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Whose book is online?Jimster41 said:I assume you knew his site existed (an on-line version of the book). I just found it but I'm a bit afraid to post the link here. I think I will have to own the actual book tho...
Now this is indeed an intriguing possibility.DarMM said:It more highlights an interesting possibility, that you might need an unmeasurable space and those are never really looked at.
I was being a bit derisive of them, they clearly aren't mere nonsense, but I would say that you yourself are making light of the statement that physics uses numbers; the fact that physics uses real numbers and complex numbers is quite profound in its own right, perhaps more so than the state space being measurable.DarMM said:Sorry, but you really think most of the no-go theorems are nonsense that's as useful as saying "physics uses numbers"?
My point is that no-go theorems which are about theories instead of about physical phenomena aren't actually theorems belonging to physics, but instead theorems belonging to logic, mathematics and philosophy; see e.g. Gleason's theorem for another such extra-physical theorem pretending to be physics proper.
There is no precedent whatsoever within the practice of physics for such kind of theorems which is why it isn't clear at all that the statistical utility of such theorems for non-empirical theory selection is actually a valid methodology, and there is a good reason for that; how would the sensitivity and specificity w.r.t. the viability of theories be accounted for if the empirically discriminatory test is a non-empirical theorem?
It is unclear whether such a non-empirical tool is epistemologically - i.e. scientifically - coherently capable of doing anything else except demonstrating consistency with unmodified QM/QFT. If this is all the theorems are capable of, sure they aren't useless, but they aren't nearly as interesting if QM is in fact in need of modification, just like all known theories in physics so far were also in need of modification.
Physics is not mathematics, philosophy or logic; it is an empirical science, which means that all of this would have to be answered before advising or encouraging theorists to practically use such theorems in order to select the likelihood of a theory beyond QM in such a statistical manner. To put it bluntly, scientifically these theorems might just end up proving to be 'not even wrong'.
I'll get back to this.DarMM said:If not could you tell me which are?
If some necessary particular mathematical ingredients such as geometric or topological aspects are removed, physical content may be removed as well; what randomly ends up getting left may just turn out to be irrelevant fluff, physically speaking.DarMM said:Also I still don't understand how it is necessarily epistemic. A measurable space might be put to an epistemic use, but I don't see how it is intrinsically so.
Partially yes, especially given the lack of precedent for using theorems (which might belong more to mathematics or to philosophy instead of to physics) in such a non-empirical statistical selection procedure.DarMM said:So your main objection to the framework is that it might unfairly eliminate a model in the early stages of development? In other words, an earlier simpler version of an idea might have some interesting insights, but it's early form, being susceptible to the no-go theorems, might be unfairly dismissed without being given time to advance to a form that doesn't and might help us understand/supersede QM?
There seems to be at least one link with BM, namely that Manasson's model seems to be fully consistent with Nelson's fully Bohmian program of stochastic electrodynamics.Twodogs said:This is an intriguing proposition. As noted, self-organizing dynamics occur on a myriad of scales, are robust and have an extensive mathematical basis. Speaking with a very superficial understanding, it feels organic rather than mechanistic and potentially rooted in a new foundational paradigm. Having just read something about Bohmian mechanics it feels like the two might go together.