Escaping Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability with a new ‘Theory of Everything’ by David Jewson

David Jewson re-uploaded the file Jewson_Essay_1.pdf for the essay entitled "Escaping Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability with a new 'Theory of Everything'" on 2020-04-24 13:25:59 UTC.

Dear Agus,

That's a particularly interesting and absolutely key question, as I think the theory contains a truly lovely, different and simple way that forces work, including gravity. It's because this explanation is so different to the conventional explanation that makes the theory so interesting and enables it to explain so much.

It all comes down to the unique way in theory that particles move (I call these particles Qs).

A Q starts as a point and spreads out as a wave. At any point in that wave, a new Q can form. New Qs are most likely to form in high amplitude waves. When a new Q forms it looks as if the original Q has jumped there. If there are lots of Qs, they overlap, creating areas of positive interference with high amplitude waves, and areas of negative interference, with low amplitude waves. The next Q is most likely to form in the high amplitude areas i.e. Q's move into high amplitude areas. Q's are, therefore, 'attracted' into these areas, so it looks as if a force is operating. So, this would be the way that all forces are explained in the theory. Simply put, particles affect the space around them and it is that space that then 'attracts' or 'repels' other particles.

It's similar to the way that gravitational force works in General Relativity.

If you look at the section on movement in the essay, it explains it in a bit more detail and also includes a completely different explanation for gravity.

Dear David,

The answer actually underpins the whole theory.

Consider the following argument:

From the time we first come into this world we have to work everything out for ourselves, and we do that through our conscious perceptions. So, any theory about the world should have, at its basis, conscious perceptions, as that is what we have had to use to form that theory.

But in the conventional view, the world has unconscious 'objects' as its basis, with consciousness as a bolt on. This, then, seems wrong. But is it actually possible to build any physics theory at all out of conscious perceptions? Is it actually possible to build a theory 'the right way round'? What are the things you can directly perceive to build a theory out of?

Well, from my own experience, I think I can say I can perceive a position in space, a direction that something moves in space. I can also perceive a quantity in that I can often see when there is more of one thing than another. I can also perceive when things change. So, If I can build my theory out of quantity, direction and change, then I have built my theory out of conscious perceptions; I have built my theory 'the right was round'.

But I can't actually exactly define those things, just like I can't define the perception of a particular shade of red, as they are personal experiences, they are the basic things from which definitions of other things are built.

However, I hope you'll agree that you too can perceive 'quantity' and I hope that will at least give you some idea of what I'm talking about!

Best wishes,

David

Dear John,

Thanks for your helpful comments, they are much appreciated and really made me think!

To be fair to Feynman, he pointed out that the maths got very complicated, as huge numbers of simple calculations are required to decide anything at all in QED. You are right though; in the end the simple maths of the Change Hypothesis would need to get the same results as the more complicated maths needed to do practical QED.

In his book, Feynman shows how to calculate (in principle) the anomalous magnetic moment of an electron using just his three actions (pages 115 to 119 of his book), so that actually shouldn't be a problem for the Change Hypothesis as it uses the same three actions.

It was Feynman who said there is an amplitude for light to travel faster or slower than c (page 89 of his book), but basically it means there is a probability that a photon could travel slower or faster than the speed of light, being most noticeable at very short distances.

If it was right, there seem to be lots of potential reasons for using the Change Hypothesis. For example, if all fundamental particles are made up of a structure of Qs, then it should be possible to calculate their masses from the theory. If I could do that, then I'm sure you would be convinced! I agree with you totally about experiments, and that, as it is it's difficult to experimentally test the hypothesis. However, the experiment I did describe isn't just about proving an absolute space, it goes to the heart of the theory, because if there is an absolute space, then the Change Hypothesis becomes the only theory that can then reasonably explain why the maths of Relativity and Quantum theory work, as the conventional theories only work in a relative space. So, the experiment I described becomes the key experiment.

Finally, you are quite right that the whole idea lacks some essential details, and without them some of my claims are more like hopes. But I'm actually rather proud of it. It is simple and, in principle at least, it looks like it could work and it is certainly 'something completely different'.

All the best,

David

P.S Thanks also for your recommended reading!

P.S.

I can't stop thinking about the interesting things you said. So here is a list of ten reasons to use the Change Hypothesis (if it were to work out the way I hope):

1 It is a variant of a well-tested theory (Feynman's), so not a big leap to make.

2 It could therefore predict what Feynman's theory predicts.

3 It could also explain and predict many things that the current theory can't such as the masses of particles and other constants of Nature, which would be its test.

4 It could show how the complicated maths described in the textbooks you kindly suggested, is actually, underneath, the repetitive, simple maths of the hypothesis.

5 It could show how the theories of Relativity, Quantum Theory and consciousness are really all part of the same theory, with the same underlying simple maths.

6 This is because it uses a different physical view of Nature. Particles aren't points but have a definite internal structure; movement is really the creation of the new at a distance (rather than the preservation of the old); all change occurs at the same speed. This different view comes from believing that the arrows used by the maths represent something real rather than just being a device for calculation.

7 The maths then turns from something that works, but for no rational reason, into clearly describing reality. Feynman knew that nobody using the conventional theory understood why it worked. The Change Hypothesis offers that understanding.

8 It doesn't contain the paradoxes of the conventional theories.

9 It's great fun, if you like new ways of looking at things.

10 If you like exploring ideas, it's essentially unexplored. I've only scratched the surface.

Of course, I shan't list all the reasons not to use it!

All the best,

David

Dear Vladimir,

I'm really impressed that you're helping out with the Covid-19 epidemic. I read your essay; I also find the idea of pilot waves very interesting. In the Change Hypothesis particles move around in a similar way, but in little jumps rather than smoothly.

Anyway, I appreciate your comments and wish you the best of luck in the contest!

David

As the essay competition draws to a close, I wanted to add some final remarks about the Change Hypothesis project. It was inspired by Richard Feynman who discovered that most of physics could be explained by just three 'actions': A photon goes from place to place, an electron goes from place to place, and a photon couples with an electron. He showed that these simple 'actions' explained complexity by being repeated billions upon billions of times. It is fascinating that so much can be explained by so little!

So, the aim of the project is to try to describe physics using the least numbers of rules and actions, which becomes rather a fun game. Feynman's 'actions' operate in a framework of amplitudes, so the Change Hypothesis plays the game by supposing that the amplitudes represent the real fundamental things in physics. As an amplitude, represented by Feynman as an arrow, can be described by its position, direction, quantity, and how it's changing, these are then taken as the fundamental things (a guess!). This has the very interesting consequence that everything is made up of the same constituents and every point in space has those constituents, so matter and space are no longer separate.

Most theories expand by having exceptions and additions, which is a big problem as it is then easy to make any theory fit the facts. That's why lots of theories appear so complicated. The Change Hypothesis doesn't allow this. If you want to make changes, you make changes to one of the fundamental rules which in turn will then affect every corner of Nature, so it should soon become apparent if that change is wrong. It also produces a physical picture of Nature that is unique and so should be open to experimental testing.

As you might expect, as it is based on Feynman's theory, the Change Hypothesis can represent photons and electrons and their actions, but even as a framework, for it to work at all, it has to work in a very different way to conventional ideas So, for example, there needs to be constant creation, and movement needs to occur in little jumps. But these ideas aren't added to make things work, they are already in Feynman's theory and just revealed by looking at it differently. These ideas also allow for new, simple and unique explanations of things like gravity. Most interestingly, for me, is that for the theory to work, all change needs to happen at the same speed, and if this is accepted the equations of Relativity can be deduced, which neatly connects Quantum Theory and Relativity together with a very simple idea.

Finally, I would say that the Change Hypothesis is great fun to work on. There are always new ideas coming out of it. Recently I realized that the position, quantity and change are also the basic qualities of consciousness, which gives a good connection between consciousness and physics. Also, as the Change Hypothesis deals with qualities of space, which is also a theme of General Relativity, that seems an area that would be worth exploring further. Perhaps the most interesting area of all would be how (and if) all the fundamental particles could be described by the Change Hypothesis, which would need to be able predict all their qualities and behaviour.

From the point of view of the essay, the amount of unpredictability, undecidability and uncomputability in Nature clearly depends on the view of Nature you take and taking the simple view of the Change Hypothesis seems to reduce all three. But, in the end, the answers to the questions posed by the contest are themselves unanswerable until we have found the ultimate theory of physics. The question then becomes, how do we know when we have actually found it?

Many thanks to the organizers and to everyone who has taken part. I've had great fun, learned new things, and been able to develop and share my own ideas.

David Jewson