hi all.

new scientist is a fun magazine, verging on the respectability of eg sci am, but
the articles are always written in a sort of breathless tone, like, "this person
is the next einstein". its entertaining, but kind of bogus in a way.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127011.600-can-fractals-make-sense-of-th\
e-quantum-world.html?full=true

the tim palmer approach sounds very promising to me, and if he can get other
Phds onto the "hidden variable bandwagon" (which is still mostly empty) then Id
say its a great development, even if it turns out not to be very close to
reality.

it is an interesting coincidence that palmer is a meteorology phd.. hidden
variables in physics is very similar to meteorology. if qm physicists thought
more like meteorologists, it would be a good thing. hidden variable abound in
meteorology. its almost the assumption, instead of the radical, unconventional
idea. heres a ubiquitous, well accepted, hidden meteorological variable ...
"wind"!!!

so, I skimmed his paper.
I like the basic outline & sketch. its definitely a 30,000 ft view overview.

I have some quibbles & issues.
first, I dont think he does enough to derive QM formalism from anything deeper.
he sort of just sketches out the overall plausibility.

next, he seems to be asserting the bell-kochen-specker theorem guarantees that
his "hidden reality" is fractal. there seems to be a lot of handwaving going on
here. I dont see how he derives the property of fractality anywhere. however,
Ill agree with his basic premise that it is "plausible".

next, he insists the hidden reality is uncomputable. this is not to be confused
with fractal, but yet he does seem to get them mixed up from my point of view..
there are lots of fractals that are computable. I dont see how he has at all
proven that it is "necessary" that the hideen reality is uncomputable. but yes,
putting uncomputability into the basic physical theory is certainly a cool move
and likely to win lots of interest. its an idea that goes back to penrose from
what I can tell.


p 5
"Invariant sets can be constructed from time series of experimental data, using
the Takens Embedding Theorem (Takens, 1981). Suppose the time series of
some component of X is measured every t units of time. Then the invariant
set can be reconstructed from a sufficiently long time series of this
component. An important conceptual point relevant to the discussion on free
variables below is that it doesn’t matter which specific component of the
state
vector is used. A sufficiently long time series of even an energetically
unimportant or otherwise seemingly irrelevant component of the state vector
can be used to construct the invariant set."

he mentions this again later. I think palmer needs to focus more on popper's
falsifiability criteria. consider that two scathing and influential critiques of
string theory have been published within the last few years. they basically seem
to boil down to "string theory is not falsifiable" along with sociological
criticism. (which boils down to something like, "its become something like a
religion of physicists").

palmer needs to focus on and answer the question.. is it possible to prove that
the underlying reality is fractal, or uncomputable, or anything that proves that
QM is incomplete?

p 9
"No classical theory requires states to be constrained to invariant
sets, even when the theory supports such sets. In this sense, the proposed
“hidden-variable model” being proposed here is certainly not classical."

again I feel there is some major hand waving going on here. it seems like palmer
says, "hey everyone, maybe the hidden reality is fractal and uncomputable, so is
that more palatable to you to try to find it?" .. but this is disappointing to
me, I think there is a hidden reality that is characterized by qm, but that it
may not be necessarily that complex, and possibly neither fractal nor
uncomputable, only that there is a sort of "weak coupling" from this hidden
reality to our own based on "measurement".

in other words, our measurement devices are very rudimentary and primitive for
revealing it. this particular approach tends to imply that there is some
possibility for better measurement if we improve our theoretical grasp of why
our measurement devises are so intrinsically flawed.. but maybe there is an
opening for better measuring devices?? this is in fact one of the best case
scenarios for physics-- a whole new order of reality that not only exists but
which we can access with strong ingenuity.


The Invariant Set Hypothesis:
A New Geometric Framework for the Foundations of
Quantum Theory and the Role Played by Gravity
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0812/0812.1148.pdf




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