John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
quantamagazine.org
John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
1–10 of 203 posts
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#2Having every ‘observer’ also ‘participate’ seems to just make it even more intractably complex? Since presumably ‘participators’ can influence each other simultaneously.
So I just don’t see how any of these theories are attractive prospects, the infinite regress seems even more severe than superdeterminism theories.
It’s quite a shame this man got stuck on something that may be literally impossible to prove.
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#3Quanta is such a great resource! High value spend from Jim Simons vast pool of dollars.
I came across MTW’s “Gravitation” as a student in the 70’s and it inspired a positively unreasonable desire to own a copy just because it looked so beautiful. Couldn’t afford the doorstop of a book at that time but happily it is still in print 50 years later.
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#4Having every ‘observer’ also ‘participate’ seems to just make it even more intractably complex? Since presumably ‘participators’ can influence each other simultaneously. So I just don’t see how any of these theories are attractive prospects, the infinite regress seems even more severe than superdeterminism theories. It’s quite a shame this man got stuck on something that may be literally impossible to prove.
Understandability to era-bound humans is not a prerequisite for existence luckily.
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#5“Hope produces space and time?”
The longer I live the more I appreciate Kurt Gödel’s proof that we can never know everything about the universe.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-godels-proof-works-202007...
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#6[flagged]
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#7Going from pregeometry to spacetime as information with observer participation might in ways relate to the law of increasing functional complexity. What if observers start as other particles but join together to iterate in increasingly large combinations in order to generate increasing complexity in spacetime phenomena? Exotic particles in space might be kind of like interesting minerals forming in comets and so on.
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#8Having every ‘observer’ also ‘participate’ seems to just make it even more intractably complex? Since presumably ‘participators’ can influence each other simultaneously. So I just don’t see how any of these theories are attractive prospects, the infinite regress seems even more severe than superdeterminism theories. It’s quite a shame this man got stuck on something that may be literally impossible to prove.
It's not like we are any closer to resolving the measurement problem today. I wouldn't be quick to dismiss Wheeler, all alternative theories for this problem are radical or "unattractive".
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#9> It is not a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.
It’s more palatable when we consider not the observation, but the information that was collapsed out of the superimposed states at the time of the observation. The universe uses lazy evaluation, and things only happen when they have effects on other things, and what we see as past depends on what we observe now, as both need to be consistent with each other.
Re: John Wheeler saw the tear in reality
#10“Hope produces space and time?” The longer I live the more I appreciate Kurt Gödel’s proof that we can never know everything about the universe. https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-godels-proof-works-202007...
You’d need something bigger than the universe to represent everything in the universe.