  The black hole area theorem suggests that classical general relativity is the
thermodynamic limit of a quantum statistics. The degrees of freedom of the
statistical theory cannot be the spacetime metric. We argue that the
statistical theory should be constructed from a noncommutative gravity, whose
classical, and thermodynamic, approximation is Einstein gravity. The
noncommutative gravity theory exhibits a duality between quantum fields and
macroscopic black holes, which is used to show that the black hole possesses an
entropy of the order of its area. The principle on which this work is based
also provides a possible explanation for the smallness of the cosmological
constant, and for the quantum measurement problem, indicating that this is a
promising avenue towards the merger of quantum mechanics and gravity.
