I'm not being facetious, you are just being unbelievably ignorant. — Metaphysician Undercover

All right! The wave function describes waves. What sort of waves do they describe?

Or, try finding it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_function

I understand wave functions as essentially statements about probability. Are you arguing the existence of probability waves?

If your aether blows itself apart for experiments with second scales over distances of a light year, how can it explain experiments on the nanosecond scale with distances of 10 feet? — InPitzotl

A light year is a LOT longer distance to maintain underlying entanglement structure. You think a pilot wave can conjoin only a couple electrons at the scale of light years? Kind of farfetched. And anyways, I chatted up the aether and that's just how aether rolls! (Perhaps someone will figure it out someday)

All right! The wave function describes waves. What sort of waves do they describe? — tim wood

What sort of waves are described is the problem, isn't it? Until the aether is identified that question cannot be answered. Right? We know that waves are described, because that's what the Fourier transform (which is central to a wave function) does, describes waves. Therefore the name "wave" function. We just don't know the medium of those waves. But we know that the waves are real because the transmit energy.

A light year is a LOT longer distance to maintain underlying entanglement structure. — Enrique

Why?

You think a pilot wave can conjoin only a couple electrons at the scale of light years? — Enrique

I'm not committed to a QM interpretation, but there's no rule I know of that says that entangled particles can't be separated by a light year. There's no upper limit for classical entanglement; why would there be one for quantum entanglement?

Kind of farfetched. — Enrique

I think the distance just "sounds large" to you... that's part of the point. This drags the distances from something too small to imagine (in terms of the duration used for "light x") to something on human scales specifically so you can imagine it. I could give you an example story of, say, how a local interpretation of QM works with this Bob and Alice story.

And anyways, I chatted up the aether and that's just how aether rolls! (Perhaps someone will figure it out someday) — Enrique

That's fine, but I don't think you can have a theory explaining non-locality until you have your theory explain non-locality. It sounds to me like it's just a name so far, and some fuzzy ideas of what it might be like.

I am under the impression that the wave functions are descriptions of probabilities. Are they math waves?

Wave functions produce probabilities, they do not describe probabilities. The mathematics employed is a description of waves, and what is produced through the application of the math is probabilities.

Consider that one can record statistics endlessly, and the statistics are useless for prediction unless they are employed. If a person desires to make a prediction, one must employ some principles which describe an activity enabling a prediction. We cannot jump from statistics to prediction without such a principle. Imagine you that you assign a successive number each time the sun comes up, 1,2,3... until you get to 6348. You want to predict the next one, 6349. But that number is useless and doesn't qualify as a prediction without a description, "the sun will come up". In the case of a wave function, the principles employed describe a wave activity, and the application of these principles produces probabilities, enabling prediction.

I thought Bell's inequality was about spooky action at a distance and not randomness

The point (as I see it) is to distinguish between convenient fictions and what's real. You know all about Mickleson-Morley - it's generally accepted there is no aether. Whether or not there is something else is a question. My issue with your post is what seems to me a gratuitous - and inaccurate - reifying of a fiction. And in this case, I am unaware of anyone (except you) even supposing it arising to the level of a fiction, it being just math - an idea.

Which opens up the question of the independent reality of descriptors. Two pears and two pears are four pears. The pears are real, but the two, four, addition, equaling, all of that, ideas, nothing in the reality that holds the pears. Similarly with odds.

As with dice. With two dice will I roll a seven? Odds one in six. Is that real? Suppose in some sense it is? But the real odds are not one in six, because the dice are not perfect, nor the circumstances of throwing them - and indeed those constantly change. That means that what is supposed to be real is at the same time changing at great speed, and unlikely ever to be "perfect."

Bottom line for me, if you insist the waves are real, then what is the nature of their reality? (And keeping in mind that, far as I know, no one else supposes them real.)

Michelson and Morley showed either the earth doesn't move or the ether was not at a degree they thought it was. In GR the earth accelerates in all directions while space itself contracts. The ether question is about whether anything is absolute in the physical world instead of relative.

I thought Bell's inequality was about spooky action at a distance and not randomness — Gregory

Randomness a part of it. Bell's easy, informally. But more formally, not-so-easy. It says that if you run a bunch of experiments, the distribution of results, under certain very basic and reasonable assumptions, is constrained, the constraint expressed by an inequality. E.g., the number of Xs should be less than or equal to the number of Ys plus the number of Zs. Completely, mathematically, reasonable. Except the results across a broad range of parameters violate the inequality.

And so far any account is just speculation.

But I think that for QM, which allows for "travel backwards" in time, that it's not a problem or a paradox. Subject to correction.

In GR the earth accelerates in all directions while space itself contracts. — Gregory

Hmm, and hmm again. I know just enough about relativity to know that ordinary language is insufficient to accurately describe it. At the very least, you might refer to space-time instead of just space. Or in short, to make sense of your one sentence would require many sentences - and I'm pretty sure that space never contracts.

I thought Bell's inequality was about spooky action at a distance and not randomness — Gregory

Bell Inequalities are constraints on probabilities that you would expect given classical probability theory.

I gave an example in another thread of a card game, where I'm the dealer. There are black and red suited cards, but it's possible I'm dealing funny, so you can't go in and assume the probability of a B draw is 50%. Per the game I deal you three cards face down. You pick two and turn them over. You win if those two cards match colors; you lose otherwise. Given the constraints, the only possible combinations of cards is BBB, BBR, BRB, BRR, RBB, RBR, RRB, and RRR. In two of these combinations you'll win 100% of the time. In the other 6, assuming you pick randomly, you win 1/3 of the time. Given this, and the fact that you don't know the probabilities of these combinations, you still know that your probability of winning is greater-than-or-equal-to 1/3. That is a Bell Inequality.

Could aether be the factor that integrates phenomena of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the observation of which would finally provide us with a realist interpretation akin to the one Einstein sought? Can experimental designs and instrumentation ever become advanced enough to register such a medium, and what does current physics suggest about the chances of this substrate existing? — Enrique

In the book I'm currently reading, The Single Simple Question . . ., the author Peter Carter says, "Although scientists no longer use the term, it turns out that there's something like the ether after all. Only the name has been changed to fields". But the concept of "Fields" is just as spooky as the empty-space notion of invisible intangible essential "Aether". He quotes physicist Sean Carrol, "the fields themselves aren't made of anything --- they are what the world is made of".

That's what you might call "an insubstantial substance". But, in my Information-centric thesis, I call it "Potential", which is not a thing, but merely the power to Actualize things. Of course, that's not a scientific definition, merely a philosophical concept. It's analogous to the usual definition of "Energy" --- not as a physical substance, but as an Aristotelian "primary substance" --- the ability or capacity to do work. Which is merely the power to cause Change. We can't define it by what it is, but by what it does.

So, scientists have not been able to do away with the necessity for some kind of potent nothingness. Ironically, that's hardly an empirical "realist" concept, but more like a hypothetical "idealist" notion. We know the Aether must exist in some sense, but we just can't put our finger on it. So, we define it with as-if metaphors. :nerd:


In physics, aether theories (also known as ether theories) propose the existence of a medium, a space-filling substance or field as a transmission medium __Wiki

In Greek mythology, Aether was the personification of the upper sky, ... thought to be the substance that allowed light waves to travel through empty space.

Empty Space = Free Space = Aether :
Some claim that empty space has no physical properties, but if you eliminate the notions of permittivity and permeability from Maxwell or Einstein's equations, ratios on which the existence and behavior of all fields entirely depends, the theories will completely fall apart. Some believe in the reality of nothingness, that empty space as such is real, and accept that notion as an integral part of their physics, but can't even ascribe any physical properties to it.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/empty-space-free-aether-laurent-r-duchesne

Primary Substance :
"Aristotle’s metaphysics of potentiality/ actuality, substance/accidents, matter/ form, essence/ existence, and four causes/ causal powers is increasingly recognized as the framework underlying the physical and biological sciences, . . ."
https://askaphilosopher.org/2019/08/13/aristotles-substance-and-accident/

When physicists say that there is no preferred reference frame they are saying that nothing objectively moves in relation to something else. Things move relatively, which makes no sense. Physicist such a philosophy but much of what they do is just that

You know all about Mickleson-Morley - it's generally accepted there is no aether. — tim wood

The problem here is that what you state as "generally accepted", is not a valid conclusion from Michelson-Morley experiments. These experiments demonstrated that the relationship between the aether and a massive object was not as proposed. The conclusion that there is no aether is simply invalid logic.

Which opens up the question of the independent reality of descriptors. Two pears and two pears are four pears. The pears are real, but the two, four, addition, equaling, all of that, ideas, nothing in the reality that holds the pears. Similarly with odds. — tim wood

Ok, now do you see that by your analogy, the Fourier transform is numbers applied to waves. The waves are real, just like the pears you say are real. The numbers you claim are not.

Bottom line for me, if you insist the waves are real, then what is the nature of their reality? — tim wood

I already answered this for you. Until we know the nature of the medium, within which the waves exist (commonly known as the aether), we will not know the nature of their reality.

I'll leave this to others. Apparently you claim the aether, whatever that is, exists, whatever that means. Without denying at all the evidence of phenomena, I'm not buying at all jury-rigged accounts and explanations of that phenomena.

When physicists say that there is no preferred reference frame they are saying that nothing objectively moves in relation to something else. Things move relatively, which makes no sense. Physicist such a philosophy but much of what they do is just that — Gregory

You want to think this through again? You have crossed into incoherence here.

I saw an interview where a geocentrist asked a physicist how the earth orbits the sun and the physicist said all motion is relative. So nothing objectively moves. It all depends on perspective. It's as if physicists don't believe in anything except the relativism of relativity

Matter is the movable in space. That space which is itself movable is called material, or also relative space. That space in which all motion must finally be thought is called pure, or also absolute space. - Kant

I'm not sure how Kant would have done with the mathematics of GR, but I am confident that the ideas of neither SR nor GR would have buffaloed him.

As to,

and the physicist said all motion is relative. So nothing objectively moves. It all depends on perspective. It's as if physicists don't believe in anything except the relativism of relativity — Gregory

I doubt this. To begin with, motion is not at all "relative." What even do you mean by saying that? The measure of motion is relative based on the observer. You cannot leave out details like that. And it is pretty clear that either you do not understand the language, or cannot yourself reproduce that understanding in English. I drop a bowling ball on the ground. Aspects of the description of the event depend on the observer, but all observers will agree that something moved.

That's what you might call "an insubstantial substance". But, in my Information-centric thesis, I call it "Potential", which is not a thing, but merely the power to Actualize things. — Gnomon

You might like this

But the concept of "Fields" is just as spooky as the empty-space notion of invisible intangible essential "Aether". He quotes physicist Sean Carrol, "the fields themselves aren't made of anything --- they are what the world is made of". — Gnomon

Einstein showed that there is no fixed background, and QFT is also background free, a rare agreement between the tiny and the large theories.

The elementary particles are breakable and makable, and so they are secondary, not fundamental, and are called physical matter. They cannot be a substance that is new and different from what is primary, for then they would be primary, as fundamental. Besides all the elementaries of a type are identical in quantum energy level, size, spin, charge, and all; thus they are formed of the same primary cloth. Nothing spooky here: the elementary physical matter are the quanta directly; thus what is primary is physical. Furthermore, what is primary is always physically moving and has no halt—or naught would have happened. The constant happenings/causations/movements are basic 'time'.

As for fields not being made of any thing (Sean Carrol), they are not makable or breakable, being the continuous simplest. They can serve for what we used to call 'space', our 'space' being emergent, but time isn't.

You might like this — Wayfarer

What is actually needed, is a definitive separation between the two principal senses of "potential", being logically possible, and ontologically possible.

In relation to future events, there is ontological possibility, in the sense that I might stand up and walk to the right, or I might go straight ahead, to the left, or remain seated. As Aristotle pointed out, even though one of these will come true as time passes, it is incorrect to say that there is a truth or falsity to any of them, at the present time. That we say there is no truth or falsity with respect to such future events necessitates that we allow exception to the law of excluded middle to account for this as reality. If we would say that such statements were both true and false, this would necessitate that we allow exceptions to the law of non-contradiction.

In the other principal sense of "potential", logically possible, we can look at past events which we are unsure of and establish logical possibilities for what actually occurred. In this case there is a truth or falsity to what occurred, but we are unable to determine with certainty what is the case, so the possibilities are not ontological they are logical.

Now, the situation gets confusing when we realize that we can apply logical possibility toward future events in the act of predicting. When we do this there is no need to separate logical from ontological possibilities to produce an accurate prediction. All that is required is a universal law, like Newton's first law of motion, which extends the actuality of the past, into the future, through that designation of necessity provided by the law. So, for convenience, all future possibilities are treated as logical possibilities as provided for by the law.

Science is derived from observation which provides us with the true or false representation of what has occurred (the past). Through universal laws derived from induction, and the principles of causal determinism, we create models which extend the past through the present, into the future, with complete disregard for ontological possibilities which do not fit into these models. The models are deficient because they do not recognize the true nature of the present, as a divisor between what is ontologically possible, and what is ontologically actual, conflating those two senses of "potential".

That we say there is no truth or falsity with respect to such future events necessitates that we allow exception to the law of excluded middle to account for this as reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you clarify this? Let P be the proposition that tomorrow I will have turned to the left. P is today neither true nor false. What is the exception to the LEM? What reality?

As to past events, let's see: logic may guide as to what is possible and what is not possible. As such, a division into possible and not possible (or acceptable as such). We can agree that something happened, but we also agree that with respect to what is questionable,

we are unable to determine with certainty what is the case. — Metaphysician Undercover

But what would be here the difference between the logical and the ontological possibility, the possibility having been arrived at as a possibility?

Hannibal's feet may have got cold in the Alps. We cannot be certain they did. But it's both a logical possibility (makes sense and not impossible), and an ontological possibility (coulda been).

Through universal laws derived from induction, and the principles of causal determinism, we create models which extend the past through the present, into the future, with complete disregard for ontological possibilities which do not fit into these models. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is misleading. To be sure, this true of all models. But this just a conscious setting aside of the irrelevant - not a deficiency for a model. It leaves open the question as to whether it is a good or a bad model.

The models are deficient because they do not recognize the true nature of the present, as a divisor between what is ontologically possible, and what is ontologically actual, conflating those two senses of "potential". — Metaphysician Undercover

And I simply cannot find the sense in this, or the purpose. Are you suggesting that relativity or QM are materially deficient because neither distinguishes between the possibility that I might be right now enjoying a chocolate-chip cookie, and the fact of the matter? Nor do I understand "divisor." The possible remains possible notwithstanding actuality. Nor, far as I know, does anyone conflate potential with actual or actual with potential. Can you help me make sense of what you wrote?

Aether was born in the René Descartes mind, a work of genius no doubt, but...according to a lecture series I'm watching, this rather innocuous looking idea set science back by centuries, even threatening the great Isaac Newton's theory of gravity - something to do with "spooky" action at a distance, Einstein's words, not mine. Didn't know Einstein was so fond of the French luminary.

Speaking for myself, haven't we gone past the stage where we thought space is nothing? Aether, space; space, aether?

Shooting in the dark, my favorite sport! That's what happens when you don't take education seriously. :grin:

You might like this — Wayfarer

Thanks. I saved it for future reading. :smile:

Nothing spooky here: the elementary physical matter are the quanta directly; thus what is primary is physical. — PoeticUniverse

I was using the colloquial term "spooky" in the same sense as Einstein's "spooky action at a distance". He wasn't denying that something physical was going on, just noting that it was counter-intuitive. Likewise, a mathematical "Field" has the same physicality as an imaginary "Ghost". It's a concept in a mind, that is used to explain some mysterious features of Reality. Scientists have concluded that something invisible & intangible is affecting the propagation of light through "empty" space.

By giving a Latin or Greek name, they make it seem more scientific and less mysterious. And the Effect is definitely physical and measurable. But the presumed Cause remains a mental concept with no physical properties. Aristotle proposed four kinds of causes. And a mathematical Field of relationships may be imagined as a "Material" Cause, minus the matter. And physicists use that notion as-if it is an "Efficient" Cause, even though the Zero-Point Vacuum Energy is merely Virtual : i.e. Potential.

So, an invisible Field is a plausible cause of physical behavior, for those who view the world through the lens of a physical Paradigm. But a Ghost is also a plausible Cause of physical books falling off shelves, for those whose Paradigm includes the possibility of non-physical causation. Personally, I'm more likely to accept the physical explanation. But I have to admit that a Cause with no sensory evidence is "spooky". :cool:

But what are quantum fields fields of? Fields of what fill, or even constitute space and time? — Goldyluck

Stuff? They are the only stuff that there is.

A wavefunction is a momentary cross-section of a quantum field, propagating freely or interacting with other wavefunctions. — Goldyluck

Fields interact with other fields; it makes for a very complicated math to be worked on.

Whoever wants to know exactly where a particle is can go fish, and not know exactly where the fish are. No big deal.

Can you clarify this? Let P be the proposition that tomorrow I will have turned to the left. P is today neither true nor false. What is the exception to the LEM? What reality? — tim wood

The LEM dictates that P must be either true or false. You have said, P is neither true nor false, hence an exception to the law.

But what would be here the difference between the logical and the ontological possibility, the possibility having been arrived at as a possibility? — tim wood

In the case of yesterday there is a truth or falsity to "I turned left". Either it actually occurred or it did not. In the case of tomorrow there is neither truth nor falsity to "I will turn left" because I could do either. Look up Aristotle's famous example, "there will be a sea battle tomorrow". It must be the case that we believe it to be neither true nor false, or else we would not deliberate in decision making.

I think this is misleading. To be sure, this true of all models. But this just a conscious setting aside of the irrelevant - not a deficiency for a model. It leaves open the question as to whether it is a good or a bad model. — tim wood

If you understood the difference, you would see that it is not irrelevant. Newton's law of inertia for instance states that a force is required to change the motion of a thing. But imagine the difference, if it was required to apply a force at every moment of passing time, to maintain any constant motion. These are two very distinct ways of looking at inertia with completely different implications. But which one is correct? Since motion appears to us to be constant, we take constant motion for granted. Then we say a force is required to alter it. But what validates the notion that there is not a force (such as gravity) being applied to every massive object at every moment of passing time, which maintains its constant motion? If this is the case, then we need to understand what sustains this force, to be able to understand motion.

Stuff? They are the only stuff that there is. — PoeticUniverse

Yes! But, unlike material stuff, mathematical "stuff" is a conventional idea, that only mathematicians can fully appreciate. The rest of us just have to take their word for it, that such invisible stuff is out there in the abstraction we call "Aether". But, that's OK. In my personal worldview, mind-stuff is "the only stuff there is". What I'm referring to is "Information". Which, like Energy, is known as a Causal Force only by its Effects on tangible matter. Otherwise, like Aether, it's un-touchable and un-seeable. But, we can imagine it in terms of material metaphors such as the "fabric of space", or as-if it's a "grid of lines" drawn on the surface of a topological warped plane in space..

So, in my view, it's all-information-all-the-time-everywhere. But, like Energy, raw Information can be converted into "material "stuff" that our physical senses can detect. Those us educated in the conventional concepts of modern physics, take those invisible "things" for granted. But a person from the jungles of New Guinea, might think you are talking about ghosts : the invisible & intangible spirits of departed ancestors, who now live in a parallel world. Talk about "primitive" notions! :joke:

PS__Both the primitives and the moderns accept the wisdom of their experts (shaman or scientist) about such unseen "stuff".

Information :
Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.

Aether is the spacious swarthiness of the skies
Of illusive hopes of finding the illumined providence
Riding on mythologies through the routeless night streams
Marooned man clutching godly stones of earthly dreams . . . .
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aether/