Societal Path Integral by Douglas Alexander Singleton

Doug,

Again I replied to your interesting post on mine as below. We seem to agree then that words are quite powerless compared to action;

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Thanks. Your findings closely fit mine. I have two '4th tier' acceptances from a score of submissions. I estimated penetration by ~2020 so I am an optimist - but tenacious. One referee rejected a paper as it identified 'quasar era' peaks from data. Within 3 months others noticed. Now they're ubiquitous, but still not coherently interpreted! 'Unfair' is certainly one of many valid descriptions! I burnt my bridges with maths last years essay, generalizing Godel to show maths as just 'good approximation'!

Back to physics (or rather 'nature', which is a bit different!) My model does cover 'photons' and all spin ½ cases, indeed even just a wavefront! The electrons and 'flip' discussed are the detector (polariser/filter) EM field electrons. The setting rotates and flips their orientation, so the interaction 'finding' is then reversed. There are then 2 ways of looking at it subject to the experiment; The electron reverses the photon spin. Or we could just consider the photomultipliers. If one is set clockwise, one anti, and both are reversed, then the OTHER one will click! But we still get random 50:50 up/down.

In Bohm's terms; The fact that a spinning body (i.e. Earth) has TWO hemispheres still means that total spin (between two opposite planets) = 0. Linear momentum conservation ensures they're found opposite if not rotated, but we CAN rotate Earth's poles on the y or z axis while CONSERVING it's spin angular momentum!! that is a MASSIVELY important new realisation (think of a gyroscope - we can rotate it's axis as it spins). So what was found clockwise from point A is now found anticlockwise. Anybody can repeat that experiment for twopence! Bell made the same error; excluding that valid physical description of "collapse to a singlet state on measurement".

Not only is classical QM really that simple, but the same interaction process with c being measured in the centre of mass frame of each electron, then constrains our common interpretation of SR's postulates to make them genuinely local and consistent with the QM description = Unification. That may be considered 'ambitious' but it simply is what it is. I can't help it. You may have thought a result like that would turn anybodies head! Apparently it does. It makes the indoctrinated and narrow visioned turn and look away!

I suspect what it needs is a 'list' of authors, mostly with 'credentials' and with various specialisms to overcome editor/reviewer fear. That or a 'superstar' sponsor. What thinks thee?"

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I agree that an electron experiment would be revealing, but more difficult and not needed as photon/electron interaction is fine.

I'm working with my spade to move the mountain. It's moving already and there are spades for for all. Who'll help with action not words?

Peter

Best wishes

Peter

Thanks for the interesting exchange, Doug. And thanks again for reviewing my own essay. I'll be rating yours (along with the others on my review list) some time between now and May 30. All the best, and bye for now, - Mike

Hi Doug

Congrats, this is indeed an intriguing Essay. Here are my comments/questions:

1) I think you implicitly dedicated this work to Richard Feynman.

2) Has Kardashev's classification of civilizations any link with stellar classification? I suspect this because he was an astronomer.

3) I find the "Historical Path Integral" by James Burke which starts from the standardization of precious metals till nuclear weapons and energy very enlightening for clarifying what you point out in your Essay.

4) I agree with you that number of publications and citations are not great measures of actual scientific progress.

5) You emphasize that deciding on how to weight a particular societal path is very subjective and may lead to different groups choosing different paths as best or "classical". Is this the analogous of the probabilistic behavior of quantum mechanics in your nice metaphor?

6) I appreciated a lot the subtle irony that you used in some points of your Essay, in particular in the last discussion concerning the conflict between the non-scientific "cherry picking" of data which helps politician get re-elected and the scientific faceless data which, although being informative, will not help politicians get re-elected.

You wrote an very enjoyable Essay. I am going to give you an high score.

I wish you all the best in the Contest.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dough,

You are a fine human being I can sense it. You have adventure soul. We have many in common. I also admire Feynman and he is a great scientist and even more admirable that he is a great human being as well. I also use his "sum over histories" idea in my KQID theory. You summed up your suggestion: "one should loosely adopt this quantum mechanical approach of trying "all paths". Those societal "paths" which are judged best/classical would be given the highest weight in steering humanity forward."

I wish you the best, if you have time please comment on mine. Good luck on this contest.

Leo KoGuan

Sorry, Doug, not Dough.

Doug,

I like your comment to John: "Anyway if one were to follow the "path integral" proposal one should look at how wealth is distributed in countries that have a low Gini index (which means more fair wealth distribution)" also your comment to Joe's comment on light: "But light is rather odd in that respect. For example in the rest frame of a light beam is infinitely time dilated with respect to some non-light ray outside observer and thus it takes zero proper time for a light ray to travel any distance. Let's assume Minkowski space-time i.e. no cosmological expansion to complicate things. Thus in some sense one could say a light beam is "everywhere at once" in this Minkowski space-time -- at least in the coordinate direction in which it travels which is infinitesimally length contracted. .However in an outside laboratory frame (say the Earth with the light beam going by it) the light beam definitely moves and it takes finite Earth time for it to travel over a fixed distance (again measured in the Earth frame). Thus what I think you are saying about light may be true in the light's rest frame but certainly not in other frames (at least all experiments up to now do show that light moves if one takes a general frame)."

Thanks for your generous effort to make humanity to be human. I share your goal. I hope we can be friends. If you have time please read my essay.

I rated your essay ten (10).

I wish you well,

Leo KoGuan

Hi Doug,

Bear with me. But am wondering if you still can find a little time for this essay . And give me a no holds bared comment. If it be all I take from this contest I will be just fine!

And should you want more discreet interface my email is thereon.

Regards,

Chidi

Doug, I like you "metaphor" of the path integral. It is good that you manged to get some real physics into your essay as we are supposed to. I am sure you know that when Dirac first though of a path integral in physics he saw it is more of a metaphor than a real theory. Feynman realized that it really works and is not just a metaphor. perhaps the same is true of your idea here.

I appreciate the idea that it is not just the classical path that counts. We need some thinking away from the mainstream to contribute its part. It is just a case of getting the right Lagrangian so that everything has the right weight and leads to the correct unbiased answer. I think some AI technology will use this kind of technique to get the right conclusions from the sum of human thinking and help steer humanity

Doug,

Judy pointed out my reply re electrons/photons could be misconstrued as assuming photons as spin 1/2. I'm sure you didn't read it as that but I wasn't clear Invoking OAM for spin 1/2 merely put electrons under the same laws as photons, each of which may be 'observed' as either clockwise or anticlockwise subject to observer (simplify to 'photomultiplier') electron field spin orientation.

Weihs, Zeilinger et al used a PAIR of photomultipliers. They found a 'rotation' from the filter (in their case an opto-electric 'analyser' so voltage dependent), which implicitly meant the findings were REVERSED at beyond 90 degrees. Of course there's no direct proof of that unless each pair is identified, but the circumstantial evidence is irresistable and resolves the (vast majority) anomalous data in Aspects findings.

It's really then just a case of 'joined up' science. Finding a more consistent description in one field that then also resolves problems in the one next door. Hannes Alfven described how he had to FORCE scientists in one lab to speak to those down the corridor as between them they solved each others problems. But they still hated doing so!

This solution leads direct to Unification (did you pick up on how?) Seemingly the only clear direction we should be steering, though most are still not looking or seeing. Is anyone prepared to act rather than just semanticise to make it happen? What else could I do?

Best wishes

Peter

Dear Douglas,

no doubt your essay scores high in terms of originality, although, based just on the title, I had hoped for some deeper connection between the path integral concept and some novel way to look at the business of steering our future. However, you are honestly declaring that the metaphor is loose, which, in a way, makes the reader (or this reader) more relaxed and more willing to appreciate the several interesting examples that you mention. Your prose is fluent and, occasionally, pleasingly humorous. The idea to keep the reader under a multi-continental shower for such a long time is quite effective.

One small criticism. I liked the idea to distinguish (in the first section) between large and small events, and the associated dualism of known unkowns and unknown unknowns; there are unpredictable small events which can have a large positive impact on the course of humanity (this made me think of complex systems, emergence, and the antipodal butterfly that I mention in my essay, which is, however, malicious). I got the impression that the rest of the paper would concentrate on these events - the most interesting type, of course! However that distinction is basically lost in the remaining three sections, where nothing seems to relate to it, at least not explicitly. What you do is basically support the idea of trying many alternative implementations of small projects, while somehow forgetting that dualism. In fact, it seems to me that these projects could only deal with the `known unknown` case, and not with the more attractive (and difficult) alternative. But maybe I have missed some intended logical link. In this case, I`d appreciate your reply.

Best regards

Tommaso

Dear prof. Singleton,

Wonderful essay! I enjoyed your path integral analogy very much, and I strongly agree with your opinion. Humanity should try as many paths as possible to reach the most successful one.

You write "If on the other hand one funds many small scale projects there is a better chance one or more of these approaches will prove beneficial." This brings to my mind the rising importance of small science projects vs. big projects, which I discuss in my essay. I would be honored if you read it and told me your opinion.

Best regards,

Mohammed

Great essay, Douglas. The path integral metaphor is beautiful and evocative (and among other things reminds me how much I loved Feynman's little book on QED). I completely agree with you on the advantages of social experimentation. I think Diamond is right to argue that Europe's fragmentation gave cities and states the space to experiment that eventually produced modern liberal democracy and capitalism.

You anticipated and addressed almost all the caveats that struck me. As you say, institutional structures may not scale up (or down--it's easier in many ways, for example, to address the entire US health care market at once than in pieces). And politics constrains what's possible, since we aren't governed by technocratic utility maximizers.

I would also add that while we may not have the ability to control which black-swan events befall us--this is what I write in my own essay--we can nevertheless make society more resilient to unexpected shocks. We can't prevent lightning from striking, but we can ensure ourselves against damage. In general, I think we should prepare not just for our median, best guess about the future, but for as much of the space of potential futures as possible.

Again, great essay. It deserves to do well.

Best,

Robert de Neufville

Doug,

I agree with an electron experiment, but not sure it's doable. Photons do fine to verify my thesis, o consistent with the links you give and many others. It ideally needs a 'range' of settings, filters and p-multiplyers to give enough data points to prove it's an elephant not the present camel! I'd have thought predicting the unexplained Aspect and Weihs data may have carried some weiht! (lol) but it seems old doctrine needs to be crushed to death before anyone will even look. I'm not sure that's possible.

Victor Vaguine's essay is interesting, including the Bell interview excerpt from 'Ghost in the Atom'; Question: "And you can't imagine a more elaborate arrangement that might expose these defects in quantum mechanics?"

John Bell: "I cannot, but I hope that's only because of my limitations. I think it is very probable that the solution to our problems will come through the back door; some person who is not addressing himself to these difficulties with which I am concerned will probably see the light. An analogy that I like is that of the fly buzzing against a window when the door is open. It can be extremely useful to stand back from your problems and just wonder about for a time, and it is quite possible that those of us who are somewhat fixated on these questions will not be those who see the way through".

He was almost certainly right. But unfortunately it seems even if a large butterfly shows the way in the flies will still insist there isn't one because the glass is still intact. How can that be overcome? I suggest a paper with a dozen or more authors may be needed to be taken seriously be editors. What do you think?

Peter

Glad to see your essay bouncing back after a probable sneak assault with 1's. I'm still getting them too. Hold tight for the roller coaster!