Scott, you make some very strong claims.

I have a question: how can you know that

"...it would have to be the only scheme possible"?

As I outlined in my essay, the criterion for every TOE must be Truth, not simplicity. This somewhat simple statement may hit you, but even your own approach has to obey a simple scientific rule for being able to claim to be the one and only TOE: it must make a testable prediction that could be falsified. Even for the case that such a 'TOE' incorporates 'all the known laws of physics' (what I seriously doubt in case of your approach) - it must be able to derive from within itself a prediction of a phenomenon that has not yet been observed. Or do you think that mankind has already observed ALL natural phenomena that are observable according to our hitherto known physical laws? Do you really think that physics is theoretically and practically a finished job? Wouldn't claiming such things have at least a little bit of hybris within it and for the more serious case even the inability to discriminate between what has factually been achieved by physics (or by the own approach) and what one wishes to have achieved by one's own approach?

For the case you want to talk me into your approach to be indeed THE TOE..., I would recommend you to go again to the drawing board and find a testable prediction your approach is able to make from within itself.

    Yes - I AM making a huge claim - and of course people will question it... like when you say you serious doubt that my theory explains everything. You asked what my theory predicts... My theory predicts that the experiment planned for neutrino/anti-neutrino annihilation that there will be no annihilation despite the "fact" that neutrinos were "proven" to have mass.

    By definition the math of the theory of everything must begin very simple since it starts with one ingredient. It has to be more simple than any equation we have because it starts before ANY particles were created to exist in spacetime (and all we know is the physics and math of particle that exist in spacetime). The math of the theory of everything has to built to the math that derives the postulates used to create GR and QM. If the postulates used to derive these two theory can be derived by one model, then they will automatically be united under one theory.

    Physicists do not seem to understand that it is not possible to unite these theories using the math of the theories because you will never be able to derive why their initial postulates are true and why they should exist in the first place.

    I suggest you learn exactly what the ruby slipper conundrum and the concept of infinite scales are and how my model increases in complexity through the hierarchy of energy before you automatically dismiss it. AND YES - If a theory that starts with one building block ingredient (and energy) does explain everything and also explains what is not possible, then it is the one and only scheme possible for the theory of everything.

    Scott, i read your essay. Even in the papers you cited on your essay page, you mention your 'ruby slipper conundrum' only for the purpose that for understanding it one has to buy and read your 300 page book available on amazon.

    In your essay, this presupposed important concept is not exemplified, not referred to a single time. You have to understand that for your strong claims, you can't simply refer to a 300 page book (one has to buy for 40-90 Dollars) in an essay contest like this. You missed the chance to give the reader an access to the 'ruby slipper conundrum' (if it at all exists) by outlining it in your essay. Everyone of us has the problem of limited space and characters for accurately writing down one's own ideas. Compressing these ideas into a 9 page, 25000 character body is difficult, but a challenge.

    Your essay is in large parts a copy of your papers published on academia.ru. Why you didn't use the 9 pages to explain the 'ruby slipper conundrum' a bit closer is a hint for me that this conundrum doesn't play the important role you claim. Anyways, you can't expect that the reader buys your book (350 pages for 89 Dollar hardcover), when you can't convince him with what is the sole purpose of this essay contest - namely with a well composed essay on the essay's theme.

    What is a conundrum for me, is that you are in my opinion one of many people who think they found THE TOE, people who want the appropriate merits and credit for what they think to be THE TOE, but different from most of this people, you deny the access to the claimed understanding of your TOE by trying to SELL it, instead of publishing it for free. Therefore I recommend you to give away your book's content for free, so that everybody can prove for himself whether or not your claims are justified.

    "Yes - I AM making a huge claim - and of course people will question it... like when you say you serious doubt that my theory explains everything."

    Remember that the one who makes huge claims has to justify them. I will not buy your book to refute your claims, simply make it available for free and we can further discuss it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems

    quote

    Completeness[edit]

    A set of axioms is (syntactically, or negation-) complete if, for any statement in the axioms' language, that statement or its negation is provable from the axioms (Smith 2007, p. 24). This is the notion relevant for Gödel's first Incompleteness theorem. It is not to be confused with semantic completeness, which means that the set of axioms proves all the semantic tautologies of the given language. In his completeness theorem, Gödel proved that first order logic is semantically complete. But it is not syntactically complete, since there are sentences expressible in the language of first order logic that can be neither proved nor disproved from the axioms of logic alone: for example, "the flower is pretty".

    In a mere system of logic it would be absurd to expect syntactic completeness. But in a system of mathematics, thinkers such as Hilbert had believed that it is just a matter of time to find such an axiomatization that would allow one to either prove or disprove (by proving its negation) each and every mathematical formula.

    A formal system might be syntactically incomplete by design, such as logics generally are. Or it may be incomplete simply because not all the necessary axioms have been discovered or included. For example, Euclidean geometry without the parallel postulate is incomplete, because it is not possible to prove or disprove the parallel postulate from the remaining axioms. Similarly, the theory of dense linear orders is not complete, but becomes complete with an extra axiom stating that there are no endpoints in the order. The continuum hypothesis is a statement in the language of ZFC that is not provable within ZFC, so ZFC is not complete. In this case, there is no obvious candidate for a new axiom that resolves the issue.

    The theory of first-order Peano arithmetic is consistent, has an infinite but recursively enumerable set of axioms, and can encode enough arithmetic for the hypotheses of the incompleteness theorem. Thus, by the first incompleteness theorem, Peano Arithmetic is not complete. The theorem gives an explicit example of a statement of arithmetic that is neither provable nor disprovable in Peano's arithmetics. Moreover, this statement is true in the usual model. Moreover, no effectively axiomatized, consistent extension of Peano arithmetic can be complete.

    Consistency[edit]

    Andrew, what is the main point you refer to? Let's have real discussions here at the Essay contest, with arguments from yourself instead of citing chapters from wikipedia. I cannot conclude from your citings what your main point is and if there is any point at all you want to make.

    Exelent essay

    In my opinion, Newton's theory of gravity holds:

    - 1.聽聽聽聽聽 The theory is not wrong, but at the same time also not necessarily a complete description of what is going on.

    Do you think so?

    Regars,

    Brfanko Zivlak

    meteorologist

      Branko, thanks for your comment, your question and that you cherish what you read.

      As to your question, you cited a case where a prediction of a theory has been confirmed. Let's say this is the precession of Mercury's perihelion, what comes about in GR to be approximately the value of observation. Since GR was not designed to a posteriori fit these observational data (as far as I can know!:), I would say that GR predicted it.

      I cannot exclude that there are different theories possible which also can predict this phenomenon, theories that rest on different postulates than GR does.

      For the case of Newton's theory of gravity, I cannot see how it can hold to explain the precission of Mercury's perihelion. But that I cannot see it does not mean that you necessarily must be wrong. Tell me more about your view on Newton's theory of gravity if you like.

      No doubt Anstein's contribution to the understanding of nature is huge.

      But I do not believe that the explanation of Merkur's problem with the GR is essential.

      According to RuÄ'er BoÅ¡ković, 2 in the square of the distance of Newton's gravitational formula is not exact 2.

      I believe, the essential is the surface, not the distance in Newton formula.

      I do not know how to prove it.

      Regards,

      Branko

        stepan

        your point was far better made by Godel, and you still do not get it. I am not castigating you, but until you read the Godel incompleteness proof and understand it, then there is not a lot more I can bring up

        To whit, what you wrote is a tautology and until you actually read the PROOF of what Godel wrote, and understand it, I have little to discuss with you.

        https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/

        Just read it, please, and if you do not, I will abstain from any further comments.

        Good luck

          stepan

          your point was far better made by Godel, and you still do not get it. I am not castigating you, but until you read the Godel incompleteness proof and understand it, then there is not a lot more I can bring up

          To whit, what you wrote is a tautology and until you actually read the PROOF of what Godel wrote, and understand it, I have little to discuss with you.

          https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness

          /

          Just read it, please, and if you do not, I will abstain from any further comments.

          Good luck

          bluntly put, Godel did a far better job than you did, and all I am asking you to do , is to read the source of the idea.

          If you cannot bother doing that, I have nothing further to say.

          Your demands for a "real discussion" do not get to the point.

          The point is, that your essay is a loose paraphrase of what Godel was bringing up, and until you accept that, and actually get some mathematical rigour to your exposition, there is little to discuss.

          I.e. Godel nailed it.

          Paraphrasing Godel as you have done, is not exactly a strategy to break new ground.

          Andrew, you claim very much with your comment... You claim e.g. that

          1. I have not read Gödel's work

          2. I do not understand it

          3. My essay is a loose paraphrase of what Gödel was bringing up

          All three points you made are false.

          Even for the case that Gödel's work would turn out to be - for whatever hitherto unknown reasons - false, my essay does not in any way depend on the correctness of Gödel's work. The latter just reassures my conclusions, it is not in opposition to my conclusions. I think you misunderstood what I intended to say with the realm of fundamental truth. This is not merely a realm of logical / mathematical tautologies, but an existential realm that incorporates consciousness as a fundamental ingredient. Not all tautologies are fundamental truths, but according to my essay, all fundamental truths are perceived (and are) as self-evident tautologies in the realm of fundamental truth. Self-evidently, this realm must be located beyond space and time, since space and time could turn out to be just temporary appearances. They are, in my opinion, for the reasons I layed out in my essay, not fundamental truths, since in my opinion, a fundamental truth should be timeless.

          I have not found any hints in Gödel's official mathematical work that states that truth must be in union with consciousness, what my essay says is independent from what Gödel brought up with his work. Therefore the points you made are twice devoid of any meaning for the conclusions in my essay. Gödel's work is important, but for me, Gödel is not the one and only authority when it comes to the question "what is fundamental".

          Good luck also for you!

          Interesting. If you are right, then a former ‚less fundamental' (space in GR) could turn out to be 'more fundamental' than we thought - if your approach takes space and time as an independent background like Newton did. Does it do so?

          Andrew, you claim very much with your comment... You claim e.g. that

          1. I have not read Gödel's work

          2. I do not understand it

          3. My essay is a loose paraphrase of what Gödel was bringing up

          All three points you made are false.

          Even for the case that Gödel's work would turn out to be - for whatever hitherto unknown reasons - false, my essay does not in any way depend on the correctness of Gödel's work. The latter just reassures my conclusions, it is not in opposition to my conclusions. I think you misunderstood what I intended to say with the realm of fundamental truth. This is not merely a realm of logical / mathematical tautologies, but an existential realm that incorporates consciousness as a fundamental ingredient. Not all tautologies are fundamental truths, but according to my essay, all fundamental truths are perceived (and are) as self-evident tautologies in the realm of fundamental truth. Self-evidently, this realm must be located beyond space and time, since space and time could turn out to be just temporary appearances. They are, in my opinion, for the reasons I layed out in my essay, not fundamental truths, since in my opinion, a fundamental truth should be timeless.

          I have not found any hints in Gödel's official mathematical work that states that truth must be in union with consciousness, what my essay says is independent from what Gödel brought up with his work. Therefore the points you made are twice devoid of any meaning for the conclusions in my essay. Gödel's work is important, but for me, Gödel is not the one and only authority when it comes to the question "what is fundamental".

          Good luck also for you!

          Hi Stefan, I enjoyed your essay. I like the idea of the frog and birds eye views. Both in Max Tegmark's paper 'shut up and calculate" and when you use the same different viewpoints idea. Though I am now thinking that (excuse the diversion) it would be good to have a frogs eye view and the view of the hive mind of a swarm of intelligent flies. The flies can then have multiple viewpoints of the same arrangement and relations within it rather than a singular viewpoint. All of the flies, though having different individual opinions on variable values, orientations and so on will all be correct.(This ties in with relativity.) In that way the picture constructed comes closer to the truth than the impoverished single viewpoint, singular value and states that are the product of singular observers 'saying what is there'. The flies rather than frog is many worlds of possible measurements that become just one value or state for a single frog. The many worlds, other than its own view, for the frog, are not other universes but different views of the universe not made. Which ties in with quantum mechanics, in particular. Though it is also relevant to your discussion of a realm of truth. I agree with you that there is such a foundational reality. I did like your pointing out that true falsehood is a kind of truth itself. I think the truth can be arrived at by finding all of the falsehoods and putting them out of the way. Which is how the scientific method at its best works.'Certainly not like that' is closer to the truth than 'it might be like this or it might not' of a not dis-proven hypothesis. Its like drawing, which can be done by outlining the positive filled spaces or by drawing the outline of the negative empty spaces. The techniques arrive at the same outcome if done accurately. Using both can help with accuracy of the drawing. Well done, kind regards Georgina

            By 'realm of truth', I mean the existent the universe as it fully is and is happening, rather than as seen and experienced, and measured; with singular viewpoints or apparatus and protocol giving a single outcome.

            Hi Georgina, thanks for reading and of course for commenting! Your effort of commenting is appreachiated by me.

            I indeed took the terms frog's view and bird's view from Max' paper. They encode a huge problem not yet solved, the dichotomy between the subject (consciousness) and the object (matter), between relative, subjective truths (in reference to what is fundamental) and the necessity for the existence of such fundamental truths, means the fact that there is an external world independent of relative, subjective truths (objective truths) and whether or not these objective truths come out of literally nothing in the sense I defined it in the essay.

            Many accounts on these problems assume the realm of what is most fundamental to be infinite. I am not quite sure if Max does also, but I take both possibilities into account. If mathematics is infinite, then one cannot speak meaningfully of an 'outside' for the black box I described as gedankenexperiment, hence there cannot be a bird's view, since then, the mathematical landscape is infinitely infinite, so to speak. Otherwise, if what is most fundamental would be finitely describable (albeit in a coarse-grained manner), one could refer to an 'outside' meaningfully in the sense whether or not there are further objective reasons for this most fundamental thing (in the case of Max's paper it would again be mathematics) to be fundamental at all.

            If maths is finite, I think this would be a surprise for everybody. But I conclude just this in my essay: mathematics is a finitely, physical construct, as physical as one assumes matter, enery, wave functions and laws of physics to be physical. I consider 'infinity' from a logical point of view as merely an alternative term to express that something is fundamentally undefined - and undefinable (at least in our limited world).

            You raise the question of many worlds. Many worlds fall naturally out of a global wave function, the latter seen as fundamental. The question is whether or not such a global wave function does exist ontologically. I cannot exclude this, but I doubt it, due to the arguments I gave in my essay against the exclusiveness of the complete formalizability of all that exists.

            I like your painting analogy. This is what we normally do by inferencing due to antivalent thinking. The point I wanted to make in my essay is that you never can picture such a painting objectively with only antivalent thinking at hand. The best example for this impossibility seems to me the very essay contest here, where different assumptions are hold about what is true and what is false.

            My own approach stems from the considerations of what properties a realm must have that does not suffer from the dichotomy of true and false propositions. My conclusion is that falseness as an option should evaporate into 'thin air' for at all being able to meaningfully speak about a 'most fundamental' as the basis for objective reality. Just consider what an angel in a spiritual realm ('heaven') would experience: she wouldn't experience the possibility that her realm could be just a fake, a kind of computer animation (since then it wouldn't be heaven anymore but just like earth...). She wouldn't experience this possibility, but not due to an error in her perception, but due to the fact (the truth) that this realm refers not anymore to 'time', but to eternity. Eternity in this sense means eternal truth without falseness in it. So the reason why you can't objectively paint this realm is that there is only 'white' in it, but no black.

            You state that "I think the truth can be arrived at by finding all of the falsehoods and putting them out of the way. Which is how the scientific method at its best works." Albeit there is some truth in this statement, personally I wouldn't fully agree, since obviously there are situations where you aren't able to unequivocally identify some falsehood in the sense of a decisive proof for a counterexample, or a decisive proof for a certain assumption to be true at all. The problem is not that we can't observe in many cases *how* nature behaves, the problem is to unequivocally prove for at least some cases *why* it does so.

            Thanks again for your thoughtful comment and good luck in the constest!

            Kind regards, Stefan

            Stefan, thanks for your reply giving further information about the thoughts that have gone into your essay.Much appreciated.

            I agree that practically it isn't possible to uncover all falsehoods to reveal the complete truth. Nevertheless it is a good method. It will only work well where there is a clear division between true and false. There is also a grey area of it depends. Which can be a matter of whether or not the conditions can be carefully controlled to minimize unwanted influences. Something that springs to mind as not definitely true or false is the health benefit of beta carotene, unless you are a smoker. More problematic for things like health studies and social science of populations investigations than physics.

            I should mention I have put a short 2 page article in the Ultimate reality forum under Alternative models of reality that cites your essay paper.

            Hi Georgina, i found your article and am going to read it now with much eager and will reply here and at the other site. It takes much time for the second bunch of essays to go online. I hope your essay contribution will be published soon, so i can also read your 'official' contribution to the essays current theme.