Demystifier said:
interpreting something as "ontic" is a tool for thinking.
...
First, is the idea of ontic useful? It is for some people, the others are not obliged to use it. Second, is the idea consistent? Nobody so far in this thread seriously attempted to show that it isn't.
I do not connect with Bohmian thinking, but I would give you the benefit of doubt that this can be useful and consistent in principle. Especially because I see an analogy with this to my own thinking.
Given your occasional solipsist HV ideass, it seems natural to associate the gauge fixing to the observer fixing. I may sound strange as the it seems very alien to Bohmian logic to highlight the observer, but that actually can make sense.
From the qbist and agent stance, one always works in a fixed observer gauge. There simply is no way to observe nature from any other perspective than the inside. The illustion of unbiased observation are I think wishful thinking. Which means; choose an observer. Once chosen, it's her observations that matters and that are ontic, and this is in a way hidden from others.
martinbn said:
Which one? Any? There is one true one, but we can never tell? This is similar to the notion of preferred frame.
But there is always a preferred frame - Mine. (no pun intended)
How I communicate and negotiate my preferred experiences with others, is another topic and an interesting one. But there is no outside view, and no "neutral" processing grounds for comparing views, where would that be? And it's the place where one compare the views, that the patternline like laws emerge.
What makes rejecting the observer as a mathematical gauge choice is that if one consider that the observer is a physical system, then the encoded information the observer has acquired must be encoded in matter, and thus be real. And what is certain gauges makes the encoding more efficient? would it then not at least be remotely possible that the reality of the "gauges" has a physical preferences in the chosen frame? I find it to actually be conceptually inconsistent to deny the physical basis of observer gauges.
I do not think we fully understand the full observer symmetry yet. Most physics is about spacetime symmetries, but a real observers should have more qualities, like internal structure, that also is a kind of observer gauge, right?
I can honsetly say that I do not like Bohmian mechanics, but after seeing some of Demystifiers ponderings it seems at least not out question that such ideas might meet up with other research fronts in the future.
/Fredrik