On The Road Not Taken by Akinbo Ojo

Akinbo,

I found your your approach to the topic at hand fascinating and would like to rate your essay highly. However, before I do may I run some questions by you via email? Please let me know at: msm@physicsofdestiny.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Manuel

Akinbo,

As I pointed out in my response on my thread, you raise far more issues than can be easily answered.

The ancient Romans are castigated for not having a zero in their number system, yet they were a notoriously practical minded people and given that zero creates more problems that it easily solves, they may have left it out on purpose, like that relative one deals with as little as possible.

Yes, a dimensionless point is a mathematical contradiction, because lacking any of the three dimensions means it is a multiple of zero. A dimensionless point would be as real as a dimensionless apple.

A monad is not a perfect solution either. In order to have an irreducible dimensionality, like a Planck unit, one must be able to theoretically assign it some size. Two problems with this; For one thing, you could always "theoretically" cut that size in half. Saying otherwise is just an appeal to authority. For another, in order to have size, it must have boundaries, which requires structure and definition smaller than the proposed unit. If you make the walls of its container dimensionless, you only push the problem away, you don't solve it.

As for something and nothing, they are not the computational 1 and 0. In order to measure anything, even nothing, you need something to measure/detect whether it does, or doesn't exist. So actually it is 1 and 2. The detector silent and the detector ringing.

As for Zeno, it doesn't matter how many times you add a zero, you still have zero, so there is no such thing as a line of dimensionless points.

The real zero is empty space. It is not a singularity or bound in any way, because it is nothing. Being nothing, it cannot move, therefore it is inert. It is against this inertia of empty space that the speed of light is limited. Thus the faster an object goes, the greater the drag on its internal activity and so the slower its clock runs. Eventually at the speed of light in this vacuum, there is no internal activity and so no more energy that can be converted into increased speed, so the speed of light in the vacuum is an absolute limit. If space were truly relative, then nothing would prevent separate frames, with normal internal activity , moving past one another at the speed of light. There could be living beings in that beam of light flowing through your window, if space were not the ultimate frame.

Centrifugal force is another example of the inertia of space. If motion is entirely relative, then why would an object in an otherwise empty frame ever have measurable spin? And if it didn't, why would an object with only the most distant light as outside reference have any centrifugal effect if it is spinning? It is only because space is zero, the absolute, universal state, that such things are real effects and limits.

Now you might argue centrifugal force is not affectted by the frame moving, much as spinning a child on the suface of the earth is not affect when the child is moving in the direction of rotation, versus the other direction, but that is only because it is so incremental. At near the speed of light, the spin of an electron is decidedly affected, thus creating length contraction. Also General Relativity do describe gravity as warped spacetime and if you were to spin that child in a circle up and down, it would seriously matter whether it is the upward motion, or the downward motion.

I think gravity is a basic vacuum effect of radiation contracting into mass. Much as releasing radiation from mass creates significant pressure.

So since physics treats everything as measurement and space is described as a measure between mass points, so that when they are drawn together, it is considered a contraction of space, gravity is another form of length contraction of the collapsing energy and the mass that is its concentrated form. No need of gravitons or gravity waves when all we need is for light in space to be more diffuse then light absorbed into mass.

Time, on the other hand, is an entirely different situation. My last year's contest entry dealt with the problems of our understanding of time.

After this, then comes the issue of what is epistemic and what is ontological. Consider that past and future are not ontologically real, so even the notion of determinism is epistemic.

Regards,

John Merryman

Ps, You do have a very intelligent perspective on the deeper issues, so I will grade you appropriately.

Hi Akinbo,

Can you give a conceptual meaning of the use on infinity in renormalization? The link between infinity and energy is not clear to me. Also, you say "A line having the width and thickness of Planck dimension, cannot divide space infinitely." Where infinite division is at hand, can getting as close to possible to the infinite dividing reaches be useful mathematically? I would think that here since the monad has a role in the real world, this nearing of the infinite would also have some physical significance.

It is really nice to see geometry and philosophy-like ideas discussed in a science pap. I think this is what the time needs right now. The complexities of theory today keep many genius minds at bay. I did not know Wheeler's geometrical nature in his work, and this motivates me to learn more about him. I know nothing of his. What's the other side of the plank scale from the view of the Extended Point Highway? You know, the one that isn't well known to us. Many physicists are looking form smaller discrete parts 'lower' than Planck distance, but I think the general behavior around that scale is more important than the particulars at the moment. I am unsure what the view based on nomads would have to say, if anything at all.

This essay followed the discussion points of the contest very closely, and was made interesting with the invocation of the Muses...

Sincerely,

Amos.

Dear Akinbo,

Good to be home! I like your classic approach.

You ask: "in a very fundamental discussion, what information will be "occupying the ontological basement""?

I say it is in any system of events the OBSERVER proper as signifying the "virtual exchange" of standard model or "space-time" of general relativity. Thus to realize Wheeler's participatory universe we must assume that the universal computer or algorithm proper is ANY DE FACTO OBSERVER as the "configuration space" of all matter/bits and what is better known in QM as the matter wave (wave function).

My "observer" is in other words the thing we call individually "mind" or biologically "life" and physically "energy" (or generally a "conservation law").

Thank you for your engaging essay.

Regards,

Chidi

Dear Akinbo,

I hope the comment I wrote here, and lost during changing the server, will be restored. If not, I will try to make another one.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Akinbo,

Thanks very much for reading and commenting on my essay. Sorry it took so long to reply, but I've finally managed to read your essay. I thought your analysis of monads was very interesting, and I really liked the way you handled your discussion of historical philosophical views on the topic. I think it's really important that anyone who stands on the shoulders of these giants should know what they were actually thinking and how they arrived at their ideas, since textbooks often either misrepresent things, or just leave out the original reasoning entirely.

Regarding your question about existence/non-existence as a binary choice, I think our views are very different on that point, although I can appreciate what you're going for. It's just that I do think a continual passage of time is fundamental, and prior to any particular thing existing. I can think of a three-dimensional set of monads existing, like the "one-dimensional" set you've drawn at different stages in the two figures in your essay, but I can't think of those two instants if the monads don't exist. And in order for objective time to pass uniformly throughout the Universe, which is what I've argued for in my essay despite relative proper duration, etc., I don't think random discrete particle creation and annihilation in the Universe could be the cause of this uniform absolute duration.

That's why I think 'it from bit' has to fail, despite the possibility that bits (monads) are the fundamental building blocks of everything in the Universe. But I'm no stick in the mud, and as I said I can appreciate your position, and I enjoyed your essay. You have my vote!

Best of luck in the contest,

Daryl

Akinbo,

While I still disagree, I wish I'd given you more than the seven I did, on presentation alone.

You will have to go back and read my essay to get the context, but I do see the "energy" as necessarily foundational to the "information," since information changes while energy is conserved. To me, the "bit" amounts to the "peak" of a wave. It rises to the level of signal, above the ambient noise. As for why it doesn't make sense to me to specify monads as being temporally defined, you would have to go back and read my Questioning the Foundations entry, where I make the argument that the problem with our understanding of time is that we treat the sequential experience, from past to future, that physics reduces to a measure of duration, as foundational, yet it is an effect of the process of change that turns potential into actual, ie, future becoming past. Tomorrow becoming yesterday, rather than the vector from yesterday to tomorrow. This makes action foundational to events. The idea of past and future, whether of you and I, or of a monad, is conjectural, not physical.

Time then emerges from this activity, just like temperature. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. The "arrow of time" emerges from the fact that since energy is conserved, in order to create new information, old has to be erased.

It is very revealing that you use the device of a court proceeding to argue your point. It is the purpose of a court to make determinations of the evidence, in order to reconcile divergent views. The fact remains though, that there are divergent views because perspective is inherently subjective. Consider the Relativistic argument against simultaneity, that different points of view can even have different timelines of the same events. This is illustrative of a point I tried making in my entry, that such distinctions are necessary to having perspective in the first place. That if you combine all the colors, you just get one shade and that is the conceptual basis, or absolute state. It is necessary to have distinct colors in order to create complexity. This goes to the nature of theology, in that there is no "God's eye view." An ideal is not an absolute. The absolute is the universal state from which we rise, not an ideal form from which we fell. The proper representation for the spiritual absolute would be a new born babe, not a bearded old man. It is only as this essence fractures into parts and they interact that complexities, numbers, geometry, etc. arise.

Now we do need to frequently coalesce, judge, determine, will, etc. a choice out of all the potential options, but that never fully resolves the issue, because that essence naturally grows back in the open spaces of what is neglected. Like grass pushes through the cracks in the sidewalks of our decisions. What is hard and set and fast, grows old quickly when it cannot adapt, yet in order to adapt, it must change to met the new, so if the future is a continuation of the past, the old must evolve, or it creates reaction. Evolution or revolution.

I'm starting to go off into politics, so I'll leave it at that...

Regards,

John

Akinbo,

Extension being space, I fully agree. it is the stage on which all else acts.

Regards,

John

Dear Akinbo,

Judge: What of extended points?

Jacek: Your honor, I agree that all is geometry. It is not easy to abandon the idea of a universe made of matter and embrace the vision of a reality made of a pure (conformally flat, isotropic, elastic, homeomorphic and self-organized) spacetime. We shall be looking for that one, universal, distance scale invariant metric (eventually reducing to Einstein GR metric within Solar System distance scale) and having ability to generate predictions. The first prediction of that geometrization concept is the spin experiment outcome. Depending on the outcome we shall look for a proper metric or give up.

Judge: The hearing is suspended until the spin experiment is carried out!

-------

You are absolutely right that we seem to have been led along the wrong road. I do not mean that I agree with you in 100%. E.g. I would exchange your extended points for wavepackets (spacetime deformations) as fundamental objects of geometry. This is not the same in details but they are also extended objects. That is a way to reduce physics to geometry.

I like your approach and I think that philosophy is very important to understand the reality (for teaching purposes) but in my opinion it is not enough to prove anything (for judgment) in the field of physics. My experiment is not described in the essay (my fault as I had a lot of place). It is the best to read full description here: http://vixra.org/abs/1304.0027

We differ in some issues but I think your essay deserves the high rating!

Best regards,

Akinbo,

As Yogi Berra put it, "When you reach a fork in the road, take it." The point, line, etc are just model systems from a physicist's perspective. One uses them in a way that is appropriate to the problem at hand. What mathematics means in of itself and its bearing on physics is a subject that many people have pondered and written about. This extends to ideas about mathematical realism, which is a variant of Platonism, and Brower's constructivism that considers mathematics as largely just a mental model set.

There is a monad aspect to things. I think elementary particles are just projections of a single eigenstate into different configuration variables. This means there is only one electron in the universe, and the vast number of them around us are just holographic projects of that single particle state.

Cheers LC

Akinbo

You asked me, again to look at your essay.

Overall, I do not understand what you are trying to convey, and your assumptions about the generic physical circumstance are incorrect.

There is no 'it' as such, other than in the sense that ultimately physical existence/reality must comprise of something (or various types of something). A reality, ie what exists at any given time, is a discrete definitive physically existent state of whatever comprises it.

Space is implied by existence (ie of something), we do not measure space, but the difference, spatially, between somethings. This might sound like 'splitting hairs', but the important point is that one can only establish the space between/relative spatial position of whatever is existent at the same time, and that is a specific physically existent state. Not a thing. There are more than 3 dimensions, this is, rather like things, just a high level conceptualisation of what actually occurs. The concept of dimension is associated with any possible direction, either way, of the spatial footprint of whatever physical state being considered. So, however many directions the smallest thing can travel from a spatial point, halved, is the number of possible dimensions. This would represent a line as you define it.

The point is this. When considering distance, spatial position, etc, what we are doing is imposing, conceptually, a spatial grid on any given reality. Although it is probably impossible for us to do, in order to properly correspond with what physically occurs, that grid would need a 'mesh' size equivalent to the smallest existent substance. The grid is located with respect to something. But if we do not understand how reality occurs, then application of this gets confused, eg we are relating things that do not exist at the same time, or we are referring to things that physically do not exist as we conceive them, etc. X=vt can be misunderstood. The concept is that space is being expressed in terms of the duration it would take something to travel a distance. But it cannot actually do this, because whilst doing so, the reality has altered.

To put this all another way around, there is no duration, no motion, no change of any degree whatsoever in a reality. Any difference constitutes another reality, ie a different physically existent state. There cannot be two different states of whatever comprises existence occurring at the same time. Duration, motion, a degree of change of any type is a reflection of the difference between one reality and its successor. In other words, it is a sequence.

Paul

Judge: Wouldn't you then agree that what can be deformed must have some structure? And if it does, will this be composite or not? Then is your conception of space, relational or substantival? This answer will allow your further cross-examination :)

Jacek: The spacetime is continuous, conformally flat, isotropic, ELASTIC, homeomorphic and self-organized. If composite means: made up of distinct components - there is only one component - the spacetime itself. If substantival means: not imaginary, actual, real than YES. Please proceed the further examination.

I have rated your essay long time ago and very high as your essay is very well written and accessible and as you have shown it has potential.

Best regards,