Regarding arXiv shenanigans...

This is precisely why Phil Gibbs founded viXra, the alternative academic archive, because many people including full professors have found similar problems, suffering rejections, delays, or reclassification of preprints to gen-ph even when those same papers were later published in respected journals. There seems to be no recourse or protocol for the redress of grievances either. Raising an objection has gotten some people banned from arXiv entirely. This is why I am part of the support team for viXra, and will not even consider submitting papers to arXiv.

Regards,

Jonathan

Excellent!

I'll be interested to see what develops, or to research further myself how fractality enters the picture. I see that as nature's way to squeeze more detail into a smaller space, or to compress details appearing in higher dimensions onto the lower-dimensional structures and constructs.

All the Best,

Jonathan

p.s. - no offense taken

I'm aware of viXra, but that doesn't have the feature that arXiv has that subscribers to a given list get daily lists of new abstracts, which is why reclassification combined with 'this paper is inappropriate for crosslisting' is so regrettable. Actually, there is an appeal process you can find if you look in help, something like emailing moderation@arxiv.org, and I appealed successfully once this way when a submission of mine was totally barred.

If you have a bit of time to spare, you might find the following articles enlightening in regard to arXiv:

arXiv unloaded

Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive (extract follows)

It is just an ordinary day at the headquarters of the physics preprint archive. The operators are going through their daily routine and are discussing what to do about recent emails:

'Some "reader complaints" have come in regarding preprints posted to the archive by Drs. Einstein and Yang. Dr. Einstein, who is not even an academic, claims to have shown in his preprint that mass and energy are equivalent, while Professor Yang is suggesting, on the basis of an argument I find completely unconvincing, that parity is not conserved in weak interactions. What action shall I take?'

'Abject nonsense! Just call up their records and set their 'barred' flags to TRUE.'

'And here's a letter from one 'Hans Bethe' supporting an author whose paper we deleted from the archive as being 'inappropriate'.'

'Please don't bother me with all these day to day matters! Prof. Bethe is not in the relevant 'field of expertise', so by rule 23(ii) we simply ignore anything he says. Just delete his email and send him rejection letter #5.'

Vital resource should be open to all physicists

Prof. Josephson,

In my opinion, Life is but the normal extension or evolution of what the universe does. Life is a recipe for an even better dispersion of energy in space and time than that of the simple black body. As for "simple", I am getting to it in my essay. I am taking the old "substance" and "cause" approach and it gives interesting insight in the matter.

All the bests,

Marcel,

Thanks for replying Brian,

I agree that with arXiv as the de facto standard; it has become a vital resource that should be open to all physicists. If our work is perfected and polished enough to be published in a proceedings volume or journal, or to appear as a chapter in a volume of academic work, it is wholly inappropriate for the arXiv folks to pass judgement that unduly restricts access or relegates papers to a category like gen-ph where they may never be found.

It is well-known that it is nearly impossible to get a paper posted in hep-th unless it has a String Theory lineage. I have met and/or heard lectures by some of ST's most prominent figures, but I think it is a grave mistake to regard it as the only game in town. I can see why people like Geoffrey Dixon become curmudgeons, because they are not taken seriously by mainstream scientists regardless of the predictive power their proposed framework offers.

So I am not convinced that arXiv could ever be fair or will ever live up to its mandate and promise. It is a good idea gone bad!

Regards,

Jonathan

I've just heard from the moderators, thus:

The moderators determined that your submission was in need of significant review and revision before it would be considered publishable by a conventional journal.

Idiotic, isn't it! Almost certainly their system flags my submissions for review when anyone else's would get by with no problem.

And thank heaven for PhilPapers! But of course there's our university's archive system that I can use but I tend to keep that for special situations.

By the way, my ffp15 lecture, as you know, covers this material in considerably more detail. They did post the video on youtube, but not in a very useful form. I was promised they'd put in the slides but it looks as if they didn't get round to it. Accordingly I'm working on this myself and with luck will have it on CU's media server today or tomorrow. I think this will be easier to follow as it goes into more detail, and will post the details when it is there.

My experience with arXiv.

I'm not too disappointed by the system of segregation (leter # 5), because I'm not the only one. But the system of endorsement has touched me. As a meteorologist, I do not even know physicists who could endorse for me. When I thought to go to the Department of Physics in my town, I first read the articles of potential endorsers. Dean published article in which he discovered a significant value of 1000 * alpha. I know the importance of the fine structure constant, but who can explain the importance of the number 1000 in physics? Then I decided not to ask for endorsement. Not only has the scientific untruths published on arXiv, there are obvious errors in calculations that reviewers did not notice.

There is at least no segregation at viXra.

Regards,

Branko

Professor Josephson,

This is of interest to me:

"And why are there these constantly changing but in some ways staying the same 'entities'? That's because there are emergent mechanisms that achieve this: 'entities are always part of a process'... "

And indeed, physics giants have often come to discoverys with thinking about processes, not about things (Newton, Kepler, Planck ...). The entire Boskovic Philosophiae naturalis is about the forces that drive nature. I think that Bošković anticipated much of what was later discovered, probably regarding the topics of your essay too. My question is:

Why is Boskovic very little quoted in modern science? And

Do you agree? Plancks units are 'entities that are always part of a process'. So there is no beginning of the universe with the Planck time. Planck time rather is an entity in the flow of the universe.

Regards,

Branko

Professor Josephson

Thank you very much for a deep and thought provocative article.

A short question: Do you think that we could change causality in Bohm's theory? Instead of a wave guiding a particle we could assume a particle to generate a real wave function. Think about a boat moving in water.

Best regards from ______________ John-Erik Persson

    Jack Sarfatti is the main defender of the original Bohm theory (not the later Bohm that I quoted), so you need to ask him.

    Dear Professor Josephson,

    It is not easy to comment your essay. I found it interesting and very accessible. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

    Introducing biology and siemiosis into the equation is judicious to me. I am more sceptical on simple living organism examples. I wish you would have focused on the brain and its interaction with its environment.

    Kind regards,

    Christophe

      My FFP15 talk, which goes into a lot more detail, is uploading to our university's media system at this very moment. I'll post notification when it becomes available for viewing.

      Jack Sarfatti

      If you read this: What is your opinion regarding my question to Josephson?

      Regards from ________________ John-Erik Persson

      However, I am aware of recent expts. suggesting that there is a connection between the pilot wave theory and what happens with ordinary water drops. Here is a link to an article about this: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality. But, if you think about it, it sends to support my approach to the extent that it shows that you do not have to invoke early Bohm to get analogues to QM effects.

      Dear Professor Josephson,

      I am interested in your work presented here, also because I have my own, scientifically rigorous arguments in favour of the probable existence (necessity) of "other", biologically active levels of reality, not (yet) directly observable, but ontologically real. And I obtain this conclusion with the help of extended (reality-based and causally complete) mathematics of "unreduced dynamic complexity", corresponding to the description at the end of your essay abstract. You can find some major points in my essay here, with much more details in references therein. This is to say that the necessary mathematical framework may already exist, with clear signs of its efficiency. And what's interesting, it is the same one that helps to clarify "quantum mysteries" and other accumulated "contradictions" of standard science framework at "usual" fundamental levels of physical reality.

        Explanatory Video now on line

        The lecture I gave in November 2017 at the Frontiers of Fundamental Physics 15 conference is now online, complete with slides, in a range of formats at https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2657924. It goes into a lot more detail than was possible in this essay, and is strongly recommended for those wanting to understand more. The slides are also available separately, at http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/Documents/Spain-2017.pdf.

          I wanted to bring to your attention...

          There has just appeared an essay by Todd L Duncan entitled "What if Meaning is Fundamental?" asking as you do if meaning is an attribute fundamental to Physics.

          All the Best,

          Jonathan

          Professor Josephson

          Ive admirred your Essay ( as all your works!) I am also in opinion that "biologisation) of science can help to understanding it

          My best regards

          M.Kozłowski

          Emeritus Professor Warsaw University