Exploring the Meaning of Ontology: Easy for Kids, Hard for Quantum Physicists

[Sunil]

For me, "agent" is just a label for the abstraction of an "inside observer" that seems like a minimal and a mandatory and modest central starting point in an inference centered approach. The "agent" thus both encodoes and puts constraints in both memories and inferences.

Usually this is unproblematic. The observer is simply big and complex enough.

But the question one attempts to answer is rather HOW "normal matter" is constructed, and how it interacts with other matter. Ie. to explain interactions and classify them. Here the agent notion is an abstraction only, similar to abstractions such as geometry.

And, moreover, it is not even necessary except as an emergent object in statistical theories.

In order to solve the problem of the starting point, or ontology, the only solution I have found is to release oneself from the preconception that there has to be a fundamental ontology, from which all else is explained.

I don't get this point. If the theory is realistic, it starts with an ontology, so the starting point is the ontology. It works nicely without observers. If it is able, say, to predict how planets behave, this is already enough for having empirical tests by observing the planets. No need for having observers described by the theory, or having a developed psychology or so.

There is a problem with that view. Instead, perhaps we can imagine emergent and evolving relations, where one can identify at best "effective ontologies". This thinking IMO unifies ontolgoy and epistemolgoy, none of them are fundamental, they are rather entangled and evolving.

This seems to create problems out of nothing. The ontology is fundamental, epistemology is a secondary, non-fundamental human problem.

Thus the "ontology" is similar to an initial condition. What is important is how only ontolgoy evolves onto the next?

Also not a problem. Some scientist develops a new theory, with a new ontology, and derives a classical limit which allows him to recover approximately the successful predictions of the old theory.

I agree this is fuzzy but I do not think it's going to get it simpler. I do not see any reason to expect there is a fundamental ontology at all.

The actual standard position is much simpler. So you need a quite serious justification to reject it.

 

[Fra]

I am guessing our approaches are so different, so we might not reach an agreement.. but just to comment.

Usually this is unproblematic. The observer is simply big and complex enough.

If you by usually, refers to subatomic interactions, from the perspective of a classical lab, then I agree, except for subtle questions of fine tuning that arise during unification.

But generally, I think this "usually" is not good enough for many open questions, and then I think about unification of GR+QM, comsological models and unification.

And, moreover, it is not even necessary except as an emergent object in statistical theories.

I think the necessity only relates to the desire for increased explanatory value, reduce the number of free parameters and get rid of fine tuning (which is an ugly trait).

No need for having observers described by the theory, or having a developed psychology or so.

epistemology is a secondary, non-fundamental human problem.

If you start associating these terms to their meaning for humans, I think we are missing the idea. In a way - everything we talk about is "human problems", but that is missing the point. This is just like people who object to CI and think the human observers are required. (Of course human observers are required in a very superficial sense to write down equations etc, but I think we understand that there is another layer, let's not confuse ourselves).

The actual standard position is much simpler. So you need a quite serious justification to reject it.

The standard paradigm to me seems improper for an intrinsic inference approach. That is serious enough for me at least. (So the question why I think the optimal approach is the one of intrinsic inference? that is a separate subquestion we need not bring up here, and relates to the philosophy of science and evolutionary learning.)

/Fredrik

 

[AlexCaledin]

What do the human observers do except observing the spacetime reality (including one's brain process) event by event?

 

[EPR]

What do the human observers do except observing the spacetime reality (including one's brain process) event by event?

When several interconnected neurons fire without apparent outside stumuli, you call that a dream(they do fire - usually when you are sleeping and your senses are less active or shut down). The brain interprets the random firing in a seemingly random way. This is why most often dreams are disjoint and make little sense. When the same neurons fire in connection with apparent outside stimuli, you call that 'reality'(normally, when you are awake). Sometimes they fire without an apparent outside stimulus and this brings up imaginary things during waking hours. Or 'imagination'... Intelligent people use this brain feature to invent new ideas during contemplation and deliberation. Stupid people use this brain feature to concoct theories about vaccine microchips, chemtrails poisoning, reptilians and what not. With respect to brain neurology, you are not going to get much farther than this.

 

[Fra]

What do the human observers do except observing the spacetime reality (including one's brain process) event by event?

They react and take actions based on their best understanding, for its own benefit?
This helps FORM the reality for all other humans. So even a human is an actor.
Science brings us technology, that helps us exploit nature more effiently! We just can't help it ;-)

So the interacting agent analog can be applied to humans as well, but not at the level of physics. The presumed version of "agent" in QM that I have in mind, put feedback to the environment via physical interactions. But this is a more extreme version, and as far as I can tell from qbist advocates, a lot of qbists would probably not share this very radical view.

About the rationality, that is also "relative". Obviously humans may seem irrational in many ways, but what may seem natural for the inside agent, may turn out irrational judged from a different perspective. This is not a contradiction and does not make the idea invalid. I do not subscribe to some rationality constraint, on the contrary do I think the evolution will solve this. All we need is variation and competition.

People also have simiarly objections to economical theory of rational consumers. But for the individual, disregarding emotions is not natural. Of course emotions influence decisions. This is also a form of "rationality" in a natural sense AFAIK. In human descition even emotions have a survival value. Emotions can guide you when time or contemplation is not at hand. Like when a lion is coming at you. The response here is not drive by analysis, it's driven by fear. And this is in fact "rational" in the evolutioanry perspective.

/Fredrik

 

[AlexCaledin]

- that's all right - but the point is, whenever I react, I observe my brain reacting; so I seem participating somehow in the quantum dice throwing process which seems to be beyond scientific investigation.

 

[Fra]

- that's all right - but the point is, whenever I react, I observe my brain reacting; so I seem participating somehow in the quantum dice throwing process which seems to be beyond scientific investigation.

Perhaps I don't get your point in relation to the context here, but if you are suggesting that at some point the "scientific method" as we usually think of if, seems to fail to get a grip of certain questions. Then I share this is a observation. My point is that essential parts of the process, will not allow itself to be cleanly captured by an inside observer, obeying the scientific ideals we know from labframe domains.

As far as neuroscience goes, it would be problematic for a researcher to perform unbiased scientific experiments on yourself. Ie. on your own brain. But we can do experiments on other peoples brains in a scientific way, as usual.

This raises a bunch of philosophical questions on rational inference (which the scientific method is supposed to be an example of) and what about the limits of rationality and how progress is still made? It's in this limit I think in terms of random walks and evolution. But this is the "hypothesis generation" part of science. It's an important part, but also the part that Popper tried to play down.

/Fredrik

 

[AlexCaledin]

- suppose our world is a computer simulation; then all the physics is the very basic level which is only available for our science; but this observable physical reality is of course controlled by the high level software, by means of quantum Choice, maintaining the Born rule in order to keep that basic reality natural. Then, the only fundamental scientific starting point is that the whole observable spacetime reality is somehow chosen as the outcome of the universe state reduction - that's why we can use the QM. We can't tell (scientifically!) whether we are participating in the Choice or just having free will illusion...

 

[Fra]

I pressed the wrong button, too tired. I meant to reply to the post, not prett like button

We can't tell (scientifically!) whether we are participating in the Choice or just having free will illusion...

As I see it: From the point of the "agent", this does not matter, and is not a question the agent would ask concerning itself. Ie. it's not an intrisic question as I see it, and thus not relevant to the agent.

/Fredrik

 

[physika]

This helps FORM the reality for all other humans.

Then, no humans, no reality.

 

[Fra]

Then, no humans, no reality.

This of course isn't at all the meaning of what i tried to say.

First of all, it was not my choice to bring "humans" into discussion, I responded to a question about HUMANS.

It's easy to misunderstand because interactions takes place at multiple layers. Human interactions together created human society. How social rules can in fact be analysed from human interactions work. This is the "level" of my response. Ie. without humans, there would be no relations that make up human society.

If we are (which was the prior topic) talking about physics, the correct statement would be that without agent observers (which to be clear is nothing but matter, or the constitutients of matter) there would be no place for the percept of reality, and no relata for the relations that constitude physical reality.

The better statement would probably be this: No physical matter -> no physical agents -> no interaction -> no relations, and no physical reality.

All the notes on observers or agents, is just an abstraction of choice that has the purpose of structuring and understnading, the hierarchy of matter and interactions. It has NOTHING to do with humans. I mentioned this already. That said, as long as we can handle the parallell levels of abstractions without getting confused, I am fine with also using the same abstractions for human interactions and social laws. But let's not confuse them!

/Fredrik

 

[physika]

Human interactions together created human society. How social rules can in fact be analysed from human interactions work. This is the "level" of my response. Ie. without humans, there would be no relations that make up human society.

ahh you wish to talk about sociology,

 

[Fra]

No

 

[AlexCaledin]

- may I ask - suppose you are teaching QM to the practical users to make them able to understand chemical or semiconductors phenomena - will you teach them such things as agent interpretation?

 

[Fra]

- may I ask - suppose you are teaching QM to the practical users to make them able to understand chemical or semiconductors phenomena - will you teach them such things as agent interpretation?

First I am not teaching, but other than that - absolutely not!

Most of the interpretation and foundational discussions is not concnerning mature scientific knowledge and does not belong in such a class. It would probably confuse and mislead 99.9% of students anyway.

When one learns about QM first the first time, I think one should start with textbookx f would prefer to stick to facts and consensus. The best facts are the historical developements in science. And on top of that perhaps some minimal interpretation.

Those who are interested in the rest, will find their own way.

/Fredrik

 

[gentzen]

- may I ask - suppose you are teaching QM to the practical users to make them able to understand chemical or semiconductors phenomena - will you teach them such things as agent interpretation?

QM without statistical physics is not enough to understand semiconductor phenomena: if you don't properly understand the chemical potential $\mu$ and what it "means," then your understanding of how a semiconductor diode or transistor works will remain incomplete. The grand canonical ensemble might not be strictly necessary for a sufficient understanding of the chemical potential, but at least canonical ensembles will occur in many calculations in a typical solid state physics textbook. And if you want to describe such ensembles on the quantum level, then it would really help if the density matrix (or the statistical operator) had already been introduced while teaching QM, and if that introduction had included a more intuitive understanding than just those "church of the larger Hilbert space" images and those "secondary citizen two types of uncertainty" dismissals.

Therefore I believe that teaching at least elements of A. Neumaier's thermal interpretation early (basically around the time where you need to marry statistical physics and QM, and motivate the density matrix) could be useful for practical users in the domain of semiconductors phenomena.

 

[Demystifier]

Most of the interpretation and foundational discussions is not concnerning mature scientific knowledge and does not belong in such a class. It would probably confuse and mislead 99.9% of students anyway.

But at some point most students ask themselves such interpretation and foundational questions. Since old textbooks usually say nothing about those, they usually assume that the problem is them, not the textbooks, so at some point they usually stop asking such questions. So I think it doesn't hurt if textbooks at least mention (which modern textbooks often do) that such questions are asked even by (some of the) experts and that there are no yet generally agreed answers.

 

[Fra]

they usually assume that the problem is them, not the textbooks, so at some point they usually stop asking such questions.

This is true, and it's a pity. But those that are stubborn enough to keep asking the questions in a deeper way until answered seem rare anyway, while many seem happy to stop asking without much frustration.

So I think it doesn't heart if textbooks at least mention (which modern texbooks often do) that such questions are asked even by (some of the) experts and that there are no yet generally agreed answers.

Yes, many of these things should be mentioned as part of the history and open questions. Stuff like bohmian mechanics, bell etc is part of the historical development and is part of the textbooks i know of. This is good.

But no matter how confident I am about the agent perspective, I realize that it's formally a speculative idea, and something a minority of physicists will resonate with. But perhaps those sections of textbooks could be updated, this I agree with totally. But care has to be take to not give some speculations too much room or influence. I am thinking about string theory for example. I can't help thinking what progress that could have been made if some resourcers would have been put elsewhere.

/Fredrik

 

[Demystifier]

But care has to be take to not give some speculations too much room or influence. I am thinking about string theory for example. I can't help thinking what progress that could have been made if some resourcers would have been put elsewhere.

Yes, but particle physics and QFT textbooks usually don't mention strings much. Whatever the reason for popularity of string theory is (which indeed would be an interesting topic to discuss), it's not the textbooks.

 

[Fra]

Yes, but particle physics and QFT textbooks usually don't mention strings much. Whatever the reason for popularity of string theory is (which indeed would be an interesting topic to discuss), it's not the textbooks.

True. What i had in mind was that those people doing teaching and induce a strong bias and selection among the students as some start asking questions - off books. Any thinking perpendicular to strings may be discouraged, and any ideas in line with strings is encouraged.

I have seen myself. Ask foundational questions, and get the flat advise to study string theory. Now that is solid bias. If the leaders of the department are string theoriest, you can only guess what happens, no matter what's in books.

/Fredrik

 

[martinbn]

Yes, but particle physics and QFT textbooks usually don't mention strings much. Whatever the reason for popularity of string theory is (which indeed would be an interesting topic to discuss), it's not the textbooks.

May be it is the textbook and that they don't mention it. It makes you want to see what it is.

 

[Demystifier]

May be it is the textbook and that they don't mention it. It makes you want to see what it is.

My impression is that string theory is popular because it is full of deep far reaching conjectures nobody really understanding what exactly do they mean. It's just a challenge to try to understand it.

 

[EPR]

My impression is that string theory is popular because it is full of deep far reaching conjectures nobody really understanding what exactly do they mean. It's just a challenge to try to understand it.

Kaku, co-founder of String Theory:

“The mind of god, we believe, is cosmic music. The music of strings resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace.”

 

[Fra]

My impression is that string theory is popular because it appears the only major research field that comes with promises to unify all forces in a way that is not a patchwork. This is not a bad reason and there are some interesting outcomes from string theory, especially the dualities, so it's not all that bad, but as Demystifiers says, they are accidental discoveries that there seems too lack a conceptual grip on. Anyway, the question is how come there are not so many other options with similarly high ambition in public light? String theory in it's foundations does not settle with many of foundational problems of QM. They remain. I think it would really help, to step back to some foundational questions. Who knows, perhaps even string theory may benefit from this?

/Fredrik