Moira and Eileithyia for Genesis by Alexey and Lev Burov

Dear Alexei

I thank your very kind words! I can see that "beauty" is something in which you live in... and it emerges in anything you do or think.. I will try to follow your example!

You know, mathematics is a logic language, strictly logic; however, to where it leads depends on the hypothesis and assumptions on which it is applied. Because it is logical, it leads to "understandable" models provided that the hypotheses and assumptions are "understandable"; however, if those hypotheses and assumptions are not understandable or incorrect, mathematics leads to models of reality that are not understandable.

If we accept that the universe is as simple as it can be, than hypotheses and assumptions must be understandable, no "magic" in them; and also the models mathematically obtained.

From this point of view, a model that is not understandable implies that the hypotheses/assumptions made are not correct.

Mathematics has also the possibility of fitting whatever set of data - it is just a matter of considering enough parameters. This is very important and is the first phase of discovery process because it allows having control over phenomena and organizing data. These mathematical models are usually "not-understandable", they present logical inconsistency and parameters that obviously cannot represent a physical entity. However, many consider that these models of data are correct models of reality; and so they consider that the universe is "not-understandable". That seems to be the case of Wigner, as expressed in the statement you cited: "mathematics is "the correct language", that is why it is "unreasonably effective" in physics".

Therefore, while some (the mainstream) consider that the unreasonably effectiveness of mathematics in physics is the proof that it is "the correct language", for others, like me, it is the proof that the hypotheses and assumptions made are wrong because mathematics can only lead to "reasonable" models.

Now, how do you know which approach is correct?

If you take just a quick look to my essay, you will probably suspect that I may know unexpected things about the universe. How is that possible? By looking for understandable models of the universe. That is the ultimate beauty of mathematics, the fact that it allows us to go finding the nature of the universe by looking for models that are understandable. And one does one step in the correct direction, one feels the amazing beauty of it.

All the best!

Alfredo Gouveia Oliveira

Dear Alexei

Thank you very much for your comments and your vote. Your doubts are certainly the ones of others and your comments give me the possibility of clarifying important aspects. A Portuguese writer said "Do not affirm the error of a truth before changing its context. Unless it gives you joy to be stoned." Unhappily, the short size of this essay has limited my capacity of changing current context. So, allow me to try to do it now.

The classic definition of Intelligence is just a useless description of human mind, grounded in the belief of our exclusive nature.

Do you think your computer is "Intelligent"? I think your answer is "no". But why? A personal computer has memory, it can play music, make calculations, answer questions by finding the answers in the net - some can even talk with you. So why is not the computer "Intelligent"? The reason is that it cannot answer a question like: What killed the dinosaurs? (it can present current hypotheses, but that is not the answer, just hypotheses); or "does dark energy really exist or is just an ad hoc parameter?"; or "how to do a non-polluting and inexpensive car"?; or "how life was created?"; etc. That is the capacity computers do not have (yet).

Now, lets see your questions

About my definition of Intelligence you say:

1 - It looks as a circular logic to me, since not only "mind" and "problem", but "database" already imply "intelligence".

From the above I think that now you understand that what you say is wrong. Database is the content of memory; your computer has databases, a book can have databases. Intelligence uses them but they are not Intelligence, in the same that you use the computer but the computer is not you. And also a problem is not Intelligence, of course.

2- about your mention of Poincare, of course that Poincare has influenced me. As it happened with Einstein, by the way. I read it more than 30 years ago. It is not only with Poincaré or Compton that you can find resemblances - also with Darwin, as I detailed explain. In this case, it is Darwin that has inspired me the most.

3 - ""Is nature able to generate by itself something with new properties? The answer is yes, of course."

This I do not understand. How can you know that with certainty? If you said that you believe in that, I would understand; however, if you wanted to claim it obvious, I would disagree. "

I explain: take an electron and a proton; they immediately converge and form a Hydrogen atom. This atom is something new with new properties, is not so? And these atoms then can merge and form other atoms, with new properties. Therefore, the answer to the question is obviously yes, of course. I explained in the essay why I say that.

4 - "The problem is that these long molecules are not just long, but they are specially ordered, and the order is important. They are like long meaningful texts, not just like long arbitrary sequence of letters."

Again you are not correct and in two ways. One is that I don't claim to explain the creation of life, just the appearance of the long organic molecules it requires - molecules of the kind of DNA and with the capacity of auto-replication. The other is that the order is not so important as you seem to think because there are (or were) many thousands of different types of bacteria, presenting a huge diversity of DNA, and these are just the survivors of a still much larger set of previous cells. Now you have to consider the huge number of those large molecules that were produced in the described Earth early environment during near one gigayear - it's an astronomical number, making the possibility of obtaining specific sequences a reasonable value.

When we see something different of what we are used to think, the first reaction is to consider that the author is wrong; the possibility that he/her is correct is so low that we do not consider that possibility. But it can happen.

Once again, I thank you very much for your comments. I hope that I was able to clarify your questions, which are consequence of the short size of a text that had to analyze such a complex subject.

I hope to ear from you again, this is a fruitful discussion.

Alfredo Gouveia de Oliveira

Dear Alfredo,

I wanted to add to Alexey's reply by noticing a very powerful assumption you make. "If we accept that the universe is as simple as it can be..." While working out scientific ideas, assumptions are one of the primary methods. There is no need to question them if they turn out to be supported by the results. Once the science is done though, and we step back to reflect on what it is that we've learned, assumptions themselves become the focus of explanation. This reflective thinking is the domain of philosophy.

I know of no philosophical position that would allow for the extreme assumption that you make. Even the luminous theologies of the fathers of physics don't venture so far. Even Einstein used it only a sort of working philosophical hypothesis. Physics does make the assumption that the laws are simple (not simplest), and this assumption is justified with its success, but looking back, this is an incredible miracle that is not at all necessitated by any purely logical conclusion -- that's Wigner's point. It is, perhaps, the greatest contribution of physics to humanity's vision of the world, its greatest discovery. Don't you think that glossing it over as a mere assumption is the least appropriate way to treat it? Or did I misunderstand you?

Our essay Genesis of a Pythagorean Universe is devoted to the philosophical consequences of this particular discovery.

Thank you very much for your plentiful compliments and appreciation. Alexey and I will discuss your ponderous essay.

Lev

Dear Alexey & Lev Burov,

Thank you very much for your enjoyable essay. Your perspective of beauty in what we perceive around us, including "mathematical beauty" is key consideration that many people ignore or choose to ignore when building abstractions to formulate problems to solve analytically. In many cases in the past, it seems they may not have been all that successful in this separation, being silently seduced by the beauty of mathematics in the first place. (For example the Copernican system insisting planets orbit in perfect circles.) I also love how you so eloquently put it in your conclusion that, "To see in mathematics nothing but a collection of all possible, value-neutral, formal systems is no better than to view the art of sculpture as a collection of all possible articles made of stone". Wonderful!

Thank you again and I have in the meantime rated your essay too.

Regards,

Robert

Dear Alexey and Lev,

Congratulations for another strong essay! The subject of this year's contest truly called for an examination of the connection between thought and matter. In your view, thought is "cosmic, even super-cosmic", and you defend the need for a non-deceiving (Descartes), non-malicious (Einstein) God to make sense of our Universe and of the truthfulness of our thought processes. I too struggle with the search for a first principle that would ensure, among other things, the "lawfulness" of the Universe. I am willing to accept that, in the space of all possibilities, there are local domains that are shaped by god-like super-intelligences, but I cannot see how this explanation can be scaled to encompass all of reality. So I am still searching for a way to have All-that-Exists be a self-existing ensemble that is overall devoid of characteristics and information, and to have local minds and ordered worlds "co-emerge" within it. We do not share the same hypotheses about fundamental metaphysical axioms, but we do share the same yearning that made Schrodinger say that knowledge truly has value when it contributes to the synthesis toward answering the demand, "Who are we?".

By the way, in my current essay, I refer to your "Pythagorean Universe" essay from the last contest, specifically about the difficulty in accounting for the stability of the universal constants of physics by simply invoking the Anthropic Principle. It's always a pleasure to read your essays, and I am already looking forward to the next contest. In the meantime, I wish you good luck in this one!

Marc

Dear Lev,

I apologize for misquoting you. I read the several comments several times, and still managed to get it wrong. I do not know how to edit posted messages, but I apologize again for the inaccurate quote.

We are therefore in even more agreement than I thought.

Thank you for correcting my mistake, and thanks again for a most fascinating set of comments on your page. You seem to inspire more insight on your page than most of us can manage.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Alexey,

I managed to remove the post in which I misquoted you. As we seem to disagree on the Wigner issue, there is no need to revise and repost. However I've noted that there are some other issues which we do agree on that I may post later.

Thanks for your gracious understanding, and your many meaningful posts, here and on other's threads.

My very best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Alexey,

It was refreshing and interesting to read your essay.

I hold the view that thought and cognition are ontological and we are continuously ratifying our reality. (see my essay:"we are together, therefore I am")

It is all embedded in the qualities of the Movements attributes, which make us unique and singular.

Thanks again

Yehuda Atai

Dear Alexey

Once again, I repeat that I never said that I was even trying to explain how life began; what I am explaining is how molecules of the kind of DNA were produced. Between this and life is an enormous distance and I am surprised that you made such confusion.

Differently of your argumentation, the production of molecules of the kind of DNA has, at least, a reasonable property in the scenario I defined - this is not a guess, I calculated it.

Concerning life, even if one believes that it was created by God, one has to think that God did not created life from nothing. Or from clay. It is more reasonable to think that the material universe provided the material components of Life. For a believer in God, the role of God is to give life to matter, not to manufacture all life components.

So, you see, in nothing I said, God is put in question in any way - quite on the contrary. To put God in question is to pretend that the universe was made in seven days and life from clay. Would you disagree with me in this point?

I can say to you that during my life I had a set of experiences that I cannot explain by any known physical property, or by coincidences, etc; and one of them concerns precisely something that is written in the Bible - something of the utmost importance for the near future of mankind. Therefore, I know very well that the universe is much more than the description Physics can do. And this is not a "belief", its a knowledge from experience; and as I am an experienced empiricist, I am not in mistake when I state this. For me, "God" is a way to address everything that does not belongs to the material plane but I have no idea of what it might be because I have not enough data.

For us to know anything about any subject, we first have to be ready to accept all possibilities; if we are not, we will just be believers in something that pleases us. Jesus went to the desert to find the answer He was looking for. Only then He knew.

Although there are arrogant physicists that consider that Physics is able to explain everything, that periodically produce statements of the kind "to know all about the universe we are just missing this small aspect", they are just stupid and ignorant persons that not even have an idea of how far you are of understanding the universe. However, that is not the case of most scientists. Physics may conflict with "religious" explanations for physical phenomena but not with the essence of Religion, i.e., with the perception that the universe is not just matter. A bad physicist thinks that what he/her does not knows, does not exist; but that is not the methodology of science; a serious scientist analyses the data available and in relation to anything else he/her has only to assume ignorance. In this way there is no possible conflict between Science and Religion because they address different fields.

One thing that I assumed still a teenager is that to achieve some knowledge one has to drop the word "belief". Be it in Physics, Religion, whatever field. And drop it also in the negative form - we shall not "believe" or "not belief" in anything. I strictly follow Descartes method. That is a hard way, and with many problems, but is the only way for those that really want to know.

I hope that now, after this loooong message, you may understand me better.

All the best

Alfredo

Dear Alexey and Lev Burov,

On another thread [Robert Groess'] you made notice of a quote from P. Anderson:

"In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less society."

The statement is not unlike Steven Weinberg's remark, that

"The more comprehensible the universe becomes, the more it also seems pointless."

David Berlinski, a mathematician, remarks

"He had a point. The arena of the elementary particles... is rather a depressing place, and if it resembles anything at all it rather resembles a florescent lit bowling alley seen from the interstate, tiny stick figures in striped bowling shirts jerking up and down in the monstrously hot and humid night. What is its point?"

I suspect the 'stick figures' are Feynman diagrams. [By the way, if you have not read Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion, I think you would enjoy it very much.]

Anyway, you then asked, "If it is so, what do you think is the value of the particle physics for the humanity?", and you discussed the high cost of particle physics research, questioning the payoff.

The Higgs candidate has been found, as was to be expected by anyone who has read Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks, and supersymmetry, once felt to be a requirement for the Standard Model, is nowhere to be seen. No other particles are predicted [only resonances]. As you know from my essay, I view physics, particularly quantum physics, as mathematical projections onto physical reality. Due to its appropriateness in many physical situations the statistical nature of quantum mechanics delivers the goods. In particle systems QFT is essentially a bookkeeping system, based on a simplistic 'creation' and 'annihilation' formalism. I believe it is primarily a way to fit theory to data.

In contrast, I've found over several years that the predominant model from which QM is often heuristically derived is Stern-Gerlach, and physicists, after approximately a century, still do not understand the physics of one silver atom in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. In fact, I am, with others, building an experiment that will significantly affect QM if our research results are positive. We're self-funded, and, if successful, will have more impact on "real world" physics than the next few years operation of the LHC is likely to. So I agree with your implied sentiment.

My very best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman