The Present State of Physics, Mathematics, and Science

Hi John,

I think that your question about perfection / imperfection does only make some sense in a world where people's thoughts and behaviours are not predetermined, but arise to a certain degree from free will.

Nonetheless, perfection / imperfection are clearly relative terms, are human value statements. We have no universal ruler that defines perfection so that we can deduce from that what imperfection should look like.

So I would skip these two terms and ask what other universal values could there exist in a world where there is a certain degree of free will available for everyone. I think one such value could be truth. Whatever that universe is and whatever makes it possible for it to have a certain degree of free will available within it would be considered by me to be a truth.

I think the question then is whether or not truth is something that must be extrapolated to be even valid beyond space and time, beyond physicality. But I also think that already within physicality, especially within human society, truth seems to me to play a crucial role. People usually don't like lies, for example lies that come from the government, lies that come from friends and loved ones, lies that come from statements that the one making them labels them as "scientific" whereas they clearly are merely beliefs.

Anyway, most people I think would prefer truth over lies when it comes to evaluate what OTHERS say. Nonetheless I think it is undeniable that most people also regularly lie to themselves at certain occasions and at such occasions lying is considered by them better than truth, what surely is another value statement made by them.

Although I think it really sometimes is a matter of personal judgement whether or not one "should" at all bother about what is true and what is a lie, or alternatively what is true and what is false, I also think that to make at all distinctions that could be destined to be objectively true, one had to presuppose or to refuse at least that logics is somewhat mandatory, independent of the fact that we can make logical errors in our thinking. Since this is a personal decision, it seems to me to be a matter of belief whether or not one thinks the status of logics should be somewhat mandatory. Hence, it seems to me to be a matter of subjective choice and taste whether or not one wants objective truth (to the extend that one at all can determine its objectivity) to play a mandatory role in one's life. Science seems to me to have subscribed to that idea of objective truth, at least to a certain degree.

As it also is with religious beliefs in God, some people also may be agnostic about the status of logics and objective truth and some surely never thought about it because one cannot objectively determine that status. Therefore, for these people the whole quest about perfection, God and transcendental truth are meaningless academic questions due to the fact that their existence / non-existence never can be proven.

At the other hand, these people nonetheless came to the truth about that unprovability by using logics as if it would be a somewhat mandatory thing. So, obviously when asking questions and expecting some valid answers to "exist somewhere", we naturally have to assume that logics has some mandatory powers. Hence, I think that for the case that you expected a meaningful answer to your "what?" question about the consequences of an "imperfect" world, it seems to me you had to presuppose that logics has some mandatory powers. If you haven't had such expectations, then it may be possible that you merely wanted to know what answers come in, independent of whether or not they are logical. Moreover, it is impossible for me to really know why and with what assumptions in mind (if at all) you asked the "what?" question. But I would consider it an interesting question concerning the ontological status of truth and logics.

So i would say, although the answer to the question "why bothering about certain things being true or false" may be a purely subjective one, the truth about these things may itself not be subjective, but only the "bothering or not bothering" aspect, means our subjective values, evaluations about certain things. It is clear to me that Sabine Hossenfelder's statement can be perfectly understood when she says that consciousness

"comes from the way that complex systems process information I would say and at some level it becomes beneficial for the system in terms of natural selection to have a self-monitoring process"

as such a subjective value statement, since she uses the terminology "I would say". It is clear to me that this statement makes no sense other than being predetermined at the time of the Big Bang - when Sabine's video about "free will" has indeed captured the truth, namely that we live in a strictly deterministic world. So with my comments about her video statements i merely try to make some sense out of what she says there (and surely out of what you wrote) and i think that is perfectly legitimate to do.

Stefan,

The Present State of Physics does not address the philosophic questions that have been perennial since antiquity, a Truth in mathematics is about the form of argument about the axiomatic relationships employed. Perfection may well be subjective in the relentless efforts to excuse the inequities and tragic natural disasters great or small which harass humankind in a universe believed to be the creation of an omnipotent all-knowing supernatural force. Science confines itself to only questions about the natural world, and admittedly gets down into the weeds of conjecture beyond what can be reasonably projected from what has become the conventionally accepted experimentally supported theoretical truisms. In context to the stated question in my previous post, perfection was clearly meant as a measurable observation that would be expected to always operate within the set parameters of predictive observation. The threshold frequency of the photoelectric effect, for instance; do we really know that any frequency specific to a pure sample of target substance will and does ALWAYS unerringly cause the ejection of an electron? That is a causal relationship, but what if sometimes an atom that could, should, and would react to the frequency quantum in a photoelectric interaction, simply doesn't.

Quantum Mechanics doesn't address that possibility, QM works in aggregate statistical probabilities and explains anomalies as attributable to a range of variability in the frequency source and or sample purity. That methodology IS assuming that everything always operates unerringly, that the universe itself is absolutely perfect. That was my point. jrc

Hi John,

yes, the universe may work in an imperfect manner, I would and could not exclude that possibility. The question that I then would ask is whether that would have any impact on human logical thinking - if consciousness and logic are produced according to how materialism tells us. Clearly, an answer would presuppose to somehow know how logics comes about in the first place - and if logics is not impacted by imperfectly acting microscopic causes and effects in the brain, then these imperfections may themselves be the "causes" why logics works reliable in the first place - and with its help we can ask the question whether or not microscopic causes and effects work like we think they work. All a bit weird, but you are right, epistemologically there are no guarantees that could exclude any imperfections a priori, especially when they occur without any reasons at all - since then there are no reasons existent to exclude such imperfections.

Lorraine and Stefan,

You are quite right, physics cannot explain human consciousness at any level. And yes it calls into question if there is any way that we might know if what we think is at all correct to any case under consideration. But then that was precisely the question that spawned the Socratic Dialogues in the first place. Onward! through the fog!

Did you ever wonder how those cheap electric toothbrushes work? You know, the circular brush rotates a little one direction and then back the other way. I'm about to the point of breaking out a replacement, it was on special for $4.99 and has a second replacement head. So when my current one gives up the ghost I'm going to crack it open and look. Reason? Not simply idle curiosity. I got to thinking about the superposition of spin angular momentum that we are confronted with in Stern-Gerlach experiments (remember - electrically neutral silver atoms with an unpaired electron in the outer shell, not lone electrons) and the pseudo-vector that is created between the atom and the fields when the atom encounters the effective margin of the magnetic field arrangement. We find ourselves in the bewildering mess of both spin and orbital angular momentums and the observable behaviors of rotational fields both electric and magnetic. But even if we shrug and accept that QM can't concisely say what a particle is, but will accept that there are electron shells in the atomic structure, then how does the uni-directional rotation of the impeller shaft from the motor in the handle to the brush head couple with the cylindrical drum of the brush to make it rotate back and forth ?!

Neat eh! I'm thinking that one quick and easy (cheap to manufacture) way would be to cam the end of the impeller shaft in a slot in the drums circumference so that it turns one direction during one half rotation of the impeller and the other direction during the other half of the impeller's rotation. And we would have the classic rotational chirality that so stupefies description when we try to describe the interaction of fields in rotation. I have to refresh with illustrations of field direction of rotating charged particles and the whole routine every time I attempt to visualize S-G. But superposition resulting would be time dependent and the toothbrush mechanical example may well apply to the spread of the plots, with a possibility of some atoms not behaving well. I think its kind of evocative. :-) jrc

31 logical fallacies in 8 minutes

SR, category error and duck test. 'On the electrodynamics of moving bodies'.1.measurement of a material train. 2.measurement of the seen image of a train. These are not equivalent methods. Like should be compared with like. Duck Test (not a valid test) 'If it looks like a material train and sounds like a material train, it is material train', NO. The seen colours and heard sounds are qualia. Products of observation, generated by the observer. Being distant from the train the seen image is also smaller than the material object. The 'train' appearing in the generated virtual spacetime observation product.it does not have the chemical composition of the material train, being generated from processing of nerve impulses-that have resulted from sensory inputs. Assuming the seen train to be equivalent to a material train is a kind of category error. I have called it categorization error, as the different categories have not been differentiated.

The trains are illustration of the methods and issue with it,

Actual method set out-

" (a) The observer moves together with the given measuring-rod and the rod to be measured, and measures the length of the rod directly by superposing the measuring-rod, in just the same way as if all three were at rest.

(b) By means of stationary clocks set up in the stationary system and synchronizing in accordance with § 1, the observer ascertains at what points of the stationary system the two ends of the rod to be measured are located at a definite time. The distance between these two points, measured by the measuring-rod already employed, which in this case is at rest, is also a length which may be designated "the length of the rod[//i]." Einstein. That there is the error. My emphasis in italics.

(b) By means of stationary clocks set up in the stationary system and synchronizing in accordance with § 1, the observer ascertains at what points of the stationary system the two ends of the rod to be measured are located at a definite time. The distance between these two points, measured by the measuring-rod already employed, which in this case is at rest, is also a length which may be designated "the length of the rod." Einstein.

That there is the error. My emphasis in italics.

"Current kinematics tacitly assumes that the lengths determined by these two

operations are precisely equal, or in other words, that a moving rigid body at

the epoch t may in geometrical respects be perfectly represented by the same

body at rest in a definite position" Einstein. On the electrodynamics of moving bodies.

The assumption is incorrect though.

Hi John,

I did not quite get it what your idea / proposal / question with the example of the toothbrush and the link with quantum mechanics should evoke. Can you state that idea more explicitly?

When thinking about all kinds of possible imperfections that may happen for no reasons at all, these possibilities are surely a challenge for reasoning itself. Since logics is about linking reasons to come to results, I think the end of logical deduction is reached when thinking about things that exist / happen without reasons. In this respect, interestingly logics itself is able to capture its own limits: if the input (the initial assumption) is "no reasons existent" then everything could follow (but surely mustn't) from that. At least what surely follows is that whatever output (conclusion) that kind of reasoning will generate, it must be considered true without any reasons (if true and false do not somehow coexist in a kind of "superposition"). In other words, operating logically with "no reasons existent" generates a similarly closed "self-explanatory" world view as for example the deterministic world view does.

But this is exactly what we anyway intuitively have experienced long ago intellectually: an existing God without any reasons to exist, a deterministic universe without any reasons to exist, physical laws and logics without any reasons to exist, an eternally existing universe of any kind without any reasons to exist and so on. When thinking about (scientifically inspired) claims, we cannot other than use reasoning. Because if there are no reasons for a certain claim - or the only "reason" is that what is claimed should be true for no reasons at all - then any meaningful thinking about the assumed truth of that claim is doomed to be unreasonable in the first place (although that claim may indeed be true - for no reasons!).

Obviously logics has its limits and it can determine them quite well (if we do not introduce some conspiratorial bugs in the brain / mind due to imperfections in the fabric of reality). Nonetheless it also has some power to handle the situation, since the fact that there are things whose reasons cannot be captured by human logics (for example the above mentioned claims about God, the universe and all the rest) does not automatically mean that these things exist without reasons. Maybe human logics is not equipped in any way to figure out certain fundamental truths about existence. I know that many scientists would deny this and think (maybe due to the huge efforts in the sciences) that the human mind is generally able to somehow penetrate all of these fundamentals. But I would consider this a rather anthropocentric point of view in that it defines human logics as a kind of universal ruler: there may be reasonable things that lie beyond the light cone of human logics to ever truly grasp them only with the help of human logics. This could mean that there could exist a kind of logics that is not human or more than human or in other words something that is more intelligent than our human logics.

We have so several different possible interpretations about this universe.

1 is it a mathematical accident from a kind of infinite heat

2 is it a mathematical accident from an other kind of infinite or not energy

3 is it a physicality from a kind of heat utilising the photons and so the strings in oscillating them to create the topologies, geometries, matters, fields. There we can too consider a god or not.

4 is it like in my model made of spheres 3d and 3 ethers sent from the central cosmological sphere , a kind of super matter energy and so it is there that the energy of infinite eternal consciousness in 0D transforms and codes

5 is it a geometrodynamical system with points replacing the strings and so we have the same kind of reasoning than qwith the strings.

6 is it a kind of pure mathematical universe and so we have multiverses, and so we are inside one of them, how to consider the infinities and the infinity so ?

7 is it a thing still different than all these ideas ?

7

In all the cases , we must find the real origin philosophical and the real origin of geometries, topologies, matters, fields and properties of matters.

The actual crisis inside our theoretical sciences community at my humble opinion is to only focus on photons, strings or points and this GR. So they consider god or not these photons like primoridal essence and after with the geometrical algebras and the fields , they play with the partitions in maths and numbers and also with extradimensions begining in 1D at this planck scale. But all this is an assumption, they consider the spacetime of this GR, the minkoski works or others and after they try to unify G c and h , the QFT and the GR. But if all this is not the truth philosophically and ontologically speaking, so they are in a kind of prison.

The utilise the flows like the ricci flow to explain these geometries or topologies but the 3D spheres too can be deformed in preserving the volumes if the qutrits and main codes are in this space vacuum made of sphere too of this DE. All can be too explained when the 3 main series of spheres merge together.

So all seems really a question of philosophy and primordial essence after all . The real question so about these Spheres is , are they primoridal these 3D spheres like a choice of this universe, mathematical accident or god, or are they emergent from these geometrical algebras in resume. Personally I believe that the 3D and the Spheres are the choice of this infinite eternal consciousness . The extradimensions so are not really necessary , we can rank the fields in considering the motions, rotations, oscillations vibrations of these Spheres , we can respect the 3D at all scales and we can consider this time simply like correlated with the motions of these spheres.

About the consciousness, that becomes relevant considering the main energy of this infinity in 0D creating this physicality. We have so deeper logics to add to this strabdard limited model , the quantum BHs farer than these protons and the fact that this space vacuum encoding these photons and this cold dark matter to create the ordinary baryonic matter can be relevant even for the consciousness. I have reached the quantum gravitation like this and the antimatter is better understood. It is simply due to fact that these photons and these cold dark matter are two opposite suystems considering the matter energy, the photons have more energy than mass and the cold dark matter have more mass than energy ,and the DE is the main codes.

That implies even a fith force that we cannot still reach and it seems maybe antigravitational. The quantum gravitation is simply a newtonian mechanics but it is not the force between protons and electrons, but between quantum BHs of the DE and positrons.....

I beleive that the theoretical sciences community can a little bit think beyond the box and this prison of photons, strings and GR. They can return at this old schools. The GR seems correct for observations but it is just a tool , nothing tells us that this GR and photons alone are the only one truth.

Stefan,

Not to worry, the notion just took me, I haven't any idea of fleshing it out. It just struck me that since Faraday and the orthogonal relationship discovered in electromagnetism, there has never been an observation where it doesn't hold and we have no idea why it exists. So where do oscillations come from ? It is like there is physically a symbiotic relationship between a cubical space and a round space. So here's a simple macroscopic two part system, a cheap toothbrush, that can translate uniform rotational motion into an oscillation of reciprocating motion at right angles. If it can be mechanically done, why wouldn't there be some foundational relationship that connects the orthogonal to the non-linear which supports the macro array of solenoids, mass spectrographs, scanning electron microscopes and television screens and etc. Our understanding of electromagnetism is deduced from macro observations and the present state of physics really doesn't yet have a comprehensive plan to explain how a material particle can exhibit differentiated fields. jrc

The point of that last post is unclear. I'm not trying to say the lengths can be found to be unequal, which is Einstein's revelation. But it is not a correct comparison:

a) Object reality, material actualization

b) Image realty, observation product, manifestation from sensory inputs

Truth vs Reality: How we evolved to survive, not to see what's really there | Donald Hoffman

That is URL, https://youtu.be/1SL-j1XoDms

Hi Steve,

good questions about one can be curious to know the answers. Needless to say that i really have no clue how to finally answer them, but that does not mean that there are no answers. We can only see what the future brings and continue to think about every facet of them.

Hi John,

ah, now i got it.

I like your idea of a symbiosis between cubical space and round space, because cubes so nicely could illustrate Boolean logic with its adverse values whereas round things seem (to me) to more represent the consistency aspects of logics with its starting and endpoint that can be put anywhere on a circle.

Stefan,

thanks for the nod, it can go a lot of ways. But then for me, physics and especially theory in any field is not a search for an absolute answer, but more a quest for the right questions. best for now - jrc