What if even the Theory of Everything isn’t fundamental by Paul Bastiaansen

Dear Dr Paul Bastiaansen,

Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Paul,

Interesting and funny. Sometimes hard to follow where connected to authors or principles unknown to the reader. But your conclusion is absolutely on the mark!

What is fundamental is what the universe IS and DOES before we look or even think about it.

But, we may explore, with our intellect, what may exist and happen on the guidance of the rule of non-contradiction. At the fundamental level, the roles are inverted. All physical knowledge is "subjective"; they are choiceless truths, but .... we create them. We may only have access to the choiceless "objective" truth by trusting our mind in applying simple rules of logic without contradiction. Our mind becomes the trusty "microscope"...

All the bests,

Marcel,

Dear Paul Bastiaansen,

congratulations, I found your essay very interesting and well written. The case of The Game of Life and Turing's machine is very insightful (thank you for lettin me know such an interesting experiment!) and your very original way to handle the "bridge laws"reminded me very close the Sorite's paradox, in a way that's close to what I state in my essay as well.

Your conclusion about mathematics is also very interesting, but due its relativity to rules, I would argue that it's not absolute as well.

bests and good luck!

Francesco

Dear Paul;

I congratulate you. This is a brilliant essay. It completely destroys the basis of reductionism. Most of the essays that I have read in this contest are trapped in reductionism.

I wish you could have space to discuss what could be considered Fundamental outside of the reductionist paradigm.

Congratulations;

Diogenes

Dear Dr Paul Bastiaansen,

your wonderful arguments .... that phenomenal theories about the real world (and toy universes) are generally not reducible to, and even to a large extent independent of the underlying microscopic theory.....are exactly correct....

Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed................ yours is very nice essay best wishes .... 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 Paul Bastiaansen

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

Hi Paul,

Your essay took me in a very enjoyable journey, where at the end I was not sure where it took me. I want to make some remarks on thoughts I had on that journey.

I'm not sure, if I understood the argument concerning the game of live and Turing machines. Is it that because the game of live is able to create any forms and maybe by 'chance' (well not really by chance, because it is deterministic) is able to rebuild the forms and things we find in real life it does not explain anything and is just irrelevant, because it could explain everything? (I like that argument).

You then suggest the same applies to reductionistic explanations. I'm not so sure.

Putnam's peg and rigid bodies example is very nice. But the vast number of initial conditions or states, that can create that macro phenomena seams not an argument against reductionism.

I did not know the expression 'bridge laws'. It exited me a lot. They seem to express, that there must be something emergent (the bridge law, the description of the macro situation), that is a condition to be able to describe, what is going on.

Great statement: "The difficulty of formulating such bridge laws is, I think, grossly underrated. The reason must be that not only the answer is formulated in the language of the phenomenal domain, but also the question."

I wondered whether such bridge laws correspond to the observational language of the positivists. But then (so my critique on the positivists view in my essay) they depend on physical conditions under which, they make sense. There is no observational statement without physical law and condition under which these laws are true.

For math the same reasoning: without time and separated bodies in space, no counting, no law such as 2+3=5. The condition for it realizability is not given. Seems math as operational theory (Brower) depends on physical conditions.

Best regards,

Luca

Hi Paul,

"According to the demon, a stone is an abstraction that exists only in the eye of the beholder. We're like a child that sees a face in the clouds. In reality, there is no face."

Questions:

1. Would you say that the LaPlace's demon cannot determine "qualia"?

2. Does your special treatment of mathematics reinforce Tegmark's mathematics/information as fundamental?

If you are interested in gravity take a look at my essay.

Thanks for your excellent presentation,

Don Limuti

Dear Paul,

I highly appreciate your beautifully written essay.

I completely agree with you. «The way the world behaves is not anything goes. Behavior must be in line with mathematics and logic on all complexity levels. You can define whatever universe you fancy, but it will never be one in which prime numbers have divisors. For me, this is a stunning conclusion, because empiricism makes such a lot of sense. Of course you won't be able to say something about the world out there without looking at it. And yet, this very world seems at least partly understandable by thinking about it, not looking».

I hope that my modest achievements can be information for reflection for you.

Vladimir Fedorov

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3080

Dear Paul

If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don't rate them at all. Infact I haven't issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.

Beyond my essay's introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity's effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me and my essay in questioning this circumstance?

My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a "narrow range of sensitivity" that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn't then gas accumulation wouldn't be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.

Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn't we consider this possibility?

For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we "life" are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.

My essay is attempt of something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up a potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond formation activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemistry processes arose.

By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might explain for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.

To steal a phrase from my essay "A world product of evolved optimization".

Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest

Kind regards

Steven Andresen

Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin

Very nice logical journey Mr. Bastiaansen.

I fully enjoyed it and I think further words are useless.

Rate it accordingly.

If you would have the pleasure for a short axiomatic approach of the subject, I will appreciate your opinion.

Silviu

Dear Paul,

Congratulations! Your bold an thought-provoking essay is one of the best I've read so far in this contest. Contrary to many entries, that try to play it safe (or rehash the same alt-physics theories contest after contest, irrespective of the contest theme), you actually hold strong and original positions concerning the question of fundamentality. I do not necessarily agree with everything that you are arguing for, but I find the questions that you raise and the examples that you give worth thinking about. Moreover, you conclude that general mathematics/logic appears to be more fundamental than the particular "physics" that our world "runs on", which has interesting similarities to my own views on the subject, views I have hinted at in my essay in the current contest...

"Fundamentality here, there, everywhere" (2018) : fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3132

...but elaborated more fully in the essays I wrote in the previous two FQXi contests:

"The Co-Emergence of Lawfulness" (2017) : fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2912

"Living in a Mathematical Universe" (2015) : fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2497

For my comments, I will be using the format that Terry Bollinger uses --- he also has a very wise "essay contestant pledge" that I fully agree with and that can be found here: goo.gl/KCCujt

What I liked the most about your essay:

- Your definition of 'fundamental', to mean not only underlying our observations and theories of the world as we know it, but also EXPLAINING them.

- Your "running gag" of the imaginary band "Hawking and the Reductionists", that were supposed to be the opening act for "The Theory of Everything", a band that never showed up!

- Your definition of 'strong emergence' as applying to systems that are "not completely defined at the microscopic level, but in which additional causal behavior kicks in on larger and more complex scales".

- Your use of Conway's Game of Life as a toy-model of a world where the "Theory of Everything" is completely known and not in the slightest way ambiguous or uncertain, yet that clearly possesses interesting higher-level behavior, which demonstrates that this kind of behavior can "easily" occur via "mere" weak emergence.

- Your statement that, since the Game of Live is Turing-complete, its phase space contains all possible software, including World of Warcraft and the software that guided Apollo 11 to the moon!

- Your statement of the delightful circularity of the Game of Life being able to implement a Turning machine, and a Turing machine being able to implement the Game of Life.

- Your mention of the crucial importance of the idea of "multiple realizability", and your description of it: "the complex behavior on the phenomenal level can be implemented in multiple ways by different microscopic realities (noumenal level)."

- Your deep insight that it is no more necessary to scrutinize the rules of the Game of Life to understand Turing machines than it is necessary to have five coconuts to establish that 2 3 = 5, or, more provocatively, than it is necessary to know about the details of quantum mechanics to understand and use the Navier-Stokes laws of fluid dynamics.

- Your clever use of Laplace's Demon to personify an extremely powerful computer that can analyze the evolution of anything, as long as the problem is specified by using ONLY the concepts of the base-level (reductionist) description of reality.

- Your explanation, using the Taylor expansion, of the "naturalness" of Hooke's law for elastic objects, irrespective of the actual details of microscopic physics.

- Your clear, 4 bullets point phrasing, without referring to biology, of what it takes for a system to be able to undergo natural selection.

- Your bold conjecture that general aspects of mathematics (formal logic, geometry, algebra) could be said to be fundamental (if anything deserves to be called fundamental).

What I liked less / constructive criticism:

- In your analysis of Putnam's peg and board set-up, you rightly say that the notion of rigid bodies is prerequisite to understanding the situation, but you go on to say that it is impossible to make the step from Schrodinger's equations to rigid bodies --- not merely so difficult that we cannot hope to do it in the foreseeable future, but outright impossible... I am not sure I would go that far. Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic... could it be that sufficiently advanced scientists would have powers of deduction that so dwarf ours that all the higher-level laws and behaviors of physics would seem to trivially follow from Schrodinger's equation (or an even deeper, more advanced formulation of the basic reductionist laws of our universe)?

- You use the word "exist" to mean "exist at the most fundamental level", so you can make provocative claims, for example, that rigid objects do not exist or that concept of force does not exist. You certainly are not the only one to use "exist" in that way --- which leads, for instance, to the often-encountered claim made by physicists who study foundational issues that "time does not exist". I prefer a less spectacular phrasing: "force is a concept that is not fundamental" or "force is a concept that does not exist at the fundamental level" instead of "force is a concept that does not exist". That said, I like your bold claim that force is the phlogiston of the 20th century... As someone who has a degree in history of science, I find this analogy very thought-provoking... I am not sure I would go that far, but I'll certainly have to think about this!

- I really like how you show that the linear form of Hooke's law makes a lot of sense if you analyze the elasticity of an object by using a Taylor expansion. But when you say that Hooke's law can be derived PURELY from mathematical considerations and would be valid whatever underlying microscopic laws we have, I am not sure I agree. It seems to me that to derive Hooke's law, you need a lot of implicit physical baggage, the notion of rigid bodies, or at least of shape (space), change (time)... If mathematics is the most fundamental level, it seems to me that it must span/generate a wide spectrum of "physical" worlds (Max Tegmark's level 4 multiverse), some of which are so radically different from ours that they could very well contain "rigid bodies" whose elastic behavior does not obey such a linear and simple rule as Hooke's law. I agree with you that mathematics/logic can teach us a lot about how the world behaves, but when you say that it can teach us how ANY possible world behaves, I have doubts...

- You conclusion that Hooke's law is not REDUCIBLE to the underlying microscopic laws is quite a bold claim, and few physicists would agree to go this far... But I guess it all hinges on what is meant precisely by "reducible"...

- You claim that "the Theory of Everything wouldn't make a shred of difference for applied physics and chemistry, let alone biology and the social sciences". Of course, you may be right. But the future could prove you incredibly wrong: imagine, for instance, that the ToE leads to a new source of energy that solves all of humanity's problems, or to efficient ways to travel between the stars, or to contact with parallel branches of the universal wavefunction, allowing for fascinating cultural exchanges between divergent worldlines of humanity's history. Of course, all these scenarios are very unlikely, but who knows? ;)

You conclude that "this very world seems at least partly understandable by thinking about it, not looking"... a very Platonist view... but I like it! Of course, like many of us in the FQXi community, we are fascinated by the more speculative fuzzy areas at the margins of currently well-established knowledge... and in many cases, before we can look, we have to think about it... if only to know what to look for. Your essay certainly made me think!

Welcome to the FQXi community --- I am glad you "came-out" as a philosopher with this essay, and I hope your ideas generate debate and get the recognition they deserve in this contest!

Best wishes,

Marc

Dear Paul Bastiaansen, you have done a deep analysis, and I put 10. For a long time believed that the Foundation for fundamental theories is matter, an attribute which was mass. Once there was a formula of mass - energy equivalence, and mass lost the status of a value characterizing the amount of matter, about it rarely began to remember and physics has lost the Foundation. Any theory of everything is created in such circumstances would not be fundamental. The principle of identity of space and matter Descartes, according to which physical space is matter and matter is space that moves, gives us the Foundation for fundamental theories. Look at my essay, FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich Where I showed how radically the physics can change if it follows this principle. Evaluate and leave your comment there. Do not allow New Cartesian Physics go away into nothingness, which can to be the theory of everything OO.

I wish you success! Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris