I don't know whether there was some clever construct to the thought experiment that was lost by the time of printing, or whether it's just a bizarre case of "I added in something that violates conservation of energy and lookie here we can make a paradox out of this!" like this is some double negation being used to "prove" something.
If you imagine something physically implausable as your setup, then yeah it's likely to have physically implausible consequences; and in this case seems rigged for paradox, since we're creating a photon in one moment, but then supposing it already existed and had a history, like, this just seems too awkward for a theoretician to actually propose.
Our theories are just maths that we CAN use to describe reality, when reality is suitably captured and represented within it, but can ALSO describe something that has no bearing on reality, just because "the types fit", as it were, to borrow from programming. The theory is still "good" because it works for experimental predictions, even if the implausible can happen if you tried it "outside" reality - if those issues creep into reality, then it breaks down in circumstances where it is "bad" or "incomplete. I'm sure Giddings understands that, so I'd lean more towards that this was just a bad translation from a more robust mathematical thought experiment that wasn't said in English well, or that it just didn't make it to press unscathed from the writer's and perhaps editor's misunderstandings, despite best intentions and efforts.
Because casting aspertions would not be fair when we are not experts and do not have the full context before us. I hope that Quanta releases clarification and edits to help us understand that section better.
His later statement that plausible states are only thus if they "evolve backward without generating contradictions" which is a truism if I ever heard one. You mean plausible states come from a prior plausible state, and can't just be created willynilly? Wow! That would be pretty damning for your thought experiment as presented!
Your thought experiment photon not being created by "special processes" like any of the interactions of quantum mechanics (such as virtual pair annihilation or from atoms) means that it presupposes an origin for such a photon, and you find it comes from an evaporated micro black hole? That doesn't feel like a paradox, that feels like the conclusions from what may be an implausible setup. Conservation of energy demands the photon comes from somewhere, and you found that it was emitted by a black hole, just as it vanishes; so perhaps it's less implausible than imagined, or perhaps not? Either way, the only paradox is the demand that we be able to place a photon in space without any cause and then work backwards to assume where in the vaccuum this photon sprung up from to somehow make this implausible scenario plausible - and then, when you find it, and don't trace back further to ask what made that, you then assert it's a paradox because you don't think a black hole makes sense? I still find Biddings sections in this article very confusing and in need of clarification. But, I doubt the universe is in the habit of retconning, though arguably we wouldn't be able to tell either way, so oh well.
If you imagine something physically implausable as your setup, then yeah it's likely to have physically implausible consequences; and in this case seems rigged for paradox, since we're creating a photon in one moment, but then supposing it already existed and had a history, like, this just seems too awkward for a theoretician to actually propose.
Our theories are just maths that we CAN use to describe reality, when reality is suitably captured and represented within it, but can ALSO describe something that has no bearing on reality, just because "the types fit", as it were, to borrow from programming. The theory is still "good" because it works for experimental predictions, even if the implausible can happen if you tried it "outside" reality - if those issues creep into reality, then it breaks down in circumstances where it is "bad" or "incomplete. I'm sure Giddings understands that, so I'd lean more towards that this was just a bad translation from a more robust mathematical thought experiment that wasn't said in English well, or that it just didn't make it to press unscathed from the writer's and perhaps editor's misunderstandings, despite best intentions and efforts.
Because casting aspertions would not be fair when we are not experts and do not have the full context before us. I hope that Quanta releases clarification and edits to help us understand that section better.