PoeticUniverse wrote:Finally, something useful:
Smolin:
…intermediate-scale physics must be statistical, because similarity arises from neglect of information. It is interesting to wonder whether this might be the origin of quantum uncertainty. That is, the hidden variables needed to complete quantum theory, if we are to explain why individual events take place, must be relational. They must arise in adding the information needed to distinguish each event uniquely from all the others. Note that because the question of distinguishing individual events from others requires a comparison with others, such relational hidden variables must be non-local.
Very useful indeed, PU. All of the "quantum weirdness" questions can be focused exclusively on the notions of locality and non-locality at the subatomic scale. However if we think the atom as a process, rather than as an object, then the veil begins to lift. Processes are purely temporal phenomena and we merely project a spatial extension onto such phenomena when we make an observation of them. We are spatialising time and in physics this is called "collapsing a wave function", although in the common parlance "collapsing a wave function" and "having a look" are precisely synonymous terms. When we have a look at something our consciousness projects this incoming data into our minds in the form of events occurring in a 3 dimensional space. This is how we make sense of the world around us, and it's got us a long way up the evolutionary tree, but this space is not physically real. Our 3 -dimensional representation of the world is a hologram being projected from the boundary of the universe, the very moment NOW. We cannot see this moment NOW, because the speed of light is simply too bloody fast, but the speed of light is finite and this is the speed at which our universe is continuously coming into existence.
In a process model of the universe we think profoundly differently about the subatomic world. Instead of modelling particles as objects moving in space we instead model them as events occurring in time. This allows us to use a different form of language which can slowly lift the veil from QM. An electron is now defined as an EMERGENT entity which has been
encoded for by yet more fundamental processes which are occurring on the Planck scale at the speed of light but the electron itself also has only a temporal extension. In QM an attempt is made to spatialise this temporal extension and then all metaphysical hell breaks loose. Random events, particles that can be in many places at the same time, wave/particle duality, even reverse causation. QM is a philosopher's nightmare but in the fractal world of the process philosopher these apparent absurdities can all be explained away. The electrons and all the other subatomic particles are not objects moving in space. They are events being encoded for at the Planck scale and they represent a higher order of informational complexity because they each have different physical properties. This defines them as emergent and ALL emergent entities are observer-defined constructs with one thing in common. They all have properties more complex than those of the physical entities which encode for them.
We can think of the subatomic particles as reality MAKERS at the second level up from the fundamental scale. Just as these particles were themselves encoded for they can now go on to encode for the far more informationally complex atoms. We have another complexity hierarchy. Atoms in turn encode for molecules, which encode for chemistry and physics and biology. Since the big bang the universe has been evolving from the simple to the complex and this is exactly how it does it. It generates new and more complex information for itself in emergent hierarchies of informational complexity. This inexorable drive from the simple to the complex is driven by only the basic metaphysical law of causality. As long as events are always preceded by causes in an orderly and self-generative fashion then such an evolutionary trajectory is inevitable.
Exactly the same principle of causality must apply when we think the atom in terms of a self-generating computation, as are all the emergent hierarchies above and below it. This allows us to model the subatomic particles as information carriers and distributors hurtling around inside the atom at close to the speed of light, bearing in mind that the term "inside" is purely a metaphorical one. In fact these particles are moving through time alone and they are doing it in exactly the same way as everything else in the universe, they are doing it relativistically.
This is where the true genius of Einstein is revealed. He knew SR was wrong because it ignored gravity, as does QM, which is entirely predicated on SR. Einstein missed the elephant in the room but it was him that discovered it. Time and gravity are simply two different ways of expressing the same thing, namely the speed at which our physical reality CHANGES. We know that on the Planck scale this speed is the speed of light so this allows us to say that the speed of light is simply the processing speed of the cosmic computation and we as observers are observing the emergent effects of this continuous process. This perspective allows us to make a very important further unification for physics. Not only do time and gravity bear a precise mathematical relationship to each other but we finally nail down exactly what we mean by the speed of light. The speed of light is the speed at which the universe is physically coming into existence so it could just as easily be defined as the speed at which time passes. However the speed at which time passes is the most inconstant speed in the universe because of its inversely logarithmic relationship with gravity.
Therefore the speed of light is the most inconstant speed in the universe, being variable all the way down to the Planck scale and the quanta of energy which are encoding for the emergent hierarchy above. I reckon Einstein would have a good belly laugh about this because it was the constant speed of light which started him on his journey in the first place and then in GR he proves that the speed of light cannot possibly be a constant. He didn't mind a joke at his own expense and I'm sure he would see the irony of it. We seem to quickly forget that a constant speed of light in a Cartesian space is a logical impossibility so the fact that physics makes no sense is hardly to be wondered at.
This is quantum gravity in the briefest of imaginable summaries. Subatomic particles are in a continuous dynamic relationship with each other and they are doing this at breathtaking speed. This behaviour is being determined
chaotically, which is the very antithesis of "randomly" but looks very much like it when we look backwards down the arrow of time. This is precisely the same sort of causality which applies to the relativistic motions of cosmological bodies so I regard this as a significant unification of physics. According to GR the clock on the electron ticks faster than the clock on the nucleus it orbits. And yet the inversely logarithmic relationship between time and gravity must obtain even at the informational scale below this.
Max Planck succeeded in showing us that reality cannot be infinitely divisible, which would not have been breaking news to a half-competent philosopher. This means that time and gravity can be quantised equivalently with quanta of fundamental information, which we know to be changing at the speed of light. This gives reality a mechanism. Every single quantum of energy/information exists solely in its own temporal referential frame. Every Planck instant it changes as it exchanges information with other informational quanta, but it does this at an inconstant speed. It is this fundamental asymmetry between time and gravity which makes our universe self-causal and defines our future as unknowable.
PU. You know my thoughts on this subject well enough but consider these two statements.
1. The speed of light is a constant.
2. The speed of light is proportional to the clock-speed of the clock being used to measure it, which means it is always
observed to be a constant in the referential frame of the observer of it.
