So I think that even elementary particles have a structure although it may be physically inaccessible for us, or even physically inaccessible in general if laws of physics prevent the probing of such structure (for example, laws of physics seem to prevent probing of spatial distances smaller than so-called Planck length). — litewave

Elementary 'particles' are directly quantum field quanta; there is no further structure. These field lumps of field excitations are conveniently called 'elementary particles', but they are not pinpoints and are spread out; an electron has a volume.

As for consciousness, see http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/19364/1/Physics-Time%20and%20Qualia%20-%20Smolin-Verde-7-24-2021-FINAL.pdf

state of being for the cosmos and quantum fluctuations is its default energetic state — Nickolasgaspar

You are heading the question of the thread in a good direction, that of matching the physics to the philosophy for confirmation.

We note that the candidate for the base existent cannot be composite, for then it couldn't be fundamental since its parts would have to be more fundamental. This suggests that it has to be partless as well as of the least size. The quantum 'vacuum' fits the bill or is close to it. The base existent is therefore unbreakable, unmakeable, and thus eternal.

What’s Fundamental has to be partless,
Permanent, and e’er remain as itself;
Thus, it can only form temporaries
Onward as rearrangements of itself.

The Simplest can’t be made; it has no parts;
Likewise, it can’t break; ne’er ‘Nothing’ starts;
Thus, Necessity, without alternative,
Makes the Big Bang and our transient hearts.

All the temporary complexities
From the Eterne will someday fade away,
Even the universe with its grandness
Will disperse its greatness into blandness.

In between, the Basis sets a story
That gets lived by the mutable within,
As life and all the stars, moons, and planets—
In a book from the Babel Library.

What’s Fundamental has to be partless,
Lest its parts be more-so and it be less;
It’s ever, ne’er still, else naught could happen;
The quantum ‘vacuum’ weaves the universe’s dress.

The elementaries of a type are
The same, being woven by the same weave,
Only at the stable rungs of quanta;
They’re well anchored, but they’re secondary.

Are the fields spooky as non physical?
Since the elementaries are physical,
And because they are outright field quanta,
The quantum fields are purely physical.

Change, change, change… constant change, as fast as it
Can happen—the speed of light being foremost
The speed of causality—o’er 13 billion years now,
From the simple on up to the more complex.

The ‘vacuum’ has to e’er jitter and sing,
This Base Existent forced as something,
Due to the nonexistence of ‘Nothing’;
If it ‘tries’ to be zero, it cannot.

At the indefinite quantum level,
Zero must be fuzzy, not definite;
So it can’t be zero, but has to be
As that which is ever up to something.

(Perhaps more another time…)

theoretically & statistically probable — Gnomon

From quantum non-locality entanglement,
We know that information’s primary
Over distance, that objects don’t have to
Be near each other to have relation.

Everything connected to everything
Would seem to be a ‘perception’ as an
All-at-onceness, so a particle
Might ‘know’ something about what to do.

Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.

This is a realm of happenings, not things,
For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
What remains through time are processes—
Relations between different systems.

Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Within her requisite of ongoing change.

So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.

"The past and the future are quantum potentials, and conscious beings are continually creating the most likely futures and the most likely, consistent pasts. Meaning arises as a result of the decoherence of these potential states." — Gnomon

So, we have that 'potentials' can be treated as being real, from your other sources; thus, the wave-function and the quantum fields are real, not just math tools/descriptions; They are sculpted by the All.

I still doubt that the All would have a brain and a will, although when we look at ourselves this would seem to give us a clue as to the nature of the All. There is an unbiased fairness to my wandering wonderings. Perhaps entanglement and the holistic nature of the All grants some rudimentary will due to its all-at-onceness connection.

Thus both our consciousness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, could be a clue. Maybe they are of the same basis of fundamental consciousness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm, such as internal and external, our internal consciousness giving us ‘future’, and the external consciousness granting ‘future’ to the universe. Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.

Giorbran would also have all the superposed balances tracing forward to the ultimate balance at the End.

Or, or in conjunction, of all the possible superposed paths those paths that go the furthest come to dominate the wave function of the All, they becoming the paths that get actualized.

the human Will could convert ideal Potential into real Actual. — Gnomon

A "homeodynamic" process spontaneously reduces a system's constraints to their minimum, as exemplified by the increase in entropy described by the second law of thermodynamics. Although a large number of objects interacting in a system exert efficient causality on one another, an increase in entropy arises from the statistical form of the system as a whole, in which disordered macro-states far outnumber ordered states; in that sense the homeodynamic process exhibits formal causality.

I have been getting these quotes from reviews of Deacon on Goodreads.

So now I have as much free will as there can be. Hurray!

Thus oppositions are necessary for the creation of difference and for the "endless forms most beautiful" that Darwin extolled. In my thesis, I call that pushing & pulling creative force : EnFormAction. — Gnomon

The All keeps the number of protons and electrons equal, another balance of opposites; the universe is electrically neutral, else some possible disaster befall, perhaps.

The All has to provide the curious symmetry in free space of there being only one main stable positively charged matter particle—the proton, one negatively charged matter particle—the electron, and one stable energy particle—the electron, with no uncharged matter particles and no charged energy particle.

The positive kinetic energy of stuff will be paid for by the debit of the potential negative energy of gravity, another balance.

The inevitable future of equilibrium symmetry carefully designs/forces the stable particles with properties that will produce the periodic table, molecules, even DNA.

Along the road from grouping order to symmetry order that causes diversity, we will invariably observe galaxies which reflects the widest range of configurations, plus ranges of solar systems, planets, moons, asteroids. We will observe the whole range of geography, the whole range of possible chemistry, the whole range of other lifeforms, the whole range of personalities.

However, a similar concept has been proposed by biologist & neuroscientist, Terrence Deacon, in his book Incomplete Nature. There, he introduces the notion of Constructive or Constitutive Absence, as a "state of things not yet realized". He suggests that is a "defining attribute of life and mind" as well as of "ententional' phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences". Deacon's Absence also seems to be similar to Aristotle's Potential. — Gnomon

Defined as constraint, form refers in a way to what isn't physically present, and yet what has definite causal consequences. Final causality is the ability of a synergistic system of forms to become its own cause by perpetuating itself.

Mind isn't a ghostly immaterial entity existing beyond causality, but neither is it causally epiphenomenal (inconsequential). It is a dynamic process that evolved because of its function in sustaining and coordinating bodily activity in a very subtle way, through the perpetuation of constraint. Since mechanistic models only consider the extrinsic force exerted on one part by another in a deterministic system, they overlook the spontaneous propagation and self-persistence of constraints that organize our world while leaving it open to further organization.

Heraclitus, also anticipated the Eastern notion of Yin-Yang in his concept of "unity of opposites". This is a way of reconciling all dichotomies by merging antithetical polar opposites into a synthesis of Unity (the One). For example, Hegel, lecturing on Heraclitus explained his notion of Unified Identity : "Subjectivity is the opposite of Objectivity, and since each is the 'other' of the 'other". He went on to assert that "thought itself is the true Being". And in the 21st century, we could substitute shape-shifting "Enformation" (energy / matter + life / mind) as a modern version of ancient Logos and Tao. Like abstract Energy, we don't know what BEING is, only what it does : cause beings & things to exist, and to desist.

Since "Absolute BEING" encompasses all possibilities, including Positive & Negative, Freedom & Determinism, the Yin-Yang notion of Freedom within Determinism could suggest a solution to the "free quandary" in a cause & effect world. Randomness explores all possibilities, but Selection chooses what becomes Actual. — Gnomon

We see that the All had to employ the opposites of matter and anti-matter, which in addition to being mirror opposites have opposite electrical charge; so now we know that the All couldn't have done it with just one type of matter. We can surmise that other opposites were also of necessity, such as positive kinetic energy and negative potential energy.

The All also had to induce matter-antimatter asymmetry or else naught would matter. There are something like 10 billion photons for every proton, indicating 10**9 annihilations early on.

… ?

We are left with forms that matter, and still humongous amounts of it, which means that it was easy to come by… Why?

…

We are profiling the All in order to figure out how it works…

The All has to make sure that time moves forward.

Kevin Giorbran had an idea, in ‘Everything Forever’, but he killed himself, so I can’t get any more out of him…

The beginning of the universe with separated matter and anti-matter, though seemingly improbable, is indeed necessity since that’s what happened, the why being that this is the most complete grouping order, for only then will there be the overall pull toward symmetry, which is the featureless blend at the end of the universe as the ultimate symmetry order.

With the All having to be as everything in a great all-at-once superposition of potentials / probabilities, all the possibilities of all the imbalances must trace back and actualize to the one and only state of the necessary beginning of all, the separation of matter and anti-matter, the greatest imbalance of all.

A divergence ensues unto a convergence: top-down from the end of the universe drives the bottom-up events from the beginning, the future ever affecting the present. So to speak, the flat whiteness of the Omega End brings forth the diversified prismatic colors from the Alpha Start.

There would be an Enfoldment/Unfoldment: electrons, protons, seem ‘bottom-up’ only, but are ‘enfolded’ in the top-down whole, as with Bohm’s implicit order guiding the blooming, unfolding, explicit order.

Why Free Will Is Real : — Gnomon

I argue that agency, choice, and control are emergent, higher-level phenomena,

Hope so!

I just moved my coffee so I can't knock it over.

Free won't is the result of the brain categorizing domains of avoidance, building coherent value structures within those cognitive domains, and protecting their place in that domain through reinforced mechanisms of valuation as outlined in neuroeconomics. Free will IS free won't. The Will is the full expression of the brain and the thoughts and behavior that emerge, or do not emerge from it. — Garrett Travers

Well said.

This pathetic hope-against-all-hope is one of the "absurd human passions" that Hume referred to as inappropriate for a perfect deity. Carter must be aware that neither the world, nor its reasoning creatures, are perfect. Yet, his working definition of "FreeWill" seems to require a perfect & omniscient being. Hence, his project -- of proving that Determinism is not absolute -- is bound to fail. However, if he could accept a less-than-perfect definition of freedom, his desire for a world in which Reason is not ridiculous might prove to be reasonable. — Gnomon

OK 'God' is not, but the Eternal Basis may have a way of coming up with something workable although not ideal, which we have to figure out, which may help out with the 'free' quandary of free will.

Would a non determined spontaneous will choice count as free?

See here: https://nautil.us/is-the-universe-open_ended-9803/

2. Negative free will: Defiance of one's wills (free won't). — Agent Smith

'Free won't' is just the usual subconscious neural 'voting' that comes from another part of the brain will than did the initial proposal.

Holism ; Holon :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses novel properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part — A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems. — Gnomon

A real example strong emergence is needed, if there is one. The liquidity is because the tiny hydrogen atoms roll around and also roam between (as ions) the much larger oxygen atoms.

The Single Simple Question that Challenges All Convictions. — Gnomon

We’ll have to pick at some of the clues to see what might come out of them although not seeing anything about free will or not at the outset.

Then one more foray into the counter-intuitive alternative reality of Quantum theory, found a tiny glimmer of freedom in the non-local features of Entanglement.9 He hoped the “spooky action at a distance” might break the chain of causation, because “entangled particles transcend space & time”. Yet, he still couldn’t see how ghostly particles of matter could add-up to human freedom from the constraints of causation.

That entangled particles correlate non-locally over great distances means that objects don’t have to be near each other to have relation, that the relational information is more primary than distance, even perhaps that two particles are as to us bit two looks of the same system in some higher dimensional realm. So, something holistic would be going on, the same system being a whole.

(Or it is that the relation is as one long ‘rod’ of connected quantum fields such that when we see one end rotating clockwise face on then the other end has to be seen rotating counter-clockwise face on.)

Big Bang Cosmology indicates that many particles may be entangled with some others, having have been all together at the start although probably not everything is entangled with everything.

What would this say about its ‘will’ before and after the Bang and how would that work?

Probably too soon to say, so we’ll have to pick at other clues.

…

The Eternal Basis (Potential Enform Action), being the Mandatory Causeless, cannot have any input and so this may indicate that its bedrock is randomness, but, nevertheless, it is all there at once and so it could also somehow be the potential of all possible paths of action at once in a superposition—a Whole.

What would tip it to form a universe the way it did, with elementary matter and anti-matter having asymmetry?

Perhaps too soon to answer.

Potential EnFormAction — Gnomon

Your Award for finding the needle in the haystack:



The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.

HERE BE DRAGONS — Gnomon

And they breathe fire into the equations.

Photons will be all that's left! — Dijkgraf

Given that photons have no mass and no time, Roger Penrose thinks that since no mass will be left at the end of the universe then there is no distance because there is no mass or something like that … and so a new universe can begin since the spread-out photons will be as if they are near each other. Sorry, I don't remember where I saw that, but photons already seem to get emitted and absorbed without traveling in between.

Imagine a single lonely electron looking for a lonely single proton in a vast inflating space... Reaching out in vain... — Dijkgraf

From time’s shores toward oblivion’s worlds,
The quantum ‘vacuum’ fields send forth their whirls,
The sea parting into base discrete swirls,
Unto stars and life—ephemerals pearled.

When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
The way that all temporaries must go,
To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!

Only the Eternal Basis stays put
As potential for all possible books
In Everything’s Babel Repository
To author another universe’s story.

Well sure, I’d consider that — Wayfarer

On Consciousness

What the meaning to this play we’re befit,
From dirt to dust within the script that’s writ?
The wise in search have thrown themselves to waste;
Experience alone is the benefit.

Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—

As the distinctions toward survival, 
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.

The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.

The Whole can also be well spoken of 
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
Via qualia, about what’s been made.

At the most fundamental level, massless charges feel so attracted by each other that they only can exist in massive triplets, which can have color and electric charge. — Dijkgraf

Good write-up!

THE NEAR DECLINE OF PHYSICS
DUE TO ITS UNDRESSED TERMS

The quarks, those constituents of the orgy
Playfully bound within the nucleons’ chamber
Are named up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top,
The last two once being called beauty and truth;

However, when just one of a type was contained
It became referred to, say, as a naked beauty,
And thus nude tops & bottoms their charms revealed—
To ever be in closeness binding, and bonding,

So they even tried just u, d, s, c, b, and t
To prevent some ultimate collapse of physics,
But the truth of the flavors beneath the veils
Remained as the sheerest vision preferred.

So we have these vibrant dancing ladies:
The naked heavyweight top, charming up,
Down, the strange beauty of the raw truth,
And a bare bottom just around and behind.

They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling
In the universal dance of stunning motion,
The polarity sometimes reversed,
Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down.

And then there are Eden’s many colors,
In this flower garden filled with flavors,
Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops,
And magenta undulations unstopped.

Gluons are the bees of the flower beds,
Carrying pollen back and forth to bond
The many relationships that make
This loved world go ‘round as reality.

Eyed in views that probe the fundamental,
Quarks strangely swirl in and out of sight,
Pulsing, throbbing with elemental delight,
Back and forth—the love-made life of eternity.

These attractions in the altogether denuded
In the buff became the strong force manifest
That these mother-nature-naked terms exposed
To denote the stark beauty of truth uncovered.


THE ENTRANCING DANCING

They were all dancing within love’s treasure vault
Within the framework of the broadening thought,
The lights pulsing and the waves reverberating,
Where the good times had become everlasting.

Tribal primal field currents were raging
From speakers of the energy matrix pounding;
They whirled and twirled as loving gestalts
Of sentient consciousness knowing no halt.

There were rhythms of constant contraction
And expansions of bosom-energy projections
Converted to scalar waves of blinking attraction,
As fission and fusion beckoned the connections…

Ever forming in this Omni-sound emporium,
Where tone waves vibrated in waves of creation.


“THREE QUARKS FOR MUSTER MARK”

Naked quarks would really love to go wild and dance,
But there’s only a finite amount of energy and chance;
So they would spiral out of control,
Having quite a blast!

Such they’ve been confined within the proton—
To last.

They’re made bottoms-up;
Can we see them tops-down, a go-go?

No, for the quantum censor protects the charm show,
Their strange beauty and flavor bound up and down,
For the proton is much immune to disturbance around.


CHARMS

A new kind of microscope
That works via gravitational waves
Has revealed the actual interior
Of a quark for the first time.

The charming beauty
Of the ultimate truth
Is that ladies are
In charge of the universe!


WE ARE MOST FREE WHEN
WE ARE ASYMPTOTICALLY CO-JOINED

The strong family unit, as the three quarks,
Is bonded by the power of its grouping,
But, loses identity if the home breaks—
Other pairs soon forming after divorcing.

Or comes the prison of solitude,
Chained to isolation with fortitude,
Floating, lost, without effects of affects,
Losing the identity conferred by others.

Within the proton, gentleness becomes strength,
For the members are free to explore at length,
Never smothering, but building unity,
The unit’s direction adding to the one.

The strong force grows weaker near the quarks,
And so we may observe them someday,
Shining in their primordial glory—
The beginning of all things composite.

Identity is not lost in the co-joining—
True loves don’t crowd the hearts of the others,
But, rather, look outward, in the same direction,
Close, joined, but don’t block the others’ section.

It is a seeming arithmetic violation,
That in summation we become greater;
We don’t merge, having supported freedom,
Yet still share the same good vibrations.

Love matures when partners let it flow beyond,
Free to wend its way to places dear and fond.
Love’s butterfly prospers when winds blow free;
Unconditional love never binds—it bonds.

Yes. They are fundamental — Gnomon

The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes:

Sean Carroll on QFT: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf

It is not at all clear what electromagnetic fields are, nor if there are fields of other kinds — Wayfarer

How about a fundamental consciousness field, per David Chalmers?

Particles move in spacetime, don't they? — Dijkgraf

'Particles' are directly field quanta, so they move along the fields like kinks in a rope.

This is because quantum fields are not in spacetime — Gnomon

Because quantum fields are Fundamental.

(Now, what about qualia....?) — Wayfarer

Of course, all the wonders of life and consciousness evolved over a very long time after the cosmic evolution that was also over a very long time, thus both evolutions appearing to be completely natural with no other guidance. So mind-numbingly slow!

Qualia have to be constructed from the neural correlates.

I've never heard of "mind atoms" before. — Gnomon

More accurately, the universe is made of quanta; that definition covers more than atoms. So, anyway, all that forms is of quanta.

Whereas materialists of all stripes believe that the objects of perception have intrinsic reality - the kind of reality that persists independently of any perception, sensation or judgement. The difficulty with that view is that, even though it seems to accord perfectly with common sense, we can obviously never say of the reality of anything that it persists independently of perception, sensation and judgement, because in order to assess its reality, we have to perceive or sense it. We can presume with sound reason that the object persists in the absence of any perception of it, and act as if to all intents and purposes that this is true, but this is still a presumption, not a demonstrated certainty. — Wayfarer

I think it's a stretch to think that all that goes on is a hoax, such that the senses don't take anything in, that it is a story in a 4D movie in which everything matches perfectly with reality as if it were real. This is describing the block universe, and if it is then I think it all still had to have happened at some point—all at once, I suppose, and then it plays out.

The block universe would be merely the implementation—the messenger, but the message is still the same. It would be that a difference in implementation that makes no difference to the message is truly no difference.

Yes. I call it "mind stuff"; — Gnomon

I'll take it as something. The word 'immaterial' doesn't seem to be doing any work. It's like 'unstuff' that is still stuff.

Since the universe has atoms, 'mind' would be of atoms.

Since "immaterial" literally means "not made of matter" — Gnomon

Wouldn't it still be the stuff of something to be able to be?

No. I'm implying that your either "material" or "immaterial" formulation is fallacious because "immaterial" is neither an intelligible nor a corroborable option compared to – negation of – the material. — 180 Proof

Well said!

The transcendental temptation can now be thrown out of the stained-glass window. In short, the elementary ‘particles’ are physical, and because they are directly field quanta the quantum fields that they consist of must also be physical. The quantum vacuum overall field is continuous as the Simplest and thus it is Fundamental, and so its mathematics becomes the Theory of Everything. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) gives us all of physics and all of our devices.

All is Purely Physical

All That Underlies Our Lives is Now Known.
In the stars our atoms are slowly grown
From the quantum field elementaries—
Omar’s knot of how human fate is sewn.

Where’s the esoteric among atoms?
What inside their doings would be else wise?
Do molecules swirl into spooky states?
What their secret patterns hidden away?

The light atomic elements were Banged,
And the stars made more, on up through iron,
And the rest were from collisions/novae;
So, what unknown secrets would they contain?

Sounds as if you talk about God! — Raymond

Hail to 'God' the Simpleton!

We want to see you suffer more for your philosophy. — Bitter Crank

No suffering; only joy. My own slant on QFT that goes all the way:

‘Nothing’ Cannot Obtain;
The Simple Fundamental Something is Ever

Something is and a lack of anything isn’t.

To be Fundamental the Something cannot have parts, else the parts would be more Fundamental, and so there cannot be an infinite regress of lesser and lesser parts. Composites cannot be Fundamental. ‘God’ is out; impossible. Neither can be a lasting template of the lesser ever having to come from the greater, ad infinitum. The logic herein matches the cascade from the least to the greater that’s seen in our universe.

There cannot be a sequence in time from a lack of anything to Something because ‘Nothing’ has no time, nor anything; thus the Something cannot appear spontaneously, as if there was ‘Nothing’ and then there became Something, and besides, ‘Nothing’ cannot have being anyway.

Thus the Fundamental Simplest Partless Something has to be ever, as Eternal; it has no alternative. It is also Continuous because there cannot be any spacers of ‘Nothing’ in it and it is also Eternal because it cannot be made of parts that it can’t have and because it cannot broken into parts because there aren’t any. It is ungenerated and deathless. It was there before the Big Bang and exists ever after. The Bang was from the Something. A ‘Beginning’ and ‘End’ to the Something is impossible. This shows the multiverse.

Why isn’t the Something Still, never doing anything? If the Something has Stillness, then naught would happen. Scientifically, the uncertainty principle indicates that ‘Stillness’ is impossible. The Something is ever in motion; it is energetic. We don’t need all the proof when we have the truth.

From what can it form entities? It can only form entities of itself, as that’s all there is. In short, its motion as fluctuations makes for a wave nature that allows the elementary forms to be quanta of its excitations at stable rungs that grant some persistence. See Quantum Field Theory (QFT). We know that the elementaries of a type are identical and so that also tells us that they are directly quanta forms, plus that they can be annihilated shows us that they are secondary.

Why are the elementaries so minuscule? The Something as the simplest is lightweight and then so must be the elementaries.

Can the metaphysical creep back in as a hyperphysical substance to be the Something? No, the elementaries are physical and they are the quanta of the Something and so the Something is physical. What the elementaries go on to form is also physical. There can’t be anything esoteric about matter and forces.

What of the fluctuations of the Something that don’t reach a quantum energy level? They are the so-called virtual particles that ever come and go.

Can the virtuals ever persist more? If there was inflation, it would drive them apart quicker than they could annihilate.

What is the Something? It has to be the quantum ‘vacuum’ fields, for the proposed absolutes of time, space, and particles making fields have fallen by the wayside.

Are there things? The quantum ‘vacuum’ is the only thing; all else are events. A tree is a long event; the sun is a longer one; a proton’s life is very long; photons don’t decay on their own. Events come and go.

So, we and all the temporaries that the Permanent Something forms are consigned to oblivion? Yes, even the universe, but the Permanent ever remains and all is of its fields.

Well, there’s no ‘Separation’ at heart, but we and all as field forms must fade, the universe unwinding like a spring, no matter our grand complexities that outdo in scale that of the Simplest. We always knew that the Theory of Everything (TOE) would be boring in its simplicity.

What if a universe just doesn’t work? Some will, like ours does, although ours is not near to the best or near to the worst. It’s just OK.

Posting a link to an article about a 'deep' topic and then asking, "what do you think?" is the easy and lazy way of doing things. We want to see you suffer more for your philosophy. — Bitter Crank

It is right on and correct and is in accord with so much that I've posted on the subject of QFT. I only just now discovered his article of a year ago.

So not being able to see them doesn't mean you can't imagine them to fly in space. The photons can't be seen but they still are there. Like a hidden force of nature. — Raymond

Particles are a product of our imagination, although useful at times as a model when there are little perturbations about. The photon shown in a Fenyman diagram between pairs of electrons is virtual, not to be confused with virtual particles in fields. This virtual photon is actually a disturbance in the photon field caused by the electron fields. All interactions involve quantum fields at heart, not particles but as sometimes for short. Photons and electrons go through two slits to form an interference pattern because they are directly field quanta.

What's the difference between these fields and convenient math? — theRiddler

Not too much; the math is not complete.

then forget where you parked your car? — Gnomon

It's that I know where I parked my dream car but it isn't there any more. In last night's dream, I went back to where I parked my motorcycle but there was a giant electric fan in its place. Also, sometimes the neighbor hood streets and houses turn into a place I never been to; such creativity in the subconscious to model all that, making it as I pass through!

Train to be a ninja to gain focus.

Do you see fully fleshed-out Qualia in your dreams? — Gnomon

Yes, full, although now and then there are some slight mistakes, and my car never remains where I parked it.

How can physicists be so blind that they don't see that there is more elemental stuff than quarks and leptons? — Raymond

The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.

those conceptions from perceptions are what we call mental "symbols" representing reality. — Gnomon

Plus, in our imagination we see very dim qualia that have about 90% transparency, and full qualia in our dreams.