Right and Wrong Aren't Opinions

On Monday you promised your neighbour you'd bring her groceries every Saturday while her hip heals.

She said yes. She's been planning her week around it ever since.

Now it's the first Saturday, and you'd rather sleep in.

Nothing stops you. The store is open, the car starts, you're not sick. And nobody would ever find out. She'd never mention it, and there's nobody else to tell.

Would it be wrong?

And if it would, wrong according to what?

Most of us feel the answer is yes. It's harder to say what that feeling is about. No law forbids sleeping in, and nobody is watching. So what is the feeling tracking?

A fact. This post shows how it's built.

The short answer

Yes, it would be wrong. The reason isn't an opinion, a custom or a feeling. Right and wrong are facts about the permanent record of what actually happened. Morality is physical structure, as objective as charge or temperature.

Start with established physics. The basic laws of physics never destroy information about the past. In quantum mechanics that's unitarity: the present fixes the past exactly, and running the laws backward recovers every earlier state. It's why physicists treat the black hole information problem as a real problem, since losing information would break the laws. Hawking's 1976 calculation said a black hole destroys the information that falls into it, which clashed with unitarity. Most physicists now expect the information to come back out in the radiation the hole gives off, and the open question is how.¹

Our claim goes further. Reality keeps a permanent record of every event, and nothing in it is ever erased. The past still exists, written down in what we call the Ledger. Textbook quantum mechanics sets measurement aside as an exception; in the record, a measurement is one more entry, and it erases nothing. Our institute's work proves that the record keeps every entry: writing a new entry never alters an earlier one.² Nobody outside the record keeps it. Each party keeps its own books and writes only on them, so the record holds what happened and who did it.

There is one moral code, and it fits in a paragraph. An act is admissible when it touches only bonds that exist now (a bond is the record's entry for a relationship), leaves everyone's books true, changes a bond only when both people on it write the change, and ends a bond only when one of its own two people ends it. So when everyone's books start true, no admissible act pushes cost, at the moment it's done, onto someone who doesn't write it. These clauses are exactly what a record kept twice, once on each person's own books, admits. Of the admissible acts, the code permits exactly those that leave the least total cost on the complete record, every week still to come included. Every other act is forbidden. Doing nothing is always admissible, so among any finite set of possible acts, something is permitted.³

The code reads only facts in the record. In a promise like this one, they come down to what was undertaken, who relied on it, who had control, and whether everyone it covers can go on. No vote, mood or opinion enters any of them.

And nothing stops you. The wrong act is as available as the right one, and that is what makes it a wrong and not an impossibility.

I'll use a promise to feed someone as the example, because it's the case we've worked out exactly. Here's the whole answer in six steps. The rest of this post takes them one at a time and shows how we know each one. What's still being worked out has its own section near the end.

1. Every act changes bonds, and the Ledger writes down who did it. A bond compares the amounts on its two sides, and its number is their ratio: 1 when they match, and every other number has an exact cost. An act changes the numbers. The Ledger writes down which ones, by how much, and who changed them.
2. A promise is two acts, and it changes what she does. You wrote the offer. She wrote the acceptance. Because of it, she did something different that week. The Ledger has all three.
3. On Saturday, both acts are possible. Bringing the groceries leaves you with a reserve of 3/2 and her with 1/2. Sleeping in leaves you with 7/4 and her with 0. Nothing physical stops either one.
4. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. Going on means having something left in reserve. An act is permitted exactly when it's possible and meets that. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation: a possible act that isn't permitted.
5. Responsibility follows control. The requirement is on you and the act is yours to do or not, so you're responsible. Her yes made the promise. It didn't make skipping fine. Only she can let you off.
6. A lower total alone isn't the test. An act has to pass the clauses first, so a lower total bought by changing the bonds of someone who wrote nothing is wrong. And the total that decides is the complete record's, not one moment's.

Why this matters: "was that wrong?" has an answer you can go and find. Look for what was undertaken, who relied on it, who had control, and whether everyone it covers can go on. A wrong isn't a bad feeling or a rule somebody made up. It's a fact about the record, so you can be mistaken about it, the way you can be mistaken about a temperature, and somebody can show you.

You can read this one first. Four earlier posts work out the pieces at length. Part 1 of The Universe Writes in Pen introduces the Ledger. Meet in the Middle works out what a lopsided bond costs and what love does about it. Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape is where this post's small world comes from, and it covers repair and forgiveness. A Favor Isn't a Yes covers what a yes is and who can be wronged. Each step names the post it leans on and recaps what you need.

Here's the route. I'll stop after each step to zoom out, so you always know where we are, what we have and why the next step comes next.

Step 1: Every act changes bonds, and the Ledger writes down who did it

An act changes the numbers on bonds between people. The Ledger writes down which bonds changed, by how much, and who changed them.

To say what an act changes, start with how a relationship stands. Between any two people the Ledger keeps a bond. A bond compares two amounts, one side's against the other's, so its number is one side's amount divided by the other's. Only the ratio matters, so the unit the amounts are counted in drops out. When the two sides match, the number is 1, and I'll call the bond level. Each person also has a bond of their own, a number for how heavy their own load is (a friend loaded down on moving day, below, sits at 4), and 1 is level there too. The bond is real: it's what the Ledger keeps for a relationship.

Level costs nothing. Any other number costs something. The cost measures imbalance: it grows as the two sides drift apart. It has one exact formula: add the number to its flip (1 divided by the number), halve the total, and subtract 1.

For 4: 4 plus 1/4 is 17/4, half of that is 17/8, and 17/8 minus 1 is 9/8. The cost is never negative, and it's zero only at level. The formula isn't a choice. A cost has to meet three requirements: it's zero when the two sides match, it grows as they differ, and it's the same whichever side you put first, so a bond at 4 and a bond at 1/4 cost the same. Add the rule for how the costs of combined comparisons add, a cost with no sudden jumps, and one calibration (how sharply the cost rises near balance), and exactly one formula is left. This is it.⁴ A rival fails: the square of the logarithm of the number meets the three requirements and breaks the adding rule. Meet in the Middle builds the formula from scratch.

Now an act. An act multiplies some bonds' numbers by some factors and changes nothing else. In Meet in the Middle, a friend moving apartments has her own bond at 4, and yours is level at 1. You offer to take on part of her load, she says yes, and the two bonds meet at 2. Her cost falls from 9/8 to 1/4. Yours rises from 0 to 1/4.

A person's cost is the total cost of the bonds they sit at the end of, with each bond counted in full, not split between its two ends. That's the count Meet in the Middle uses. I'll call the change in it their change in cost. Hers there was 1/4 minus 9/8, which is minus 7/8. A negative change is relief. Yours was plus 1/4.

Relief needs a lopsided bond to relieve. Start with everything level and nothing can cost less than 0, so no act can lower anyone's cost.

A rise in cost isn't harm. The code keeps the word harm for something else: a false entry in someone else's own record. An act that would leave one is a wrong act, and the code's clauses forbid it. A book is false when what it says about a relationship isn't what the relationship is. Your book goes false when the relationship changes and you didn't write the change.

Every act also has an author. The record is kept as each party's own books, and each party writes only on its own: an act is a change written on the actor's books, or on both sides' books when two people act together. Nobody holds the pen from outside. The Ledger writes down who made each change, on a line of its own, apart from the numbers. Two acts by different authors can leave every number identical, and then the numbers can't tell you who wrote which. (A Favor Isn't a Yes shows a pair.)

How we know. The cost is the forced one described above. The rest is definition and arithmetic you can check with a pencil: an act is a change to a bond, a person's change in cost is their cost after it minus their cost before, and the 9/8, 1/4 and 7/8 are the numbers from Meet in the Middle. Carry one thing out of this step. A change in cost is a readout of an act. It isn't the verdict on it. Step 6 shows why.

Zoom out. Step 1 is done. A bond has a number and a cost. An act changes the numbers, and the Ledger writes down who made each change. The change in a person's cost can be relief. Next, and why: a promise is the plainest way to set up a requirement. What is one, in a record that only takes new lines?

Step 2: A promise is two acts, and it changes what she does

A promise is an offer and an acceptance, written by two different people. The one who relies on it does something different because of it. The Ledger has all three.

On Monday you said, "I'll bring you groceries every Saturday while your hip heals." She said, "Yes."

That's two entries by two authors. The offer is yours and the acceptance is hers. Neither is a promise alone: an offer nobody accepts is just a line you wrote. With both in the Ledger, there is a promise, and it holds what the promise says (groceries, every Saturday), who wrote each side, and who it's for. It's for her, because she's the one who accepted. Nobody picks that afterwards. The record already says.

There's a third entry, and it's what gives a promise its weight: her yes changed what she did.

Say she has strength for one outing a week. Before you promised, she'd have spent this week's outing shopping for herself. After her yes, she spent it on other work that earns her no food, because the food was handled. That's reliance. It isn't a feeling. It's a change in her week, and it's written down.

By your first Saturday it has a number. Count what each of you has stored up, in one unit that food and work are both counted in, and call that your reserve. You have 2. She has 1/4, because her week of work earned her no food. Had she shopped for herself instead, she'd have 3/4.

These are the small world's numbers from Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape, and they're the example's own, chosen to keep the arithmetic short. The results below are exact for this world.⁵

How we know. Two things about the record. The offer and the acceptance are separate writes with separate authors, and who the promise is for is read from the accepted record. Nobody ranks who deserves care afterwards. And reliance is a difference between worlds. Take either write away, your offer or her acceptance, and she shops for herself that week. Both ways of taking the promise away leave her in exactly the same place, so "where she'd be without the promise" has one answer. Step 4 uses it.

Zoom out. Step 2 is done. A promise is two writes by two authors, it's for the one who accepted, and it changed what she did. Next, and why: Saturday. What can you do, and where does each choice leave the two of you?

Step 3: On Saturday, both acts are possible

Bringing the groceries and sleeping in are both possible. They leave the two of you in different places, and nothing physical stops the wrong one.

I'll call an act possible when nothing physical stands in its way: the food is in the store, the car runs and you have the strength. Possible doesn't mean permitted.

You have strength for one trip, so you have two possible acts: make the trip or don't. The rules of this world:

• Every week, each of you pays upkeep of 1/4 from your reserve, just to stay in working order. That's the cost of a bond at 2: in this world each person's own bond stretches to 2 every week (the example's chosen rule), and putting it back costs 1/4.
• A trip uses 1/4 of your reserve in work, and it gives her 1/2.

You bring the groceries. You pay 1/4 for the trip and 1/4 upkeep, so your 2 becomes 3/2. She gets 1/2 from the groceries and pays her 1/4 upkeep, so her 1/4 becomes 1/2.

You sleep in. You pay only your upkeep, so your 2 becomes 7/4. She gets nothing and pays her 1/4, so her 1/4 becomes 0.

Sleeping in saves you 1/4. It leaves her with nothing.

The promise is weekly, so at the end of each week it has a checkpoint, where it's checked that she can go on. I'll say someone can go on when they have more than nothing left in their reserve. Zero isn't enough. The reserve is what pays to put their own bond back each week, and going on takes a margin: some amount they can lose and still pay. At exactly zero, any loss at all, however small, leaves them short. (Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape works it through.) "Go on" is a statement about the reserve, nothing grander. Step 4 shows why it's the one that matters here. After the groceries she can go on. After sleeping in she can't.

Both acts are possible. That's the first thing to see about right and wrong, and it's easy to miss. The wrong act isn't blocked. Physics doesn't forbid it and nothing in the record prevents it. It's right there, as easy as the other one.

And nobody has to find out. Finding out isn't how anything gets written. The offer and her yes went in on Monday. If you sleep in, Saturday goes in too, and so does her empty reserve. Whether anyone ever reads those lines changes nothing about whether they're written.

How we know. Every number is the rules above applied once. Check them with a pencil. "Possible" does real work here: both acts pass every physical check, the food, the strength and the trip. A second trip the same day doesn't, because you only have strength for one. So the possible acts are exactly two, and the wrong one is on the list.

Zoom out. Step 3 is done. Both acts are possible. Bringing the groceries leaves you at 3/2 and her at 1/2. Sleeping in leaves you at 7/4 and her at 0. Next, and why: possible isn't permitted. What does the promise itself require, and who fixed it?

Step 4: The promise requires one thing

The promise requires exactly one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. An act is permitted exactly when it's possible and meets that requirement. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation: a possible act that isn't permitted.

Two more words. An act is permitted when it's possible and does everything the promise requires. It's a violation when it's possible and isn't permitted.

Notice that "possible" sits in both definitions. A violation has to be something you can do. If sleeping in were impossible, there would be no wrong left to explain.

In this world the promise requires one thing: she can go on, and so can you. Bringing the groceries meets it. Sleeping in doesn't. You can go on (you'd have 7/4), and she can't (she'd have 0). So the groceries are permitted, and they're the only permitted act. Sleeping in is a violation.

Why this requirement and not another? It isn't a rule picked to fit the verdict. The promise left her depending on you, and what it requires is to put her back where trusting you took her from. In this world that comes to one fact, whether she has anything left at the checkpoint. Move Three below gives the numbers. And the code's own care case gives the same answer: feeding beats doing nothing, which leaves more cost on the complete record. With her reserve empty and nothing more coming, her bond can't be put back next week, and from then on its cost keeps growing (Step 6 has the numbers).³ So in this world, right and wrong are this: meeting what the promise requires, or breaking it.

How we know. Four moves.

One: the promise is a physical record, written before Saturday. It holds your offer, her acceptance and the terms, and it carries a check: any act can be compared with what she accepted. The check passes bringing the groceries and fails sleeping in, because sleeping in leaves her with nothing at the first checkpoint. The record exists before you act, so what it requires isn't picked afterwards to fit what you did.

Two: exactly one requirement is the record's. Plenty of requirements can be written down for this promise. The record carries exactly one. Here are five statements, checked against both possible acts:

The first four rows always agree. Four questions that sound different (was the promise kept, is she back where her trust left her, can she go on, can you both) get the same answer every time, because each one, worked out from the physics, comes down to one fact in this world: whether she has anything left at the checkpoint.

The fifth row is the odd one out. "You can go on" sounds like a fine requirement, and sleeping in meets it. But it isn't the record's, because the record's check fails sleeping in. A requirement that sleeping in meets can't be the one carried by a check that sleeping in fails. The promise was for her, and the record says so.

Three: why it binds. Take either write away and she shops for herself, ending the week with 1/2. Bring the groceries and she ends it with exactly 1/2. Sleep in and she ends it with 0. The requirement puts her back where trusting you took her from. That's what "owed" means here: what the promise requires, with her reliance as the reason.

Four: says who? Nobody says. The requirement was fixed on Monday, when you two wrote the promise, five days before Saturday. No vote, opinion or mood enters any step, and anyone who works it out gets the same answer.

Nothing moves your hands, though. The record selects the groceries. It doesn't compel them. You can still sleep in, and then there's a possible act the promise didn't permit. Nothing in the record makes anyone kind: people live under this same cost and still skip the groceries.

All of this is proved for this world: from its rules, the one requirement, the permitted act and the violation follow exactly.⁵

Zoom out. Step 4 is done. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation, and it was possible the whole time. Next, and why: a violation belongs to someone. Who answers for it, and who can let them off?

Step 5: Responsibility follows control

You're responsible because the requirement is on you and the act is yours to do or not. Her yes made the promise. It didn't make skipping fine. And only she can let you off.

Responsible. Responsibility takes two things together: the requirement is on you, and you control the act. In this world the groceries are yours to bring or not. She can't, and nobody else is there. So you're responsible, and nobody else is.

You have both. The requirement reached you through the promise, and you wrote your half of it on Monday. Her need came from the promise too: she relied on it, and that's why her reserve is down to 1/4.

She bears the cost of your skipping, and bearing a cost isn't controlling it. She's the one with the empty reserve. She isn't answerable for it.

Her yes. Her yes is in the Ledger, written by her, so it's consent in the one sense the Ledger carries: her own act of accepting. It's a yes to being fed. It isn't a yes to being skipped. Accepting a promise isn't blanket permission for whatever you do afterwards. (What a yes covers, who can write one and who can be wronged are the subject of A Favor Isn't a Yes.)

Her release. Only she can let you off. That's one of the promise's rules: the release belongs to the one who is owed. The promise is cleared only with her write: she gives the release, and you take it. If you write "I release myself," that's written down and nothing changes. And a release never erases a miss that's already written. Sleep in, get forgiven next week, and Saturday's line is still there. A meal brought the next week lifts her reserve again, and the missed checkpoint stays missed. Repair and release have a whole post: Sorry Doesn't Rewind the Tape.

How we know. The same proof that fixed the requirement settles these, for this world. You hold the requirement and the control. She holds neither. Her yes is her own act of accepting, and the proof shows it doesn't make sleeping in permitted. Given the promise's rule that the release is hers, nothing clears it without her write, and yours alone changes nothing. And neither repair nor release removes the checkpoint that was missed.

Zoom out. Step 5 is done. A violation has an address: the one who controls the act and carries the requirement. Her yes made the promise but not permission, only she can release you, and a release never erases the miss. Next, and why: the total. The Ledger puts a cost on every bond, and the code's judgment reads the total. Couldn't the verdict just be whatever lowers it?

Step 6: A lower total alone isn't the test

A lower total decides only among acts that pass the clauses, and only when it's read on the complete record. Read at one moment, the total can be the same after the right act and the wrong one. It can fall while the giver pays more, and that act is right. It can fall while a bystander pays, and that act is wrong.

By now there's a cost for every bond and a total for the Ledger, and the code's judgment reads that total. It's tempting to make the total the whole test: the right act is whichever makes the total smaller, and a wrong act is one that raises somebody's cost. The record says neither.

How we know. Three checks.

The same total after both Saturdays. Both Saturdays leave every bond level: you pay your upkeep and she pays hers, and both bonds go back to 1. The total cost is 0 after bringing the groceries and 0 after sleeping in. It reads the same both ways. What tells the two apart is her reserve: 1/2 against 0.

So a total read at one moment isn't the test. The code reads the complete record: the cost at every checkpoint still to come. Give it one more week with no new groceries and the totals part. She can't pay her upkeep, her bond stays at 2, and the total reads 1/4, where bringing the groceries would have left it at 0. With no reserve and nothing more coming, her bond doubles every week after that in the case the code works through, and its cost grows without bound. Her reserve on Saturday decides that future, so the comparison is settled on Saturday: on the complete record, bringing the groceries beats doing nothing.

The total falls and the giver pays. In Meet in the Middle you took on part of a friend's load and met her at 2 and 2. The total fell from 9/8 to 1/2. And you went from carrying nothing to carrying 1/4. Compare the two situations person by person. She carries less, and you carry more, so neither is at least as good for both of you: one is better for her and the other is better for you. A single score has to put one situation above the other or call them equal. Person by person, the two are neither, so no single score matches the person-by-person comparison. The code doesn't judge person by person. It judges by the total, which counts each bond once, and meeting in the middle leaves the least total, so it's the right act although your own cost rises.

The total falls and a bystander pays. A new scene, with three new people: they sit in a ring, each with a bond to the next. Call them Alice, Bob and Carol. Alice and Bob have a lopsided bond between them. Carol has level bonds on both sides. The two of them can close their own gap, and Carol is untouched.

Now test the idea that a lower total is the goal. Settle the whole ring in one go, with a rule that keeps each person's net position, what goes out along their bonds less what comes in, and picks the lowest total cost. Level is the flat bottom of the cost curve, so a little strain on a level bond costs almost nothing, while the same strain taken off a lopsided bond saves a lot. So the lowest total moves some strain onto the level bonds. The total falls, and both of Carol's bonds now carry a cost.⁶

She wrote nothing. She was never part of the gap. The settlement changes both of her bonds without her writing anything, and that's exactly what the code's clauses forbid: an act may change a bond only when both people on it write the change. So the settlement is wrong however much it saves. The clauses come before the total, and no price can do their work: any fixed charge for pushing cost onto someone is outweighed by some push, because the relief a push can buy grows without bound.³

So the cost is exact, it's forced, it's the same for every bond, and the verdict reads it, but second. First come the clauses: whose bonds the act touches and who wrote it. Then the least total, on the complete record. A change in cost is a readout, not the verdict. A wrong isn't "somebody's cost went up," and a right isn't "the total went down." A right act passes the clauses and leaves the least total cost on the complete record.

Zoom out. Step 6 is done. Read at one moment, the total can be the same after the right act and the wrong one; the complete record tells feeding from doing nothing. The total can fall while the giver pays, and that act is right. It can fall while a bystander pays, and that act is wrong, because it breaks the clauses. The clauses come first, then the least total on the complete record. Next: one honest note about what's still being worked out, then the whole trip in one breath.

What's still being worked out

We have proved the promise's law exactly for one worked case: a promise to feed, written by two people. The code itself covers every act, promised or not: it requires you to help wherever an act both of you write lowers the cost, and then doing nothing is forbidden. What Do We Owe Each Other? works through a case with no promise. Several of the derivations that tie the code to the foundations are still being finished. Eight touch this post:

• that what one person owes another, read from the offer and the acceptance, is carried on the physical record between the two of them;
• that each person's books hold one exact state of a bond, which is why a bond changes only when both people on it write;
• the step from "the record charges this cost, and the charge grows without bound" to "this ought not be done", and the reading of the record that the charge rests on, which decides each bond from its own entry;
• the answers the proof that there is one code starts from. The record fixes the facts the code reads: which acts are possible, which break a clause, which leave more total cost than another admissible act, and which tie. The proof starts from three answers to those facts: an act that leaves more total cost than another admissible act is forbidden, which is the step just above; the balancing act, which brings bonds toward level, ends none and uses no energy, is permitted in every situation the record allows, which is still being derived; and two acts that tie get the same answer, which the proof assumes;
• that two more clauses, keeping everyone's books true and ending a bond only by one of its own two people, follow from what a comparison is;
• closing the one gap, a relationship's own repair reserve: the clauses don't yet read changes to it, so a taking from it passes them with no write. Whether reading consent through the amounts an act moves catches it is being derived;
• one judgment at a moment and over time. The proof that there is one code is given for the judgment at a single checkpoint, this post uses the judgment on the complete record, and in some cases the two give different verdicts;
• why the code totals cost bond by bond rather than person by person.

Two questions about promises are open too. Promise the same groceries to two neighbours when there's food for only one of them: which promise governs, and whether making the second promise wronged the first neighbour, hasn't been derived yet. And the release: in this world it's one of the promise's rules that nothing clears the promise without her write, and that a release needs your write as well as hers rests on the second step above.

The other step is from this small world to a real neighbour. That means finding what her bond and her reserve actually count, and how her yes and your morning's choice connect to the record in the example. The numbers in this post are the example's own.

The whole trip, in one breath

Reality keeps a permanent record, and an act is a change to the bonds in it, with its author written beside it. A promise is two acts, an offer and an acceptance, and the one who relied on it does something different because of it. On Saturday, bringing the groceries and sleeping in are both possible, and they leave her in different places: 1/2, or nothing. The promise requires one thing, fixed before Saturday: she can go on, and so can you. Bringing the groceries is permitted. Sleeping in is a violation, a possible act that isn't permitted. You're responsible because the requirement is on you and the act is yours. Her yes made the promise and didn't make skipping fine, and only she can let you off. And a lower total alone isn't the test. An act has to pass the clauses first, so a settlement that makes a bystander pay is wrong however much it saves. And the total that decides is the complete record's: read at one moment it's the same either way, and on the complete record doing nothing leaves more.

So, would it be wrong? Yes. Wrong according to what? According to the record and the one code that reads it: what you promised, who relied on it, who had control, whether she can go on, and which act leaves the least cost. Nobody has to vote on it, and nobody has to find out. Right and wrong are as objective as charge, and you can still sleep in. That's what makes it a wrong and not an impossibility.

That's how reality is built: a record that keeps every act with its author, one forced cost on every bond, and one code that reads them both. The wrong act isn't walled off. It sits right beside the right one, and the record holds everything needed to tell which is which.