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

Dear Georgina Parry,

Marvelous! You have been hard at work for a few years, and it shows. I have read a few of your comments over the last year and I thought that you were going off the track, but I now see that you were just exploring various pathways.

I think you have produced a winning essay and I hope you do. Your analysis covers a very broad spectrum, including paradoxes which you handle well. I also find interesting your observations that "Information is not conserved in Object reality." Generally speaking, I agree with most of your "wrong assumptions." Because you have done such a masterful job presenting the data as a complete picture (the essay, not the diagram) I agree with things that I would probably argue about if presented in an isolated comment, so it is very important that you have had the opportunity to paint a nine-page picture. I still have some slight problem with "no reason to assume that the Object universe does not have an eternal history", but if space-time is 'emergent' in your sense, I don't think it's worth arguing about the semantics. Also, you cover so much area that I think you chose wisely to make lists, rather than waste words in prose.

I definitely agree with your well stated paragraph on the Object universe as "...actively participating creator... preserver and destroyer of all structures and patterns." You finished with a quote from Feynman, but I think you said it better.

Congratulations, well done.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Georgina

Both Relativity and QM attempt to explained what is 'observed' (ie measured), they are just both based on incorrect presumptions as to how physical reality (the very thing they are trying to measure), occurs. In other words, Relativity is no more a theory about observation than QM is. The point about Relativity is the use of references (frames of reference, etc) to ascertain a relative calibration, because there are no absolutes, and (allegedly) matter alters dimension and light curves under certain conditions. It is not, or at least was not meant to be, a theory about the observation of physical reality. QM, because it is dealing with quantum, does not presume from the outset to be able to 'observe', so it pursues measurement (ie observation) in terms of probability, ie all the features in a given circumstance cannot be observed/ measured, because the very act of doing so affects it, etc.

Now, the problem with all this is that what is sensed (observation being just one example) involves the physical receipt of a physical phenomena (it is passive and it is a physical event). And that is not the physical reality. It is the result of a physical interaction with that particular reality and other physical phenomena. That is all it is, physically. The evolution of sensory systems has involved the development of the functional use of it, but that is irrelevant to its physical existence. Or put another way around, no amount of sensing alters any form of physical existence whatsoever. Except that, upon receipt the physical phenomena cease to exist, just like they do if they hit a brick wall instead of an eye.

Paul

Hi Georgina,

I was increasingly impressed with your essay. A nice take on the differnet ways of analysing the big problems of modern day physics and it's many assumptions. Excellent work and I imagine very useful to a lot of people. I found a few title headings which sounded like my own imagery-simulation-like methodology, so I was happy at the end of it. Well done and thank you for your effort.

Dear Ms. Georgina,

I enjoyed reading your essay ever so much.

"H-h-h-hat's all folks."

Avid cartoon watcher, Joe Fisher

Hi Georgina,

Bravo!! A virtuoso presentation if ever I've seen one! Congratulations on a big job well done! I'm totally blown away by your essay.

I hope Edwin will excuse me for latching onto the coattails of his laudatory comments, as it were, but I definitely wanted to echo his words of praise for your essay (and what better place to do so?). If you don't win some sort of recognition for this essay it will constitute absolute, irrefutable proof that there is, indeed, no justice in the universe! Moreover, if such an unimaginable outcome were to occur I suspect that all the other essayists would band together and hold a ceremonial burning in effigy of the competition's judges. Just kidding, of course; we're *far* too mature and sensible a group for such a childish stunt, maybe.

All that said, and while I agree with by far the lion's share of what you've written, I was puzzled by a few things. One which leaped out at me was your statement (point 13 under the heading 'Yellow hat-What works and why/advantages') ". . . Nested *if* the historical sequence is considered, as the iterations of the Object universe exist in sequence not in a continuum." If I'm reading this correctly, it sounds as though you've just unilaterally declared that reality is digital rather than analog (the topic of last year's essay competition)? Did everyone finally agree to that conclusion, or am I not reading you correctly? Not a major point, to be sure, but one on which I'd like some clarification. Thanks!

I very much like the many excellent quotes you've included, especially the Tegmark quote, "Evolution has endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic trajectories of flying rocks." As someone else (Richard Dawkins perhaps?) has commented, evolution has prepared us to operate at peak efficiency in a primitive hunter-gatherer society. Modern science, on the other hand, has armed us with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons rather than stones and clubs. A dangerous mix. Advances in science and technology have, unfortunately, far outpaced advances in wisdom and common sense. We know how to promote the advancement of science (FQXi is a brilliant example), but how do we promote the advancement of wisdom and common sense? Anyone who can answer that one has a Nobel Prize waiting with his or her name on it.

Thank you again, Georgina; your clarity of thought and presentation are refreshing beyond words. I'll undoubtedly have more to say later, but already have rambled on too long here.

Best Regards,

jcns

I have replicated John Merryman's posts, that are relevant to my essay topic 1294 to my topic area. I have responded to John's last post in my topic post.

Georgina,

I have reviewed other parts of your essay in some detail, but my original reply was limited to the statement you made concerning time.

You have a lot of interesting material in your essay to provoke discussion. You quoted Max Tegmark, and I quoted Sir Arthur Eddington in my IEEE paper, "My conclusion is that not only the laws of nature but the constants of nature can be deduced from epistemological considers, so that we can have a priori knowledge of them." There is a nuance of difference between intuition and priori, with both Tegmark and Eddington giving our species some unusual capability.

Your approach is quite different from the way I used to describe assumptions. I had never heard of Edward de Bono's thinking hats, so I had to learn what that meant in the context of how you presented material concerning assumptions.

Your approach to describing assumptions by using Color Coded Thinking Hat Logic (CCTHL) sets exposes you to the consequences of the completeness and validity of the material in the sets. A postulate is supposed to be based upon the factual validity of some preceding material. You stated in the preceding logic set, that item 3, "Time is a dimension of external reality", is a "wrong assumption." Earlier, in the Magic paragraph, you made this statement, "the human tendency to draw strong conclusions from incomplete information." A postulate is a rather strong conclusion about the validity of the facts it is based upon. In the item 3 postulate, I am aware you made a statement that can be mathematically contradicted, because you have "incomplete information." I just happened to have knowledge about the mathematical process, although published, that hasn't been widely or properly disseminated, even though it was distributed to 405,000 IEEE members.

When I came to the diagram on page 4, I had an expectation to see some logic diagram based upon the CCHTL , which would match the colors. I did not find the diagram helpful.

In your section," What is an object and what is a clock?", you make the statement, "Independent inanimate objects such as rods and clocks do not change in response to being observed in different ways." A clock is a specific form of an object that provides a function and depending upon its form, it is quite easy to get a different result depending upon the method of observation.

As an electrical engineer, I have a particular bias on how a photon should be described, and your Yellow hat section, item 14, has a close fit to my bias. Physicists tend not to use the terms polarization and frequency.

Edwin Eugene Klingman,

You emphasized a particular statement from Georgina's essay, "Information is not conserved in Object reality." That statement bothered me when I first read it in the essay because the term "information" was not defined. We have a very limited viewpoint as to the information contained in the universe and we have "insufficient information" to state, or make the assumption, that the universe, as a system, does not have a feedback mechanism that exploits/processes information from some event, and adjusts.

Dear Frank Makinson,

This is a very complicated topic, and I agree that it was not defined. I view information as contextual, and as dependent upon a codebook (which may be implemented as specific neural structures that our brain has learned from experience) and as that which literally 'in-forms' or creates 'formation' or formal structure 'inside' the brain. I view relativistic momentum (energy and 3-space momenta) as physical realities, and information as an overlay or map that is largely brain-dependent. I realize that many physicists today believe that information is physical, and some even believe that physical reality somehow 'derives from' information, but my belief is closer to what I've said in this paragraph. I just found it interesting that Georgina appears to arrive at a similar conclusion.

Thanks for your comment.

Also, I noted in jcns's comment that he picked up on a remark that "sounds as though you've just unilaterally declared that reality is digital rather than analog". If he is correct in his interpretation, then I too have reservations about that, as explained in my essay last year. Regardless, Georgina has done an excellent job, and one can agree with her without endorsing every conclusion she comes to.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Thanks Alan, glad you liked it.

Dear Frank,

I did not define information in the essay or any of the other words used though I did offer a very brief explanation of the word "phenotype" in brackets, as I was aware that the essay would be read by non biologists who might be unfamiliar with the term. I have tried in the essay this year to keep the language simple and the sentences short and not overly complicated.

I have written word lists giving the definition of words, as I use them, with the framework to overcome problems of misunderstanding. The rules did not permit supplementary pages of written definitions, which I might otherwise have included. "Information" has not been on the word lists I produced prior to this essay competition. As I deliberately did not use it. I have, in my numerous blog comments over the last couple of years, avoided the term "information" because it does have certain meanings to physicists that I have not necessarily intended by its use. In this essay it is meant in a very broad sense.

Structures and patterns are destroyed and so anything "contained" that might generate data, or that might have been later learned from such data -ie. inform is lost from the Object universe. Structures includes neural structures permitting memory of events or facts. EM and other sensory data can persist in the environment after the source objects have ceased to exist but it is a "data pool" and not the space-time continuum past, present and future from Bang to Crunch (or whatever) in which everything is conserved. That is what was meant.

Dear Edwin,

thank you for reading my essay and writing such a glowing appraisal. It does feel good to be understood. I am glad I have communicated the ideas clearly.It's also good to hear that this has put some of my blog comments into a context where they make more sense.

I agree with your slight reservation -I personally see no reason to assume the Object universe does not have an eternal history. To assume otherwise, it seems to me, just makes nonsense or insoluble problems. However I can't speak for everyone else. There may be people who wish to disagree and require, according to their reasoning, a beginning however problematic.

Thanks again, I really appreciate your very positive feedback.

Georgina,

It's really very good thinking of you. You explained the problem successfully.But the question here from where to start. There is a contradiction between quantum and relativity in concepts and principles. So, will we modify relativity theory of Einstein in order to be accepted with quantum theory concepts and principles? Or we modify quantum theory to be accepted with relativity theory concepts and principles. Einstein tried in his last years of life to proof the inconsistency of quantum theory, and then tried to interpret the physical phenomena which interpreted by quantum to be interpreted by his relativity concepts and principles, but he false. From that time, scientist did not try to interpret relativity theory by the concepts and principles of quantum....why? In 1996 I adopted the first proposal, and I modified the relativity theory of Einstein to be accepted with quantum theory (Copenhagen School) concepts and principles. I found I could solve the most problems in physics regarded to quantum and relativity. I found in 1996 it is possible measuring speeds of particles or light ray to be faster than light according to my MSRT without violating Lorentz transformation or causality, and thus according to that it is interpreting, the quantum tunneling and entanglement, without violating the Lorentz transformation or causality. Also I could solve the Pioneer anomaly exactly according to modified GR. My proposed solution relative to modified general relativity and gravity is agreed with what proposed in quantum field theory. Please can you read my paper http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1272

then we discuss?

Hi J.C. N Smith,

thank you very much indeed for reading my essay and posting such a very enthusiastic review. Really glad you liked it.

Re.nested not a continuum. You will have noticed from the essay that the explanatory framework presents a different way of thinking about reality. Not just a continuum as is the space-time continuum but the output reality, the data in the environment and the source of the data. When talking about the quaternion representation in this essay I was only talking of mathematically representing the way data travels through the environment. A small aspect of the entirety of reality considered. It's a different way of thinking about Einstein's light cone idea. That's what Roger Penrose demonstrates in his lecture that I cited.

I can imagine a short pulse of light emitted from a source. A photon cascade spreads out spherically from the light source. As an analogy I can imagine a domino cascade, which is easier to visualise. In the space-time continuum model there would be all of the dominoes standing -and- all of the dominoes felled -and- every other intermediate stage, all in existence within the continuum. However in this explanatory framework each patten of felled and unfelled is temporary. So to consider the whole sequence of patterns historical iterations have to be combined. For data spreading out spherically, from a source in all directions, ie the progression of the photon cascade, that would be nested iterations- rather like a Russian doll. Not all simultaneously existing in space and therefore not simultaneously detectable by observers at spatial positions of the different spherical surfaces or "shells".

Dear Azzam,

I'm glad you think I have successfully identified the problems. If you read beyond the introduction you will find that I also offer, what I consider to be, solutions to a large number of problems, physical and philosophical, including the incompatibility of QM and GR. I also say which of our basic physical assumptions have been wrong and why. Given as postulates that emerge from the explanatory framework necessary to incorporate the facts and overcome the problems identified.

I am going to read a number of essays. I will post feedback on your thread if yours is one of them.

Frank,

thank you for your reply.

The hats are used in the essay as a device for presenting a lot of diverse information in a systematic and therefore comprehensible joined up way. It allows a structured flow from input facts and problems to output solutions and suggestions for further research / interesting directions to investigate. Edward de Bono's hats can be used in any order and more than once. They prevent thinking being stuck in one particular unproductive mode.

The explanatory framework pre-dates this essay and has been presented and discussed on FQXi blog discussions and the thread of my previous FQXi essay for a long time. The diagram is a combination of sets and flow chart. I have a higher resolution file of that particular version if the quality was a problem for you. The colours are merely to help identify the separate parts and have no meaning. It would convey the same information in black and white. For people who think like me it is less easy to mentally separate the various processes and parts from a monochrome image, perhaps for you the colours are a distraction.

Re. Factual validity. In my opinion the explanatory framework presented incorporates the necessary facts given under white hat and overcomes the black hat problems and red hat dislikes. The assumption of its validity is based upon its ability to do that ie. its explanatory power. You are correct that this -framework- does not include -all- information known to humanity and therefore is incomplete. However that does not make it incorrect. With respect I think the mathematics you mention would need to be interpreted differently to be compatible with this framework, which you have demonstrated you do not yet comprehend, if that mathematics is itself valid. There is a historical -time line- that can be imagined for the Object reality and there is a time dimension within the space-time output.Without having seen what you are referring to, I think either might relate to the dimension you are talking about

When you question the "clocks and rod part" you seem to have entirely failed to grasp the argument for differentiation between output generated from data and independent object. Actualisation and manifestation. I agree that different manifestations can be observed and measured but that does not imply that the structure of the independent object itself is altered.

The way in which this framework functions is by joining up many ideas in a particular relationship. It might not seem to make sense if accessed in a piecemeal or disjointed way.

I should add to that list, data in the environment, which might also be regarded latent information, is not conserved in this framework. Such as when a photon is absorbed by a material object and there is no emission of another. The capacity to supply information is different from energy. Energy is conserved.

Frank

Time is non-existent. Timing, involves comparison of the number of changes, irrespective of type. That is, it is measuring the rate of change, of itself. This can either be effected directly, ie elephant walked 1mile whilst leaf changed to pantone colour x. Or, via a common denominator. For example if you are using a quartz watch, then it is oscillations (mins, secs, etc being fossilised language). In other words, what you are really saying is that there were 10m oscillations of a particular piece of crystal whilst that elephant walked 1 mile. What is occurring in physical reality is change, ie it occurs then re-occurs differently.

Therefore, everything is inherently a 'clock', it is just that some are better than others.

Paul

Hi Frank,

I have now taken a quick look at your methodology paper, for which you have now put a link. It looks interesting to me. I now think I understand why you have made such a strong pronouncement against that particular postulate of mine, without carefully reading the essay giving its context.

Your objection is, I think, because you are considering wavelengths. According to the framework I have set out waves are patterns spread over different iterations of the Object universe. Those iterations might be imagined along a time line giving a historical sequence but that is not a -dimension- of the external reality. The external reality I am talking of is uni-temporal ie. exists wholly at one and only one time, not spread over time. Being uni-temporal is incompatible with having a time dimension.

Time is a dimension in that it is a measurement that can be made but measurements are not in themselves things: and it is a dimension in that it is an aspect of the entirety of reality but not a dimension of the external Object reality, which is the uni-temporal arrangement of all objects and particles that exist.

I hope that clarifies the reason for that difference of opinion.