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    The absence of local observables is not an artefact of th... — Carmelics
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    The absence of local observables is not an artefact of the canonical formulation of general relativity

    Skepticism
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Dirac's constraint analysis shows that gauge freedom in canonical GR reflects genuine physical underdetermination, not merely a formulation artifact.
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    • 2.Torre's 1993 result applies equally to reduced phase space formulations, which eliminate canonical structure while preserving the non-locality of observables.
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    • 3.If non-locality were an artifact of canonical formalism, Lagrangian path integral formulations of GR would recover local observables, but they demonstrably do not.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Bergmann's 1961 program established that genuine observables in GR must be invariant under the full diffeomorphism group, independent of any particular formalism.
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    • 2.Earman's hole argument demonstrates that spacetime points lack intrinsic physical identity, making any purely local quantity physically meaningless across all formulations.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.The requirement that observables be non-local (relational) results from the full spacetime diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity
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    • 2.This non-locality requirement is implicit in Torre's 1993 theorem
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    • 3.The same non-locality condition holds for four-dimensional (Lagrangian) versions, which must be spacetime diffeomorphism invariant
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    Modality & Possibility3 linkedCausation1 linked

    Related

    Bergmann's 1961 program established that genuine observables in GR must be invar...Dirac's constraint analysis shows that gauge freedom in canonical GR reflects ge...Earman's hole argument demonstrates that spacetime points lack intrinsic physica...If non-locality were an artifact of canonical formalism, Lagrangian path integra...
    +4 moreShow less
    The requirement that observables be non-local (relational) results from the full...The same non-locality condition holds for four-dimensional (Lagrangian) versions...This non-locality requirement is implicit in Torre's 1993 theorem

    Similar

    General relativity is a local field theory and does not itself entail ...81%Both formulations therefore rule out local observables80%General relativity is an inherently local field theory78%Observables in general relativity must be either global or relational ...76%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: quantum-gravity
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    A similar confusion can be found in discussions of the related problem of defining observables in canonical general relativity. The claim gets its traction from the fact that it is very difficult to construct observables in canonical general relativity, while (apparently) it is relatively straightforward in the standard Lagrangian description. (See, e.g., Curiel, 2009, pp. 59–60, for an explicit statement of this claim. Curiel cites a theorem of Torre, 1993, to the effect that there can be no lo
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Torre's 1993 result applies equally to reduced phase space formulations, which e...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit