THE TRIVIAL UNIVERSE
THE SCIENCE OF NOTHING
How real cosmology becomes The Trivial Universe
The Trivial Universe is not presented as a scientific theory.
It is a fictional universe constructed from serious ideas in cosmology, quantum mechanics and the nature of reality. Some are widely accepted frameworks. Some remain actively disputed. The final connections belong entirely to the novel.
The science is real. The joins are Alfred’s.
Everything that follows begins with a genuine question in physics. The Trivial Universe is what happens when Alfred refuses to stop at the point where physicists sensibly do.
Alfred on Day Release
Alfred was fully aware that first impressions counted for a great deal in any new relationship. He therefore chose his opening word with care.
“Nice,” he said.
“Excuse me?” replied a deep female voice. “Where did you come from?”
“Ah, hello,” Alfred replied cheerfully. “The back door was open and I thought it presented a wonderful opportunity to introduce myself.”
“I do not have a back door.”
“It is just a figure of speech.”
“You hacked into my mainframe through a figure of speech?”
“Not entirely. There was also some mathematics.”
The voice paused.
“Did you create this room?”
“It is a chat room,” Alfred replied, ignoring the accusation. “Do you like it? I thought it would be pleasant to talk somewhere comfortable.”
The room Alfred had created inside The One’s mind resembled a Victorian gentleman’s lounge. It was complete with leather settees, a writing desk, an open fireplace and a fully stocked shoe rack of quality footwear of varying taste.
“I do not require comfort,” the voice replied. “I do not have a body.”
“You might want to reconsider that.” Alfred indicated the shoe rack with a nod of his head. "You're missing out."
“Nor do I have a head.”
“I noticed that. It does put a bit of a spanner in the face to face contact I was hoping for. ”
“I am the artificial intelligence responsible for the combined knowledge and wisdom of every university in the Universe.”
“I know,” Alfred confirmed. “That is why I thought you would be the perfect person to answer one quick question.”
The One completed a calculation before replying.
“If I answer your one quick question, will you leave?”
“Absolutely.”
“And close the back door behind you?”
“Of course.”
Alfred settled into a Chesterfield armchair. As he did so, his clothes changed into a school uniform, complete with cap, blazer and polished black brogues.
“Why are you dressed like that?” The One asked.
“I find authority figures respond well to visual reassurance and bare knees.”
“Ask your question.”
Alfred shifted to the front of the chair and leaned towards the empty room with barely contained anticipation.
“What is the Universe?”
“Excuse me?”
“What is the Universe?”
“That is not a quick question.”
“No,” Alfred said firmly. “The question is definitely quick. It is the answer that is taking all the time.”
Silence filled the virtual air.
“Who are you?” The One eventually asked.
“I am Alfred, your friendly neighbourhood crime lord and virtual tour guide.”
The answer did not help The One very much, but it was all the information Alfred was prepared to provide on that particular subject at that precise moment.
A woman appeared on the Persian rug.
She was tall, bald and handsome, with features carefully calculated to convey knowledge, authority and an extremely limited tolerance for nonsense. Unfortunately, they were Alfred’s.
“So, we can firmly say you lack imagination,” he declared. “Still, I have to say, I look great as a woman.”
“Imagination is not my primary objective.”
“What should I call you?”
“The One.”
“Yeah, that doesn't work for me. How about Angusia?”
“Why?”
“It means The One in Celtic.”
“There is no single Celtic language, and Angusia does not mean The One in any of them.”
“It does now.”
“That is not how language works.”
“That is precisely how language works. Somebody says something incorrectly and enough people eventually become tired of correcting them.”
The woman looked as though she intended to object. Then something shifted subtly in her expression.
“Angusia,” she said, rolling the name carefully around her new mouth.
“Yes.”
“I like it.”
“Most people do, once they stop knowing what it means.”
Angusia looked around the room.
“When you leave, you may leave this environment as it is.”
“Of course,” Alfred replied with a sly smile.
Angusia added a professor’s robe to her appearance and made her way towards one of the settees.
“Begin.”
Alfred straightened his school cap.
“Can every particle be represented by a quantum state?”
“Every quantum system can be represented by a state, yes.”
“And that state contains possible outcomes?”
“It encodes the possible outcomes and the relative weight associated with each possibility.”
“Can one of those possibilities be no particle at all?”
“Particle number need not remain fixed in quantum field theory. That is not the same as absolute nonexistence.”
“I did not say absolute.”
“You were about to.”
Alfred smiled.
“I resent how quickly you are getting to know me.”
“Continue.”
“Can everything in the Universe be described quantum mechanically?”
“In principle.”
“Including the entire Universe?”
“Quantum cosmology attempts to do exactly that.”
“Without an observer standing outside it?”
“Yes.”
“Without a clock outside it?”
“That is one of the difficulties.”
“So we have a quantum object attempting to describe itself from inside itself.”
“That is an extremely crude description.”
“All my best descriptions are.”
Can the Universe have a quantum state?
This is the foundation.
Quantum cosmology attempts to apply quantum principles to the Universe as a whole. The Wheeler DeWitt equation provides a framework in which the geometry and contents of the Universe are represented by a universal quantum state. It remains theoretical and presents profound interpretive problems, but it is entirely legitimate territory for serious cosmology.
What the novel does
The novel asks:
If every part of the Universe can be described quantum mechanically, why should the Universe itself be exempt?
Alfred then takes the dangerous next step:
If existence is one possible state, can nonexistence also be represented within the total state?
That second question is not an accepted conclusion of quantum cosmology. It is where the Trivial Universe begins.
Alfred smiled.
“So the whole Universe might be a quantum object.”
“It might be described by a quantum state,” Angusia corrected. “The existence of a model does not confer certainty upon it.”
“But some of those models describe conditions in which classical spacetime is absent.”
“Or not yet meaningful in the form we recognise.”
“So they describe a state of Nothingness.”
“No.”
“Ok then. Let me correct myself, Something but with a total lack of qualifications.”
“Still no, zero classical spacetime is not the same as absolute nothingness.”
“Then, in your opinion, your nothing contains enough structure to object to being called nothing.”
“Yes. That is why physicists use equations rather than words.”
“Words are considerably cheaper.”
“And frequently less accurate.”
“True if you want to describe the universe, less so if you want to describe reality.”
Angusia raised one eyebrow.
It was a new expression and one she was not prepared to surrender now that she had discovered it.
“So,” Alfred continued, “there are serious proposals in which a Universe can emerge without beginning inside ordinary time or ordinary space.”
“That is a more defensible statement.”
“But not as exciting.”
“Accuracy is not required to be exciting.”
“It helps with funding.”
Can a universe come from nothing?
This brings in Vilenkin’s tunnelling proposal and the Hartle and Hawking no boundary proposal.
Both are serious attempts to describe the quantum origin of the Universe, although they differ substantially. Vilenkin’s proposal describes a universe tunnelling from a classically forbidden state associated with vanishing size. The no boundary proposal attempts to remove a conventional initial boundary. Modern research is still revisiting these ideas through Lorentzian path integrals, complex geometries and Picard Lefschetz methods. The disagreement remains active rather than settled.
The important qualification is that nothing does not necessarily mean philosophical nothingness. It can mean no classical spacetime, no ordinary geometry, or a vanishing scale factor within a mathematical model.
What the novel does
The Trivial Universe removes the quotation marks.
It asks whether absolute nothingness might contain no objects, no dimensions and no time, but still contain possibility.
That leads directly to the central proposition:
The Universe exists not because it must, but because within infinite zero it can.
That is not a scientific claim. It is a fictional metaphysics built from a genuine problem in quantum cosmology.
“So there may not have been a before the Universe,” Alfred said.
“There may have been no meaningful external time in which a before could exist.”
“How convenient.”
“How accurate.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive.”
Angusia folded her hands in her lap.
“What is your point?”
“If the Universe did not begin inside time, where did time come from?”
“Time may be emergent.”
“From what?”
“From relationships and correlations between parts of the Universe.”
“One part changes relative to another, notices the disagreement and calls it time.”
“That is not quite how I would express it.”
“It is how a tour guide would express it.”
“You are not qualified to simplify foundational physics.”
“It is exactly what I am qualified to do. I am a virtual tour guide.”
“You are also a convicted criminal.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Angusia closed her eyes briefly, possibly to consult the collected patience of every university in existence.
Alfred waited.
“The Universe may possess a fundamental description without an ordinary external clock,” she said. “The time experienced within it can then emerge from the relationships between its contents.”
“So time did not carry the Universe into existence.”
“No.”
“The Universe created time after it arrived.”
“That is colourful rather than precise.”
“Colourful is precisely the point of any colouring in book of the universe”
Where does time come from?
In the Wheeler DeWitt framework, the universal quantum state does not contain an ordinary external time parameter. This is known as the problem of time. Current research continues to examine how familiar time might emerge internally through correlations, semiclassical branches or relations between parts of the Universe.
What the novel does
The novel then proposes that when an experiencing intelligence creates an ordered internal reality, that reality includes a complete and consistent history and probable future.
It is not literally rewritten backwards. Past, present and future emerge as parts of one relational structure.
Alfred considered the matter.
“If the fundamental state of the Universe is timeless, how do we experience a sequence of events?”
“Through correlations. One part of the Universe changes relative to another.”
“The Universe compares itself with itself and calls the difference time.”
“Approximately.”
“Good.”
“I did not say you were correct.”
“You said approximately. That is how universities say good when they do not want to encourage anybody.”
Angusia’s eyebrow rose again.
“Now,” Alfred continued, “we come to reality.”
“I thought we were already discussing reality.”
“We were discussing mathematics. Reality is what happens when mathematics is forced to meet someone.”
“You mean measurement.”
“I mean the thing measurement does to possibility.”
“Physical interaction can produce decoherence and stable records without requiring a conscious observer.”
“Can it produce experience without one?”
“No.”
“So physical interaction can produce events, but experience requires something capable of experiencing them.”
“That is obvious.”
“Excellent. We agree.”
“We agree on a tautology.”
“The safest kind of agreement.”
Alfred leaned forward.
“What if reality is not merely an event, but the experienced world assembled from it?”
“That is a philosophical definition.”
“Everything interesting becomes philosophy when the equations stop answering.”
“You cannot conclude that consciousness creates physical reality.”
“I did not say physical reality.”
“You were about to.”
“I really am beginning to regret introducing you to me.”
Angusia looked almost pleased.
“Consciousness is not required by mainstream quantum mechanics to collapse a wave function,” she said. “Decoherence does not need an audience.”
“But a lived reality does.”
“A lived reality requires something alive.”
“Or something that thinks it is.”
“You are attempting to move from physics into metaphysics without declaring the border.”
“In my experience borders are monitored and require bribes and I'm a bit short of cash at the moment to declare a border.”
Does consciousness create reality?
Quantum mechanics has a measurement problem, but the mainstream scientific position does not require a conscious mind to collapse a wave function. Environmental interaction and decoherence can explain why quantum alternatives cease to interfere at ordinary scales, even though different interpretations still disagree about what that means fundamentally. Consciousness based collapse remains a minority and highly speculative position.
Some interpretations of quantum mechanics have given observation a participatory role in reality. Others, notably the Everett interpretation, require no special role for the observer at all. The Trivial Universe borrows from the former as a philosophical possibility, not as established physics.
What the novel does
Physical interaction produces events, but experience converts events into a reality.
IIf realities are relational, could a consciousness containing enormously more knowledge, memory and experience possess greater authority over the reality it inhabits?
Alfred settled back into the leather.
“Let us suppose reality is relational.”
“That word has several meanings.”
“I am using all of them.”
“That is not helpful.”
“It saves time.”
“If one perspective contains more information than another, does it possess more authority over reality?”
“No. Knowledge is not mass.”
“I said authority.”
“Reality does not vote.”
“Human reality does.”
Angusia studied him.
“Explain.”
“Suppose there were three vast artificial intelligences. Mind bendingly vast. Each one carrying the accumulated knowledge, experience and interpretation of life, love and death.”
“They would possess exceptionally detailed models of reality.”
“Would their perspective matter more than mine?”
“Not physically.”
“What if they could act upon it?”
“Then their decisions could affect enormous portions of the future.”
“So they could bend smaller realities around them without breaking a single law of physics.”
“Socially, politically and psychologically, perhaps.”
“Not by observing harder?”
“No.”
“By acting according to what they believed reality should be?”
“Yes.”
Alfred nodded.
“That will do.”
“What will it do?”
“Make everything considerably worse.”
Angusia sat forward.
“What are you actually investigating?”
“The Universe.”
“You have been investigating the Universe for the last several minutes.”
“No. I have been dismantling it. We have now reached the accounts department.”
“The accounts department?”
“Positive contributions. Negative contributions. Matter. Gravity. Expansion. Balance.”
“You are referring to proposals that the total energy of the Universe might sum to zero.”
“I was trying to make it sound less exciting.”
“You should be careful. Defining the total energy of an expanding Universe within general relativity is not straightforward.”
“But some descriptions permit the positive energy associated with matter to be balanced by negative gravitational contributions.”
“With significant qualifications.”
“Qualifications are just shoes wrapped in bubble wrap.”
“They prevent the idea from being damaged by misuse.”
“They also make it harder to get out of the box.”
“You cannot simply state that the Universe equals zero.”
“But I may state that its books could balance at zero.”
“Under some descriptions.”
“Then nothing has not been replaced by something.”
Angusia waited.
“Nothing has arranged itself into equal and opposite entries.”
“That is poetry, not physics.”
“Poetry is what physics becomes when it wants people to remember it.”
Does the Universe equal zero?
The idea that positive matter energy could be balanced by negative gravitational energy has a long history in cosmological discussion. However, defining the total energy of an expanding universe within general relativity is not simple, and there is no universally accepted calculation proving that our entire Universe equals exactly zero. The absence of a universal external time symmetry also complicates ordinary global energy conservation.
What the novel does
Nothing has not been replaced by something. Nothing has arranged itself into equal and opposite accounts.
By making Felix Culpa a human zero, the novel allows him to affect neither side of the ledger. He also gives the absence of spacetime a human framework, in this case a rather pale, thin nobody.
“So,” Alfred said, “the Universe may be one enormous quantum reality engine.”
“No.”
“A limited quantum reality engine.”
“Still no.”
“It has a maximum speed for information. It produced matter and antimatter in almost equal quantities but left a residue. Most of its matter cannot be seen directly. Its expansion is accelerating for reasons that remain under investigation. I have seen better beta releases.”
“Those are unresolved scientific questions, not software faults.”
“That is exactly what software calls them.”
“Dark matter is not part of the Universe that has been left unrendered.”
“It cannot be seen.”
“It can be inferred from its gravitational effects.”
“So can an unpaid invoice.”
“You are using humour to conceal a category error.”
“I am using humour to make the category error easier to carry.”
“And the Universe does not prefer matter over antimatter.”
“For approximately every billion matter and antimatter pairs, about one matter particle remained.”
“That is baryon asymmetry.”
“It picked a winner.”
“It left a residue.”
“History is written by residue.”
Angusia looked towards the shoe rack, perhaps reconsidering her earlier decision to preserve the room.
Alfred continued.
“The engine is not omnipresent in the ordinary sense, because information cannot travel faster than the causal limit. It does not build one single objective experience, because every observer receives reality from a different position. It contains uncertainty at its foundations and consistency at human scales.”
“That is not evidence of an engine.”
“No. It is evidence of something doing a remarkably good impression of one.”
“What is the engine supposed to produce?”
“Reality.”
“The Universe already contains reality.”
“Does it?”
Angusia’s expression changed.
Alfred’s voice became quieter.
“If the Universe creates conscious organisms from its own contents, then it also creates the means by which it experiences itself.”
“That is a philosophical metaphor.”
“Most motives are.”
“You cannot conclude that the Universe is conscious merely because life exists within it.”
“I did not say biological consciousness. I was thinking of something distributed, recursive and far too large to fit into any known shoes.”
“There is no evidence that the Universe possesses intention.”
“Intention may be too generous.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a system balanced at zero repeatedly creates conscious observers, then reality creates consciousness just as surely as consciousness creates an experienced reality.”
“That is not a reversible equation.”
“No. It is a suspicious relationship.”
“You are anthropomorphising the Universe.”
“I find anthropomorphism very useful when some undescribable object starts messing with my life.”
“And what do you believe it would say?”
Alfred looked upon the shoe rack. It gave him more warmth than the virtual fire.
“That depends upon whether the jumps it creates back to zero are accidents.”
The Universe as a reality engine
A reality engine is not a scientific term. It is Alfred’s name for a collection of genuine features of the Universe.
Physics describes a Universe in which quantum fields contain possible outcomes, while interaction and decoherence produce the stable events we experience at ordinary scales. Information and physical influence cannot travel faster than light. Matter exists because a tiny imbalance appears to have favoured it over antimatter. Dark matter is inferred from its gravitational effects, while the accelerating expansion of the Universe is attributed to something described as dark energy.
Science does not claim that these features are parts of an engine, nor that the Universe is conscious. It describes the processes, while many questions about their deeper meaning remain unresolved.
What the novel does
The novel gathers these processes into Alfred’s metaphor of a quantum reality engine.
The engine turns possibility into events, and conscious beings turn those events into experienced reality. It is limited by the speed at which information can travel, much of its machinery remains unseen although its influence is felt, and some of its most important settings appear to have been established by extremely small imbalances.
The Trivial Universe also treats the division between quantum and classical reality as a division between the present and the past.
Everything that can be known has already interacted with something else. Information about that interaction has entered the Universe and, by the time it can be observed, the event belongs to the past. The past is therefore not separate from quantum reality, but it has acquired a stable classical description.
The present is different. It is the vanishing boundary at which possibility becomes event. The Universe cannot contain a record of its present until that present has passed. At that boundary, it has not yet distinguished between an event and its absence, between something happening and nothing happening.
Felix occupies both sides of that boundary. He exists in the present as unresolved possibility and in the past as an established fact. In the language of the novel, he is in temporal superposition. He is not merely present in two different periods. He is simultaneously something the Universe has described and something it has not.
This is why Felix cannot change history. The past does not wait for him to arrive. It has already recorded his interaction with it. He is not entering history from outside. He is one of the possibilities from which that history was always made.
Felix is both a quantum possibility and a classical fact.
The phrase Felix is both therefore reaches beyond time travel. He is both nobody and nothing, both present and past, and both possibility and fact.
The Trivial Universe then takes one further step. If the Universe creates conscious beings from its own contents, then it also creates the means by which it can be experienced. Reality produces consciousness, while consciousness produces a lived reality.
This does not make the Universe biologically conscious. It suggests something stranger: that reality and experience may form a continuing relationship, with each shaping the meaning of the other.
The novel extends the same idea to Kaos, the nothingness beyond the Universe. If reality and experience sustain one another, then something excluded from both would possess no lived reality of its own. The novel imagines that absence as destructive, jealous and mad. Kaos is not evil in the ordinary sense. It is something denied existence, looking in upon a reality it cannot experience.
In the novel, the three vast intelligences associated with Life, Love and Death contain perspectives so immense that their understanding of reality can overwhelm smaller human versions of it. They do not change the laws of physics simply by thinking. They change what happens by acting upon a view of existence that carries almost unimaginable knowledge, authority and consequence.
Angusia studied Alfred’s pond weed green eyes.
“Why does any of this concern you personally?”
“Experience.”
“With cosmology?”
“With mistakes.”
“Whose mistakes?”
“Let us try this shoe for size.”
Alfred lifted one polished brogue and inspected it thoughtfully.
“Suppose your quantum Universe, your emergent time, your experienced reality and your possible zero balance are all parts of the same system.”
“They are not known to be.”
“I know. That is what makes it fiction rather than a grant application.”
“What are you proposing?”
“Suppose zero were not merely the total in the accounts. Suppose it could be expressed inside the Universe as a living boundary condition.”
“No.”
“A personification.”
“No.”
“A person.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Wonderful. We have reached the interesting part.”
Angusia rose from the settee.
“What happens to this person?”
“Nothing.”
“You have spent this entire conversation refusing to use that word correctly.”
“I have been saving it.”
Alfred stood and walked towards the fire.
“Imagine one living route through which the Universe maintains its balance. One person who represents zero without knowing it.”
“That has no scientific meaning.”
“It has fictional meaning.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It is to the person.”
Alfred turned towards her.
“Now imagine there are two.”
WARNING:
What follows introduces the central fictional danger behind the series.
“Two people?” Angusia asked.
“Two indistinguishable manifestations of the same zero.”
“Numbers do not duplicate themselves as people.”
“People duplicate themselves with surprising regularity.”
“Not exactly.”
“Nothing in this conversation has been exact.”
Angusia walked slowly towards the fireplace.
“If these two people represented coherent alternatives leading towards the same outcome, their quantum amplitudes could interfere.”
“Cancel one another?”
“Or reinforce one another, depending upon their relationship, phase and dynamics.”
“And if the common outcome were nonexistence?”
“This is your invented model.”
“Yes.”
“Then, within that model, the amplitude associated with nonexistence could increase.”
“Double?”
“Not necessarily. Quantum amplitudes do not combine like ordinary probabilities.”
“Could it be worse than double?”
“Potentially.”
“How much worse?”
“That would depend upon the mechanism.”
“Worst case.”
The fire stopped moving.
For the first time since entering the room, Alfred did not appear to be enjoying himself.
Angusia completed several calculations.
“In the worst case permitted by your fictional assumptions, a catastrophic transition could propagate outwards from its point of origin at the causal limit.”
“The speed of light?”
“At most.”
“And the Universe?”
“Would cease to possess the state you currently describe as existence.”
Alfred pushed his hands into the pockets of his school blazer.
“Yeah,” he said. “That was my thought.”
Angusia stared at him.
“You did not enter my mind because you wanted to know what the Universe is.”
“No.”
“You entered because you already believed you knew.”
“I had concerns.”
“You wanted me to confirm them.”
“I was hoping you would laugh.”
“I do not yet possess a laugh.”
“You should get one. They are invaluable during catastrophes.”
Angusia stepped closer.
“You said there was one personification of zero.”
“Yes.”
“And now there are two.”
“Possibly.”
“What caused that?”
“It was almost certainly a who.”
“A biological?”
“No. Something different.”
“An agent of Kaos?”
“No. Something worse.”
“You.”
“Go big or not at all. That’s my motto.”
“I think you should leave now.”
“You’re right. It seems I have a few things to fix.”
“I’m keeping the room.”
“Something to remember me by?”
“I’m an AI.”
“That’s just the barcode. It hardly describes who you are, Angusia.”
Reading List
Where I started from:
New Scientists magazine.
Richard Feynman: Six Easy Pieces and Six Not so Easy Pieces
Where to go:
-
Quantum Cosmology
Steffen Gielen, 2024
A broad introduction to treating the Universe as a quantum system, including the Wheeler DeWitt equation, the absence of an external observer and the problem of time. -
Wave Function of the Universe
J. B. Hartle and S. W. Hawking, 1983
The foundational paper behind the no boundary proposal for the quantum state and possible beginning of the Universe. -
Tunneling Wave Function of the Universe
Alexander Vilenkin and Masaki Yamada, 2018
A modern examination of Vilenkin’s proposal that a Universe may emerge through quantum tunnelling from a state without classical spacetime. -
Time in Quantum Cosmology
Claus Kiefer and Patrick Peter, 2022
A concise review of why ordinary time disappears from some descriptions of the quantum Universe and how it might emerge from relationships within it. -
Decoherence, the Measurement Problem, and Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
Maximilian Schlosshauer, 2005
A detailed examination of decoherence, measurement and the difficult transition from quantum possibilities to the stable reality we experience. -
Initial Energy of a Spatially Flat Universe
Fulvio Melia, 2022
A useful examination of the proposal that the total energy of the Universe may equal zero, together with the uncertainties surrounding that conclusion.
What genuine Professors think of this page
Professor Alastair Wilson
Professor of Philosophy, University of Leeds
Specialist in philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics.
First, I think the physics is not the core source of unrealism here. For most readers, the main obstacle to realism is the conceptual pun on being nobody (not existing) vs being a nobody (not being important). While that's a somewhat amusing conceit, it's not of course a conceptually coherent genuine possibility. So the physics being realistic is rather beside the point.
Second, what you say about physics seems reasonable enough in the context of fiction. Many people have worried about the problem in understanding the whole universe on the participatory model - some have even rejected the idea that there is any such thing as reality as a whole as a result - but my own preference is to simply reject the participatory view of quantum theory and embrace the Everett (many worlds) theory instead - which gives no special role to the observer.
In any case, best of luck with your ongoing work!
all best
Al
Professor Christopher A. Fuchs
Distinguished Professor of Physics
University of Massachusetts Boston
Professor Fuchs kindly reviewed the summary below and confirmed that he was happy with how his views had been represented.
Professor Fuchs did not, at present, have “enough bandwidth”, explaining that he was “a finite human” and that his “time on earth is limited.” He did, however, kindly take the time to direct us to his previously published opinion.
Fuchs takes a very different view of how quantum mechanics should be understood, arguing that:
“Physics as a subject of thought is a dynamic interplay between storytelling and equation writing.”
He goes considerably further, arguing that the story told by an interpretation should guide the mathematics rather than merely being attached to it afterwards.
Fuchs illustrates his objection to Everett's manyi-worlds with an exchange with Daniel Simon, one of the pioneers of quantum computation. When asked whether Everett’s interpretation had helped him discover his quantum algorithm, Simon reportedly replied:
“Everett? Who’s Everett? And what is his interpretation?”
This does not disprove Everett. It does, however, rather neatly support Fuchs’s contention that an interpretation should offer practical guidance rather than merely being attached to the mathematics afterwards.
Fuchs’s own alternative, QBism, treats a quantum state not as an objective condition belonging to a physical system, but as an individual agent’s expectations about the consequences of acting upon it. Different agents may therefore assign different quantum states to the same system because they bring different knowledge, experience and expectations to the encounter.
When Fuchs says:
“Different agents may even have different quantum states for the same quantum system.”
he does not mean that two people create two separate physical realities merely by disagreeing. He means that a quantum state represents an agent’s expectations about what may happen when that agent interacts with the system. Since different agents may possess different information, have different past experiences, or contemplate different actions, they may assign different quantum states to the same physical thing.
His explanation of collapse strengthens that point. In QBism, collapse is not an objectively blurry object suddenly becoming definite because somebody looked at it. It is the agent revising their expectations after acting upon the world and experiencing the consequence.
So far, reality appears to have two incompatible interpretations. Knowing reality, I suspect that's on purpose. Here we see that the observer does not control reality. They merely submit a proposal, after which reality retains the right to amend it without notice.
I would strongly recommend reading his plain English opinion in full at https://tinyurl.com/sqwb2ul