Deeper Than Quantum Mechanics—David Deutsch’s New Theory of Reality
From the post:
…
Their new idea is called constructor theory and it is both simpler and deeper than quantum mechanics, or indeed any other laws of physics. In fact, Deutsch claims that constructor theory forms a kind of bedrock of reality from which all the laws of physics emerge.Constructor theory is a radically different way of thinking about the universe that Deutsch has been developing for some time. He points out that physicists currently ply their trade by explaining the world in terms of initial conditions and laws of motion. This leads to a distinction between what happens and what does not happen.
Constructor theory turns this approach on its head. Deutsch’s new fundamental principle is that all laws of physics are expressible entirely in terms of the physical transformations that are possible and those that are impossible.
In other words, the laws of physics do not tell you what is possible and impossible, they are the result of what is possible and impossible. So reasoning about the physical transformations that are possible and impossible leads to the laws of physics.
That’s why constructor theory is deeper than anything that has gone before it. In fact, Deutsch does not think about it as a law of physics but as a principle, or set of principles, that the laws of physics must obey.
…
If that sounds like heavy sledding, see: arxiv.org/abs/1405.5563 : Constructor Theory of Information.
Abstract:
We present a theory of information expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible – i.e. in constructor-theoretic terms. Although it includes conjectured laws of physics that are directly about information, independently of the details of particular physical instantiations, it does not regard information as an a priori mathematical or logical concept, but as something whose nature and properties are determined by the laws of physics alone. It does not suffer from the circularity at the foundations of existing information theory (namely that information and distinguishability are each defined in terms of the other). It explains the relationship between classical and quantum information, and reveals the single, constructor-theoretic property underlying the most distinctive phenomena associated with the latter, including the lack of in-principle distinguishability of some states, the impossibility of cloning, the existence of pairs of variables that cannot simultaneously have sharp values, the fact that measurement processes can be both deterministic and unpredictable, the irreducible perturbation caused by measurement, and entanglement (locally inaccessible information).
The paper runs thirty (30) pages so should give you a good workout before the weekend. 😉
I first saw this in a tweet by Steven Pinker.