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Ted King
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Question: Greene's "The Hidden Reality": the holographic principle
On pp. 260-261 of "The Hidden Reality" Brian Greene says the following:
I puzzled over this for quite awhile and it seems as though Greene, probably inadvertently, phrased this somewhat more decisively than is justified - that is, the "then there's reason to think that the surface is where the... processes happen" part in particular. It seems that he hasn't provided reasons why something that can be is anything more than a theoretic possibility rather than what is the case.
Perhaps I'm being too pedantic, but when I first read this I was led by his phrasing into thinking that what he was stating about the holographic principle was something that some physicists have good reason to think is more than a theoretic possibility.
Of course, I could easily be misconstruing the whole issue or missing some critical aspect of it. I am also aware that scientists who popularize complex issues oftentimes understandably use imprecise language that can cause misunderstandings that are avoided by more precise formulations that scientists steeped in the technical language of the discipline are able to avoid. That's why I'm asking for help in understanding this. Is the holographic principle essentially only a theoretic possibility that is consistent with our best understanding of physics or are there actually other reasons to think that it is more than a "mere" theoretic possibility? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?
On pp. 260-261 of "The Hidden Reality" Brian Greene says the following:
Susskind and 't Hooft stressed that the lesson should be general: since the information required to describe physical phenomena within any given region of space can be fully encoded by data on the surface that surrounds the region, then there's reason to think that the surface is where the fundamental physical processes actually happen.
I puzzled over this for quite awhile and it seems as though Greene, probably inadvertently, phrased this somewhat more decisively than is justified - that is, the "then there's reason to think that the surface is where the... processes happen" part in particular. It seems that he hasn't provided reasons why something that can be is anything more than a theoretic possibility rather than what is the case.
Perhaps I'm being too pedantic, but when I first read this I was led by his phrasing into thinking that what he was stating about the holographic principle was something that some physicists have good reason to think is more than a theoretic possibility.
Of course, I could easily be misconstruing the whole issue or missing some critical aspect of it. I am also aware that scientists who popularize complex issues oftentimes understandably use imprecise language that can cause misunderstandings that are avoided by more precise formulations that scientists steeped in the technical language of the discipline are able to avoid. That's why I'm asking for help in understanding this. Is the holographic principle essentially only a theoretic possibility that is consistent with our best understanding of physics or are there actually other reasons to think that it is more than a "mere" theoretic possibility? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?
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