Douglas,

I commend your words highly. I've found quite the opposite attitude is often prevalent. Commonly fine words are spoken but not practised. Any hypothesis beyond the ruling paradigm causes a sprint for cover within the brackets of conformity. A minor example was the top two peer scored essays last year, including mine, entirely ignored in the judging.

I note and agree your comment above that; "Big advances often/always come (from) people trying different, unusual, unexpected approaches to science questions." Which is well documented as being the case, but many fail to make it or take years, while often banal repeats of present doctrine flood the journals with information overload. Dan Shecktman's rejection for 40 years is typical of the few that do emerge.

I believe my own essay this year is self evidently groundbreaking; showing that a classical derivation of quantum mechanical predictions is possible allowing convergence with SR and fundamental advancement across a broad range of a sciences. I predict all those schooled in the present nonsensical QM will again run for the nearest brackets or beach, as do editors. Are you really any different Douglas? A top score coming if you are, or were they really just words? That is human nature. I agree with Judy above and suggest thinking outside the Earth centred frame may help intellectual evolution.

I look forward with interest to you comments on my, rather different, essay.

Best wishes

Peter

    Douglas,

    Such deliberate reasoning in solving the problem of steering a future seems quite foreign in American society. Reason is not a guiding force in the overall social structure, not in business, not in government, maybe in science. But then again motivations and goals are different. Business has profit. Government leaders have election and re-election and science perhaps discovery. This simplistic statement of goals and motivation in itself shows the multifaceted problems our problem poses.

    How do we come together and actually decide the path we move toward? I speak of solutions but have a sketchy idea of how to get there. Your practical experiences speak of cultural differences and expectations in supplying hot water, which too suggests the difficulty of reaching goals.

    Jim

      Hi Peter,

      Thanks for your comments and I will definitely take a look at your essay. I wasn't aware of the Dan Shecktman case so googled it and as you imply he got (initially) pretty bad treatment. Quasi-crystals of course now are "well respected" science and I think Penrose even discussed them in mathematical terms. There are so many stories like Shecktman's (Alfred Wegener and continental drift theory comes to mind since this was just on "Cosmos" episode last night) that maybe this is inevitable, bad side feature of the scientific method -- one needs to have some way of deciding which new proposals/hypothesis in science are good/correct so one must critically exam each of these new proposals and think of tests which would either confirm or refute the proposal/hypothesis. However during the criticism phase the person proposing the new hypothesis or the critic, or both become "invested" in the theory or the criticism of the theory and then objectivity is lost. I'm not sure what can be done about this (one does need to critically exam new ideas and keep those that agree with experiment and discard those that don't). From what I understand of the Shecktman case he just stuck to his guns and eventually people came around. Wegener was not as lucky -- he died in 1930 during an expedition to Greenland to make measurements of the ice thickness and weather. People eventually started to come around to the idea of continental in the 1950s. Anyway I'm not sure if there is a good answer to this question.

      Best,

      Doug

      Hi Jim,

      Thanks for reading my essay and your question/observation. Yes many parts of our society -- politics, business, to some extent even science -- are not driven by logical reasoning and following data/experiments, but are driven by self-interest. The example I give at the end of my essay where as part of an APS delegation I went to DC to lobby congress members to support science tries to make this point in regard to government i.e that it is not strongly data driven. When we had a chance to meet with the representatives of the various senators or representatives from our state/district they were most interested to hear "human interest stories" which they would collect in the story bank for the congress member. They were not interested (or did not appear so) in discussing data with us. I was later told when I asked about this that human interest stories, which the congress member could use to make a point with the electorate, where perceived by the congress members to be more effective at getting them re-elected vs. a detailed discussion of data on a given issue. Now most/many of the congress members probably do know how to look at data and come to some kind of more or less informed decision, but if they don't see this as helping get them re-elected they will value this mode of decision making less. Pay attention next time to speeches of politician from either party in the US and some individual human interest story will come up. You can bet this is probably a real story that was collected in a story bank.

      My suggestion for how to choose a path for some particular societal question would be to run as many small scale "experiments" as possible and see which ones work best and then scale up to see if they still work at a larger scale, etc. For example if one wants a health care system try various health care systems at a small scale and see which works best according to criteria such as mortality rate, cost effectiveness, timeliness, patient satisfaction, etc. and then expand those health care experiments to a larger scale which work best according to the criteria that are picked. Of course unlike physics the choosing of criteria will be a bit subjective and different groups may weight things differently and thus choose different systems/paths.

      Best,

      Doug

      Doug,

      I suggest there IS a good answer, which is to actually apply the scientific method (SM) not just pay it lip service and use instant 'front cerebral cortex' judgements to ignore things, which is what really happens.

      What I do is construct coherent hypotheses and test them to destruction, but NOT against prior beliefs and assumptions, which is what most do. Sometimes surprising new results emerge, often falsifying other assumptions and resolving a number of anomalies. I then try to present them and ask the world to test and falsify.

      But that's not what happens. They're either entirely ignored or dismissed because they 'don't seem consistent with this or that' assumption. Physicist simply don't bother with the SM. I work to explain anything not understood, but that's dismissed as the partisan view most others have! I also speed-read, over 20 papers a week, so I'm right up to date in many areas. I find many read NONE! so simply cite out of date nonsense to instantaneously dismiss anything new. And we simply don't use 'joined-up-physics' as few study all the parts. Physicists often talk a good game but don't play one.

      If some 'big name' has a silly unfalsifiable idea it's instantly accepted and published, taken seriously a priori, so leaving no room or time for real scientific advancement. Physics has severe problems. They're all solvable but human nature means they're not as we don't use our on-board quantum computers to anything like the good effect they're capable of. Even clear advances in understanding are recognized (my essay scored 2nd last year) they're instantly forgotten, or those who 'know better' (judges for example) ignore them.

      This year I give a very clear cut self evident geometrical result, falsifiable and with novel predictions proven. It has massive ramifications for unification and major advancements right across science. Yet that seems almost entirely invisible to most! I await your response to my essay with hope and fascination.

      Best wishes

      Peter

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      • Post #46

      Hi Doug,

      Been following you eventually and I like your combination of candour and expertise; most "experts" are way too mortified by fear of being per adventure caught wrong that they speak from both sides of the mouth or they play dumb. I will very much appreciate your honest critique of my essay taking seriously the equations supplied therein.

      By the way, I don't find that the rating pattern in this essay contest is free of most of the bias accused of establishment science. People vote their "favorites" here however disconnected this may prove to be with the issue of content. Also people fear retaliation with low rating. And people (myself inclusive) tend to read top-rated essays first. After all it is NOT often that the rejected stone turns to be the chief cornerstone; it happens in fact RARELY.

      In short I came here hoping I may get your combination of expertise,candour and responsiveness.

      Thanks for being there, Doug.

      Chidi

        That was me above, didn't know I had been logged out.

        chidi

        I discuss the Kardashev scales of technological collectives (civilizations) in my essay, but with a different take. I argue there are limits to this; probably anything beyond level II is highly improbable. This means it is not likely our observable universe is a simulation or "matrix."

        The climatologists who simulate the future climate of this planet are performing in some ways the sort of scheme you propose. The quantum superposed amplitudes of course are replaced by a stochastic ensemble of paths or possible outcomes. It is not hard to imagine something of this sort being applied to other systems on Earth, including ourselves.

        LC

          Dear Professor Doug,

          Your article is a proof of your wealth of experience. Your thought is original. It held my interest through out and wish you an astounding accomplishment in this competition.

          Kindly read my article as well and give it a rating. Here is the direct link considering the enormous entries STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND ECOSYSTEM http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2020

          Best wishes

          Gbenga

          Hi Peter,

          I will definitely look at your essay. I took a peek already and the prose is very strong and I like Bell's Theorem stuff although it can be tricky to understand -- for me at least. Therefore I look forward to reading your essay.

          By the way you may be interested in some recent work related to Bell's Theorem. First there is the EPR=ER (Einstein-Rosen) proposal of Susskind and Maldacena in "Cool horizons for entangled black holes" arXiv:1306.0533) where from what I read the proposal is there is some entanglement via wormholes (which then seems somewhat classical). They claim this resolves the "firewall paradox" of Almheiri, Marolf, Polchinski and Sully (AMPS). One can find a discussion of Bob, Alice and the firewall at

          http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20121221-alice-and-bob-meet-the-wall-of-fire/

          [Also note in terms of priority Friedwardt Winterberg had a proposal for a BH firewall already in 2001 http://www.znaturforsch.com/aa/v56a/56a0889.pdf. I have not looked into this in enough detail to understand if Winterberg's firewall is the same as the AMPS one -- there do appear to be some differences -- but this does make the point that a lot of times things are a matter of luck, timing, or the right affiliation :-/].

          Second there is the Nature Physics article from about 3 years ago "On the reality of the quantum state" Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett, Terry Rudolph, Nature Physics 8, 475-478 (2012). We discussed this article in our Friday theory group meetings here for 2-3 weeks and never could exactly understand why this was such a great advance (the reason we came across this work in the first place was because it was written up in some popular science magazine as "the most important result since Bell's theorem). I think you can also find this article on the arXiv now. Also from the end of the abstract the authors say "..Here we show that any model in which a quantum state represents

          mere information about an underlying physical state of the system, and in which systems that are prepared independently have independent physical states, must make predictions which contradict those of quantum theory."

          Anyway I will have a look and comment on your essay soon.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Chidi,

          Many thanks and I will have a look at your essay soon. Also in almost any human undertaking there is always some unfair, subjective aspect to the undertaking. Also let me say I learned to "love" being wrong during my stays in Russia. If you give a talk there you'll be grilled very vigorously to see how well your idea holds up. This is a bit disconcerting at first coming from the US where people may think your idea is wrong but will be afraid to engage you out of a false idea of niceness and also for fear that they may be wrong or ask a "bad/stupid" question. You learn a lot when people push your ideas. Also the Russians make you understand this is nothing personal (i.e. tearing into your ideas) since they'll invite you out for vodka and snacks after.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Lawrence,

          Nice to "see" you again in the FQXi contest. I already had on my list to look over your essay and comment. Yes in regard to the Kardashev scale I use this only to point out that at present humanity, while having plenty to be proud of, is not really that advanced. But we do have some ability to crudely steer a direction so we should have some semi-scientific way of doing this. But I only use the Kardashev scale since it is well known. As you say it could be there may be some barrier to ever developing into a Type III civilization. Also in reply to another reader I mentioned there is another scale based on amount of information a civilization can harness/acquire instead of the level of power it can use/control. But the Kardashev scale is better known.

          What you say about climatologist simulations sounds right (I don't know enough in detail about these types of climate models). In my area one might use the example of lattice gauge calculations which take huge amounts of computing power to simulate quark bound states (i.e. protons, neutrons, mesons, etc.)

          My suggestion in the essay is to try something like this (i.e. choosing different social organization paths) in the social context. Of course the number of paths on can try in a social context will be much more limited than in the context of climate simulations or lattice QCD simulations.

          Best,

          Doug

          Hi Gbenga,

          Thanks for reading my essay and kind words. I will have a look at your essay -- hopefully within a week.

          Best,

          Doug

          Dear Douglas,

          Very well expressed essay.

          The idea of many paths is the same I make in my essay(here) but from a very different perspective.

          It seems you are only looking at BIG investments by institutions and nation-states. I am, however, looking from the perspective of individual or tiny groups of people.

          You suggest the need for "weighing" and the need to find a "best" path? Cannot weighing approaches be necessarily different? Cannot different paths be more effective as communities, cultures and environments are quite different around the world?

          My essay is here.

          - Ajay

            Dear Douglas,

            Very interesting and enjoyable read. Humanity has had time to try a very large number of paths. With the result that we are HERE. I think a Kardashev value of .76 for our civilization to be very, um, flattering. First, does the earth qualify as 'a' civilization? And second, clearly the 'entropy' of a society, or perhaps more directly the free energy of a society, bears on how much a society has control of those resources.

            One of the characteristics of the late evolution of a society, (the present state of ours?) seems to be the closing off of alternative paths. Instead of open competition, with its many paths, we have oligopoly; instead of social mobility, we increasingly have oligarchy. Instead of Congressmen open to evidence and data we have those whose choices are dictated by measures other than the actual success of a path. Clearly the best paths, or even viable paths will not likely be selected in such a situation. So one of the first tasks presented humanity, us, may be how to open more paths. And this may involve increasing the free energy available, as was done, for instance, in WWII.

            You made the important point that paths do not always scale in a simple manner. This is especially be the case when responding to global issues, when the metric is not the same as smaller scales. The world is round. Yet we must start somewhere, and adjust as we go.

            You've made important points with simple examples. Excellent.

            I remember the Connections series. The episodes I saw were excellent. Some are available on YouTube. They are also available on DVD.

            I hope you find time to read my essay.

            I wish you good luck in the competition.

            Charles Gregory St Pierre

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              • Post #56

              Dear Douglas Alexander Singleton,

              You mentioned the path of what is called Energiewende in Germany. My essay addressed a quite different subject that was more important for me personally: peace. Having dealt with power electronics and batteries, I know the importance of energy and its connection to politics. Instead of considering single paths from A to B and intentional steering, I rather asked how to contribute to more basic influences; I arrived at the insight that there might be imperfections in the traditional notion of humanity, cf. my requests to Mohammed Khali and Sabine Hossenfelder.

              You will certainly agree that hope for cold fusion is irresponsible, and the promising project DESERTEC almost abandoned. Germany's decision to give up nuclear power was mainly an ethical rather than profit-oriented one.

              The territory of Germany is simply to small as to cope with possible nuclear disasters. Not even a final place for nuclear waste has been found.

              What about the various academic paths, I realized at MEI how close Moscow related to old German tradition. When I was a member of AWS, I often also felt like at home. However, close relations like for instance between Wilhelm II and Nikolaus II in 1914 don't guarantee good decisions. I will read your essay because I expect expert details.

              Curious,

              Eckard

                Doug,

                Not just you, I'm sure it's tricky for anybody in reality. You may need to forget most of what you've read and return to it's foundations.

                The concept "collapse of superposed spin states to a pure singlet state" was never meant to represent a physical model, and no proof of such an actual 'thing' as a 'singlet state' has ever been offered. 720^o spin can be derived classically so lets look at classical OAM. If we take a spinning sphere, cut it in half on the equatorial plane and send each half in opposite directions, then BOTH halves will have both north and south poles (clockwise and counter clockwise spin) but only one can be measured at a time ('Measurement' as transfer of OAM to detector field electrons).

                Now also invoke a few other things found in the last 100 years and classical joined-up-physics can re-produce the quantum correlations (but only to a quantum gauge limit so a Godel 'fractal' uncertainty remains)

                Unfortunately that's a bit too shocking for those steeped in Bells theorem, which is circumvented by using a different starting assumption. The cosine derivation is geometrical and dynamic, relating circumferences (so rotational velocity) at different latitudes. It's actually quite self apparent! Also note how the mechanism removes any bar on convergence of QM and SR.

                The tricky bit is, how on Earth does one get it published when editors put up the barricades and run away screaming with hands over everything! (and reviewers would probably do the same). The only option may be to get Neils Bohr to submit it, or at least a group of respected professors.

                I look forward to your views and ides.

                Best wishes

                Peter

                Hallo Eckard Vielen Dank, dass Sie meinen Aufsatz gelesen habe. Ich werde weiter auf Englisch zu schreiben, da mein Deutsch ist, dass von einem Schüler der fünften Klasse.

                I very much admired the German Energiewende. When I was in Potsdam on sabbatical we lived in guest housing of the Fachhochschule Potsdam and just a short distance from the campus. On our way to the Volkspark we would pass a solar power project being run by the students which supplied some power to the campus. By the way what is the opinion of Germans in regard to the Energiewende? My impression was overall favorable but since I was only there for 4-5 months I did not maybe get a complete picture. By the way in the US when the media reports about the initiative they generally point out what is not working about the the Energiewende, which then is in stark contrast to my limited observations. But long ago I realized a good part of what one reads/hears in the news is slanted to one particular view point or the other. US News is especially bad about this. BBC is OK and PBS news in the US is good (but no one watches because it's less "entertaining" than watching Fox News. Also Deutsche Welle seems good/balanced). Also I had never heard about DESERTEC so googled it. This looks like a great idea, but it seems you are indicating it is being abandoned. By the way the US had large stretches of desert in the southwest which might also be useful for such a project.

                Again thanks for your comments and I will have a look at your essay soon.

                Alles beste,

                Doug

                Hi Aaron,

                Thanks for your comments and your article sounds interesting. Do you have in mind some actual future viewing machine (i.e. something like a wormhole time machine) or is the idea "Suppose we had a machine that would allow us to view the future. This is what we should do with it." Anyway I'll have a look and leave a comment if I find anything useful/clever to say. I don't generally say if I voted and I don't say what ranking I gave since this gets into another shady aspect of this contest which is vote bartering. But usually if I make some comment I'll also take the time to vote since I did read your essay so I should have some opinion. But I do agree down voting without reading is not good.

                Best,

                Doug

                Hi Doug,

                You got it man, something like a wormhole time machine. The actual technology that the machine I identify would be based upon is not of central importance. The discovery is that there is a specifiable kind of future-viewing machine which is logically possible which can only be found when one proves that a naive kind of future-viewing machine is not logically possible. You'll see when you get a chance to read my paper. Now, before you comment on my page or rate my work, please read my conversations with Michael Allan, Tommy Anderberg, and Robert de Neufville on my page. A great deal of clarification is available there. I now have you in my spreadsheet to read and rate your essay. Have a good one.

                Warmly,

                Aaron

                P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate essays:

                10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

                9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

                8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

                7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

                6 - slightly favorable indifference

                5 - unfavorable indifference

                4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

                3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

                2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

                1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

                After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.