Scientific progress demands proof. Everything else is mere philosophy (no offense to philosophers). We must continuously seek proof or, more accurately, falsification. Therefore, we should celebrate refutations. While this may seem obvious, it’s often neglected in practice. Many physicists avoid it, making their theories vague and irrefutable to protect their careers and reputations—a phenomenon explored in detail in the OPIP book.
However, this is just one reason why we don’t achieve the falsifications needed to make progress. There are other, subtler reasons as well. For instance, we may not seek refutations because we don’t know we need to look for them in the first place. A good example is Bell’s Theorem. When John Bell proved that Einstein’s belief in local realism[1] was wrong, he did more than provide a solution to a well-known problem. Before Bell, many physicists regarded Einstein’s views as purely philosophical, disconnected from “real physics.” Bell demonstrated that seemingly abstract concepts might fall within the realm of testable science—an achievement that should be valued at least as highly as finding the actual solution.
The lesson is that we should sit down and think hard about anything we consider candidates for “truth”—whether they are specific theories or entire worldviews—and determine how we could prove or refute them. This article aims to explore this for the objective and subjective worldviews.
Subjectivity Theory states that what we call matter is subjective and created in our minds, similar to colors. Yes, it sounds crazy. However, no matter what the new big insights will be, they will be massively surprising and be perceived as crazy at first.[2] Hence, let’s entertain this thought for a while and see if it leads to anything tangible. After all, that’s how progress is often made: wild assumptions are one of the key tools of the physicist. As long as we don’t fall in love with them or forget that they are assumptions, we should be safe from going astray.
The OPIP book argues for the subjectivity of matter from various angles. Some of these arguments can be found in the Objective vs. Subjective Worldviews post. The most straightforward reasoning is probably the following (please answer every question in your mind):
For the record, Subjectivity Theory does not rule out the existence of an outside world (unlike pure solipsism). It just makes it a bit fuzzier what this outside world is. The conclusion is only that the world turns out to be different than we initially thought, as it happened so often in the history of science. Perhaps matter is the result of a more fundamental objective reality that we don’t know yet, similar to how colors are created by the underlying reality of different wavelengths of light.
However, this post is not about providing further theoretical reasoning for matter being subjective but about exploring ways to test this idea. How could this be achieved?
A theory is proven—or at least corroborated—if it makes clear predictions that current theories do not, and those predictions are then confirmed by experiments. In the context of Subjectivity Theory, one example could relate to what is often described as one of the strangest phenomena in all of physics: quantum entanglement. Currently, it is not known how quickly a particle assumes its characteristics (such as spin up or down) when a measurement is performed on its entangled partner. Experiments have shown that this process must occur much faster than the speed of light[3], leading many physicists to assume that it happens instantaneously.
What does Subjectivity Theory say about this? According to it, our brains create a model of the outside world—be it characteristics like spin up or down, or entire particles. The key word in the last sentence is “create”; it first needs to be created. And like a computer performing calculations according to defined rules, this process may take a little time. Hence, Subjectivity Theory predicts that the process of updating the characteristics of a particle after its partner particle has been measured is not instantaneous.[4]
How quickly does it happen? It’s not clear, but there’s a good case to be made that it happens within the smallest possible time frame, the Planck time (roughly 10−43 seconds). That’s because, once particle A is measured, from the rule processed in the brain (“If one particle has spin up, the other one has to be spin down”), it automatically follows which state particle B must be in. Planck time is deeply linked with the speed of light, which represents not only the speed at which light travels but also the maximum speed of causation in our universe.
Will we ever be able to test this? The shortest time frames we can currently measure are in the range of zeptoseconds (10-21 seconds) using ultrafast laser impulses. Hence, Planck time differs by 22 orders of magnitude, making it appear entirely out of reach for testing. However, it’s important never to underestimate human ingenuity. Einstein was very skeptical about the possibility of ever measuring gravitational waves, a consequence of his General Theory of Relativity, but this was achieved only 100 years later, which is historically a tiny amount of time.
Still, it’s safe to say that it will probably not be possible to measure it anytime soon. Nevertheless, two points should be appreciated. First, Subjectivity Theory is making clear predictions that can be tested in principle. Second, the underlying mindset and drive to make predictions, as exhibited above, may lead to other predictions that are indeed in the realm of what can be tested today—as covered in the OPIP book, as well as in future posts on this blog.
Afterword: Despite its title and apparent content, this post is not primarily about proving or refuting a specific theory. The key point is to convey underlying principles of progress in physics, such as the importance of seeking falsification, being aware of assumptions, and the willingness to entertain thoughts that strongly challenge our current understanding of the world. The value of conveying such principles is not diminished by the fact that the examples used to illustrate them might be utterly false—like fairy tales, which can also exemplify underlying principles well. For more on the principles of progress in physics, read the OPIP book.
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[1] Local realism is the belief that objects are influenced only by their immediate surroundings and have definite properties independent of observation. See Opip.lol/locality
[2] Obviously, this is not an argument in favor of the theory (no argument is valid if it could be applied to everything), but it is an argument against the argument that a theory should be ruled out solely because it seems crazy. “Crazy” often just means “going completely against our existing paradigm”—and if history is any guide, it’s almost guaranteed that new discoveries will do exactly that.
[3] Yin, J. et al. (2013): “Bounding the speed of `spooky action at a distance’” (Physical Review Letters).
[4] Incidentally, this interpretation also resolves any need for «spooky action as a distance» that troubled Einstein so much. We simply create it, so why shouldn’t there be a rule in our minds that says if we create something at location A, we also create a corresponding value at location B?
