Thank you Sir Vladimir for the replies to my confused probing. After reading your paper that you linked in your reply, I think it's now evident at least that my statement on momentum meant more to you (mathematically and with working familiarity) than I knew at the time. That is the great risk in talking to a mind, one never knows exactly how much lies in there unknown or unexpressed.

With a little fuzz still left after the read.

You are welcome Sir W. Amos

Thank you for reading my rather rambling papers. Do not blame yourself for feeling a little fuzzy. My Theory is very much a mostly qualitative work in progress. I have faith in the effectiveness of the node gyrations to explain gravity, e=mc^s etc. it needs to be presented systematically and the appropriate math developed. There are vast tracts of modern physics I do not understand at all, or understand only through writing addressed to the layperson so its OK to feel fuzzy. Yes there is risk in communications online - at least these days one can reasonably assume there is a human being at the other end. In a few years one will need to be careful it is not a computer providing the feedback!

Dear James

Thanks for your careful reading of my paper. Frankly the subjects I chose to tackle in it are new to me and outside my usual areas of interest or expertise, but I found them interesting enough to try to complete the paper as I did. So it may be inconsistent or badly phrased in places. However I was later told that the Cloud in my essay is no different from Kant's concept of the difference between phenomenon and noumenon!

You said "It is the processing that our minds do to it that draws a possible image out of the mix and forms it into a picture. I see that picture as being most usually an improvement of the information that was received. Our minds choose what to make of the information and proceed to make it. You mentioned intuition in another part of your essay. What is 'intuition' in your view?"

Very true and I think you answered yourself in the last sentence - it is our innate sense of intuition - some ability to reach logical conclusions about the world ? that sorts through the messy information and makes sense of it in ideas and theories. Is intuition due to inheritance or to upbringing and experience...?

""Nature and information can then be regarded as one and the same thing. ..." seems to me to be questionable. "

Right..I think I was describing the gadgets such as the soroban, the slide rule, and in a similar vein, my Beautiful Universe erector-set-like model of the Universe. What *actually* happens in Nature is something else and subject to the hazy influence of the Cloud.

I wish I had the stamina to go into this more deeply - I will see if you have an essay and if so will read it.

With best wishes

Vladimir

I have just downloaded your Beautiful Universe Theory. I seems to be interesting...

Jacek

And I have read your paper on vixra "Spacetime Deformations Theory". I see we share some (but not all) ideas about how to re-start physics from new concepts. Good! Your concept of regarding matter as waves was the leitmotif of the late Gabriel La Frenier - his website is archived here: Matter Is Made of Waves . Please tell people about this great thinker's website because he had some important insights. I agree with you that a physical field density is a key element in gravity. Good luck.

Vladimir

5 days later

Dear Vladimir,

I have just read your 'BEAUTIFUL UNIVERSE: TOWARDS RECONSTRUCTING PHYSICS FROM NEW FIRST PRINCIPLES'. It is not a work for one night. I have left some ad hoc comments at my essays' forum where you have recommended BU theory.

I see that you recommend very interesting content so I have to look immediately at Gabriel La Frenier website. Thanks!

Vladimir,

I love your 'cloud of unknowing'. Great essay, particularly as it extend what I'd assume is your main comfort zone. I particularly liked; "Experimental and theoretical knowledge and information about Nature should not be confused with Nature itself." Very similar to my own point about maths and statistics.

I also picked out;

"in arrogance and short-sightedness we have fallen into the trap of confusing our derived knowledge of Reality with Reality itself

"...misconceptions can easily arise even from correct data"

"...a Cloud of Unknowing obscures both the process of experimental observation of Reality and in thinking and creating theories about it."

"...Taking a hint from Shannon's Information theory it is useful to think of the Information about the subject as passing from Nature to the observer through an information channel. There is always the possibility of noise distorting the information as it is transferred from its original manifestation to a sensor, retina, (including the paraphernalia of data processing in a brain) or computer."

Excellent stuff. (and all consistent with my proposed new law I think?)

Peter

    Thanks Peter for your generous response to my essay. Indeed it was off my usual well- trodden path but It finally dawned on me how important it was to examine not just what we know but how we know it. I kick myself for not including the input of the five senses in the illustration!

    Good luck with your new law.

    Check out the Itsy Bitsy song on YouTube thats of my generation!

    All the best

    Vladimir

      Peter

      We only have knowledge of, we do not have any 'direct access' to reality. The issue is whether the knowledge compiled corresponds with what is knowable. Physical existence being what is potentially knowable to us, which is the function of a physical process. We may never achieve it, but that is a practical matter. The point is, if proven to correspond, which will be by default, ie nothing new arises after many years of further investigation, then all we can say is that the knowledge is the equivalent of existence as manifest to us.

      Paul

      Vladimir

      Do not fret, because there are more than 5 senses anyway. Physical existence is not just the preserve of human beings. Any sense of any sentient organism is relevant.

      Paul

      Thanks for your sensible comments Paul - also for a witty one I noticed recently about reversing into a blind alley.

      Vladimir

      Vladimir,

      Nice looking essay. "An observer using an imaging

      instrument such as a telescope or microscope sees only the final image". Rang close to my heart, because the fundamental theory I am working on (not included specifically in my own essay here), also suggests that reality is a result of Quibits - specifically geometric asymmetries, that relies on the observers unique frame.

      Great work - well done!

      Antony

      Thanks Antony for your kind words. Yes qubits of some kind seem to lurk at the zero point vacuum. However I am committed to a frameless observationless physics. By getting rid of the ether and making observation absolute (c is constant) Einstein condemned physics to go on an unnecessary detour that made general relativity unnecessarily complicated. Relativity is perfectly possible in an absolute medium.

      Wish you all the best in your research.

      Vladimir

        Vladimir

        c was just a constant, and he explained it as a ray of light. It was not observational light, just a ray. Later it was lightening, which is seriously difficult to see with! There was no observation in Einstein. You find me an example. What he said he was doing, and thought he was doing, is irrelevant, it is what he did which matters.

        There is no relativity in physical existence. The 'relativity', or more precisely, variance in timing, is in the receipt of light, which although existent in its own right, is a representation of the reality which occurred. And that occurred in a definitive discrete physically existent state.

        Paul

        6 days later

        Hello, dear Vladimir!

        You always write great essays! And most importantly - give beautiful drawings. "The truth is to be drawn ..." (A.Zenkin. "Scientific counter-revolution in mathematics"). You are right: «There is a necessity to examine our philosophy of knowing. By their very nature our best theories are merely our best guesses, and there is no guarantee that better theories may not be discovered contradicting present assumptions and / or presenting new ones. »Good luck in the contest! Regards, Vladimir

        Dear Vladimir

        Nice to address another Vladimir!

        Thanks for your encouraging comments about my essay. It was new territory for me . Now having looked into this aspect of physics, I respect philosophers much more than I did before!

        I will read your essay soon. Good luck to you too.

        Vladimir

        Dear Vladimir,

        Thanks a lot for your kind words.

        Seems like we are thinking much in the same direction, and after reading your essay I am even more convinced that the top-bottom approach most commonly used will fail to uncover everything that is to know about the universe due exactly to the cloud of unknowing. Using a bottom-up approach could be used as a possibly much needed "reboot" of the field giving the oppertunity to both build up physics without the constraints of the accepted view, which by all means is mainly exellent and brilliant science, and in addition give the possibility to view this physics with much less of our everyday intuition clouding our view. And I especially like your view of writing and reading information. I believe that this view can help us understand quantum mechanics in a less confused way.

        Respectfully,

        Kjetil

        Dear Kjetli,

        Thank you - yes a 'reboot' of the field is what is needed. That was exactly the subject Fix Physics of my essay for last year's contest.

        As you say much of current physics is "exellent and brilliant science" because somehow theoretical premises predict and confirm experiment. Many of us protesting the situation however feel that the foundations on which this science is built are physically unrealistic and lead to dead-ends and to mistaken views as well as to the brilliant successes.

        The hardest part of this rebooting is to convince people to recognize that ideas like a constant speed of light, that gravity is due to warped spacetime, that the photon is a point particle, and that probability is a property of the zero-point vacuum are embedded in the Cloud of Unknowing. They may well be physically wrong, as my alternative model points out. Unfortunately I do not have the training and resources to prove my ideas to the satisfaction of the mainstream. But I am trying!

        With best wishes for your work.

        Vladimir

        Dear Vladimir,

        A well written and nicely illustated essay.

        I completely agree with you that "it from qubit" is a much better view of at least part of the universe as I develop in my own essay

        https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

        There is a cloud of unknowing due to very basic nature of quantum measurements we are allowed to perform. The general idea of contextuality, ecompassing quantum contextuality, would be that one can only be aware of what is compatible with our questions, and the latter follow from our restricted knowledge. This idea can be given a quite rigorous mathematical form for qubits.

        My best regards,

        Michel

          Dear Vladimir F. Tamari

          Unfortunately, your essay is too large for self-service capabilities of my computer, but I agree with " ABSOLUTE REALITY AND RELATIVE OBSERVERS ".

          I also believe that:REALITY Of course ABSOLUTE.

          http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802