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  • Post #85

Ben,

Thanks for acknowledging that my essay is strictly in context of the topic of the contest. Actually, you may note that I have gone a bit further by, finding alternative solutions, which would confirm my contentions about the identified wrong assumptions.

I am awaiting your comments about my essay. I hope being a young person with an open mind free of dogmatic views on exisitng theories, you would find it easier to understand the point of view I am presenting.

BTW, LSU in which city are you in. I was in Shreveport recently for some time.

Best regards,

Viraj

Dear Lawrence,

I appreciate the insight. This is the sort of thing that would require me a lot of time and effort to piece together myself. If there is any connection between Verlinde's entropic description of gravity and my speculative application of entropy to determine transition amplitudes, it's a coincidence, since I didn't even know about Verlinde at the time. I suppose that the hypothesis "gravity is entropic" can mean a lot of different things. My idea came from results in graph dynamics, and entropy in this case is determined by the cardinality of a particular automorphism group. If this works at all, it requires some finiteness assumptions. (I assume you transposed "closed" and "exact" above, unless you were referring to something different than the usual definition of de Rham cohomology.) Take care,

Ben

Dear Viraj,

Yes, I'm at LSU in Baton Rouge. The last time I was up through Shreveport was when I evacuated during Hurricane Katrina, but I was living in New Orleans at the time.

I'll post my remarks about your essay on your thread rather than mine. Take care,

Ben

Dear Donatello,

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll put subsequent discussion about your program on your thread rather than mine... but I think I'll read your arXiv article first. Take care,

Ben

Dear Ben,

I found your essay very inspiring especially it deals with excellent mathematical arguments. Generally, your presentation is convienced and very good, this more that you touch so many important things on so limited number of pages. Let me comment on some important for me point.

It is certainly something that should be rejected in manifold's model for the space-time valid on every physical scales. But my personal view is that we do not understand or even know at present whole net of mathematical structures related with manifolds. Let it be two things: 4-d smoothness and logico-categorical perspective. Both indicate on discrete and noncommutative structure of smooth 4-manifolds. This discretness does not change or replace the manifolds, it is rather an ever-present leyer of smooth manifolds. Besides, the dimension 4 is crucial here. Fundamental gravity can be, thus, related with the curvature of exotic R4 (standard R4 can be flat exotic can not) where discretness appears naturally. I think that again mathematics shows us the way which is not, however, quite clear yet.

These commentaries expresses rather my personal point of view but I was inspired by your great essay. Congratulations and good luck.

Jerzy

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    • Post #90

    Dear Ben,

    Thanks for your impartial comments on my essay, on my thread and rating it.

    http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1549

    However I am responding to it on your thread because I think it has come out incomplete. Can you please check and do the needful if neccesary.

    You wrote: "My belief is that its standing will improve as more serious authors read it". I do not think even 10% of the authors will give an unbiased rating. Firstly,because they will not understand what my essay is about with their own pet ideas in their minds, and secondly they will be interested to up their position by rating others low. (As for me I still have not rated even my own essay. I am reading through them and will rate all of them on their merit at a later date).

    This points to the facct that all those who have got high Community ratings for their essays seems to have achieved them not by the ratings of authors but from the FQXi 'Community'.

    But the big question is how do I get the attention of the "Community". The FQXi, highlights "Top Essays" some authors to the Community, but when I posted some highlights about my essay in that blog to draw their attention, it was removed by the administrator saying that Competitor ads are not allowed. So all competitors are not playing on a level playing field.

    Best regards,

    Viraj

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      • Post #91

      yes of course and Verlinde who speaks whith Johan and Brendan, of course of course.

      The team is known band of comics frustrated and loving money and opulences.

      The team is a small team from usa,canada and Netherlands. In fact , they need funds simply.So they try , it is logic for the persons needing funds due to our global crisis. You like money band of comics.Me no, you dislike me, me no I like you.You imply diffamations and calomnias and lies and strategies.Me no.You are in team with tools, me no.and what ? There is a probelm?

      academicain of nothing yes.You do not improve, you decerease the velocity of evolution. It is totally different.The suit does not make the monk !!! my knowledges are above yours. Even with my literal english, I give you courses all days.Me I learn all days everywhere even in seeing a fly of a bee. and you want what, a bridge between netherlmands and usa for the convergences with Canada. let me laugh.

      You want really that I give a list of people of this badteam on net.

      here is the team band of comics.Lisi, Brendan,Lawrence, Tom,Christi,Don, Benjamin dribus,Jens,Verlinde,Rick,Goodband,joy,Jonathan,Johan,.........

      Mr Witten, Mr Wilczec,Mr Tegamrk,Mr Guth please don't be corrupted by the businessmen.They imply the chaos.Just due to their vanity and their unconsciousness. Don't accept these comportments. I will go at MIT .and I will show in live what are the truths.

      Regards

      Steve,

      I'm not sure what I did to offend you, but a penniless graduate student such as myself is far more interested in keeping my health insurance next year than being part of any "team" of people whom I have never met and have only conversed with online in the last few weeks.

      If you recall, my first remark to you (on a different thread) was an expression of sympathy for the loss of your piano, since I am a fellow musician. When you posted on my thread, I asked if you had an essay or any paper online, and would gladly have looked at your ideas, as I have everyone else's.

      Kindly leave me off the "team." Most of the people you name are way out of my league anyhow. Take care,

      Ben

      Dear Jerzy,

      I really appreciate the kind remarks! As a matter of fact, you and Torsten have convinced me to reconsider a lot of my tentative beliefs about fundamental physics, as have some of the shape dynamics folks and a few others.

      The last time I really thought carefully about low-dimensional manifolds was a few years ago, and that was before I was properly aware of noncommutative geometry. I never took nonstandard models seriously until I read Connes, and as you have seen, I still have only the vaguest ideas about them.

      I feel fortunate to have perhaps half a dozen serious new directions to think about once the exchange of ideas slows down a bit. Take care,

      Ben

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      • Post #94

      Ben,

      Indeed I interpolated closed and exact. I have done this in the past as well.

      I read last night Barbour's essay and had some thoughts about this that I will relay to Julian later today. This touches on ideas of graphs, causal sets and dynamic triangulation.

      Cheers LC

      Dear Viraj,

      You're absolutely right... the form evidently won't accept a "less than" sign without putting it in a latex environment, and it deleted everything below, which was 80 percent of my post. I finally got it right, but there was another abortive post in between. I apologize for cluttering your thread, but all the comments are there now at least!

      Regarding your remarks about the contest and the rating, there are many more than 35 good essays among the 270 or so in the contest, so no one should be too disappointed if his or her own submission isn't a finalist. For a complete outsider and first-time contributor like myself, the whole point of participating in this contest is to have the opportunity to discuss many interesting ideas with serious and original thinkers, and to make contacts with other scientists of similar interests.

      In my opinion, the final community ratings are unlikely to look anything like what they do now; probably most people have not yet voted and it wouldn't be surprising if submissions in the top 10 now finish out of the top 100. The FQXi membership includes many of the most distinguished physicists in the world, and I imagine most of them are very busy. I seriously doubt if they are paying very close attention to this contest on a daily basis or have read or rated most of the essays.

      In my view, the ratings are not worth worrying about too much, since doing so only distracts from the science. A high rating would be nice, but I would prefer to try to understand other people's ideas, circulate my own, and let the chips fall where they may. Take care,

      Ben

      Lawrence,

      Thanks... I'll be sure to look at that. There are at least two other essays involving shape dynamics that I think are interesting, the one by Sean Gryb and Flavio Mercati, and the one by Daniel Alves. My general inclination is to regard this form of relationism as less well-motivated and compelling than the causal versions, but it has some attractive qualities, and some of the authors here have expressed it quite well. Take care,

      Ben

      Hi Ben,

      Quite an ambitious essay indeed! If we ever meet, I suspect we will have many interesting discussions.

      I applaud your courage for trying to reject so much structure and still try to reproduce the rich structures of GR and the Standard Model. It is certainly not an easy task as is evidenced by the efforts of the Causal Sets people. However, I have always found that these approaches are well motivated. Good luck with your approach and in this competition!

      Sean.

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        • Post #98

        Hi Ben,

        Thanks for re-posting your message in my thread.

        About your other comments:

        It is not that I am dead keen to get a good rating. I too am in the 'contest' more to use it as a forum to get to know people and ideas, and to circulate my own. You know the long forgotten motto of the Olympics - "Not to win but to take part".

        But an important aspect of taking part amounts getting the attention of independent parties (eminent scientists who are FQXi members) to my essay for whatever it is worth, as much my reading other participants' essays. But the avenue to reach FQXi members is blocked, while 'Top Essays' are freely advertised in the Main blog. It is also a fact that the content of some of these "Top Essays", do not conform to the context of the topic of the contest.

        This is a genuine concern I have about the way the "Contest" is run.

        However, I am not worried about the 'contest'. If things are left for chance without manipulations, I know the chips would have fallen in a cetain way, but the way things are it appears they won't. It is just the instinct in me not to take things sitting down that bugs me.

        Quite apart from the contest and FQXi community, do you know of any scientists who are likely to take an interest on essays like ours concerning fundamental problems of physics. If you feel it appropriate I request you to let me know.

        My email: virajplf@yahoo.co.uk

        Best regards,

        Viraj

        Dear Sean,

        Thanks for your kind remarks. I think you have characterized the obvious advantages and disadvantages of an approach like mine quite correctly: it's well-motivated and would be terrific if it worked but may fall well short of the level of structure necessary to describe the real world.

        One remark I will make (I said something similar on Daniel Alves' thread) is that perhaps one way to think about the relationships among approaches such as causal sets, causal dynamical triangulations, shape dynamics, and my approach, is to consider the symmetry, antisymmetry, or asymmetry of the relations involved. Shape dynamics seems to involve symmetric relations, since separation does not specify order. Causal sets involves strictly antisymmetric relations because of the acyclicity hypothesis. Causal dynamical triangulations uses both symmetric and antisymmetric relations, and my approach uses mostly antisymmetric relations, although I admit the possibility of cycles. Of course, shape dynamics assigns weights (separations) to the symmetric relations, which gives more information. Anyway, maybe this is wrong, and I'm certainly a fool to talk about shape dynamics two weeks after first learning it existed, but it seems on the surface that there might be dualities among appropriate versions of some of these theories. Oh well, just a wild thought. Take care,

        Ben

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        • Post #100

        "Regarding the constancy of the speed of light, my guess would be that a concept like this only makes sense at sufficiently large scales."

        No it makes sense locally. See this:

        "vO is the velocity of an observer moving towards the source. This velocity is independent of the motion of the source. Hence, the velocity of waves relative to the observer is c vO. (...) The motion of an observer does not alter the wavelength. The increase in frequency is a result of the observer encountering more wavelengths in a given time."

        This author teaches that the speed of light is VARIABLE (varies with the speed of the observer). If he thought it was constant, he would have written:

        "vO is the velocity of an observer moving towards the source. This velocity is independent of the motion of the source. The velocity of waves relative to the observer is constant,c, because the motion of the observer alters the wavelength. The increase in frequency is a result of the motion of the observer altering the wavelength."

        Pentcho Valev

        Interesting thought.

        I don't know much about the difference between symmetric and anti-symmetric relations so I can't comment much. However, I would just point out that, in shape dynamics, the conformal factor of the metric is pure gauge, up to a constant. Because of this, the causal structure is really the main information that we are keeping aside from the total volume. Thus, I suspect that there is a way to map causal structure onto shape space. Indeed, this could have something to do with the isomorphism between the de Sitter group and the conformal group. Probably there is a way to map the conformal structure of de Sitter to the isometries of the conformal sphere in one less dimension. Then one could use a framework similar to what Flavio and I are discussing the paper we're about to post to understand this better in gravity. The discreteness is another issue but I have some ideas about that as well. There may be a way to make some connections.

        Cheers,

        Sean.

        Sean,

        I believe it's precisely because of the conformal factor that Rafael Sorkin incorporates the (constant discrete) measure in his "order plus number equals geometry;" i.e., because "order" by itself is not enough to recover the metric. That was part of what interested me about shape dynamics, because throwing in the scale seems artificial. You note that I have to keep repeating "up to a scale factor," in my own essay. Take care,

        Ben

        Sean,

        Also, Lawrence Crowell (who seems capable of instantly making precise remarks about almost any subject) has made some comments on Daniel Alves' thread along the same lines (possible duality/complementarity of symmetric/antisymmetric relations). I'm sure you are following Julian Barbour's thread; there is some relevant discussion there as well. Take care,

        Ben

          I'll take a look. I haven't had much time to check the discussions but I will but we just posted our new paper so I will have some time next week. I think there is definitely a connection. It would be nice to make this more rigorous though!

          Cheers,

          Sean.