Jeff Tollaksen - What is Ultimate Reality?

What is the deepest nature of things? Our world is complex, filled with so much stuff. But down below, what’s most fundamental, what is ultimate reality? Is there anything nonphysical? Anything spiritual? Or only the physical world? Many feel certain of their belief, on each side of controversial question.

Jeff Tollaksen is a Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for Excellence in Quantum Studies at Chapman University. He received his BA in physics from MIT. He later attended Boston University where he earned a MA and PhD in theoretical physics.

Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[samosa]

Blown away by the clarity of his flow of thoughts. Amazing video

[TerryBollinger]

Professor Tollaksen, and Robert Lawrence Kuhn, thank you for this excellent interview. It prompted me to look up your latest paper [1]. Headline first: Your team’s Dirac-style prediction worked. Counterparticles are the weak-force-blind left-chiral fermions and the right-chiral antifermions. Their negative mass makes them blind to the weak force.

I was fascinated and deeply impressed that your team developed the concept of negative energy counterparticles starting only from pre- and post-selection reasoning. I have no idea how you did that! I would have thought the distinction was too subtle to show up under that style of analysis. I’m now intrigued to learn more.

My name for them is _contra_ particles [2], but I seldom use that prefix at the particle level since these particles have been part of the Standard Model for several decades. As I’ve noted, your negative-energy counterparticles are identical to the weak-blind chiralities of the Standard Model: the left-chiral fermions and the right-chiral antifermions.

What you and your team have done is, in effect, a reverse Dirac. Using only mathematical arguments, your team predicted the existence of negative-energy versions of the weak-aware fermions and antifermions. While these particles were proven to exist decades ago, neither their finders nor your team immediately realized the connection.

The reason is easy to identify. Why should anyone in the Standard Model community think to question whether one of the fermion chiralities might have _negative energy?_ There is no reason to postulate such an absurd-sounding idea, especially since the common perception is that particles such as electrons are always _equal_ mixes of the two chiralities. Assigning negative mass to one would cancel both particles to null.

This assumption overlooks the importance of chain termination points, which define what non-physicists would call “the present.” While the long-term history of the particle does indeed cancel to null, the terminal particle in the chain represents a slight excess of weak-aware chirality in our universe, with a corresponding and a weak-bind chirality chain end at the opposite end of the chain, in what I assume you would call a counterverse.

Sorry about adding a counterverse, but that outcome becomes almost unavoidable once you head down the negative energy path. Particles and counterparticles exist in _both_ universes, but only the universe has a slight excess of particles, and only the contraverse has a slight excess of counterparticles. On the positive side, a counterverse rushing backward in geometric (but not causal) time eliminates the antimatter shortage problem in a nicely CPT-symmetric fashion. So your counterparticle prediction may make Boyle, Turok, and others happy (maybe Chen and Carroll? Barbour, too, I’d think).

The role of time-axis pair production — as opposed to “ordinary” space-axis pair production — in creating time is deeply fascinating [2] and hints at broader contexts.


[1] M. Waegell, E. Cohen, A. Elitzur, J. Tollaksen, and Y. Aharonov, _Quantum Reality with Negative-Mass Particles, _ arXiv Preprint arXiv:2201.09510 (2022).

[markstipulkoski]

Ironically, I was playing Wordle while listening to this video. The pattern I had was" _A_S_". So I decide to guess "FALSE". A couple of seconds later, Tollaksen says the word "FALSE". I blame precognition for missing that guess. True story, but I have many more unlikely premonitions very frequently. So I truly believe that information from the future can affect my present thoughts, and in this case, affected my behavior, guessing "FALSE". My hypothesis is that neural networks are entangled with their near future state. Lookup Stuart Hameroff and his theory that microtubules within neurons provide a shielded environment where quantum states can persist. Now Google entanglement across time. Put the two together and you have a mechanism for precognition, without needing to resort to supernatural explanations. Yes, I know, it could have been random chance in this case. BTW, the Wordle answer was BALSA.😂

[TheTroofSayer]

So much probing across assumptions, so little concluded. As it should be, in the face of so many unknowns. It tells me that the CTT project is asking all the right questions. Respect.

[rishabhthakur]

Most people just cannot say - i don't know. There is no one who know ultimate reality.

[brendangreeves]

Patterns in purely abstract dynamic relations comprise what we call reality.
Constraints that form in the dynamic give rise to resonant frequencies.
An “event” is essentially a multiplicity of energy transfers ( higher resonant frequency to lower resonant frequency and vice versa).
The interaction is ultimate reality.
In the absence of interaction there is merely potentiality.

[catherinemira]

Mind bodingly fascinating. 👏👏
I wish causality could be violated though...
Thanks for a super discussion and video Robert. 💯

[JohnRevelation]

*_“It may seem bizarre, but, in my opinion, science offers a surer path to God than religion.”_* –Physicist Paul Davies, the winner of the 2001 Kelvin Medal issued by the Institute of Physics and the winner of the 2002 Faraday Prize issued by the Royal Society (among other awards), as cited in his book God and the New Physics. Davies adheres to no standard religious creed.

[ronhudson]

“The short answer is, no”. The long answer is no. The only answer is no. All we can hope for are answers that live comfortably with what we do know. The theologian answer must live with what we know about the actual origin and development of the universe and life. The scientific answer must live with what we know to be true about the reality of the mind and the yearning for meaning.

[jan-erikjones]

What’s the relationship between observation and reality?

[NeverCryWolf]

Does matter give rise to conciousness, or does conciousness give rise to matter?

[ReynaSingh]

We can only ever access reality through our perception, if there is an ultimate reality then it may as well be the unfaltering illusion

[Existential_Indian]

Where is the "Ultimate Reality" playlist???? 🙂

[fairlyindifferent]

So the reason we can't know a particle's position and momentum at the same time isn't because of a magical axiom, it's because the observer is using a sledge hammer to observe the system. That makes sense.

[stephenzhao]

2:00 nevertheless there have been some really exciting developments which change profoundly the current understanding of what is at least deep reality I wouldn't know if I would call it the ultimate nature reality most likely not but it really changes in a fundamental way what you mean by deep reality. uh so, one of the big paradoxes which is formed are modern conception of reality is the fact that in quantum mechanics if we're trying to get good information about the property of some system suppose there's electron and we want ot find its position and we're shining photons off of it we have a microscope which the photon comes back so that we can try to see its position. It turns out if we're trying ot get better and beeter precision on where that electron in you have to use photons that wiggle more and more quickly lhave higher higher frequency. But quantum mechanics also tells us that if you have higher and higher frequency 3:03 it means it has more energy more momentum momentum and so when that Photon goes in to try to look at e;ectrpmoc it you it crams it it kicks it and so and it kicks it in a random way. 3:14 so it goes left it may go left may go right you dont have ... smoke [2D-brane existings] ... 7:26 and then on top of that you have this new kind of non-locality 8:26 so that would tend to indicate that whatever ultimate reality is there's a deep coherence to 👍these funndamental concepts [we can use number the ultimate abstract to represent the ultimate reality for better understanding as Torah suggests in Deuteronomy 6:4, God is plural LORD is 1 the unit, or God stuff as Rabbi Dr Jeff A Benner in his book Genesis, Zen and Quantum Physics suggests pg17 ] that work through these what we had beofre thought was capricious ways that things were happening so quantum mechanics was uncertain and probabilistic well maybe that's just the way it is but you're saying that there's some deep principles operating that form the bedrock of ultimate reality. Jeff Tollaksen: absolutely.

[Bill..N]

Jeff is engaging indeed.. I'm wondering how this new term particle "FLUID" would be different from the concept of a "probability wave.." ?

[kodaskycastle]

The ultimate reality is consciousness, because without an observer, nothing exists.

All facts are based upon assumptions. For example, for matter to exist, one must first assume that time and space are real.

The boundaries of the physical universe, from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, from the infinite past to the infinite future -- the actual boundaries of the physical universe, the places where our ability to perceive will forever end -- exist in the form of infinity. Nothing physical can be infinite. (An infinitely long line of apples and an infinitely long line of oranges are combined to form a line of fruit that is twice as long as the first two lines, yet it remains the same length, which is physically impossible.) Infinity is an idea. The physical universe is contained inside an idea (infinity) and that means everything within those boundaries must also be an idea -- phenomena perceived by consciousness. Dreams have no reality when we are awake. Likewise, the physical world does not exist while we are dreaming.

Existence requires a conscious observer.

The laws of physics are expressed as mathematical formulas (abstract, non-physical ideas). These laws appear to operate on a metaphysical ("beyond" the physical) level, because we are unable to perceive the forces or influences which actually cause matter to follow these laws.

These observations indicate that the physical universe is a highly structured, illusionary world of experience occurring within the mind of a single consciousness, or All That Is. It appears that we are all individualized points of awareness within the One Consciousness. Evidence for this is provided by many reports of those having near death experiences, and from many doing heroic doses of psychedelic drugs, where people report "ego death" and becoming one with the universe. From this larger perspective time is an illusion so there was no beginning and there will be no end. Everything and nothing-whatsoever exist simultaneously in a constant state of becoming.

The illusory nature of reality and the fact that everything occurs within consciousness helps to explain why psychic phenomena are real. Telepathy involves the full or partial merger of the subjective perception of two or more individuals -- combining separate awareness into one unified awareness. (My book, Rational Spirituality by Koda, explains how essentially any two people can experience a scientifically provable form of telepathy in just minutes.)

The ultimate reality is pure consciousness, because without it, nothing exists -- not even nothing :)

[holgerjrgensen]

The Ultimate Reality,
is always Here and Now,
is the Eternal Here and Now,
the Only Real Steady Point, in Existence,
behind the physical reality, Stuff-side, the Motion-Ocean.

[ronaldgreenphilosophy]

Why is it a given for physicists that there is an Ultimate Reality? Nothing in the conversation showed that there is.

[B.S...]

Complementarity is not rational… wave/particle duality is fundamental as are the properties of electrons and quarks. Ultimate reality is not rational it is an indeterminate fluctuating state of being. Each fluctuation of the vacuum is a random temporal virtual reality.