Emily Adlam (Chapman University): Are Entropy Bounds Epistemic?

The Beyond Spacetime group is pleased to announce a talk, in person at UIC, and live-streamed to Geneva and on YouTube.

Abstract: Entropy bounds have played an important role in the development of holography as an approach to quantum gravity, so in this talk I will seek to gain a better understanding of the covariant entropy bound. I observe that there is a possible way of thinking about the covariant entropy bound which would suggest that it encodes an epistemic limitation rather than an objective count of the true number of degrees of freedom on a light-sheet; thus I distinguish between ontological and epistemic interpretations of the covariant bound. I consider the consequences that these interpretations might have for physics and I discuss what each approach has to say about gravitational phenomena. My aim is not to advocate for either the ontological or epistemic approach in particular, but rather to articulate both possibilities clearly and explore some arguments for and against them.

For logistics, please see https://beyondspacetime.net/about/space-and-time-after-quantum-gravity/speakers/