Comments on the Possibilist Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, aka Models vs. Reality
September 30, 2015 6 Comments
Reality is what it is. Everything else is just a model.
From Plato to Einstein to random humans like myself, we are all trying to figure out what makes this world tick. Sometimes I think I get it pretty well, but I know that I am still a product of my times, and therefore my view of reality is seen through the lens of today’s technology and state of scientific advancement. As such, I would be a fool to think that I have it all figured out. As should everyone else.
At one point in our recent past, human scientific endeavor wasn’t so humble. Just a couple hundred years ago, we thought that atoms were the ultimate building blocks of reality and everything could be ultimately described by equations of mechanics. How naïve that was, as 20th century physics made abundantly clear. But even then, the atom-centric view of physics was not reality. It was simply a model. So is every single theory and equation that we use today, regardless of whether it is called a theory or a law: Relativistic motion, Schrodinger’s equation, String Theory, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – all models of some aspect of reality.
We seek to understand our world and derive experiments that push forward that knowledge. As a result of the experiments, we define models to best fit the data.
One of the latest comes from quantum physicist Ruth Kastner in the form of a model that better explains the anomalies of quantum mechanics. She calls the model the Possibilist Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (PTI), an updated version of John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (TIQM, or TI for short) proposed in 1986. The transactional nature of the theory comes from the idea that the wavefunction collapse behaves like a transaction in that there is an “offer” from an “emitter” and a “confirmation” from an “absorber.” In the PTI enhancement, the offers and confirmations are considered to be outside of normal spacetime and therefore the wavefunction collapse creates spacetime rather than occurs within it. Apparently, this helps to explain some existing anomalies, like uncertainty and entanglement.
This is all cool and seems to serve to enhance our understanding of how QM works. However, it is STILL just a model, and a fairly high level one at that. And all models are approximations, approximating a description of reality that most closely matches experimental evidence.
Underneath all models exist deeper models (e.g. string theory), many as yet to be supported by real evidence. Underneath those models may exist even deeper models. Consider this layering…
Every layer contains models that may be considered to be progressively closer to reality. Each layer can explain the layer above it. But it isn’t until you get to the bottom layer that you can say you’ve hit reality. I’ve identified that layer as “digital consciousness”, the working title for my next book. It may also turn out to be a model, but it feels like it is distinctly different from the other layers in that, by itself, it is no longer an approximation of reality, but rather a complete and comprehensive yet elegantly simple framework that can be used to describe every single aspect of reality.
For example, in Digital Consciousness, everything is information. The “offer” is then “the need to collapse the wave function based on the logic that there is now an existing conscious observer who depends on it.” The “confirmation” is the collapse – the decision made from probability space that defines positions, spins, etc. This could also be seen as the next state of the state machine that defines such behavior. The emitter and absorber are both parts of the “system”, the global consciousness that is “all that there is.” So, if experimental evidence ultimately demonstrates that PTI is a more accurate interpretation of QM, it will nonetheless still be a model and an approximation. The bottom layer is where the truth is.
Elvidge’s Postulate of Countable Interpretations of QM…
The number of intepretations of Quantum Mechanics always exceeds the number of physicists.
Let’s count the various “interpretations” of quantum mechanics:
- Bohm (aka Causal, or Pilot-wave)
- Copenhagen
- Cosmological
- Ensemble
- Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber
- Hidden measurements
- Many-minds
- Many-worlds (aka Everett)
- Penrose
- Possibilist Transactional (PTI)
- Relational (RQM)
- Stochastic
- Transactional (TIQM)
- Von Neumann-Wigner
- Digital Consciousness (DCI, aka Elvidge)
Unfortunately you won’t find the last one in Wikipedia. Give it about 30 years.
Musings on the Nature of Reality 
Il use analgies always and nothing more or less than that.
What is reality.
I belive in an language of information we stil dont grasp, the contures maybe bot not near it yett.
What could it then be.
I use the ying/yang model, as the prime base of begin, and this state also emits electromegnetism, witch is then a system in ballance.
The physics are clear.
But stil we lack something, the infromation, that have to be prepacked into the system, because unless an system in ballance is puched/altered, nothing would happend.
You cant create something, from nothing.
You need something.
The whole system is mutch more complex than just the atomic dance, witch is basicly an reflection of everything else, an interconected entety in an complex system, and when interconected it also have acses to infromation genegrate by the larger comunety aka collective consciousness.
This can be scaled upwards, or downwards, as obove so belove, and vice versa.
An holographic manifestation of the effect the collective force feilds inherent infromation base is ready to give the matter witch is been manifesting it self in the field called mass, aka biological entetys.
Our very own DNA.
WE are the same, energetic entetys, in an force field, witch have the same base as all living entetys have on this planet, all this infro is in the force field, and that force field is generated by our earth, and our sun.
This universal ascpet is beasicly the same, it justs is manifested otherwise, as what we call reality.
but electromagnetism dont explains everything, it stil need a infromation deliverance system, to make matter manifest, to be an copy of what was the intial base of infomation force fields, the parents.
Both of them.
But I belive its more complex than an simple ying/yang, because of entanglement.
This pushes the issue into what I can define as gemetric systems.
Secret gemetry.
For this, if one consider ones observer atributes, as deleyed choice exp. have shown, and the infromation/separation from mass, this system is stil unballanced when it comes to potentiale.
Potential manifests when observer, aling with the infromation prepacked along the force feilds potentiale, makes it happend, in real time, as an event.
Infromation processing, with all the infro prepacked is what I say it is.
This feild, is what desides whats the limit and what to manifest as reality to those feilds that is biological, fractional.
But that initial info isnt within the atom, its source is emited upon it, the only thing I can think of is collors.
What is it with collors.
So maybe, this is an thetrahedon a 5 pointing cube, if my mind is corect, I hope, hehe, where the ballance in the entanglement, is the ballance bwtween our perspetions interpetation and the language in the force field, witch we are preddisgend to persive.
This can be scaled upward and downward in biological life and matter.
I hope it helped.
Consciousness creates reality.
Mater is a systemic ballance between two opositts, whom then is cept in place bye ballncing their inherent forcefields, consciousness, witch is is then ballanced out into the grater pickture of reality acordingly to the field.
Space/time is bound to matter, infromation isnt.
peace
Hello Mikael, You wrote, “Consciousness creates reality.”
This is interesting. Can you explain it more?
Is there a way to subscribe to this blog? I’ve looked around, can’t seem to find it. You’re on WordPress, a plugin such as Postmatic would be helpful. I’m totally aligned with this site and would love to receive notifications when new posts are added.
It’s more likely that they’re all equally valid interpretations. Depending how you see a problem, and from which viewpoint, or how big of a picture, each one of these relate a truth.
The article says,”Every layer contains models that may be considered to be progressively closer to reality.”
My question is that how can you claim to know that which layer is closer and which layer is further to reality when you do not know what reality is? Or are you claiming to know what reality is? If you are then where is the need for models?
Atoms by definition are the ultimate building blocks. What do you think “atom” means? (Not what they say it means, but what it means.)
String theory isn’t a theory but a stupid toy model that abuses the fraudulent Cesàro-Ramanudzhan sum-average as a sum of the infinite reciprocal harmonic series; as with any infinite operation the solution depends on the offset and number of equations. It’s abuse of notation to claim that the solution represents equality rather than a set containment. The -1/12 then somehow becomes translated into 24+2 degrees of freedom needed to make a body’s temperature-motion relation convenient or elegant (like a “spherical cow”). Then without any justification it claims that each new interaction is restricted to its spatial dimension, when this isn’t observed for the known interactions. All bodies are known to be at least three-spatial-dimension, but strings are 1D. And it assumes the Planck scale imposes a nether limit on bodies, which quantizes these strings, when the Planck scale is siimply where gravity’s attraction exceeds the repulsion of two like charges and there can be arbitrarily many compounds smaller like there are heavenly orbits.