reduces to a prosaic example of conditioning". That sure sounds like he is saying the information existed all along and we just discovered what was already there. But, it does not have to mean that, so that could be me reading too much into that statement.

 

[iste]

He does explicitly say that it goes through a single slit, but a discontinuous path makes more sense (at least to me), so maybe that was a slight misstatement on his part or maybe I misread what he meant there.

He says somewhere you can use continuous paths. He is just simplifying for the purpose of communication.

That sure sounds like he is saying the information existed all along and we just discovered what was already there. But, it does not have to mean that, so that could be me reading too much into that statement.

Yes, he is saying that.

I think it fails to keep clear what type of probabilities objective/subjective are involved. How can it be both stochastic and have definite hidden values at the same time?
Another way to put it - where exactly is the stochastic event in the two-slit experiment?

I think to make clear the distinction between this formulation and kinds of subjective quantum interpretations, the nature of probabilities should probably be seen as fundamentally objective but I think but there is nothing stopping someone from taking a subjective perspective - objective frequencies inform and beliefs and make those beliefs empirically meaningful.

Stochastic and definite hidden values? Look at stochastic processes wikipedia page and you will see the distinction:

"A stochastic process is defined as a collection of random variables defined on a common probability space"

These random variables are at every point in time. They just give you the probabilities of how the system behaves at every point in time. This corresponds to the information in the wavefunction.

You then have:

"A sample function is a single outcome of a stochastic process, so it is formed by taking a single possible value of each random variable of the stochastic process"

These are the definite values / positions / configurations of particles. You sample the random variables to get a single definite path that a particle could take, in a definite position everywhere along the way. How do you actually realize the probabilities of the random variables? You just repeat the experiment many, many times. You will get many many many definite paths; and the frequencies in which they sample possible values / configurations / positions at all the different times will approach the probabilities of the random variables at the different times.

You can have some scenario where the configurations / values / positions are maximally uncertain as described by a random variable, but all this means is that if you repeat an experiment many times, the frequencies will be uniform; nonetheless, these frequencies are about definite particle positions / configurations / values / outcomes that occur when the expeeriment is repeated. The uncertainty principle is then just a statement about exactly this kind of thing: e.g. if a particle takes a position with probability 1, its momentum probabilities will be uniformly spread - but in both cases you are talking about frequencies for definite outcomes in principle, even if this means repeating an experiment many times with a particle always ending up in the same position.

So when I said earlier: "how the system behaves at every point in time" this always means over many many repetitions of an experiment.

 

[GentDave]

Well, he intents to deal with objective probabilities. However, the second part is your own attempt to make „objective probability“ more rigorous. But if this second part should lead to contradictions, then this is your problem, not his.


But it is of no consequence at all in his formulation through which slit it goes. If it would have a discontinuous trajectory and spend some time near both slits, nothing would change. In fact, since he assumes discrete states (for simplicity), the trajectories are actually forced to be discontinuous.

Most importantly, the measurement process corresponds to a (local) splitting event. And because of that, you actually can have more or less information about what happened. So that you can have subjective probabilities here is not in contradiction to the fundamental stochastic behavior.


Just because there are objective probabilities doesn‘t mean that you always know everything that can be known. And it would be strange if you didn‘t learn new information from a measurement. So my impression is that you are confusing yourself here.


The stochastic event is after the interaction with the slit, when it has actual consequences. Barandes is free to postulate as much stochastic effects as he likes before, but they have no consequences at all in his formalism.

He says somewhere you can use continuous paths. He is just simplifying for the purpose of communication.



Yes, he is saying that.



I think to make clear the distinction between this formulation and kinds of subjective quantum interpretations, the nature of probabilities should probably be seen as fundamentally objective but I think but there is nothing stopping someone from taking a subjective perspective - objective frequencies inform and beliefs and make those beliefs empirically meaningful.

Stochastic and definite hidden values? Look at stochastic processes wikipedia page and you will see the distinction:

"A stochastic process is defined as a collection of random variables defined on a common probability space"

These random variables are at every point in time. They just give you the probabilities of how the system behaves at every point in time. This corresponds to the information in the wavefunction.

You then have:

"A sample function is a single outcome of a stochastic process, so it is formed by taking a single possible value of each random variable of the stochastic process"

These are the definite values / positions / configurations of particles. You sample the random variables to get a single definite path that a particle could take, in a definite position everywhere along the way. How do you actually realize the probabilities of the random variables? You just repeat the experiment many, many times. You will get many many many definite paths; and the frequencies in which they sample possible values / configurations / positions at all the different times will approach the probabilities of the random variables at the different times.

You can have some scenario where the configurations / values / positions are maximally uncertain as described by a random variable, but all this means is that if you repeat an experiment many times, the frequencies will be uniform; nonetheless, these frequencies are about definite particle positions / configurations / values / outcomes that occur when the expeeriment is repeated. The uncertainty principle is then just a statement about exactly this kind of thing: e.g. if a particle takes a position with probability 1, its momentum probabilities will be uniformly spread - but in both cases you are talking about frequencies for definite outcomes in principle, even if this means repeating an experiment many times with a particle always ending up in the same position.

So when I said earlier: "how the system behaves at every point in time" this always means over many many repetitions of an experiment.

I think I have clear in my head what the paper is saying now. I'm not sure you and I are communicating 100% clearly, however. Which is OK. I'm coming from a statistical (and physics) background with a dash of philosophy. And my definitions of objective probability and subjective probability are questions about the existence or non-existence of information. This is slightly different than asking about the nature of the wavefunction and if it is "real". I do understand what a stochastic process is. Here is what I would now say he is saying in my own words. There is a stochastic process (involving objective uncertainty) that selects one path and then another repeatedly. And at any given moment one of these paths is real, but that may change in the next moment and this change is stochastic and objectively uncertain. However, when we make an observation we do find a definite value that it actually had AT THAT MOMENT. so we are resolving our subjective uncertainty regarding the momentary value of the variable. My opinion is that I like the idea.

 

[Fra]

I'm using "objective probability" to mean that the information needed to resolve the uncertainty does not exist and "subjective probability" to mean that the information to resolve the uncertainty exists, but we don't have the information.

The notion of wether "information exists" becomes more complicated if you add learning and emergence/organisation to parts of the system.

If we assume that "information exists" means that, there is at least one observer (at some point), or someone that "knows", but it's just not me?

Then this becomes subject to evolution, as initially perhaps noone knows, but with time someone can learn or find out; it may emerge as a result of some learning/inference process. Also the only way for someone to find out if someone else has the information, is by interacting with others; which again changes things. I think at some point interacting observers can evolve an emergent effective agreement of consenscus, this is then "objectivity", but that is only effective locally, it has no global rooting.

Except of course in the space of mathematics of our models. But that is I think redundant embedding lacking physical basis, but it is what keeps seducing theorists.

This mechanism, is critical at least for my conceptual understanding, and it is what I see behind the memory effect.

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

I'll think and see if I can explain more clearly in some other way and still keep it general.
...
But let me think if I can find some other "simple" made up example to explain the concepts of the framework without making specuations of physical interactions.

I have been thinking howto to explain the "mechanism" where the memory effect can explain correlation via a kind of "hidden variables", and yet escape beeing subject to bells inequality, but without speculation or detail as that blurs the conceptual overview.

I think to make up an explicit toy example, would involve lots of assumptions about how information are encoded and stored, and how actions are randomly chosen by guided by probabilities, and making the examples realistic without engaging in specuialtion I have hard to see doable in a simple way.

So I tried to explain again conceptually, but found out that I still need to first list a number of say axiomatic assumptions, not about details, but about constrainin principles on causality and interactions in an agent based model view, that in themselves can be interpreted as "speculations", so I deleted it

Therefore I will pass try to explain the function of memory effect and the proble of dividisiblity. If I find paper that does something similar I can get back to it, but all the papers I have find are all tangenting this thing from different angles, many are related to AI research, and many are relating to agent based modelling, but none put the right things together yet.

Happy new year!

/Fredrik

 

[GentDave]

The notion of wether "information exists" becomes more complicated if you add learning and emergence/organisation to parts of the system.

If we assume that "information exists" means that, there is at least one observer (at some point), or someone that "knows", but it's just not me?

Then this becomes subject to evolution, as initially perhaps noone knows, but with time someone can learn or find out; it may emerge as a result of some learning/inference process. Also the only way for someone to find out if someone else has the information, is by interacting with others; which again changes things. I think at some point interacting observers can evolve an emergent effective agreement of consenscus, this is then "objectivity", but that is only effective locally, it has no global rooting.

Except of course in the space of mathematics of our models. But that is I think redundant embedding lacking physical basis, but it is what keeps seducing theorists.

This mechanism, is critical at least for my conceptual understanding, and it is what I see behind the memory effect.

/Fredrik

Hi Thank you for your reply I mean “information exists” in a different sense. When I’m asking about "objective probability" I'm asking "does the universe 'know' the result?” That is - even if you had all information in existence and infinite computing time can ,in this case, the next exact position of the particle be known ? If it can't then its next position is objectively undetermined. - As is assumed in a mathematical stochastic process. If it could be known, but we just lack information then that is a subjective uncertainty. Every probability we know of outside of quantum mechanics is a subjective uncertainty, although the abstract random generator in math is always assumed to be an objective uncertainty. What DOES complicate this a bit in my view is when you start thinking about nonlocal relations and the role "future knowledge" plays.

I’m also sensing you are coming from a global entanglement point of view – like "many worlds" perhaps. I don’t share that idea though. In those models the universe is deterministic and there is never any objective uncertainty. So it is a concept that separates various interpretations.

If I understand the author he is saying the next position of the photon is objectively undetermined but its current position is always only a subjective uncertainty.

 

[Fra]

Hi Thank you for your reply I mean “information exists” in a different sense. When I’m asking about "objective probability" I'm asking "does the universe 'know' the result?” That is - even if you had all information in existence and infinite computing time can ,in this case, the next exact position of the particle be known ?

For me this is not a question I ask, it is not physical for me. Your hypothetical question implies infinite computational capacity. For me "physical questions" must be constructible from what the questioner (ie the observer or agent) has to work with; and subject to any actual constraints in terms of memory of information capacity with reduces the "set of possible questions" that are physical.

If it can't then its next position is objectively undetermined. - As is assumed in a mathematical stochastic process. If it could be known, but we just lack information then that is a subjective uncertainty. Every probability we know of outside of quantum mechanics is a subjective uncertainty, although the abstract random generator in math is always assumed to be an objective uncertainty. What DOES complicate this a bit in my view is when you start thinking about nonlocal relations and the role "future knowledge" plays.

I’m also sensing you are coming from a global entanglement point of view – like "many worlds" perhaps. I don’t share that idea though. In those models the universe is deterministic and there is never any objective uncertainty. So it is a concept that separates various interpretations.

Ouch no I am not into mwi

If we are talking about understanding "normal descriptive QM", I an more into statistical or copenhagen interpretation. But in this context, of trying to understand the QM foundations deeper, my stance is a kind of qbist inspired interpretation where there action under irreducible uncertainty is a key.

/Fredrik

 

[GentDave]

For me this is not a question I ask, it is not physical for me. Your hypothetical question implies infinite computational capacity. For me "physical questions" must be constructible from what the questioner (ie the observer or agent) has to work with; and subject to any actual constraints in terms of memory of information capacity with reduces the "set of possible questions" that are physical.

Ouch no I am not into mwi

If we are talking about understanding "normal descriptive QM", I an more into statistical or copenhagen interpretation. But in this context, of trying to understand the QM foundations deeper, my stance is a kind of qbist inspired interpretation where there action under irreducible uncertainty is a key.

/Fredrik

It make sense that your comments come from a Copenhagen interpretation. Initially it was sort of founded on the idea that anything we can't observe does not count. and there is only subjective uncertainty. I think that was an early wrong turn. An example I'd use is a black box that we can not open. We can test its function with inputs and observing outputs. But our best models may postulate moving bits inside we can't see. What we can't measure may still be important for forming our best theories.

 

[Fra]

An example I'd use is a black box that we can not open. We can test its function with inputs and observing outputs. But our best models may postulate moving bits inside we can't see. What we can't measure may still be important for forming our best theories.

This is fully in line with how I prefer to think as well. In fact i take it probably eve more serious, in that from the perspective of an agent/observer the future is always a "black box". And the learning, such as inference to best explanation, of what is not "directly visible", is a physical process.

In the simplifications of quantum mechanics, where we study small subsystems, which can be preparted many times and whose dynamics are shortlive, relative to the time of the "inference" (including tomoghraphic processes and acquiring statistics), it is indeed possible to infer an internal structure and dynamical law that does constitute the effective inference to best explanation.

In QM as we know it, this is presumed in the starting point. The "process" of inferring the state space and dynamical laws (states preps and hamiltoninans) are not considerd subject to "dynamics". It is treated outside. And this is precisely the unacceptable idealisation that prevents us from getting deeper.

If I understand the author he is saying the next position of the photon is objectively undetermined but its current position is always only a subjective uncertainty.

This makes sense yes.

I would put it so that the FUTURE is objectively undertermined because the abduction or inference to best explanation requires TIME so the future is fundamentally undetermined; all we have is our "best expectations of the future".

Put perhaps that PAST can be said to be the "subjectively undetermined" (beacuse even one might say that history is a "fact" no single subsystem/observer could have inferred and encode in a non-lossy way all this). So the "best description of the past" we have is still subject to uncertainty as any recording is necessarily incomplete and lossy.

This I agree resonates well with the memory effect, divisibility and non-markov features as well.

Copenhagen interpretation or statistical interpreation is what you get as as "limiting case"; for small short-lived "quantum-systems"; as described from a dominany macroworld, where information processing capacity is practically unlimited. And as this, and nothing else philosohical, was what the founders of QM worked on, I still think the old Copenagen or statistical interpretation is the best and most honest one, at least in the historical perspective.

/Fredrik

 

[GentDave]

This is fully in line with how I prefer to think as well. In fact i take it probably eve more serious, in that from the perspective of an agent/observer the future is always a "black box". And the learning, such as inference to best explanation, of what is not "directly visible", is a physical process.

In the simplifications of quantum mechanics, where we study small subsystems, which can be preparted many times and whose dynamics are shortlive, relative to the time of the "inference" (including tomoghraphic processes and acquiring statistics), it is indeed possible to infer an internal structure and dynamical law that does constitute the effective inference to best explanation.

In QM as we know it, this is presumed in the starting point. The "process" of inferring the state space and dynamical laws (states preps and hamiltoninans) are not considerd subject to "dynamics". It is treated outside. And this is precisely the unacceptable idealisation that prevents us from getting deeper.


This makes sense yes.

I would put it so that the FUTURE is objectively undertermined because the abduction or inference to best explanation requires TIME so the future is fundamentally undetermined; all we have is our "best expectations of the future".

Put perhaps that PAST can be said to be the "subjectively undetermined" (beacuse even one might say that history is a "fact" no single subsystem/observer could have inferred and encode in a non-lossy way all this). So the "best description of the past" we have is still subject to uncertainty as any recording is necessarily incomplete and lossy.

This I agree resonates well with the memory effect, divisibility and non-markov features as well.

Copenhagen interpretation or statistical interpreation is what you get as as "limiting case"; for small short-lived "quantum-systems"; as described from a dominany macroworld, where information processing capacity is practically unlimited. And as this, and nothing else philosohical, was what the founders of QM worked on, I still think the old Copenagen or statistical interpretation is the best and most honest one, at least in the historical perspective.

/Fredrik

I would agree the future is objectively undetermined, but many interpretations do not agree. The wavefunction delelops deterministicly and the future is fully determined by the present state of things in many interpretations. The one statement of yours I disagreed with was when you described one person and then another and another learning about a quantum result and that that changes the result (if I understood correctly). That implies a global entanglement and I don't thing that is the case.

 

[iste]

I would put it so that the FUTURE is objectively undertermined because the abduction or inference to best explanation requires TIME so the future is fundamentally undetermined; all we have is our "best expectations of the future".

Put perhaps that PAST can be said to be the "subjectively undetermined" (beacuse even one might say that history is a "fact" no single subsystem/observer could have inferred and encode in a non-lossy way all this). So the "best description of the past" we have is still subject to uncertainty as any recording is necessarily incomplete and lossy.

This I agree resonates well with the memory effect, divisibility and non-markov features as well.

Been reading, thinking more deeply Caticha's papers recently has some interesting stuff to say: (top two papers below)

https://scholar.google.co.uk/schola..._vis=1&q=caticha+entropic+dynamics&oq=caticha

If time is constructed purely based on informational entropic assumptions it must be naturally irreversible and is described in a Markovian sense, independent of the past. He asks then how can some processes be time-reversible and dependent on the past - like quantum mechanics - if time is irreversible. Interestingly, the conditions for / that prevent time-reversibility actually seem to follow from Bayes theorem, and can be cashed out in the following way: the Markovianity conditions only work in one direction, which contradicts time-reversibility and so the system will look different forward in time vs backward - the difference between backward and forward is actually in Bayes' theorem. Seems things shouldn't work in a non-Markovian way under informational-entropic time; as he puts it - there is no symmetry between the inferential past and inferential future. And this statement is inherently connected to Markovianity.

So it seems from Caticha's papers that you cannot get time-reversibility and non-Markovianity without something extra. He requires extra-variables in addition to particles in his quantum mechanics. Dynamics of extra variables influence dynamics of particles and dynamics of particles influence dynamics of extra-variables so its reciprocal, and this stops the irreversibility of time. But the way he does it seems kind of tautological in the sense that he just asserts a condition where something called "energy" is conserved; but, "energy" here is literally defined as just whatever is conserved in the dynamics due to invariance in time-translation - which seems to be another way of saying... uhh, it just is.

But I think it can still be made more tangible in the following sense - if you assume that the Markovian time is occuring under an open system which interacts with its environment through force and energy. If we don't assume anything about what it gets back from the environment we have Markovianity as the random changes to the system described by entropy maximization are not counterbalanced - we also don't know where the force goes because we have decided to arbitrarily focus on this small compartment of a larger whole isolated system . Adding the extra variables may just be a way of modeling (even if just an idealization) isolatedness - in the sense that if the system is isolated, then the force being exerted elsewhere hasn't left the system - but it needs to go somewhere, so we can talk about these extra variables as where this force goes. We can then effectively assume that everything lost by the particles, and exerted on the extra-variables, is returned - nothing is leaked out the system and so it is no longer Markovian. Because the informational-entropic time is based around the idea that the transition probability distributions maximize entropy, but only in one direction, I guess one could see that as dynamics over time are inherently characterized by the loss of information which maybe is returned by the extra-variables.

The coupling of the particles to the extra variables to my eyes then looks, at least superficially, kind of like a recurrent neural network, especially an Elman network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_neural_network#Elman_network

The y units in the Elman depiction receive inputs that change their state at one time-step, then outputs from the y unit go into the  u unit which recycle y's outputs back to it at the next time-step - this means y not only depends on its immediate inputs but its history - what happened in the past. This recurrence then is the very basic principle of how recurrent neural networks (and indeed brains where recurrence is fundamental) can learn sequential, history-dependent information (e.g. what comes next in the sentence based on what came before, but modern large language models are based on a more efficient way of doing this than recurrent neural networks though). Maybe this is a way of an intuition for the non-Markovianity - the particle outputs are fed back onto them so that nothing leaks out (In terms of physical energy, neural activity), but simultaneously rendering the system history-dependent and time-reversible.

The extra-variables take the role of the phase in quantum mechanics. Caticha later plays down the extra-variables because he doesn't have an interpretation at hand; but there is a trade-off in the sense that by playing down the extra-variables, you just have to make certain assumptions about the existence of phase and related things - but the extra-variables give you them all for free.

What perhaps is most interesting is that quantum-type non-locality appears to occur in Caticha's Newtonian theory (first two papers below but specifically second paper, section 5):

https://scholar.google.co.uk/schola...is=1&q=caticha+newtonian+inference+to+physics

You see in his Newtonian system for multiple particles in an isolated system, their Newtonian behaviors depend on each other in a similar way to Bohmian mechanics (but note equation (39) and the following note: particles still are statistically conditionally independent). Seems to me this is from the fact that the Newtonian behavior conserves energy. And interestingly, in later papers you see that both the quantum potential in Bohmian mechanics, responsible for quantum non-locality; and the quantum configuration space both are consequences of the information metric which characterizes his entropic dynamics even in the Newtonian case (and curvedness is related to information): i.e.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=2247357911529834348&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

Caticha's Newtonian dynamics are obviously time-reversible and conserve energy but it still emerges from the lossy entropic dynamics, evident in the fact that the Newtonian dynamics is only along the most probably path: i.e. analogous to path of least action.

 

[Fra]

Been reading, thinking more deeply Caticha's papers recently has some interesting stuff to say: (top two papers below)

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1&q=caticha+entropic+dynamics&oq=caticha

If time is constructed purely based on informational entropic assumptions it must be naturally irreversible and is described in a Markovian sense, independent of the past. He asks then how can some processes be time-reversible and dependent on the past - like quantum mechanics - if time is irreversible. Interestingly, the conditions for / that prevent time-reversibility actually seem to follow from Bayes theorem, and can be cashed out in the following way: the Markovianity conditions only work in one direction, which contradicts time-reversibility and so the system will look different forward in time vs backward - the difference between backward and forward is actually in Bayes' theorem. Seems things shouldn't work in a non-Markovian way under informational-entropic time; as he puts it - there is no symmetry between the inferential past and inferential future. And this statement is inherently connected to Markovianity.

So it seems from Caticha's papers that you cannot get time-reversibility and non-Markovianity without something extra. He requires extra-variables in addition to particles in his quantum mechanics. Dynamics of extra variables influence dynamics of particles and dynamics of particles influence dynamics of extra-variables so its reciprocal, and this stops the irreversibility of time. But the way he does it seems kind of tautological in the sense that he just asserts a condition where something called "energy" is conserved; but, "energy" here is literally defined as just whatever is conserved in the dynamics due to invariance in time-translation - which seems to be another way of saying... uhh, it just is.

But I think it can still be made more tangible in the following sense - if you assume that the Markovian time is occuring under an open system which interacts with its environment through force and energy. If we don't assume anything about what it gets back from the environment we have Markovianity as the random changes to the system described by entropy maximization are not counterbalanced - we also don't know where the force goes because we have decided to arbitrarily focus on this small compartment of a larger whole isolated system . Adding the extra variables may just be a way of modeling (even if just an idealization) isolatedness - in the sense that if the system is isolated, then the force being exerted elsewhere hasn't left the system - but it needs to go somewhere, so we can talk about these extra variables as where this force goes. We can then effectively assume that everything lost by the particles, and exerted on the extra-variables, is returned - nothing is leaked out the system and so it is no longer Markovian. Because the informational-entropic time is based around the idea that the transition probability distributions maximize entropy, but only in one direction, I guess one could see that as dynamics over time are inherently characterized by the loss of information which maybe is returned by the extra-variables.

The coupling of the particles to the extra variables to my eyes then looks, at least superficially, kind of like a recurrent neural network, especially an Elman network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_neural_network#Elman_network

The y units in the Elman depiction receive inputs that change their state at one time-step, then outputs from the y unit go into the  u unit which recycle y's outputs back to it at the next time-step - this means y not only depends on its immediate inputs but its history - what happened in the past. This recurrence then is the very basic principle of how recurrent neural networks (and indeed brains where recurrence is fundamental) can learn sequential, history-dependent information (e.g. what comes next in the sentence based on what came before, but modern large language models are based on a more efficient way of doing this than recurrent neural networks though). Maybe this is a way of an intuition for the non-Markovianity - the particle outputs are fed back onto them so that nothing leaks out (In terms of physical energy, neural activity), but simultaneously rendering the system history-dependent and time-reversible.

The extra-variables take the role of the phase in quantum mechanics. Caticha later plays down the extra-variables because he doesn't have an interpretation at hand; but there is a trade-off in the sense that by playing down the extra-variables, you just have to make certain assumptions about the existence of phase and related things - but the extra-variables give you them all for free.

What perhaps is most interesting is that quantum-type non-locality appears to occur in Caticha's Newtonian theory (first two papers below but specifically second paper, section 5):

https://scholar.google.co.uk/schola...is=1&q=caticha+newtonian+inference+to+physics

You see in his Newtonian system for multiple particles in an isolated system, their Newtonian behaviors depend on each other in a similar way to Bohmian mechanics (but note equation (39) and the following note: particles still are statistically conditionally independent). Seems to me this is from the fact that the Newtonian behavior conserves energy. And interestingly, in later papers you see that both the quantum potential in Bohmian mechanics, responsible for quantum non-locality; and the quantum configuration space both are consequences of the information metric which characterizes his entropic dynamics even in the Newtonian case (and curvedness is related to information): i.e.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=2247357911529834348&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

Caticha's Newtonian dynamics are obviously time-reversible and conserve energy but it still emerges from the lossy entropic dynamics, evident in the fact that the Newtonian dynamics is only along the most probably path: i.e. analogous to path of least action.

Lots of things to comment here... not sure where to begin.

I like Caticha, I have read most of his papers, and ET Jaynes half-ready book but this was many years time ago and he was an early inspiration, and while I share alot of the idea of Ariel when it comes to inference and physics, I different in some critical parts in his thikning. He largely thinks of inference as as human probabilistic description of nature, and that this in itself has implicates on the laws. While this is true, I unlike Caticha, have a problem to start with the real numbers as an intrinsic measure of degree of belief because it requires the "memory constraint" to be patch onto things, in a way that I think gets complicated and risks leading to pathologies of divergences later in development.

I share parts of the entropic dynamics thinking, but I don't share the way he does it completely. I think the way that each agent/observer see and "entropic flow"; but as this is conditional to the agent, different observers have different parameterisation of time. Ie this time is relative to the obsever, and only valid differentially (before new information update) like in relativity. So I think the parameterisation of the "expected change" is entropic, the global change is not; it is evolutionary and the difference is that the "microstructure" relative to which entropic flow can be defined, is in principled evolving, this is why they entropic time makes sense for me only for short time.

But as I think different in many basic things, while I love Catichas papers, I stopped comparing his details to how I think years ago. I traced things back to this introduction of the degree of belief, and he basically goes with continuum probabiliti and real numbers, I find this probolematic and wants to "reconstruct" measure itself from ang agent with memory constraints to get an instrinsic measure. Here an uncountable number system is a nono for me. it is a valid embedding, but as the embedding is obvioulsy way too large, it creates the problem of tracking limts, and the tracking is unfortunately lost fast, which requires that you keep patching things with normalizations and other constraints all the time.

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

The coupling of the particles to the extra variables to my eyes then looks, at least superficially, kind of like a recurrent neural network, especially an Elman network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_neural_network#Elman_network

The y units in the Elman depiction receive inputs that change their state at one time-step, then outputs from the y unit go into the  u unit which recycle y's outputs back to it at the next time-step - this means y not only depends on its immediate inputs but its history - what happened in the past. This recurrence then is the very basic principle of how recurrent neural networks (and indeed brains where recurrence is fundamental) can learn sequential, history-dependent information (e.g. what comes next in the sentence based on what came before, but modern large language models are based on a more efficient way of doing this than recurrent neural networks though). Maybe this is a way of an intuition for the non-Markovianity - the particle outputs are fed back onto them so that nothing leaks out (In terms of physical energy, neural activity), but simultaneously rendering the system history-dependent and time-reversible.

Yes, although there are many options for how to encode the past dependence, a neural network if this type, where the hidden layer is a memory, is indeed the kind of intuition I tried to describe as well in previous posts. There is more one can discuss here, but as far as I recall Caticha is not taking this very far.

But in these cases, the most obvious "natural" intuition to a conserved quantity is memory. Ie. an agent (or neural network) can reorganize, say add additional layer, but doing so requires sharing finite memory, and it requires additional computations, so at some pint it seems reasonble to think that - there is an optimal internal microstructure of hte agent/network or what we calle it, where the agent has maximal fitness in a given environment (which defines the inputs and feedback to outputs). This may even allow for future associations of concepts such as mass~inertia and energy, in terms of such things. The question of mass generation in phusics, might thus relate to how can a neural agent increase it's "effective memory"? Maybe by cooperating with the environment, exploit patterns and use instead "implicit memory". when you start in this direction, we can release ourselves from Ariels view of physics are inference, in the sense of human tools. Perhaps we can undo some of the ad hoc constrains or assumttions we initially add. Perhaps physics can even be inference in the sense of inter-material tools, to handle relations? But solving everything at once is hard, so a first step is perhaps to see, is what Ariel is doing. Then the next step would be to relase ourselves from the broad human context or mathematics, and try to see what natures instrinsic "mathematics" is like? Perhaps then we need less ad hoc constraints?

Here there is plenty of "intuition" for non-markovianty and also emergence.

/Fredrik

 

[pines-demon]

J. Barandes did another podcast with Curt Jaimungal:

He seems to discuss INMS. I have not listened to it yet, I will report back when I can and only if it brings anything new to the discussion.

 

[pines-demon]

In the new video he gives two or three thoughts that could be important here:

1. simple non-chaotic Newtonian mechanics is non-Markovian. You need the position $\mathbf r(t)$ at some time $t$ but also the position an infinitesimal time before ($\dot{\mathbf r}(t)\mathrm d t$), the present state does not suffice. The way that we make the dynamics Markovian is to expand into the configuration space $(\mathbf r,\dot{\mathbf r})$ (from 3D to 6D). Quantum mechanics according to him is the same idea, you have some extremely non-Markovian system, and forcing it to be Markovian (Schrödinger equation) introduces phases and interference terms.
2. He seems to have dropped the idea of memory. He says
   

   These are the prices you pay [interference terms to make it Markovian]. We talked before about, like, are these memory effects? Memory is not quite the right metaphor for indivisible stochastic processes. Traditional non-Markovian processes require that you specify sort of conditional probabilities conditioned in arbitrarily many previous times. That's very complicated and has a lot of structure and contains a lot of information. And you can legitimately ask, where is that information being stored? An indivisible process is actually much simpler. It doesn't entail the specification of all those higher order non-Markovian probabilities. It's much sparser.

   He does not say much more unfortunately. Barandes compares his discovery with path integral formulation which is equivalent to other formulations.
3. He is working on a draft on the "Hello-world example", a qubit example. Is he reading PF? (he actually hand-wave explains it, but does not provide the interpretation part).

That's what I got so far, he explains where linearity and unitarity comes from (the latter comes from a relation with unistochastic processes). But I am still trying to dissect if there is an interpretation here. He takes more time to discuss the importance of analytic philosophy in science. I will add more if I get to watch it completely.

He left Bell's inequalities to a future video...

 

[iste]

simple non-chaotic Newtonian mechanics is non-Markovian. You need the position r(t) at some time t but also the position an infinitesimal time before (r˙(t)dt), the present state does not suffice. The way that we make the dynamics Markovian is to expand into the configuration space (r,r˙) (from 3D to 6D). Quantum mechanics according to him is the same idea, you have some extremely non-Markovian system, and forcing it to be Markovian (Schrödinger equation) introduces phases and interference terms.

I do also believe he says it isn't non-Markovian in the same sense though, if iirc - the quantum case is not the same as that procedure which I believe is closely related to what is said in your next quote about conditioning on arbitrarily many times.

He seems to have dropped the idea of memory.

It really depends what you actually mean by memory. I was under no illusions that he meant the kind of memory he describes in that quote.

But I am still trying to dissect if there is an interpretation here.

I think it just has to be accepted that Barandes has no interpretation of how it happens even though he clearly states in the video that at all times the system has a definite configuration, even during periods ordinarily described by superposition. He can point to indivisible stochastic processes as the explanation of quantum mechanics but the correspondence theorem is so general that it can never explain exactly why something is indivisible because it applies to literally any indivisible system. If physical systems are indivisible they can be turned into a quantum system, if cognition is indivisible it can be turned into a quantum system, if the dynamics of ecological systems are indivisible they can be turned into quantum systems. Barandes seems to just go down the route that he believes this may just be a fundamental physical law which doesn't need explanation because he thinks that indivisible stochastic systems are plausibly the most general kind of dynamical system.

If you want a more palatable interpretation (imo) of why an indivisible stochastic process might behave the way it does, I suggest looking at stochastic mechanics which will be equivalent to Barandes' formulation when looking at regular physical quantum systems and is extremely well-established as a formulation and research programme involving many physicists and mathematicians, stretching back well into the mid-twentieth century. Recent review:

https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/7/6/166

Beyer gives three assumptions used to construct quantum mechanics from a stochastic process / diffusion:

1. The form of the diffusion coefficient, featuring Plank's constant and inversely proportional to particle mass.

2. The diffusion is non-dissipative - i.e. it conserves energy on average.

3. The system behaves according to Newton's second law, F= ma, with regard to its average motion.

From a physical system constructed this way, all quantum behavior can be reproduced.

Assumption 2 is enforced by something called the osmotic velocity, which was invoked by Einstein in his studies of Brownian motion and is defined as "the velocity acquired by a Brownian particle, in equilibrium with respect to an external force, to balance the osmotic force". If you want to take the meaning of the osmotic velocity literally, as originally defined in the Einsteinian context of stochastic systems, then the natural interpretation implied is that the randomness in the stochastic system is being caused by its interactions with another background system. This is conceptually no different to the archtypical Brownian motion of a dust pollen in a glass of water being pushed about by the background water; but in the quantum case, the particle's exchanges with the environment conserve energy on average. This is the broad consensus in stochastic mechanics on how to make quantum mechanics intelligible as a stochastic system, the background system mentioned a couple times passingly in the Beyer paper.

Hydrodynamic pilot-wave experiments provide an interesting toy model for how the stochastic mechanical particle-background system could produce quantum behavior in an intelligible way. These toy models produce quantum-like, nonlocal-like, non-markovian behaviors in oil droplets which are being pushed around by their interactions with the fluid bath. The behaviors only manifests when viscous dissipation in the fluid bath is counteracted by vibrating it, injecting energy to balance the losses from dissipation. This mechanism therefore looks like it is artificially mimicking assumption 2 from earlier, and enables information about the global configuration of the system to be stored in the fluid bath and affect droplet behavior. Some reviews of the behaviors in these toy models: Review1, Review2, Review3.

I think this is the most intelligible way of interpreting a stochastic formulation of quantum mechanics, like Barandes'. The strangeness of the double slit experiment would then be mediated by the influence of the background system on the particle. The slit configuration would indirectly influences the particles via the background once the whole system has relaxes into the stochastic mechanical quantum equilibrium (which takes a very short but finite amount of time, and is seen in stochastic mechanics simulations).

The background system seems like quite a huge assumption to make in order to explain the indivisible stochastic process; but there is already vacuum energy and fluctuations in quantum field theory. A resemblance to the kind of pervasive background ontology that stochastic mechanics postulates is then already alluded to in orthodox quantum theory. At worst, the stochastic mechanical background hypothesis is no more radical than what you would otherwise have to still entertain, even if only in an instrumentalist capacity, in quantum theory. I also prefer the intelligibility of such a hypothesis to Barandes' alternative that potentially this indivisibility just represents some brute fundamental law. Ofcourse, the non-dissipative, conservative nature of the background may also warrant explanation; but imo it doesn't immediately beg for an explanation in the same way that the bizarre indivisibility does. Nor does a possible explanation in the future seem implausible imo.

 

[JC_Silver]

1. He is working on a draft on the "Hello-world example", a qubit example. Is he reading PF? (he actually hand-wave explains it, but does not provide the interpretation part).

I wasn't aware PF existed until I Googled "Jacob Barandes Stochastic Interpretation" and this forum was on the first page, so I wouldn't doubt he did read some posts here.

I'm excited about the paper he says he's writing, I want to try doing some calculations using his method, for fun, but I need to see an example done first, as I haven't finished reading his sugested paper on the indivisible process. (this one: https://journals.aps.org/prxquantum/abstract/10.1103/PRXQuantum.2.030201)

 

[physika]

Realism these days seems to be something related to pre-xistence of values before

Not necessarily.
It refers to entities that may or may not have properties. But such entity exists, whether it has properties or not, and therefore it is REAL.

......

 

[Fra]

i havent' had time to wach the long clip yet, but it's on my todolist

1. He seems to have dropped the idea of memory. He says
   He does not say much more unfortunately. Barandes compares his discovery with path integral formulation which is equivalent to other formulations

These are the prices you pay [interference terms to make it Markovian]. We talked before about, like, are these memory effects? Memory is not quite the right metaphor for indivisible stochastic processes. Traditional non-Markovian processes require that you specify sort of conditional probabilities conditioned in arbitrarily many previous times. That's very complicated and has a lot of structure and contains a lot of information. And you can legitimately ask, where is that information being stored? An indivisible process is actually much simpler. It doesn't entail the specification of all those higher order non-Markovian probabilities. It's much sparser.

What is written in bold here, makes sense to me. Clearly it makes no sense to consider ALL history retained, I think that was never what is meant by memory effect either. So his questioning of where this information is stored is the right quesion. And in my view, this is stored in part in the agents microstructure and implicitly in the environment; there is necessarily a lossy retention at play here, so that we can answer the questions "where is it stored". This in a way is "much sparser"; buy they exact way it is sparser is likely evolutionary emergent and remains to be understood.

This is similar to how the result of billions of years worth of evolutionary training, is "retained" in simple organisms. Clearly the history of all the universse in detail can not possible be encoded in these parts. But they retained the critical parts (sparse is an understatement!) relative to the similary evolving environment that supports the "simple encoding"; where the higher orders are truncated, beacuse of limited memory. So I think the fact that there is a "memory effect" and that the memory is limited, and explicitly constrains the effect are both equally important.

I think the idea of "memory" is similar in foundations of QM, or it is at least how I see the logic beging behindes formulation.

I will try to listend to the talk when i get time and get back with impressions of Barandes talk.

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

J. Barandes did another podcast with Curt Jaimungal:

I now went through this talk and my impression is that I really have no objections to anything Barandes says, I like his angles and emphasis on philosophical perspective, and his explanations of the correspondence between hilbert space, unitary evolution, and the non-divisible markovian picture which has a natural correspondence to a basis choice. Ie. the hilber space and "wave interference" is and apparent artifact and price you pay from reformulating the probabilistic non-divisible non-markovian original picture.

But he does not address the question of the origin and physical nature of the "probability spaces" and the transitiion amplitudes. He however notes that if we assume this; the hilber formalism simplifies that math; and the side effect is some of the "interfereance weirdness" and complex numbers. I fully agreee on that.

But this only transforms the questions into; what is the physical basis and ontology and preference for the particular probability spaces and their transition amplitudes? And how is this "selected" or "tuned" in the perspective of unification? My original impression on Baranders still is the same, I think it is good work, but many deep issues remains, and from the youtube clip these seems to be uncommented.

/Fredrik

 

[JC_Silver]

Seems like the second half of the interview is out, but for members only.
It's a bummer since paying for anything in dollars is beyond what I can afford.

 

[Fra]

I think it just has to be accepted that Barandes has no interpretation of how it happens even though he clearly states in the video that at all times the system has a definite configuration, even during periods ordinarily described by superposition.

I agree he seems to have no clear interpretation; this is why it's hard to follow him. All I can do is "fill in" with my own interpretation, and then it makes sense and harmonized, but what Barande himlself actually things is not clear.

But I think that there is a key here, that is often confused: Ontology and the nature of causality is I think one of the things that are most often confused in the normal paradigm. It tends to be understood "mechanistically" rather than via "information". This is the case even in quantum mechanics, as long as we still don't have a better foundation.

This also makes sense, as Jacob Baranders says himself he is also interested in "metaphysics of causation", and this is exactly what is deeply insatisfactory in the classical paradigm, and IMO at least, this is also exactly where the indivisibility enters.

immediately beg for an explanation in the same way that the bizarre indivisibility does

Indivisivilibly is bizarre only if you have a "simplistic view" on the nature causation.

I would say that if you instead see the nature of causation in the context of interacting and information processing agents(observers) then indivisiblity of the "expected evolution" - which is exactly what the schrödiner equation is, nonthing else - it becomes even almost obvious, that a division, BREAKS the expectation. There is nothing bizarre about this. They insight is rather than expectations is always contextual, or observer dependent.

So IMHO, the only way to see clearly why this is natural, is to complement his ideas with an interpreation, and I think acqknowledging the importance of the observers the "stochastic process" is the most obvious solution. But none of this is in his talks. But as someone that has been thinking alot about this, I know there is a big can of worms also, coming with new problems if you go this route, so perhaps he wants to refrain from exposing this can of worms in public. I do not blame him, as it might be held against.

So keeping the exposition as a more mathematical equivalence and refrain from "speculating" too much how to interpret it, is perhaps a clever professional strategy.

/Fredrik

 

[pines-demon]

Seems like the second half of the interview is out, but for members only.
It's a bummer since paying for anything in dollars is beyond what I can afford.

It will release in a couple of days, and then we have to watch about 1-2 hours of it, it can wait.

 

[JC_Silver]

It will release in a couple of days, and then we have to watch about 1-2 hours of it, it can wait.

Oh, I wasn't aware that's how that channel worked.
Sorry for sharing anticipated worry