Hi Doug,
Thank you for finding the time to read and comment on this essay. As I expected your comment touches upon the more critical claims I make in this essay. Let me answer in the same sequence you ask, and permit me to answer in detail:
1.) "...put too much into the essay so that it is hard to follow the logic thread at points."
I was only trying for a poetic approach. Science writing wants everything said expressly, poetry would in fact leave the kernel for the reader to deduce, the best poetry would have the reader deduce necessarily what the writer wants deduced. I may be guilty of this artist's approach to scientific argument. But in this essay especially I do not attempt to show how to steer humanity, I focus on what I see to be the sure trap namely mans preference for realist (local; hidden variable) definition of things as against the emerging uncertainty principle approach.
2.)"no two [quantum] measurements can yield quite the same results."
This is my perhaps simplified view of the measurement problem in QM in so far as we may EXPECT the lay man to make sense of that issue. It boils down to the opposite of determinism. In my view claiming determinism is down to claiming a fixed space and time FRAME (as Newton did). Outside of such a claim the "path" of a particle (as your path integral approach well show) CANNOT be the same. To get such a result you must assume a FIXED space and time frame; a singular space-time continuum.
3.)"...the mathematician starts "zero, one, two -- see I told you there were two."
You get my point exactly. Actually I have not shown in this essay my reliance on the Peano Axioms in foundational mathematics. The issue of where/what to start counting from touches, in my opinion, upon the so-called naïve set theory; is the set of all sets an empty set...? So the mathematician starts "zero, one, two..." and the physicist starts "virtual particle (field?), boson, fermions (particles; spins), etc." The point is, WHERE EVER you start counting from must define eventually as the null event (zero). This is why Newton must start with the concept of inertia, and hence the utility of the concept of "force".
Einstein dispels of the notion of an ether BUT rests instead on the notion of a universal constant (speed of light); he needs some functional simultaneity, even if that simultaneity be in fact a zero (a null-information).
4.)"You talk about the fine-tuning of cosmology/origin stories of physicist/creationist."
My great example of the necessity of fine-tuning is the Hoyle state (as predicted by Fred Hoyle). Whatever our preferred theory of cosmology, in so far as we must think of life itself as also a valid state of the nature we observe we MUST make a logical connection between the existence of man (the observer) versus the laws of nature it observes.
5.)"At several points in the essay you use h_0 which you say is the "threshold potential of the action potential in man precisely 55 millivolts." Where does this come from? "
Just the one question I so much wanted to go home with! I adopt this value to PHYSICALLY define man as our working observer (i.e. our quantum/threshold of observables, and hence our "uncertainty" if Heisenberg Cut). Now, to understand how I have arrived here you need to read the paper where I have developed my argument in full. The preprint should be ready within a month. Please send an address to my email and I will love to send you a link, because then I will also need your judgement.
Dear professor Singleton, I will beg you to investigate this one claim most thoroughly. I think it unravels basic issues about PRACTICABLE quantum gravity. I define the observer PHYSICALLY as own quantum (threshold) of observables.
This certainly is an outrageous claim to make in QM but the reason why we predict is to be falsifiable. So I ask you to deploy your expertise and investigate this one claim on your own. Try, for instance, to plug it into equations and have it in the appropriate dimension represent the graviton, photon or "virtual exchange" and then see what results you get. As for the literal value please see the subject ACTION POTENTIAL in any standard reference like the Britannica or the Wikipedia. Of course, you must have access to more specialized sources.
Thanks a lot, Doug. Feel free to ask me more questions.
Bests,
Chidi