Dear Peter,

I strongly disagree.

Of course I believe that these people *have the experience* of something that is common to many people in similar near-death circumstances. But all that this tells us is that there are similar processes in their brains that produce these experiences. It doesn't tell us in itself that our most naive interpretation of it ("looking beyond death" or something like that) is true.

In fact, people under drugs have similar experiences, and reliably so.

When you write "checked for correctness by scientists", then this is deeply misleading. No scientist can check that these experiences are a correct view into some afterlife-world. What they can check is, again statistically, that many people under similar circumstances report similar experiences.

All it tells us is that similar things are going on in their brains. It certainly does not "falsify a pure materialistic and reductionistic worldview". It shows us exactly nothing.

If you give a large number of people alcohol, many of them will report that they experience that the world is spinning around them (when they had too much and feel drowsy). This doesn't mean that the world is really spinning around them in any sense, it just means that their brains produce these experiences for biochemical reasons.

Certainly none of my arguments rely on any of those reported experiences that you mention.

Best,

Markus

Dear Markus,

i am not Peter...

Well, people had their experiences while brain-death for more than just a few minutes (yes!).

You do not want to engage in the arguments i gave, but finally this is no problem, since i do not intend to convince anybody, but only want to present arguments.

Best,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Markus,

thank you for your answer. Yes, that's the "strange loop" you quoted in the 5th paragraph, I agree - also with what you say about the prequel/sequel question.

All the best!

Francesco

Dear

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 Markus P Mueller

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

Respected Prof Markus P Mueller

Nice philosophical thinking sir...... Here I propose that we should consider a similar reversal in our understanding of the relation between the "mind" and the "world", and take the idea seriously that some notion of the former is more fundamental than the latter. I argue that such a view, if properly analyzed, leads to a surprising kind of "strange loop": even though it is ultimately more fundamental, the mind can still consistently be regarded as causally supervening on the world....... It will definitely a helping point sir....

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 Markus,

thanks for a highly original perspective on the notion of what's fundamental. Your illustration using noncommutative geometry to show how the arrow of fundamentality can be reversed is very insightful, as is the rest of your essay. I will certainly check out the papers in which you develop the toy theory further.

You get a lot out of relatively few assumptions. I'll have to have a look at your further papers---I'm especially interested in the 'tests' you're using. I assume they're something like the Martin-Löf tests for effective randomness, and you're essentially just saying that any 'typical' sequence will pass almost all (?) of such tests? One might wonder if this isn't a bit strong---after all, very many regularities of experience don't actually persist. I'm asleep sometimes, awake at other times. I was a boy once, now I'm a grown man. There is a lot of change---albeit, of course, one may say that the 'fundamental' level stays the same. Gravity works today the same way it did in those halcyon days of my youth, even if I may feel its effects more severely now.

But what is 'fundamental' in experience? Does gravity really hold a special place over youth, there? In a sense, you're engaged in a phenomenological project, and an important technique in phenomenology (as per Husserl) is bracketing: leaving out assumptions about what the world is 'really like'. For instance, are you entitled to the Church-Turing thesis, which in this context (as you note) is essentially a physical stipulation, if you're putting experience first?

I found this one of the more stimulating works (of those I've read) in this contest. Wishing you the best of luck!

    4 days later

    Dear Stefan,

    sorry, the Peter thing was a typo.

    It is perfectly fine if you draw the conclusions from the existence of these experiences as you said, but I would say it's anybody's personal decision what to make of it.

    Best,

    Markus

    Dear Jochen,

    thanks a lot for reading and for your insightful comment!

    This one sentence of yours made my day: "Gravity works today the same way it did in those halcyon days of my youth, even if I may feel its effects more severely now." :-))

    I agree that the question of what is fundamental in experience is a very difficult one. I'm not trying to answer it. Instead, I'm exploring a theory where algorithmic probability is fundamental, and then the analogous question becomes a technical one: what is the best possible compression of the totality of all previous experience (in a detailed sense explained in a longer paper)? And then the answer is: the laws of nature as we know them.

    Regarding your example, if we replace "being young" more concretely by "being less than 25 years old" (for example), then your question, and what it implies, is an instance of "Goodman's new riddle of induction". In the long version of my paper, I show how this apparent riddle, or paradox, is resolved in the context of algorithmic probability (and this argument doesn't even rely on my theory). You might find that interesting, or even just Goodman's riddle itself.

    Best of luck for you too!

    Markus

    Dear Dr. Mueller,

    Thank you for a very insightful, poignant, and thought-provoking essay. I especially appreciate the clarity with which you articulate a balanced perspective: acknowledging the value and reasons for holding the "orthodox view" of a formal system description of the world as fundamental, while also acknowledging the many indications (the hard problem of consciousness being perhaps the most obvious) of its incompleteness. One might even argue that the orthodox view was intentionally incomplete from the start - as you point out, focusing on objective aspects of reality over the subjective opened the way to tremendous progress. We just need to remember that choosing to focus on one aspect of reality, even for good reasons, does not make the other aspects go away!

    You've also nicely articulated a concrete way to explore a more balanced perspective on reality, without opening the door to an "anything goes" approach that might lose much of what we've gained with the orthodox view. Well done, and I look forward to reading more of your work and seeing how these ideas develop.

    Best regards,

    ~ Todd

      Dear Todd,

      thank you so much for your kind comment!

      Best regards,

      Markus

      Dear Markus,

      I've just had a brief look at your treatment of Goodman's riddle---it's very intriguing stuff! I think one could fruitfully apply your apparatus to some related philosophical puzzles, all variously concerned with finding out what the 'true' structure of the world is. Most forms of structural realism bump up against the question of uniqueness and end up somewhat battered; in the end, one tends to find that any given structure (by which I mean something like 'set of relations') at all obtains of a given set of elements (sometimes called Newman's objection).

      Ted Siders has made use of the notion of predicates that 'carve at the joints' (as Plato put it) to try and attack this problem: if a plane that's half red and half blue is divided such that all blue is on one side, and all red on the other, this seems a better fit to what that 'world' is actually like than some slanted division, into 'bled' and 'rue' objects, although the latter is not obviously wrong, once one gets to think about it (this is very similar, of course, to Goodman's 'bleen' and 'grue'). But it's very difficult to actually make the case that the latter structure is 'wrong' in some objective way, and I don't think Siders quite succeeds, because in a way, he has to appeal to the red and blue itself, which is not analyzable in terms of structure.

      But if your apparatus can be used to give a definite criterion of which structure is preferable out of all the possible ways of carving up the world---or, as I suspect you would view it, that the world appears to us carved up a certain way because there exists a uniquely preferred structure that orders our experience---then I think this could be a huge boon for the program of structural realism.

      Anyway, I suppose I'll just have to go and think about this for a bit!

      Dear Jochen,

      thanks a lot for pointing me to Ted Sider, I wasn't aware of him! I'll have a look at his argument.

      The idea that (algorithmic) simplicity is relevant for analyzing Goodman's riddle has been mentioned a few times before, e.g. here: http://www.dklevine.com/archive/refs4122247000000001964.pdf

      All the best,

      Markus

      Dear Markus,

      thanks for the link, I'll check it out!

      BTW, I'm not good at this whole self-promotion thing, but I'd be very interested if you had some time to read/comment on my essay...

      Dr. Mueller,

      I am reminded of George Fitzgerald's astute observation that the speed of light is "astonishingly slow". And it is compared to instantaneous. The Glider has a flight path. The orthodox view misses Fitzgerald's profound humor, it always seems that velocity is viewed as going from zero UP to light speed. Rather, the non-commutative approach would be that instantaneous in every direction would also be in opposite directions of any direction, and light velocity emerges as the averaged constant of a root exponential mean DOWN from instantaneous at infinity. The 'occluded middle' so to speak.

      Analysis, it seems to me, always needs contain an instantaneous component as expressed in some correlation to be the benchmark necessary for our mind's comprehension of experience. And in common practice, that generally prevails as an assumption of physical absolute simultaneity, which is convenience. Even information of what the parameters are that physically differentiate a zero boundary of a quantum gravitational domain distinct amid equal valued parameters of a local spacetime field, would needs be time dependent in exchange and perhaps the only valid argument for instantaneous information exchange would be ON that zero boundary.

      Pardon me, I'm an old guy, and its a struggle for me to get with the ideas of information being something real. I think you illustrate in your essay something that I have always sensed. That I am distinctly me. What I attempt, I may win, and the world responds to my footstep as if summer's dust but comes to my shin. Best Wishes, jrc

      Dear Markus,

      well, many skeptics as well as believers take the opposite view by claiming these phenomena can be objectivized sufficiently to explain them. Indeed there is much literature of investigations from both sides of the fence.

      Therefore I would not consider exchanges of arguments and viewpoints from both sides of the fence as being beyond any scientific discourse. In fact, the whole essay contest is an example of scientific discourse about ideas that mutually exclude each other and moreover - as this contest shows - is the whole lot the quest of "anybody's personal decision what to make of it".

      The example with the current contest should merely illustrate that questions like "what is 'fundamental'?" can reasonably be considered as being suitable for a scientific discourse. Since science is also about null-results, we should not wonder that the very essay question hasn't been answered yet by any essay in a manner that could be unequivocally accepted by the whole scientific community. But what would science be without exchange of arguments? The latter is the sole purpose of every publication (usually).

      I would therefore distinguish between the goals of convincing someone and exchanging arguments for the purpose of seeing whether or not there are inconsistencies in one or the other's explanatory framework.

      Anyways, thank you for your reply.

      Best wishes,

      Stefan Weckbach

      Markus, Thanks, (as posted in reply to your comment on mine)

      The main finding, yes is an "astonishing"! classical QM. Despite beliefs John Bell did NOT show "a local realist model of a singlet state" is impossible! He showed some assumption was wrong, which I identify as JUST 'up/down spin'. Let's listen more carefully to him;

      "..in my opinion the founding fathers were in fact wrong.. ..quantum phenomena do not exclude a uniform description of micro and macro worlds" p171.

      "We would have to devise a new way of specifying a joint probability distribution. We fall back then on a second choice - fermion number density." P.175.

      "..a real synthesis of quantum and relativity theories requires not just technical developments but radical conceptual renewal." p.172.

      "...the new way of seeing things will involve an imaginative leap that will astonish us. In any case it seems that the quantum mechanical description will be superseded." p.27 (so first seeming 'idiosynchratic')

      "..the solution, invisible from the front, may be seen from the back.." p.194.

      " quantum mechanics is at the best, incomplete." p.26.

      The axioms are all required for the mechanism. It'd take half a page each to fully explain but once the ontology is understood all is clear. Those 'two paragraphs' need very careful reading, maybe twice! to do so and overcome normal cognitive dissonance.

      Declan Traill's short essay with code and plot, with my experiment, confirm the mechanism works (at CHSH >1) and the 'detection loophole' is (CHSH >1) closed.

      This has vast implications (beyond the wide areas you refer to) so I'm quite aghast so many accredited physicists seem to dismiss it so readily. Bell did also say; "..conventional formulations of quantum theory, and of quantum field theory in particular, are unprofessionally vague and ambiguous. Professional theoretical physicists ought to be able to do better." p.173.

      (Editors are the same). But I'd expected some could! I hope you might try that 2nd read of those 2 para's using logic not expectations?

      Very best

      Peter

      PS I've just discovered the Poincare Sphere, ignored by consistent with Maxwell, quantum optics and my model!! For visuals also see my last yrs essay. You can anyway reproduce my table top experiment for a few Euro's.

      Marcus,

      I posted a response above in the Feb 3 string.

      Peter

      Dear Markus

      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

      Hello Markus,

      Wow! Mind, physics, emotion. Excellent essay that would get young people interested in the "not boring" world of Physics.

      A quote from Wheeler: "We are no longer satisfied with insights into particles, or fields of force, or geometry, or even space and time," he wrote in 1981, "Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself." [Reference: "The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries"]

      Thanks for an essay that pushes the limits,

      Don Limuti

      (there may still be time to take a look at my entry. I do not think you will sleep through it :)