Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong? by Georgina Parry

Georgina,

For this contest, I decided to go through and comment on essays of interest and see what responses I got to my own essay. There are over 250 entries, so I narrowed down my evaluations. For only those who responded, I decided to reread and provide my evaluations before time expired, not making it a popularity contest but keeping in mind that I entered for an exchange of interesting ideas, whether I agree or not. Some concepts are superior and more persuasively supported.

Jim

Dear Benjamin Dribus,

thank you so much for your comments. I really appreciate the time you have spent with my essay and your making the effort to give feedback on it. I am sorry about the diagram being on its side. I wanted to get it as large as possible so that it would be easier to read as there are a lot of labels. If printed out it could be turned around, though I have posted a high resolution version of the diagram on this discussion thread. As it also lost some resolution when it was put into the text program. That high resolution version is the correct way around.

Re. no.1. I am not so sure about the point you make.I am not invoking different dynamics (from what is observed and modelled by the mathematics of relativity) for the space-time output reality, (that is the Image reality). So the consideration and modelling of relativity is completely unaffected/unaltered by employing the explanatory framework. It works well and I do not see the need to alter it.

A very important difference between the picture of the universe presented by the explanatory framework and Einstein's space-time continuum universe is that the explanatory framework includes continual motion at the foundational, Object reality, level, ie. continual change rather than being static. That continual change will it seems to me permit the centripetal force, to balance gravity,as envisioned by Kurt Godel, but disliked by Einstein because of the implications for time. Though if this explanatory framework is employed it can be understood that it is only the observer's relationship to the potential sensory data that would be altering and not temporal alteration at the foundation level. As at that level in whatever way the observer moves everything in existence still exists simultaneously.

RE your number 2. I appreciate what you are saying but I think it more complex than mere observed cause and effect because there is the epiphenomenon of non simultaneity of events for different observers. Which seems to imply that there is not a set order of events. I agree that at the foundational level a sequence of events is generated but that is not directly observed. Potential data is formed by interaction with actualised arrangements of matter and when that data is received an output incorporating it can be generated. It is imo the (one way) input of data that gives the impression of time flowing one way. The sequence of events observed need not match the sequence in which the data was generated. As when the data is received depends upon the observers distance from the source and his/her/its motion, but still gives a one way passage of time experience.

re.3 Both. The Object reality is what exists as the source of the potential sensory data that we use to fabricate a manifestation of external reality. So it is the material universe independent of observation of it, including the electromagnetic and other potential sensory data within it. It is objective in that it is not fabricated by any kind of observer of it, organism, device or sensitive material.

Re,4 to 8. Glad to hear that there is similarity in our ways of thinking.Thank you very much once again for your feedback and good wishes. I will read your essay.

Dear Georgina,

Oh, I should have explained... what you say about "order" is absolutely correct, and the relativity of simultaneity is one of the most important points... in fact, it's what I use to replace the "group symmetry interpretation of the covariance principle." I mean "generalized partial order," which exactly incorporates this kind of structure, but sometimes I get sloppy about including all the adjectives. Anyway, I do explain all this carefully in my essay. I'd appreciate your thoughts! Take care,

Ben

Dear Ms. Georgina,

Thank you for taking the time and the trouble to read my essay. Thank you also for the extremely kind considerate comment you left.

Hi Georgina --

Your essay covers a lot of territory, and I found the list-structure a little bewildering, since each item on each list would take me some time to feel clear about. Similarly, there's so much going on in your diagram that I don't yet feel that I understand what it's saying, as a whole.

But this reflects the situation we're all in, if we try to envision the foundations of physics. There's such a vast amount of theoretical structure that's more or less well-verified, empirically. Most of the essays in the contest focus on one particular aspect of the problem, which makes them easier to understand. But like you, I imagine that at bottom the world does not reduce to a simple picture. The issue is to find the right question, that can get us on the track of understanding why the world is built as it is. And I can see that's what you're trying to work out here.

One comment -- I like the fact that you're thinking of the "Image Reality" as integral to the picture, as well as the "Object Reality". In my essay ("An Observable World") I tried to develop a different but perhaps related approach. First, I made a distinction between the subjective "image" constructed by an observer and the environmental structure of communicated information the observer has access to. I think it's this communications structure that physics needs to describe, while what any particular observer does with the physically available information is a separate issue, not relevant to fundamental physics.

Second, I think that once we have a framework that lets us understand the structure of the informational environment we live in, we'll see a different relationship between it and the "Object Reality". I think of the factual reality in physics as the information content that's defined and conveyed by the web of communicative interaction. And my hope is that by understanding how and why such a web could evolve, we'll be able to understand the very complex, mutil-layered patterns of objective fact we find in physics -- extremely complex and indeterminate at a fundamental level, yet relatively simple and highly deterministic at the level at which observations and measurements are made.

Getting back to your essay, it looks to me as though there are a great many interesting ideas here. Apart from this essay contest, which prompted you to build a remarkably comprehensive picture, I hope you're able to work out some of the many specific issues you raise in another format, that would let what's special in your approach stand out more clearly. I had a similar problem in my essay -- even after cutting out many points that seemed very important, I still ended up putting so much into the essay that I'm sure many readers found it hard to grasp.

Thanks -- Conrad

Hi Georgina,

I like the way you connect philosophical matters with empirical ones, and agree with many of the views you defend here. Also that persistent paradoxes and anomalies are key to identifying phenomena beyond the known.

As a systems philosopher I think you are spot on when you say:

"The relationships of everything allow the Object universe to function and become, rather than just exist. The relationships are integral to the arrangement of the constituents, being the variables and parameters that produce force for change or the potential for change."

Can you send me a high-res copy of your diagram 1 please? My email address is on the 1st page footer of my essay. Thanks!

Good luck, you deserve to do well in the competition,

Best wishes

David

Georgina,

Nice Essay and excellent choice of presentation style. I can only classify how a fan of GR and QM would attempt to explain uncertainty on the quantum level existing in block time as a conundrum. You point out so many other gems too.

Good luck to you.

Thank you very much indeed for your positive feedback. I have sent an email.

Dear Georgina,

I like how you used de Bono's thinking hats. Even the most creative scientists may find help in using simple strategies to improve lateral thinking. The result is interesting and beautiful, congratulations.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Georgina,

I thought your essay had an interesting analysis and discussion of the situation we find ourselves in in the universe, and I liked your upbeat conclusion.

Cheers,

Lorraine

I have just read your essay and I like your holistic approach.

I jumped at a couple of details that surprised me that you according to my own assumptions has got wrong. But that is the backside of trying to grasp the whole thing instead of concentrating on a single piece. It is a super-human undertaking to get everything right, covering many diverse fields.

The two things I jumped at was:

1. The Twins Paradox.

"This paradox is due to misuse of theory".

Physically, it is not a paradox at all. Clocks and chemical processes just runs like syrup at relativistic speeds. The travelling twin is preserved, because he hasn't experienced the same amount of time as the earth-bound one. This is experimentally proven with atomic clocks in jet-planes in the early 1970's.

2. Expansion of the Universe.

"The red shift evidence for expansion may possibly be due to the continual universal motion of the Earth"

I am not sure I understand your hypothesis of choice, but... no.

Several ideas has been put forward as alternative explanations for the red-shift: Light-speed is not constant, but slows down. Or: Everything shrinks and gives an illusion of distances growing. Those ideas simply does not fit observations.

These remarks is not ment as mocking. I think you have made a great contribution to the community as a fellow amateur cosmologist.

Good luck in your further studies.

PS.

I have answered your post in my essay home page.

Dear Andreas,

thank you for taking a look at my essay. I'm glad you like the approach.

You picked out a couple of ideas that struck you as surprising. It is important to understand that that what I have said must be understood within the explanatory framework that is being used to answer the essay question.

I will explain further in a while but don't have time for a full answer right now.

Kind regards Georgina

Dear Andreas,

Some thought about the two issues you raised.

Re.the twins: Considering what time is within the explanatory framework used to answer the essay question. In Object reality there is only uni-temporal-Now, everything existing exists simultaneously. Passage of time is the simultaneous change of the whole universe, iteration by iteration, (configuration by configuration using J.C.N Smith's description). Different passage of time for different parts can not occur. Relativity is still possible because it pertains to the output fabrication of data processing and not the foundational Object reality.

If a man on an exercise bike peddles away next to a man who is standing reading a newspaper we would not consider passage of time to be different for the two men, though they may subjectively experience time passing faster or slower. The man who is exercising will have a higher metabolic rate, there will be more chemical activity occurring in his body but the men still exist at the same time. Therefore amount of chemical change, which may be relevant to ageing, is not the same as passage of time.

Ageing is due to accumulation of deleterious changes that have occurred to the body. As space is inhospitable,with low gravity and more radiation, that are bad for the human body, the travelling twin should be expected to age more than the stay at home twin. Not because of a difference in time but environment. The two environments are too different, a fair comparison can not be made and it can not be said that the travelling twin will age less.

Re.red shift: The framework I have proposed depends upon continual change of position of matter as it travels along its Object universal path considered overall all scales . So rather than a stationary Earth at the centre of an expanding universe, the image reality, there is an Earth in motion through the unobserved Object universe. Rotating, orbiting, moving with the solar system and galaxy. The Earth moving away from the origin sources of the data that is being received and processed into the Image Universe. I don't think total motion of the observer has been accounted for when considering -what- is being observed.

I don't think what I have said implies any difference in what what would be observed but just gives another way of interpreting what is going on; consistent with the RICP explanatory framework, allowing relativity and QM to co-exist without contradiction.

Thank you for your kind words, Georgina

Thank you : )

But I -have been- affected. It is cruel on all of the honest participants who now do not know where they stand.

Thanks lorraine,

I appreciate the feedback.

Georgina

Dear Cristi,

thank you so much. I really appreciate your positive feedback. Georgina : )

Let's drop the red-shift thoughts and take another round at the twin paradox.

The two men at the excercise bikes in your example experience time the same because the electrons move around the cesiums atoms in their bodies the same number of times per second. But if the peddling mans feet peddle the bike very fast, the electrons around the cesium atoms in his feet will move a little slower, so that he ends up a bit older than his feet. That is in a physical, chemical and ultimately biological sense. There is still a common now for both men, but the ticks of Universal time ticks away faster in the slower moving mind of a moving person.

(I promise to question myself if this is a wrong assumption of mine, I am sure to learn something new from it).

PS.

Cesium may not be very abundant in human flesh, but I used to live down wind from Chernobyl, so I know at least me and my brother have some of it. He can be the peddler and I the paper-reader :->