- #36
DevilsAvocado
Gold Member
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You’re welcome JT.
JenniT said:Are dinosaurs extinct in RBW?
Indeed: You seem to prove that they are not?
JenniT said:OK; thank you. But, help please:
Q1: What leads to Red (R) and Green (G) lights blinking on the test devices?
Q2: Why do these G/R blinkings correlate with my pressing a button on the source; as well as with each other?
Q3: Why do my hands get warmer as I hold them between the source and the test devices while someone else presses the button?
Q4: Why do photographic plates show point-like exposures when held between the source and the test devices while someone else presses the button?
Q5: Will your answers equally apply to CEPRB, which is wholly classical?
With thanks again, might I suggest that there are related questions, answers to which would help many of us understand RBW?
PS: Is there an RBW FAQ on the web?
JenniT said:RUTA, please excuse my continuing puzzlement, but: Which experimental equipment would that be?
The two with Green lights? The two with Red lights? The two with neither? Plus combinations of same?
How does RBW account for the dynamic phenomena?
Are you saying that nothing moves from the equipment to my eye to convey these dynamics?
Thank you.
DevilsAvocado said:I’ve localized the problem – it’s "lost in translation" related... It’s the two words ontology and formalism, which messes up things for me. Please correct me if I’m wrong:
Ontology: the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.
Meaning that, this is the way we as human beings perceive the world around us. We see the laser beam, and the polarizer, and the measuring electronics, and the clock. Now, if our consciousness is in anyway "involved" in the outcome of EPR-Bell experiments, we’re going to have a darned hard time solving this enigma, by just using the reality as we perceive it.
DevilsAvocado said:Formalism: describes an emphasis on form over content or meaning, and mathematics is no more than the symbols written down by the mathematician, which is based on logic and a few elementary rules alone.
Meaning that, we can write a computer program called the Game of Life, having a 2D grid of square cells and just 4 basic rules for survival. The name of the game doesn’t necessary mean it’s related to reality and the real life of living beings. The game and the rules is all there is, and we are able to do scientific research using axioms and theorems, viable in the current formalism.
DevilsAvocado said:I interpret the above and EPW as – Mathematically there is S symmetry between EPRB & SEPRB. In the real world with measuring apparatus, the S symmetry is broken.
Then the question remains, what is correct, mathematics or our senses and consciousness?
I have no idea... but I suspect that the "ordinary-life-of-a-brain" would never have discovered QM or Spacetime curvature, without formalism and mathematics...
Correct...?:uhh:?
Maui said:Would that be very different to the "coincidence" which forced low entropy at the BB, which appears to have fined tuned the fundamental constants or answers the question why there is something instead of nothing?
How would you like to call it? Underlying reality? HV? ...?
RUTA said:... To answer your last question, photons are not "things," since there is no context when they're not "screened off." So, yes, no"thing" moves from the equipment to your eyes in order for you to see the equipment -- there are just relations that co-define you and the equipment. This is not a new idea, here are a couple quotes along the same lines:
"Photons are clicks in photon detectors" -- attributed to Zeilinger, arXiv quant-ph/0505187v4
"The droplets in the cloud chamber form a track that vividly conveys the image of a particle passing through the chamber, but this imagined thing is a phantasm. There are no things beyond the droplets." Aage Bohr, Ben R. Mottelson & Ole Ulfbeck, Foundations of Physics, Vol. 34, No. 3, March 2004.
RUTA said:... atoms ... are generally ascribed ontic status even though we can't directly perceive them.
RUTA said:When I say "formalism" I mean the mathematical formalism of the physics, which must correspond to reality (per experiment) by definition.
RUTA said:Generally, we favor the experimental evidence over the theoretical predictions, but that doesn't always prove a good discriminator, e.g., Einstein didn't believe GR's prediction of the expansion of universe because it didn't match the astronomical observations of the time. Personally, I would not reject experimental data, although I would consider rejecting the analysis of experimental data. In other words, I might advocate a different analysis using the raw data, but I would not attack the raw data itself unless I (or someone I trusted) replicated the experiment and obtained different raw data altogether.
Maui said:How would dinosaurs go extinct in a universe in which time does not(is not supposed to) flow? You would need a completely new blockworld universe.
DevilsAvocado said:Atoms have a status of real or factual existence. And we can see them thru scanning tunneling microscope!
BUT! Atoms could not be atoms without the "imaginary" components electrons and photons (and quarks)!? The real needs the "unreal" to become existent??
RUTA said:The "picture of atoms" you showed was generated by millions of photons per second. The belief is that the atoms are "there" whether we excite them or not. That's the source of the confusion. In the RBW "relational" view, or Bohr et al's "symmetry" view, or Zeilinger's "measurement" view, if you strip away the relations/symmetries/measurements, you lose everything. In the atomic view, you still have the atom "sitting there in space," it's just not interacting with anything, i.e., it's "screened off." Once you decide to construct "things," like the atoms in your picture, from relations/symmetries/measurements, rather than smaller "things," e.g., quarks and electrons, then you understand clearly that the atoms in your picture slowly disappear as you gradually reduce the number of relations/symmetries/measurements ("photons" in the language of "things") used to "see them." In other words, the relations (aka "photons" in "things" talk) don't allow you to "see the atoms," the relations "construct the atoms." So, given millions of photons per second, you're well into the classical regime, thus your "picture." This view makes it clear how the dynamical/causal classical reality of interacting "things" might obtain statistically from a more fundamental, adynamical reality of relations/symmetries/measurements (a la the Figure from our arXiv paper you posted earlier).
RUTA said:BTW, thanks for that post. I haven't had time to answer all the questions posted here for me, so I was glad you helped me out The answer was good.
DevilsAvocado said:YES! FINALLY! I THINK I’VE GOT IT! Many many many thanks RUTA!
It’s just sweet when the brain "clicks"! This is how it must be: To make an observation of QM objects, we must "bombard" it massively on the microscopic scale, so massively that we "transcend" to the macroscopic scale. It’s almost (in the macroscopic world) like we were forced to put "heavy fire" on a building to be able to observe it (and destroying the finer "stucco properties" at the same time ). Right?
RUTA said:You can tell dynamical stories with a blockworld, but the 4D perspective is nicely described by this Geroch quote:
There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. In particular, one does not think of particles as moving through space-time, or as following along their world-lines. Rather, particles are just in space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once, the complete life history of the particle.
Geroch, R.: General Relativity from A to B. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1978), pp 20-21.
If you're open to the 4D perspective, then adynamical approaches to physics are not so shocking. This is what Huw suggests in his "Toy Models" paper and what we're claiming in RBW, i.e., the fundamental rule of physics concerns "4D patterns" rather than dynamics.
Maui said:Yes. The most consistent picture is that solid matter is the result of billions of 'measurements' per second, not of solid objects existing in spacetime.
Maui said:Is RBW completely deterministic?
DevilsAvocado said:... wonders too ...
RBW = Superdeterminism = No free will ...?
DevilsAvocado said:I’ve localized the problem – it’s "lost in translation" related... It’s the two words ontology and formalism, which messes up things for me. Please correct me if I’m wrong Ontology: the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.
Meaning that, this is the way we as human beings perceive the world around us. We see the laser beam, and the polarizer, and the measuring electronics, and the clock. Now, if our consciousness is in anyway "involved" in the outcome of EPR-Bell experiments, we’re going to have a darned hard time solving this enigma, by just using the reality as we perceive it.
RUTA said:I'm not sure how to answer this because I'm not sure what you mean by "deterministic." In the standard physics sense, I would say RBW is not deterministic because you calculate probabilities at the most fundamental level, just like in quantum physics.
RUTA said:I'm not sure how to answer this because I'm not sure what you mean by "deterministic." In the standard physics sense, I would say RBW is not deterministic because you calculate probabilities at the most fundamental level, just like in quantum physics.
yoda jedi said:..Wrong, Ontology deals with existence.
Existence of things independently of anything
RUTA said:"Is the Moon there when nobody looks?"
I would answer this question by first clarifying the phrase "nobody looks." If by this you mean simply "it doesn't interact with anything," then the answer is no, the Moon is not "there" when it's not interacting with anything (nothing special about interacting with humans). The Moon is not anywhere in this case -- it doesn't exist because it is defined by interactions. No interactions, no Moon. [We prefer the word "relations" to "interactions," because the latter is too dynamical; in RBW the fundamental law deals with links on graphs, and not all links correspond to "interactions." But, speaking in terms of interactions is a helpful first step.]
Maui said:If you are able to correctly calculate probabilities of outcomes, then it's obviously not the most fundamental level. I thought the most fundamental level in RBW was supposed to be, how would i say it, an underlying reality or HV's(or the "aim of science is what we can say about nature, not what nature is" approach)?
Maui said:There is a pretty strong tension between GR and QM with regards to the notion of determinism and hence my interest in what RBW is saying about the issue. The worldlines in GR are set in stone, assuming some weak form of realism.
DevilsAvocado said:This is very interesting, especially when exchanging "interactions" to "relations". This must mean we are not 'simply' talking photons here, right?
DevilsAvocado said:Then I have a 'tricky' question for you (I hope ): I know quantum gravity is still "under development", and maybe RBW will provide the complete solution. But anyway, we take it for granted that QM objects are influenced by gravity (and spacetime bends even light/photons). Now, I would then claim that every particle in the whole universe has "relation" to "something", whether it’s the 'normal' galaxy gravity (Black holes/Dark Matter), or the repulsive gravity from Dark Energy...
Right or wrong?
RUTA said:RBW doesn't disagree ... But, we still assume the possibility of modeling systems in isolation ...
DevilsAvocado said:Fascinating! But... generally in QM? Does gravity qualify as a "relation" and thus the Moon is there, as long as it has mass...??
RUTA said:Certainly, gravity constitutes an "interaction"
RUTA said:If you want to know what RBW says about GR, look at Regge calculus
DevilsAvocado said:
:rofl:
DevilsAvocado said:You’re using Regge calculus to produce a "Simplicial manifold" of 4D spacetime (called simplex?), right?
A 3-simplex
You break up this manifold into a "Simplicial complex" of a topological spacetime.
Which is now 'open' for a "non-separable solution", right...??
I don’t understand "links" and "stress-energy"... is this a way to 'implement' gravity in RBW??
DevilsAvocado said:Thanks YJ for clarifying. I think I got the picture. Philosophy can be a slightly 'tedious' matter... causing endless discussions. If I wanted to continue along this line, I could have stated:
– There seems to be some misunderstanding. RUTA has just explained that classical objects need interaction to be existent.
yoda jedi said:then is not an ontological entity (the moon).
consequently what produces gravity ?
Maui said:We don't know ontologically what the Moon is.
Moreover, the standard "spacetime curvature" answer also falls short when you take seriosly the implications of GR, because "spacetime curvature" is also just another worldline in a 4D block universe. It cannot be a ultimate explanation of anything, ontologically.
yoda jedi said:and who said that ?
yoda jedi said:then is not an ontological entity (the moon).
consequently what produces gravity ?
Great!RUTA said:Yes.
RUTA said:Simplices are 4D extrapolations of the 3D tetrahedron (3-simplex) you pictured, like tetrahedra are 3D extrapolations of 2D triangles. So, the simplices are bounded by tetrahedra which are bounded by triangles which are bounded by links (the silver rods bounding the red triangles in your picture of the 3-simplex).
RUTA said:Specifying the lengths of the links uniquely determines the geometry of the graph and Regge calculus provides the equations in those link lengths. You can get as good an approximation as you like to a smooth 4D manifold by letting the simplices be as small as necessary -- just like you can approximate the surface of Earth with small enough triangles.
RUTA said:It turns out that the stress-energy tensor (the tensor on the RHS of Einstein's equations of GR representing the momentum flux, energy density and forces in spacetime) takes its values on the links in Regge calculus. In GR it's possible to solve EE's for the metric in empty spacetime, i.e., where the stress-energy tensor is zero. The counterpart to such solutions in Regge calculus would simply be links with no associated stress-energy.
RUTA said:The difference to Regge calculus that we're exploring is to assume all links must have stress-energy. That means we will (at times) need links that connect distant sources, e.g., sources in two different galaxies. That means our simplices can be very large, which means spacetime isn't a smooth manifold structure. Returning to our analogy of modeling Earth's 2D surface with triangles, imagine forming the surface with continguous triangles to form a nice 2D sphere. Now, make a triangle connecting Washington D.C. with Paris and Tokyo. So much for your smooth 2D sphere. Those "manifold-violating" triangles are what we mean by "non-separable."
RUTA said:This is very good! I'm sending it to colleagues!
RUTA said:P.S. Thanks for sending that link to the RBW reference in superdeterminism. I always thought RBW was a "God-like" idea and now I have the proof :rofl:
yoda jedi said:pd: and sorry the term "existence" belongs to phylosophy
DevilsAvocado said:But, for god sake! I’m not asking you this question!