Dear Jack,

Alas, we are all in this boat together -- but hooray, we can all keep trying to navigate and find our way toward better (more fundamental?!) explanations!

I was most impressed by your succinct essay, which on first reading might seem superficial but which contains some surprising insights packed into a small package. If I understand you correctly, you propose using our (complex) Darwinian cognition, even though we don't fully understand it, to attempt to find a rational/empirical understanding of quantum behavior.

Some of our difficulties in comprehension stem from the fact that we didn't evolve to understand fully concepts such as infinity and nonlinear logic. I cover some of this in a previous FQXi essay (ref. [13]), and in that essay I quote Danny Hillis, from his book, "The Pattern on the Stone":

"I have used simulated evolution to evolve a program to solve specific sorting problems, so I know that the process works as described. In my experiments, I also favored the programs that sorted the test sequences quickly, so that fast programs were more likely to survive. This evolutionary process created very fast sorting programs. For the problems I was interested in, the programs that evolved were actually slightly faster than any of the algorithms described... [standard algorithms] -- and, in fact, they were faster at sorting numbers than any program I could have written myself.

"One of the interesting things about the sorting programs that evolved in my experiment is that I do not understand how they work. I have carefully examined their instruction sequences, but I do not understand them; I have no simpler explanation of how the programs work than the instruction sequences themselves. It may be that the programs are not understandable -- that there is no way to break the operation of the program into a hierarchy of understandable parts. If this is true -- if evolution can produce something as simple as a sorting program, which is fundamentally incomprehensible -- it does not bode well for our prospects of ever understanding the human brain."

In short, when nonlinearity and feedback become involved, we quickly lose our so-called intuition. (This is another approach to demonstrating that straightforward, linear reductionism is not fundamental.) Instead, somehow one has to strive to make use of some sort of holistic logic, to be able to see how how simultaneous widely-separate parts (and concepts) interact to affect the whole. This is a tall order for philosophy, as well as for science, but it seems to fall within your more abstract ideas of having our evolved cognition empower a rational understanding of, say, quantum concepts.

I would be very interested in your take on these subjects.

Best wishes,

Bill

Dear Bill,

Thank you for your in-depth response to my essay. Your incomprehensible sorting program does indeed present significant challenges. I agree that how evolution arrives at this is seemingly simple yet bafflingly complex - it gives in my view some weight to Leslie Valiants 'ecorithms' (if you haven't read his book on this I think you could get a lot from it given the results of your experiment). I also think your right to relate this in the context of the abstract ideas i have presented here. Perhaps this is because it may refer to the same hurdle - being that what makes those difficult natural algorithms that facilitate our mind, and evolution, are one and the same as that which facilitates quantum fundamentality. How else could evolution process if not innately equipped with the same underlying capacity? I am glad you appreciate the deeper themes of my essay.

Best,

Jack

Dear William C. McHarris,

I enjoyed your essay and agree with your main points. Being a 'come-lately' to theory is not necessarily negative. I left theoretical physics in the late 70s and returned circa 2006. As far as I'm concerned, I just missed a lot of fads, while all the data discovered in that period is still available. There are advantages to (re-)entering theoretical physics with more experience under one's belt.

For example, lifelong theorists seem to interpret Einstein's linear 'weak field' equations as implying that the weak gravitational field is "linear". This is one more example of projecting mathematical structure onto physical reality and then "believing" in the structure. In fact, changing the field equations by suppressing the self-interactive (non-linear) terms has exactly zero effect on the physical nature of the field! Because most instances of weak-field gravity are boring, this seldom comes back to bite one. But if one can construct a situation where iterative self-interaction repeats endlessly, (or as long as driving energy is available) this non-linearity dominates all other effects.

A comment is not the place to dwell on this, but results are quite fascinating. In short, I am in complete agreement that non-linearity is poorly understood, as it is one of the few places where our intuition really does have problems keeping up.

On another non-intuitive topic, I hope you will read my essay on the historical development of Einstein's space-time symmetry and an alternative energy-time interpretation of special relativity. I would appreciate any comments you might have.

Thanks for a great essay.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Dear Alan,

    Thank you for your comments and comforting thoughts about my essay. I have studied your essay as well, and I was most impressed, even overwhelmed by it. I'll have to follow up by studying your other, previous references before I can really comment intelligently, but here are a few preliminary ideas:

    We more or less agree about the importance of nonlinearities necessary for further progress. I was fascinated by your ideas of soliton-like electron waves. I can't quite grasp your overall picture, but it is an impressive attempt to overcome procedures that don't seem to have worked. Even if it isn't true in toto, it's an important way to start out -- and a welcome journey into uncharted territory.

    As for waves versus particles, one doesn't have to resort to quantum behavior to find this duality. A wave-particle duality of sorts occurs in classical chaotic scattering, where macroscopic balls scattering off arrays as simple as three triangularly-spaced other balls can result in diffraction-like behavior. Some interesting trajectories of this sort are shown in "Chaotic Scattering: An Introduction" [E. Ott and T. Tiel, Chaos, 3, 417 (1993)], as well as in Ott's book, "Chaos in Dynamical Systems." What do you think about waves and particles merely being two different mathematical approaches for describing things -- non-commuting mentally as well as physically?

    I hope to get back to you after studying and thinking about these things in greater depth.

    Best wishes,

    Bill

    Dear Richard,

    Thank you for your kind words. Also, thanks for your beautiful, philosophical essay. I enjoyed reading it very much. To me it seems that you are seeking what physicists call the perhaps quixotic "Theory of Everything." I don't mean to disparage this search, for I hope that you are correct -- that it is attainable and not beyond the human intellect. Plus, we most certainly do need the cooperation of philosophers and scientists, of theorists and experimentalists, if ever we are to reach such a thing.

    As you can tell from my essay, I belong to the bottom-up school. To some extent this has a degree of pessimism built in. If you read my reply to Jack just above, the quotation by Danny Hillis sums it up succinctly: Our brains did not evolve to understand/decipher nonlinear logic very well. If the Universe is highly interconnected, as now seems to be the case, fathoming Nature may well be similar to magnifying a fractal such as the Mandelbrot set -- an infinite self-similar (actually self-affine) sequence. Nevertheless, that certainly should not stop us from trying! (Interestingly enough, Alexander von Humboldt was one of the early people to assert that we must consider Nature as a whole rather than just reduce it into parts, so the idea has been around for a long time.)

    Your question about the Big Bang Theory: I tend to shy away from commenting on the Big Bang, for I am not all that well-versed in its details. However, I have listened to many lectures and studied many papers by cosmologists with implications for cosmology about the Standard Model, such as cosmologically limiting the number of quarks to six, i.e., the number of generations to three. It seems to me that some cosmologists are extrapolating dangerously from a modicum of hard data, much as some psychologists are prone to reach "profound" conclusions from poorly-controlled experiments (my apologies to most psychologists!). And I do know that the Big Bang Theory keeps getting layer upon layer of corrections and reinterpretations -- Band-Aid on top of Band-Aid. In nuclear science when we are performing, say, a shell-model calculation, and we find that it takes an inordinate amount of time to converge -- well, quite often we have chosen an unsuitable, inconvenient basis set to start with. Maybe we should choose a better basis. As far as "a singularity not being a beginning," I think that falls in the category of things we have not evolved to understand too well -- again, we should take the Cantor approach and try.

    I have probably said too much, for I am not a philosopher. But thank you for a lovely, beautifully-written essay.

    Best wishes,

    Bill

    Respected Pri William C. McHarris,

    Thank you very much for your excellent essay written againest on Reductionism, a wonderful thinking "... for Nature is far more complex and interconnected than once thought. you have nicely discussed the linearity necessary for Reductionism, questionable uses of statistics and the contemporary breakdown in feedback between experiment". Definitely rethinking is needed as how to progress with basic science. Wonderful sir...

    Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed................ yours is very nice essay.... I highly appreciate hope your essay and hope for reciprocity ....You may please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

    Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

    -No Isotropy

    -No Homogeneity

    -No Space-time continuum

    -Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

    -No singularities

    -No collisions between bodies

    -No blackholes

    -No warm holes

    -No Bigbang

    -No repulsion between distant Galaxies

    -Non-empty Universe

    -No imaginary or negative time axis

    -No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

    -No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

    -No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

    -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

    -No many mini Bigbangs

    -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

    -No Dark energy

    -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

    -No Multi-verses

    Here:

    -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

    -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

    -All bodies dynamically moving

    -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

    -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

    -Single Universe no baby universes

    -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

    -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

    -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

    -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

    -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

    -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

    -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

    -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

    - Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

    http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

    I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

    Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

    In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

    I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

    Best

    =snp

    Dear William C. McHarris

    Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.

    My essay is titled

    "Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin". It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.

    Thank you & kind regards

    Steven Andresen

    Dear Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta,

    Normally I would thank you for your kind words, but it appears that you have sent essentially the identical message to dozens of us in order to promote your own essay.

    Wm. C. McHarris

    Dear Sabine,

    Thanks you for your thought-provoking ideas. I studied your eloquent essay and am much in agreement with it. And I very much look forward to reading your book when it comes out this summer.

    We are mostly in agreement, the differences being in degree rather than in kind. In strongly nonlinear systems (not just nonlinear corrections or perturbations on basically linear systems) feedback can cause effects that are every bit as counterintuitive as the paradoxes of orthodox quantum mechanics. For example, cyclic or even apparently random values are frequently encountered for final states. Although these trajectories are deterministic, our inability to locate/determine the initial conditions with the necessary precision forces us to interpret the results statistically. Thus, although nonlinear dynamics -- and even its extreme manifestations in chaos -- may "in principal" not be incompatible with reductionism, for all practical purposes it is. It's much like the numerical concept that numbers such as 2 and 1.9999999.... (ad infinitum) are the same number. (Or rather, its inverse. Here I'm arguing that if one has to go to an infinite limit for a result, then that result is essentially out of reach.)

    The philosophical idea of strong emergence is rather new to me, and I know that I'll have to study it much more thoroughly in order to make sense. However, a first, rough take seems to me to indicate some sort of parallel between effective field theories and trying to apply nonlinear dynamics to rid ourselves of counterintuitive so-called paradoxes. Does this make sense? Surely there is some sort of parallel or connection, although it is certainly not a straightforward scramble to find it.

    The quote from Danny Hillis, one of the founders of emergent, evolutionary computer programs, in my reply to Jack (four posts above) amply demonstrates this. We are simply not wired to understand concepts such as nonlinear logic intuitively, and most of us stick too blindly to simple, linear concepts, where we can get pat answers. I like your statement about nonlinear dynamics possibly being one reason for the lack of progress in contemporary theory.

    I also appreciate your slightly tongue-in-cheek farewell: "I herewith grant you permission to believe in free will again." Incidentally, free will and infinitely-regressive determinism may not be incompatible, as argued in my essay, "It from Bit from It from Bit... Nature and Nonlinear Logic" [13].

    Again, thanks for a lovely essay and for your comments. I would like to continue this discussion after I familiarize myself more with your ideas.

    Best wishes,

    Bill

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    • Post #32

    Dear Jonathan,

    Thank you very much for your kind words and comments. I also have kind words for your lovely essay, which I have completed studying. I have to admit that I'm a bit overwhelmed by it, as I am somewhat new to the inner workings and implications of/for gravity. However, I am in complete agreement with your ideas about asymmetry being every bit as important as symmetry, also the dangers of applying Noether's Theorem outside its realm of applicability. I don't quite get the physical significance of the condensation of gravity coinciding with that particular Misiurewicz point, but I have downloaded your paper from the Prespacetime Journal, and I shall work on trying to understand that next.

    Your use of fractals, in particular the Mandelbrot Set, seems to be just as logical as using group theory. In fact, it's another way of generating asymmetry, for odd-order nonlinear systems are well-know for generating asymmetries, the simplest example being a cubic or sine map. Since the standard Mandelbrot Set is analogous to the logistic map, once you have gone through the necessary changes of variables, making the logistic map bifurcation diagram correspond to the Mandelbrot Set, it would appear that the (asymmetrical) bifurcation map of, say, the cubic map could be made to correspond to a higher-order Mandelbrot Set. Have you thought about looking, for example, at the simplest third-order Mandelbrot Set (missing the x-squared term) to see see what it might have to say about Misiurewicz points? It could be a fascinating mental exercise at the very least.

    Leonard Susskind has just published on arXiv [arXiv:1802.01198] a paper, "Why Do Things Fall?", which talks about GR=QM, based on the quantum chaos ideas of Maldacena et al. -- e.g., the idea that gravity might result from a tendency for complexity to grow. In order to understand it better, I'm going to have to go back through an entire chain of articles, but you might be interested in investigating it as well, since it seems headed in the same direction as your ideas.

    [Although a bit off the current subject, I really liked your recording of Pete Seeger, "At 89"! It's of lasting value. As another combined scientist/musician (there must be a word for it -- "muscientist" ?!), you might be amused by my musical attempt at political satire on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdNB3Z4YAK8 or simply search YouTube for Bill McHarris).]

    Again, thanks -- especially thanks for your novel, yet logical ideas.

    Best wishes,

    Bill

    Dear Bill,

    Thanks for your well written essay. I specially liked the passage where you described your own experience in the tension between theory and experiment. During my years at the university, I never liked the experimental lectures. With a bit an arrogant attitude of the theoretical physicist, I though these experiments are boring and it would be enough to know the fundamental laws, that govern the the dynamics of the fundamental particles, to understand everything there is to understand. Today I regret a lot, not to have studied the experimental part as thoroughly as I could have done.

    However I do not directly see how nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory can work as critique to reductionism (as in Sabine Hossenfelder's comment). Chaotic systems are described by nonlinear interaction of their components. This looks very reductionistic. Despite that because of the complexity even the near or far future state cannot be calculated/predicted, if the initial conditions are not known.

    So my own critic in my essay to a extreme reductionism takes an different path: Most physical theories are described by fundamental objects with specific properties like location, momentum, mass and their interaction between these objects. Now in a reductionistic, realistic view these objects have their properties independent of the condition under which they can be defined or measured. I belief that this is not true (and I belief this is the main message of quantum mechanics). But also in Newton's theory we might follow Poincare's interpretation, that Newton's first law of constant motion for force free objects serves as condition under which momentum and mass can be defined. Only then forces and accelerations are definable (second law). This means, that the fundamental concepts, that allow us to formulate the interaction between the objects, depend on being free objects. This is only possible, if the the environment is highly homogeneous (in order to have translation symmetry in the free object subsystem).

    So if one wants to employ complex systems with feedback loops, I would expect, that the structures that emerge, should be able to describe their own fundamental properties.

    I hope you find the time to read my essay called The quantum sheep - In defence of a positivist view on physics and let me know, what you think about it.

    Best regards,

    Luca

      To Jonathan and other readers --

      I think it is pretty obvious from content that the previous post was from me, despite the computer's giving me an alternate, more abstract name!

      Cheers,

      Bill McHarris

      • [deleted]

      • Post #35

      Dear Gary,

      Thanks for your comments. In a sense your first two paragraphs above eloquently summarize much of my premise. Especially when one includes the feedback inherent in nonlinear interactions, the unification of the whole becomes all that more real.

      I just finished studying your own delightful essay. You must have had an immense amount of fun in writing it. Delightful, literate prose! Your history of science in a nutshell is remarkable, and I was delighted with many of your memorable sentences, such as "Academia had been absorbed in splitting hairs for so long that it had lost sight of the nature of the bodies of which the hairs were working parts." Or, "We may assume that theory stands somewhere between imagination and the truth." Your science is weak in places -- e.g., the weak interaction is not responsible for "binding atoms to atoms..." -- but despite that, I found the essay to be a delightful overview of the problems of modern physics as seen from a philosophical distance!

      I would love to see some of your architectural creations in California.

      Best wishes,

      Bill

      To all --

      Again, the above is my post. It appears that if one dwells too long over writing a reply, the computer loses your name!

      Bill McHarris

      Thanks for your kind remarks Bill!

      I've begun digesting the Susskind paper and some of its associated references. I'd be surprised if it dies not tie in with my work fairly directly. Thanks greatly for the heads up. The comments above will be re-read and mined for insights later.

      Warm Regards,

      Jonathan

      Bill,

      Brilliant job, again. Our past close agreement is enhanced and your expression of it excellent. That'll surely be a 10 I think. Of course big affects big, but I see you don't suggest we don't need the smallest & simplest to solve current mysteries. I won't pick out highlights as we have more important work. i.e. I seem to show in mine that we CAN solve current mysteries with the smallest & simplest;;

      I hope you'll read and check through my ontological mechanism carefully. There are a number of components which fit together appearing to reproduce all 'non-linear' QM Classically, free of non-local weirdness. 'Superposition' is of REAL states, both non-linear!! Declan Traill's short essay confirms the code based on the mechanism gives the required CSHS >2, with the 'detection loophole' closed with a >1 steering inequality.

      Maybe best to first read a short outline sequence I've just posted on John Klausers string.

      I have lots of agreement notes & gold stars on yours an apologise, but will post them if you'd like. Exciting times I hope. Do you know where we can get quantity discounts on coffins?

      Very best

      Peter

        Hello again Bill,

        Above you commented "Have you thought about looking, for example, at the simplest third-order Mandelbrot Set (missing the x-squared term) to see see what it might have to say..?" so I wanted to find this paper to attach. It is entitled "Physical meaning for Mandelbrot and Julia sets" and Professor Beck does talk about using 3rd and higher degree Mandelbrot and Julia Sets in Physics models. I recall that Barnsley was already talking about creating Green's functions using Julia Sets back in the 70s, so it seems pretty incredible there are so few Physics developments in this area to date.

        All the Best,

        JonathanAttachment #1: Beck-1999-manjulia.pdf

          Thanks, Jonathan,

          I downloaded the paper and will get to it shortly. I agree that it's odd there has been so little followup in this field. Perhaps it's because it falls between disciplines -- unnecessary for pretty fractal pictures, yet alien to standard calculus techniques.

          Cheers,

          Bill

          Dear Eugene,

          Thanks a million for your comments. It happens not only with theory, but also with experiment. I find that from time to time, getting back to relativistic nuclear-nuclear collisions (the last major topic I worked on when mostly involved with nuclear science), it seems like the discussions are but a continuation of what we were discussing just yesterday -- new, mostly redundant experimental examples, but very little advance in understanding and/or interpretation.

          I have gone over your essay many times, and I must admit that I am both most impressed and overwhelmed by it. Plus, it's a neat idea to contrast Einstein with Hertz rather than with Poincaré, as most people would have done. The dialog is a novel but good way to present the alternate ideas based on Hertz. I'm only marginally familiar with gravitoelectromagnetism, so my comments must be somewhat naive. Emotionally, I really like the idea of a universal, fundamental time, but if it really requires some sort of quasi-ether, have you (or for that matter, anyone else, since I'm not familiar with the field) -- have you thought about the idea of "E generating B generating E..." (a good example of nonlinearity) producing the composite electromagnetic wave acting as a sort of self-generated "ether" that travels along with the wave? This would get around the MM results. How would local gravitation affect such a wave?

          At the very least, questioning apparent inconsistencies between special and general relativity has to be a very healthy exercise. It reminds me in a way of the Einstein-Bohr debates concerning quantum mechanics. And for the latter it seems that history is beginning to question the hastily drawn conclusions that enthroned the orthodox interpretation.

          I'll keep working at your essay and hopefully get a better physical "feel" for it in time, when we might continue the discussion.

          Best wishes,

          Bill