In the relativistic transactional picture (RTI), spacetime is an emergent construct. It emerges from specific interactions at the quantum level (i.e., transactions). This process creates a metrical structure; thus, RTI allows the harmonious integration of quantum theory and general relativity, two theoretical domains generally thought to be in conflict. In 2023, I was joined by researcher Andreas Schlatter in a paper presenting the quantitative specifics of this development. The bottom line: quantum theory and general relativity are now reconciled and unified. Our publication is here:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/acd6d7
Here is a video of our presentation of the above paper at the 2024 Lake Como School on “Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Cosmological Tensions”: https://youtu.be/xkpfGgCgJ-g
Transactional Interpretation 
Hi
You may be interested in this publication:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331302828_Emergent_dark_gravity_from_nonholographic_screens/fulltext/5c729cf8299bf1268d212fa4/Emergent-dark-gravity-from-nonholographic-screens.pdf?origin=profileFeaturedResearchPublicationItem
David Thornton
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Ruth, I have really become interested in this whole approach to understanding gravity from a thermodynamics perspective rather than from a mechanics perspective that makes assumptions about the inertial foundation of gravity that may not be true. This is coming out of my reading of Robert Rosen who makes a very clear categorical distinction between ‘simple’ systems that admit to the mechanistic formalism and that it entails–which include some assumptions–like computability and state-based ontology–on which Rosen’s work casts dispersions, and ‘complex’ systems that are more like living organisms for which a thermodynamic approach may be more appropriate. Here is Rosen’s claim drawn from his introduction to ‘Essays on Life Itself’: “I claim that Gödelian noncomputability results are a symptom, arising from within mathematics itself, indicating that we are trying to solve problems in too limited a universe of discourse.” The claim is that the mechanistic formalism as a basic model is inadequate and misleading–effectiveness does not admit to computability. And I don’t think that the implications of Gödel have really sunk in because of how deep the belief in computability goes. And in the universality of a belief in the exclusivity of ‘inertial’ mechanistic forces and the basic difference between a ‘response’ to a force and the ‘generation’ of a force. Rosen’s claim that ‘complex’ systems which manifest ‘closed causal loops’ do not admit to state descriptions–do not have an ‘ontology of states’–suggests that one must turn to a non-mechanistic thermodynamic approach. If the universe is composed of complex systems resembling the function of living organisms, and it behaves more like a ‘complex’ organism than a ‘simple’ mechanism–which is Rosen’s claim–then a whole-system understanding that thermodynamics provides may actually be more relevant (with the generalization of the concept of ‘entropy’, for example) than mechanics. Which is a point made by Rosen in ‘Essays on Life Itself’. There is also the question about how this all fits together with quantum physics (which is not necessarily a ‘mechanics’!) which is addressed in this remarkable paper by Slobodan Perović : ROBERT ROSEN’S RELATIONALIST UNDERSTANDING OF BIOLOGICAL STATES AND QUANTUM MECHANICS.
https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.2298%2Ftheo1803005p
The bottom line on this is that a thermodynamic approach for seeking an explanation for gravity makes more sense than trying to explain gravity using the mechanical formalism and its associated assumption.
The “Transactions Complete Entropic Gravity” monograph suggests that some cosmological phenomena may be explain in a more compelling manner by RTI that other quantum interpretations. In particular, I would be interested to known if you have considered extending RTI theory to the cosmological realm beyond entropic gravity. A few ideas come to mind. Under RTI the universe evolves as “a structured set of events” (transactions) from which spacetime emerges. Such an explanation seems more compelling that the one offered by move conventional quantum cosmologies. Another aspect of cosmology that might be better explain by RTI is the so call “dark era” of the early universe. In the dark era, the superheated plasma constituting the universe would have few if any on shell photons needed for emission and absorption events by which spacetime is transacted into existence. Consequently, the early universe would consist almost entirely as a quantum reality independent of time and space, offering an extremely limited set of possibilities. Thus, the expansion of the spacetime universe must have been extremely slow until the neutral hydrogen fog that trapped photons emitted by early stars and galaxies became reionized, creating a vastly increased set of opportunities for actualized transactions. As a consequence, spacetime would expand autonomously at an accelerated rate.
What would seem more difficult to explain within RTI is the so called early inflationary phase of the universe. Perhaps some type of direct action non-unitary quantum inflationary field could explain cosmic inflation, based on a set of transactions that are no longer permissible under conservation laws.
If RTI can be extended successfully to explain phenomena studied by other physical disciplines, I think that success would induce more people to embrace RTI.
Thanks very much for your comments and questions. Actually, it’s not clear that the inflation hypothesis is needed under transactional gravity (TG). Inflation was invoked as an attempt to resolve such issues as the ‘flatness’ and ‘horizon’ problems. There is no horizon problem under TG, since the quantum substratum is in full causal contact among its constituents and the spacetime construct arises directly from that. Also, the fact that TG naturally leads a small cosmological constant suggest that it may also resolve the ‘flatness’ problem without the need for inflation. However, I have not examined these issues in detail.
The relationship between gravity and quantum mechanics is a very interesting question, regardless of which interpretation we take. It is also very exciting that RTI suggests something specific about quantum gravity (most interpretations are completely ambivalent on this point).
While reading the article and researching the topic, I found a very interesting thought experiment written by three Israeli physicists (arxiv:1812.11450), and I would like to ask your opinion on what RTI would say about it.
The gedankenexperiment is as follows:
This allows Alice to send information to Bob faster than light (FTL)! This seems quite absurd. Especially since this would violate the QM no-cloning theorem (the article describes how, but that is not important now).
My question is, what does RTI say about the gravitational field of an electron while it is “flying”.
I think that according to RTI, an electron has no gravitational effect on its own. So an electron/photon/etc. flying freely – an Offer Wave – does not generate a gravitational field.
Thus Bob would not measure anything, even if he had infinitely sensitive and accurate atomic clocks. So this gedankenexperiment would not work.
Sorry, one more thing. I forgot to mention that it is not the gravitational field of the electron itself that is measured, but the gravitational effect of the electron’s magnetic field!
So if Alice measures the spin in the Z direction, for example, then Alice and Bob’s electrons have a magnetic dipole in the Z direction, which therefore has an asymmetric gravitational field (different in the Z direction), and Bob measures this with the atomic clocks that surround his electron.
So the question is, what RTI does say about the gravitational effect of this magnetic field of an electron / any spin-half quantum system?
Thanks for the comment & question. Yes, if I understand the premise of the experiment, I agree with you: there is no ‘gravitational effect’ of the electron’s magnetic field on its own. Gravitational effects emerge from actualized transactions and the ‘flying electron’ is a pre-transaction process. A photon, in contrast, is an aspect of the spacetime structure but only insofar as it mediates a transaction (connects an emission and absorption event).
I recently came across a paper by Bianconi in Physical Review that proposed a theory of entropic gravity based on quantum information… Gravity from entropy. GBianconi How might this possibly work together with the theory of ‘Gravity from transactional entropy’ that you and Andreas Schlatter have proposed, which is a proposal that is getting some attention now that I think it really deserves. The implication that gravity derives from the distribution of transactional activity has fired up my thinking about the more general idea of a ‘scientific’ process metaphysics that very much runs parallel to that of Charles Sanders Peirce which he proposed in.a series of papers published in the Monist in the first half of the last decade of the 19th century. If a ‘transaction’ can be conceptualized as involving a ‘pre-negotiated’ exchange of mass, energy and/or information between an emitter and an absorber, then might Bianconi’s idea that gravity derives from entropic considerations with respect to quantum information exchange be compatible with your idea of ‘Gravity from transactional entropy’?
If all of this can be shown to be true empirically, then I think the implications are truly staggering and run very deep!
Well, we have already done essentially what Bianconi is doing, and we did it in 2023. Note that Bianconi fails to cite our prior work. His approach is couched in a more conventional formalism, of course, but we have already gotten the key result; namely derivation of the Einstein equations and correct value of the cosmological constant from a specific quantum process. Bianconi has no specific process, so instead works with an ad hoc ‘quantum operator’.
His work is compatible with ours in the same sense that a re-invented wheel with a slightly different description is compatible with the wheel that was already invented by others several years prior. :)
Yes, I totally hear you Ruth! Bianconi is trying to describe something that has already been clearly described in the work that you and Andreas have done on the generation of gravity from transactional ‘entropy’, and you and Andreas have already done this work in a much clearer and much more elegant way! No question about it. And the fact that he does not cite your work which clearly has addressed and done what he is proposing well before he wrote this, says a lot about his own level of scholarship and awareness of what he is talking about.
What I am wondering about is whether or not fundamental ‘transactions‘ taking place between quantum systems, like atoms, involving a transfer of mass or energy can all be understood in terms of equivalent transfers of ‘quantum information’–if it is possible to understand transfers of mass or energy in ‘communicative’–ie. informational terms through some type of equivalence between mass, energy, and information? I am asking this question for a reason that is operative at the macro level: I am really curious about how this may relate to a philosophical project that was worked on a while ago by John Dewey, who was a pragmatist-philosopher who was deeply influenced by Charles Sanders Peirce, together with Arthur Bentley, a younger colleague of Dewey’s, in a seminal book titled ‘Knowing and the Known‘ published in 1949. John Dewey has been considered by some to be a very deeply insightful American philosopher who had previously published a book in 1925 titled ‘Experience and Nature‘ which has been examined recently in some detail by Mark L Johnson and Jay Schulkin in a very interesting book titled ‘Mind in Nature. John Dewey, Cognitive Science, and a Naturalistic Philosophy for Living‘ which I have been reading as of late and really enjoying… see: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262545167/mind-in-nature/
What Dewey and Bentley put together in ‘Knowing and the Known‘ has become known as ‘Transactionalism‘ although they never referred to it as such themselves. But the approach they laid out conveys a philosophical position that seems to be very much reflective of what one might imagine is implied by the relativistic Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics in a broader general context where ‘transaction‘ is understood as a mediated communication that serves a process of pragmatic inquiry. The philosophical implications are quite significant, I think. They suggest a deep relational foundation of existence which places emphasis on the significance of being a relational being embedded in a fundamental communicative network rather than an isolated individual. This tends to push back against a lot of conventional thinking in modernity that places emphasis on the power and freedom of the isolated individual disconnected and on their own. It also places a huge emphasis on coordination and communication as fundamental in communal functionality in the natural world–that individual organisms necessarily operate in the context of relational networks, and that cooperative communication among networks of conspecific organisms then becomes critically important for survival. And it suggests that this general principle goes all the way down to the quantum level. It also suggests that a process of mediation through which communicative channels can operate is also a crucial necessity in a natural system. In Peirce’s philosophical process metaphysics this is what he called ‘Thirdness‘–ie. mediation. It also suggests that without this mediating element, one is dealing with a non-organismic mechanistic system that can be modeled through the mechanistic formalism as strictly deterministic–ie. as being able to be partitioned into ‘states’ and ‘dynamical equations’ that determine the lawful temporal evolution of the states. Which is the way that machines operate. The suggestion is that organismic living systems do not operate in this manner because they are inescapably ‘transactional’ and therefore operate on the basis of ‘free will’ which cannot be pre-determined by a system of equations. Organisms are not strictly deterministic the way that mechanisms are. And therefore the rTI predicts this element of free will and ‘indeterminism’–which I know you have written about with regard to the ‘Born Rule.’
Personally, I think this is really huge and relates to the issue of the balancing or ‘mediating’ between the Yin and the Yang active aspects–which is dynamic, adaptive, and exceeds strictly deterministic prediction.
Thanks Gary. Indeed Adil Kabbaj’s new book “Science Proclaims Materialism is Dead” makes these essential points. I would just note however that he uses the term ‘Information’ in a different way from e.g. Shannon information, which is a very specific quantity.
In RTI there are two kinds of ‘communication’ that need to be distinguished: (1) unitary (force-only) interactions and (2) non-unitary energy transfer (“measurement”). So these are very different kinds of ‘information exchange’ and only (2) corresponds to a “transaction” although
(1) influences the probabilities of transactions.
So interesting, Ruth! Yes, the term ‘information’ is very ‘loaded’ especially given the history from ‘electrical engineering’ and the invention of ‘Shannon Information’ which has a relatively limited application and significant ‘context-restriction’ because it effectively ignores the fundamental importance of relational context. Shannon information theory intentionally ignores the semantic meaning, significance, and relational context of messages to focus purely on the technical, quantitative aspect of transmitting data. Which has some utility in communication engineering in a mechanistic context–eg. in electrical circuit and electrical signal transmission contexts, but which does not take into account what John Vervaeke and his colleagues call ‘Relevance Realization‘ which is obviously fundamentally context-dependent. And when one realizes the essential significance of ‘context’, then we are also bringing into the picture the ‘Logoi framework’ introduced by Timothy Eastman in his book, ‘Untying the Gordian Knot. Process, Reality and Context‘ recognizing three fundamental categories: ‘context-independence’, ‘context-dependence’, and ‘context-transcendence.’ To summarize in a limited way, we finite creatures aspire to but never quite fully realize context-independence in open organismic systems which require context-dependence for the purposes of adaptability, and so must recognize that all knowledge has an applicable contextual temporospatial range within which the operative ‘law’ serves as a pretty decent approximation of actuality ( a good example is Newtonian mechanics which works pretty nicely in the typical human temporospatial context which is what makes it so useful, and, at the same time, so ‘vulnerable’ to change of context down to the quantum range and possibly, also, to the cosmological range ). And then there is the Logoi category of ‘context-transcendence’ which is the idea of connecting to a realm beyond finite confinement. Might this be the realm of the quantum substratum outside of the restrictions of spacetime? That is, a realm of as-yet unrealized potentiality?
Your point of distinction between two different forms of ‘communication’–‘unitary’ that can influence the probability of transactions only and ‘non-unitary’ involving actualized energy transfer as a realized ‘transaction’– seems to reach very deep indeed! Deeper than I can reach at this point personally. I need to try to understand it more fundamentally from the perspective of informational exchange and the two categories of ‘communication’ that you distinguish as they apply in the context of quantum information transaction–ie. the exchange of qB’s (cubits). And possibly how the work of Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano and his colleagues who claim that quantum theory can be derived from ‘first principles’ using an informational approach, fits into this general picture. Federico Faggin is utilizing their work to make his point regarding the primacy of consciousness as outlined in his book, ‘ Irreducible‘–which I am also trying to fully appreciate and understand! Thank you, Ruth. [image: ScienceDirect.com]
Thanks Gary. As far as I can tell, existing ‘consciousness-based’ approaches to QM, including Faggin’s, don’t have a way to deal with these two different levels of the physics, which means they fall short of accounting for what a ‘measurement’ is. That’s not just a technical problem but also a problem for any interpretation that wants to allow for a level of possibility (quantum substratum or primary arena in which consciousness could be seen as anchored) as well as a level of actuality (the ‘manifest’ or empirical level). In particular, Faggin’s model just assumes measurement without explaining what it is. This is because one really needs the direct-action dynamics in order to support the distinct character of these two modes of being. If you like, one (the quantum substratum) is ‘internal’ and where meaning is created, while the the other (the manifest, phenomenal, empirical level) is amenable to a ‘classical’ or ‘mechanical’-style description. The latter is where we inherit our ‘substance’, ‘object’- based metaphysics
but of course it’s not mandatory, it’s just that one can get ‘get away’ with it at the classical or phenomenal level. Unfortunately, approaches that try to extract the physics through defining fields as conscious, but not interacting transactionally as in the direct-action picture, are not going to cross that ‘gap’ between possibility and actuality because they are neglecting the basic necessary dynamics. Which, again, includes Yin–receptiveness and responsiveness on the part of the fields themselves, which manifests in specific behaviors. That is, the ability to recognize and confirm an offer or more precisely to actively participate with the ‘other’ in creating the OW/CW exchange.
So the sad part IMHO is that many of those trying to ‘de-materialize’ physics are missing the crucial Yin aspect. What they are offering is still a Yang-only account that invokes ‘consciousness’ without understanding what it really is at the basis: it is Yin-like awareness and receptivity, with the option to engage in transactional processes at its discretion. All of this is quantifiable and quantified in RTI. The solution is there, but the mainstream remains locked in their Yang-only conceptualizations in which consciousness is then imported but its crucial Yin-like role omitted. The result is handwaving.
These ideas also relate to the communication philosophy of Marshall McLuhan who was famous for his most widely recognized idea that ‘the Medium is the Message‘ in that, without mediation ‘between’ participants, there is no real possibility of messaging, of ‘communication’. So, in the ‘big picture’, I see the relativistic Transactional Interpretation as being a fundamental scientific foundation for the philosophy of John Dewey and others, implying that existence is based upon the reality of the ‘trans-action‘–as distinct from ‘self-action‘ and ‘inter-action‘–that comprises real communicative exchange, which is consistent with what I have been recently referring to in my own work as ‘Semiotic Panpsychism‘.
From the perspective of a philosophical understanding of a basis for ethics and morality, I think this has fundamental importance as well, and can be related to the phenomenological philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, who published two main book-length works, along with many additional essays and commentaries: ‘Totality and Infinity. An Essay on Exteriority.‘ and ‘Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence‘. The basic idea would be that, if transaction with an ‘Other’ subject is fundamental to existence throughout nature, then the ‘one’ is inherently obligated to the preservation of the relation to the Other, and thus to the Other’s well-being. Which, it could be argued, would constitute a basis for what Charles Sanders Peirce, in his ‘scientific’ evolutionary process metaphysics described in a series of publications in the Monist in the first half of the last decade of the 19th century, referred to as ‘Agapism‘ or the mediational role of ‘Evolutionary Love‘ that rides above and ‘mediates’ between pure chance ( ‘Tychism’ ) and the absolute certainty of deterministic law ( ‘Anancism’ )–the bailiwick of the ‘Laplacean Daemon.’
The other issue that needs to be addressed is the whole fundamental question regarding what really happened cosmologically near the beginning of the formation of the universe and what we may be learning about that fundamental question from the observations made through the operation of the James Webb Telescope (JWT). What might the ‘gravity from transactions’ theory predict about what we may expect to see via the JWT about the earliest phase of formation of the universe given the assumption that the universe formed in a sudden ‘Big Bang’ event around 13.8 bY ago?
How might the ‘gravity from transactions’ potentially fix some of the ‘cracks’ in our understanding of the observations of the earliest phases of formation of the universe that we are now accessing and recognizing by way of the observations made through the JWT? What might it tell us about the earliest phases of star and galaxy formation and the history of the life of galaxies and the stars that comprise them? How can it explain the massiveness and the numbers of the earliest galaxies that are now being observed in the early universe? What is most exciting about questions about how structure forms in the earliest universe is what it might actually tell us about the true nature of gravitational effects, and how this might serve as an empirical test of various different ‘theories’ of how the gravitational force emerges. For example, what might the transactional entropy theory of the basis for gravity tell us about the origin of the ‘Hubble tension’ and why it is the specific magnitude measured? What might it tell us about the possibility of for the necessity for assuming the existence of ‘early dark energy’ to explain this specific measured value for the Hubble tension? What does the gravity from transactions theory tell us about the whole question of ‘dark matter’ and its ‘evolution’ during the course of the evolution of the universe? How might it explain the existence of the ‘cosmic microwave background? How does it explain the idea that dark energy evolves over time? And the general assumption that the laws of physics are fixed over time and space? That is, the ‘cosmological principle’ that assumes the universe is smooth and uniform and that the physical laws that govern it are fixed across space and time. As is suggested in the video referenced above, the findings of the JWT may be raising a great deal of uncertainty regarding basic cosmological assumptions. It is clear that JWT is stimulating some deep thinking, rethinking and questioning regarding our understanding of the origins of the cosmos, and our assumptions regarding physical laws, through raising a number of unexpected and currently inexplicable ‘anomalies’ for which we currently do not have acceptable explanations.
Thank you, Ruth.