Doesn't "sure" here means "of course"?

Cheers, Lev

Akinbo,

In an earlier comment above you ask the tough question, about "the not-two aspect of reality". You note that Parmenides said "of necessity one thing exists, viz., the existent and nothing else."

If this is true then several questions arise: how to conceive of or represent this fact. And whether this is merely a conception or whether one can be aware of this fact in direct fashion.

I choose, as a physicist, to identify the "one thing" as the primordial gravity field, and attempt to show how our current universe, including us, can and did evolve from this one thing. To do so I necessarily include in the nature of the field the aspect of awareness, based partly on the self-interaction of the field that is necessary for the one thing to evolve (since nothing else existed!) and partly on a conclusion that I have reached that awareness, as I experience it, cannot be created from material building blocks, but must be inherent in the Participatory Universe that Wheeler intuited.

But this then implies, as Amos noted above, that we can, being evolved parts of the one thing, be directly aware of the one thing. Yet if this is the case, why is not everyone aware of this, and further, what does it mean to be aware of it?

In my essay I discuss how the existence of a threshold allows the creation of "two-state" systems, idealized as logic gates and the interconnection of these gates can produce numbers and such numbers can be generated by energy input to the 'counter'. I then discuss how we can, algorithmically, treat these numbers to derive 'feature vectors' which are the essential ingredients of physics. This process can be internalized in our brains to represent the world as "things", or what Zen calls "the Ten Thousand things".

Now whether awareness arises from the biological fact of putting the right building blocks in the right order, or from its inherent existence as a primordial field, in either case human beings identify as 'separate individuals', generally denoted by the term 'ego'.

If all we are is 'meat machines' then that's probably as far as we can go. But if awareness is the core property of the universe, then one might expect that it's possible to have some direct indication of this. Unfortunately, the nature of ego is to divide the universe into 'me' and 'not-me', an inherent two-fold reality.

Is it possible to transcend this? Many reports claim that is.

Abraham Maslow's studies, related in "The Peak Experience" claim that many people naturally have episodes wherein they experience the 'one-ness' of the universe, also termed 'being one-with the universe'.

William James in "Varieties of Religious Experience" came to the same conclusion.

Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight" describes the state as she (a neuro-anatomist) experienced it while having a stroke.

Innumerable reports of LSD and psilocybin experience indicate the same thing.

All cultures have a mystical tradition based on experiences of this sort.

In my opinion every one of us was born with this general awareness, before our brains learned to distinguish 'me' from 'it' based on sensory input.

I also believe it is essentially a 'topological' awareness, based on *connectivity*, wherein the metric overlay of 'distance' is (almost) completely suppressed.

What is absolutely certain is that it can neither be adequately described in words (or math) nor can it be reached by talking, reading, or "thinking" about it. It is apparently reached through a biological state, either naturally, as Maslow and James report, or chemically induced, or stroke induced. Those who have never experienced it (or have forgotten the experience) tend to believe it's hogwash (or possibly codswallop). However it would appear that millions have experienced it, and the general consensus is that it's 1.) real, 2.) extremely positive, and 3.) has 'religious' overtones.

According to Zen and the Tao, it cannot be reached with words, but for a taste of the experience, I find D T Suzuki's translation of "Inscribed on the Believing Mind" to be exquisite.

I hope this adequately addresses the 'not-two' question.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

PS. This may seem to border on 'mystical', but I personally find it far less mystical than the belief that "math lives in some Platonic realm". It is based on direct experience, not abstract concept.

    Edwin

    You do not have to argue with me, just point out where my statement is wrong. It is a simple statement, therefore, where it is wrong, according to you, must also be simple to explain.

    There is no room for beliefs in science, physical existence as manifest to us is the only subject of concern.

    Paul

    Lev

    "Of course, we don't know what "awareness" means scientifically"

    Yes we do. You are falling into the same trap as Edwin and many others, by not first differentiating the knowable from the not-knowable. We can only know (be aware) of what is manifest to us (hypothesis being in effect virtual sensing). In other words , physical existence is that form of existence which is all that is potentially knowable to us. Whether we can attain knowledge of all that is doubtful, but another issue, the point is that the potential was there. Whether there is an alternative is irrelevant, because we cannot know it. And knowing it, ie being aware of it, involves the receipt of physical input (supplemented by the hypothesising of input which could have been received had some identifiable physical issue not prevented that). The subsequent processing of this input received is irrelevant, as that is not physics. The utilisation of representational devices to express this knowledge is another matter.

    Paul

    Edwin

    "Now whether awareness arises from the biological fact of putting the right building blocks in the right order, or from its inherent existence as a primordial field, in either case human beings identify as 'separate individuals', generally denoted by the term 'ego'"

    What evidence is there that this is a physical process, which you are labelling as awareness (and I cannot understand what it could be-not what you want it to be- other than what is normally termed awareness)was existent from the outset, and not just the result of an evolutionary process?

    And incidentally, physical existence is not just the province of humans, it is all that is potentially knowable by any sentient organism. Indeed, if a non-human landed on this planet and could explain a way to utilise a different sense which has not developed here, that would be included too.

    Paul

    Paul,

    I would ask, politely, that you refrain from commenting on my blog, and I will do so on yours. I do not accept your idea that the world is a movie, one sequential frame after another. Nor do I credit your claim that you "have no beliefs". But I do not go on your blog and constantly attack your position. I know you are impressed with your arguments, because you spread them everywhere, but they are not welcome here. Cannot you control yourself?

    Okay, Edwin. Will keep my mind open and "aware". If you dont have it, you may like to read this classic on Parmenides. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.1b.txt

    Cheerio

    Doctor Klingman,

    This essay is indubitably the best essay so far presented in this competition. As a doddering amateur realist, I would just like to make one comment. I contend in my essay BITTERS, that reality is unique, once.

    There is no way I can thank you for bringing to my attention the results of the Planck 2013 expedition: "Planck satellite data shows with high precision that we live in a remarkable simple universe."

      Dear Joe,

      Thank you very much for that appraisal.

      I have read your essay and am in basic agreement with you. But there are aspects of reality -- perhaps "chaotic attractors" -- that produce 'repetition' or 'near repetition'. As I point out, without such we would not even have language, as nothing would ever be stable enough to describe. Thus for example, while no two snowflakes are alike, we can make reasonable approximations of how much sunlight is reflected from Antarctica from trillions of snowflakes. That is what science is about. But your reminder of the nature of reality is very welcome.

      Best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Akinbo,

      I read the Parmenides paper. Very interesting. I would be interested in what you see as the main thing to be taken from it.

      Thank you Edwin for your careful and satisfactory responses to my questions.

      What you say that " Rather than derive gravity from some imaginary field, I simply accept it as real and try to derive everything else from that reality, starting only with the idea that it must evolve" makes sense - In a self-acting system there is no 'primal motive force' as it would be in a car engine. There the pistons turn the gears that turn the wheel - it is wrong to start with the wheel. But in the type of system you describe it is reversible at least in the local micro volumes. Hope that is right.

      I noticed the chirality of the arrow because in my own paper I did all the illustrations using a special font I created for the top-like rotating nodes. And it all followed the left hand rule. I revised the font and illustrations when I discovered that!

      Oops I will now have to revise the web page describing the font as well because the nodes there still rotated left-handedly!

      Cheers

      Vladimir

      Edwin,

      Re your iconoclastic survey of the status of modern physics.... Bravo! Your insights into the wild and wooly world of physics research are a refreshing .... well, just refreshing says it best.

      The difficulties of experimental testing of extrema theories, like particle physics and cosmology, seem to tempt some of our colleagues to cheat on sci method testing in order to stoke the imagination. When objective analysis leads to an impasse, a resort is made to bypass testing or to shave away hairy problems with Occam's Razor, a subjective and unscientific standard.

      Special thanks are in order for the revealing review of the QED skeleton in the closet. Apparently QED is really only Quantum ElectrON Dynamics, finely tuned parametrically to agree with electron testing, but QMD would require another tune-up for the muon... perhaps another alpha 'constant' and doubling of the parametric set? And then noting that QED has all the predictive power of Darwinism.... breathtaking expository precision but nonexistent predictions.

      Interesting, Edwin... Why isn't this specificity trumpeted along with the 6 sigma QED compliance with reality?

      "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world!".....said Archimedes. Now this has been updated to, "Give me enough 'tunable parameters' and I shall completely curve-fit reality with least-squares laws!

      "Planck satellite data shows with high precision that we live in a remarkably simple universe.".... but maybe too simplistic. More than the inflationary paradigm is in trouble, post Planck-2013... just the iceberg's tip, Edwin.

      The CMB as officially interpreted: the remnant radiation from the surface of last BB scattering, capturing the primeval structure of temp differences then, for all time and all places. We are looking - we are told - back in time 13 billion years to the first formation of matter.

      However, a series of unexpected multiple multipole alignments had appeared in the COBE and WMAP sky scans, but were assumed to be temporary artifacts that the Planck survey would erase.... Instead, Planck affirmed the anomalies even more credibly.

      The combination of a complete lack of any known systematic error, and long odds against random alignment was such a threat to the BB model that the combo has earned the initial low-alignment anomaly the nickname - "Axis of Evil". The axial correlation between multipole harmonics evident in all 3 CMB sky scans matched the local sky geometry to a very high CL.... the Leo direction, equinoxes, ecliptic and galactic planes were all there. And now there are more.... a lot more. All of these anomalies contradict the standard model of the universe and have no explanation in the LCDM, the standard Big Bang model. We are told we are seeing a pattern ubiquitous in space and formed far back in time, yet what we see is what is in the sky now - the local symmetries and celestial landmarks of our solar system and galaxy. As if when peering into deep space with our telescopes, we would actually see the surrounding buildings and trees in our own backyard! And how is it that the Andromedans see our solar and galactic alignments in their local sky?

      There are not one, not two, but three giant elephants in the living room.

      1) What explains this evidence so contradictory to the conventional cosmology for the CMB, BB, LCDM and even the Copernican principle?

      2) Why is this evidence treated as non-emergent in the world of physics?

      3) Why is the vast CMB universe seemingly centered on an insignificant planet like Earth?

      All the best,

      Robert

        Robert,

        What a gracious remark you begin with.

        I could not recall which essay was yours and when I found it there was only one mark on it: 're-read', underlined. I will do so and respond on your thread.

        As for the current anomalies in physics, is it surprising that they seem to get 'swept under the rug'? The establishment structure is so heavily invested in QED that even 120 orders of magnitude change in vacuum energy is simply ignored by most. That should have been earthshaking, calling the whole concept of virtual particles into question.

        Although I do not mention it in the current essay, I have written about the 'Axis-of-Evil', which as you know, forms a really big bump under the rug. The silence is deafening.

        I do not have any quantitative calculations but hope to generate some. May I offer you a qualitative explanation for the axis. This works much better with a diagram, but I'll try to be succinct.

        The model I described (my master equation) has a perfectly symmetric solution G = 1/r if C is suppressed. If one assumes that the gravitational field explodes symmetrically, then the energy density, hence mass density, at the big bang should create a massive outward flow. Each volume element would induce massive gravito-magnetic circulation. But here's the kicker: every outward "ray" of energy is completely surrounded by neighboring rays of energy and the perfect symmetry causes each induced circulation to cancel its neighbor's circulation, completely suppressing all circulation.

        At some point, as always, symmetry breaks, and the axis on which it breaks will unleash tremendous energy, establishing a preferred direction, a.k.a., "the Axis-of-Evil".

        I won't conjecture in a comment on the peculiarly "earth-centric" aspect (the 'evil' part!).

        Since you don't mention him I'll assume you may be unaware of Michael J Longo's study of spiral galaxies. (Google: Longo spiral galaxies) arXiv:1104.2815 and a Physics Letters B 4/14/11 paper. Very interesting. And very compatible with my model.

        I thank you again for reading my essay and for your wonderful comment. I look forward to re-reading your essay and commenting on it.

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Respectfully Doctor Klingman,

        You wrote in your essay that you had self awareness. Obviously, it is clear from the sheer brilliance of the writing that you are indeed gifted enough to have self awareness. You may be the last man in America to have self awareness.

        I never had self awareness. From my birth to the present no matter in which direction I faced, I have only been able to see humanly fabricated structures or humanly explored terrains. My nostrils have only ever received wafts of humanly compromised fumes. My mouth has only tasted humanly adulterated food and liquids. Man made sounds have constantly drowned out any bird songs or dog barks or cock crows. Only fabricated materials have ever touched me.

        There is no me here. I have three options. I can be a conventionally, consistently, or conspicuously conformist.

        Joe,

        Self-aware or not, you are unique!

        Lev,

        The focus of the paper I referenced was on inflation models and the conclusion was that many complex inflation models are eliminated by the Planck results.

        As I noted to Robert below, my C-field model qualitatively accounts for the WMAP and COBE multi-pole anomalies and the spiral galaxy distribution, and potentially provides dark energy and dark matter, although I have absolutely no idea whether this makes quantitative sense. The new nonlinear technique offers a greater range of possibility but decreases my intuitive feel for the solutions. I am currently focusing my efforts on particle problems where the numbers are well known. Cosmological numbers, such as the thickness of the Milky Way, can double overnight, so I never know what cosmological numbers to trust.

        I am aware of the quasar cluster but I've not put much thought into how it fits my model. My gut feel is that if I can explain the multi-pole anomaly, the rest will fall out.

        Thanks for pointing to this data. Whatever the final outcome I think it's clear that the current cosmological models are on life support.

        Best,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Gene,

        Thanks for your heartening remarks.

        You mention that I did not include values for the C-field. This is correct, although the values are included in the linked references. I will give you a brief summary:

        In 2006, when I decided that a new field was likely, I asked myself how strong the field could be without interfering with known atomic and molecular physics and chemistry. I arrived at a value that turned out to be 31 orders of magnitude greater than indicated in Einstein's field equations. Then, within the year, Martin Tajmar reported measurement of the C-field with an experimental result 31 orders of magnitude greater than expected. So for the last seven years I've been using this scale factor. It has produced very interesting results, while at the same time not yielding other results that I expected to find. As mentioned in my essay Kauffmann's work in the East and Pretorius papers caused me to focus on the nonlinear approach I show on page 4. The result is that, rather than a fixed value, the strength of the field appears to vary depending on the driving force. This is a radical change from my previous work and I'm only beginning to pursue quantitative results. I have great hopes for this approach, but, so far, have solved very few quantitative problems. I expect this to change within a reasonably short time.

        I've looked at your essay, but of course have not yet worked through all of your numbers. And I'm not sure that I fully understand your model. You ask where your large factor exp (90) comes from. My belief, based on work I have done, is that the nonlinear approach yields very unexpected numbers. Your comment references Kauffmann (reference 15 in my essay). I recommend reviewing this and looking at my reference 16, East and Pretorius, to gain a better idea of the effect of nonlinearity on gravity.

        Thanks again for your extensive comment and your kind remarks.

        Best,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        I would like to call my readers' attention to a remarkable essay by Alexei Grinbaum. To understand fully the following comments, one must read his essay, nevertheless, my comment to him is worth reproducing:

        Dear Alexei,

        A most interesting essay! If I understand you correctly, you are considering the case of what will remain of a physics theory "if one clears away its human inventors and users," based on the assumption that our ideas of physical reality are primarily a function of the way our brains are wired. Thus the first thing you throw away are ontological bases for theories. You conclude that only a mathematical basis of theories remains.

        This appears to be a Platonic belief that math exists in some extra physical realm. An alternate perspective, developed in my essay, considers that, in the sense of Wheeler's "Participatory Universe", we are immediately connected to the physical universe (i.e., we sense gravity directly), while mathematics is a creation of the organization of our brains. In this case, if brain-based ideas are removed, then only physical reality, but no mathematical "principle" remains. This seems to cover the extreme cases.

        A Platonic mathematical universe seems reflected in your statement: "in theoretical physics the axiomatic method must be separated from the Greek attitude that axioms repeat truths about reality." And "the axiomatic method has become a powerful tool for mathematical research."

        My approach is based on the fact that I know how to derive math from matter, but I cannot imagine how to derive matter from math, and Occam's razor seems to argue against the separate independent existence of math and matter. Given a set of measurement numbers, an algorithmic procedure based on entropy maximization will produce a feature vector, with no ontological assumptions, and the space of such feature vectors is the typical basis of physical theories. The numbers and their mathematical manipulation, up to and including the derivation of the feature vectors, all are generated by material circuitry. Similarly, the fact that you discuss, that physics is observer independent (in the sense you describe) "only because quantum mechanics uses abstract mathematics..." is also compatible with matter generated math.

        You have an interesting discussion that concludes that we do not have the "precise physical constitution" of the observer. This too is compatible with matter-generated-math as there are countless ways to design mathematical circuits, all of which will produce the same numeric outputs. You conclude that "the defining characteristic of the observer" is that "it must have information about some physical system." In my model this information is equivalent to energy transferred from the system to the structure of the observer, and thereby 'registered', becoming information. In other words wholly dependent on the 'it' of the observer structure. The 'bit' is the result that comes into existence only when a threshold is crossed. This is in agreement with your remark that "this information fully or partially describes the state of the system."

        So we are both led to the conclusion that "An observer is a system identification algorithm."

        I was surprised when our different assumptions converged on this point. You note that the observer can be flesh or silicon. Like you, I treated a robot developing a theory of physics, based on measurement, for the same purpose of eliminating human preconceptions. It is fascinating that you appear to start with the reality of a mathematical world and the reality of information, while I deny both, and we reach an important common conclusion. This became much clearer with the development of your schema based on where one cuts the loop.

        You say "Each way of cutting the loop fixes one part of the loop in the position of derived concepts [...] while the other part becomes a given, ..."

        You have done a superb job in developing this formalism. Congratulations!

        You say, "it is mandatory to cut the loop, which makes it impossible to close within one theory the gap between the observer and the observed." This might also be considered the inherent boundary between the subjective and the objective. But where does one cut the loop? The system cannot choose, only the observer can choose. Based upon awareness that metric overlays on reality are mental constructs, and based on subjective awareness of the reality of gravity, I choose to interpret physics as real and information as a derived concept. I congratulate you again on having developed the schema and I hope you enjoy my essay as much as I enjoyed yours.

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman