October 30, 2024
Entropy bounds have played an important role in the development of holography as an approach to quantum gravity. In this talk I will introduce the strong and covariant entropy bounds, and then discuss how the covariant bound should be interpreted. I will argue 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 will distinguish between ontological and epistemic interpretations of the covariant bound. I will consider the consequences that these interpretations might have for physics and 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.