After some puzzlement (because it is so unlike what I expected), I think I now understand your interpretation. Possibilist TI is essentially a growing block universe which consists of a set of state vectors with a timelike partial order (a little like this), and the growth is a stochastic feeling out of immediate future extensions of this poset, via potential transactions.
For various reasons I can’t believe in that as a final ontology, but I can imagine that it would have heuristic value, and maybe even practical value, for people trying to understand the nature of time and causal dependency in a universe containing backward as well as forward causality.
Thanks Mitchell—it’s only at the nonrelativistic limit that there is a timelike partial ordering in this sense, and that emerges stochastically from the relativistic level. I.e., there is no temporal causal relationship in the basic field propagation. So my picture isn’t quite captured by the formulation in this paper (which also doesn’t appear to address wf collapse and the possible relation of collapse to an emergent spacetime). But in any case, thanks again for your interest and I hope you will take a look at the book. The main dividend you get from the TI picture is a robust solution to the measurement problem, in contrast to the ‘FAPP’ quasi-solution obtainable from decoherence approaches. In particular, decoherence never gives true irreversibility, since you never get real collapse with decoherence alone. In PTI you get true collapse, which also sheds light on macroscopic irreversibilty. I discuss this in my book as well.
After some puzzlement (because it is so unlike what I expected), I think I now understand your interpretation. Possibilist TI is essentially a growing block universe which consists of a set of state vectors with a timelike partial order (a little like this), and the growth is a stochastic feeling out of immediate future extensions of this poset, via potential transactions.
For various reasons I can’t believe in that as a final ontology, but I can imagine that it would have heuristic value, and maybe even practical value, for people trying to understand the nature of time and causal dependency in a universe containing backward as well as forward causality.
Thanks Mitchell—it’s only at the nonrelativistic limit that there is a timelike partial ordering in this sense, and that emerges stochastically from the relativistic level. I.e., there is no temporal causal relationship in the basic field propagation. So my picture isn’t quite captured by the formulation in this paper (which also doesn’t appear to address wf collapse and the possible relation of collapse to an emergent spacetime). But in any case, thanks again for your interest and I hope you will take a look at the book. The main dividend you get from the TI picture is a robust solution to the measurement problem, in contrast to the ‘FAPP’ quasi-solution obtainable from decoherence approaches. In particular, decoherence never gives true irreversibility, since you never get real collapse with decoherence alone. In PTI you get true collapse, which also sheds light on macroscopic irreversibilty. I discuss this in my book as well.