Democracy of the dice people by Colin Walker

Colin Walker

Dear Ajay,

The NASA-sponsored study appeared as a news item just as I was thinking about this essay contest. 350 years until collapse seems like a short time to me and is specific, which increases the feeling of urgency. My original topic was going to be ideals of fairness, but the idea of needing equitability to avoid our upcoming demise is more compelling.

The usual six-sided die leads to deadlock in most of the cases. Entropy is just another statistic, like average or median. I would not like to speculate on how it relates to human activity. Other statistics, like the number of people without safe water or sufficient food as you mention in your essay have more meaning.

Best regards,

Colin

Christian Corda

Dear Colin,

As I promised in my Essay page I have read your beautiful and peculiar Essay. Here are my comments/questions:

1) It is an almost general conviction that the universe will ultimately expand into a cold death. In fact, observations shows that the value of the density parameter is extremely near 1 and this, in turn, implies a flat universe with cooling to approach absolute zero temperature. You tell you do not agree with this view. What is your alternative?

2) Sadly, I agree that that economic disparity has already become problematic for society.

3) I like your introduction of "economic entropy" as both a measure of fairness and of economic potential and of "hottest and coldest economies". It is indeed a enlighten parallelism.

4) It is again enlighten that the solution with maximum likelihood expresses a socialist ideal while entropy is a measure of unfairness in communism. On the other hand, I prefer to use "social democratic ideal" rather than "socialist ideal"

5) I would like to be optimist. You put a possible time scale for societal collapse in perspective of 350 years. But I stress that in last 350 years we had both the Newtonian and Einsteinian revolutions! Maybe that within a lapse of 350 years we could be further scientific revolutions which will save our society.

In any case, your Essay enjoyed me a lot. Thus, I am going to give you an high score.

Best luck in the contest.

Cheers, Ch.

Colin Walker

Dear Christian,

Thank you for your gracious comments. Let me address your points.

1) I propose a stationary universe. Tired light would appear as pure dark energy in the context of a flat big bang cosmology. Supernova data support a tired light model, but the connection requires complementarity between photon energy loss and time dilation seen in supernova light curves. Equivalently, it is as if the recessional velocity were fictitious. This should be ready for the next essay contest.

2) And the old song "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".

3) It is a fairly unusual idea of hot and cold, but seemed appropriate in context.

4) The trade-off between likelihood and entropy was the part that most interested me. The left side of the political spectrum could be called "Inclusion", and the right side could be called "Exclusion" of the person in the least advantageous position (Kenny) effectively posing a kind of moral choice. In my model, entropy is all business but likelihood has heart.

5) I share some of your optimism. Technology is providing more data to science than ever before. I am not so optimistic about the organizational and social aspects of science that are susceptible to the foibles of human nature. The mention of 350 years was meant to give a sense of urgency but it also gives a sense perspective. Given the accelerating pace of technology, we surely have less chance of imagining 350 years into the future than our ancestors.

Good luck to you, and thanks for the boost!

Colin

Ryoji Furui

Hi Corin,

Interestimg essay, voting system is the way to be democratic and as its definition, the power and its responsibility are fundamentally owned by voters and not chosen person(s).

by the way, what do you think about bicep2 result? i had a discussion at Lawrence Crowell's essay site. i would like to hear how it can be formulate with GR.

Ryoji

Colin Walker

Dear Ryoji,

Thank your for your comment. I have not been following bicep2 discussion. It appears that a complete analysis will not be published until later this year. In my opinion, singularities such as the black hole horizon in general relativity are a sign that something is wrong with the theory. I prefer your approach just using special relativity, at least for basic understanding.

Best wishes,

Colin

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