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I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint

I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. Seems to wander well beyond the author's sphere of expertise. Palmer has nevertheless done a lot of interesting work in atmospheric and oceanic systems. Here's one, which also explains why current warming trends would persist for decades even if we halted all fossil fuel use tomorrow, something many seem to not have grasped: "Uncertainty in Weather and Climate Prediction", Slingo & Palmer (2011) > "In terms of seasonal to decadal prediction, the predictability of the system resides primarily in the oceans, where the greater thermal capacity and the much longer dynamical time scales for adjustment impart a memory to the coupled ocean–atmosphere system, which exceeds that for the atmosphere alone by several orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, the ocean, like the atmosphere, is a chaotic, nonlinear system, and so an ensemble approach to seasonal to decadal prediction is fundamental to forecasting on these time scales also." https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2011.0161 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201... Anyone wanting a solid introduction to the notion of chaos in fluid dynamics should look at work of the original researcher who discovered the phenomenon, Ed Lorenz (1995) The Essence of Chaos. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154291.The_Essence_of_Chaos https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154291.The_Essence_of_Ch...

lisper 4y ago
>I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. Seems to wander well beyond the author's sphere of expertise. Indeed. The question of whether quantum uncertainty is epistemological or ontological is formally undecidable (on the assumption that quantum mechanics is actually true). For starters, there already exists a quantum interpretation where uncertainty is ontological: Bohmian mechanics. But you don't even need that. All you need is to hypothesize a "cosmic Turing machine" computing the digits of pi or some other normal number and the stipulation that every time you do a quantum experiment the result is the next digit that the TM writes to its tape. That is an ontologicical interpretation of QM that is every bit as valid as Bohmian mechanics, and every bit as useless. It doesn't matter whether quantum uncertainty is ontological or epistemological. What matters is that the outcomes of quantum measurements are fundamentally unpredictable for the entity conducting the experiment. It doesn't matter whether the information generated by the experiment was pre-existing or somehow magically came into existence by wave function collapse or whatever, what matters is that the outcome is not predictable even in principle. And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. It doesn't matter because one of the things we cannot know, even in principle, is which of these hypotheses are correct. It's a non-scientific question. [UPDATE] The general principle is that quantum experiments produce an unbounded amount of information which cannot be predicted from the finite information available to any observer before those observations are made, so there has to be an unbounded amount of "hidden" information "out there" somewhere that in inaccessible except by performing quantum experiments. Different interpretations hide this inaccessible information in different places. Copenhagen hides it in wave function collapse. Bohm hides it in the particle positions, which are posited to be real numbers, every one of which contains an infinite amount of information. Chaotic dynamics hides it in the initial conditions which, like Bohmian positions, are real numbers which contain an infinite amount of information. If you look at how the math plays out, they are literally reading out digits of real numbers as if they were written on a TM tape. I think physics would benefit from the study of information theory.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > It doesn't matter whether quantum uncertainty is ontological or epistemological. What matters is that the outcomes of quantum measurements are fundamentally unpredictable for the entity conducting the experiment. It doesn't matter whether the information generated by the experiment was pre-existing or somehow magically came into existence by wave function collapse or whatever, what matters is that the outcome is not predictable even in principle. And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. It doesn't matter because one of the things we cannot know, even in principle, is which of these hypotheses are correct. It's a non-scientific question. Thanks. That was actually really insightful. I never thought about it like that. It's beyond the scope of science and what models are for. We'd be switching purposes at that point. The tools only do what they are meant to: predict; it doesn't make sense to them for to do something else (unless we specify that new purpose), especially when we do so as if we're not.
- naasking 4y ago
  > And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. I don't think this is correct. Each formal model will allow you degrees of freedom that are ruled out by other models because the axioms differ. This is why a quantum field theory for Bohmian mechanics has been much harder to formulate than it was for Copenhagen, for example. Unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity could actually be easier under a "fractal model" of quantum mechanics than it is with Copenhagen. Edit on your [update]: > [UPDATE] The general principle is that quantum experiments produce an unbounded amount of information That doesn't sound correct either. No experiment can produce an unbounded amount of information. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea.
  - lisper 4y ago
    > Each formal model will allow you degrees of freedom that are ruled out by other models because the axioms differ. Nope. All QM interpretations produce the same predictions. They are formally equivalent in the same sense that lambda calculus and TMs are equivalent. The reason it is hard to unify Bohm and relativity to produce a Bohmian quantum field theory is that Bohm is committed to an intuitionistic metaphysics that requires there to be an answer to which measurement of an entangled system was performed first, and so it requires the imposition of an arbitrary foliation of space-time. This is a metaphysical requirement, not a physical one. That is what makes it hard to extend Bohm to a field theory. > No experiment can produce an unbounded amount of information. No single experiment can, but over time you can do an unbounded number of experiments. Note that I am deliberately using the term "unbounded" rather than "infinite". These are not the same. An unbounded quantity is finite at any given time, but it can keep growing without an upper bound. (In actual fact all of these numbers are probably finite and bounded because the observable universe is finite and the second law of thermodynamics puts a limit on how many experiments you can do.)
sampo 4y ago
> I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. Seems to wander well beyond the author's sphere of expertise. I don't think anyone can be an that much of an expert in quantum foundations. It's a research topic full of questions and not much answers, so you don't need deep expertise to grasp the current situation and the limits of current knowledge. In that sense, it should be a free game for almost anyone with a PhD in physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foundations
naasking 4y ago
> I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. People are so quick to dismiss without any evidence. Why not look at his actual publications: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/palmer/publications https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/palmer/publications Some choice excerpts: * Bell's theorem, non-computability and conformal cyclic cosmology: A top-down approach to quantum gravity, https://avs.scitation.org/doi/10.1116/5.0060680 https://avs.scitation.org/doi/10.1116/5.0060680 * Supermeasured: Violating Bell-Statistical Independence Without Violating Physical Statistical Independence, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-022-00602-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-022-00602-9 * Discretization of the Bloch sphere, fractal invariant sets and Bell’s theorem, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0350 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.035... * The Invariant Set Postulate: a new geometric framework for the foundations of quantum theory and the role played by gravity, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2009.0080 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2009.008... The last is when he first started publishing about quantum mechanics back in 2009, in which he described "invariant set theory" as a new approach to quantum foundations that was well received. He actually worked with Stephen Hawking on developing supergravity before he switched to climate modelling.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  I guess that's what I get for only looking at the top page of Google Scholar results for 'Palmer quantum chaos climate'. However, Palmer's view on quantum systems does seem to be pretty set and fairly ideological in nature (i.e. experimental verification doesn't seem to be much of a concern). For example: (2005) "Quantum Reality, Complex Numbers, and the Meteorological Butterfly Effect " https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/4/bams-86-4-519.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/4/bams-86... > "By considering an idealization of the upscale cascade (which provides a novel representation of complex numbers and quaternions), a case is made for reinterpreting the quantum wave function as a set of intricately encoded binary sequences. In this reinterpretation, it is argued that the quantum world has no need for dice-playing deities, undead cats, multiple universes, or “spooky action at a distance.”" At this point, I think anyone pushing this view of how QM works without experimental results to back it up is just tilting at windmills.

lisper 4y ago

>I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. Seems to wander well beyond the author's sphere of expertise. Indeed. The question of whether quantum uncertainty is epistemological or ontological is formally undecidable (on the assumption that quantum mechanics is actually true). For starters, there already exists a quantum interpretation where uncertainty is ontological: Bohmian mechanics. But you don't even need that. All you need is to hypothesize a "cosmic Turing machine" computing the digits of pi or some other normal number and the stipulation that every time you do a quantum experiment the result is the next digit that the TM writes to its tape. That is an ontologicical interpretation of QM that is every bit as valid as Bohmian mechanics, and every bit as useless. It doesn't matter whether quantum uncertainty is ontological or epistemological. What matters is that the outcomes of quantum measurements are fundamentally unpredictable for the entity conducting the experiment. It doesn't matter whether the information generated by the experiment was pre-existing or somehow magically came into existence by wave function collapse or whatever, what matters is that the outcome is not predictable even in principle. And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. It doesn't matter because one of the things we cannot know, even in principle, is which of these hypotheses are correct. It's a non-scientific question. [UPDATE] The general principle is that quantum experiments produce an unbounded amount of information which cannot be predicted from the finite information available to any observer before those observations are made, so there has to be an unbounded amount of "hidden" information "out there" somewhere that in inaccessible except by performing quantum experiments. Different interpretations hide this inaccessible information in different places. Copenhagen hides it in wave function collapse. Bohm hides it in the particle positions, which are posited to be real numbers, every one of which contains an infinite amount of information. Chaotic dynamics hides it in the initial conditions which, like Bohmian positions, are real numbers which contain an infinite amount of information. If you look at how the math plays out, they are literally reading out digits of real numbers as if they were written on a TM tape. I think physics would benefit from the study of information theory.

guerrilla 4y ago
> It doesn't matter whether quantum uncertainty is ontological or epistemological. What matters is that the outcomes of quantum measurements are fundamentally unpredictable for the entity conducting the experiment. It doesn't matter whether the information generated by the experiment was pre-existing or somehow magically came into existence by wave function collapse or whatever, what matters is that the outcome is not predictable even in principle. And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. It doesn't matter because one of the things we cannot know, even in principle, is which of these hypotheses are correct. It's a non-scientific question. Thanks. That was actually really insightful. I never thought about it like that. It's beyond the scope of science and what models are for. We'd be switching purposes at that point. The tools only do what they are meant to: predict; it doesn't make sense to them for to do something else (unless we specify that new purpose), especially when we do so as if we're not.
naasking 4y ago
> And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. I don't think this is correct. Each formal model will allow you degrees of freedom that are ruled out by other models because the axioms differ. This is why a quantum field theory for Bohmian mechanics has been much harder to formulate than it was for Copenhagen, for example. Unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity could actually be easier under a "fractal model" of quantum mechanics than it is with Copenhagen. Edit on your [update]: > [UPDATE] The general principle is that quantum experiments produce an unbounded amount of information That doesn't sound correct either. No experiment can produce an unbounded amount of information. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea.
- lisper 4y ago
  > Each formal model will allow you degrees of freedom that are ruled out by other models because the axioms differ. Nope. All QM interpretations produce the same predictions. They are formally equivalent in the same sense that lambda calculus and TMs are equivalent. The reason it is hard to unify Bohm and relativity to produce a Bohmian quantum field theory is that Bohm is committed to an intuitionistic metaphysics that requires there to be an answer to which measurement of an entangled system was performed first, and so it requires the imposition of an arbitrary foliation of space-time. This is a metaphysical requirement, not a physical one. That is what makes it hard to extend Bohm to a field theory. > No experiment can produce an unbounded amount of information. No single experiment can, but over time you can do an unbounded number of experiments. Note that I am deliberately using the term "unbounded" rather than "infinite". These are not the same. An unbounded quantity is finite at any given time, but it can keep growing without an upper bound. (In actual fact all of these numbers are probably finite and bounded because the observable universe is finite and the second law of thermodynamics puts a limit on how many experiments you can do.)

sampo 4y ago

> I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. Seems to wander well beyond the author's sphere of expertise. I don't think anyone can be an that much of an expert in quantum foundations. It's a research topic full of questions and not much answers, so you don't need deep expertise to grasp the current situation and the limits of current knowledge. In that sense, it should be a free game for almost anyone with a PhD in physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foundations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foundations

naasking 4y ago

> I don't think Palmer has ever published anything on quantum mechanical systems, so this claim seems questionable and might be some kind of ideological viewpoint. People are so quick to dismiss without any evidence. Why not look at his actual publications: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/palmer/publications https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/palmer/publications Some choice excerpts: * Bell's theorem, non-computability and conformal cyclic cosmology: A top-down approach to quantum gravity, https://avs.scitation.org/doi/10.1116/5.0060680 https://avs.scitation.org/doi/10.1116/5.0060680 * Supermeasured: Violating Bell-Statistical Independence Without Violating Physical Statistical Independence, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-022-00602-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-022-00602-9 * Discretization of the Bloch sphere, fractal invariant sets and Bell’s theorem, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0350 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.035... * The Invariant Set Postulate: a new geometric framework for the foundations of quantum theory and the role played by gravity, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2009.0080 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2009.008... The last is when he first started publishing about quantum mechanics back in 2009, in which he described "invariant set theory" as a new approach to quantum foundations that was well received. He actually worked with Stephen Hawking on developing supergravity before he switched to climate modelling.

photochemsyn 4y ago
I guess that's what I get for only looking at the top page of Google Scholar results for 'Palmer quantum chaos climate'. However, Palmer's view on quantum systems does seem to be pretty set and fairly ideological in nature (i.e. experimental verification doesn't seem to be much of a concern). For example: (2005) "Quantum Reality, Complex Numbers, and the Meteorological Butterfly Effect " https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/4/bams-86-4-519.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/4/bams-86... > "By considering an idealization of the upscale cascade (which provides a novel representation of complex numbers and quaternions), a case is made for reinterpreting the quantum wave function as a set of intricately encoded binary sequences. In this reinterpretation, it is argued that the quantum world has no need for dice-playing deities, undead cats, multiple universes, or “spooky action at a distance.”" At this point, I think anyone pushing this view of how QM works without experimental results to back it up is just tilting at windmills.