Locally mediated interpretations with future input dependence

In summary, the paper discusses how future or future boundary conditions could not cause or participate in any type of explanation of EPR correlations.
  • #1
msumm21
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TL;DR Summary
Is it true that locally-mediated, future dependent interpretations of QM are relatively unpopular in the foundations community? If so, why?
Just read this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.04313.pdf

At first it had me thinking that locally mediated, future dependent interpretations are the way to go. Yet it admits these seem to be rare relative to other types of interpretations. Any good intuition or reasons why this is rare in the mainstream?

One thought that maybe part of this discussion. Do such models rule anything out at all? I guess if we allow signals to travel both ways in time, at c then theoretically a signal can go anywhere by "zig zagging" through space time: forward in time, back, forward again, back again, ...? So then local wouldn't mean anything? OR is there something that rules this out in such interpretations?
 
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  • #2
msumm21 said:
Summary:: Is it true that locally-mediated, future dependent interpretations of QM are relatively unpopular in the foundations community? If so, why?
It's true, but it's always hard to tell why something is unpopular. Noting its weaknesses wouldn't explain much, because popular interpretations have weaknesses too.
 
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  • #3
Ken is the editor of a special issue of Entropy “Quantum Theory and Causation”:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/special_issues/causation
I think the reason retrocausality hasn’t gained more converts is that it doesn’t get you a classical ontology as hoped. Here is a paper in that special issue you might want to check out:
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/1/12
Here is the abstract:
In this paper, I argue that the Shrapnel–Costa no-go theorem undermines the last remaining viability of the view that the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics is essentially classical: that is, the view that physical reality is underpinned by objectively real, counterfactually definite, uniquely spatiotemporally defined, local, dynamical entities with determinate valued properties, and where typically ‘quantum’ behaviour emerges as a function of our own in-principle ignorance of such entities. Call this view Einstein–Bell realism. One can show that the causally symmetric local hidden variable approach to interpreting quantum theory is the most natural interpretation that follows from Einstein–Bell realism, where causal symmetry plays a significant role in circumventing the nonclassical consequences of the traditional no-go theorems. However, Shrapnel and Costa argue that exotic causal structures, such as causal symmetry, are incapable of explaining quantum behaviour as arising as a result of noncontextual ontological properties of the world. This is particularly worrying for Einstein–Bell realism and classical ontology. In the first instance, the obvious consequence of the theorem is a straightforward rejection of Einstein–Bell realism. However, more than this, I argue that, even where there looks to be a possibility of accounting for contextual ontic variables within a causally symmetric framework, the cost of such an account undermines a key advantage of causal symmetry: that accepting causal symmetry is more economical than rejecting a classical ontology. Either way, it looks like we should give up on classical ontology.
 
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  • #4
We wrote an entire book arguing for adynamical explanation over dynamical explanation ("Beyond the Dynamical Universe," Oxford UP, 2018) and I have written many Insights along those lines. However, I think the easiest way to view adynamical constraint-based explanation is via "principle" explanation, since we already have a well-regarded example in special relativity (SR), i.e., 115 years after its publication and we still have no "constructive" counterpart. Here is an accessible read for that by Mainwood.

Attached is our paper "Beyond Causal Explanation: Einstein's Principle Not Reichenbach's" for Ken's special issue of Entropy linked above. It was accepted for publication this week, so it's safe :-) You can just read the figure captions and Table 2 to see how quantum entanglement is explained in principle fashion a la SR. Indeed, the mystery of quantum entanglement results from the relativity principle applied to the measurement of Planck's constant h, just like the mysteries of time dilation and length contraction result from the relativity principle applied to the measurement of the speed of light c. So, efforts to explain quantum entanglement constructively via causal mechanisms are akin to theories of the luminiferous ether. It's been 85 years since the publication of the EPR paper and we still have no consensus constructive explanation for quantum entanglement.

Addressing the OP, we do spend some time in the Introduction arguing that retrocausality is pseudo-dynamism, despite its block universe implications.
 

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  • #5
RUTA said:
Either way, it looks like we should give up on classical ontology.
Would you call Bohmian ontology "classical", given that it is based on local particles with nonlocal action at a distance?
 
  • #6
Demystifier said:
Would you call Bohmian ontology "classical", given that it is based on local particles with nonlocal action at a distance?
That's a quote from Evans' paper, but I would call dBB a "classical" ontology.
 
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  • #7
RUTA said:
Attached is our paper "Beyond Causal Explanation: Einstein's Principle Not Reichenbach's" for Ken's special issue of Entropy linked above.

Thanks. I started reading this. On page 4:

RUTA said:
it’s hard to see how the future or future boundary conditions could cause anything or participate in any type of explanation of EPR correlations, if the future does not exist. Yet, when we think of the block universe from the God’s-eye point of view, it’s clear that causation can’t be about bringing new events into being that didn’t formerly exist, because from a God’s-eye point of view it’s all just ‘there’, including EPR-experiments from initiation (source) to termination (detector)..

I'm not a physicist and not familiar with some of the background, but let me try to give a counter based on what I understood from the paper in the OP. Take an EPR experiment. When an electron pair is produced, a signal from the future could "tell" this pair that their spin will be measured about specific axes. So the type of measurement is locked in stone, God's eye sees it all along. But perhaps the measurement result was not. Maybe, at pair creation, the electrons randomly pick future measurement results, knowing the future measurement settings and conspiring to violate Bell inequalities. So "god's eye" can't see the results until after the pair were created.

Admittedly not sure what I just said could be made logically consistent, still thinking.
 
  • #8
msumm21 said:
I'm not a physicist and not familiar with some of the background, but let me try to give a counter based on what I understood from the paper in the OP. Take an EPR experiment. When an electron pair is produced, a signal from the future could "tell" this pair that their spin will be measured about specific axes. So the type of measurement is locked in stone, God's eye sees it all along. But perhaps the measurement result was not. Maybe, at pair creation, the electrons randomly pick future measurement results, knowing the future measurement settings and conspiring to violate Bell inequalities. So "god's eye" can't see the results until after the pair were created.

If information about the future measurement settings exists at the emission event where and when the particles are emitted, then the future exists. If the future exists, no thing is moving in spacetime, no information is "being sent" anywhere. Here is a good quote from Geroch:

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, General Relativity from A to B. University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 20–21].

Therefore, the results are also "there" in the future, so the particles cannot really "choose" to behave differently than what already exists and they cannot in any meaningful sense "bring events into existence." See Allori quote starting at the bottom of p. 7 of our paper (published now at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/special_issues/causation) and the paragraph starting with " In addition to the specific problems faced by" on p. 4.
 
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  • #9
RUTA said:
If information about the future measurement settings exists at the emission event where and when the particles are emitted, then the future exists. If the future exists, no thing is moving in spacetime, no information is "being sent" anywhere.

Are you saying that, if "some of the future is predetermined" then it follows that "all of the future is predetermined"? If so, I'm thinking that wouldn't necessarily be right. For example, can't we have conservation laws (total energy) and QM randomness in the same interpretation? IF so that would predetermine the future of some things (e.g. total energy), but not everything (e.g. energy distribution).

FYI I'm not trying to argue for retro causal interpretations, in the course of this discussion I'm talking myself out of my initial view after reading the OP paper. Just trying to ensure I understand the pros/cons.
 
  • #10
RUTA said:
Here is a good quote from Geroch:
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, General Relativity from A to B. University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 20–21].
Therefore, the results are also "there" in the future, so the particles cannot really "choose" to behave differently than what already exists and they cannot in any meaningful sense "bring events into existence." See Allori quote starting at the bottom of p. 7 of our paper (published now at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/special_issues/causation) and the paragraph starting with " In addition to the specific problems faced by" on p. 4.
This also characterizes part of what Smolin lablels the Newtonian paradigm. Ie. the idea that all future is determined by the set of eternal laws, and the initial conditions. This is why dynamics is just arbitrary parameterisations and thus trivial.

But there may be a problem how we arrived at this picture, as we know now real experiments can produce statistics of infinite time histories. So what is wrong in the picture?

/Fredrik
 
  • #11
msumm21 said:
Are you saying that, if "some of the future is predetermined" then it follows that "all of the future is predetermined"? If so, I'm thinking that wouldn't necessarily be right. For example, can't we have conservation laws (total energy) and QM randomness in the same interpretation? IF so that would predetermine the future of some things (e.g. total energy), but not everything (e.g. energy distribution).

FYI I'm not trying to argue for retro causal interpretations, in the course of this discussion I'm talking myself out of my initial view after reading the OP paper. Just trying to ensure I understand the pros/cons.

You need the settings that go with the outcomes (not the settings a nanosecond before or after), so both pieces of information are "there" in the future together.
 
  • #12
Fra said:
This also characterizes part of what Smolin lablels the Newtonian paradigm. Ie. the idea that all future is determined by the set of eternal laws, and the initial conditions. This is why dynamics is just arbitrary parameterisations and thus trivial.

But there may be a problem how we arrived at this picture, as we know now real experiments can produce statistics of infinite time histories. So what is wrong in the picture?

/Fredrik
There is a difference between a future that is "determined but nonexistent" and a future that "exists." In the latter case for example, the Geroch quote applies, but not in the former.

I don't know anything about "infinite time histories," so I can't comment there :-)
 
  • #13
RUTA said:
There is a difference between a future that is "determined but nonexistent" and a future that "exists."
If the laws means that the future is implied but the past. What would determined but not existent mean?

I probably missed something.

/Fredrik
 
  • #14
Fra said:
If the laws means that the future is implied but the past. What would determined but not existent mean?

I probably missed something.

/Fredrik
As in a deterministic presentism versus block universe.
 
  • #15
RUTA said:
As in a deterministic presentism versus block universe.
Thanks. I see. The block universe is the kind of thing if any I was thinking of.

The combination of deterministim and presentism never occurred to me as an option ;)

(Although Smolins ultimate argument is that the block universe pictures is problematic.)

/Fredrik
 
  • #16
Fra said:
Thanks. I see. The block universe is the kind of thing if any I was thinking of.

The combination of deterministim and presentism never occurred to me as an option ;)

(Although Smolins ultimate argument is that the block universe pictures is problematic.)

/Fredrik
This Insight is relevant. I mention Smolin's view at the end.
 
  • #17
RUTA said:
This Insight is relevant. I mention Smolin's view at the end.

Thanks! As I understand it your perspective is to defend the constraint based approach.
Ie. that observer equivalence are enforced by timeless constraints (eternal law), but that this does not per see deny a subjective experience of the present moment?

IF this is right, this seems to be essentially the most common modern view, right? In principle that stance seems fine and possible and conservative, but I personally disagree with this view however. But the main arguments are different ones. I am not much concerned with my own "impression" of the present, but I am very concerened with the inference perspective. The scientific excuse for this view is to think that we "discover" the laws, (laws that was there already), and while this is of course true from human perspective, this becomes troublesome to me when it comes to unification ideas.

I just find some verstion of what you label "radical empirism" the most explanatory one, even that it admiddetly raises more problems.

/Fredrik
 
  • #18
I also advocate "radical empiricism," as James called neutral monism. Here is our paper on it.
 
  • #19
RUTA said:
I also advocate "radical empiricism," as James called neutral monism. Here is our paper on it.
Thanks! I will read it and see how it appears to me!

Edit: I see now the topic seems to be philosophy of mind. That usually makes me back off a bit from lots of pages of text, but reading the abstract i appreciate the line of reasoning from the abstract.

You write "..how one might derive fundamental physics from neutral monism."

Give or take, human mind, this sounds familiar! I have been thinking enough about this to identify the abstractions even if the words are different.

"how one can infer the most probably laws of physics from interactions between agents".

The agents are what "implements" the rational empirism, but objectivity and interaction "rules" are emergent as they interact. In theory this agent can be a human as well as an atom. There is not difference except complexity.

/Fredrik
 
Last edited:

1. What is the concept of locally mediated interpretations with future input dependence?

Locally mediated interpretations with future input dependence refers to the idea that the way we interpret information and make decisions is influenced by our current environment and past experiences, but also takes into account potential future outcomes.

2. How does this concept apply to scientific research?

In scientific research, this concept can be applied to understanding how individuals or systems make decisions and interpret data. It recognizes that our interpretations and decisions are not solely based on past experiences, but also consider potential future consequences.

3. What are some examples of locally mediated interpretations with future input dependence in everyday life?

Some examples of this concept in everyday life include deciding what to eat for dinner based on your current mood and past experiences with different foods, or choosing a career path based on your current interests and potential future job opportunities.

4. How does this concept relate to the concept of determinism?

Determinism suggests that all events are determined by previous events and the laws of nature. Locally mediated interpretations with future input dependence challenges this idea by recognizing that our decisions and interpretations are not solely based on past events, but also take into account potential future outcomes.

5. How can understanding this concept benefit society?

Understanding this concept can benefit society by helping us make more informed decisions and recognize the potential consequences of our actions. It can also aid in problem-solving and decision-making in various fields, such as healthcare, economics, and politics.

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