On the Consistency Between 'Everything is Quantum Information' and 'Everything is Elementary Particles'

Some people are confused by the consistency between the epistemological understanding that 'everything is quantum information' and the atomistic reductionist understanding that 'everything is made of atoms and molecules, which in turn are made of elementary particles found in the Standard Model or yet-to-be-discovered particles.' I believe this is because atomism was discussed as realism in the last century. However, in the 21st century, that 'realism' has been refuted, as described in the article below.

The Standard Model, which describes elementary particles such as electrons, neutrinos, and quarks, is merely one theory within quantum mechanics, where the concept of 'reality' has already been experimentally refuted. However, the reason researchers working in the field unconsciously feel that neutrinos—which pass through our bodies without us feeling anything—are 'real' lies in their own experience of reading conservation laws for various physical quantities from particle reaction data.

In the first place, the reason Pauli theoretically proposed the neutrino was that he wanted to prevent the violation of the law of conservation of energy. At least in low-energy particle reactions, the laws of conservation of energy and various other physical quantities hold true. Physicists analyzing data in the field naturally sense some kind of 'reality' in objects that satisfy such conservation laws.

The true nature of this 'reality' for them is nothing more than these conservation laws of physical quantities. The Standard Model of particle physics is a theory that describes various conservation laws—such as energy, momentum, baryon number, lepton number, and gauge charge—and how each conserved quantity is exchanged between subsystems over time. The reason experimentalists fall into the sensation of 'touching' the 'reality' of neutrinos, even as they pass through our bodies unnoticed, lies in the fundamental nature of the Standard Model as a fabric woven with various conservation laws as its warp and weft.

However, that 'reality' is merely an approximate concept that is strictly refuted in quantum mechanics. With the demonstration of the violation of Bell's inequality, which won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, local realism—the idea that 'things exist there'—has been experimentally refuted. Just as the geocentric model was overturned by observation, the assumption that 'things exist there,' which is a common-sense feeling for us, has already been overturned by modern physics experiments.

Even in neutrino experiments, the conservation laws of various physical quantities, which are experienced repeatedly, are merely creating an illusion of 'reality' in the experimentalist's brain that is very useful for analysis in the field. Furthermore, in high-energy physics beyond the Standard Model, it is expected that conservation laws such as baryon number and lepton number will actually be violated.

I believe that the last-century style of lecturing that teaches the Standard Model of particle physics through a lens of realism will disappear by the second half of this century. As the generation of educators changes, the fact that 'quantum mechanics is information theory, and local realism does not exist in the first place,' which has been experimentally confirmed, will naturally become widely accepted. The quantum-native generation standing at the podium will likely teach neutrinos not as a 'vivid reality,' but strictly as 'elementary particles as quantum information.'

Furthermore, I have published a modern textbook with Kodansha Scientific that emphasizes that quantum mechanics is information theory, not realism.