The Red/Green Sock Trick. Can Mathematics Demystify Nature? by Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson,

Your essay deserves a ten, love those socks and speaking true.

I hope to post a little more at my essay site to answer some questions raised by you and others. Check at my present essay entry later here or you can see additional at my entry to the first FQXI Essay Contest on The Nature of Time.

Sherman Jenkins

Thank you for reading my essay, I read them all, and I voted for those who deserve.

It is interesting, if I understand well, what you say that the mathematics is only a means to obtain a computer calculus (or in old days hand calculation) of a real phenomenon, so that if we use the brain to create a physical equation then a calculation analogous to organic computation (quantum computer simulation, parallel computer, etc.) could get interesting results to obtain physical equations.

I think that mathematics is pure imagination, pure symbolic play, and the "shut up and calculate" is - for me - a mathematical point of view (you have the game rules, follow them).

The three filter paradox is interesting because it can extend the logic (the filter like brackets), and with different routes I had thought that the logic can be represented by bracketing of symbols (if the elementary operation are binary and asymmetric).

Is it possible quantum calculus, with lasers and semitransparent glass and filters, using Zeilinger apparatus with multiple layers?

A good essay make you think, so your essay is a good essay.

Domenico

Jackson

If you haven't already, I suggest you look at papers by Tamari, Schultz, and Dariano.

Dariano

Are models based on probabilities `physical theories'? I suggest `physical models' necessarily require a cause - effect model. I think probability models suggest a cause - effect model. The probability models are measurement models.

Would you classify the group models of particle classification the same as you classify statistical analysis? The periodic table was developed first by noting common characteristics of elements. A few holes were filled (predicted) by where the hole was in the classification scheme. Later, the causal underlying structure of atoms explained the periodic table. Indeed, the position of an element indicated something about the atomic structure. The same type of classification is true for the group models. Holes in the group model have been used to predict particles that were found. Can this be used to imply an underlying structure of particles? How would such a study proceed? Is anyone working on the structure of particles (papers I see seem to stop with the group description with no indication of an underlying structure)?

Tamari sugggested a how to build elementary particles' structure.

Schultz suggested the patterns of the 5 Platonic solids could be the pattern of the elementary particles' structure. The same patterns construct crystal structures.

I combine these to solve the problem of my models of how to construct elementary particles from photons. Thus, the SU() groups may be the result of structures of photons much like the periodic table suggested the structure of atoms (my fractal thinking). This would be a physical model rather than a probabilistic model.

Hodge

Peter,

I just realized that many of these essays are yelling at us. Your essay calmly takes us by the hand and talks to us. The real world of Physics seems to be messy and math is the soul of order. One can see how math can fool us into seeing order even when order is sadly lacking. I don't know if I saw any new ideas, but ideas were presented in a clear and interesting way.

If you present light as corkscrews, having angular momentum and the polarization filters as slots (like for microwaves)you can have a classical picture of the three filter problem.

All the best,

Jeff

Dear Peter,

I finally got to read your very interesting and nice essay. I like the visual approach to abstract problems. You illustrate very well the idea that mathematics can be misused (like any tool), in which case it misleads us. Using the inadequate math misleads us for example that there should be no light after inserting the diagonal filter between the two, but the adequate math makes the correct predictions. Congratulations for the high position and good luck in the contest!

Cristi

Hi Peter,

I found your essay to be thought-provoking and easy to read - I think it's your best essay so far, and deserves to be up there near the top. What you say seems to make sense to me: the idea of multiple layers on layers; bracketing calculations so that "each proposition must be resolved in it's own LOCAL context". I'm not clear about how to decide where one layer begins and ends; where locality begins and ends. But I'm sure that : "all is potentially knowable and rational if our intellectual evolution progresses hand in hand with refinement of mathematics."

Cheers,

Lorraine

Hi Peter,

Your discussion of the 3-filter Paradox reminded me of Ron Garrett's 2011 Quantum Conspiracy Google Tech Talk where he talked about the same experiment. He reaches the conclusion that measurement is the same thing as entanglement and we are all living in a virtual reality. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on his presentation. Would you consider the possibility of a piece of code evolving a deterministic, yet highly complex/encrypted universe which only has pockets of predictability? Do you think lots of different math used to describe reality could be encoded in one very gerneral discrete logic system (i.e. a computer)? Your F. Werner quote

"How do we know that, if we made a theory which focuses its attention on phenomena we disregard and disregards some of the phenomena now commanding our attention, that we could not build another theory which has little in common with the present one but which, nevertheless, explains just as many phenomena as the present theory'? It has to be admitted that we have no definite evidence that there is no such theory."

has a striking similarity to one of the "Dedekind Cut quotes" in my essay.

Also your remark that paradoxes (what you refer to as "trickery") "is not the fault of maths but from misuse due to our poor initial conceptual understanding and analysis of empirical findings and thus valid formalisms" also directly relates to my main thesis and some of the questions I pose at the end of my essay.

I would love some thought on my Digital Physics essay if you get the chance.

Thanks,

Jon

(copied from my essay forum -- THR)

Peter,

Thank you, that's very kind. There's no mystery to why my score languishes below the cut -- never in my memory, from the first time I entered these competitions (which dates from the very beginning), has a fully relativistic viewpoint in foundational physics gotten due respect, while some of the fringiest views in quantum theory have won big prizes. So I have long abandoned any illusions I might have had. It is enough that the FQXi forum gives voice to a minority viewpoint that it de facto opposes, and I am grateful to the Institute for that, even when I think it could do more.

There is an even lower score than mine, given for a far better essay by Vesselin Petkov, and -- I expect -- is low for the same reasons. I am going to do a lazy thing, and quote Vesselin's reply to a recent forum participant, because it matches my opinion: " ... if Minkowski had lived to see the advent of general relativity, he would have realized, as a mathematician, that the mathematical formalism of general relativity implies that gravitational phenomena are merely manifestation of the non-Euclidean geometry of spacetime (not an interaction). Einstein made a gigantic step by linking gravity with spacetime geometry, but even he was unable to overcome the seemingly self-evident 'fact' that gravitational phenomena are caused by gravitational interaction (which, unfortunately, is still the accepted view in physics)."

Things are changing. I got an Email from The Minkowski Institute Press just a few days ago that they are publishing Cristi Stoica's PhD thesis (congratulations, Cristi!) , which is relativity-based, with a perturbative path to quantum gravity (my own solution is non-perturbative, but we are pretty close).

In regard to your own defense of conventional quantum theory in the Bertlmann's Socks analogy, I applaud your expansion of the pedagogy, and give high marks for that. It is deservedly among the best of Bell's output (and your own, for that matter).

If you don't mind, I am going to do another lazy thing, and reproduce this reply in your forum.

All best,

Tom

Dear Peter,

I read your essay and saw your nice video that you suggested to me in my essay blog. I should honestly say that--if I haven't misunderstood your essay and video--we are on the opposite sides of the fence: it seems to me that you want to mechanize the whole physics (including quantum), whereas I want to derive the mechanics itself from something more fundamental: pure information processing, or, to be precise, from very fundamental principles that are mathematically stated but have physical interpretation. Our two positions seem to be irreconcilable.

However, I should say that I enjoyed parts of your movie, and the animations illustrating your "mechanization" point of view.

Congratulations for your high position

Best regards

Mauro

Dear Peter, thanks for getting in touch via my Essay Forum. In reply:

The remarkably broad sweep of your latest ideas, coupled with your new ideas re the details (eg, Jackson & Minkowski (2014)),* is mostly moving beyond me! Dare I say, leaving me behind. I might even say that our approaches are diverging to the extent that we are moving to be polar opposites in approach.

Fortunately, I still understand you to be a local realist to the point (as spelt out in my essay) of being an Einstein-local and a Gisin-realist.

To be clear re our differing methodologies: For my part, I am investigating a very small part of physical reality: one where, like a stone in my shoe, most interpretations contradict my basic understandings of that reality; at the same time aggravating my fundamental sense of comfort -- as a successful engineer -- with my intuitions re such.

That small part, as you know, relates to the many and varied interpretations of many and varied Bell-tests: whose results I accept without question, since they are exactly the results that my own views endorse.

But I reject the common interpretation that local realists like us must give up Einstein-locality (for nonlocality) or Gisin-realism (for un-realism): and, in that regard, I happily note the increasing trend of old foes to be moving to my position (which is, hopefully, still our position).

In particular, my small corner of the business holds out hope for a new quantum theory: one devoid of Hilbert space (since spacetime appears to be sufficient) and certainly absent nonlocality (since, to be blunt, how on Earth could any such thing be possible). For a very simple critique of the mainstream view, just skim paragraph #6.1 of my essay.

Nevertheless I see a growing trend to go for the Full Monty here; and though I'm not in favour, it's good to see that trend reflected in the very high standing of your essay.

However, from my own broad experience (and for those who are aware of it), the Full Monty does not quite measure up against what I have to offer!

With best regards, and hoping to keep in touch; Gordon Watson: Essay Forum. Essay Only.

* Jackson, P. A., Minkowski, J.S. Quasi-classical Entanglement, Superposition and Bell Inequalities. Academia.edu 9th Nov 2014.

Hi Peter,

My best congrats for your winning the community rating. Let us wait the panel's judgement now.

Cheers, Ch.