[Fis] Reply to Ted Goranson: Quantum Gravity
Dear Ted, Thanks a lot for your point: > I\'m not surprised that most physicists want to ontologically flatten > > everything into a QM-described truth. What does surprise me is that > no one has mentioned the inconvenient fact that gravity, that most > prevalent force in physics, is notably unfriendly to QM. Yes, quantum gravity is really totally unfriendly to QM. Last month at the workshop <> in Leiden I presented the following viewpoint: Why do we think that such a thing as quantum gravity should exist at all? The only reason is again the Copenhagen dogma about the completeness of QM. If one assume that QM is not complete at all, so it is not fundamental theory (and if one be even more provocative and assume that QFT is neither fundamental and complete theory), then there is no reasons to think that such a thing as quantum gravity exists. May be the real fundamental theory is purely classical and QM is just an approximation of such a theory. So the postulate on the completeness of QM is not so innocent, it is not just a philosophic subject... With Best Regards, Andrei Khrennikov Director of International Center for Mathematical Modeling in Physics, Engineering, Economy and Cognitive Sc., University of Vaxjo, Sweden ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
[Fis] Limited info
Dear all -- Pedro's pearls are, as always, inspiring. For me the biggest problem is the precise formulation of a principle that limits the information nature allows us to discover. Schroedinger related this question to the nature of space-time, and the use, in mathematics, of the continuum of numbers. If you could pinpoint the location of a particle on the line of real numbers from zero to one, as you do in classical physics, you would have an infinite amount of info about it, represented by an infinite string of decimals. Surely, Schroedinger felt, the information that is physically carried by a material system must DECREASE as the volume of the object gets smaller, not increase. So, he argued, real numbers should not be used at all. In his estimation his own equation is a trick, and a poor one at that, to solve this problem. His equation starts with a continuum, but ends with discrete integers (eigenvalues). Quantum mechanics is an elaboration of the idea that a box with volume h in six-dimensional phase space can SOMEHOW carry one bit of info. But all that is handwaving. Hans Christian von Baeyer ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] Bell\\\'s inequality: Can we find its classical analogue? Classical and Quantum waves
Dear John and colleagues, Thanks for the rigorous philosophical directions to connect with. Getting ahead with the speculation business, here there are a few related "pills" that perhaps could be matched with aspects of the current discussion: -- physical (and biological?) information: as a distinction on the adjacent (taking "distinction" in Karl's set theory sense). -- principle of "limited information" (behind measurement, complementarity, and perhaps entanglement?). -- vacuum energy and quantum fluctuations: as a result of the inner generativity / destructivity of the "engines" of nature laws imprinted on space-time? -- motion: not as merely displacement but as "reconstruction" (along information flows ? "it" from "bit"?). -- if laws of nature do process "information" and are themselves "info", What kind of physicality they do purport? (to Michael Deveraux's consideration: "information is always physical"). with best greetings, Pedro At 15:08 12/06/2006, you wrote Dear colleagues, let me add another aficionado naive speculation on the matters below : We might regard every locus of space-time as having the capacity to instantiate the whole laws of nature, in relation to any existential perturbation by what we call matter, energy, etc. If there is an "information processing capacity" strictly by adjacency, in which informational perturbations --physical "state" information-- are passed or reconstructed only from locus to locus.. For the non-technical view, a sense of wholeness, of global "entity", has to be added to interpretations of space-time... Seems right to me. It also allows application of some (minimalist) views of causation to the QM world. Much of this is in our forthcoming book (All things must go: Information theoretic ontic structural realism, Oxford UP probably 2007), Ross, Ladyman, Spurrett, Collier. We look at open and closed block universes, among other things... Cheers, John -- Professor John Collier [EMAIL PROTECTED] Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 http://www.nu.ac.za/undphil/collier/index.html ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es http://webmail.unizar.es/mailman/listinfo/fis
