Fundamentality Here, Fundamentality There, Fundamentality Everywhere by Marc Séguin

Hi Marc,

It is treat to be in another contest with you.

Could I summarize your diagrams as follows:

If you climb down the stairs (turtles) you favor small scale cause. If you climb up the stairs (monkeys) you favor large scale emergence.

Or is this a little to simplistic?

I have a tendency to climb down the stairs. I think you may find my essay interesting.

I think your essay could be a "crystal clear" introductory course to the sciences.

Thanks,

Don Limuti

Dear Marc,

thanks for the intriguing essay! However, I always have to smile a little when I hear somebody claiming that 61 is too 'large' a number of constituents for the Standard Model to be fundamental---given that it could just as easily have been thousands, or millions, or billions, it seems actually rather an astonishingly small number!

But still, there are of course plenty of reasons that the Standard Model should not be expected to be fundamental.

You mention the generation structure as similar to the order of the periodic table, hinting at something more fundamental, and I think there's something to that---to me, it's always been a terribly frustrating element of the SM: it's kinda like, being out of ideas like a washed-up Hollywood producer, nature decided to capitalize on its greatest hit with two unnecessary sequels that introduce litte novelty except for packing a heftier punch. That alone is reason enough for me to want the SM replaced by something neater!

Going further, I think we share some common ground in thinking about epistemological fundamentality, and in particular, in terms of 'everything' being essentially of zero information content, and our models of the world ultimately containing information because they only pick out some part of it, being themselves only incomplete descriptions. Although I come at it from a very different angle, it's intriguing that we should find some common ground there. There's even a little Zen in my essay, too!

Marc,

An exceptionally classy job, as usual, and thorough review of the whole concept. I particularly liked reading your take on the standard model. I'ts been described in many ways to me including from what seemed like a small frame of snooker balls to a top Fermilab guy talking about a 'quark/gluon soup'! It always seemed a cloudy soup to me, missing stock and seasoning, so I enjoyed your clarity and agreed your view.

I agree big affects big and loops back to small but I confess most sympathy for Weinbergs view (indeed I find massive new value in the smallest condensed scale of fermion 'pairs' after 'popping up' and "permeating all space"). I certainly agree your plan to form a loop with the turtles & monkeys, all is connected and relative though perhaps leave the monkeys out of the soup!

I DO want to discuss the GREAT issue between SR/GR and QM. Bell said a classic QM would be found, but it would 'amaze'. Well you may need to be prepared to be amazed. Full ontology and experimental proof in mine, matching code and CHSH>2 Cos^2 plot in Declan Traill's. So yes, I agree "the situation can improve" but only if those in Academia dare to look! which few have. I judge you to give a fearlessly honest view.

Very well done for yours, penciled in for another top score.

Best wishes in the judging.

Peter

Hi Marc, clearly written and nicely illustrated essay.

About combining 3. and 4. take care not to muddle map and territory when doing that.

Dynamic emptiness is a nice idea but to be dynamic it can not be utter emptiness, nothing alone can not move, it seems to me. I think I can equate it to the idea of the base medium from which all kinds of existent things and phenomena are differentiated. I don't think everything physical can come from nothing at all. Though I have read Max Tegmark's argument.

Good question at the end. I think we can still have awe without mystery. Such as for the scale, and the complexity and diversity of the universe. There is another saying, "ignorance is bliss," but does that make it desirable?

Dear Marc,

the Matrix trilogy is, in fact, exactly what I had in mind when I made that comparison. And yes, I suppose I have a somewhat analogical style of thinking---which I often have to reign in, as one tends to see spurious connections; on occasion, I have been so taken in by a (superficially) fitting analogy that I didn't notice where it breaks down. I always feel the danger of succumbing to crankdom in that area: I get so taken in by my own associations that I forget to stop and check them against hard data, or, failing that, the hardest arguments I can find against my own views.

This is why discussion, such as that generated by these contests, is so important to me: here, I get the chance to have other people look at my stuff, and hopefully tell me if I've left all solid ground behind and analogized myself into some fantasy cloud-cuckoo-land.

That said, I am admittedly somewhat fond of the rainbow analogy, I have to admit: it goes to show (well, suggest) that whether the world is just as it is in an objective way, or whether the observer creates what they observe, is not necessarily a cut-and-dried dichotomy, but rather, that the two may complement each other to give rise to observed phenomenology.

This is the sort of thing that I also see at work in your thinking: it's not just the tower of turtles or the chain of monkeys, both have their part to play. A point that one might also make in this regard is how we know of the (current) 'bottom layer' of the tower of turtles only via mediation of the 'top layer'---i.e. ultimately, the entire tower is, of course, presented to us only via our experience within the world, and hence, as much a part of the mind as it can claim to be objective reality.

So again, idealism's insistence that 'all is thought' and materialist reduction to fundamental particles may not be the opposite poles of the spectrum of metaphysical options, but may both be valid views of the world, with different emphasis.

And yes, I do agree---a lot of valuable thought has emerged in the essay discussions, and I would be very interested in seeing how this might have impacted individual views. Perhaps make the next essay question, "what's the most important insight to emerge from FQXi contests"?

Cheers,

Jochen

Dear Marc,

I was very pleased to read your essay! It was very well explained, honest, taking into account multiple views about what is fundamental, and at the same time entertaining. I like the idea to use the Zen symbol ensЕЌ to symbolize "dynamic emptiness", whether it is at the top or at the bottom. And the proposal that maybe the top and the bottom was the same ensЕЌ. I had much fun seeing the "fog of metaphysical handwaving" as the missing link with the bottom fundamental abstract structure, and at the same time the missing link to consciousness. This was even funnier considering how true it is :) Excellent essay, I wish you success!

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica, Indra's net

Hello Mr Seguin,

I liked a lot your essay.It is one of my favorites.

I have an explaination for this dark matter and this dark energy and I have correlated with the quantum gravitation in my theory of spherisation with quant and cosm sphères Inside an universal spheres.It is the meaning of my equation E=m'b)c²+m(nb)l² with m(nb) this dark matter this matter non baryonic.I have encircled the model standard mith these particles and correlated fields , with forces weaker than electrmagntic forces of photons.I have also inserted a serie of quantum Bhs farer than nuclear forces, this standard model is encrcled by this gravitation.If this DM exists so it is produced by something and also encoded in nuclei.For the dark en,ergy I cnsider it like an anti gravitational spherical push and I consider that aether is gravitational also.They turn so they are these soherical volumes ....

Your essay was a pleasure to read , I learn in the same time,

Best Regards

Marc, yes and no. I think a more complex structure is needed. For analogy; The story in a book is something different from the ink on the pages. When the printed characters are interpreted by a mind the story can be of another world, not the world the book, (ink on pages), is in. The 'things and events of the mind are not the same things and events as external reality independent of the mind, There is a categorical difference.That is to say the map has to be within the terrain, as that is all that exists, but that does not make the map the terrain itself. That's how I see it.

Marc.

Thanks. On the classical QM matter; "I find it a little bit difficult to believe.., of course. But to paraphrase Douglas Adams; "Ahh..yes, that's just perfectly normal 'cognitive dissonance' ..we all have that".!

You saw my identification of the FOUR inverse Cos momenta state distributions on all spinning spheres last year, which may be unfamiliar but is unquestionable as proved by the table top experiment shown this year. Borns rule (Cos^2) simply comes from the second cos theta momentum transfer, at the photomultiplier.

Now what you CAN use, I'm sure, is logic. Try this;

Alice & Bob are sent half each of a spinning sphere (any but conserved = polar axis). Each USES a spinning sphere (polariser electron) to find either 'same' or 'opposite' momentum direction (for polar spin AND linear momenta). Each can then revers the dial to change A,B outcome from 'same' to 'opposite'.

Now tell me why we'd need 'action at a distance'?!!

Peter

I liked indeed your essay.

Each year I don't make this essay's contest, my English is not good and also I have my mind occupied by problems in Belgium.But what is foundamental, I beleive that many things are foundamentals, the sphères of course lol, the geometrical algebras , the waves, the maths, the physics, the philosophy, the hamiltonian, the lagrangian, the QFT, LOL.....so many things, in fact there are many foundamentals and it is difficult to choose one road, but the spherisation with quant and cosm sphères Inside this universal sphere and their motions for me are the most foundamental things :) they turn so they are ....

Best Regards

Dear Marc Séguin,

I enjoyed your essay, and I think it helps that you point out how disparate and disjointed physics is at present. And the general overview of the questions about fundamental makes one think about how it all might be linked up.

I found some similarities with my essay. Some of these are superficial, and some run deeper. But perhaps they all show we share a bit of a similar mindset. They can be listed, we both:

Distinguish between ontological and epistemic uses of the word fundamental

Talk about explanation as a key aspect of what links the layers of description

Look at the boundary between chemistry and particle physics

Compare the periodic table with the standard model

Quote Einstein in relation to what might be at the deepest level

Mention putting a theory of everything on a t-shirt

I'd like your opinion on a point of mine about emergent time, which I've never seen made anywhere else. No-one had refuted it so far, but several people have said it's a good point. It's near the top of page 2 of my essay, and boils down to the need to explain a coincidence - if a real or apparent 'flow of time' emerged somehow, then why was it so appropriate that it allowed physical laws (such as laws of motion), which were already pre-implied in the sequence of the time slices in the block, to function? And what were the laws doing, sitting there in the block in this 'just add water' sort of way, as if waiting for something to emerge?

I'd appreciate it if you'd rate my essay, it has only had four ratings so far, and in some situations that isn't enough for the average to be taken seriously.

Thank you, best regards,

Jonathan Kerr

PS we also both mention that we don't yet know how the chemistry to biology transition is made.

PPS. I was very surprised to find an idea that I used as an analogy in the '80s and '90s about QM on your page, in a conversation you had with Georgina. At the time I was looking for an analogy for what Paul Davies used to call the 'software/hardware entanglement', and what Jaynes called an omelette: "A peculiar mixture describing in part realities of Nature, in part incomplete human information about Nature - all scrambled up by Heisenberg and Bohr into an omelette that nobody has seen how to unscramble"[i/].

I thought about a map which is at the same scale at the territory it describes, and is drawn onto it. And then one day you don't bother to draw it on, you just use the territory as the map. This idea didn't help much at the time, but it helped to understand that something, somehow, was doubling as its own description. Anyway, it seems that you and I have similar ideas! Best wishes, Jonathan