On the emergence of the Lorentzian metric structure of space-time in general relativity

Abstract

In this short note we argue that, even if, as sometimes remarked, a Lorentzian manifold does not model correctly the structure of the spatio-temporal continuum as it is, yet a Lorentzian manifold should describe its macroscopic structure as we experience it. More precisely, theoretically motivated by von Weizs\"acker's chronological relative frequency interpretation of probability, and taking the Diaconis--Mosteller principle (also called the law of truly large numbers) as an empirical evidence in the macroscopic world, we argue that large collections of physical events appear in a composition of two fundamentally different patterns, termed as a progression and a sample here, making it unavoidable to use a Lorentzian-type metric on a manifold to describe matter-filled macroscopic regions of the spatio-temporal continuum.