Clearly, there are no holonomic constraint equations possible for particles under "intelligent control" — Sir Philo Sophia

Seems obvious to me — Sir Philo Sophia

I am curious, is this your personal theory about animate matter, or did you read it somewhere?

Amen, and a small point. Anything can be defined by anyone anyway they choose to define it - whether any good a different topic. Insofar as the definition is a text intended to convey a definite meaning, wrt to that text the language matters, is in fact the first and arguably only thing that matters.

In literature is the concern for le mot juste, the right word. I imagine in the sciences as well, perhaps as the correct word. And do the sciences have their own phrase for that? — tim wood

My point wasn't that you can define action however you want. It was rather the opposite: action has an established definition in Lagrangian dynamics. But Lagrangian dynamics is just a mathematical framework that is applied differently in different contexts. Once you define your Lagrangian (a mathematical object), then the definition of action follows straightforwardly from that. But how the Lagrangian is cached out in physical terms is going to vary from one theory to another. It is one thing in non-relativistic classical mechanics, another - in relativistic classical mechanics, yet another in quantum mechanics, etc.

Here is a random example from the literature:

This paper proposes a theory for understanding perceptual learning processes within the general framework of laws of nature. Neural networks are regarded as systems whose connections are Lagrangian variables, namely functions depending on time. They are used to minimize the cognitive action, an appropriate functional index that measures the agent interactions with the environment. The cognitive action contains a potential and a kinetic term that nicely resemble the classic formulation of regularization in machine learning. A special choice of the functional index, which leads to forth-order differential equations---Cognitive Action Laws (CAL)---exhibits a structure that mirrors classic formulation of machine learning. In particular, unlike the action of mechanics, the stationarity condition corresponds with the global minimum. Moreover, it is proven that typical asymptotic learning conditions on the weights can coexist with the initialization provided that the system dynamics is driven under a policy referred to as information overloading control. Finally, the theory is experimented for the problem of feature extraction in computer vision. — Cognitive Action Laws: The Case of Visual Features

Here the Lagrangian formulation is given to a mathematical model of a perceptual learning process. The action here doesn't even have the units of energy x time, as it usually does in physics. But given the context of the model, it is unambiguously defined.

I am not going to comment on the OP "theory" with regard to animate vs. inanimate matter, which he somehow wants to cram into the definition of action. I was just giving some context on how action is actually defined in mainstream science for those who may have chanced on this thread.

@fishfry already addressed a number of your misconceptions. You ignored his patient explanations and are now repeating the same mistakes here. And while you quoted my post, you did not address its content and instead repeated the same nonsensical arguments that you made earlier. I don't see a point in continuing this conversation.

Standard set theory includes an axiom that basically says that given a set, any collection of its elements is also a set. Since sets that are not members of themselves are included in the set of all sets, then a collection of all such sets must form a set. But we know from Russell's paradox that such a collection cannot form a set on pain of contradiction.

I am not going to comment on the "definition," but for those who are actually interested in science, action can be defined in any theory that admits a Lagrangian formulation. Lagrangian dynamics applies to a very important class of theories in physics and other sciences. Invariances of the action integral under continuous transformation were the subject of the famous theorems of Emmy Noether, who related them to symmetries and conservation principles, such as conservation of energy.

Because Lagrangian dynamics is a general mathematical model that is applicable in multiple contexts, action cannot be given a single physical definition that will cover all applications. This is a feature, not a bug. A general definition could be something like "the integral with respect to time, along a possible history or trajectory in configuration space of the system, of a quantity with the dimension of energy" (Butterfield).

A classic introduction to the concept in physics is Feynman's lecture on the principle of least action.

Care to explain in what sense it's 'opposite'? — Wayfarer

The article tells how much we actually do know about "dark matter." What we don't know may well turn out to be something pretty boring, like a WIMP. Or it could turn out to be something more exotic (which would be that much more exciting, as far as physicists are concerned). Or it could remain forever out of reach of our instruments and our models. But none of this implies or suggests that something "non-physical" is going on (whatever that means).

Well you can define physical things so as to include it. That's usually how physicalism continues. At first "physical things" were rocks and such, then they became the less intuitive waves, then the non-inuitive "Probability functions" and now "physical things" pass through each other apparently.

I never got the split between physicalism and idealism for this reason, it seems physicalists are playing dirty by changing what counts as "physical" every few decades, leaving no room for something to be "non-physical". Eventually we're going to say that consciousness is a "Physical thing". But at that point the word "Physical" becomes meaningless and redundant, as it should, and so will "Idealism". We'll just have "thingism" — khaled

That's a problem if you define "physical" as what current physics posits - see Hempel's dilemma, etc. (SEP article on Physicalism goes into gory details if you are interested.) I personally don't see a satisfactory definition of "physicalism" in terms of an ontological commitment.

Nice article in Vox though, and the thrust of it is, if anything, the opposite of Wayfarer's perennial pitch.

As a slightly nerdier companion piece I would recommend this podcast in which cosmologist Sean Carroll interviews astrophysicist Lina Necib on What and Where The Dark Matter Is.

Yet another iteration of "science doesn't know everything there is to know, therefore physicalism is false."

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

given that you are in such great command of current state-of-the-art scholarship on the subject, as you claim to be aware of, then why don't you reply with what you find to be the best scientific definition of what minimal properties constitutes living matter vs inanimate?

If you cannot offer one, your own or what you believe in the most from literature, then I choose to ignore your rants about me not posting literatures best vs Webster's. — Sir Philo Sophia

You missed my point. This wasn't about showing how much more I know on the subject. Although I happened to know a little more than Webster's definition, the point was to show you that voluminous literature on the subject exists and is readily available, so you don't need to start from scratch. I even gave you some specific pointers. But that was because I mistakenly assumed that you may be interested in learning and discussing ideas.

So, let's see if you can do better... — Sir Philo Sophia

Ah, no, thanks. You are not worth my time.

In other words, thanks for confirming that you do not have or know of a concise Scientific Definition of Living vs inanimate matter. So, maybe science has not clearly defined it? — Sir Philo Sophia

Do you really think that people who study life have never given any thought as to what life is? Never ventured a definition? Your OP cites one definition from a dictionary - was that the extent of your research? As a scholar, you owe it first of all to yourself, not to mention your readers, to do your due diligence, rather than demanding that others do your homework for you.

A couple of simple Google Scholar searches would have given you plenty of literature on the topic, including specific proposals, reviews of past efforts, as well as general thoughts on why and how we should (or perhaps shouldn't) go about defining life - which is a question that, as a philosopher, you should probably ask yourself first.

As one example, an entire issue of the Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres journal was devoted just to this question. Or if you like podcasts, I can recommend Sean Carroll's talk with astrobiologist Stuart Bartlett, where they touch on these issues and discuss Bartlett's own proposal. The paper is also available: Defining Lyfe in the Universe: From Three Privileged Functions to Four Pillars ("Lyfe" is not a typo :)).

If you look at the literature, you will quickly notice a pattern: the scientists who are most interested in the definition of life are mostly astrobiologists like Barlett, and origin of life researchers - which makes sense, of course (this is to the point of why we might need a definition of life). From the origins of life perspective, you may find this recent review of particular interest: Origins of Life: A Problem for Physics (2017) by Sara Imari Walker (she was also a guest on Sean Carroll's podcast). Among its 190 references the review includes some of the names that @apokrisis has already recommended to you (but not all - which shows just how much scholarship there is on this topic).


Now as to your own proposal, I find it very puzzling, because it is actually a hypothesis masquerading as a definition: a hypothesis that living organisms have a unique ability to transcend the principle of least action. The principle of least (or stationary) action is considered to be one of the, if not the most fundamental laws of nature:

Among the more or less general laws which manifest the achievements of physical science in the course of recent centuries, the Principle of Least Action is probably the one, which, as regards form and content, may claim to come nearest to that final ideal goal of theoretical research. — Max Planck

If you were to discover that anything in our universe was not subject to this principle, you would have overturned the last two and a half centuries of physics (and not just physics). The only explanation that I can see for your matter-of-fact attitude towards your "definition" is that you are harboring some severe misconceptions about PLA, as evidenced by comments such as this:

The path of least action, As defined in physics, for any living system is simply to die. — Sir Philo Sophia

Far from dooming living systems, the PLA, alongside the 2nd law of thermodynamics may be key to understanding self-organization in our universe, of which living systems are, by some metrics, the most extreme example known to us. See for instance Chaisson, The cosmic environment for the growth of complexity (1998), Georgiev and Georgiev, The least action and the metric of an organized system (2002), Annila, The 2nd law of thermodynamics delineates dispersal of energy (2010), as well as Apo's recommendations.

Well, you seem not to hold philosophy in high regard compared to natural sciences. — ssu

I am not denigrating philosophy. But since we have this specialization and division of labor, philosophers should be using scientific results and ideas where it is appropriate - for example, when discussing the metaphysics of space and time (e.g. The Ontology of Spacetime ed. D. Dieks.)

What I just oppose is the simple reductionism of the view that If physics at the nuclear level uses QM, the QM should be used as an overall philosophy — ssu

Well, that is one view, but it is not the only view, and it is not just taken for granted because science.

Hence if you are making a philosophical argument, far better to base it on previous philosophical inquiry on the question at hand. — ssu

That's a terrible idea. I just can't think of a single advantage in rejecting the fruits of the most productive period in the history of scientific thought and empirical research in favor of recycling past ideas. Ideas, which themselves were, of course, to a great extent informed by observations and scientific ideas of their time and times past.

I would ask why would it be so. Because philosophy has debated already for long the problems of physicalism and materialism. And the pseudo-scientific world view was about a "Clock-work universe" and then this changed to "Multiverse" with Butterfly-effects, it really isn't pure philosophy. — ssu

I say good riddance to "pure philosophy" (if there ever was such a thing, which of course there wasn't - see above). Of course, my idea of a scientifically literate philosopher is not one whose ideas about science come from popular media publications and, God help us, Butterfly Effect. Fortunately, in actuality there is no lack of philosophers who are better informed about their subject matter (see, for example, some names from the three generations of philosophers of physics in the paper that I linked above, which include actual physics PhDs).

Yet Is philosophy just thinking about nature? Natural sciences answer more directly to what nature is, yet any question of "what should be" and you need philosophy. — ssu

No argument here - except, of course, where philosophers choose the naturalizing approach.

Philosophers can relate to science, but basing philosophy on science can be a tricky thing as our scientific understanding can change a lot. — ssu

Well, what would we base it on then? We obviously cannot assume that the current state of science is the last word and the whole truth about nature. But ignoring science would be an even bigger blunder. We just have to live with the fact that philosophy is no less contingent than science.

People tend simply to think that physics, Quantum Mechanics, cosmology etc. are somehow close to the basic philosophical questions, hence we let physicists blabber about philosophical question, things that they actually have not studied or worked on. — ssu

There is a reason why so-called fundamental physics is often thought to have an intimate connection with basic metaphysical questions (cf. physicalism, metaphysical and ontological grounding...) For example, while it is not a given that the ontology of fundamental physics has some sort of metaphysical priority, it is a popular enough notion.

But more to the point of your complaint, as I pointed out above, science cannot be too far removed from philosophical questions. When scientists attempt to make sense of nature and come up with theories about it, they are not doing anything different in principle than what philosophers do when they turn to the same subjects. It is only relatively recently that academic and technological specialization bracketed off certain methods of study and called them "science."

Still, if we view science as a branch or outgrowth of philosophy, then professional scientists, as a rule, have a much more narrow specialization than professional philosophers. This is why we find that scientifically literate philosophers are usually in a superior position when they philosophize about nature outside of the narrow scientific context, while, as a rule, professional scientists appear to be dilettantes in these matters. But that is when science is in a quasi-stable state, when no major paradigmatic changes are under way and well-informed philosophers can stay up-to-date with the state of science. Conversely, when you look at the history of thought, most important new developments in the thinking about nature were driven by developments in science.

I'll start with a nominee:

When someone lets you in on something, you're getting it as you are.
You can therefore never understand them. — jorndoe

Heh, are you trying to repeat Stove's competition? (Stop me if I am spoiling it!)

Well, I'm being careful to distinguish between transmission and emission. Emission can be described as the spread of a single electron wavefunction from the tip of the cathode. Transmission is emission + absorption. In standard QM, transmission has occurred when we detect an electron on the screen. Emission by itself cannot, as MU keeps saying, be observed directly and independently (well, it can, but not without destroying the interference pattern).

So the electron wavefunction may well continue to evolve but simply not collapse. In TQM, the same holds: the retarded wavefunction can evolve indefinitely; it is only when the transaction with the advanced wave occurs that transmission occurs. As per the OP, the emission occurs precisely because the transmission occurs, i.e. it is simply one of the boundary conditions of a process that is agnostic about any arrow of time. — Kenosha Kid

As per Cramer (and his predecessors), there can be no emission without transmission in the absorber theory, whether classical or quantum. "Absorber theory, unlike conventional quantum mechanics, predicts that in a situation where there is a deficiency of future absorption in a particular spatial direction, there will be a corresponding decrease in emission in that direction." (I don't think you disagree, since that is also the premise of your hypothesis - just pointing this out, because what you wrote might suggest otherwise.)

In Type II transactions there is still an "absorber" - well, let's call it a "partner emitter."

I wonder though whether the absorber theory actually rules out, logically or empirically, uncollapsed/unabsorbed waves?

True, hence my interest in Type II transactions, which, if they existed, should be empirically observable and presumably would differentiate TQM-like interpretations from others empirically. — Kenosha Kid

By the way, in the 1980 paper Cramer wrote: "Davies argues that the most general test of absorber theory would include the possibility of type II transactions." This refers to a 1975 paper by Paul Davies: On recent experiments to detect advanced radiation. Perhaps that would be a good place to start digging in that direction. (Google Scholar doesn't list Cramer's paper among the references.)

I'm not sold either! It's just something else to ponder. The challenge is how to keep up with revolutionary progress in the sciences with static models. How do we explain even simple demonstrations of magnetism? — magritte

One can't usefully make general statements about the state of philosophy, but it is not like the progress of science is universally ignored - certainly not by those who specialize in modern science, but more besides. Obviously, Darwinism and Einstein's relativity have had a pronounced effect on philosophy (for better or for worse).

Speaking of QM, I recently came across this entertaining survey from F.A. Muller: The Influence of Quantum Physics on Philosophy. He concludes thus:

Although quantum physics has influenced philosophy in the sense that it has grown a new flourishing and blossoming branch of the tree of philosophy, apart from some recent contact between philosophy of physics and metaphysics, quantum physics has had hardly any influence on philosophy at all, and at best some influence on metaphysics, mostly in recent times. With regard to prominent issues intensely thought about by philosophers, such as those on the Chalmers-Bourget list [referring to their 2014 survey "What do philosophers believe?" - SC], we dare conclude that it is difficult to see how quantum physics could bear on those issues. If it cannot, it ought not, for ought implies can. — F.A. Muller

While I am on board with analytic philosophy in general, I am skeptical of totalizing positivist worldmaking.

Even speculative physics of other possible physical worlds is intended to be fully mathematical as soon as the needed maths are invented. — magritte

If you are thinking of such things as multiverses in cosmology or the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics, then it's the other way around: mathematics is there from the start, evocative metaphors of "worlds" are interpretations.

Is it really possible to say anything whatsoever in any language that is not predicated on at least implied metaphysics? — magritte

Identifying metaphysics with just any conceptualization is selling it a little cheap, don't you think?

There are theoretical physicists (hand waving) and mathematical physicists (mathematicians working in physics). — jgill

To be fair, I don't think that these disciplines are very distinct. I don't know any mathematical physicists well, but some theoretical physicists that I've known have gone back and forth throughout their career between working on specific problems in physics and working on less specific mathematical problems, depending on their engagement.

You are engaging in a strange exercise. You have no idea what philosophy of physics is, and you are trying to figure it out from what you think the words mean. Why? Is there some reason why you can't just use the resources at your disposal - you know, Internet, books, journals - to get some idea of what actual practitioners do?

Philosophy is not so much about the how. If it were, it would be a science. What does that leave? It leaves the what and the why. A philosopher of physics is going to be interested in what physicists are thinking and why they're thinking it, and mainly in terms of the history of the thinking that has led to the moment. Probably they will document the axioms in use by the thinkers under consideration. Then perhaps to document their presuppositions, this latter much the more difficult because presuppositions, being presupposed, are usually not apparent. — tim wood

Yes, that is part of what philosophy of physics is (or more broadly, philosophy, history and sociology of science). And it isn't much different in its scope and methods than a lot of the philosophy that you are probably more familiar with, that has more to do with history, biography and philology than with logic and metaphysics as such. This is probably not what @magritte thinks of as philosophy, but it has long been part of the academic discipline.

But that's not all there is to the philosophy of physics.

philosophy in its highest sense, which I take to mean knowledge of man, his peculiar character and the nature of his life, I would welcome it. — Todd Martin

That's more than a little arrogant, don't you think? Who are you to legislate what "philosophy in its highest sense" should be? Here's a thought: philosophy is what people do when they do "philosophy."

If physicists understood the underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy — magritte

The underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy? Really? There is such a thing?

The first is that philosophy is a logical enterprise, an application of some pure logic just as mathematics is. Like mathematics or other axiomatic systems, philosophy attempts to stay as simple as possible but not too simple and touches any other ground only as necessary to meet the demands of some arbitrary (strings, tiles, whatever) application domain. There are many possible mathematics and philosophies with the distinction being in their axiomatic choices. Thus, neither mathematics nor philosophy should be thought of or treated as monolithic.

If any of this makes any sense, then that is the rational for my answer to question 5. above. Theoretical physics is very different from observational physics. They are totally different games by philosophical standards. Knowing the formula for the flight of the bumblebee says nothing about why I was stung when I stuck my hand in there or how I should whack one. — magritte

To be honest, I don't recognize either philosophy or physics in your description.

I ask because I am pretty sure that physics and a philosophy of physics cannot be the same thing. I have a pretty good idea what philosophy is and what physics is, but no idea what is here meant by a philosophy of. And unless we find some good starting point at least, philosophy of physics seems to border on the oxymoronic. — tim wood

So ok, you are clueless. I don't blame you for that: one cannot and doesn't need to know about everything. But if you are interested enough to join the conversation, why can't you make even a tiny effort to learn?

Here, let me google that for you.

Want to see some examples? Here.

Just for the heck of it, what do you suppose a philosophy of physics is? What does it look like? How does the thinking of a physicist differ from the thinking of a philosopher of physics? Can there even be such a thing? — tim wood

Did Google ban your or something?

We see more and more that science, mainly physics, has strayed into the realm of philosophy and though experiments — CallMeDirac

There was never a firm partition between science and philosophy. As academic disciplines they only became distinct relatively recently. Natural science used to be called Natural Philosophy (hence Ph.D.), and this nomenclature was a true reflection of the state of scholarship, which knew no boundaries between what we today call "science" and "philosophy."

Nowadays scholarship, like most professional pursuits, is much more specialized. But the reason most scientists don't have to give philosophy much thought, if they don't feel so inclined, is that the theoretical groundwork has already been laid down before them, frameworks have been built, and they can now do productive work within those frameworks, only occasionally doing some maintenance and expansion that does not call for much philosophizing.

But even today's academic boundaries are porous, and at the forefront of theoretical science it is often hard to make a distinction between science and philosophy. And that is how it should be.

I don't even see any physicists with a glimmer of understanding of the philosophy of their own field. — magritte

What do you mean? No doubt, the share of all physicists who are knowledgeable about the philosophy of physics (as an academic field) is quite small. But that is to be expected, and the same can be said about every other field outside of philosophy itself. But surely you must know that there are some physicists who are, at the very least, interested in philosophy, and some are actually knowledgeable enough to participate in the academic process. If you had even a casual interest in the philosophy of science, you would have encountered such examples by now. Certainly on the other side of the fence, philosophers of physics nowadays usually have at least some physics background, all the way to postgraduate degrees.

Effectively, yes. TQM is a conspiracy of sorts. — Kenosha Kid

Well, as I said, so long as, over the lifetime of the experiment, the holes on average occupy a uniform distribution, we will obtain the characteristic banded pattern. — Kenosha Kid

So if the holes (at the screen and elsewhere downstream) don't participate in the conspiracy (indeed, such an extended conspiracy would seem problematic), and there aren't many holes available at any one time, then the emitter has to time its transactions so as to build up the right pattern over time. Indeed, you need to posit that the process of picking the site of the transaction unfolds not instantaneously, as Cramer posits, but in all 3+1 dimensions. That's the only plausible solution that I can think of.

Is it plausible? I suppose the bare-bones theory (not including a specific mechanism for the Born rule) does not rule it out, and neither does its empirical basis, which consists of just such accumulation over time of apparently probabilistic events.

Mods, this is dangerously stupid. I don't think that our board should be adding to the Covid disinformation on the 'net. (And I don't care if some shrill idiot calls us fascists, and neither should you.)

The problem that Block considers is how to define the mind in a non-circular way, which would mean avoiding mentalistic terms and concepts as part of the definition. (This is a notoriously difficult, perhaps intractable challenge.) What about behaviorism, i.e.diagnosing the presence of a mind in some entity by judging its behavior? This is what the Turing Test is supposed to accomplish. But can we describe the test without recourse to any mentalistic concepts, such as thinking? (Remember, thinking is what we want to define, so we cannot appeal to it as part of the definition, on pain of circularity.) So that's the problem that Block is grappling with here:

For example, one might specify that the judge be moderately knowledgeable about computers and good at thinking, or better, good at thinking about thinking. But including a specification of the mental qualities of the judge in the description of the test will ruin the test as a way of defining the concept of intelligence in non-mentalistic terms. — Ned Block

I'm not sure why you think so. The electron doesn't have to be transmitted at all. In fact, wherever the hole is located, we expect no electron to be transmitted most of the time. Any time the hole is at a site where the probability of finding the electron (as given by its wavefunction) is zero, then no transmission event will occur at all, for instance (i.e. you cannot slow the rate down to 0.001 Hz and get an event every 1 ms if the only available hole is sometimes inaccessible). — Kenosha Kid

In our example of a diffraction through slits the wavefunction is non-zero almost everywhere on the back screen, so that is not an issue. If an electron is ready to fire, and there is (in the edge case) just one hole that it can fill, then it will go there almost always, because where else would it go? Which means that the distribution over time will just be the distribution of holes popping up on the screen. We could put one slit, or two, or ten - doesn't matter, the distribution will be the same.

(Unless holes and/or emission events conspire to construct the distribution that we expect to see.)

Similarly if the probability of finding the electron at a given site is 0.2, you would expect an electron to transmit there when there is a hole there at most 20% of the time. — Kenosha Kid

Not if that's the only place where it can go, or one of the few places where it can go. Perhaps the emitter is picky and won't always transact with a hole just because it's available? So in your example if the only available hole is at a 20% probability spot, then 80% of the time the electron will wait out until another hole opens up (and then make another probabilistic decision). That would work, but where is the mechanism for this process?

In reality, the screen is more complex, and electrons will usually be able to squeeze in somewhere. But there should, as per Pauli, always be places it cannot squeeze, and that is neglected in ideal treatments. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, but in order to explain experiments where we see nice diffraction patterns, we must conclude that the number of holes available at any given time is not too few, or else we would be seeing something different (or we need to modify the theory).

You mean this?

Three of the fundamental equations of quantum physics are:
E=mc2,
w=P/mv,
and E=Pf,
where E=energy, m=mass, c=the velocity of light, w=wavelength, f=frequency, v=velocity, and P=Planck’s constant.

If the first two equations are solved for mass, followed by substituting and canceling such that the absolute minimum of variables remain, the simplest synthetic formulation is v=fw. This implies that all matter is in motion, and the structure of this fluxing matter takes the intrinsic form of a wave. It appears that since mass can be vacated from the hybrid expression in favor of a more essential form, namely a wave, the structurality we associate with mass, namely three dimensional particularity, is an epiphenomenon. Then we must inquire as to the sense in which this is true. — Enrique

You seem to be groping around the idea that massive objects exhibit irreducibly quantum behavior, which is expressed in the equation for the De Broglie wavelength. Since massive objects exhibit wave-like behavior, each of them has a characteristic wavelength associated with it. For example, when a basketball falls through a hoop, it undergoes diffraction, just like when light shines through a pinhole - an immeasurably tiny bit of diffraction, which nonetheless we can theoretically estimate via its de Broglie wavelength. This isn't about matter being in motion - that is a triviality. Since motion is relative, everything is or is not in motion, depending on the reference frame. Rather, this is about one specific manifestation of quantum behavior of matter, which you overthink at your peril absent the understanding of its full context.

As for the rest... I couldn't get much further than the next paragraph, which quickly devolves into a word salad. This is not a theory in any meaningful sense.

Not *only*: the wavefunction of the emitted electron still natters; my point was rather that it can't be the *only* thing that matters.

In TQM itself, the probability of a transaction causing absorption at (r, t) is the amplitude of the retarded wavefunction arriving at (r, t) times the amplitude of the advanced wave travelling backward from (r, t). So it depends on the probability amplitude of *both* waves. — Kenosha Kid

Well, the confirmation wave is just an echo of the offer wave: its amplitude is proportional to the amplitude of the offer wave at the would-be absorber. So the information carried back by confirmation waves is redundant, as far as the system as a whole is concerned - it's just a mechanism for establishing a transaction in accordance with the Born rule.

In your example of a screen that has only one absorption site at any one time, only this site can backwards-emit a hole wave. In the language of TQM, only this wave can handshake with the retarded wave, since the amplitude coming from all other sites is everywhere zero.

However, that single hole will move around the screen and, on average, should be smeared out such that the probability distribution we see forming is given only by the retarded wave. — Kenosha Kid

If the hole moves around independently of the impacting wave, while emissions are a Markov process, i.e. a transaction is established whenever a hole is available (as you explain below), with no "knowledge" of what comes before or after, then the resulting distribution of impacts will be independent of the impacting wave. It will only depend on the entropic movement of the hole - most likely just a uniform distribution.

Some dependence on the wavefunction will manifest when multiple holes are available at the same time, but unless there are a whole lot of them (rather than "not many"), the distribution will be blurred.

As someone with nominalist inclinations, I still find this charming, right down to the note of pragmatism: — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, this sounds like where I am at as far as ontology is concerned, though I could never put it as gracefully as Grice does here. I'll have to dig up this paper.

That's so ironic.... That's precisely how I feel about nominalists. — Mapping the Medium

Ooh, burn!

Just curious, what does "nominalist" even mean to you? You don't seem to use it in its usual meaning, but more like "motherfucker."

Is it just me or are Peirce fans rather a cultish bunch? I have yet to meet anyone with a moderate and critical interest in Peirce. It seems like anyone who talks about Peirce more than in passing is almost religiously devoted to him.

That this doesn't hold true is precisely my point. While an individual transmission may depend on the precise microstate of the screen, the screen explores these microstates continuously. A statistical number of transmission events will take place over a period of time, during which one will have a statistical spread across the precise microstates explored during that time, a spread which looks like the probability of finding a given electron at a given position depends principally on the wavefunction. — Kenosha Kid

Let's take an extreme example:

1. The emitter (of electrons, photons, ...) is under experimental control, so that for instance we can ensure that a particle is emitted every millisecond.

2. The availability of receptive absorbers is so constrained by present and future boundary conditions that at any point of time at most one site is available.

Right away, if at the time when we want to make emission happen there are no available absorbers, then we have a problem: some assumption has to give. But even if an absorber is available, the cumulative distribution of impacts will be defined only by the distribution of the available absorbers on the screen over time. And at the same time, in order for the Born rule to hold, that distribution has to match the impacting wavefunction - whatever it happens to be. If we can contrive to emit a particle that hits the screen at times (t₁, t₂, ...), the screen had better supply us absorbers at such locations r_i that (r₁, r₂, ...) form the distribution that we expect to see.

So how can this happen (or can it happen)?

A. (1) and (2) hold, which means that the screen and the universe in its future lightcone have to contrive to match the impacting wavefunction. While no individual absorber is constrained to be in a fixed position at a fixed time, there is a constraint over time on all such absorbers, which is a function of the impacting wavefunction, whatever it happens to be.

B. (2) doesn't quite hold: instead of just one absorber at a time, we have "not many" absorbers. This relaxes the constraint on the screen, but does not completely eliminate it. Unless there is such a constraint, the actual distribution of impacts will inevitably be distorted.

C. (1) does not quite hold: we cannot make emissions happen at will (can we?) This distributes the constraint of producing the right cumulative distribution between the emitter and the screen or shifts it entirely to the emitter, so that now it is the emitter's responsibility to be aware of the state of the screen (and the rest of the universe in the future lightcone) and fire particles under the constraint of producing the right distribution.

The cancellation depends on both waves being advanced waves, so it's not purely terminological. (Advanced waves cannot cancel retarded waves in Cramer's formulation.) — Kenosha Kid

Why not? If I understood it correctly, the reflected wave is out of phase with the advanced wave, so it must cancel it. That the time direction is reversed means that the cancellation occurs everywhere at once, so that to an observer it is as if neither wave ever existed. Only the advanced wave back towards the BB is cancelled; the retarded wave from the emitter is out of phase with the advanced wave, which means that it is in phase with the reflected wave.

Cramer’s proposal cannot work for EM waves, simply because the early universe was not transparent to EM radiation — Darko B

He addresses this concern in the paper, but this physics is way above my pay grade.

Getting back to this topic (sorry, this is tough slog for the old cat-brain):

Clearly then the true probability of transmission from cathode to any given site A-E is not identical to the absolute square of the wavefunction (denoted by the blue rays coming from the cathode), but also on whether each site has an electron in it or not. — Kenosha Kid

So the bolded part is what I am having difficulty with. We do, of course, observe that the cumulative distribution of impacts on the back screen is in line with the square of the wavefunction from the emitter. If emission occurs whenever, while the distribution of available absorbers on the screen is constrained by external factors, then we won't recover the expected distribution. (In the edge case where at most one site is available at any time, the distribution won't even have any dependence on the impacting wave!)

The only way to recover the expected distribution that depends only on the impacting wavefunction is if the timing of successive emissions is coordinated so as to compensate for the constraint from boundary conditions and produce an undistorted distribution over time. But I don't see how such compensatory mechanism is being realized.

Cramer claims to have mapped the above arrow of time to the cosmological arrow in the paper here:

Another paper by Cramer (Foundations of Physics, 1973) specifically treating the arrow of time: http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/TI/The_Arrow_of_EM_Time.pdf — Kenosha Kid


However the more I read it the less compelling I find it. He actually talks about advanced waves going forward in time, which is contrary to what an advanced wave is. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, he says the entire four-vector is reflected at the Big Bang boundary, i.e. time direction of the advanced wave is flipped, but still insists that the reflected wave is an advanced wave. But other than terminology, do you see any issues with his proposal?

But what did I say that was false? lay it out concisely: what is the problem? — jamalrob

You said stuff that a belligerent moron with no reading comprehension might interpret as you endorsing Putin. Shame on you, sir!

Well, have to say that some progress has happened. — ssu

Yes, you are right, if you look at the numbers, the good old times were pretty terrible compared to now. State and even some non-state actors have become more shy about committing atrocities, although often that just means that they lie about it (not caring very much about whether anyone believes their lies).

But the most immediately painful scars are from the 1990s. Nobody wants to go back to that, and that's partly why Putin has been popular. Pro- and anti-Putin often agree that he did what had to be done in his first years in power. Anti-Putin people differ now in thinking, come on, that's enough, time to go. — jamalrob

Some of that fear of the "chaotic 90s," as well as the nostalgia for the good old days of the Soviet rule has been helped along by state propaganda. So is the idea of Putin riding in to save the day in 1999. A lot of the economic recovery during 2000s can be quite simply accounted by the booming oil prices and the accompanying rise in Russia's oil and gas production.