Questions re Cramer's Transactional Interpretation?

[Jacques_L]

Thank you Mrs Kastner to have opened this discussion.

Some years ago, your previous paper http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/0502/0502021v3.pdf" had been thrown to my face by someone (a bellicose pervert).

I am very glad to read how much you have evolved since, and how your own theorizing has deepen in the meantime.

However, I maintain that one of the necessary sources of the TIQM has not yet percolated up to the american physicists. For them, what is not published in english, simply does not exist. Albert Einstein, Arnold Sommerfeld and Erwin Schrödinger took care of reading the thesis of Louis Victor de Broglie, and read it in french.
http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/70/78/PDF/tel-00006807.pdf
At least the Nobel lecture is in english :
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1929/broglie-lecture.pdf


Unfortunately, Schrödinger was defeated at the Solvay congress in 1927.

Sorry, there is not yet any english translation of my page on TI : http://deonto-ethics.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Interpr%C3%A9tation_transactionnelle" .

What have been thrown into the Memory Hole by the winning pack was the intrinsic frequency : \nu_e = \frac{m.c^2}{h}
and the theorem of Harmony of phases. Broglie deduced that the phase velocity V should be c² / v : V = \frac{c^2}{v}
So in the frame of the electron, the electron is everywhere in phase with itself, and cannot become punctual, never.
An unavoidable consequence that Broglie has never perceived, is that every quanton dwells in the noise of the broglian waves of all the others. No screen for that...

In that permanent noise, sometimes a complete handshake can achieve : same frequency (beat between final and initial state), same polarization, same phase...

The malediction on the astronomers is that the emitting regions are hot and obvious, though the absorbing ones are not.

During eighty years, nobody noticed that in 1927, Erwin Schrödinger had not yet the right equidistance for explaining the Compton diffusion by a Bragg diffraction (Über den Comptoneffekt; von E. Schrödinger. Annalen der Physik. 1927, 28, 257-64. http://www.apocalyptism.ru/Compton-Schrodinger.htm), and that he found it in 1930, but without exploiting it. And oddly enough, nobody corrected it after 1930, including Schrödinger himself.

By a way or another, TIQM was unavoidable. Pity is that did not occur in the 1930 or so years. A huge waste of time, and waste of physicists

 

[DrChinese]

...
What have been thrown into the Memory Hole by the winning pack was the intrinsic frequency : \nu_e = \frac{m.c^2}{h}
and the theorem of Harmony of phases. Broglie deduced that the phase velocity V should be c² / v : V = \frac{c^2}{v}
So in the frame of the electron, the electron is everywhere in phase with itself, and cannot become punctual, never.
An unavoidable consequence that Broglie has never perceived, is that every quanton dwells in the noise of the broglian waves of all the others. No screen for that...

In that permanent noise, sometimes a complete handshake can achieve : same frequency (beat between final and initial state), same polarization, same phase...

The malediction on the astronomers is that the emitting regions are hot and obvious, though the absorbing ones are not.
...

Welcome to PhysicsForums, Jacques_L!

You have made some very interesting comments about this subject. I especially like the commentary about the emitting and absorbing regions. So I wanted to ask your personal opinion, and it relates to this. Some people say that a photon is an "excitation" or similar, with the sense that it does not have an independent wavefunction. I.e. it is more of a mathematical artifact. Do you think that photons can exist freely? By this I mean: I would imagine that stars emit light that would never arrive anywhere. If so, would that contradict the idea that photons do not have an independent wavefunction?

Or is my question poorly formed (or sadly misinformed)? Or perhaps someone else can help me here!

 

[Jacques_L]

Welcome to PhysicsForums, Jacques_L!

You have made some very interesting comments about this subject. I especially like the commentary about the emitting and absorbing regions. So I wanted to ask your personal opinion, and it relates to this. Some people say that a photon is an "excitation" or similar, with the sense that it does not have an independent wavefunction. I.e. it is more of a mathematical artifact. Do you think that photons can exist freely? By this I mean: I would imagine that stars emit light that would never arrive anywhere. If so, would that contradict the idea that photons do not have an independent wavefunction?

Or is my question poorly formed (or sadly misinformed)? Or perhaps someone else can help me here!

I do not know enough to conclude.
As I think as a transactionnist myself, my answer begins so :
A photon is the successfull electromagnetic transaction between an absorber and an emitter. It begins by a handshake emerging form the ambiant broglian and chaotic noise, it continues by a synchroneous transfer (momentum and energy), and ends by a disconnecting when a whole quantum of action is transferrred, and return to the chaotic usual noise, for both the emitter and the receiver.

Clear and cut ? NO !

The above sentence is oversimplified, as it has omitted a third kind of partners in the transaction : the vacuum and/or the matter in the middle, mirrors or lenses for instance, sometimes gravitational lenses at the astronomical scale, gratings, other synchroneous photons, etc.

The Maxwell equations remain valid at the scale of a photon, at least in the vacuum.

At the surface of the metals, there is also a coupling between the conduction electrons and each photon, that confers a temporary mass to the photon.

Each one of these couplings with the electronic clouds of matter, temporarily confers a mass to the photon. As far as I know, there is no photonic mass in the vacuum.

Above, I have only set a theoritical frame of a two partners transaction, as Cramer did in 1986. And I am sure it is not enough. Even the first problem dealed by Planck in 1900 involved the space between emitters and absorbers.

We need a three partners transactionnal theory, and I am unable to set it. As Ruth Kastner wrote it above (end of page 1), our macroscopic space is just a statistical emergence. It is beyond my means to mathematize that.

If the space in-beween did not intervene, the photons would not be bosons at all. The astronomy by large basis interference would not work at all.

The mere fact that large basis interferometry works proves that during their long and wide journey, the photons that our distant sensors capture, had time enough to synchronize in frequency and phase.

The photons are special : they travel at null intrinsic time (and null intrinsic frequency). They do not bother of the lifetime of a physicist, nor of his/her pride. For us, it may be very important for our pride that photons bang in an absorber during our lifetime... But does it matter for intrinsic and impersonal physical laws ?

 

[Jacques_L]

Cannot more edit, must quote in a new message...

If the space in-beween did not intervene, the photons would not be bosons at all. The astronomy by large basis interference would not work at all.

The mere fact that large basis interferometry works, proves that during their long and wide journey, the photons that our 10 km or 20 km distant sensors capture, had time enough to synchronize in frequency and phase.

So you are right, photons remain "an excitation" of the vacuum, besides being a successful transaction between an absorber and an emitter. The prove is that they interact as bosons.
The theoritical synthesis remains to be done, as far as I know (and I know little).

 

[Ken G]

Another point to ponder is the role of the observer/perceiver/conceptualizer in all this. The transactional approach seems to be one of the "realist" interpretations, in that it attempts to limit its interpretation to events that are "really happening", and would be happening even without an observer to register the happening. But what of the role of hypothetical observers, has the transactional approach really banished a role for them? In my opinion, no, because the very spirit of a "transaction" as being the physically actualized event screams "role of the observer" to me. As we heard above, the guts of the PTI is that reality plays out on two planes at once-- an actualized plane of completed transactions, and a descriptive plane of possibilities that rule, in a statistical way, what is actualized. If you knew no physics, what would that language sound like to you? It would sound like exactly the way our minds deal with our uncertain surroundings-- the actualization of potentialities, where we can find rules that govern the potentialities but no rules that determine the actualities. That sounds just like the kinds of limitations our thinking encounters in our daily lives, so although quantum mechanics is often painted as the "weirdest" arm of physics, I think it is the subfield that makes it the most clear the imprint that our own thinking process leaves on our physical descriptions of reality. Is a transaction something that really happens without any hypothetical observer present, or is it just something that we require to happen, in our approach to realism?

 

[Jacques_L]

Another point to ponder is the role of the observer/perceiver/conceptualizer in all this.

Strictly not any in physics.
But it/he/she plays the central role in positivism.
And a pack of positivists took over in 1927. Since then, they are the winning pack and wan all the holding on the teaching apparatus.

 

[Fyzix]

Just a quick question: is TI 100% deterministic?

 

[Ken G]

Actually, I would argue that recognizing the role of the observer is exactly the escape from excessive positivism. Positivism as a philosophy is a claim on reality, that only what we can objectively observe should count as what is real. But in science, positivism is not a claim on reality, it is merely a claim on science-- so we say, if we can't objectively observe it, it doesn't fall within the purvey of science, but we don't claim the purvey of science is all that is real because that is not something that any science could ever falsify. Hence, noting the essential role of the observer in everything we call science is how we can tell the difference between what is science, and what is philosophy.

 

[Ken G]

Just a quick question: is TI 100% deterministic?

No-- it is clear from the above that TI is the opposite of deterministic, because it places at the level of an axiom the stochastic nature of the transactions that get actualized. Thus, it asserts from the start that god does in fact roll dice.

 

[Jacques_L]

Just a quick question: is TI 100% deterministic?

We do not change the formalism.
We do not change the known laws. Or not yet.
They remain strictly undulatory and strictly deterministic.
It does not imply a deterministic physics. Not at all.
Simply because of the unavoidable broglian noise. This simple fact ruins any panoptical fantasy. There are no ways to know any kind of "initial conditions", nor on the absorber, nor on the emitter, nor on any other intervening parties.

The involved frequencies, and the crushing mass of transient facts to recorder, are far beyond (even future) human possibilities. And the Avodagro constant and the W.R. Ashby's theorem on requisite variety are unbreakable barriers.

 

[Fyzix]

Thanks.

Ok if it is indeterministic put me in the "TI is definitely wrong" opinion category.
There is no way the fundamental reality is indeterministic...

I'll let you guys keep debating though.

 

[Jacques_L]

Actually, I would argue that recognizing the role of the observer is exactly the escape from excessive positivism. Positivism as a philosophy is a claim on reality, that only what we can objectively observe should count as what is real. But in science, positivism is not a claim on reality, it is merely a claim on science-- so we say, if we can't objectively observe it, it doesn't fall within the purvey of science, but we don't claim the purvey of science is all that is real because that is not something that any science could ever falsify. Hence, noting the essential role of the observer in everything we call science is how we can tell the difference between what is science, and what is philosophy.

I do not agree with the amalgam :
The "observer" and the hativous slogans on the "observer" are not a good replacement for the necessary fine physics of the sensors.

 

[Jacques_L]

Thanks.

Ok if it is indeterministic put me in the "TI is definitely wrong" opinion category.
There is no way the fundamental reality is indeterministic...

I'll let you guys keep debating though.

Can you predict when a particular Thorium nucleus will decay ?

 

[Fyzix]

Can you predict when a particular Thorium nucleus will decay ?

Obviously not, but what sort of argument is that?
If I bring you to the top of the empire state building and throw 2 dice off the edge, will you be able to predict where they will fall and what sides will turn up? Ofcourse not, because you don't know all the variables yet.

we do not have a ToE so atm atomic decay seem random.

 

[Ken G]

The problem with the claim that "reality must be deterministic" is that it does not flow from a logical argument. Determinism is actually a property of a theory or model, so one can only pass the aspects of a theory or model to the aspects of reality if one believes one has good reason to do so. However, in the history of science, plenty of good reasons to pass from aspects of theories to aspects of reality have fallen by the wayside. Indeed, the failure of that program is one of the most constant aspects of all in physics. The history of physics is very demonstrably a history of maps that were not the territory.

Presumably, those who maintain that the quality "deterministic" can be successfully passed from theory to reality do so on the strength of the success of deterministic models. They see the advancement of science as a gradual loosening of the hold of the pernicious and fickle desires of ill-defined gods, and a replacement by the block-steady rules of law embodied in well-defined physics equations. None can dispute the successes of the latter approach, and yet it still falls short of a logical syllogism. That which works never becomes the truth, no matter how well it works, unless it happens to also be the truth. Which well-worked theorem of physics happened to also be the truth? I'm am unaware of a single example. So those who maintain that determinism is true seem to do so only with a substantial helping of willingness to overlook facts.

 

[Jacques_L]

The problem with the claim that "reality must be deterministic" ... So those who maintain that determinism is true ...

Please do not forget to be precise ; who are the persons you are aiming at ?
Who supports or is pretended to support which position ?

 

[Jacques_L]

we do not have a ToE so atm atomic decay seem random.

Please say it in clear and basic english. These abreviations are not decipherible.

 

[Fyzix]

ToE = Theory of Everything
atm = at the moment

To me, randomness can infact not exist, it's incomprehensible, it's illogical...

You may explain "randomness" as a effect without a cause, but NO...
Nature doesn't suggest that this is real.

The fact that we do already have a lot of deterministic interpretations of QM (dBB, MWI, other hidden variables etc.) is a testimony to the fact that nature isn't random.

I know a lot of people will disagree, but I'm like einstein, I will die knowing the universe is random no matter what

 

[DrChinese]

The problem with the claim that "reality must be deterministic" is that it does not flow from a logical argument. Determinism is actually a property of a theory or model, so one can only pass the aspects of a theory or model to the aspects of reality if one believes one has good reason to do so. However, in the history of science, plenty of good reasons to pass from aspects of theories to aspects of reality have fallen by the wayside. Indeed, the failure of that program is one of the most constant aspects of all in physics. The history of physics is very demonstrably a history of maps that were not the territory.

Presumably, those who maintain that the quality "deterministic" can be successfully passed from theory to reality do so on the strength of the success of deterministic models. They see the advancement of science as a gradual loosening of the hold of the pernicious and fickle desires of ill-defined gods, and a replacement by the block-steady rules of law embodied in well-defined physics equations. None can dispute the successes of the latter approach, and yet it still falls short of a logical syllogism. That which works never becomes the truth, no matter how well it works, unless it happens to also be the truth. Which well-worked theorem of physics happened to also be the truth? I'm am unaware of a single example. So those who maintain that determinism is true seem to do so only with a substantial helping of willingness to overlook facts.

Well said Ken!

 

[Jacques_L]

The only way to get out of such open eyes dreams, out of our own intimate needs for autotheories, is to prepare some experiments able to cut into our dreams.
Can we prepare an experiment in which we can predict which atom will emit a photon or an alpha nucleus ? No, we can't.
Can we predict at which instant this atom will emit ?
No, we can't, unless we can trigger it, as in a femtosecond laser.
Can we prepare an experiment where we can predict which atom will be the absorber ? No, we can't either.
All that is definitely beyond control, though the theory seems deterministic, but the conditions are definitely beyond control, for ever. And the theory explains why they are beyond control forever.

In France, Olivier Costa de Beauregard was the first to see that the laws are time-symmetric, so the absorber plays a nearly or totally equivalent causal role as the emitter. Alas, the decoherence was not yet theorized, nor even suspected, and Beauregard went astray, believed he had found the theoritical ground for telepathy. Blind-alley, of course, and preposterous.

However, in the primitive state of TIQM, it seems to lead us to a world totally deterministic, where all is so tightly coupled, such as "all is already written", like the "Mektoub" of the arabic culture. Empirical experience shows us that such extrapolation is as false as possible. A real challenge : to explain why...

 

[Ken G]

The mantra of determinism would seem to be that everything happens for a reason. But if we cannot get access to that reason and use it to make a prediction, then the outcome is fundamentally unpredictable. What is the meaning of a determined outcome that is unpredictable? That concept seems indistinguishable to the ancient concept of divine will. So would the determinist, facing unpredictable outcomes, return us to the very divinations that science was invented to offer an alternative to? Even if one sees science as a glimpse into the mind of god, one must allow that when what we see there is unpredictability, we are closing our eyes to conclude that what we actually see there is determinism. It's true that DeBB and MWI allow us to carry out that magic trick without violating any equations, but we are still seeing what we want to see, rather than what is really there to be seen.

 

[rkastner]

Just a quick question: is TI 100% deterministic?

No, it has a probabilistic collapse to one of a set of incipient transactions, where each is weighted by the Born Rule.

 

[rkastner]

Ah, yes, I see.
In any case, I think TI is incompatible with QFT for the reasons I explained above:
a) QFT uses emission/absorbtion almost everywhere and it does not cause any collapse;
b) QFT does not make principal difference between exchange of photons, W,Z, g or any other partcles

There is no collapse for virtual particles in TI either. QFT implicitly gets into the collapse domain in its treatment of outgoing particles, which are 'real' and therefore must be detected somewhere. In my forthcoming book I deal with all these issues; I think you'll see that there is a consistent account.

 

[rkastner]

Thanks Jacques, I agree that de Broglie waves are fundamental and I have a paper forthcoming on this topic, will post the reference when it's officially accepted for publication.

 

[moving-finger]

No, it has a probabilistic collapse to one of a set of incipient transactions, where each is weighted by the Born Rule.

Interesting.

Is a deterministic variation of TI in principle not possible (ie something along the lines of hidden variables)?

And if not, why not?

 

[moving-finger]

Some people say that a photon is an "excitation" or similar, with the sense that it does not have an independent wavefunction. I.e. it is more of a mathematical artifact. Do you think that photons can exist freely? By this I mean: I would imagine that stars emit light that would never arrive anywhere. If so, would that contradict the idea that photons do not have an independent wavefunction?

An interesting question. "Never" is an awfully long time :)

It could be argued that all photons "eventually" arrive somewhere - though it may take some of them "forever" to arrive. But then, from the POV of the photon, the journey takes no time at all.

If TI is correct, then all photons must eventually arrive somewhere (since no photon could start on its journey until a CW existed from the destination).

 

[moving-finger]

The TI - as I understand it - involves certain elements of time symmetry in that there are advanced and retarded interactions. There are other time symmetric interpretations as well, such as relational blockworld (RBW). So, how does TI compare to RBW? Are they somewhat similar or radically different?

As I understand it, RBW isn't so much a time-symmetric interpretation, as an atemporal interpretation, in the sense that RBW views the world in terms of 4D spacetime (blockworld), with any notions of time actually flowing, or of any kind of temporal dynamics (which is implicit to TI), being illusory under RBW. Also, I believe that non-locality is accepted as being a fundamental aspect of RBW (its "built-in" so to speak), whereas non-locality is not a fundamental aspect of TI (apparently non-local behaviour is explained by the dynamics of TI).

The two interpretations are thus fundamentally different in the sense that one is ultimately dynamical but local (TI), whilst the other is ultimately relational (non-dynamical) but non-local (RBW).

 

[ThomasT]

As I understand it, RBW isn't so much a time-symmetric interpretation, as an atemporal interpretation, in the sense that RBW views the world in terms of 4D spacetime (blockworld), with any notions of time actually flowing, or of any kind of temporal dynamics (which is implicit to TI), being illusory under RBW. Also, I believe that non-locality is accepted as being a fundamental aspect of RBW (its "built-in" so to speak), whereas non-locality is not a fundamental aspect of TI (apparently non-local behaviour is explained by the dynamics of TI).

The two interpretations are thus fundamentally different in the sense that one is ultimately dynamical but local (TI), whilst the other is ultimately relational (non-dynamical) but non-local (RBW).

Is RBW, in your opinion, explicitly nonlocal, or just open to being interpreted as nonlocal? I recall one of the authors of RBW (the physicist, Stuckey, as I recall, his PF username is RUTA) talking about his creation as being ontologically 'nonseparable'. Which would seem to preclude the possibility of it being nonlocal (in the sense of allowing action at a distance at least). But I'm not sure. Wrt the other salient features of RBW that you mentioned, I believe that your characterization of RBW is correct, or at least in line with the authors'. In any case, as with Cramer's TI, it doesn't seem to be a serious contender for mainstream acceptance.

 

[moving-finger]

Is RBW, in your opinion, explicitly nonlocal, or just open to being interpreted as nonlocal? I recall one of the authors of RBW (the physicist, Stuckey, as I recall, his PF username is RUTA) talking about his creation as being ontologically 'nonseparable'. Which would seem to preclude the possibility of it being nonlocal (in the sense of allowing action at a distance at least). But I'm not sure.

I clearly need to read more - the following from Silberstein & Stuckey suggests that RBW is indeed a local theory, but I just don't understand how it does this. More study needed. Thanks for picking me up on this.

www.spacetimesociety.org/conferences/2008/SilbersteinStuckey.pdf

 

[RUTA]

As I understand it, RBW isn't so much a time-symmetric interpretation, as an atemporal interpretation, in the sense that RBW views the world in terms of 4D spacetime (blockworld), with any notions of time actually flowing, or of any kind of temporal dynamics (which is implicit to TI), being illusory under RBW. Also, I believe that non-locality is accepted as being a fundamental aspect of RBW (its "built-in" so to speak), whereas non-locality is not a fundamental aspect of TI (apparently non-local behaviour is explained by the dynamics of TI).

The two interpretations are thus fundamentally different in the sense that one is ultimately dynamical but local (TI), whilst the other is ultimately relational (non-dynamical) but non-local (RBW).

Atemporal is right on the money. We tend to think of RBW as local, i.e., no superluminal worldlines or information exchange. We go with nonseparable, since sources, space and time are co-constructed.