Yes, this title calls for some explanation of what I mean.
This year, I
understand better how the key pieces really fit together under Einsteinian
realism,
and today I see more
clearly what they imply for real life today in a world which does seem to be on
the verge of dissolving away into goo,
like waking up from a dream. Some people believe that Trump leaving the White
House will be enough to prevent that dissolving away into unreality, but it is
not at all so easy.
I.
What
Einsteinian Realism is and Why I Know About It
But first: what do I
mean by “hard core Einsteinian realism?” It is a type of hard core belief in
objective reality.
I defined Einsteinian
realism already in papers published in 2019, linked to at Werbos.com/religions.htm,
and earlier.
Here, I define “hard
core Einsteinian realism” as the belief that we live in a curved Minkoswki
space, the same kind of spacetime continuum which Einstein discussed in his theory
of general relativity. EVERYTHING which exists in reality exists in that space.
The underlying reality is just the state of “force fields” which vary over
space and time in that continuum. What’s more, they are “governed” by hard core
partial differential equations, as is discussed in the nook Classical Fields b
Mshe Carmeli.
How could I imagine
that an old man like me sitting in his kitchen in December 2020 could be the
first person of earth to really understand the implications of an idea which
came from Einstein himself long ago?
First, because very
few serious physicists who understand this math have really looked into the question.
Most physicists, like
Weinberg, who really understand the math gave upon Einsteinian realism long
ago, because it does not SEEM to fit a lot of important empirical results in
quantum mechanics. At OUR level of life, as revealed in physics experiments, we
currently seem to be governed by the equation psi dot = i H psi (sometimes
called the “modern Schrodinger equation”), which assumes that we ae living in
an infinite dimensional multiverse. Just a year ago (see those papers linked to
from werbos.com/religions.htm), I
thought that this was more likely to be due than Einsteinian realism is. When I
was younger (from age 15 to 2009), I did believe in Einsteinain realism, but
more and more evidence came in proving the existence of “macroscopic Schrodinger
cats”. The multiverse theory also fit very naturally with a lot of experiments
in hard core quantum optics, which I funded and oversaw from the National
Science Foundation.
(See https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.3310.pdf.)
Second, because I was
the first to derive the full mathematical mapping which tells us how any
statistical mixture of possibilities over ordinary spacetime corresponds to a “density
matrix” in the multiverse theory.
(See https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.5116.)
Because of how important that breakthrough was, I was invited b Marlan Scully
(a world leader in
quantum optics) to present this in 2014 and 2015 in his elite workshop on quantum
foundations at Princeton – but I disappointed him in 2015 by asking to discuss
a different subject, some radical new experiments in quantum optics b Yanhua
Shih and Tao Peng, which have yet to be fully published because of important
unanswered questions.
Even by 1985 or so,
very few serious physicists believed that hard core Einsteinian realism had any
hope of being true, because of EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE from two generations (now
four) of ever more precise experiments called “Bell’s Theorem experiments.” But
most people who knew about his evidence learned about it from popularized
accounts (which always tend to stretch a few points) or from the semi al book
by J.S. Bell, The Speakable and Unspeakable In Quantum Mechanics. Those who
actually read the book learned that the theorem being tested was actually the
CHSH Theorem, by Clauser, Holt Shimony and Horne; I learned about in in the early
1970s from oc hard Holt himself, a classmate, who gave me a preprint.
The popular book by
Bell says that these experimental resoluts rule out “local realism.” No, that
is not what the theorem said. It ruled out what it called “local, causal hidden
variable theories”of physics. It defined the word “causal” in a very special
way. Many times I published papers showing that Einsteinian realism can still
fit, if we look closer at the way that CHSH DEFINED the word “causal” and find Einsteinian
theories which do not fall under that restrictin.
In later years, I
published a paper (also posted at arxiv) DEMONSTRATING actual modlesof quantum
optics, consistent with Einsteinian realism, which DO give the right
predictions for the CHSH experiments. At research hgate, I have gone further,
in more examples of this type of model in new types of experiment.
II.
And
Now: Connecting Underlying Reality to Our Level of Reality
Here is a key point.
Obviously, since I was the first to build a working, predictive model in that category,
I have some idea of how they work. They were not models of the deepest
underlying reality, the Lagrange function of the universe.
In a way, they were
the kind of approximations used in thermodynamics, DERIVED from underlying
principles, but simplified in a way which lets us understand specific experiments
and predict them without unnecessary distraction by irrelevant minutiae. They
involve a network of POSSIBLE scenarios or time tracks, in which the “imaginary
objects” or “emergent patterns” we call “photons” follow MULTIPLE possible
paths. These paths are NOT parallel universes.
They are not really
things that DID actually happen. They exist only in a mathematical sense as
terms in a complete, infinite dimensional expansion of how to solve the underlying,
Einsteinian partial differential equations over Minkowski space. They “live: in
approximation space”, not the teal space of space and time.
I came to understand
the link between what a photon experiences in such an experiment and what we
experience in our lives in 2014, when I compared what a photon experiences in a
new, precise model of how polarizers work (CMRFp,
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1309/1309.6168.pdf
), versus what I was experiencing at NSF when a certain group (called “the
gestapo” by several of my colleagues) created a new polarizing environment. See
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Links-Between-Consciousness-and-the-Physics-of-Time-Werbos/ce9d366d584ce130b549f276d8b1135d331f8547?p2df
for a stable web-based copy of the paper I wrote on that connection.
When a “photon” is “moving
forward” along such a path, going through a standard type of polatrizer (like
your sunglasses!!), it seems to have three choices at any moment in time. It
can give up its own, “personal” polarization which it experiences at that time,
either by (1) jumping suddenly to the polarization of its environment, then
ebing absorbed and disappearing form view; or (2) jumping to a defiant
polarization 90 degrees out, which will let it continue hat way until it
escapes from the polarizer altogether. But it can also “screw up its face,”
like the lead actor in an old British Comedya about the Seven Deadly Sins, and
cause a “remake” which removes that entire time track from existence, INCLUDING
that ‘self” which makes that decision.
In 2014, when the new
“gestapo” was forcing that kind of choice, I wondered: “AM I less powerful than
a little photon? Do **I** have a third choice?”
Bit by bit, I came to
believe that I do. Just as that photon is nothing but a possible pattern of
fields LIKE electric and magnetic fields, my mundane consciousness is just a possible
pattern of the atoms and fields which make up my brain.
It is just an emergent
pattern, one of many, in the same kind of mathematical space which this photon
lives in.
If we ALSO have some
kind of “soul” (see Werbos.com/religions.htm), which I do not expect all of you
to believe quite yet, that soul would be made of a broader suite of underlying force
fields, with a brain more like a quantum computer than a classical computer.
III.
Bottom
Line: Who You Are
That aspect of “you”
which lives in your brain is just a possibility, a possibility which might
indeed “dissolve into goo” as your present time track interacts with other
possibilities, as SOMEONE in your illusory world decides to screw up his face
like that photon or comedian I just mentioned.
THIS IS THE HARDEST
CORE REALISTIC THEORY OF WHO YOU ARE CONSISTENT WITH WHAT WE NOW KNOW FROM
ENDLESS EXPETIMENTS IN HARD CORE PHYSICS. Those experiments, and the new ones
of macroscopic Schrodinger cats, DO allow for the mathematical possibility that
a different theory might be rue, BUT ALL THEORIES WHICH FIT ARE EVEN WEIRDER
THAN THIS.
We ARE what Penrose
once called “shadows of the mind,” the shadows of Plato’s cave. Not really
real.
We are what Deepak
Chopra has called “fictional characters”.
At www.werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf,
I posted my chapter in a NATO book from a workshop where I was asked: what do
the new results actually imply for our level of life? That chapter BEGAN my exploration
of that very real, very practical issue. No matter what happens after the
recent US election, we know hat a lot of peoplewill be screwing up their faces
as hard as they can for awhile, and what would happen in they also possess
souls, in varying degrees?
If we do… and if hard
core Einsteinian realism is true… the entire time track we live on now on earth
may indeed “dissolve into goo.” It may prove to be what some folks call “maya”
or “delusion.” Not only our future but our present and our past will go away;
they will not be part of the ACTUAL final state of the 4D space-time continuum.
Will they leave ANY
trace at all of having existed?
Yes, if there are
souls. The memory of our lives would echo, and “live on”, only as it influences
the memory and state of our noosphere, which COMBINES tracks in much the way
that a quantum computer can ( but it would be more powerful than the limited
concepts of quantum computing in use today in the US).
And so, if you rise
up in the morning from a spiritual kind of state like cosmic consciousness, and
enter the solid realities of mundane life, and seek to have a real impact…
What is real? The impact
on the imaginary world of your mundane experience, a time track likely to
dissolve
In time, maybe sooner
than expected (if you all keep screwing up your faces so much)? Or the impact
you can have when connected to the noosphere, leaving at least SOME trace in a
place which is more real and more permanent than this one?
In truth, I believe that
traces or memories of OTHER dissolved existences have had an impact even on
ours, even in the mundane world, as traces of those other memories touch the communities
of the arts, where we in our souls can even remember some of that more
directly. And in our own connections to the noosphere, where it is especially
important to be careful about screwing up our faces.
IV.
Footnote
– alternatives
In another post, I
mentioned some “PARWIN” (People are Real, World Is Not” theories as
alternatives to Einsteinian realism. When Deepak once proposed some very
nonmainstream theories, Hal Cox once observed: “That theory might be totally
wrong as physics, but still describe our lives in an important way.” His post
follows that spirit, but reality might be even weirder than this. Maybe. But
perhaps this viewpoint already contains all the weirdness we really need,
at our level of
existence. We already have enough to adapt to and connect to. At least, we
humans do, even if body and soul are both included. Like humble villagers in
prehistpric China, we also know and accept the fact that there is something
ELSE over the horizon, but we have “dharma and karma” enough in our own little
village solar system right now.
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