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  • Post #59

So fig. 6 depicts an event that casn be viewed both from the mechanical viewpoint and from your new structural viewpoint. What is it about the class that changed? What is it that goes beyond the mechanical viewpoint? It seems that the figure and your explanation could be interpreted as another mechanical explanation. I am certain you intended it to represent more than that. Are you introducing an intelligent property in fig. 6? This probably seems trivial; however, I am looking for the clear break with the mechanical perspective.

Is it your position that entanglement cannot be explained by mechanical means? I look at the figure and think that it could be depicting mechanical forces and their effects. I don't believe it is intending to do only that; but, your separation between mechanics and intelligence is not yet clear to me from that figure. Your use of the words 'interacting' and 'modifying' leave me wondering exactly what do they mean?

I have been interested in your work since I became aware of it. I do not doubt that we must go far beyond the mechanical perspective or the spatial perspective. I am looking to understand that clear break in your work. It appears to me that your structural representation could be applied without explaining the means of the 'interactions' and 'modifications'. It is probably my fault, but, I don't see the explanation of the means with regard to your presentation of fig. 6.

Here you make the point that, "...the vague appeals to "self-organization" and "top-down causation", nothing short of a fundamentally new scientific language will do." I am asking what here goes beyond the language? I am not wondering if information is flowing around. I am wondering what is it that you are saying is making use of it? Is it an intelligent property that understands the meaning of the information?

I don't mean to be misrepresenting your work, just saying what it looks like to me. In this passage it it appears to me that you are conceding that the development of recognition, the intelligent use of information, could have evolved substantially on its own: "In fact, the proposed organization is supposed to explain why an organism endowed with the capability--inherent in the entire Universe--to construct the representations of some classes in its environment (e.g. of the class of snakes) is then able to recognize members of those classes not encountered previously (new snakes). It is most unlikely that such highly nontrivial informational capability could have evolved fully on its own, especially considering the independence of the structure of (evolving) classes in an organism's environment." How much could have evolved on its own? Is it your position that you are adding the means by which recognition exists or are adding something new that is a catalyst that extends the means?

I will end my questions with these. Sorry for dragging it out. Thank you.

James Putnam

    "Is it your position that entanglement cannot be explained by mechanical means?"

    More accurately: "by the spatial formalism".

    James, I'm not quite sure what escapes you in Fig.6, but put simply, there is a conventional spatial realm and there is a fundamentally different, let's call it, for lack of a better word,"informational" realm. The later provides blueprints for the former.

    As for the caption for fig. 6, "interaction" refers, for example, to the conventional measurement process, since it occurs in the spatial realm, while the dashed arrows shows the causal connections with the informational realm, where (i) stands for the basic causal connection between the particles' source and its "informational" counterpart. Keep in mind that according to my view of ETS, for each spatial process there exists its original ("informational") blueprint in the form of the corresponding struct.

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    • Post #61

    "James, I'm not quite sure what escapes you in Fig.6, but put simply, there is a conventional spatial realm and there is a fundamentally different, let's call it, for lack of a better word,"informational" realm. The later provides blueprints for the former. ..."

    "Keep in mind that according to my view of ETS, for each spatial process there exists its original ("informational") blueprint in the form of the corresponding struct."

    With regard to entanglement, how would one test for the difference? Even if the example had been DNA, or RNA, encoding for particular proteins, the mechanical, mechanical for me means without the aid of intelligence, explanation would suffice. However, the forms and functions of organs that are produced are not possible in the abilities of mechanical properties. This is, of course, my opinion. I think a different example from entanglement might have clarified the difference between a a spatial process and its blueprint. I wonder if you mean that it is the spatial process that produces the effects and that the blueprint is guiding it by hidden means?

    If I appear to be just way off on this with little prospect of understanding you, please just say so. I can let it go.

    James Putnam

    "if you mean that it is the spatial process that produces the effects and that the blueprint is guiding it by hidden means? "

    Yes, I do. Accordingly, even the DNA might be only the visible part of developmental process. In fact, there is the relevant process in developmental biology called the "morphogenetic field", which is not understood at all.

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    • Post #63

    Lev,

    Thank you for your explanation. I understand. Good luck in the contest. :)

    James Putnam

    Lev, I appreciated the time and patience you spent anwering my questions. I see that you are posting more ratings. I wouldn't want you to think that one of those recent ratings might have been mine. I rated your essay some time ago with that high mark.

    James Putnam

    Thanks, James! I appreciate your sensitivity to the rating mess that is going on.

    The reason I started posting the essay scores is to help me cope with this mess. ;-)

    Of course, I have been talking about this issue repeatedly during and after contests 2 and 3, but to no avail. So one would think that I should have been prepared for this, but unfortunately (or may be fortunately) I will never be prepared for such mess in a *scientific* contest. Is it a scientific contest or simply a PR event disguised as the former?

    Lev

    Aha, so who is being naïve now?? I commented on this when you first raised it in the essay topic, agreeing that the notion of competitors rating each other was absurd, and more importantly, stymies the ensuing debate. Which would have otherwise been a very useful mechanism for what was being said to be clarified/enhanced. Note how some have virtually no posts, and no posts have been made by the author, yet people have been 'moved' to rate the essay. And whilst I agreed with the essence of your resolution to the problem, ie poor quality essays should be screened out by a panel,the real resolution to this, which you told me I was naive about, is that a panel should judge both the essays and postings. I am not interested in the resource implications of this, if a contest is organised then that encompasses a responsibility of judging it properly.

    Paul

    Roll the dice, pick a number. 7 looks good, its not been used yet!!

    Paul: "I am not interested in the resource implications of this, if a contest is organised then that encompasses a responsibility of judging it properly."

    Exactly! I have been appalled that such *indignity* has been allowed to go on from year to year.

    5 days later

    Lev

    Congratulations for an exceptionally well-written paper in which you guided us to the new horizons of your ETS concepts. From the outset I realized that I can completely agree with some of your ideas, but of others I can say "he knows what he is talking about but I just do not want to go in that direction". Examples:

    You said " how many physicists are prepared to start the development ofphysics more or less anew". Count me in. The subtitle of my Beautiful Universe Theory (BU) is "Reconstructing Physics from Simple New First Principles."In my model of the universe the internal causal exchanges of angular momentum between the lattice nodes are well described by two of your statements:

    "...development of a radically different - non-numeric, or structural-scientific language" and "evolving transformations systems". In other words in (BU) matter, energy, space and time all emerge from something more basic, and self-evolve according to internal exchanges of momentum (a 'language') much as in a quantum computer.

    Having said that I then began to shy away from the structs representation you propose. It may well eventually work to describe how nature and thought work and interact, but using classes seems an artificial top-down coarse approach to describe what in the end would be the most delicate operations of nature at the sub-atomic level.

    Yes your scheme may be " radically different from all known representations mainly because it is addressing the formative, rather than any apparent, structure." But understanding and dealing in space and structure is part of our human heritage. Is ETS a language invented for robot physicists?

    I was intrigued by your enigmatic Figure 5 of a "schematic event-based version of the Huygens' view of light, which now removes the waveparticle mystery". How? I know Huygens' principle quite well and have shown in my de-diffraction research described in papers here that it is not a physically correct representation of how diffraction occurs in nature - as streamlined flow. I also know that Eric Reiter has now definitively explained particle-wave duality by debunking the point photon concept. Your comments on this and other issues here as well as on my current fqxi paper would be welcome!

    With admiration for your combination of bold initiative with technical expertise in your field, I wish you the best.

    Vladimir

    Dear Vladimir,

    Thanks for your interest!

    1. "using classes seems an artificial top-down coarse approach to describe what in the end would be the most delicate operations of nature at the sub-atomic level."

    Classes are proposed as the informational units of Universe organization and are not related to a "top-down coarse approach" at all.

    2. "Is ETS a language invented for robot physicists? "

    I'm not sue what you mean by this.

    3. "I was intrigued by your enigmatic Figure 5 of a "schematic event-based version of the Huygens' view of light, which now removes the waveparticle mystery". How?"

    Vladimir, I referred to the 'visual', or informal, Huygens' view of light

    "In 1678, Huygens proposed that every point to which a luminous disturbance reaches becomes a source of a spherical wave" (Wiki)

    and not to its analytical expression.

    In other words, the spatial 'propagation' of the instantiated ETS events might be similar to the process of wave propagation as proposed by Huygens.

      Lev

      From the brief description of informational classes in your essay I could not imagine how they can be used for example to describe the motion of a particle in a gravitational field - what kind of math would be used there?

      Oh my reference to robot physicists was my attempt at a humorous expression of my bafflement about your scheme. An experience of space is a fundamental human sensation so the laws of our physics are geared to that. Humans are not necessary for the universe to function of course, and it seemed to me that if some mechanical artificial intelligence (robots) were to derive the laws of physics they might use a scheme such as the one you are advocating.

      @"the spatial 'propagation' of the instantiated ETS events might be similar to the process of wave propagation as proposed by Huygens."

      I now understand what you are saying but not how ETS events can describe the propagation of light.

        Vladimir,

        1. "From the brief description of informational classes in your essay I could not imagine how they can be used for example to describe the motion of a particle in a gravitational field - what kind of math would be used there?"

        As you can imagine, I can only speculate here. The "motion" of particle is represented by a struct, and the "gravitational field" is also captured by a very large struct, since the field emerged gradually during the formation of a particular object or objects, as for example, in the formation of Earth and Sun.

        2. "An experience of space is a fundamental human sensation so the laws of our physics are geared to that."

        As you might have guessed, the development of ETS formalism was mainly motivated by the desire to unlock the nature of our perceptual mechanism, which I suggest was driven by the proposed structural representation.

        3. "I now understand what you are saying but not how ETS events can describe the propagation of light."

        In order to properly address this question we need to discover (experimentally) the structure of the events associated with the propagation of light. We don't even know if there is one or several events involved, not talking about their structure. But my point is that if the structure of the corresponding events is something like that depicted in Fig.5, this would explain *very naturally* the mysterious "wave-particle duality".

        By the way, I forgot to ask you if you looked at the only example I gave in the essay (in the endnote (iv) ). That is a must for getting at least some feeling for the formalism.

        Cheers, Lev

        Vladimir,

        I forgot to comment on the following your point:

        "using classes seems an artificial top-down coarse approach to describe what in the end would be the most delicate operations of nature at the sub-atomic level."

        As you may know, it is physics that approached nature in a "top-down coarse approach" and eventually met with the substantial difficulties in QM, where one has to deal with the "bottom" side of reality.

        The ETS struct is a suggested bottom-up approach to the representation of "reality". However, what gradually became clear to me--and independently, to some extent, to some physicists--is that the basis of such approach inevitably leads outside the conventional spatial framework.

        Physicists are not yet comfortable to think and to talk in terms of new forms of data representation, but this will come once you started on the path leading outside the spatial forms of data representation.

        The shameless game of pulling down the entries with the higher scores continues unabated ;-) :

        3, 1, 10, 2, 6, 5, 5, 1, 6, 2, 3, 8, 3

        Lev

        Turkeys don't vote for Christmas!

        Paul