2021-09-12

41: The Reality, Observations, and Interpretations of Them

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There is no relativity or ambiguity in the reality. They originate in interpretations of observations. Unpredictability is another issue.

Topics


About: truth

The table of contents of this article

Starting Context

Target Context


  • The reader will understand the distinctions between the reality, observations, and interpretations of observations, and where relativity, ambiguity, or unpredictability could exist.

Orientation


Absolute truths exist.

Main Body

Stage Direction
Here is Special-Student-7 in a room in an old rather isolated house surrounded by some mountains in Japan.

1: We Mean 'All the Sentient Beings' by "Humans" Here


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 In order to prevent footling mix-ups, let us agree that we mean 'all the sensible beings' by "humans" here.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 So, Earthians are not included.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 I mean 'all the SENTIENT beings'.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Ah, then, they are included.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 And we are included, and also Klingons are included.

So, when I say like "You cannot claim that the position of a particle does not exist just because humans cannot measure it.", retorts like "Also Klingons cannot measure it!" are really unnecessary.

2: The Reality Is the Spacetime Manifold and All on It


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 The reality is the 4-dimensional spacetime manifold and all the world lines and all the fields on it.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Well, there may be some people who do not agree on the supposition.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Some details do not really matter for this discussion. For example, the manifold could be 5-dimensional or whatever-dimensional, and there could be no world lines but only fields.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Then, what aspects matter?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 The 1st important point is that you do not think of a space but think of the spacetime.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 I understand, but many people would have stumbled already.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Please stand up if you have stumbled; if you do not fulfill this point, you will understand almost none of the rest of this article.

The worst by thinking of a space is that you cannot even identify a point, objectively speaking.

For example, when you are floating in "the space", you may claim that you are keeping being at an identical point while another person, who is flying against you, is moving across points, but that another person, for whom you are the one who is moving, can claim that you are moving across points instead.

So, is the supposed "point" you are claiming to have kept being at really a single point or multiple points? . . . You cannot objectively decide which, unless you are as selfish as to claim that only your view counts.

Instead, in the spacetime, there is no problem in identifying any point.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 How so?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Well, as it will be difficult to imagine the 4-dimensional manifold, let us here pretend that the spacetime is a 2-dimensional plane.

Then, you, who are thinking in terms of space, have chosen a t-x coordinates system on the plane by which you keep being on the t-axis, which means that your x-coordinate keeps being '0', and you are claiming that you are keeping being at the identical point just because your x-coordinate is keeping being '0'.

But on the plane, you are not keeping being at any point, but are moving along the t-axis.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 And that another person has chosen a different t-x coordinates system by which your x-coordinate is changing, and that another person is claiming that you are moving across points because your x-coordinate is changing.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 But such a difference of x-coordinates does not matter for any point on the plane to be unambiguously the point.

When you think of a "space", you are really thinking of uncountably many lines on the plane, each of which is parallel to the t-axis of your arbitrarily-chosen t-x coordinates system, and are identifying the uncountably many points of a same x-coordinate, each of which is on one of those lines, as an identical "space" point.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 So, the ambiguity of identity of point comes from the fact that such identification depends on the choice of coordinates system.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Another bad of thinking of a space is that it unnecessarily complicates things: when a particle flies in a space, you have to imagine the space at a time when the particle is at a point, you have to imagine the space at another time when the particle is at another point, and so on, in fact, you have to imagine the space at uncountably many times.

If you think of the spacetime, you have to imagine only the single spacetime and the movement of the particle is just a stationary curve in the spacetime.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 And as such a space is a biased view based on a coordinates system, you will have to think of uncountably many spaces based on uncountably many coordinates systems, in order to unbiased-ly comprehend the reality, very complicated.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 The 2nd important point is that we are always aware of the manifold itself and the world lines and the fields themselves on the manifold, which are nothing but the reality.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Do you mean that many people tend to forget them?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Yes, I do; each of many people cannot or will not distinguish his or her view of the reality from the reality itself, while each of some, a little more enlightened people understands that there can be uncountably many views, but still refuses to acknowledge the reality itself.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Such a little enlightened people begin to claim like "There is no absolute truth.".

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 That is an absurd claim, because there is nothing relative about the manifold itself or all on the manifold themselves. It is just that views are relative.

Any view is an arbitrarily-chosen coordinates system and plotting of some objects on the coordinates system, which is certainly relative, or in fact, usually, it is not really even any legitimate coordinates system, because it is not homeomorphic to any open set of the manifold, which is the reason why the view is also partial, not just relative.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 For example, such a non-homeomorphic view is a 2-dimensional picture of the 4-dimensional manifold.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 On the 2-dimensional picture, a village behind a mountain is not shown, because it is not seen from your view point.

Anyway, the 3rd important point is that we are aware of that humans are like some maggots wallowing in a despairingly minuscule area of the whole manifold.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 How is it important?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 It is important in order to avoid making absurd claims like "~ doesn't exist because humans can't measure it."; humans cannot measure any in almost the whole area of the manifold, because such area is physically unreachable from the wallowing area.

It is foolish to claim that only things in the area reachable from the wallowing area exist.

3: Any Observation Is a Part of the Reality, and Is Not Particularly Special as a Physical Phenomenon


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 When we call an act an observation, on the spacetime manifold, the observer is just a world line (a set of world lines, strictly speaking, unless the observer is a one-particle being, but let me avoid annoying unprofitable accuracy here), the measuring equipment is just a world line (likewise), and the observation is just a physical phenomenon in which the observer, the measuring equipment, and the target object are interacting with each other somehow.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 If the observer who is supposed to be watching the equipment display is in fact asleep, is it still an observation?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 What is important here is that whether it is an observation or not is just a human interpretation: someone may say that it is still an observation and I myself say that it is not, but the target object will definitely not care who wins the argument or whether the observer is awake or not in the first place.

4: Any Interpretation of Any Observation Is a Somewhat Blurry Imitation of a Part of the Reality


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Typically, our purpose is to know the trajectory of the world line of an object, but we cannot know the trajectory by just wishing to know it.

So, we do an observation like detecting photons that were reflected from the object, and make an inference from the observation.

I said "inference" because we cannot really exactly know the trajectory, because, for example, any photon does not hit the object at the exactly desired moment nor hit the object at the exactly desired spot from the exactly desired direction.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 So, the interpretation is blurry, more or less.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 And we typically want to give some numbers to the interpretation, like the coordinates and the velocity components of the object, which requires a coordinates system to be chosen.

Such any choice is arbitrary, of course.

A typically convenient coordinates system for you will be one that is stationary for you, but it is not special for the reality just because it is convenient for you.

Anyway, you plot an approximate trajectory of the object on your arbitrary coordinates system, and what does that signify, really?

It is a kind of reflection of the reality, but of course, is not the reality itself.

The approximate-ness and the arbitrariness is of the interpretation, not of the reality, mind you.

5: On "Changes" and "Parallel Universes"


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Most humans tend to talk about "changes", but there is no such thing as "change" really.

They talk about "changes" because they are thinking in terms of a "space"; for example, a particle "changes" its position in the "space", but in the spacetime, the world line is just a stationary curve.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Or they talk about a "change" with respect to an imaginary reality, for example, "If I had not hit this particle, it would have been on this world line, but by my hitting the particle, I have changed the world line."

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 But "imaginary reality" is an oxymoron; it is just a fantasy; if he or she has hit the particle, he or she has definitely hit it, and there is no another reality.

So, there is no "change" in the reality itself, although they are talking about "changes" from their fantasies.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Some people may claim that there are "changes" from "parallel universes".

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Ah, we had better make clarification on "parallel universes": I do not particularly suppose that there are such things, but even if there are, so what?

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 They may claim that so, there are multiple realities.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 That should mean that there is a single reality in each "parallel universe", which is different from that there are multiple realities in a universe.

What I claim is that there is only one reality in any universe, especially, there is only one reality in THIS universe, and if they are not claiming otherwise, there should be no difference in opinions.

If someone claims that the reality is ambiguous because there are multiple realities in multiple "parallel universes", that claim is beside the point, because we are talking about the reality in THIS universe and existence of other realities in other "parallel universes" does not rebut the unambiguous reality of THIS universe in any way.

As there are some people who bring in "parallel universes" as their reinforcements for their unreasonable arguments, they are like a dull-witted boy who objects to the daily TV time limit of his home, saying "Emily's home has no such limit!"; his parents saying disgustedly "We are not talking about Emily's home. We are talking about OUR home!".

We are talking about OUR universe, not about another one's universe, which any "parallel universe" is. You may assume that there is someone who resembles you, but that someone is not you, however that someone resembles you.

As a aside, I have seen a Earthian drama in which the same (strictly speaking, not "same", but resembling) characters in a parallel universe are serving the same (or resembling) spaceship, but they are absurd! That is because in the parallel universe in a different situation (for example, Hitler had prevailed there), people should have acted differently reacting to the different situation, taking reproductive behaviors in different times, which should have produced different children, so, the same characters should not have been born, and even if they had been miraculously born, they should have acted in different ways (reacting to the different situation) and should not have joined the star fleet so uniformly, and even if all of them had miraculously joined the star fleet, they should not have been promoted in the same ways, because the values system was different there!

So, even if there is another universe, the another universe will never be like a "parallel universe" in which the situation is different, but the same people live in the same houses in the same town.

6: Nothing in the Reality Needs to Be Observed in Order for It to Exist


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 We must not forget that nothing in the reality has any obligation to be observed by humans.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 In fact, most objects cannot possibly be observed by humans, because humans are in a minuscule area on the spacetime manifold from which most regions of the manifold are inaccessible.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 The objects in most regions are not aware of any human at all: ""humans"? What are they?"

And most objects in the vicinity of humans which could be observed are not being observed, because humans are just lazy, watching TV instead, perhaps. They would be like "Am I not being observed by humans? That is not my fault! They are watching TV!"

So, let us never ever hear a foolish talk like "Something does not exist because humans cannot observe it."

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 This may not seem as foolish as that, but we see a similar worldview like "The reality exists in interactions." in some Earthians, actually even in supposedly educated Earthians.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 That seems as foolish and as selfish to me, actually.

Suppose that a particle is floating in a vacuum, far away from anything, practically interacting with nothing, then, does the particle not exist, because it is not interacting? Or suppose that a particle does not ever interact with anything by nature, then does the particle not exist? Supposing that a particle has an attribute that does not interact with anything, so, of course, the attribute cannot be detected, but then, is the attribute not part of the reality?

It is just that humans need interactions in order to observe or have something to do with something, but denying an existence just because humans cannot have anything to do with it is really a perverted idea.

7: The Absoluteness of the Reality and Relativity of Interpretations


Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Many Biasians seem to be misunderstanding that what they call "Relativity" is saying "All are relative.", but that is certainly a very misguided notion.

In fact, nothing is relative about the spacetime manifold itself or the world lines and the fields on it.

A point on the manifold is absolutely the specific point and a world line is absolutely the specific world line.

In other words, the reality is absolutely absolute.

What are relative are the components of some things expressed based on coordinates systems.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 "some things"?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 For example, the position of a particle, the velocity of a particle, etc.

The components of the position based on a coordinates system depend on the choice of the coordinates system, of course, and the components of the velocity based on the coordinates system depend on the choice of the coordinates system, which is nothing new at all, but the trajectory of the world line is just unique, regardless of what multiple coordinates systems humans fantasize.

"Relativity" is basically about that the universe is a spacetime manifold, not "the set of spaces, each of them at its own absolute time", and that the relationships between the components based on a coordinates system and the components based on another coordinates systems are not really like people had been assuming to be.

For example, let us think of a train running on a plain and 2 observers, one standing on the earth and the other in a car that is running beside the train in the same velocity with the train's.

The 1st observer says that the velocity of the train is (100, 0, 0) for example; the 2nd observer says that the velocity of the train is (0, 0, 0). Certainly, those velocity components are relative to the observers, but the train does not care how many observers are there and what coordinates systems they are fantasizing.

As the car of the 2nd observer has run out of gas and slows down, the velocity of the train with respect to the 2nd observer increases, but the train has not sped up in any way just because the car has run out of gas.

And the train goes out of sight of both the observers, but the train does not vanish from existence just because it is not being observed any more.

The world line of the train is as absolute as the spot on your face, regardless of those fusses those stupid-faced humans have made.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 "the spot"? Where is the spot?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 It does not matter. What I mean is that the spot does not get bigger because it is seen through a magnifying glass and does not disappear because I look away or because you hide it under cosmetics.

We should remember that relativity exists only in human interpretations, not in the reality.

By the way, a statement like "The velocity of the train with respect to this specific coordinates system is (0, 0, 0)." is not particularly relative, because it is absolutely true, although a statement like "The velocity of the train is (0, 0, 0)." is certainly relative.

The 2nd statement is relative because the prerequisite of the statement is left out: "The velocity is (0, 0, 0)? But it is (100, 0, 0) for me!". As for the 1st statement, I cannot raise any dispute about it: "Well, the velocity must be in deed so with respect to the coordinates system.".

A statement becomes relative, always because the statement is made sloppily, with some prerequisites left out.

Any component number itself is relative because it is really sloppy: "100? With respect to what coordinates system?".

8: The Unambiguity of the Reality and Indeterminancy of Interpretations


Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 A point I can guess that some people will raise is what Earthians call "the indeterminancy principle".

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 As you should see if you see things clearly, what "the indeterminancy principle" is saying is nothing but the impossibility of completely accurately inferring some things; the argument of "the indeterminancy principle" does not include anything that suggests any ambiguity of the reality itself.

The argument is like "We cannot know the position and the velocity of a particle by just wishing to know them; we need a kind of interaction of our measuring equipment with the particle; but there can be no interaction from which we can accurately infer the position and the velocity at the same time!". . . . Too bad, in deed, but there is nothing there that even remotely suggests that the particle does not have a definite world line, is it?

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 I do not see any.

How about the argument that the particle is also a wave?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 The argument has really nothing to do with "the indeterminancy principle", but has come from some phenomena like so-called "interference fringes", and I do not particularly support the argument, but anyway, if the particle is a wave, it is just a matter of that the particle is a field, which does not mean at all that the field is ambiguous in any way in the reality.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 But how about the indeterministic nature of what Earthians call "Quantum Mechanics"?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 It is crucial to understand that unpredictability does not mean any ambiguity of the reality.

Unpredictability means that the trajectory of a world line after a specific spacetime manifold point cannot be uniquely calculated from the trajectory of the world line before the point and the surrounding condition (like the fields around the point), which does not mean at all that the world line does not take a definite trajectory after the point.

In other words, when there are 2 different spacetime manifold points that have the same condition and a world line comes into each point in the same trajectory (they are not really the same trajectory because they are at different locations, but you will understand what I mean), the 1st world line turns left at the 1st point while the 2nd world line turns right at the 2nd point. The trajectories are unpredictable, but are not ambiguous at all: the 1st world line has definitely turned left and the 2nd world line has definitely turned right.

When we have cast a die in an opaque box, the result is unpredictable, but the die is not in any fuzzy state inside the box.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 But some Earthians are insisting that a cat in a opaque box is in a fuzzy state.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 It is absurd, you know, because why do you not just make the box transparent, then the cat cannot be in any fuzzy state, but why should the transparency of the box matter for the sake of the life or death of the cat?

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 The box does not have to be transparent all over; it can just have a tiny transparent circle through which the observer can look into the box.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 And does that tiny circle influence the life or death of the cat? You should not be as crazy as to assume it does.

The situation should be no different for any particle, in my opinion.

The particle is not in any fuzzy state in which it is 10 % here, 20 % here, . . .; it is just unpredictable. At least I do not see any logical reason in their arguments why we have to adopt such a ridiculous assumption.

Look, because of "the indeterminancy principle", the initial condition of the particle cannot be known, so, we cannot predict the trajectory of the world line of the particle, so "Quantum Mechanics" has abandoned the attempt to describe the trajectory and has decided to be satisfied with doing only probabilistic predictions, which is what "Quantum Mechanics" is.

I do not blame them for the decision at all, but I will blame them if they insist that the reality is ambiguous just because humans cannot make accurate inferences or predictions.

Whether there is unpredictability in the reality or not is really unknown, because "the indeterminancy principle" prevents us from discerning it clearly. The lens through which we see the reality is misted, so the vision is blurry, but we cannot say that the reality is blurry just because the lens is misted.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 You said that you did not support the argument that a particle was a wave.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 The statement that "A particle is also a wave." cannot help but seems to be a contradiction to me, and if someone insists that it is not any contradiction, he or she must make a convincing explanation why it is not so.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Such he or she seems to say like "You have to accept it even if it is weird.".

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 I am not blaming it because it is "weird", but because it is contradictory (at least it seems so to me). You know, "weird" is OK in a theory, but any contradiction is never OK in any theory, because if it was OK, well, nothing could be discussed logically in the theory, because you could just say "It is OK." for any illogicality. You could not object to "1 + 1 = 3", if contradictions were OK.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Why is it contradictory?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 Being a particle means that it exists only at a point; being a wave means that it exists not only at a point. Is that not a contradiction? Please explain why, if it is not.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 Then, what do you propose?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 I do not see any necessity for the so-called wave to be an object; it can be just a physical law.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 What is the difference?

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 When you say that a particle moves along a straight line, you do not assume the straight line to be an object, do you?

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 I myself do not.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 If you assumed the straight line to be an object, the argument would go haywire, because if I hit the particle and change the course of the particle, does the straight line that had been stretching far away in a direction suddenly shift to be another straight line that stretches in another direction?

As the straight line does not have to be an object, why does the wave have to be an object?

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 That is probably because going straight is assumed to be natural, so, the particle is assumed to go straight without the guide line as an object, while the particle is not assumed to naturally move wave-like, so it is assumed that there must be something, an object, which is moving the particle so.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 What I want to ask is that is it not a human prejudice to assume that being straight is natural? Why cannot the particle move NATURALLY wave-like?

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 There does not seem to be any logical reason why it cannot, except that it is weird.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 But who said "You have to accept it even if it is weird."? It may be "weird", but is not contradictory in any way.

Special-Student-7-Rebutter
 So, you assume that the particle behaves wave-like because it is a physical law, not because there is a wave as an object.

Special-Student-7-Hypothesizer
 If the wave was an object, the wave would have to suddenly shrink just because a human has detected the particle at a point.

I do not really see any logical reason why we have to have such an absurd worldview.

References
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