Re: Quantum Gravity 308.0: "TOE" - Everything is Either Cause, Effect, Causation, or Their Probabilities

On Feb 9, 9:34 am, OsherD <mdocto...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From Osher Doctorow

From the last few Sections, the picture that is emerging in physics is
that of the Physics of Elementary Particles (Elementary Particle
Physics) rather than the usual pictures of Quantum Theory or General
Relativity or their "modifications"/generalizations.

1. Quantum Theory (QT) uses Elementary Particle Physics (EPP) as a
guide throughout, both theoretically and experimentally, and in
particular the mechanistic models of EPP with bosons/virtual particles
or their "actions" (exchanges) replacing the usual mechanistic contact
or contact-like forces (despite the formal "Non-Causal" and even
discrete spacetime language and topology into which it attempts to
translate the former, with least success in Quantum Gravity).



2. General Relativity (GR) has already turned out to be only a
description of a limited part of the Universe at most, a description
which is neither extended much nor clarified much in practice and
intuition by use of the tensor and pseudo-tensor concepts and
geometric curvature/torsion and topology.

3. The Schrodinger Equation of Quantum Mechanics (QM), which is the
real Fundamental Equation of QM, implicates Probability in QM beyond a
shadow of a doubt, which in turn implicates Events (Sets) including
process-describing Events.

4. The Schrodinger Equation also "irretrievably" links the Quantum
wave interpretation ("hydrodynamic-like" waves) with classical wave
equations, contrary to the common myth that QM is only classical in
the (extreme) limit.

5. The Event (Set) in probabilities, such as the set A in P(A) (the
probability of A), is a Causal Set in the very precise sense that A =
(A ' --> A) = (A U A) = A, where (A --> B) = (AB ' ) ' = A ' U B.

6. The nature of "virtual" in "virtual particles" (exchange bosons in
particular) makes no logical or physical sense unless one is prepared
to admit non-"substances" including probabilities and sets/events into
the deepest parts of physics, and moreover the interpretation of a
"virtual exchange" is roughly speaking isomorphic with the
interpretation of (Probable) Causation in which the forms of events
change or specialize (as in A = (A ' --> A) rather than events being
"created and annihilated".  There is even a directionality of
Causation in (A-->B) that is similar to the idea of transmission of
forces by exchange of bosons, but nothing has to "disappear" or be
"annihilated" in the former.


I think that virtual particles make sense from the point of view that
you have an existence/nonexistence dichotomy. It's a bit like asking
whather the choice function exists in the Axiom of Choice. And that is
the view that one is forced to adopt if we take the existence/
nonexistence dichotomy to it's logical extreme.

Existential indeterminacy makes much more sense IMO.


7. The linkage of Quantum Mechanics to time comes not only from the
time partial derivative in the Schrodinger but from the Born
probability obtained from the modulus of the wave function, because
probabilistic sets/events are time-index implicitly or explicitly, as
Probable Causation/Influence (PI) shows.   For example, a set/event A
can only be regarded as persisting through time in general if it is
really a collection or sequence of time-indexed quantities A_t, t
varying through a usually uncountable set of times.   The dropping of
the index in practice, both in the Schrodinger Equation and in PI, is
something analogous to the Summation Convention in GR.


If points in a chunk of length exist probabilistically, then time is
also obviously probabilistic on quantum scales. This explains
retrocausality quite nicely. If the now is probabilistic, then there
is a nonzero chance that an effect might very reasonably preceed it's
own cause. But the laws of probability also constrain this effect and
confine it to the quantum realm. To me this seems quite obvious, but I
dont have much math to back that up - yet. But I do feel that it is
completely and thoroughly sensible and that the math will come.



8. The 4 Fundamental Interactions/Forces of Elementary Particle
Physics (EPP) appear from the last few Sections to be basically linked
through Probability (PI in particular), unlike the inability to link
them through QT or GR or their modifications.

Osher Doctorow


I feel that the great failing of modern science is that we cannot
explain something very simple. The thing that we cannot explain is
this:

Flip a coin. Is the outcome random or not ? We cannot answer whether
it is or not in any definitive way.

The thing that we cannot explain is "Why can we not answer ?"

I believe that the unification of physics hinges on our ability/
inability to answer that question. We say that QM is probabilistic,
but we do not even understand randomness from a philosophical
standpoint IMO.


.

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