Rob,

Great to hear from you! I'll study your comments above and reply.

I was really looking forward to your essay on this topic, and am disappointed that you did not find time to write one. By the way, I have tried to find your email address during the last year and failed. If you would, please send it to klingman@geneman.com.

Hope you are well,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi, Edwin,

Thanks you. That does clarify a lot. I am in the midst of a move to another city, so spare time is scarce, but will reread your essay and respond again. I am very glad to have gotten into this discussion on FQXi, brings me up to date on a lot of issues. The depth of the mess into which philosophy of physics has fallen is startling, but I should have been forewarned by my own original doctoral thesis as to the problems ahead given what philosophers of science were saying in the 1960's.

Our views might indeed be compatible. I will have to think through your thoughts above with another reread of your essay.

Blessings, Earle

Hi Earle,

Hope your move goes well. I don't envy you!

I've enjoyed our discussion, and would look forward to more. I think our views are more compatible than they might seem at first. I'm glad that my essay may help to bring the current state of physics into focus. I too hope to read your thesis, but it won't be any time soon. I do hope you re-read my essay with the above clarification in mind. After your move, if you're interested in further communications, my email address is at the '@ 16:33 GMT' comment below.

Best wishes to you,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Don (knower of all),

I very much enjoyed your essay, both the ideas expressed and the superb humor (just a little computer glitch on the pod bay doors!). I thought you integrated lambda-hopping with Zeno, Newton, Heisenberg, Feynman, Wheeler and Einstein very well. And we both agree that "quantum mechanics is made up a mathematical story that fits the data" but has big gaps in the physics. As one who has a bad case of the continuity gene, I'm not yet on the lambda bandwagon, but I believe that these FQXi essays are the ideal vehicle for presenting our ideas to the community, improving the ideas from user feedback, and presenting the idea again in the context of the new topic, if it fits (or can be made to fit) the topic.

Yours was the most fun essay of all, and you managed to keep lambda-hopping in our awareness and Siri was an excellent foil.

Thanks again for reading and commenting.

Have fun,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Rob,

Thanks for your interesting questions and for the link to Casey's essay. You ask "why assume that the *entire* field is interacting with itself?" Initially, I do *not* assume either that the entire field is interacting with itself or not... just that evolution can only come from self-interaction. This leads to a symbolic equation, in which neither field nor "change operator" is defined. That's as far as we can go without more knowledge, so I call on Maxwell's teaching that fields have energy and Einstein's that energy has mass and these two lead to a form similar to Newton's gravitational equation. Therefore I hypothesize that the field is gravity and the change operator is the differential operator, del. The differential operator is inherently local, despite that it may be completely compatible with global "least action" principles or conservative fields in which endpoints are independent of paths.

I'm glad that you find the idea of starting with a single, self-interacting, field interesting. As I note in my essay, this leads to both QM and GR equations, but I have recently strengthened these links considerably.

As Casey points out, if the action is a function of the square of the distance, how do particles [lacking the field] know how far apart they are? This is global. You seem to be asking how do particles sense the local field. But you presume structureless particles, I do not. My particles have structure, manifested in spin. But 'sensing' and 'acting' are mysterious properties that, in effect, define what it means to be a field. I'm not sure there is any physical 'mechanism' that will explain this capability.

You seem to rely on the quantum field theory assumption of a 'field per particle' and that particles are 'vibrations' in the field. That is not my model. And the question "why don't particles evolve?" (as one would expect from vibrations) is also known as "the mass gap" problem. I have an answer to this that does not fit neatly into a comment. I hope to soon model it with Mathematica. I have several problems with quantum field theory. I think there is a logical problem (page 72, Casey) with 1) all electrons are quanta of the same field, and 2) the field endures, but particles come and go, transforming one into the other. As indicated in my essay, I have problems with the virtual particles of QED, which I tend to see as a fudge factor.

As you have so aptly noted, we discuss particles in English without assigning alphabetic character 'properties' to particles, but when we use Fourier descriptions we assign superposition 'properties'. That is a big mistake.

Jonathan Dickau, on another blog, says that some are proposing that gravity is not limited to the speed of light. I have not seen their arguments, but I tend to think of it as limited to c, and this is also assumed in GR. There's also the possibility, probably untestable, that the 'self-awareness' aspect of the field is not so limited, but the 'action' or 'force' aspects are. There are a number of possibilities, and I have not thought through all of them. So global 'self-awareness' is an open question.

Thanks for reading my essay and your comments, I'm always interested in your opinions.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin,

I did not mean to give the impression that i agree with the assumptions of quantum field theory. Let me explain the point I am interested in regarding "local interaction".

Assume, for the moment, that Newton's law of gravity is valid, namely that gravity is dependent on the inverse square of the distance between masses. If this force were to act instantaneously at a distance, then all masses, even those infinitely far away, would have to be integrated into the total force. But, if the effect of the force has to travel, at a finite speed, then a distance threshold exists, at which masses more distant than the threshold have no effect, since the force has not had enough time to propagate out to that distance. Hence, the force law remains an inverse square, out the the threshold distance, then becomes a step-function, and the force becomes identically zero. Furthermore, the distance threshold constantly increases, so that the amount of mass within the threshold also increases.

Comparing such a force, to Newton's force, would result in an apparent repulsive force (dark energy), that is actually not repulsive, but just diminished effective mass, acting upon very distant objects. The force law appears to evolve, but the cause is not a change in the force per unit mass, but a change in the amount of mass that acts upon another mass.

In your master equation, it is not the del operator acting upon the field, but the other side of the equation that I wonder about. I am not sure how the field times the field could represent the situation described above, in which the "effective" field, is a constantly changing subset of the total field. Unlike Newton's case, one cannot integrate over all space in order to determine the field. Determination of the field would be highly dependent on the initial conditions, namely, the distribution of masses, as they are "swept into" the effective threshold range.

It is also interesting to think about General Relativity, from this non-geometric point-of view. Objects do not respond gravitationally to where other objects are, but instead respond to where they used to be. The greatest differences between these two types of response, occur in situations in which the relative geometry changes the fastest. Hence, in the solar system, one would expect the fastest moving planet, Mercury, to have the greatest discrepancy between the two models; like the advance of the perihelion of Mercury.

Rob McEachern

Hi Rob,

Didn't mean to imply that you agree with QFT, just distinguishing specifics of my theory from QFT approach.

I understand your 'step-function' model and agree that it seems to imply a kind of dark energy.

My model assumes that initially there is nothing but field, and space is defined by the extent of the field. The solution represents a scale-invariant distribution of energy, hence mass, that "fills" space (loosely speaking). So the initial distribution of energy/mass is probably a close approximation to later distributions. Once spherical symmetry breaks (as it must -- I haven't yet calculated 'when' or 'why') local particles are formed. I don't assume that this adds any mass, just "clumps" it, so the distribution probably holds. In this sense I don't see a step function. But I haven't worked out all of the cosmological dynamics. My calculations have focused more on particle aspects of nonlinear gravity.

It is also the case that local C-field dynamics can "oppose" local gravity, hence providing a sort of dark energy. My gross calculations hint that this is reasonable, but I want to try for a Mathematica solution.

So my current idea of the cosmological implications of my model is based on an initial scale-invariant solution that is assumed to hold perfectly until symmetry breaks, and then yield relatively small changes in distribution. I think this model is in rough agreement with observations, but I really have not had time to check it out. I'm afraid my attitude is that, if I can do a better job on particles than the Standard Model, then the cosmological aspects of the theory just "have to" work!

Also, we've got a pretty good handle on particles, whereas there's a new data point for cosmology almost every week, and I expect this to continue for some time. This discourages trying to match my theory to data that may only be good for a short time.

Since I've posted my essay I've been able to come up with a straightforward derivation of general relativity from my master equation. I'm in process of writing that up now. In other words, I expect my theory to show more differences with particle physics than with general relativity.

Thanks for elaborating on your previous comments,

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Edwin,

It's the step functions I don't see that bother me. Starting out in physics, I learned about using differential equations to describe data. Then, in numerical analysis, I learned to approximate derivatives with finite differences. In other words, initially, I came to think of differentials as the "accurate" description, and differences as the "approximate" description. I now have come to believe the exact opposite. Differentials admit of infinite bandwidths and step functions. I see no empirical evidence that such things exist in reality. Hence, differential equations are merely approximate representations of a finite bandwidth reality. They cannot, by themselves, implicitly define a finite bandwidth process. All the information content that limits the bandwidth must come from outside the equation - from the auxiliary conditions.

For me, the issue is not it from bit or bit from it. It is bit from finite bandwidth. It is the finite bandwidth of reality, that makes it exactly describable via discrete samples, but only approximately describable via differential equations that do not properly model the bandwidth.

I have mentioned the significance of a priori known information, many times in these discussions. An a priori know bandwidth can be built explicitly into a difference equation, but not a differential equation.

Rob McEachern

Edwin,

I was playing a bit fast and loose with the bandwidth terminology in my previous post. Let me be more precise. Think of the del operator being modeled as either an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) spatial filter or as a Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. By integrating over all the masses out to infinite, Newton's law models the operator as an IIR. But if signals propagate at finite speeds, the correct model must be an FIR filter, but one whose response grows at the speed of propagation.

As long as all the masses are within the range of the FIR response (as in most earth bound experiments), the models produce exactly the same results. But at cosmic distances, they differ. The difference results from the finite extent of the filter's "action" rather than a difference in the inverse square law.

Rob McEachern

Hi Edwin Eugene Klingman,

Thanks, for a most positive review. You captured my work perfectly. I am under no illusions a fundamental discontinuity of motion (not time and space) can be accepted readily (the gene thing). But allow me to suggest to you that at some time in the future you may walk up thinking: "why did I ever believe that matter and energy must have a continuous existence".

Given that just about all entrants in this contest have the gene, it is amazing how well I am doing.

And Siri tells me that Edwin Eugene Klingman is master of the game"

Thanks,

Don L.

Dear Rob,

I need to review IIR and FIR as I've not studied signal analysis for decades (except a minor review of Fourier Optics occasioned by your comments last year). My argument is, essentially, that there are no signals to propagate. As you know, outside of the radius of the spherical mass, all the mass may be considered to reside at a point at the 'origin', independent of size or density. The scale-invariant solution of my equation says that the original density distribution of the field energy, hence mass, is scale invariant hence time independent. This implies that it remains the same during inflation, and I believe, post-inflation. My working assumption is that when the field 'condenses' to mass, this does not change the distribution (except locally). In other words there is no signal, step or otherwise, to propagate that would have any dark energy effect. With no signal, IIR and FIR should be essentially equivalent as far as their effects:

Scale invariance = static distribution = no signal to propagate

If one could, say, lop off half the universe, this would change the mass distribution significantly and your analysis would be more relevant. This is similar to the problem that would occur if the sun suddenly disappeared. The step function analysis of this problem seems correct to me.

Your remarks on difference versus differential are interesting and I'll give more thought to those. I certainly agree that reality has a finite bandwidth, finite speed, finite extent -- is finite period. Thus Fourier integration over infinite ranges are clearly approximations. This is why free particles have mathematically infinite distribution, which is clearly ridiculous (although quantum field theorists I know seem not to realize this). On the other hand bound particles such as a hydrogen atom are highly localized and more susceptible to differential treatment. The mistakes, in my opinion, occur when infinite solution techniques are applied to physical reality. I believe I recall you commenting on Dickau's blog about Kauffmann's treatment of self gravitation as limiting upper bound on local energy. Whereas quantum field theory has had these infinite energies for over half a century, Kauffmann shows them to be physically unrealistic (which should have been obvious anyway).

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Edwin Eugene Klingman,

Thanks for posting on my blog. That was very kind of you to point out to my readers that I believe in the continuity of space-time. That is something that I do not explicitly point out and it should be.

We are very close in outlook.

One of my goals is to topple the uncertainty principle. Do you have similar leanings?

What do you think of this notion: photons and particles do not move, but they do change positions. What we call velocity is actually a calculation from position to position. If this does not immediately drive you crazy, checkout this experiment that I believe can be performed:

http://www.digitalwavetheory.com/DWT/20_Experiments-_QM.html

Nothing moves but everything changes....

I do not know if you can agree with a lot of my speculations, but I appreciate your openness.

You and a few others make this contest great.

Thanks,

Don L.

Edwin,

Don't take my comments about IIR and FIR filters to literally, in the mathematical sense. Rather, I'm trying to develop two visual analogies, for "self-interaction", one for fields causing gravity, one for particles causing gravity. Call them "Gravity on the surface of a Pond" and "Gravity on the surface of a Petri Dish".

Field View - Gravity on the surface of a Pond:

Boats move on the surface, and create wakes. Wakes propagate outward and disturb the other boats.

Particle View - Gravity on the surface of a Petri Dish - FIR version - non-Newtonian:

A "Big Bang" scatters individual bacterial cells (matter) across an expanding Petri dish. At first the distances between them are too great for any interaction to occur between the scattered cells. But each cell develops into an expanding colony (FIR filter taps), expanding outward at some propagation speed (same as wake in previous model). Eventually some colonies touch others and a central force (like a spring) is created, by the strands of the colony pulling together with a force inversely proportional to the distance squared.

Particle View - Gravity on the surface of a Petri Dish - IIR version - Newtonian:

Same Big Bang scattering, except that instead of scattering individual cells that grow into colonies, it scatters infinitely large colonies (IIR) so that the force producing strands are instantly put in place, all the way out to infinity, rather than having to grow outward at some propagation speed.

In the Field View, a wave-like signal propagates between the masses, and produces the interaction.

In the Particle View, an "operator" associated with each mass, the strands, expands outward, either instantly or gradually, until they contact other operators, and cause an interaction. In the field view, a "sensible" signal expands outward to meet a static sensor. In the particle view, the sensor (filter or operator) expands outward to meet a static entity being sensed.

Neither the disturbance in the field, nor the operators are directly detectable. But the resulting interactions would produce detectable movement of the masses. How would the movements differ, if the force between the masses was always the same, as Newton's inverse square, or whatever?

The IIR, Newtonian Petri Dish results in a global, instantaneous action-at-a-distance. But the FIR, non-Newtonian interaction is localized by the finite, but growing size, of each colony's force producing strands, or "lines of force".

Rob McEachern

Afterword:

It was the Casey essay that got me thinking about "How did Faraday and Maxwell visualize the problem?" My guess is that Faraday saw it as the Particle View, IIR version. As per the bible, "In the beginning..." the matter and the interconnecting "lines of force" were put into place, and then left to interact. Maxwell's much more mathematical view centered upon unchanging differential operators; since the operators cannot expand to meet the particles, the particles must somehow travel to meet the operators - hence the field.

But with my background, I tend to think of operators like tapped delay lines - the pond has dispersed tide gauges, like FIR filter taps, whose outputs can be combined to form difference operators etc. (filters), which can change over time. Tide gauges can be moved, their number changed, and the manner of interconnecting them can change.

Perhaps an analogy could be made between the expanding cosmos and the growing cortex of the brain. The whole brain grows in size, within it, neurons grow, and grow connections (lines of force) and signals (forces) are transmitted via those connections. The interactions thus have three relevant speeds; speed of brain growth, speed of neuronal connection growth, speed of interaction along established lines of force.

Rob McEachern

Oops. I missed the comment before the afterword.

I should emphasize that my field equations express mass dependence in terms of mass density, so particles and fields, at least in the early moments of the universe, are best viewed as simply different density distributions. Of course as the universe grows the field density diminishes while particle density is locked into localized distributions. Due to essentially random fluctuations in density these tend to aggregate into galaxies and galactic clusters. If, as I suppose, the global distribution remains effectively scale-invariant, then there is very little non-local change propagating, and galactic formation is viewed as local with no global significance.

So initially it is the fields causing gravity, globally. Then local "condensation" produces particles (in the expanding universe). The fields continue to weaken but the particles aggregate and produce stronger, but localized, fields. In other words the nature of the self-interaction varies until finally the most significant self-interaction is in our brains.

Which is fun!

In your particle view above, the FIR version is closest to what I imagine, but this assumes that there are signals spreading outward. If the distribution of mass does not change, as seen beyond a certain radius, then there are no signals, so there is no 'expanding colony' except in higher order approximations. But in any case, the FIR view seems more realistic.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin,

Our struggle reminds me of one of my favorite movie lines, from Clint Eastwood's "Eiger Sanction". The mountain climbers are in trouble. Clint says to one of them, "Don't worry, we'll be OK". The other responds, "I do not think so. But we shall continue in style!"

Keep up the good fight!

Rob McEachern

Hi Edwin,

I very much enjoyed your essay. You wrote:

1. "Without the physical, there simply is no information. To argue otherwise one must show how a world with no physical reality can be brought into existence from information. Wheeler's remark "how to combine bits in fantastically large numbers to obtain what we call existence" was just unsupported fantasy."

I think the question is whether what we experience as "physical" is really better understood as "virtual". Is our "physical reality" an illusion? When we look out at the world, are we just seeing an immersive virtual illusion? We have the example (or analogy) of software agents in a virtual world. What they might "perceive" as "physical" we know to be "virtual", that is, just based on information. Are we in the same position, that everything we take as "real" is virtual and the ground of being is unobservable?

2. "It's been a Participatory Universe from the beginning."

I agree that is the simplest explanation.

While yours is an elegant bottom-up explanation for the cosmos, my essay Software Cosmos takes a top-down approach. While my starting point is very different, my picture does include a hyperspherical gravito-electric field (i.e. without boundary conditions) that may provide a venue for yours. You also may like the fact that I endorse Geometric Algebra and do not require Inflation in my model. Anyway, I hope you find some food for thought or a reference or two in there that will be of use to you.

Hugh

P.S. I have a copy of your Microprocessor Systems Design (vol II) still on my bookshelf, from my days of developing operating systems for new computer hardware. Chapter 7, which describes the construction of a floating point processor, is a remarkable account of how a higher order can be constructed from simpler parts. Consider that today's virtual worlds like Second Life, while implemented in software, are reliant on decent floating point calculations. We could say that conceiving and implementing the FPU design is where the physical world opens to the possibility of hosting a virtual world. You described that transition in 62 pages that are still enjoyable today as a reminder of the ineffable pleasure of seeing such possibilities open up.

    Dear Edwin,

    Thank your for your many very interesting ideas. Here are a few comments.

    The real world is not a purely mathematical or informational entity. As I understand your essay, this is one of your main theses. I agree with this contention. For one thing, nearly all of mathematics has no relevance to the physical world. Therefore, some additional principle or fact of reality must account for actual existence. Nonetheless, you would, I think, allow that some part of mathematics is at least useful for the understanding of physical existence. Indeed, you present your theory in a mathematical way. What about the mathematics which is not physically applicable? Is that just fictional or made up? Or does it have a different kind of Platonic reality of its own? This point is to the side of your topic, and therefore you did not discuss it, but it would be interesting to know your views about it.

    I also have to agree with your insistence that awareness is a genuine feature of reality. Would you consider your position a kind of panpsychism? If awareness is a primordial property of the field, that would seem to imply that awareness, or at least proto-awareness, is everywhere.

    I am not clear about the relationship in your theory between this universal aboriginal awareness and the self-interaction which gives rise to the physical world. Are these two separate properties of the field? Two aspects of the same property? Or something else?

    Finally, your essay should remind us not to be too quick to dismiss awareness from reality altogether, based on what are thought to be the findings of physics. You propose a new system of physics, based on one field. Even those who accept some other system--such as the hundreds of fields, which you attribute to Susskind--will have to admit the force of your critique of the current state of knowledge (or current state of ignorance and belief). Given this not very satisfactory situation, do we really have adequate reason to suppose that awareness, consciousness, and thinking are something other than the way they present themselves to us?

    Laurence Hitterdale