I have a degree in theoretical physics and a gold medal, which is to say I have endured the requisite intellectual beatings. Often the best interpretations of physical theory are unpalatable to the average person. The idea that there is in fact no objective physical reality is the most egregious offender in this regard. However, it is nonetheless the best conclusion that one can draw given strict adherence to what the mathematical formalism of QM provides. There is simply no physical machinery to support an objective reality, period.
Now, that being said, the remarkable part is that the forgoing conclusion does us zero harm. We can still have the logical predictive fiction that an objective reality exists. What staggers the mind is the corollary that no human has ever erected a truth. Moreover, every intelligent species that ever endeavors to ask these questions will find the same non-answer.
>>no objective physical reality is…the best conclusion that one can draw given strict adherence to what the mathematical formalism of QM provides…
Can’t get on board with that. Relational QM/no objective reality is just one viewpoint, and it’s worth noting it’s not consensus.
To clarify he’s not claiming objects don’t exist, just that they don’t have observer independent properties.
It is fun to try and wrap your head around what no objective reality would mean. To grasp what we already have shown to be true about time being relative, the examples around simultaneity are a great wtf demonstration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity
Isn’t it as likely that we have formulaic illusions like time that suffuse our inability to reach objectivity? And in those paradoxes: change only at Planck speed, motion is illusory, quantum gravity obeys probability as in Darwin, the theoretical observer independent reality exists.
The process of philosophy involves shedding illusions like words, statements, time, space to reach objectivity. A loop quantum gravity philosopher claiming there is no objective reality could just be an observer stuck at a bottleneck (notice he doesn’t call into question illusory attributes the piece relies on like biographical info).
Barbour’s observation, that quantum appears to demand specialization and record keeping at very unique planes (records are geology, fossils, impressions, photographs) hints that observers are what physical reality is, is counterpoint to “there is no objective reality.”
If reality is non trivially about record keeping, then of course there’s an objective reality, the Darwinian outcome is the objective sum of record keeping and the study of their differences.
Can you be more precise about what you mean by "objective reality"?
I would say that QM shows the world is not classical, but it doesn't say there's no objective reality: the predictions it makes about what we observe (reality) are extremely reliable and accurate (i.e. objective).
Yes, those predictions are just probabilistic for any single system, but when you have a lot of systems the probability that you will observe a specific outcome (to within observational error) can approach 1. A lot of our technology, such as lasers, transistors, etc., relies on this. I don't see how you make sense of that while denying there's objective reality.
In my view there is such a perspective: quantum mechanics. So far as we know its predictions are valid for all observers.
But what that means is that we have to readjust our classical conceptions about what a "property of a system" is.
The word "property" in general is just a logical concept, and doesn't carry any intrinsic ontological implications. There can be mathematical properties, physical properties, properties of thoughts and dreams etc., and this way of talking about things doesn't by itself imply any specific ontological interpretation. It's just a feature of the structure of language.
About physical properties specifically, if we derive our concept of physical property from quantum mechanics, instead of trying to retain the inadequate classical meaning, then physical properties are exactly those represented by the state vector: e.g. its projections on to each of the basis vectors corresponding to some observable.
True, as is well-known from the Bell and Kochen-Specker theorems, we can't consistently say that a quantum state has some specific value of its observables independently of interactions with other systems, but this is just the classical conception of a physical property (formalized, e.g., by a real-valued function on phase space).
But quantum mechanics doesn't thereby force us to say that a physical system has no definite properties. Instead, we can reconfigure our conception of physical property to make it compatible with quantum mechanics.
Then in general the properties of quantum states are probabilistic (at least some of them - the dimension of its state space, for example, is not), but the theory unambiguously assigns to a state the probabilities that the various possible measurement outcomes will be observed. These probabilities are among that state's properties, and all indications are that these probabilities are objective features of the state, independently of our ways of representing the state.
In fact the dependence goes in the other direction: this (objectively) probabilistic character of quantum states (among other things, like the quantization of energy exchanges) is what forced us to change the way we think of physical states.
if your definition requires universal observer agreement you already have that issue with special relativity / light cones / the spacetime metric.
many worlds posits a single universal quantum state it's just only partially accessible to observers, which is different from saying that it simply doesn't objectively exist.
I've got a doctorate and I don't really see what you are saying, primarily because "no objective physical reality" is somewhat vague.
QM, for example, is a totally adequate theory of objective reality! it just describes an objective reality with properties which differ to some degree from those intuitive to creatures at classical scales. It may be inadequate in other respects (not invariant, a little unsatisfying wrt the born rule, etc) but it isn't as if it implies NO OBJECTIVE REALITY.
I second your comment. This is where a degree in philosophy would have been useful. The term "objective reality" is just a semantic indirection to a cluster of loosely defined concepts. Okay, what concepts? That whole discussion is philosophy, informed by physics.
I think language does us a disservice here. I'm reminded of Korzybski's work in Science and Sanity. The interpretation of "truth" depends on which level of abstraction you are operating on. "Every statement is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense". The term "reality" implies a perceiver, and that perceiver is generating "reality" based on their neurological instrument, which has its own biases based on its prior experience and genetics.
But the problems described by the parent comment also exist in mathematical language, that’s what Godel Incompleteness is. The problem is inherent to all conceptual frameworks
No. Subjective reality is what we experience as sentients. There must be an object reality and imho that is the only statement of truth that can be uttered in language, with "language" to be understood in the sense that Werner Hisenberg uses that term.
So I'm with Bohr, Hisenberg on this matter. We can not 'presume' to speak of the Real with capital R. It exists but it can not be 'encompassed'.
No vision can encompass Him, but He encompasses all vision. Indeed, He Is the Most Subtle, the All-Aware! - Qur'an - 6.103
Leave out the quran quote since that is most definitely not what Bohr/Heisenberg/Others mean when they talk about subjectivity/observation/measurement. See my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45759220
If you want to discuss Philosophical/Ontological/Epistemological concepts of Reality/Truth etc. there are far better models in Hindu/Buddhist scriptures. The submitted article itself refers to Nagarjuna's Sunyata and Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy.
The quote seems perfectly fine in illustrating the idea that reality will always transcend our language or thought (to the extent that can be expressed in any language).
And if you appreciate Hindu scripture, that particular quote could have been lifted almost verbatim from the Upanishads.
I don't appreciate the dogmatism that is associated with a lot of orthodox Islam either, but this is something similar to a lot of conservative religious outlooks, as you can find among people identifying as Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, etc. But in fact this particular quote can be seen as antithetical to any such dogmatic position, and it's worthwhile to recognize points of agreement even though you might disagree in other areas.
I find your chauvinism is what doesn't belong to HN. Bohr was familiar with Eastern scriptures so it is perfectly understandable as to why he would reference its formulations. I happen to familiar with both and I do not see any discrepency or antagonism in these scriptures. You may not benefit with such comments but it is possible that others will find it useful and informative.
Quoting the Quran in a positive light is like doing the same with Mein Kampf, except that Islam has caused a lot more deaths over the years. I'd say it's yours that doesn't belong on HN.
I dislike unnecessary religiosity being dragged in where there is no reason for it.
> I happen to familiar with both
I don't think you are. No Quantum Physicist has ever quoted anything from Quran since there is nothing there (it is the youngest of all religions being only from 7th century AD) which has not been already elaborated in Hindu/Buddhist/Greek/Chinese/Christian philosophies/worldviews. That is why most scientists quoted from those ancient scriptures. There is no need to try and hoist your opinions on them.
Moreover the article specifically mentions Carlo Rovelli drawing inspiration from Nagarjuna's Buddhist philosophy and hence that is the only model we should look at to try and understand what he means (and not drag in all and sundry others).
For non-relativistic QM, the QM formalism is provable from Bohmian mechanics, an actual particle theory. BM starts from particles have locations the change continuously in time via a guidance equation using the wave function of the universe. One may choose other theories to explain quantum phenomena, but to say "There is simply no physical machinery to support an objective reality, period." is just false, at least in that realm. As for relativistic QFT, there are plausible pathways using Bohmian ideas as well though nothing as definitive as BM has been firmly established.
I would also say that any theory that does not have room to say definitively that I exist is a theory that is obviously contradictory to my experience and is therefore falsified. There has to be room in the theory for at least me. Additionally, I would certainly value much more a theory that has room for the rest of humanity more than one which questions the existence of everyone but me. I am not even sure what the point of a theory would be if it could not account for collaborative science being done.
QM does not deny you existence, it rather denies you a complete objective description of how you exist. Or perhaps it says that your existence is not an objective phenomena.
BM is objective, and indeed deterministic. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "complete" but it has all the same predictions as other interpretations of QM. It has some odd quirks however, such as explicit non-locality.
I am just a lay person so a lot of the maths is over my head for all of this, but I do try to follow the best I can.
Do you ever ponder that the maths that you try to distill into the “laws of physics” is just too low of a fidelity for such a complicated system?
For example when you capture a gorgeous sunrise/sunset in a photo, and despite you doing every trick under the sun to get a good angle/lighting etc, the photo is never as good as what you experienced in person.
Or maybe you just never experienced the sunrise/sunset shrug.
QM provides the most accurate and verifiable predictions in human history. The follow on from that is that my thoughts can be conveyed to you over a sea of quivering electrons. The one catch is that you must accept that when you are not looking the universe does its evolving in a way that is inimical to your conceptualizations.
A wave is a product, trigonometric functions do not exist.
Gerard hooft was on Curt Jaimungal's youtube channel a while back, I generally agree with him, discrete systems cannot be explained by real numbers, only integers
Your conclusion rests on the assumption that QM's description of reality represents the ontological truth. And such a 'truth' is not provable. However, as you already mentioned, it doesn't matter as QM provides the strongest epistemological claims, and this is what matters in the end.
I think otherwise. I am precisely saying that QM as a formalism denies ontological truth in the first instance. You have to do something like the BM guy above is embarking on.
Once the notion of objective truth is relinquished, what ontological or epistemic status remains for reasoning itself? Is it to be understood as a pragmatic construct, or as something with deeper necessity beyond empiricism?
Logic does not exist in a physical sense, but try to think without it. For example, try to think without the law of noncontradiction. Can you categorize?
Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this. Let's say you have a box of gas in a low entropy state: all the particles are on one side of the box. A moment later, the particles will have spread to the other side of the box, so the entropy is lower. But to say "a moment later", we're assuming a quantity called time. I'm confused how you can see this in reverse: "because the particles spread to the other side of the box, a moment passes".
This is not radical. His thought is clearly in line with a very old and very mainstream philosophical tradition called "idealism," and I was surprised to see this go unmentioned in the article. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/
> Within modern philosophy there are sometimes taken to be two fundamental conceptions of idealism:
> 1. Something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality, and
> 2. although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.
Among mainstream philosophical traditions, idealism is IMO the weakest, as it's inevitably solipsistic. Physicalism has become strongest.
I take issue with the “stronger” characterization. Maybe I have a vocabulary problem. However…
Your own perception of the physical world is, by necessity, solipsistic. Your own experience of the physical world is in your own mind. Without that perception, you can’t say it exists.
We know that it’s possible to have this experience of perception without the physical world, as long as your mind exists. In other words, this could all just be a simulation being dumped into your mind without the physical world as you “know” it existing. Hence, idealism.
Whether one is stronger (or more true?) than the other really doesn’t affect how you function within reality - you’re constrained by what you perceive as the physical world.
Indeed. Science isn't the study of the universe, it's the study of our experience of the universe.
Physics tends to imagine that a mind is a neutral blank screen that represents reality faithfully and accurately. But that's nonsense. It's a process that imposes certain kinds of perceptions.
The conceptual metaphors we use - position, mass, velocity, time, causality - are products of that process, not fundamental representations.
It's possible other minds have unimaginably different experiences based on unimaginably different metaphors.
Some of those might have potential mappings to our models, others might not.
Your vocabulary is fine. I think that idealism is necessarily weaker than other ways of viewing the world; it has problems that were repeatedly noted throughout the 20th century in major works by Wittgenstein and Heidegger, among others. (In fact, it can quite fairly be said that most of 20th century philosophy is a reaction to the fuzzy, yet superficially persuasive, idealistic tendencies of the 19th. Analytic philosophy is 100% a reaction to this.)
Per Heidegger, well, the entire notion of "being-in-the-world" is a response to idealism. This is the notion that we first encounter a shared world of use, tasks, and significance (hammering, writing, speaking with others,) not private "ideas." So the world as you experience it isn't constructed within your head alone; the outside is always with you. You're embedded in an objective field -- or, at the limit, a consensus field.
As a general rule, you can't make sense of science and the commons as purely private occurrences. One's theories are often false; one is often genuinely surprised.
Besides, even classical idealists need something "beyond" representation (Kant's thing-in-itself; Schopenhauer's subliminal Will) to make sense of why experience has the structure it does. That is, the idealist view silently re-imports something non-mental to ground the mental.
Of course, we could be Boltzmann brains, dreaming clouds of charged gas in the sky, or we could be controlled by Cartesian Demons... and that is where strong idealism eventually leads... but I think that these views should be disfavored even on empirical grounds, for instance in your continued existence.
I am puzzled that Carlo Rovelli associates the perception of time flow with entropy increase. Entropy increase allows to define the direction of time, but it cannot explain why we perceive the time flow.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. Actually, it does explain why we perceived the time flow: It is called Thermodynamics. One can compute and verify scientifically, measure time flows from biological clocks to GPS systems.
Merely disagreeing with a guy like Rovelli on physics feels like hubris. :)
But agree with you in this case. Animals perceive the flow of time because we have memory and prediction abilities. This gives us a psychological arrow that aligns with the thermodynamic arrow.
He still obviously believes in some sort of underlying "reality" in spite of his claims to the contrary.
The wavefunction evolves as if it were a single, global, observer-independent object.Between interactions, nothing “happens” to it.
It doesn’t care who’s looking.
It just evolves — deterministically, coherently, globally.
This is not a “perspective.” This is a God’s-eye view — the very thing Rovelli says doesn’t exist. If there were no underlying system, how do you compute interference?
He is in practice unable to accept the parsimonious and experimentally supported idea that very simply: regularity is only achieved at the price of generality.
Rovelli says it, but lives in denial. He cannot accept it because it would force him to abandon the global wavefunction — the silent god of his physics.
People interested in this subject might enjoy this interview with David Albert [1], as well as this interview with Tim Maudlin [2], who offers a different perspective from Albert. They are both philosophers of physics, or in other words physicists working on the foundations of physics.
I especially like 'Quantum Mechanics and Experience' by David Z Albert (he's got a very peculiar style of writing that I enjoy), and 'Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity' by Tim Maudlin.
Not easy reading, but manageable if you have a physics degree.
Time is not an illusion. It can be experimentally verified. There is a flow in a certain direction. Carlo is saying that time is not absolute, every point on the space is a clock, essentially trying to convey the core concepts of special relativity with engaging interaction.
I think the idea of an "external reality that follows certain rules and humans operate in" could itself be a kind of evolutionarily-advantageous belief, even if it's not actually true in a quantum physics sense. In other words, we become capable of science and technology only after assuming there are scientific rules to be found.
There are many concepts like this throughout human history - another one I'm thinking of is the (in the West) monotheistic idea of narrative history/time. By framing time as something that can have a beginning and end, you enable or at least incentivize "progress", and mentally unlock the ability to work toward some idealized future, rather than accepting that time is cyclical and/or without some notion of moving forward.
Another Ph.D. physicist here. Any popularization of quantum mechanics (or quantum gravity in this case) can quickly degenerate into potentially foolish, or even harmful, metaphysical speculation. Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]." The frustrating part is that about 100 years ago, quantum mechanics provided a set of rules that didn't have an easy intuitive interpretation (i.e. that quantum mechanics is not both a "real and local" theory.) Yet it is wildly successful for what it does, and the mathematics is crystal clear. (By the way, regular non-relativistic quantum mechanics can be interpreted as having "no reality", no fancy quantum loop gravity needed; see e.g.https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013 - more precisely, only correlations exist.)
Taken to its metaphysical conclusion, though, "there is no objective reality" can lead to harm. So, I guess morality is all a matter of perspective? That can be used to justify anything. We do seem to have an emergent reality (at least the one I am experiencing at the moment) that is held in common - just because the underlying mathematics is hard to interpret doesn't justify "anything goes", or my crazy belief is just as good as your crazy belief.
So although it is fun to think about, don't take "there is no objective reality" too seriously - you still have to go to work, you still have to pay your taxes.
> Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]."
Physics can't claim domain over the study of reality and then say that reality can only be studied using mathematical rules. You can either say physics is the study of mathematical physicalism and stick to your mathematical rules, or you can say physics is the study of reality and be open to alternative ideas outside of mathematics to describe reality. Otherwise you're just precluding the conclusion of what you're supposed to be studying, that reality can be described by mathematical rules.
> Taken to its metaphysical conclusion, though, "there is no objective reality" can lead to harm.
So we should hide reality under a rug if it could possibly lead to harm? The truth is the truth, your objective as a scientist should be to follow the evidence not police morality. History shows that the truth tends to lead towards a better world anyway. I'm sure the Church was afraid of the decay of morality from atheists if they learned that God doesn't keep the planets in motion.
You, too, are practicing and advocating for a philosophy here.
Also, the lack of objectivity in the universe doesn't necessarily mean that nihilism is the ONLY way to go. Existentialism, for example, doesn't accept an objective reality either, and folks have found ways to make morality (and even religious faith) fully compatible within that framework.
Obviously, it's not good to delve into metaphysical speculation, as it often clearly leads to junk conclusions written by people who don't have the credentials to account for what the actual science (OR the actual philosophy) says.
But I do wonder what it would be like if modern physicists were more willing to pair up with modern philosophers once in awhile. I would very much love to see a collaboration between the two fields to explore what a subjective universe really MEANS to us as both a species and as moral beings in that universe.
I, very much, would love to see what some of these implications are, as written out by the folks who actually understand the science. Even if there's no true consensus among them, just learning what the different possibilities might be could be very enlightening.
I must admit the foundation of the argument presented punches well above my understanding, but I recently read Carlo Rovelli's short work "The Order of Time" and found it wonderfully engaging and relatable.
I like the article. And I applaud any physicist trying to come to grips with our conceptions of reality AND reading up on philosophy. That being said, he's neither the first nor will he be the last, nor is "perpectivism" in epistomology a new thing. I like, however, how he is throwing in several streams (I saw James, Nietzsche, Kuhn, and even Rorty and Wittgenstein II) of thought, centered on Kant's ideas of the noumenon and its inaccessibility. I don't think I agree with him, though ;)
If I had to label him, I'd say he is mostly an anti-realist.
Mario Bunge was another physicist who deeply engaged with philosophy (he taught philosophy at McGill University). Interestingly, the conclusions he arrived at were quite the opposite.
> There is no objective reality, according to Rovelli — only perspectives. “This is very radical, because you can no longer say, ‘This is a list of things in the world, and this is how they are.’"
Perfectly in line with his political views, when he's a guest on the Italian TV's, or on social media he spend so much time defending the reasons of the Russian in the Ukrainian invasion. With hosts that often asks physics and political questions in the same set, as if his way of looking at reality gives him any ground truth. I'm wondering how much his physics and political views overlap. Such a delusion for me as Italian, I stopped reading his books for this reason and because at some point, after the wonder effect of reading about quantum worlds, I was left with the sensation that I read a lot and nothing at the same
time
The thing with idealists in the philosophical sense is that they're typically not very well grounded in reality. Not saying it's always drugs/psychotic breaks/deep meditation, but often it is. Even more so with the panpsychists.
As former physics student, a lot of ego and little physics IMHO.
Theoretical physics is pointless without experimental tests. Personally, I prefer physicists spending more time in the lab or in classroom than on mass media
Also physicists tried the "keep out of the public and just do the science* thing and now everybody thinks physics has made no progress for 50 years and the masses think "string theory" is anything more than a topic in some books not aimed at physicists
Seriously, it would interest me when they enable the creation of something akin to a warp drive.
- First, because it would be a way to test these hypotheses
- Second, because it would dramatically expand humanity's playground, even if it's only in the solar system in the first step.
- Third, because building a Warp drive would be good for the economy. Currently, we have no equivalent to the space race. We have AI, but there are doubts that it will enable more than incremental steps.
The core idea of relational quantum mechanics is that when we talk about an object — be it an atom, a person or a galaxy — we are never just referring to the system alone. Rather, we are always referring to the interactions between this system and something else. We can only describe — and in fact understand — a thing as it relates to ourselves, or to our measuring devices.
Lee Smolin has gone down a different track but with similar spirit of sorts. Carlo poked fun at Lee for all the work they've done together despite disagreeing on so much in his recent talk[1] at Lee's Fest[2].
Smolin has named his approach the Causal Theory of Views, in which he postulates that spacetime emerges from events, ie relational interactions. This[3] interview, which is a few years old now, contains a decent high-level explanation. The idea that kinda overlaps with Rovelli he explains like this:
The theory that I've been looking for would take advantage of the fact that the notion of locality and nonlocality is key to understanding quantum mechanics, and then try to understand that with the lens of the unification of quantum physics with space and time, which is quantum gravity.
In both approaches, there's a principle, which is the idea of relational physics—that the degrees of freedom, the properties of whatever it is that's dynamical that you're studying, arises from dynamical relationships with other degrees of freedom.
In other words, you don't have absolute space, you don't have particles that occupy points or follow paths or trajectories in absolute space. You have many particles which, between them, allow you to define relative motion.
Lee has given several talks[4] at PIRSA since that interview with more details as he's developed his idea.
So while both go hard on the relational aspect, they disagree on some fundamental things. Rovelli thinks time is an illusion, but in Lee's CTV time is real and space is the illusion (emergent).
Who knows if it'll pan out or be a dead end, but since the quantum physics community has been headbutting the fundamental issues with little progress for so many decades, it seems prudent to try some bold approaches.
I'm not a physicist by any means but I was just thinking something similar only a few minutes ago... that humans (or anything) ageing probably only exists as a function of the passage of time, but if all matter stopped moving, even in an isolated area, there is seemingly no longer a passage of time there. So maybe time itself only exists insofar as our ability to measure relative changes to matter.
A crazy thought I had in my sleep: What if dark matter only exists as a random noise generator to keep the simulation from halting? /s
How do these quantum + gravity loops/patches evolve continuously w/o time? The more I learn about theoretical physics & physicists the more I'm convinced these people are basically idiot savants.
Not sure about this specific theory, but I imagine it's similar to Wolfram's Digital Physics project, where you have "ticks" that apply the rules to eems, and then out of the maze of rule applications we somehow get time as we perceive it.
I am willing to grant that time is indeed an illusion b/c we do not have perfect perception of reality but it seems like all these new developments are squirreling time away into another part of the theory by calling it something else like "dynamics", "rule application", "evolution", etc. The physically relevant relations happen one way or another & whatever they're calling the deltas between the new primitive states & their evolution is still referring to some coordinate (whether implicit or not) that is essentially the same thing as time.
Moreover, it's pretty obvious that when they're describing the theory they can not avoid evoking temporal language & metaphors so it's difficult to take them seriously when even they can't avoid describing what's going on w/o referring to time.
My naive way to think about a reality without time is that all the possibile states of reality are already there, all together. The rules are about how to move from one state to another one, like water flowing on the side of a mountain.
Those rules might be be deterministic or there may be a roll of a dice. Then what we perceive as time is the sequence of states, the memory of previous states. No ticks are needed: there might be no central clock like in CPUs, each part of reality might apply those rules continously and move the global state from one state to another one.
But this is not physics as we are doing it now, it's presocratic philosophy. They got the idea of atoms right among a number of ones that turned on wrong.
There's no motion in what you've described. You're describing a crystal or maybe a hologram. David Bohm is the main physicist I know about who has written on this topic but I'm sure there are a few others by now as well who are taking holographic principles seriously.
I'm not a physicist either but this stuff isn't magic. Most of the mathematics used by physicists isn't complicated if you've managed to get past calculus.
If you read a lot of analytical philosophy & meta-mathematics literature you'll notice it's not unique at all. That's how I learned the short-hand conventions.
at a macroscopic level obviously what they describe must look like "time" to match what we see
but time ticking because of some dynamic interaction mechanism between some things (like a mechanical clock) is very different than some fundamental/abstract/irreducible "time" which just is (like in einstein)
Baader-Meinhof complex in action: I have _just_ ordered a book of Rovelli's (Reality is Not What It Seems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems), it should be in my hands by the end of the week. I am fascinated by the ongoing work in quantum gravity, it's tantalising by its nature.
This is a great interview and I must say I like the man a lot more than I did before. He has articulated something here that I have long felt: that it is as important in politics as it is in philosophy or theoretical physics to be able to state one's assumptions, to suspend one's assumptions for the sake of argument and to drop/change one's assumptions in the face of evidence.
I feel like this is a vital skill that we, as a society, need now maybe more than ever, in literally any field in which there is any meaningful concept of "correct" (which I think is most fields). I also think it's a skill you basically learn at university - and that that is a problem. I don't know what an approach to cultivating it more widely would look like.
> My intuition is that the overall flow of time really could be like the rotation of the sky every day. It’s a majestic, immense phenomenon, but it’s actually an illusion. This is a totally perspectival understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. It’s real in the same sense that the rotating sky is real, but it’s real only with respect to us.
And later:
> Our community has wasted a lot of time searching after speculative ideas. What we need instead is to digest the knowledge we already have. And to do that, we need philosophy. Philosophers help us not to find the right answers to given questions, but to find the right questions to better conceptualize reality.
I think it’s odd that a physicists proposes a new theory without suggesting experiments that could falsify the theory.
That second quote hits hard. Physics got so good at answering questions that people forgot to check if they were asking the right ones. Same thing happens in tech - we're really good at optimizing for metrics, terrible at asking if those metrics matter.
I love Rovelli, but to me he’s just another proof that if you look for too long into the quantum abyss, the abyss is gonna eventually look back at you…
Most folks don't understand what Physicists mean when they say "Reality doesn't exist at the Quantum level". Words like "Reality", "Illusion" etc. mean quite different things when applied at quantum level vs. classical-macro level.
The best book to get a grasp on the above is Werner Heisenberg's classic Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. The introduction by Paul Davies itself is worth the price of the book since it highlights the main issues quite clearly.
At the fundamental level quantum systems have an inherent indeterminism (as a consequence of the famous uncertainty principle) which is what we find hard to grasp. It does not mean total anarchy but that you can only calculate relative probabilities of the alternatives in the answer set i.e. it is a statistical theory. Thus it can make definite predictions about sets of identical systems but generally cannot say anything definite about a specific individual system.
For example, an electron doesn't exist as a single thing occupying a specific trajectory around the nucleus. It only exists as a set of potentialities occupying an area of space viz. the so called electron shell. Only when a measurement is made does a electron-with-position or electron-with-momentum
can be said to come into existence (since before the measurement there are only probabilities and you cannot measure both position and momentum sharply simultaneously). It is in this sense that the Reality of an electron is said to only exist in the Measurement/Observation and cannot be said to exist otherwise.
The other side of the coin is that, Modern Neuroscience tells us that the Brain itself is wired to Construct Reality from incomplete data and we seek/construct patterns where there are none. See for example Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives and watch this Ted talk by Susana Martinez-Conde Reality is made of illusions—and we need them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDw07RqCSs
I have a degree in theoretical physics and a gold medal, which is to say I have endured the requisite intellectual beatings. Often the best interpretations of physical theory are unpalatable to the average person. The idea that there is in fact no objective physical reality is the most egregious offender in this regard. However, it is nonetheless the best conclusion that one can draw given strict adherence to what the mathematical formalism of QM provides. There is simply no physical machinery to support an objective reality, period.
Now, that being said, the remarkable part is that the forgoing conclusion does us zero harm. We can still have the logical predictive fiction that an objective reality exists. What staggers the mind is the corollary that no human has ever erected a truth. Moreover, every intelligent species that ever endeavors to ask these questions will find the same non-answer.
>>no objective physical reality is…the best conclusion that one can draw given strict adherence to what the mathematical formalism of QM provides…
Can’t get on board with that. Relational QM/no objective reality is just one viewpoint, and it’s worth noting it’s not consensus.
To clarify he’s not claiming objects don’t exist, just that they don’t have observer independent properties.
It is fun to try and wrap your head around what no objective reality would mean. To grasp what we already have shown to be true about time being relative, the examples around simultaneity are a great wtf demonstration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity
To clarify he’s not claiming objects don’t exist, just that they don’t have observer independent properties. -- that's right!
Isn’t it as likely that we have formulaic illusions like time that suffuse our inability to reach objectivity? And in those paradoxes: change only at Planck speed, motion is illusory, quantum gravity obeys probability as in Darwin, the theoretical observer independent reality exists.
The process of philosophy involves shedding illusions like words, statements, time, space to reach objectivity. A loop quantum gravity philosopher claiming there is no objective reality could just be an observer stuck at a bottleneck (notice he doesn’t call into question illusory attributes the piece relies on like biographical info).
Barbour’s observation, that quantum appears to demand specialization and record keeping at very unique planes (records are geology, fossils, impressions, photographs) hints that observers are what physical reality is, is counterpoint to “there is no objective reality.”
If reality is non trivially about record keeping, then of course there’s an objective reality, the Darwinian outcome is the objective sum of record keeping and the study of their differences.
Is existence an observer independent property?
no, unruh effect
Can you be more precise about what you mean by "objective reality"?
I would say that QM shows the world is not classical, but it doesn't say there's no objective reality: the predictions it makes about what we observe (reality) are extremely reliable and accurate (i.e. objective).
Yes, those predictions are just probabilistic for any single system, but when you have a lot of systems the probability that you will observe a specific outcome (to within observational error) can approach 1. A lot of our technology, such as lasers, transistors, etc., relies on this. I don't see how you make sense of that while denying there's objective reality.
I mean there is no perspective from which one can obtain a view of all properties of all systems that will not be invalid to another observer.
In my view there is such a perspective: quantum mechanics. So far as we know its predictions are valid for all observers.
But what that means is that we have to readjust our classical conceptions about what a "property of a system" is.
The word "property" in general is just a logical concept, and doesn't carry any intrinsic ontological implications. There can be mathematical properties, physical properties, properties of thoughts and dreams etc., and this way of talking about things doesn't by itself imply any specific ontological interpretation. It's just a feature of the structure of language.
About physical properties specifically, if we derive our concept of physical property from quantum mechanics, instead of trying to retain the inadequate classical meaning, then physical properties are exactly those represented by the state vector: e.g. its projections on to each of the basis vectors corresponding to some observable.
True, as is well-known from the Bell and Kochen-Specker theorems, we can't consistently say that a quantum state has some specific value of its observables independently of interactions with other systems, but this is just the classical conception of a physical property (formalized, e.g., by a real-valued function on phase space).
But quantum mechanics doesn't thereby force us to say that a physical system has no definite properties. Instead, we can reconfigure our conception of physical property to make it compatible with quantum mechanics.
Then in general the properties of quantum states are probabilistic (at least some of them - the dimension of its state space, for example, is not), but the theory unambiguously assigns to a state the probabilities that the various possible measurement outcomes will be observed. These probabilities are among that state's properties, and all indications are that these probabilities are objective features of the state, independently of our ways of representing the state.
In fact the dependence goes in the other direction: this (objectively) probabilistic character of quantum states (among other things, like the quantization of energy exchanges) is what forced us to change the way we think of physical states.
if your definition requires universal observer agreement you already have that issue with special relativity / light cones / the spacetime metric.
many worlds posits a single universal quantum state it's just only partially accessible to observers, which is different from saying that it simply doesn't objectively exist.
maybe it depends on your definition of objective
I've got a doctorate and I don't really see what you are saying, primarily because "no objective physical reality" is somewhat vague.
QM, for example, is a totally adequate theory of objective reality! it just describes an objective reality with properties which differ to some degree from those intuitive to creatures at classical scales. It may be inadequate in other respects (not invariant, a little unsatisfying wrt the born rule, etc) but it isn't as if it implies NO OBJECTIVE REALITY.
This is what’s meant by no objective reality as alluded to in the article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_quantum_mechanics
The claim is not that objects don’t exist, just that they don’t have observer independent properties.
This is what I mean.
I second your comment. This is where a degree in philosophy would have been useful. The term "objective reality" is just a semantic indirection to a cluster of loosely defined concepts. Okay, what concepts? That whole discussion is philosophy, informed by physics.
See above.
I think language does us a disservice here. I'm reminded of Korzybski's work in Science and Sanity. The interpretation of "truth" depends on which level of abstraction you are operating on. "Every statement is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense". The term "reality" implies a perceiver, and that perceiver is generating "reality" based on their neurological instrument, which has its own biases based on its prior experience and genetics.
I agree that language other than math fails us here. Nevertheless, I humbly try to convey thoughts that occur in me with these tools.
But the problems described by the parent comment also exist in mathematical language, that’s what Godel Incompleteness is. The problem is inherent to all conceptual frameworks
I would disagree, completeness is not required consistency is all you need really. QM is consistent.
> The term "reality" implies a perceiver
No. Subjective reality is what we experience as sentients. There must be an object reality and imho that is the only statement of truth that can be uttered in language, with "language" to be understood in the sense that Werner Hisenberg uses that term.
So I'm with Bohr, Hisenberg on this matter. We can not 'presume' to speak of the Real with capital R. It exists but it can not be 'encompassed'.
No vision can encompass Him, but He encompasses all vision. Indeed, He Is the Most Subtle, the All-Aware! - Qur'an - 6.103
Leave out the quran quote since that is most definitely not what Bohr/Heisenberg/Others mean when they talk about subjectivity/observation/measurement. See my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45759220
If you want to discuss Philosophical/Ontological/Epistemological concepts of Reality/Truth etc. there are far better models in Hindu/Buddhist scriptures. The submitted article itself refers to Nagarjuna's Sunyata and Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy.
The quote seems perfectly fine in illustrating the idea that reality will always transcend our language or thought (to the extent that can be expressed in any language).
And if you appreciate Hindu scripture, that particular quote could have been lifted almost verbatim from the Upanishads.
I don't appreciate the dogmatism that is associated with a lot of orthodox Islam either, but this is something similar to a lot of conservative religious outlooks, as you can find among people identifying as Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, etc. But in fact this particular quote can be seen as antithetical to any such dogmatic position, and it's worthwhile to recognize points of agreement even though you might disagree in other areas.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45761877
I find your chauvinism is what doesn't belong to HN. Bohr was familiar with Eastern scriptures so it is perfectly understandable as to why he would reference its formulations. I happen to familiar with both and I do not see any discrepency or antagonism in these scriptures. You may not benefit with such comments but it is possible that others will find it useful and informative.
Quoting the Quran in a positive light is like doing the same with Mein Kampf, except that Islam has caused a lot more deaths over the years. I'd say it's yours that doesn't belong on HN.
I dislike unnecessary religiosity being dragged in where there is no reason for it.
> I happen to familiar with both
I don't think you are. No Quantum Physicist has ever quoted anything from Quran since there is nothing there (it is the youngest of all religions being only from 7th century AD) which has not been already elaborated in Hindu/Buddhist/Greek/Chinese/Christian philosophies/worldviews. That is why most scientists quoted from those ancient scriptures. There is no need to try and hoist your opinions on them.
Moreover the article specifically mentions Carlo Rovelli drawing inspiration from Nagarjuna's Buddhist philosophy and hence that is the only model we should look at to try and understand what he means (and not drag in all and sundry others).
For non-relativistic QM, the QM formalism is provable from Bohmian mechanics, an actual particle theory. BM starts from particles have locations the change continuously in time via a guidance equation using the wave function of the universe. One may choose other theories to explain quantum phenomena, but to say "There is simply no physical machinery to support an objective reality, period." is just false, at least in that realm. As for relativistic QFT, there are plausible pathways using Bohmian ideas as well though nothing as definitive as BM has been firmly established.
I would also say that any theory that does not have room to say definitively that I exist is a theory that is obviously contradictory to my experience and is therefore falsified. There has to be room in the theory for at least me. Additionally, I would certainly value much more a theory that has room for the rest of humanity more than one which questions the existence of everyone but me. I am not even sure what the point of a theory would be if it could not account for collaborative science being done.
QM does not deny you existence, it rather denies you a complete objective description of how you exist. Or perhaps it says that your existence is not an objective phenomena.
BM is objective, and indeed deterministic. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "complete" but it has all the same predictions as other interpretations of QM. It has some odd quirks however, such as explicit non-locality.
I don't at all begrudge you your logical predictive fictions.
I am just a lay person so a lot of the maths is over my head for all of this, but I do try to follow the best I can.
Do you ever ponder that the maths that you try to distill into the “laws of physics” is just too low of a fidelity for such a complicated system?
For example when you capture a gorgeous sunrise/sunset in a photo, and despite you doing every trick under the sun to get a good angle/lighting etc, the photo is never as good as what you experienced in person.
Or maybe you just never experienced the sunrise/sunset shrug.
QM provides the most accurate and verifiable predictions in human history. The follow on from that is that my thoughts can be conveyed to you over a sea of quivering electrons. The one catch is that you must accept that when you are not looking the universe does its evolving in a way that is inimical to your conceptualizations.
You have beautiful way of writing. Do you have a blog?
Just want to +1 and would subscribe if you start one
Thank you so much, I don't.
Thank you for trying.
What were you hoping for?
I apologise as I replied in a shirty manner and deleted as I thought better of it.
I don’t think we’ll be able to really discuss the matter so have a good night!
The idea is that there is no "complicated system", or at least that you are not permitted to concieve of one without describing it in physical detail.
> is just too low of a fidelity for such a complicated system?
I think you're asking questions that some are afraid to ask.
It appears to me that some people have become accustomed to working with approximations, and have accepted the map for the terrain.
Fundamentally, I don't see how you can use continuous math to explain a discrete system.
"It appears to me that some people have become accustomed to working with approximations, and have accepted the map for the terrain."
No, here we are discussing the formalism without approximations associated with an instance of its approximate application.
And QM says "The map is the terrain".
QM is many things
You might want to be a little more specific, and rely less on approximations.
I am aware of what the Copenhagen interpretation states, thanks
To what approximations do you refer?
Here we discard Copenhagen and move forward.
Take your pick
Schrodinger/Dirac/Feynman.
A wave is a product, trigonometric functions do not exist.
Gerard hooft was on Curt Jaimungal's youtube channel a while back, I generally agree with him, discrete systems cannot be explained by real numbers, only integers
Not following youtube, sorry.
uhuh, well I'm sure you know how to use a search engine
Nice example of physics tumbling into meaningless metaphysical nonsense.
Nice example of hurling meaningless invective.
Your conclusion rests on the assumption that QM's description of reality represents the ontological truth. And such a 'truth' is not provable. However, as you already mentioned, it doesn't matter as QM provides the strongest epistemological claims, and this is what matters in the end.
I think otherwise. I am precisely saying that QM as a formalism denies ontological truth in the first instance. You have to do something like the BM guy above is embarking on.
Once the notion of objective truth is relinquished, what ontological or epistemic status remains for reasoning itself? Is it to be understood as a pragmatic construct, or as something with deeper necessity beyond empiricism?
Deep necessity, we follow logic so we are not grunting beasts.
But where does logic exist in, then? Does it not need consistency to be useful? And what causes the consistency? It's turtles all the way down.
Logic does not exist in a physical sense, but try to think without it. For example, try to think without the law of noncontradiction. Can you categorize?
> What staggers the mind is the corollary that no human has ever erected a truth.
Hell, you don't need a physics degree for this, nor even QM, just a robust grasp of the limits of empiricism. Hume connected the dots centuries ago.
I see this as decidedly non-Humean. Why be Humean anyway?
Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this. Let's say you have a box of gas in a low entropy state: all the particles are on one side of the box. A moment later, the particles will have spread to the other side of the box, so the entropy is lower. But to say "a moment later", we're assuming a quantity called time. I'm confused how you can see this in reverse: "because the particles spread to the other side of the box, a moment passes".
This is not radical. His thought is clearly in line with a very old and very mainstream philosophical tradition called "idealism," and I was surprised to see this go unmentioned in the article. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/
> Within modern philosophy there are sometimes taken to be two fundamental conceptions of idealism:
> 1. Something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality, and
> 2. although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.
Among mainstream philosophical traditions, idealism is IMO the weakest, as it's inevitably solipsistic. Physicalism has become strongest.
I take issue with the “stronger” characterization. Maybe I have a vocabulary problem. However…
Your own perception of the physical world is, by necessity, solipsistic. Your own experience of the physical world is in your own mind. Without that perception, you can’t say it exists.
We know that it’s possible to have this experience of perception without the physical world, as long as your mind exists. In other words, this could all just be a simulation being dumped into your mind without the physical world as you “know” it existing. Hence, idealism.
Whether one is stronger (or more true?) than the other really doesn’t affect how you function within reality - you’re constrained by what you perceive as the physical world.
Indeed. Science isn't the study of the universe, it's the study of our experience of the universe.
Physics tends to imagine that a mind is a neutral blank screen that represents reality faithfully and accurately. But that's nonsense. It's a process that imposes certain kinds of perceptions.
The conceptual metaphors we use - position, mass, velocity, time, causality - are products of that process, not fundamental representations.
It's possible other minds have unimaginably different experiences based on unimaginably different metaphors.
Some of those might have potential mappings to our models, others might not.
Your vocabulary is fine. I think that idealism is necessarily weaker than other ways of viewing the world; it has problems that were repeatedly noted throughout the 20th century in major works by Wittgenstein and Heidegger, among others. (In fact, it can quite fairly be said that most of 20th century philosophy is a reaction to the fuzzy, yet superficially persuasive, idealistic tendencies of the 19th. Analytic philosophy is 100% a reaction to this.)
Per the Wittgenstein, you have, e.g., the "private language" problem: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/
Per Heidegger, well, the entire notion of "being-in-the-world" is a response to idealism. This is the notion that we first encounter a shared world of use, tasks, and significance (hammering, writing, speaking with others,) not private "ideas." So the world as you experience it isn't constructed within your head alone; the outside is always with you. You're embedded in an objective field -- or, at the limit, a consensus field.
As a general rule, you can't make sense of science and the commons as purely private occurrences. One's theories are often false; one is often genuinely surprised.
Besides, even classical idealists need something "beyond" representation (Kant's thing-in-itself; Schopenhauer's subliminal Will) to make sense of why experience has the structure it does. That is, the idealist view silently re-imports something non-mental to ground the mental.
Of course, we could be Boltzmann brains, dreaming clouds of charged gas in the sky, or we could be controlled by Cartesian Demons... and that is where strong idealism eventually leads... but I think that these views should be disfavored even on empirical grounds, for instance in your continued existence.
I am puzzled that Carlo Rovelli associates the perception of time flow with entropy increase. Entropy increase allows to define the direction of time, but it cannot explain why we perceive the time flow.
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. Actually, it does explain why we perceived the time flow: It is called Thermodynamics. One can compute and verify scientifically, measure time flows from biological clocks to GPS systems.
Merely disagreeing with a guy like Rovelli on physics feels like hubris. :)
But agree with you in this case. Animals perceive the flow of time because we have memory and prediction abilities. This gives us a psychological arrow that aligns with the thermodynamic arrow.
Yawn.
He still obviously believes in some sort of underlying "reality" in spite of his claims to the contrary.
The wavefunction evolves as if it were a single, global, observer-independent object.Between interactions, nothing “happens” to it. It doesn’t care who’s looking. It just evolves — deterministically, coherently, globally.
This is not a “perspective.” This is a God’s-eye view — the very thing Rovelli says doesn’t exist. If there were no underlying system, how do you compute interference?
He is in practice unable to accept the parsimonious and experimentally supported idea that very simply: regularity is only achieved at the price of generality.
Rovelli says it, but lives in denial. He cannot accept it because it would force him to abandon the global wavefunction — the silent god of his physics.
People interested in this subject might enjoy this interview with David Albert [1], as well as this interview with Tim Maudlin [2], who offers a different perspective from Albert. They are both philosophers of physics, or in other words physicists working on the foundations of physics.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR2sMeXLuLw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3riyyEmWwoY
They have written some good books too.
I especially like 'Quantum Mechanics and Experience' by David Z Albert (he's got a very peculiar style of writing that I enjoy), and 'Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity' by Tim Maudlin.
Not easy reading, but manageable if you have a physics degree.
Thank you for the links :)
Time is not an illusion. It can be experimentally verified. There is a flow in a certain direction. Carlo is saying that time is not absolute, every point on the space is a clock, essentially trying to convey the core concepts of special relativity with engaging interaction.
Genuinely curious - what experiment can be used to verify the existence of time?
I think the idea of an "external reality that follows certain rules and humans operate in" could itself be a kind of evolutionarily-advantageous belief, even if it's not actually true in a quantum physics sense. In other words, we become capable of science and technology only after assuming there are scientific rules to be found.
There are many concepts like this throughout human history - another one I'm thinking of is the (in the West) monotheistic idea of narrative history/time. By framing time as something that can have a beginning and end, you enable or at least incentivize "progress", and mentally unlock the ability to work toward some idealized future, rather than accepting that time is cyclical and/or without some notion of moving forward.
I dare say the phenomenon is real and our understanding is lacking.
Another Ph.D. physicist here. Any popularization of quantum mechanics (or quantum gravity in this case) can quickly degenerate into potentially foolish, or even harmful, metaphysical speculation. Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]." The frustrating part is that about 100 years ago, quantum mechanics provided a set of rules that didn't have an easy intuitive interpretation (i.e. that quantum mechanics is not both a "real and local" theory.) Yet it is wildly successful for what it does, and the mathematics is crystal clear. (By the way, regular non-relativistic quantum mechanics can be interpreted as having "no reality", no fancy quantum loop gravity needed; see e.g.https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013 - more precisely, only correlations exist.)
Taken to its metaphysical conclusion, though, "there is no objective reality" can lead to harm. So, I guess morality is all a matter of perspective? That can be used to justify anything. We do seem to have an emergent reality (at least the one I am experiencing at the moment) that is held in common - just because the underlying mathematics is hard to interpret doesn't justify "anything goes", or my crazy belief is just as good as your crazy belief.
So although it is fun to think about, don't take "there is no objective reality" too seriously - you still have to go to work, you still have to pay your taxes.
> Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]."
Physics can't claim domain over the study of reality and then say that reality can only be studied using mathematical rules. You can either say physics is the study of mathematical physicalism and stick to your mathematical rules, or you can say physics is the study of reality and be open to alternative ideas outside of mathematics to describe reality. Otherwise you're just precluding the conclusion of what you're supposed to be studying, that reality can be described by mathematical rules.
> Taken to its metaphysical conclusion, though, "there is no objective reality" can lead to harm.
So we should hide reality under a rug if it could possibly lead to harm? The truth is the truth, your objective as a scientist should be to follow the evidence not police morality. History shows that the truth tends to lead towards a better world anyway. I'm sure the Church was afraid of the decay of morality from atheists if they learned that God doesn't keep the planets in motion.
You, too, are practicing and advocating for a philosophy here.
Also, the lack of objectivity in the universe doesn't necessarily mean that nihilism is the ONLY way to go. Existentialism, for example, doesn't accept an objective reality either, and folks have found ways to make morality (and even religious faith) fully compatible within that framework.
Obviously, it's not good to delve into metaphysical speculation, as it often clearly leads to junk conclusions written by people who don't have the credentials to account for what the actual science (OR the actual philosophy) says.
But I do wonder what it would be like if modern physicists were more willing to pair up with modern philosophers once in awhile. I would very much love to see a collaboration between the two fields to explore what a subjective universe really MEANS to us as both a species and as moral beings in that universe.
I, very much, would love to see what some of these implications are, as written out by the folks who actually understand the science. Even if there's no true consensus among them, just learning what the different possibilities might be could be very enlightening.
I must admit the foundation of the argument presented punches well above my understanding, but I recently read Carlo Rovelli's short work "The Order of Time" and found it wonderfully engaging and relatable.
I like the article. And I applaud any physicist trying to come to grips with our conceptions of reality AND reading up on philosophy. That being said, he's neither the first nor will he be the last, nor is "perpectivism" in epistomology a new thing. I like, however, how he is throwing in several streams (I saw James, Nietzsche, Kuhn, and even Rorty and Wittgenstein II) of thought, centered on Kant's ideas of the noumenon and its inaccessibility. I don't think I agree with him, though ;)
If I had to label him, I'd say he is mostly an anti-realist.
Mario Bunge was another physicist who deeply engaged with philosophy (he taught philosophy at McGill University). Interestingly, the conclusions he arrived at were quite the opposite.
> There is no objective reality, according to Rovelli — only perspectives. “This is very radical, because you can no longer say, ‘This is a list of things in the world, and this is how they are.’"
Perfectly in line with his political views, when he's a guest on the Italian TV's, or on social media he spend so much time defending the reasons of the Russian in the Ukrainian invasion. With hosts that often asks physics and political questions in the same set, as if his way of looking at reality gives him any ground truth. I'm wondering how much his physics and political views overlap. Such a delusion for me as Italian, I stopped reading his books for this reason and because at some point, after the wonder effect of reading about quantum worlds, I was left with the sensation that I read a lot and nothing at the same time
The thing with idealists in the philosophical sense is that they're typically not very well grounded in reality. Not saying it's always drugs/psychotic breaks/deep meditation, but often it is. Even more so with the panpsychists.
As former physics student, a lot of ego and little physics IMHO. Theoretical physics is pointless without experimental tests. Personally, I prefer physicists spending more time in the lab or in classroom than on mass media
Some degree of engagement with popular opinion and culture might be needed to keep on getting money for the experiments and grants for the students.
But I take the point you are making.
Also physicists tried the "keep out of the public and just do the science* thing and now everybody thinks physics has made no progress for 50 years and the masses think "string theory" is anything more than a topic in some books not aimed at physicists
I haven’t heard about his views on Russia but that’s worth looking into since I also have his books.
Just a quick nitpick as a fellow Italian: “delusion” (“illusione”) is a false friend of “delusione.” Maybe you meant “disappointment”!
thanks for the false friend! Let me share, one the many, critic articles to rovelli https://www.ilfoglio.it/russia-ucraina/2023/04/11/news/caro-...
Carlo Rovelli: 'Time Is an Illusion' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuLaUYQFIwg
Related. Others?
Carlo Rovelli on challenging our common-sense notion of time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17893865 - Sept 2018 (74 comments)
Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17376437 - June 2018 (143 comments)
For a counterpoint see:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.13338
And my own personal take on it:
https://blog.rongarret.info/2014/10/parallel-universes-and-a...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.13338
Could you please cite the abstract pages instead of the pdf.
The pdf is linked off the abstract page anyway, in case the reader wants to download that after reading the abstract.
The abstract pages usually have other bibliographic goodies that can be easily accessed.
Seriously, it would interest me when they enable the creation of something akin to a warp drive.
- First, because it would be a way to test these hypotheses
- Second, because it would dramatically expand humanity's playground, even if it's only in the solar system in the first step.
- Third, because building a Warp drive would be good for the economy. Currently, we have no equivalent to the space race. We have AI, but there are doubts that it will enable more than incremental steps.
What hypothesis would be tested by a warp drive?
All these theories question the nature of space, time, and matter:
- Loop Quantum Gravity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity
- Causal Set Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_sets
- AdS/CFT & Tensor Networks
https://qspace.fqxi.org/videos/121/a-tensor-network-approach...
- Relational Quantum Mechanics
The one discussed here
- “It from Qubit”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tangled-up-in-spa...
- Thermodynamic Gravity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity
- Noncommutative Geometry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncommutative_quantum_field_t...
A person proposing to stop or limit military aid to Ukraine "for peace" has decidedly radical view on reality, that's for sure.
The core idea of relational quantum mechanics is that when we talk about an object — be it an atom, a person or a galaxy — we are never just referring to the system alone. Rather, we are always referring to the interactions between this system and something else. We can only describe — and in fact understand — a thing as it relates to ourselves, or to our measuring devices.
Lee Smolin has gone down a different track but with similar spirit of sorts. Carlo poked fun at Lee for all the work they've done together despite disagreeing on so much in his recent talk[1] at Lee's Fest[2].
Smolin has named his approach the Causal Theory of Views, in which he postulates that spacetime emerges from events, ie relational interactions. This[3] interview, which is a few years old now, contains a decent high-level explanation. The idea that kinda overlaps with Rovelli he explains like this:
The theory that I've been looking for would take advantage of the fact that the notion of locality and nonlocality is key to understanding quantum mechanics, and then try to understand that with the lens of the unification of quantum physics with space and time, which is quantum gravity.
In both approaches, there's a principle, which is the idea of relational physics—that the degrees of freedom, the properties of whatever it is that's dynamical that you're studying, arises from dynamical relationships with other degrees of freedom.
In other words, you don't have absolute space, you don't have particles that occupy points or follow paths or trajectories in absolute space. You have many particles which, between them, allow you to define relative motion.
Lee has given several talks[4] at PIRSA since that interview with more details as he's developed his idea.
So while both go hard on the relational aspect, they disagree on some fundamental things. Rovelli thinks time is an illusion, but in Lee's CTV time is real and space is the illusion (emergent).
Who knows if it'll pan out or be a dead end, but since the quantum physics community has been headbutting the fundamental issues with little progress for so many decades, it seems prudent to try some bold approaches.
[1]: https://pirsa.org/25060030
[2]: https://pirsa.org/c25023
[3]: https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-the-causal-theo...
[4]: https://pirsa.org/speaker/lee-smolin
I'm not a physicist by any means but I was just thinking something similar only a few minutes ago... that humans (or anything) ageing probably only exists as a function of the passage of time, but if all matter stopped moving, even in an isolated area, there is seemingly no longer a passage of time there. So maybe time itself only exists insofar as our ability to measure relative changes to matter.
A crazy thought I had in my sleep: What if dark matter only exists as a random noise generator to keep the simulation from halting? /s
My brain is weird.
How do these quantum + gravity loops/patches evolve continuously w/o time? The more I learn about theoretical physics & physicists the more I'm convinced these people are basically idiot savants.
Not sure about this specific theory, but I imagine it's similar to Wolfram's Digital Physics project, where you have "ticks" that apply the rules to eems, and then out of the maze of rule applications we somehow get time as we perceive it.
I am willing to grant that time is indeed an illusion b/c we do not have perfect perception of reality but it seems like all these new developments are squirreling time away into another part of the theory by calling it something else like "dynamics", "rule application", "evolution", etc. The physically relevant relations happen one way or another & whatever they're calling the deltas between the new primitive states & their evolution is still referring to some coordinate (whether implicit or not) that is essentially the same thing as time.
Moreover, it's pretty obvious that when they're describing the theory they can not avoid evoking temporal language & metaphors so it's difficult to take them seriously when even they can't avoid describing what's going on w/o referring to time.
My naive way to think about a reality without time is that all the possibile states of reality are already there, all together. The rules are about how to move from one state to another one, like water flowing on the side of a mountain.
Those rules might be be deterministic or there may be a roll of a dice. Then what we perceive as time is the sequence of states, the memory of previous states. No ticks are needed: there might be no central clock like in CPUs, each part of reality might apply those rules continously and move the global state from one state to another one.
But this is not physics as we are doing it now, it's presocratic philosophy. They got the idea of atoms right among a number of ones that turned on wrong.
There's no motion in what you've described. You're describing a crystal or maybe a hologram. David Bohm is the main physicist I know about who has written on this topic but I'm sure there are a few others by now as well who are taking holographic principles seriously.
Not a physicist but this echoes my feelings when people talk about time as an emergent phenomenon.
I'm not a physicist either but this stuff isn't magic. Most of the mathematics used by physicists isn't complicated if you've managed to get past calculus.
Very off-topic but use of "b/c" and "w/o" in all your posts makes you stand out quite a bit. And the particular use of "&", as well.
If you read a lot of analytical philosophy & meta-mathematics literature you'll notice it's not unique at all. That's how I learned the short-hand conventions.
at a macroscopic level obviously what they describe must look like "time" to match what we see
but time ticking because of some dynamic interaction mechanism between some things (like a mechanical clock) is very different than some fundamental/abstract/irreducible "time" which just is (like in einstein)
Baader-Meinhof complex in action: I have _just_ ordered a book of Rovelli's (Reality is Not What It Seems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems), it should be in my hands by the end of the week. I am fascinated by the ongoing work in quantum gravity, it's tantalising by its nature.
This is a great interview and I must say I like the man a lot more than I did before. He has articulated something here that I have long felt: that it is as important in politics as it is in philosophy or theoretical physics to be able to state one's assumptions, to suspend one's assumptions for the sake of argument and to drop/change one's assumptions in the face of evidence.
I feel like this is a vital skill that we, as a society, need now maybe more than ever, in literally any field in which there is any meaningful concept of "correct" (which I think is most fields). I also think it's a skill you basically learn at university - and that that is a problem. I don't know what an approach to cultivating it more widely would look like.
> My intuition is that the overall flow of time really could be like the rotation of the sky every day. It’s a majestic, immense phenomenon, but it’s actually an illusion. This is a totally perspectival understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. It’s real in the same sense that the rotating sky is real, but it’s real only with respect to us.
And later:
> Our community has wasted a lot of time searching after speculative ideas. What we need instead is to digest the knowledge we already have. And to do that, we need philosophy. Philosophers help us not to find the right answers to given questions, but to find the right questions to better conceptualize reality.
I think it’s odd that a physicists proposes a new theory without suggesting experiments that could falsify the theory.
That second quote hits hard. Physics got so good at answering questions that people forgot to check if they were asking the right ones. Same thing happens in tech - we're really good at optimizing for metrics, terrible at asking if those metrics matter.
This falls in line with the absolute rarity of questioning your own assumptions. In my experience few do.
The amount of people looking outward only is too damn high, as the saying goes.
pretty much all experiments that could have been done were done
and you can rearrange equations to make them better fit together without needing new experiments
I love Rovelli, but to me he’s just another proof that if you look for too long into the quantum abyss, the abyss is gonna eventually look back at you…
Most folks don't understand what Physicists mean when they say "Reality doesn't exist at the Quantum level". Words like "Reality", "Illusion" etc. mean quite different things when applied at quantum level vs. classical-macro level.
The best book to get a grasp on the above is Werner Heisenberg's classic Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. The introduction by Paul Davies itself is worth the price of the book since it highlights the main issues quite clearly.
At the fundamental level quantum systems have an inherent indeterminism (as a consequence of the famous uncertainty principle) which is what we find hard to grasp. It does not mean total anarchy but that you can only calculate relative probabilities of the alternatives in the answer set i.e. it is a statistical theory. Thus it can make definite predictions about sets of identical systems but generally cannot say anything definite about a specific individual system.
For example, an electron doesn't exist as a single thing occupying a specific trajectory around the nucleus. It only exists as a set of potentialities occupying an area of space viz. the so called electron shell. Only when a measurement is made does a electron-with-position or electron-with-momentum can be said to come into existence (since before the measurement there are only probabilities and you cannot measure both position and momentum sharply simultaneously). It is in this sense that the Reality of an electron is said to only exist in the Measurement/Observation and cannot be said to exist otherwise.
The other side of the coin is that, Modern Neuroscience tells us that the Brain itself is wired to Construct Reality from incomplete data and we seek/construct patterns where there are none. See for example Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives and watch this Ted talk by Susana Martinez-Conde Reality is made of illusions—and we need them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDw07RqCSs