The Present State of Physics, Mathematics, and Science

Hi Stefan,

I hope that a good leader, and a good political party, is elected. The world lurches from crisis to crisis, but I don't think that there is any such thing as "last days". What is more the worry is that we "destroy the goose that laid the golden egg", i.e. we destroy the environment that sustains us.

Science and physics is about finding logical connections, via deductions and experiment.

For example, if our the initial assumptions about something are true and we choose the proper logical connections, the logical deductions that follow should be unambiguous and true. It is a bit like what Sherlock Holmes did so successfully. In this respect, a logical deduction of a truth leaves no room for alternatives, since (ultimate) reality - whatever it is - is true under all circumstances.

In other words, (ultimate) reality - whatever it is - cannot be true and false at the same time. If we accept this logical necessity, then all logical deductions that lead to some insights about (ultimate) reality are predetermined by the truth of that reality. In this respect, finding a certain truth about reality seems to be just like mathematics where 1+1 unambiguously equals 2.

At first sight, this seems to be good news for people that believe in a strict determinism of all of reality. However, we often do not know whether or not our initial assumptions are true nor do we know whether or not ultimate reality does allow the brains / minds of human beings figure out all "secrets" about ultimate reality Nor do we know whether or not ultimate reality allows some feasible experiments to decide certain questions. So we have at least three unknowns.

But if we assume that ultimate reality allows human beings to figure out what it is (and how it "works") we are left with the problem of how reliable our initial assumptions are that we used to start our deductions (and experiments) in the first place. If we additionally accept that all true deductions about ultimate reality are predetermined, we may be tempted to conclude that they all are "out there" and are within one's grasp. Some people that believe in a strict determinism then even may be tempted to think that they themselves are predetermined to find out some fundamental truths about ultimate reality, equalizing themselves with a deterministic process that is doomed to "calculate" these fundamental truths.

But if that strict determinism is indeed true, then all of our emotions, thoughts, deductions and conclusions are also strictly predetermined. Whether we nourish some stupid thoughts and conclusions about that reality or whether we nourish some highly intelligent thoughts doesn't matter in the framework of strict determinism, since every thought is predetermined. In this framework we then must state that the only difference between a stupid thought and an intelligent thought is that the latter has deterministically captured a truth about reality whereas the former hasn't.

But the crucial point here is that all these thoughts are not under our control, we have no power over them. A fortiori it is at the utmost remarkable to me that human beings can at all have logical thoughts within that deterministic framework. For example, according to a strict determinism, Alva Edison's conceptualisation of the carbon filament light bulb as well as the subsequent installations of all the electrical energy supplies around the world were simply predetermined by mindless physically deterministic acting processes.

The logical ambiguity that I identify with that strict determinism is that the latter is so suited for not only deterministically bringing about the countless huge scientific successes we see everywhere. Moreover, this strict determinism also let's us falsely conclude that we humans decided to start the adventure of science in the first place!

Within the framework of a strict determinism there is no entity to which one could ascribe a certain intelligence (because all thoughts, intelligent or stupid are predetermined). But IF we want to maintain that the world is logical - THEN we are forced to ascribe a certain intelligence to these mindless processes that brought about our huge scientific successes in the first place, since according to strict determinism these successes are at least partial truths about ultimate reality. MOREOVER, these mindless processes then (if the initial assumption of mindless deterministic processes is correct!) have enabled that we found out that they are mindless in the first place!

So are these strictly deterministic processes mindless or intelligent?

I hope that the ambiguity of taking that strict determinism for a fact now becomes clearer: a mindless ultimate reality at some point in time realizes with the help of logics and some human mind that it has to be considered as mindless - despite or even due to the huge "successes" of science ("successes" in quotation marks since that term has no meaning in a deterministic world where there are no goals to choose from)!

The ultimate last step of such a mindless process then may be that some scientists at some point in time may also conclude that what we call "consciousness" isn't really existent, but is just an illusion a mindless ultimate reality has about itself. Unfortunately for these scientist it can be predicted in my opinion that such a "logical" conclusion is incoherent - since illusions necessarily need some conscious subject to maintain them.

So my suspicion is that it could be really intelligent to accept that intelligence has some real power over the course of events in this world - as stupidity surely also has. Moreover, it seems to me that there must be an objective difference between intelligence and stupidity out there in the world - and not just in our minds like a strict determinism suggests! Remember, ultimate reality (whatever it is) cannot be considered to be true and false at the same time.

So my conclusion is that whatever ultimate reality is - it cannot be considered to be mindless at its very bottom, since otherwise we loose the distinction between intelligence (whatever it is) and stupidity (whatever it is) and the whole assumption of a strict determinism then looses its logical foundation right from the start.

In addition to what I wrote above:

intelligence is the ability to anticipate the consequences of some truths. Intelligence cannot "happen" or "not happen" merely due to the grace of exclusively mindless physical processes. This is a truth that is dictated upon us by logics and it has consequences - if we believe that logics is at all able to lead one to reliable truths!

If you walk through the African wilderness and suddenly see a tiger (that also sees you), it is intelligent to run to the next tree and climb it or to the next car and jump in. Nonetheless, for a strictly deterministic world view, the "intelligent" behaviour of escape has no more value than the behaviour of walking towards the tiger, because a mindless deterministic world does not value animate and inanimate matter differently - it doesn't value anything (except surprisingly its own logic with which it came to its conclusions).

A mindless deterministic world cannot even explain a living thing's curiosity about what is true and what is false - until it would introduce some values that suggest that truth is better than falseness. But that introduction would necessitate that the mentioned world view had to incorporate that it is better to be alive than to be lacerated by a tiger, so had to introduce a value statement. Obviously human intelligence incorporates such a value statement, whereas a mindless deterministic world cannot grasp why truth should be better than falseness - it cannot grasp that intelligence, values and truth come as a package.

"Statistics does not lie, but liars use statistics". We all know the adage. We should not conflate science with scientists. Science is the set of honest, singular truths of the reality we share with all living things. It has no agenda, it does not equivocate. To wit, you are not a science denier if you do not buy in to what even a group of "scientists" claim. Like the liar insisting correlation is causation after knowingly leaving out significant statistical dependencies that would weaken the desired conclusion, some pseudo scientists are more than simply over enamored with their simplistic models of complicated phenomenon, they want a particular conclusion more than the truth.

Antropocene or Chumpocene? Are we approaching critical mass on the number of people trained in universities to think emotionally instead of with intellectually honest critical rational thought? Why is this outcome so prevalent? No coincidence here. Emotional people are easily manipulated, rational people are more likely to push back when promoted ideas do not fully pass scrutiny. If there is a new epoch, will it be marked by the death of the scientific method?

Rick,

Isn't there something very wrong with the idea that a brainless mathematical system at the foundations of the universe can do all the things that only a human mathematician can do?

The fact is that people/ mathematicians are the MAIN COMPONENT of mathematics: people use special symbols; people differentiate (discern difference in) the special symbols; people manipulate the special symbols.

Clearly, if you want to have a STANDALONE system at the foundations of the universe, that can be represented by the symbols of mathematics and physics, then from the start, you also need symbols representing the system differentiating itself (discerning difference in its own equations, variables and numbers), and you also need symbols representing the system moving itself (assigning new numbers to the variables). The additional symbols are necessary if you want to extricate human beings from the system.

But it's not just the symbols, it's the recognition that there are additional, separate, but necessary, aspects of ANY system: 1) the aspect that differentiates (discerns difference); and 2) the aspect that moves the system.

We need additional symbols (Boolean and algorithmic symbols) in order to faithfully represent the world.

Hi Rick, you want to understand the human psychology you lol? good luck. We cannot generalise in fact simply, the emotions or feelings or thoughts are personal. The humans are complex and our sad common global past is a reality and so the adaptation is correlated like the education. Furthermore the vanity and the ego are also realities , all persuaded the humans about their philosophies, ideologies or others, and even they are persuaded to be the center of the universe and when you contredict them , they are for the majority angry and want to show their smart minds like a conpetition instead of a cooperation and give a lesson to satisfy this said ego. You understand this you ? me frankly I have difficulties , all wwe foollow a system general not universal, all we try to find our place and some have more chance than the others and this and that. Now it is the clothes and the wallet wich are prefered instead of this universal altruistic intelligence and consciousness. Andf the majority prefer to be followed instead to follow, have we a problem in the DNA, maybe and probably due to these interactions with our environments since many years of adaptations, so the encodings are correlated. Can we change, yes , is it difficult to change ? yes , can we imply choatical exponentials if we don t change? yes , can we harmonise all this and be more universal ? yes. The scientific method is on the road of death ? no . Regards

You seem to conflate reality and mathematics. The "system" is reality. The methodology by which we try to better understand this system is prescribed by mathematics and physics. The latter are secondary, not primary. There are no puppet masters "assigning new numbers" to the variables. From the physics we find that we can prescribe mathematical expressions that model dynamic situations, where we can predict progress say, over time, by continuously varying the variable representing time. I presume you took at least one mechanics class in the education you repetitively bring up, so this should not be foreign to you. Now I imagine you could find some people that self identify as physicists that would say math/physics is primary. Their view does not define physics, but they are welcome to their beliefs.

Rather than stating your opinion on the need for Boolean and algorithmic symbols repetitively, you could bring it home by describing one specific physical situation that can't be covered without them.

Steve, I think I have a good handle on the variability of human psychology through many years of observation. The dumbing down of our (at least, or perhaps most notable in the U.S.) young in the university systems is demonstrably real. The goal was once to teach kids how to reason, to think critically, to prepare them for solving difficult problems they will face later in life. By in large today, they are taught to put emotions first, and whatever logical/rational skills they brought with them are actively repressed and left to atrophy. They are conditioned to think they have been victimized if what they want does not come to them with minimal effort instead of instilling the need for personal responsibility and continuous personal improvement required to holistically improve the human condition. This is not limited to liberal arts majors, it is put forth in classes required for all students.

All of this is counter to the scientific method, so yes, it's future is in doubt. Nowhere is it more evident than in climate "science" and the touted "anthropocene".

E.g. "the anthropocene"

Rick,

Re "All of this is counter to the scientific method, so yes, it's future is in doubt. Nowhere is it more evident than in climate "science" and the touted "anthropocene"" [1]:

So are you saying that, despite the platitudes and PR of some equivocating physicists, what the hard-line ideas and equations of physics actually say is: that there is no Anthropocene; and that human beings have no influence on the climate, because the laws of nature are the cause of all outcomes?

Contrary to what you seem to be saying, I'm saying that there is SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE PHYSICS; there is nothing wrong with the people who say that there is an Anthropocene [2], and that humans are increasingly influencing the climate [3]. I'm saying that the world is such that human beings have literally changed the numbers for the variables, as opposed to the laws of nature changing all the numbers for all the variables.

1. Rick Lockyer replied on Oct. 2, 2021 @ 15:46 GMT

2. "The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth's history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems." https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/

3."Humans are increasingly influencing the climate and the earth's temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and farming livestock. This adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming." https://ec.europa.eu/clima/change/causes_en

Lorraine, you put forward a false binary choice. If one does not buy into the "anthropocene", it does not mean they subscribe to the position physics and mathematics says everything is deterministic through their application, that free will does not exist. My personal opinion is that every sentient being has the ability to make spot good or bad choices, and free will has no place in a physics discussion.

As for the "anthropocene", first some personal background. I spent nearly 20 years of my engineering career designing microprocessor based meteorological monitoring systems and sensors. Serious stuff, not hobbyist. Our customers were U.S. and international government agencies. I have visited the NOAA/NWS Test and Evaluation Center in Sterling VA more times than I can remember, proving my designs met their requirements and talking to everyone from climate scientists to field technicians in my capacity of VP of Engineering. During this time period from the 1980's through the turn of the century, I developed a very good understanding of the metrology of meteorological monitoring, and relevant history since I lived it and was part of it. This time period coincides with the knee and sharp increase of the hockey stick response in what is called "global air temperature" used to scare people with impending doom.

Prior to the 1980's, governments paid human observers to make synoptic (hourly on the hour) measurements of various meteorological phenomena. This was becoming a budget issue. The 1970's brought on the microprocessor, and in the early 1980's this technology advanced to the point where it became possible to replace the costly human observations with data collection by automated microprocessor based systems. Unlike the human who would not dare leave his thermometer outside in the elements, for cost reasons the automated systems were located full time out in the open so they could measure wind speed and direction without adverse impact from nearby structures. This means all sensors were subject to the worst conditions Mother Nature could dish out, a non-trivial design challenge I will let you know from experience. For air temperature sensors, there was a daily issue of solar radiation heating of the sensor body. This was thought about early on, and to mitigate it, sensing elements were well insulated from the warm up of the structure, and air was drawn in to the element with a fan, a so called "aspirated" sensor. The rub with this is the lack of reliability of the fan over time and weather extremes, leading to high maintenance costs from replacement, and lack of potentially critical data when the sensor was flagged as "missing" since accuracy could not be assured when the fan was inoperable. So once again for budgetary reasons, weather services transitioned to a no moving parts air temperature sensor. I wanted a piece of that action badly, but was told by NWS insiders they wanted a larger company that could logistically handle the field replacement requirements of the solicitation. From reliable inside information I can tell you the skew in the measurements as compared to the "golden" aspirated standard sensor for the vendor fly off was very comparable to the scare "global air temperature" increase to the point we cannot reverse so called human-caused climate change. Now these measurements were from colocated sensors making readings at exactly the same time. Let that sink in if you will before I give you my feelings about the concept of a "global air temperature". Also understand the solar radiation measurement bias is one sided, to the higher temperature side.

There are not enough ground based meteorological monitoring systems providing "ground truth" to come up with any more than a qualitative wet finger in the air approximation of something you could call "global air temperature". Satellites have coverage but measure radiation that has escaped the atmosphere, thus not the heat trapped by greenhouse gases. You might be able to wave your hands and back into some "space truth" (inside joke) indirect "global air temperature" and ignore the fact that indirect measurements dilute accuracy and are endangered by the correlation is not causation dilemma due to missing/ignored/unappreciated facts. Through hubris and arrogance, climate scientists could anoint something as some doable algorithm with available data today, and say that is what they will go with to measure human influence, but how could they possibly put real error bands on the estimate? And what of them talking out of the other side of their mouth with exaggerated certainty about "global air temperature" prior to the better data being available, or any data for that matter going back further in time? Error analysis is important if your goal is the truth, and is inconvenient if the goal is influencing behavior you believe, but can't scientifically prove, is more than perhaps sub-optimal but is actually harmful.

I do not think there has been a scientific endeavor more politicized than climate science. Global climate is a very complex problem, and is addressed currently with relatively simplistic models with conclusions that lack rigor. The "ends justify the means" lack of candor, honesty if you will, overstating the certainty about conclusions put forth to scare the emotional and uninformed into change is shameful and distant from the doctrines of the scientific method.

Hi Lorraine and rick,

Dear Rick, I understand what you tell about the educational system and others, regards.

Numbers are the exact issue that physics refuses to face:

1. What is a real-world number? Physics can't tell you, though an awful lot of physicists seem to believe in abstract Platonic entities. Yes, that's correct: hard-line, hard-nosed physicists believe in abstract Platonic entities, NOT real-world explanations for numbers.

2. Why do the real-world numbers change? Physics can't tell you what a system is; physics can't tell you why a system moves; physics can't tell you who or what is assigning new numbers to the variables/ "jumping" the numbers.

All physics has got is a set of fixed relationships between categories, known as the laws of nature, but physics is pretty hazy about the details of how the laws are supposed to work. Nevertheless, physics is adamant that it's NOT people or other living things changing any of the numbers for the variables; i.e. physics is adamant that people don't have any genuine effect on the world; physics is adamant that people don't have genuine agency.

Rick,

"Free will has no place in a physics discussion" ONLY IF free will has no effect on the world.

You are seemingly saying that people and other living things can have no genuine effect on the world.

In other words, you are seemingly saying that:

-- The physics of the world is such that people could have no influence on the climate, because people and their actions are mere epiphenomena, i.e. by-products of the laws of nature;

-- The laws of nature are the only entities that have any effect on the world.

It seems that, even BEFORE you get to discussing the details of climate change and the Anthropocene, you have totally dismissed the possibility that people could have any genuine influence on the climate.

Lorraine, you should read other's posts with a more open mind. You would do less mischaracterizations. Your conclusions about what I think have no basis in anything I have written. Free will has no innate connection to physics or mathematics, it would be (wrongly) inserted by hand as a matter of opinion. Free will can certainly impact the world. If someone shoots you dead, it will clearly change the world as your living self was part of the world.

(By the way Rick, I think the information about sensor accuracy, that you shared with Lorraine, is very interesting.)

I asked myself a couple of additional questions, anwers are welcome:

1. The issue of counterfactuals

If we take it at face value that ultimate reality operates strictly deterministic, then the whole machinery leaves no room for errors. Literally everything plays out just as the laws of physics demand it - without any exceptions. If we imagine that world to be free of any living and thinking entities, everything happens just the way it should, without errors.

But if we now include human thinking and deduction into that reality, the picture suddenly changes, since people make errors, they can take counterfactuals as facts and vice versa. This means that the human mind - deterministically produced by the laws of physics - often produces ontologies that are nowhere to be found in a strictly deterministic world: the human mind can produce all sorts of things for those we can say that they do not exist.

Consequently, if that strictly deterministic world view is true, parts of the deterministic machinery (the brains) are able to produce false statements about the whole machinery (or about parts of it). This seems to be no wonder, since these parts are not the whole and therefore these parts lack some information to produce the correct statements that reflect the whole reality correctly instead of filling the gaps with some imagination. Nonetheless we have to state that a strictly deterministic world obviously is able to produce counterfactual, non-existent things by acts of imagination and thoughts. What is non-existent are not the thoughts themselves, but their thought-to-be-ontological contents.

So, physical laws in a strictly deterministic world obviously can and do produce thoughts that often are in contradiction with these laws themselves. This can be easily seen when evaluating the huge amount of scientific papers on the "market" whose conclusions contradict each other. From a logical point of view, they cannot all state the truth about (ultimate) reality.

So, the strictly deterministic world that has been defined by us as working error-free is nonetheless able to produce errors. It does not produce these errors on the fundamental level (particles, trajectories, interactions etc.), but on a more complex level (brains). The term "errors" surely is a human term, relative to the human desire to know and value truth more than falsity. Nonetheless we can ask whether it is possible to minimize these errors down to zero in the future?

If the reason for these errors is that parts of ultimate reality (brains) cannot represent the whole thing (due to lack of the whole information, the whole truth), then only the whole thing may be error-free - as is expected within the framework of strict determinism. Now, the whole thing is considered to be inanimate and does not know everything about itself (but only what human brains know about it). The more astonishing it would be if parts of that whole thing (brains) nonetheless at some point in time should be able to know everything about that whole thing (theory of everything). Notice that without animate matter (consciousness), the whole ultimate reality wouldn't know anything, not even that it exists! But with brains, so the story goes, ultimate reality will sooner or later know everything about itself (at least everything foundational, what would be a lot!).

Therefore let's look closer at what inanimate matter doesn't know - but human brains know (in the sense that these brains know what they [still] do not know): if there was a big bang, are the initial conditions that led to the present world have been a necessary consequence of some other deterministic processes - or have they merely been a realized possibility amongst other possibilities? How can one ever solve the problem of a "beginning" other than to assume that there was no beginning, but ultimate reality literally did exist forever (maybe in a timeless realm, maybe only in a realm where time was, is and will be "present" forever)?

If we can't trace infinitely back into the past, how substantiated is the assumption of a strict determinism? Moreover, if we assume ultimate reality with a certain set of physical laws to be eternal (without a Big Bang), how would that leap of imagination be different from assuming a Creator for our present world? The fact that the laws of physics were what they were (and not other) and are what they are then is equally mysterious than believing in a Creator.

2. Quantum fluctuations

Are Quantum fluctuations real? And if yes, do they act deterministically or do they counteract the course of events dictated by the known laws of physics?

3. Non-measurable parts of ultimate reality

Are there in-principle non-measurable, non-deterministic influences in ultimate reality that we never can detect in a repeatable fashion? Are there even aspects of ultimate reality that never can fully be imagined by human brains?

4. What place has "intelligence" within the world view of a strict determinism? How can - and should - "intelligence" be defined within this world view?

Rick,

There's no need to take umbrage.

Forget about climate change and the Anthropocene for a minute. The real question is: can people EVER have ANY effect on the world, i.e. can people ever change the world?

The alternative scenario is that people and their actions are mere epiphenomena, i.e. by-products of the laws of nature; the bottom-up laws of nature are the only things that ever have any effect on the world; i.e. the bottom-up laws of nature are the only things that change every number for every variable.

The concept of people having an effect on the world can be reframed as the concept of people assigning at least some new numbers to at least some of their own variables.

I'm saying that physics is very mistaken about the nature of the world. I'm saying that the world is such that people and other living things assign at least some new numbers to at least some of their own variables (whereby other numbers for other variables are changed, due to law of nature relationships).

E.g., people continually assign new numbers to some of their own position variables for their own hands, feet and vocal cords. This is the means by which people have a genuine effect on the world; this is the means by which people literally change the world.