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Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

New publication! Maybe, after a century of trying to “interpret” the quantum wavefunction, we should also spend a bit of effort looking at different variables that might better represent reality. Say, variables that fully respect relativity, hidden inside a common representation of quantum systems.

mdpi.com

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Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Looks like there's a zoom link, if anyone wants to watch the seminar live. (11am EDT, Thursday 9/10). I probably shouldn't post it here, but feel free to email me if you'd like the link.

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I'm looking forward to visiting Perimeter next week! It'll be fun to talk foundations with everyone. Good timing, too; the paper I'm presenting was just accepted yesterday. My seminar is 11am Thursday; I'll post the recording at some point. Abstract below. events.perimeterinstitute.ca/event/2618/

events.perimeterinstitute.ca

Localized covariant quantities appear to underlie quantum systems

Any quantum system can be closely approximated by a quantum circuit with spatially-localized qubits. We analyze such quantum circuits and present evidence that the local weak values comprise a covaria...

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You’re not wrong! 😀 Cramer modeled TI after a similar approach to classical electrodynamics (Wheeler-Feynman) where almost the same thing happens. In the classical case, it’s not photons, but all electromagnetic radiation eventually has to be absorbed for the theory to work.

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Very nice analysis by David Albert.

Anyways, it would be fascinating if you could find a different way to make your points using worldlines on curved surfaces, instead of using such a dangerous and incorrect analogy. Getting the reader into a block-universe mindset might be useful for other topics as well. (And sorry for the rant! 😀)

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There are also so-called “ego-moving” idioms: “approaching the deadline”. This is the view that “motion through time” will tap into, in an incorrect & misleading way. (Other languages put time in a different spatial orientation; Mandarin has time go “down”, and Malagasy has it going "behind us".)

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There are actually two such representations in most languages. In English, we talk about time as if it is a spatial dimension stretching out in front of us, and then talk about motion along that “spatialized” dimension. “The deadline is approaching”, for instance; this is a “time moving” idiom.

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But even worse, when one takes a clear concept like “motion” (which already has time baked into it!) and tries to analogize it to some purported “motion through time”, you’re bound to tap into a reader’s completely incorrect representation of time, one constantly enforced by our everyday idioms.

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… even if you did that, you’d end up talking about that field of clocks as if it were the keeper of the “one true time measure”, the clocks from which you measure your supposed “motion through time”. This is also an anti-relativistic viewpoint, bound to put the reader into a Newtonian mindset.

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First of all, you’re comparing this to “moving through space”, which is *already* something you should be avoiding when talking about relativity, as it portrays space as some fixed substrate. You could fix this (moving through a field of clocks, to give you the time reference you need later), but…

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Hi Ethan – I read this over breakfast this morning, and was quite enjoying it, until you made the rhetorical choice to talk about “moving through time”. I think I get why you’re doing this, but I also think it’s a mistake. At the very least, you’ve triggered a mild rant! :-)

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Thanks, Jeffrey! Happy to discuss it if you're interested, as well as the next stages of the project that are now underway. One thing that the paper is missing is some of the cool hidden-variable videos I'm able to show when I give the talk. See the first talk here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwj...

youtube.com

John Templeton Foundation at Chapman IQS conference day 1

YouTube video by Institute for Quantum Studies

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Nice! But why didn’t you also tell the director that they should therefore also fund a bit of quantum foundations research on the side? 😃

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My take is basically *all* physics students start out interested in foundations! (If you didn't want to understand how things worked at some low level, you likely wouldn't go into physics.) But too many are then told these questions are irrelevant, or have been resolved, or aren't "real physics".

Here's an honest question of mine, from deep in another thread.

Although, I think the more important question is this: If the eventual success of conventional quantum gravity research programs entirely depends on unresolved questions in quantum foundations, then why are so few physicists even marginally engaging with those foundational questions?

Not to mention there’s comparable experimental accuracy between the g-2 experiments and the binary pulsar decays. So why should we have such unshakeable confidence in the usual QM/QFT mathematics, and no trust at all in what GR seems to be clearly telling us about our spacetime-based universe?

It’s fair to not have much confidence in any given alternate approach (with nowhere close to the vast research-hours devoted to quantum gravity), but that doesn’t mean one should then have strong confidence in the usual all-wavefunction approach -- especially if it seems unlikely to recover GR.

In that case, I would suggest that everyone working on standard quantum gravity should ask themselves the very same question: why not introduce some spacetime-manifold-based ontology right from the start? (And how could one seriously hope to recover GR, in any limit, without it?)

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

You mean, say, some GR-style equations that apply to superpositions of all pairs of points whose spatial average is the tip of your nose? If there were useful constraints in that basis, that would be a reason to introduce some ontology that singled it out. But instead, we use spacetime-equations.

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Interesting take! But even if he’s only interested in ‘empirical adequacy’ for *current* quantum theories (as opposed to future advances) why stop at QFT and not also worry about GR? If you want adequacy in that domain, it’s a whole lot easier if the theory utilizes something in spacetime.

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Hmmm. I think that only works if all the other kinds of properties have something analogous to relativity. If not, that means that spacetime properties are special (only *they* obey relativity-like rules). Of course, there are many other reasons to think that spacetime properties are special, too!

On (3), as in (1), don’t you think that empirical observations should be a good reason to make a theory “messy”?Theoretically, it would be prettier if there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Putting in some imbalance, as we do, is “messy”. But there’s a good reason for it, right?

On (2), the thrust of this point seems exactly opposite (1). If you don’t care about ordinary spacetime, and don't want to privilege it, why would you care about relativity? You can’t have relativity (as we know it) without ordinary spacetime.

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On (1), yes! That’s exactly the empirical observation we are trying to match to the theory. All of my friends live in space and time; none of them live in config space (as far as I can tell!). So why *not* have the theory privilege exactly the special thing that we observe, to match up observations?

Well, let’s get arguing then! 😉 I happen to think the wavefunction is epistemic, but suppose I instead agreed with you that it somehow really “exists”. Why shouldn’t I then supplement it with Bohmian particles in spacetime, as the most obvious way to map the theory to empirical observations?

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Also, the technical problems that need to be resolved by each approach are so different that they become uninteresting to other camps. For instance, the Everettians have some very deep technical questions they are working on, but no other approach finds their questions the slightest bit relevant.

I don’t see so much of this at foundations conferences. But it is accurate to say that the top advocates for each approach know and attack the weakest parts of every other approach. The resulting problem is that field isn’t “cooperative” -- more like a circular firing squad. 😉

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For you, certainly! Or do you have someone else in mind?

We've been playing around a bit with trying to use all the textbook data that's been loaded into LLMs to simplify the research, but without exact quotes (which the LLMs won't give you) it's not going to work.

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I'm afraid this is sort of a slow-burning project... This last spring we got a few sections drafted, but there's a lot more textbook-combing we need to do to get the 'data' for the main sections. If you have any interest in helping out, shoot me an email! More collaborators would help get it moving.

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That was excellent -- thanks for this! My favorite bit: "Even in this much, I now sense Chris leaning over my shoulder and declaring 'No, that’s not quite right!' "

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Actually, this is just a preprint; we're just submitting it for publication today. Hopefully it'll get published before your new book that says nice things about it! ;-)

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I guess I haven't posted anything new since alphaxiv started up... The automatic summary of our new paper is surprisingly good! Certainly useful if someone wanted to read more than the abstract but not the whole paper. Does anyone here use alphaxiv much? www.alphaxiv.org/overview/260...

alphaxiv.org

Localized Covariant Quantities Appear To Underlie Quantum Circuits | alphaXiv

This research suggests that local weak values associated with individual qubits within quantum circuits can be described as components of a relativisticall

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Right? And we also can’t start an answer with “Great question!”

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

New preprint. Maybe, after a full century of trying to “interpret” the quantum wavefunction, we should spend a bit of effort looking at different variables that might better represent reality. Say, something that fully respects relativity, hidden inside a common representation of quantum systems.

arxiv.org

Localized Covariant Quantities Appear To Underlie Quantum Circuits

Although entangled state vectors cannot be fully described in terms of variables localized in space and time, any given entanglement experiment can be built from basic quantum circuit components with ...

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Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I think you’ll find a lot of temporal-double-standard arguments in that Zeh book (arguments that seem plausibly time-neutral until you flip them around, at which point they give the opposite conclusion). I suggest you also try Huw Price’s book, “Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point”.

LMU Munich Philosophy Faculty @lmuphilosophy.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Reposted by Ken Wharton

"Bell's Theorem and Beyond" (June 26) One-day workshop at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. More info here: www.philosophie.lmu.de/mcmp/en/late... #philosophy #bellstheorem

philosophie.lmu.de

Workshop on Bell’s Theorem and Beyond

Detail page of an event

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Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Harshness is good; it keeps one out of dead ends and aimed at what might work. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know how it all might work, but since no one else does either, we'd better keep asking the tough questions. (And not let familiarity with textbook-QM lull us into complacency.)

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Yes, good observation. It can’t *all* be relative scale; h-bar also has to come into it somehow. One idea would be to have the relative scale determine when/where the action is quantized, at all scales. But for macroscopic systems, a quantized action S=nh wouldn’t have observable consequences.

Ken Wharton @kenwharton.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Okay, instead of a pure field, put an excited atom in a cavity. Will it decay? That depends on whether the emitted frequency is supported by the cavity. If not, it’s “frustrated spontaneous emission”, and it doesn’t decay. Here, it’s the *future* cavity mirrors that most clearly matter.

(You can actually *see* this transition, when you take a laser cavity and slowly make one of the mirrors less and less reflective. The sharp quantization of the normal mode frequencies gradually blurs out, as the strong measurement-like constraint on the intermediate fields gets weaker and weaker.)

Interesting -- I've never thought about that! Would it be so terrible if the "complexity" was actually "computational complexity", rather than "ontic complexity"?

The other piece of the puzzle is that large objects impose boundary constraints, while small objects don’t, even in classical physics. Think of a field interacting with a large conductor, vs. interacting with a single electron. In fact, that alone might do it, with a smooth transition inbetween.

Entanglement and the Path Integral

You also see the importance of geometry in path integral calculations: arxiv.org/abs/2206.02945. So, to the extent that different “measurements” require different connectivity patterns, while different “interactions” don’t, maybe there really IS a difference between measurements and interactions.

arxiv.org

The path integral is not typically utilized for analyzing entanglement experiments, in part because there is no standard toolbox for converting an arbitrary experiment into a form allowing a simple su...

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Quantum States as Ordinary Information

So, when we combine both paths from a double slit onto a detector (or, alternatively, keep them separate), that’s choosing a global geometry. Retrocausal models just need the prior hidden variables to be constrained by the later geometry (see the Ising model example here: arxiv.org/abs/1403.2374 )

arxiv.org

Despite various parallels between quantum states and ordinary information, quantum no-go-theorems have convinced many that there is no realistic framework that might underly quantum theory, no reality...

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I guess someone should write one up! To the extent you might find a hint of a solution in the literature, it’s probably the stuff I’ve written trying to distinguish the experimental “geometry” (spacetime connectivity) from the underlying dynamics. The former can encode the measurement basis.