Why field theories are deterministic, but QM isn't?
dud...@gmail.com
believed to be better approximation of physics than quantum mechanics
- for example because it allows for extremely accurate predictions of
Lamb shift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics
One of formulations of field theories is due to Lagrangian density -
physics finds the field which minimizes integral of this density over
four dimensional space - so called action.
Now using Euler-Lagrange equations, we can find necessity condition
for such minimization, which is in form of time evolution - we get
'evolving 3D' picture.
These equations are completely deterministic - we don't have a problem
with for example probabilities, wavefunction collapses ...
So why its predecessor which we commonly use - quantum mechanics is
completely undeterministic - we can usually talk only about
probabilities????
For me it clearly shows that QM is forgetting about something - kind
of 'subquantum noise' ... which determines quantum choices.
We cannot fully measure QM ... so it's probably even worse with this
'subquantum information'.
We can say only about probabilities of quantum choices - but in fact
they should be deterministic - they are stored somewhere there!
What we can talk about is that events have been causally connected in
the past - we call it entanglement: if two photons have been created
together we cannot know what spin they have, but we know that it's the
same one.
So from our point of view - the future will decide which of entangled
events will be chosen ... but in fact it's written in some subquantum
information, but we cannot even think about measuring it.
Bohm's interpretation uses 'pilot-wave' which goes into future to
choose how to elongate trajectory.
But maybe it would be better to use CPT conservation as in QED and try
to interpret QM fully fourdimensionally.
Now everything is clear:
- probability is proportional to the square of amplitude, because it
has to agree in both past and future halfplanes,
- knowing only the past we can predict only probabilities,
- entanglements means that events are causally connected in the past.
One of them will be chosen in the future (as in Wheeler's
experiment).
Here is expanded this topic:
http://www.advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11844
What do You think about it?
dud...@gmail.com
indeterminism of QM is a result of zero-point oscillations: "QUANTUM
FIELD THEORY OVERCOMES EINSTEIN'S OBJECTIONS AGAINST QUANTUM
MECHANICS" I. A. Boloshin, M. E. Gertsenshtein, and M. P. Suvorov
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n27p29417130h25h/fulltext.pdf
Doesn't it means that physics is deterministic and in quantum
mechanics we get probabilities only because we just don't have (cannot
have) full knowledge?
So maybe if we have entangled photons means: because they were created
in the same episode - they are causally connected in the past. In fact
they are in some state, but we have only information to say that they
have the same spin.
Benj
> So why its predecessor which we commonly use - quantum mechanics is
> completely undeterministic - we can usually talk only about
> probabilities????
It's that way because it described what people observed. I've always
called it the "science of ignorance" which probability obviously is.
If you are ignorant of all the micro-forces that flip a coin, you
STILL are able to glean a bit of information about the outcome of coin
tosses on average using the mathematics of probability. The problem
arises is when people turn that into a religion and start asserting
that it is "impossible" to know more than what probability gives you.
Whenever someone says something is "impossible" it's another way of
saying "I'm an idiot!"
> For me it clearly shows that QM is forgetting about something - kind
> of 'subquantum noise' ... which determines quantum choices.
> We cannot fully measure QM ... so it's probably even worse with this
> 'subquantum information'.
Of course the "hidden variable" thing has been around since the
beginning, but the problems with QM go well beyond that especially
when such variables are "subquantum" which means they are down at a
level where they can't ever be examined. Such a theory is no better
than the "standard theory". It just uses different words for it is
all.
> We can say only about probabilities of quantum choices - but in fact
> they should be deterministic - they are stored somewhere there!
Not only deterministic but causal as well. Causality is commonly
disregarded as a natural law in the Earth. Lots of things start to
become clear when you start to include it in your thinking.
> What we can talk about is that events have been causally connected in
> the past - we call it entanglement: if two photons have been created
> together we cannot know what spin they have, but we know that it's the
> same one.
Personally I find Schroedinger's "entangled" cat that is neither alive
nor dead until you look at it to be total religious nonsense. He
proposed the experiment to make fun of such views and now all the
textbooks accept the cat-ghost as some kind of ultimate truth. It's
not. For more information on these basic philosophical questions, I'd
urge you to buy a copy of Dr. Lewis Little's new book on his Theory of
Elementary Waves (available at Amazon for $27). Whether or not you
buy his "backward wave" theory, the philosophy in the book is
extremely provocative and should be required reading for all the
believers in "faith-based" QM. And personally I find his theory at
least superior to Feynmans "waves from the future" theory even though
it is a bit on the strange side. Check it out.
http://www.advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11844
> What do You think about it?
Personally I find a FEL to be an amazing device and I'm truly
surprised that it works at all let alone as well as it does.
The universe just continues to amaze and delight.
dud...@gmail.com
> called it the "science of ignorance" which probability obviously is.
> If you are ignorant of all the micro-forces that flip a coin, you
> STILL are able to glean a bit of information about the outcome of coin
> tosses on average using the mathematics of probability. The problem
> arises is when people turn that into a religion and start asserting
> that it is "impossible" to know more than what probability gives you.
> Whenever someone says something is "impossible" it's another way of
> saying "I'm an idiot!"
Well said...
But it's stored so deeply into sociology of physicists...: 'geniuses
creating this theory died many dozens of years ago there and we have
just to worship their beliefs...'
And so physics goes into some kind of mysticism nowadays... it's
easier to convince that we live in a fractal or a projection of
multidimensional something then that physics is really deterministic,
fourdimensional and CPT is really conserved...
> Of course the "hidden variable" thing has been around since the
> beginning, but the problems with QM go well beyond that especially
> when such variables are "subquantum" which means they are down at a
> level where they can't ever be examined. Such a theory is no better
> than the "standard theory". It just uses different words for it is
> all.
I disagree.
Our world is to be a result of this theory - we can make conclusions
from it, try to approximate somehow these hidden variables ... and
compare these consequences with experiment - if something is wrong,
we've probably falsify it ... like in the whole modern physics :)
> Not only deterministic but causal as well. Causality is commonly
> disregarded as a natural law in the Earth. Lots of things start to
> become clear when you start to include it in your thinking.
What is causality?
Remember that CPT conservation strongly suggests similarity between
past and future light cone ... look at any field theory - 'tensions'
from both past and future influence the present...
Retrocauality is clearly seen in Wheeler's experiment...
Time arrow cannot be included into CPT conserving equations - so maybe
it's a property of their solution we are living in - with strong
boundary conditions - big bang which created world with relatively
small entropy.
> Personally I find Schroedinger's "entangled" cat that is neither alive
> nor dead until you look at it to be total religious nonsense. He
> proposed the experiment to make fun of such views and now all the
> textbooks accept the cat-ghost as some kind of ultimate truth. It's
> not. For more information on these basic philosophical questions, I'd
> urge you to buy a copy of Dr. Lewis Little's new book on his Theory of
> Elementary Waves (available at Amazon for $27). Whether or not you
> buy his "backward wave" theory, the philosophy in the book is
> extremely provocative and should be required reading for all the
> believers in "faith-based" QM. And personally I find his theory at
> least superior to Feynmans "waves from the future" theory even though
> it is a bit on the strange side. Check it out.
I agree - physics is deterministic so the cat is really in one of
these states.
Entanglement is only our description that we don't have (cannot have)
complete information, but we e.g. know that they were connected
causally in the past - if we have 2 entangled photons, that means we
don't know their spin, but we know that because they were created in a
single event - they have the same spin.
> Personally I find a FEL to be an amazing device and I'm truly
> surprised that it works at all let alone as well as it does.
> The universe just continues to amaze and delight.
So what if we look at it as CPT transformation of a picture on which a
positron goes on the same path, but in opposite direction?
What should it produce? :)
Benj
> And so physics goes into some kind of mysticism nowadays... it's
> easier to convince that we live in a fractal or a projection of
> multidimensional something then that physics is really deterministic,
> fourdimensional and CPT is really conserved...
I'd say there is nothing worse than the fractal argument. There is
nothing more abstract and non-physical than fractal mathematics, yet
people argue that mathematics is more real than reality all the time.
> I disagree.
> Our world is to be a result of this theory - we can make conclusions
> from it, try to approximate somehow these hidden variables ... and
> compare these consequences with experiment - if something is wrong,
> we've probably falsify it ... like in the whole modern physics :)
It's not that I am denying hidden variables. I feel that such
structures are very likely. However, to say they are "unknowable" is
the problem. The only question then is HOW can we deduce what they
are?
> What is causality?
> Remember that CPT conservation strongly suggests similarity between
> past and future light cone ... look at any field theory - 'tensions'
> from both past and future influence the present...
"time" is a very difficult issue. Note I said causality is a natural
law "in the Earth". There are plenty of hints out there that at an
ultimate level time doesn't exist at all. Imagine if you will a
gigantic "matrix" consisting of everything that exists and every
possible transformation of it. Imagine your consciousness as well as
coupled groups of consciousness traveling over that matrix reading it
like a phonograph record. Imagine the velocity of consciousness as the
speed of light. Now in fact, and in truth, every event is actually
determined by what was before and came after (past and future) but
there really is no "time" at all hence no past and future. It is all
"one time". To the consciousness, the "past" is the path that one took
to that point. It is fixed in history and is a fact. The "future" on
the other hand is left to choice if you choose to choose. Otherwise
the trajectory proceeds on by Newton's law unless acted on by will
(force). To a person in the "present" the past can't be changed (Even
though you could theoretically "loop" back and take another nearby
path for grins) and the future can only be predicted as "most
probable". But also in the present it appears to you that the future
is completely determined by the past. The subtle actions of "free
will" are rather hidden. So causality seems a natural law.
> Retrocauality is clearly seen in Wheeler's experiment...
IF the "waves" are reversed the causality problems disappear (see
TEW).
> Time arrow cannot be included into CPT conserving equations - so maybe
> it's a property of their solution we are living in - with strong
> boundary conditions - big bang which created world with relatively
> small entropy.
The "Big Bang" is a mistake. It is a product of ignoring higher
dimensions. Nearly all of physics chooses to ignore and reject the
ample evidence of higher dimensions. As in "flatland" so-called
magical and mystical events become nothing more than "natural
geometry" when viewed from a higher perspective. Because physics
rejects such events out of hand, does not make them any less real.
> I agree - physics is deterministic so the cat is really in one of
> these states.
> Entanglement is only our description that we don't have (cannot have)
> complete information, but we e.g. know that they were connected
> causally in the past - if we have 2 entangled photons, that means we
> don't know their spin, but we know that because they were created in a
> single event - they have the same spin.
"entanglement" can be seen to be a result of the way we insist waves
travel. If we make the bold stroke of first separating waves and
particles and just say, hey, waves are waves and particles are
particles. They are allowed to be TWO things and don't have to be a
hyphenated single object. And then REVERSE the path of the waves so
they travel (NOT backward in time!) from the detector to the source,
the problems of "entanglement" abstract structures, and causality all
disappear! As I said TEW is a very interesting theory! Check it out.
> > Personally I find a FEL to be an amazing device and I'm truly
> > surprised that it works at all let alone as well as it does.
> > The universe just continues to amaze and delight.
>
> So what if we look at it as CPT transformation of a picture on which a
> positron goes on the same path, but in opposite direction?
> What should it produce? :)
Good question. Lessee: if positrons are electrons going backward in
time, and then we reverse their trajectory as well, what does that
produce? Waves into the past?
dud...@gmail.com
> nothing more abstract and non-physical than fractal mathematics, yet
> people argue that mathematics is more real than reality all the time.
Maaaaaybe there is something true in that we live in some
projection ... but before such speculations we should find good
understanding of the best for this moment approximations -
fourdimensional, CPT conserving field theories and how QM emerges from
it.
> It's not that I am denying hidden variables. I feel that such
> structures are very likely. However, to say they are "unknowable" is
> the problem. The only question then is HOW can we deduce what they
> are?
How we deduce that QED, standard model ... Dirac's equations are very
likely?
By calculating their 'higher level' consequences like Lamb shift and
comparing with experiment.
> "time" is a very difficult issue. Note I said causality is a natural
> law "in the Earth". There are plenty of hints out there that at an
> ultimate level time doesn't exist at all. Imagine if you will a
> gigantic "matrix" consisting of everything that exists and every
> possible transformation of it. Imagine your consciousness as well as
> coupled groups of consciousness traveling over that matrix reading it
> like a phonograph record. Imagine the velocity of consciousness as the
> speed of light. Now in fact, and in truth, every event is actually
> determined by what was before and came after (past and future) but
> there really is no "time" at all hence no past and future. It is all
> "one time". To the consciousness, the "past" is the path that one took
> to that point. It is fixed in history and is a fact. The "future" on
> the other hand is left to choice if you choose to choose. Otherwise
> the trajectory proceeds on by Newton's law unless acted on by will
> (force). To a person in the "present" the past can't be changed (Even
> though you could theoretically "loop" back and take another nearby
> path for grins) and the future can only be predicted as "most
> probable". But also in the present it appears to you that the future
> is completely determined by the past. The subtle actions of "free
> will" are rather hidden. So causality seems a natural law.
Yes - what we feel, sense are reason-result chains of relations.
Their speed depends on velocity of interactions - light speed - local
directions/shapes of causality cones (chosen by Einstein-Hilbert
equations).
We feel our time arrow, because big bang in our past had small entropy
- defined everything well, starting our 'wave of reality' driven by
entropy equilibration.
> The "Big Bang" is a mistake. It is a product of ignoring higher
> dimensions. Nearly all of physics chooses to ignore and reject the
> ample evidence of higher dimensions. As in "flatland" so-called
> magical and mystical events become nothing more than "natural
> geometry" when viewed from a higher perspective. Because physics
> rejects such events out of hand, does not make them any less real.
So how You explain time arrow in CPT conserving physics?
> "entanglement" can be seen to be a result of the way we insist waves
> travel. If we make the bold stroke of first separating waves and
> particles and just say, hey, waves are waves and particles are
> particles. They are allowed to be TWO things and don't have to be a
> hyphenated single object. And then REVERSE the path of the waves so
> they travel (NOT backward in time!) from the detector to the source,
> the problems of "entanglement" abstract structures, and causality all
> disappear! As I said TEW is a very interesting theory! Check it out.
I'm planing to analyze transactional interpretation and TEW, but
rather for final comparison - earlier I would like to fully develop my
own understanding - based on fourdimensional thinking and field
theories - that physics optimizes some 4D action.
For me - uncertainty denotes that knowing only the past, we are not
able to determine (making some measurements) which slit/event/timeline
is chosen - so we describe it as entanglenens of some events (photon
goes through this or that path).
Interference is kind of stronger version - a complete uncertainty -
not only we cannot measure slit/event, but even physics doesn't
distinguish between consequences of these paths/events - and so have
to choose one using some strange for us criterion - interference - to
optimize some 4D action.
> Good question. Lessee: if positrons are electrons going backward in
> time, and then we reverse their trajectory as well, what does that
> produce? Waves into the past?
It's a bit more complicated - from our perspective of time it's the
'target' which emitted the photon absorbed by this laser/lasar - this
'target' had to be excited correspondingly previously to make it
possible.
The trick is that this absorption was stimulated, and so should be
detectable.
Here is large discussion about it:
http://www.advancedphysics.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11844