MOPECCA A: The MOst Powerful Existential Conjecture Currently Available

Saying that:
* something came out of nothing and arguing that this needs a “creator”, or that
* a Big Bang happened and the rest is cosmic pre history,
both beg the question of existence. In other words

“Where did Big G come from?” or “What caused the Big B” are valid enough questions but the better question is:

What is the universe? and, Why and How does it continue to exist?

What provoked this thought?

(NB: If you don’t care why I came to thinking about this, scroll straight down to Primary absolutes (PA) below.)

In my opinion (IMO), we cannot take existence per se for granted. In fact, as I will explain below, we should be prepared to accept that what we normally consider to be existence is in fact the emergent properties of existences (plural!) which are, pretty much, permanently beyond our knowledge. (I think the word “beings” might also be appropriate for reasons which should become clear below but I think that would lead more than a few people astray.) Happily, IMO anyway, this does not imply anything ‘supernatural’ in either the common-or-garden sense or in an ecclesiastical sense.

De Broglie-Bohm theory, aka the pilot wave theory

It occurs to me that MOPECCA, whilst being a robust exercise in ontological speculation about the ultimate nature of our physical universe (and thus a potentially obnoxious, dilettante-ish, ‘challenge’ to modern quantum mechanics,) in fact has a few things in common with the “pilot wave” theory or interpretation of QM. I base this on  the last row of a table on page 40 of New Scientist magazine for 28 August 2021. The table is headed: “Your Quick-Fire Guide To What Quantum Theory Means”.  The happy features MOPECCA shares with the pilot wave concept are: it takes physical quanta and fields to be ‘objectively real and deterministic’; it doesn’t need ‘collapse’ of a wave function because (something like) ‘Pilot Waves’ guide the evolution of quantum states on a hitherto unseen layer of reality; it rids quatum theory of its observer problem and its randomness, and it can explain quantum entanglement; and (last but not least) it invokes “hidden variables” and says reality is non-local such that everything in the universe is connected. In fact the concept of entanglement in the form of Qnots is the very basis of physical matter.

Why “Primary Absolutes”?

About 30 years ago I came across the idea that our consciousness – which for these purposes I always define as rememberable awareness – is what it is like to be a model of self in the world. I learned this from Susan Blackmore in her article Waiting for Consciousness – Science tackles the self, in New Scientist Magazine, April 1989. For me this idea has evolved into UMSITW (pronounced “um-see-two”) my acronym for updating model of self in the world.

The relevance here is that I became convinced that my mind, conscious and unconscious, and therefore every bit of my subjective experience, is all and always actually inside my skull but (usually) about everything outside it.  This means our normal experience of being here now is intrinsically paradoxical because we normally act as if we are naive realists due to that being the default state that Darwinian evolution has left us with. This is not a problem until you start questioning how it all works. Elsewhere I will deal with how brain and mind relate; here enough to say that I decided that the strangeness and wonder of the world described by qauntum mechanics (QM) and Einstein’s relativity are features of the natural world, the Great It, and not mere products of the human mind.

I encountered the thinking of mathematical ontologists many years ago, hearing about Max Tegmark’s ideas now and then and also through reading on-line discussions by Bruno Machal and occasionally dialoguing with him. I always felt provoked to try and imagine some way to combat their apparent belief that: before all else, numbers are. My gut instinct says they are begging the very question of existence per se.

I now believe:

• My knowledge of my existence is a synthetic a priori – because its denial involves a self contradiction
• Similarly, denial of the existence of a universe is also self contradictory and this carries with it the implicit acceptance of basic not-self, as a bare minimum but, actually, denial of the existence of others and of factual  knowledge about the rest of the world is just stupid. Yes, those of a trolling disposition who really don’t get out enough may like to assert solipsism as their solace and from their own perspective it is logically possible but, that way madness lies. Denying my existence is also rude and oppressive to me.
• Multiplicity is therefore also necessarily entailed in the very concept of universe, IMO, which is just as well because the scientific revolution has provided us with the Copernican/Hubble expanding universe, the table of elements and a rigorous basis for understanding and dealing with potentially millions of different kinds of molecules, evolutionary biology, Einsteinian relativity, and quantum physics.
• Quantum physics and relativity theory have both been found to correctly predict measurable features of the ultimately small and the astronomically big and/or ultimately fast respectively and are considered to be very robust mathematical descriptions of their respective domains.
• But QM and relativity theory do not tell us why the laws they describe are as they are rather than just a bit different or totally other than what they are. Furthermore, at the time of writing they are still not reconciled in the different ways they describe gravity.

There are certainly many people wracking their brains for ways to understand and overcome the discrepancies between QM and General Relativity. The physist Gerard ‘t Hooft is clearly ruminating on the question of what is happening behind all the quantum events
It seems to me however that the approach of considering the smallest possible instances of space-time to be like the cells of ‘Game of Life’ has a kind of intuitive connection to the ancient Far Eastern concept of Yin and Yang.
What I mean is that, rather than positing somethingness versus nothingness, it is more reasonable to see expansion or inflation versus subsidence or contraction or, in plain English, “bigwards” versus “smallwards“.
IMO by avoiding reference to the actually not imaginable “nothingness” which bedevilled (grin) the ecclesiastics, at least one ontological rabbit hole is filled in and the mathematicians can relax because “divide by zero” is always an error, never a reality!

Primary absolutes (PA)

PA provide me with a way of relating to what QM seems to describe without needing a degree in higher mathematics. I believe PA also help in visualising some aspects of relativity theory. I was pleased a while ago to come across a  theoretical paper: Quantum Quandaries: A Category-Theoretic Perspective explaining how physicists and mathematicians are exploring new formulations for describing the QM world.
There is also a website showing the author John Baez’s earlier detailed presentation of his ideas. I skimmed through several pages of the pdf file but chugging through the web site was easier – although only relatively speaking. I was struck by how some of what the author describes has at least a smidgeon of similarity to what I keep trying to imagine.

My conjecture is that the following seem reasonable as potential properties for PA:

• Each PA exists in and of itself and is only itself – as far as we can speculate –  
• which is to say each PA is different from every other, and, by and large, they do not merge with each other but meet at a mutual boundary
• speculatively, maybe some PA simply do not ‘recognise’ some others which would mean that for any two such PA to influence each other requires that they both influence or be influenced by a third PA which somehow makes them act as if adjacent in some causally effective way
• an occurrence of this sort might be part of the explanation of how dark matter can have such a profound gravitational effect on EM matter but be otherwise completely undetectable
• From our point of view each PA is eternal, but we can never know this for sure
• It is assumed each PA is not “simply-connected” within itself but every part must be connected to the rest of itself, (so its boundary with others is likely to be unimaginably complex). 
  • NB: to  be a simply connected space  means that if a string were to connect any two points within it those two points could each be  moved  to anywhere that is also a point of the space and the string will still connect them and if those two points at any time should be at exactly the same place, the string can always be pulled in to itself and become part of the point. So I am saying this is *not* the case for the PA (plural) underlying our universe.
  • This would seem to be a critical requirement if existence as such is not to be taken for granted  in the complete absence of any other assumption implying an absolute background.
  • So ‘not simply connected’ means that PA are penetrated by regions of other PA such that each (and all) of them respectively are connected to the rest of  themselves at two or more separate places. Thus the different PA are each like a  different kind of holey cheese where the holes are all interconnected but the holes as such are not empty, they are made of other cheeses!
    • Note: A way to see that this is at least logically possible is to imagine a particular variety of such a cheese riddled throughout by air spaces which are also all connected to neighbouring air spaces. Then consider that a different variety of cheese could be coated on all of the surface of the first cheese! (Or if you prefer horror stories think of a fungus being able to spread all over that inner surface of the Mother Cheese!)
    • Logically it seems clear that there could be any number of layers of different cheese varieties spread everywhere between the original cheese and the air space. (Not ‘spaces’ because it is all connected).
    • Of course in considering PA there is no reason for them all to be layered as such. In fact the MOPECCA conjectures only that each is everywhere connected, ultimately, to every other instance of itself and that, with the exception of PA(vac) they have all probably been around since before the Big Bang.
  • From a simplistic point of view it might be said that  PA as such form “strings”.
• From the above it is reasonable to assert that the word “exist” means  something different in the case of each respective primary absolute. (It’s a different kind of cheese!)

Nothingness is a non-issue.

• (Edit Note, 1 Aug 2022: since writing the dot points of this paragaph many months ago I have come to reject the very concept of nothingness as being self contradictory.
• (In other words I now think that nothingness as such does not occur as part of our universe. Instead our vacuum is the PA which is unique to our universe and is what exists in any gaps between the other PAs. As such it is the intrinsic speed of PA(vac) – otherwise known as “c”, the so-called speed of light – which determines some of the important properties of the world we know.)
• ……. (Per the above, the following dot points remain here as historical baggage only, to be culled when their useful content has been rewritten.)
• ……..
• True Void, AKA “Nothingness”, is potentially a joker in the PA pack. It may simply be  a PA whose occurrence is an emergent property of the existence of the other PAs. So, for example, it is possible to think of Nothingness  as a direction of “smallwards”only in that where it occurs other PA may expand into it
  • IF True Void is assumed to be an emergent property ie, the absence of others, it may be the only PA which retains its intrinsic nature when separated from other instances of itself. This may be a crucial insight into the way other PA may “lose” pieces of themselves or, much more speculatively, some pieces of a PA may change the way they are or become disconnected at one end whilst significant topological changes are happening
  • On the other hand it is open to us to conjecture that True Void is a PA, or perhaps two PA’s. IE perhaps True Void as apparent nothingness is actually the direction of “smallwards” with an absolute lower limit of  the Planck length? As such it may be the crucial feature which creates mass and gravity in that where it is wrapped  around or entangled with knots [Qnots] of other PA’s this is what endows them with the appearance of mass subject to gravitational attraction and inertia but where Qnots of other PA’s are not entangled with with it they are massless
  • A twist to this particular conjecture is that what we consider to be “empty” space may be two separate PA’s: smallwards, as above, and “bigwards” or “inflation”. What properties might there be to a boundary between those two? Think about it! Qnots in which such a boundary is entangled might be the basis of Dark Matter.

• From the above: what we call our universe is in fact the emergent properties of the boundaries of PA – primary absolutes.
• From the above it appears to follow that:
• the archetypal feature of our universe is a virtual two dimensional surface – the boundary of two PA
  (Note, this makes wave motion more fundamental and/or more pervasive than particularity because the latter to requires loops and/or knots.)
• the boundary locus of 3 PA together is a line;
• • for 4 PA it would seem to be a tube;
  • possibly the maximum number of different PA which can each be in direct contact with all the others is 5 but this is a topological conjecture – food for thought
• Wherever two particular PA are in contact the properties of that locus of contact will be the same – (minimalism requires this) – but the presence of other PA abutted may change aspects of it
• Relative motion amongst the various PA will have a number of potential manifestations:
  • stretching and compressing of regions of boundaries
  • wave motions both sinusoidal and longitudinal
  • resonance of wave motions
    disconnections/re-connections
  • the Chladni vibrational modes (3D vibrations of a relatively rigid 2D plate) show how symmetrical patterns can evolve naturally; in the absence of friction at PA boundaries the unending presence of such oscillation patterns will amount to structure
  • rotation and twisting resulting in various consequences:
    • stretched associations of boundaries twisted into yarn-like  and rope-like ‘filaments’ and ‘fibres’
    • coiling and coiling of coils
    • rotational oscillations such as repeated twisting, untwisting and over-twisting
    • disconnections/re-connections in combination with rotations, twisting and twisting oscillations would potentially result in the formation of
    • simple and complex loops including Moebius loopings
    • knots of twisted PA ropes
• The concept of friction  does not apply to PA boundaries, not at the basic level anyway, because the boundaries as such are not a separate ‘thing’ from the PA.
  • (See elsewhere (“ruminations”) for discussion of nothingness in the form of smallwards as a layer between each and all other PA.)
• The speed of light is one limitation we know to apply to the interactions amongst PA boundaries  because the testing of Einstein’s relativity theory and QM all confirm, as far as I know, that Einstein’s supposition that c is the fastest speed possible is correct; c applies everywhere “within” our universe
  • “c” is referred to as the speed of light but more accurate is to consider it as the speed of causation within our universe; I will expand on this idea later
• The Planck length  ℓP is another limit relevant here. It is derived from Planck’s constant h  which relates the energy carried by a photon to its frequency. Basically the Planck length  is a unit of length that is the distance light travels in one unit of Planck time, that is to say  ℓP = 1.616255(18)×10ˆ(−35) m.  This makes it about 10ˆ(−20) times the diameter of a proton, ie 20 orders of magnitude smaller!
  Possibly this length may be related to the smallest of possible cross sections of the most tenuous of stable stretched PA.
• Alternatively it may point to the smallest distance between nodes of a standing wave on a strand of twisted thread of PA boundaries  where at least one of the boundaries embodies an aspect of EM force

Potential emergent properties

The dot points above are a work in progress.
Any bona fide suggestions for improvement will be gratefully received!

I feel reassured now that a coherent description is possible. The key would seem to be the fact that the Planck scale of things is umpteen orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest ‘particles’ of Quantum mechanics – quarks, electrons, neutrinos, photons, etc.
This belies the idea that something like the electron, for example, has no ‘internal structure’.

My intuition – based of course on profound ignorance and the wish for things to be as simple as possible – is to see what we call particles as structures of space time and not fundamentally different in nature from space time itself. Therefore even something as supposedly simple as an electron consists of a characteristic, and very stable, configuration of loops and folds [“Qnots”]of various PA boundaries.

• The connectedness of PA must rely on a process such that, as some strands of PA break, each broken end is far enough from the other end so that re-connection occurs and the speed of light limit prevents the “information” about the break travelling that distance before the re-connection has occurred
  • To be consistent here it seems that if a particular strand is broken at one end and no re-connection occurs then True Void replaces the lost piece as it retracts
  • How the surrounding PA strands and their boundaries react will depend on the existential nature of each.
• Motion, as such, is first and foremost the changing of the shape of boundaries which is primarily a stretching into one PA and then back into the other. These stretches and recoveries must usually travel as wave forms along the boundaries.
• Motion also includes rotation as well as translation so yarn-like twists of PA strands/strings would seem to be as likely to occur as not
• In the case of twisted ropes of PA stretched out and spiralled around one another there will be potential for
  • helical sinusoidal waves running back and forth along and around the ropes
  • various modes of standing waves of the whole ropes as both sinusoidal oscillations in a plane across the overall rope and combinations of these like a long playground skipping rope held at each end by different people
• Each of the basic forces of QM must involve at least one boundary ie pair of PA
  • a quandary for contemplation is the nature of the interrelationships amongst the various manifestations of strong nuclear force features and the electroweak force features
    • this is hard if one thinks of the electron charge as being something primary because why are quark electro charges either +2/3 or -1/3? (Edit note: I have since read that the attribution of partial charges to quarks is a consequence of the mathematics, ie a need to ‘spread’ the known unitary charge/neutrality, over the experimentally verified tripartite structures of protons and neutrons.)
    • it is easier to suspect that the electron charge comes about as the complement of the combinations of quark charges ie:
      • the quark charges reflect the tripartite nature of quarks (AKA ‘colour charges’, etc), ie the numbers of PA boundaries incorporated, and the ways in which they may be twisted, looped and knotted including how this may cause one PA rather than another one or more to be most on the ‘outer’ part of the rope
      • given that the net effect of quark electro charge is normally either +1 or nil (-1 being the rare antiproton) it may simply be that electrons e^– are the most stable and simple complementary structure that survived the turmoil of the Big Bang.