Dear Leo,
I am very glad to see that you know that our conversation here transcends the bounds of this contest. In my opinion, the fact that authors must vote on each other's essays injects a large amount of politics: as a recipient of a compliment, one can not be sure if it is genuine or whether it is meant to just garner a high vote. And if you want to point out a problem in an essay you cannot be sure if this will the other person to retaliate by Down voting your essay. Last year I strongly criticized FQXi for this on their 2012 contest for this, but this year I'm just resigned that since this is their they, they can set the evaluation criteria however they fit, author voting seems to me like a highly misguided approach. You might wonder why I still participated. The answer is already contained in your comment above: when someone wants to introduce a new idea in science, then he will encounter a lot of resistance from people who want to hang on to the "orthodox meme", especially if the new idea is substantially different and the person comes from outside mainstream. For all the flaws with author voting, this contest is still one of the best ways for such people to expose others to their ideas, and it is still possible that useful exchanges and collaborations happen.
But let me come back to your work: I agree that in science orthodox memes have a limited lifetime. In the western world, Aristotle's lasted for 2000 years until we had a understanding of what science is, Newton's lasted only about 225 years, and who knows how long the current one will last.
Introducing a new idea is hard enough, but when the conceptual framework goes beyond science as understood by most of its practitioners it may well be impossible. I think that this independent of how much the proponent of the idea has achieved in other areas and how much money/influence/power that person yields.
Not too long ago, the physics journals were flooded with glossy, pagelong advertisements for "null physics", a theory of everything by Terence Witt. Witt founded a biomedical company and then sold it for about $150M, so he had the resources to carry out a massive advertising campaign. He even became adjunct faculty at a Florida university (I suspect that he made a large donation to the University).
However, his null physics does not seem to connect to what we already understand, and to my knowledge there is no experiment to test it. As a result, nobody in the physics community takes his theory seriously except when there is the influence of his money.
I think a way that your situation is very different from his is that I perceive a strong motivation underneath to help people. You say that you want for people to identify with their work, but I think you mean that you want for people to identify with their passions. The reason I think this is because you gave the people who entered this contest as an example, but for (most of) the people participating here is not work, it is the pursuit of their passions. Like you, I think it is great for a person to have at least one passion. It fills life with purpose and meaning. When you pursue something with passion, it is no longer work. So I agree that just helping people to find their passions if they don't already have one is to help them. I can tell that you have a great passion about KQID, but my concern is that if your dream of its receiving scientific recognition and acceptance the way quantum theory and relativity are currently recognized is not realized, then the disappointment about that might also negatively impact your noble goal of helping people.
Even in this essay contest, I can tell that if there is the prospect of a reward, some people will tell you what they think you want to hear instead of what they really think. I can only imagine that for someone in your position this is magnified manifold. You are obviously a very accomplished, smart and adroit person, but you are still only human. Your enthusiasm and passion for KQID may lead you to give more weight to believing those who think that by telling you that KQID is, say, on the same footing as quantum theory and relativity as a scientific theory, they may gain favors from you. I will give you my honest opinion, even though I think this may not be what you want to hear:
In order for KQID to be accepted as a fundamental scientific theory of the world, two main requirements need to be met. First, it needs to mathematically connect to our existing theories. Historically, every new theory that came to be accepted by scientists could reproduce the old theories within their own more limited domains. Can you derive the Einstein Field equations or the standard model Lagrangians in the limit in which general relativity and the standard model, respectively? I understand that you see your equation as so much more fundamental that it transcends the field of physics, but if that is really the case, it should be possible to derive this in some limit. That is because if a new theory is inconsistent with an old theory in its domain and an experiment supports the old theory, the new theory will not be accepted. This brings me to the second requirement. You mention that KQID makes testable predictions, but it is not clear to me that the technology is quite there. Is there an experiment that can be done right now to test it? Note, that while it is good if a new theory produces known results, but it is much more compelling if the experiment tests something that has not been tested before, and for which the old theory gives a new prediction from the old one.
Unless these two requirements are met, I think KQID will suffer the same fate as null physics. In your case I think that would be a pity because the central theme of the associated philosophy of helping people find and pursue their
passions is something with which I find myself in complete agreement and think would be a valuable contribution to society. That's why I suggested that even though you see KQID as a total package, it might be better to separate out the physics part from the philosophical.
All the best,
Armin
