Lorraine Ford As far as I can see, you're postulating an assumption that there are "simple", "one-step" processes whose uncertainty at quantum levels remains a mystery, and then there are many-step "complex" processes creating the observed diversity of structures. This corresponds more or less to the mainstream science picture. What I rigorously show by the unreduced, real interaction analysis (never performed within the mainstream science framework) is that there are no such "simple" processes with the single possible outcome in real-world interactions, since even the simplest (but real) interaction configuration leads to many equally possible and incompatible outcomes, which are forced therefore to permanently replace one another in causally random order thus defined, under the influence of the same, initially (configurationally) simple interaction. All respective one-step "models" of usual science fatally simplify real-world interactions (all real objects have finite extensions, interact in three dimensions, etc.), and that is the origin of one-step simplicity you refer to.

I agree that cause can be viewed as a basically simple concept. It is the more disappointing that the standard science approach prefers to ignore causality (the origin of things) imposing instead its ready-made (actually guessed), simplified and abstract structures, which are then mechanically adjusted to observation results by playing with parameters and rejecting the inevitable remaining contradictions as irrelevant "philosophy" or the object for (never-ending) "future studies". Particles are "strings" (apparently not anymore, decades lost for "our best theory"), or maybe they are "loops"? (to fill in the next decades, with the same result), and interactions are "gauge symmetries" (can you imagine that?), which then are "spontaneously broken" (i.e. they are real and not at the same time, the half-dead cat is here again), while gravity is the curved time, don't even try to doubt it (even if they can't say what time actually is), and so on.🙂

Speaking of higher-level complexity (your final remarks), we obviously deal here with the whole underlying hierarchy of fundamentally uncertain interaction results. However, uncertainty of lower levels may be too small and actually hidden within more definite structures of higher levels, which have their own, smaller or greater, uncertainty. The general course of the complexity development curve is causally determined, including all its internal uncertainties (i.t. it's a "thick" and "structured" line, with particularly "smeared" sections around its "bifurcation points" of greater changes). Right now, the global civilization development has entered the huge, historically unique bifurcation phase and tends already to opt for the default, descending branch of degradation, including the dominating tendency of mainstream science (the notorious "end of science"). Today's stupid Putin's wars and other "strange" disasters ("a sham world" you mention) are but secondary manifestations of this global bifurcation and its emerging sad choice, while "people" always preserve their "genuine responsibility" to choose the new progress and pass to the ascending development branch. I just specify how they could do it practically. But whether they can really be better than they are now may also be predetermined at a deeper level. So what, again "no real choice"? The naturally following positive solution is that the minority of those who want and can make the better choice should at least be permitted (and suitably organized) to do so, with others eventually joining them or following their other choices (we tend to tolerate and coexist with all those wild but quite human tribes, don't we?). And all of it starts right here, in modern science/knowledge development, the unique basis of any other progress.

      Andrei Kirilyuk

      Oh yes, sorry for mixing. I read both answers in one and then didn't pay close attention to what I was quoting from. But my questions and comments are still the same.
      When it is stated
      »two physically real, practically structureless, homogeneously interacting entities« there is obviously a specific theory/book behind it, which is not known to the reader and which can be read somewhere. My own experience is: Ideas have little value! They would have to be translated at least into a physical hypothesis, which can be compared with reality, i.e. measured. What I should understand by two physically real, practically structureless, homogeneously interacting entities, is not clear to me.
      And that leads over to the part I forgot to comment on, »why is "our science system really so unfree"«. I think our science is as free as it's ever been, it's too free, there's too much money. From my perspective we put way too much unfinished and bad 'science' into the world, and hardly anyone is embarrassed. It takes maybe 50 ideas to come up with a reasonably solid, mature and well thought out hypothesis, and then a lot of time to verify it. For me, it's actually enough to read a good, complete publication about it at the end. But today the authors publish already the 50 small, not seldom trivial ideas and then still leave out the difficult part of the Verfikation at the end completely, because they publish already again new ideas to new topics. To find something in this unfinished mass that really takes you further is not only a problem of mine, but certainly also of FQxi and other organizations.

          Arved Huebler Yes, a more detailed and technical expositions of my results certainly exist, but in this essay I wanted to emphasize specifically that general idea about the necessary causality in science (consistent progressive derivation of everything), since it is absent in the allegedly "rigorous" framework of conventional theory (while I obviously maintain it in my approach, which permits one to avoid all conventional "mysteries", the accumulating "dark matters" and resolve many other stagnating contradictions of standard positivism). It seems so evident: Just preserve consistency (i.e. actually logic) in science, and you'll obtain an "ideal" picture of measurable reality (which is virtually everything reasonably accessible, with modern technological powers). And yet, the cherished and spoiled official science (as you correctly note) succeeds in total violation of this apparently natural demand. So, yes, as you say, there are too many useless "models" in modern science — and, I would add, practically no truly truth-seeking, problem-solving results. With such terrible "effectiveness", we are losing genuine science and with it any real progress possibility (inevitably and quickly replaced by degradation, already quite visible).

            Andrei Kirilyuk
            Any theory of how the world works needs to be able to say why the numbers are moving. 🙂

            Why did Vladimir Putin’s vocal cords move from numeric position 1 to numeric position 2, and to other numeric positions (when he was giving orders to invade Ukraine)? Was it the laws of nature that moved the numbers, quantum randomness that moved the numbers, or did Putin move his own numbers? Your answer seems to be identical to the answer physicists would give: impersonal laws of nature or impersonal randomness caused the numbers to move; Putin cannot cause some of his own numbers to move. Your answer seems to be identical to the answer physicists would give, because there is no way that these theories would allow people to be responsible for their own words or deeds.

            Admin Comment: While we do not support the war in Ukraine please refrain from making political commentary here. This is not the space for it. Other examples could have been used.

                Lorraine Ford Everything shows that Putin's general motivation was just to prove that he can do it in spite of objective development laws and the corresponding reasonable behavior (represented by the "Western" approach and politics). We'll see the final result, but the already realized "achievements" are impressive enough. Of course, anybody can always perform an arbitrary stupid action, just to prove his personal "will power" as if exceeding "all their objective laws". I am afraid, however, that objective laws will only be confirmed by the resulting losses.

                But forget that grotesque Russian roulette: We have right here and now the very relevant case of even "revolutionary situation" in fundamental science, much more open to "responsible" actions (in contrast to the quasi-total background stability in Putin's case). If one only reads these essays here and nothing elsewhere, one will already have the strong impression that big changes are urgently needed in science (especially taking into account the huge diversity of participants and their visions). In reality, however, such opinions are not extremely new, while science always is and most probably will be dominated by its unchanged mainstream practices and approaches apparently being condemned by almost everybody everywhere. Now that's a perfect case for the study of the role of "responsible" actions by very responsible, elite leaders of humanity... And "objective laws" certainly continue their unstoppable action, with a predictable outcome (including the predictable behavior of major actors). That's where one may become the true lover of unpredictable deviations.🙂

                    Andrei Kirilyuk
                    I am disagreeing with what you are saying, because both you and most physicists are saying essentially the same thing: that we live in a type of world where a person’s physical outcomes, the person themselves, and the person’s environment, are all a product of nothing but laws of nature and randomness. This view of the world is thought to be an unquestionable self-evident truth to many people.

                    In this type of world, naturally enough, living things (e.g. Vladimir Putin) can have no free will over outcomes, and no responsibility for outcomes, because all outcomes are nothing but the unfolding of the laws of nature and randomness.

                    It actually doesn’t matter what the reasons are, what the immediate surrounding circumstances are, what a person’s whole life and environment has been like. (I was just now listening to an interview with a Sri Lankan author who was saying that, when he was a child walking to school, there were often dead human bodies lying on the road, due to the Sri Lankan civil war.)

                    When a person says or does something, they move the position of some part of their body, where position can be seen as a natural category, which seems to only exist in terms of (law of nature) relationships with other such categories, and where there is a number associated with that category. The only issue is: when a person says or does something, at a micro level was it the laws of nature or randomness that caused the number change, or did the person themself cause the number change, or at least sometimes cause the number change?

                    Both you and physicists are saying the same thing: Vladimir Putin was not himself the cause of any number change, and therefore he is no way responsible for the war in Ukraine; only a very superficial reading of events could conclude that Vladimir Putin was responsible for the war in Ukraine.

                    Both you and physicists are saying that we live in a sham, fake world where people don’t act (change the numbers), only the laws of nature and randomness change the numbers, and so there can be no such thing as ““responsible” actions by very responsible, elite leaders of humanity” ! 🙂

                        Lorraine Ford Well, to be exact, I say I'm always waiting for responsible actions in positive direction and I even propose my own, rigorously substantiated version/direction of such actions, in science and beyond, but if there is no real motion in any positive direction beyond "hopes", one should accept it as a matter of fact.

                        You seem to mix greater, many-people, "social" tendencies related to "laws" and particular, individual cases that can either contribute to a tendency or produce a local deviation from it that won't in itself change the tendency. In each case, the individual is responsible (to a different degree) for his actions, but hardly can he/she change the tendency alone. By making efforts against the tendency, we are actually hoping for the growing support of other individuals (in particular, with the problems discussed in this competition), but whether this sufficient support will come or not depends on something else, far from our individual (and subjective) efforts alone.

                        Also, while criticizing the attitude of "physicists", you don't say what your own vision is. Do you want to say that one person's actions can change a massive tendency, or what?

                            Andrei Kirilyuk
                            When it comes to world affairs or science, or any other area, how would you know if events were moving in a “positive direction”? I’m always noticing that what I and others might think is a positive direction, is not necessarily a positive direction from the point of view of other groups of people.

                            Only individual subjects can estimate what seems to be a positive direction, from their individual point of view. Only individual people can summarise their own knowledge and experience and agree or disagree that there are “massive tendenc[ies]” in world affairs or science or other areas. These tendencies are merely a type of summary knowledge or conclusion, about the state of the world, that subjectively exists in the minds of individual people observing the world. (I have explained in my essay what I think are the necessary characteristics of things that can actually exist in the world, and what can only exist in individual imaginations. “Science could be different” if science examined this issue.) But are you claiming that tendencies are a type of objectively-existing emergent lawful force that has power over the world, and that people might need to resist?

                            I’d say that “one person's actions” can’t “change a massive tendency” because tendencies are only a conclusion or an idea that exists in the minds of e.g. researchers; and this conclusion would refer to surveys examining what is going on in the minds of masses of individual people, or the actions of masses of individual people. To change a tendency, it is seemingly a matter of somehow interacting with individual people in the hope of incrementally changing individual people’s minds: this is what e.g. advertising tries to do.

                            Looking at the world and its origins, change is about individual jumps, in numbers or laws, where laws are difficult to change because they are structural relationships between categories as opposed to tendencies perceived by observers of a system. Living things literally have to jump their own numbers, otherwise no change can occur in a system.

                                Lorraine Ford However, all those individual jumps are closely related, due to omnipresent and multilevel interaction, and this permanent interaction changes the whole picture. Individual jumpers are always looking at each other's motions and asking questions, both about their individual jumps and the resulting general motion. Too often, it takes the form of occasional and superficial "consensus" of opinions and jumps (or "self-organization"), but other results are also possible, including more collective and less predictable jumps of progress or degradation. Today, on the background of lasting stagnation, we'd need a collective jump of progress, in science and elsewhere, but for the moment, it looks more like a quickly progressing degradation


                                I agree that the clear definition of "positive" development tendency is absent in the conventional knowledge framework, while it becomes increasingly needed in the modern world of strong and large interactions, in particular as a basis for the missing progress. If we say that "positive" tendency is that of progress (understood as a general "better life"), it becomes somewhat less ambiguous, although still remains intuitive. A sustainable, lasting progress is a yet better explanation of "positive" tendency (when each "success" opens real possibilities for further successes). As to the truly rigorous definition of "positive" result or development tendency, or "progress", the causally complete description of unreduced interaction processes I defend leads to such definition in terms of optimal (the largest possible) growth of unreduced dynamic complexity (the latter also rigorously defined as interaction product diversity, if I try a verbal expression).

                                    Andrei Kirilyuk
                                    You seem to be saying that the world is such that: automatic processes in the whole system, or automatic processes in small, localised parts of the system that exist in the context of the whole system, cause smooth number change and/or number jumps. It doesn’t matter if is labelled “self-organization” or not, it is still automatic processes, that occur as the system automatically unfolds, that cause all numeric outcomes.

                                    In other words, you seem to be saying that the pilots who flew the planes into the twin towers in New York were just as much victims of an automatic system as were the thousands of people killed or injured when the twin towers collapsed. All people, and indeed the whole world with its natural environment and weather, are victims of an automatic system as it unfolds.

                                    Whether it is labelled “self-organization” or not, you seem to be saying that we live in a type of world where people are/were deceived by the superficial appearance of pilots flying planes into the twin towers: people mistakenly believe that the pilots themselves were responsible, when it was actually just automatic processes that occur as the system automatically unfolds. You are saying that everything is/was caused by automatic processes: the pilots themselves, the pilots’ actions, and the environment in which the pilots existed.

                                    Both you and most physicists are saying that we live in a sham, fake world. Why are you and most physicists unable to face the idea that we live in a type of world where the pilots themselves caused their own numbers (that apply to their own bodies) to jump. Why do you and most physicists have a philosophical aversion to the idea that we live in a type of world where people are genuinely responsible for their own outcomes, i.e. for jumping their own numbers?

                                      5 days later

                                      Andrei Kirilyuk
                                      Very relevant and powerful essay with important ideas and conclusions:
                                      <<...we concentrate here on the logical necessity of such knowledge extension today, without which the already visible degradation of science and society becomesirreversible and catastrophic (with the opposite tendency of unlimited progress within the extended knowledge paradigm).>>

                                      <<By contrast, it should not be surprising that causally complete knowledge provides the exact and consistent version of world objects and properties in a naturally unified way of both the physically unified world structure and the universal law of its dynamics and development (unifying the causally extended versions of known laws).>>

                                      A very strong conclusion for the entire system of world science and human civilization:

                                      <It becomes obvious that now, after the complexity threshold, all usual, largely achieved social purposes of “prosperity” and “wellbeing” lose their guiding role of previous epochs, together with the related traditional forms of “political” (tribal-ierarchical) social organization, and the only real candidate for the new, truly sustainable social order of superior efficiency is the reason-based governance and self-aware structure development that should rely on the essential application of the causally complete knowledge of unreduced interaction dynamics described above. >>

                                      But what kind of revolution is needed - the "Revolution of complexity" or the "Big Ontological Revolution" if we recall the philosophical testament of John Archibald Wheeler:
                                      “We are no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, fields of force, into geometry, or even into time and space. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself."?

                                          Thank you, Vladimir. Referring to your question, what I mean by "revolution of complexity" (or "causality revolution") would be analogous to a "Big Ontological Revolution" in its results because the unreduced complexity/causality approach involves progressive derivation of all really existing structures and processes in their causally complete version, without any essential simplification or omission. This hierarchy of complexity levels includes, in particular, the open hierarchy of life and consciousness and eventually any related, maybe yet unknown and not directly measurable, "meta-material" structures.

                                          A most entertaining essay, but I have a few nits
                                          A. First of all in terms of Causal structure, its creation in terms of space - time is even now debated . As an example at the start of the big bang what introduced Causal structure in the first place. What is its genesis
                                          B. As to completeness, we have to go to this one
                                          quote
                                          What does Gödel's incompleteness theorem say?
                                          Can you solve it? Gödel's incompleteness theorem ...
                                          In 1931, the Austrian logician Kurt Gödel published his incompleteness theorem, a result widely considered one of the greatest intellectual achievements of modern times. The theorem states that in any reasonable mathematical system there will always be true statements that cannot be proved.
                                          end of quote
                                          In effect what it says that we as an example may NEVER be able to really prove the existence of conditions which are a precursor of causal ordering. If so we may have to accept that we will, no matter what we try to do about it, harness different models of space-time evolution to give INITIAL conditions for the formation of causal order
                                          If that is true, then the next problem is of complexity, and how complexity is utilized. As an example , elementary inflation is very harmonious and at least nearly a perfect fluid. We have to make assumptions about causual structure (Godel's theorem) and then if we understand a branching of causal structure intuit what lead to inhomogenious structures forming. The starting point will probably be doomed to a partial arbitrariness and this also frustrates model builders to no end whom use the Zeldovich relationships as to the introduction as to the CMBR structure.
                                          Meaning that we have to make judgement calls. All the carefulness of the world will not minimize that judgement calls have to be made and that it will be ALWAYS the devil in the detail work to reverse engineer back to initial conditions. We need to accept this and not try to go beyond some of the necessary incompleteness of some of what we choose for our own research findings.

                                            Hi, I disagree with all the negative criticisms above and commend your well presented and argued view that a 'causally complete' understanding of nature and the universe is possible, if only we can overcome the societal issues that took us to this 'barrier to further progress'. I hope my own essay demonstrates that you're correct in most every way, relating the results of an alien science that avoided that barrier! If particularly shows that a 'causal' derivation of QM experimental data is possible (recent 'Nature' paper cited) once the original error is identified. Few have yet understood it due to embedded belief in NON causality! Do study and comment.
                                            The only question I have is on an apparent dichotomy. You agree to Chaos and 'unknown complexity levels', which is what Godel's theorem is mainly about, yet include and dismiss Godel with the worse parts of isolated mathematical fantasy! I suspect your view of Godel differs, or do you see the dichotomy? A good score none the less.

                                              Vladimir Rogozhin
                                              I believe that this is the problem of ontological justification /substantiation of the entire system of knowledge and cognition, and above all, the solution of the "millennium problem" No. 1 (not only for mathematicians) - the ontological justification /substantiation of mathematics (ontological basification).
                                              Philosophical precepts have given us great minds.
                                              "Philosophy is written in a majestic book (I mean the Universe), which is constantly open to our gaze, but only those who first learn to comprehend its language and interpret the signs with which it is written can understand it. It is written in the language of mathematics, and signs her - triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which a person could not understand a single word in it; without them, he would be doomed to wander in the dark through the labyrinth "(Galileo "Assay Master").

                                              Why in the first place "triangle"? Let us also recall Plato's "celestial triangle" (equilateral).
                                              Fields Prize winner Vladimir Voevodsky (1966-2017): "What we now call the crisis of Russian science is not only a crisis of Russian science. There is a crisis of world science. Real progress will consist in a very serious fight between science and religion, which will end in their association."
                                              I think there will be a "serious fight" here: Meta Axiom "In the Beginning was the Logos
/ ጘΜ áŒ€ÏÏ‡áż‡ ጊΜ ᜁ Î»ÏŒÎłÎżÏ‚" VS. Hypothesis "In the Beginning was a" Big Bang ..."
                                              where LOGOS is a META-LAW that governs the Universe (in the spirit of Heraclitus)
                                              [http://baaltii1.livejournal.com/198675.html]
                                              How to draw the LAW in the language of mathematics?
                                              This is an equilateral triangle (since ancient Egypt).
                                              On the other hand, to interpret in the modern language of physics (taking into account all the problems in its metaphysical / ontological foundations) the dialectical-ontological triad "being - nothing/otherbing - becoming" and draw it. By the way, G. Hegel tried to do this...
                                              What is your attitude to the covenant of the mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky, the developer of the univalent foundations of mathematics?

                                              "Truth should be drawn..." (A. Zenkin "SCIENTIFIC COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN MATHEMATICS")
                                              [http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.htm]

                                              Understanding is "events of grasping the structure" (G. Gutner "Ontology of Mathematical Discourse"). So we need to grasp the "structure" (super-structure, primordial generating structure).
                                              And the central problem: What holds, develops and directs this generative "super-structure"?

                                              Therefore, here it is also necessary to take a fresh look (understand) matter: matter is that from which all meanings, forms of structure are born.
                                              Good tips from A. Einstein:
                                              “I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified" and his famous metaphysical maxim: "God does not play dice with the Universe." How can this maxim be understood, taking into account the fact that quantum theory and the theory of relativity are phenomenological (parametric, operationalistic, "effective") theories without ontological justification (ontological basification)?
                                              Tradition gives us the answer: God created the Universe according to the Logos (Law) (In the Beginning was the Logos..."
                                              By the way, according to the ancient Greek dictionary, the word "Logos" has 34 clusters of meanings, that is, more than a hundred meanings. The main one for the "sciences of nature", "sciences of the spirit" and theology "Logos" = Law.
                                              Here are its invariants to consider and draw an ontological frame, frame, foundation of Knowledge. By the way, the concept of "meta-law" is used by Lee Smolin in "Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe".

                                                Dear PinkJunglefowl,
                                                Certainly, your essay deserves the highest marks. I subscribe to almost every word you say.
                                                In my essay, I drew attention to the fact that the generally accepted concept does not see new phenomena in experiments, due to its abstract representations.
                                                If you do not pay attention to the obviously biased imposition of distorted experimental results (for example, in the experiments of Michelson and the Pioneers), then, in my opinion, words will remain words, while facts may remain recognized facts and the basis of new theories of reality. Hope to see your comments.
                                                I wish you success!

                                                  Andrew Beckwith Thanks for your attention, MagnoliaCentipede. To answer your Question A, as I mention in the essay (page 4, 2nd paragraph), our "postulation" of the initial, simplest possible (practically structureless) world system configuration is not a problem as it includes physically and logically inevitable interaction components, while all the observed world structures and dynamical laws are progressively and rigorously derived due to the unreduced interaction analysis (hence its crucial advantages). As to the causal, physical origin of that starting configuration itself, we can only make some reasonable guesses that can hardly be clearly confirmed, since the real world we obtain and can measure doesn't depend on those processes before it was born (we would obviously obtain here an infinite and practically senseless sequence of queries about what was before each past stage).

                                                  Question B, about "Gödel’s incompleteness" and other uncertainties: See page 3, 1st paragraph and page 4, 2nd paragraph in the essay. Gödel’s theorem is correct, but physically it is even "too correct", i.e. trivial, because in real-system translation it means that you must know the initial system components to make any definite judgement about further system development, or in other words, that every structure has irreducible links to other structures. This is true, but in reality nothing prevents us from knowing the initial system or interaction process components, especially with the modern technology power. It is not always a trivial, but always feasible task. By contrast, the key point is to correctly obtain interaction products, without any simplification of the process. It is at this point that the essential extension of conventional science results is obtained within the causally complete interaction analysis. Another source of uncertainty that you may have in mind is the dynamically random, unpredictable behavior of real systems, but here again, it's not a problem if we can consistently derive all possible interaction outcomes and their respective probabilities, which is precisely the general result of the same unreduced interaction analysis. We cannot (and I think should not) avoid the probabilistic character of existence, but we must and can know the exact details in all those uncertainties (all real-interaction results and their probabilities). There should be no ad hoc guesses of usual science, in the form of its horribly simplified and abstract "models", but only totally consistent, causally complete analysis of each next interaction level, starting from the provably simplest (and thus inevitable) "primordial" interaction configuration.

                                                      Peter Jackson Thank you for your positive attitude, ThistleLion. There seems to be a real problem with those Gödel’s theorems. 🙂 Too many people are inclined to think that they encode some mysterious and omnipresent "gap" in the knowledge we can acquire or maybe even obscure influences from unknown realities. As I explain in the above answer to another comment, the physical meaning of those purely abstract theorems is quite trivial: every real system or interaction level has irreducible links to other structures (typically by its components), and if we don't know those real interaction contributions, we can hardly obtain the correct interaction results. However, we practically can know all the necessary links and interaction components, using the power of modern technologies etc., up to the natural limits of our empirical capacities (like the "observable universe"), which do not create the essential knowledge incompleteness but only mark its permanently moving and quite causal border. In other words, all the "quantum mysteries" and other "dark matters" are not due to some fundamental science limits (as if encoded in Gödel’s theorems), but result only from artificial restrictions of the standard science framework (involving huge interaction simplification and ad hoc abstract models).

                                                        Andrei Kirilyuk
                                                        What is your view of “the provably simplest (and thus inevitable) "primordial" interaction configuration”? Does it involve a relationship (represented by an equation)? If so, where did the operators and the operands come from (or more correctly, the things that are represented by the operators and the operands)?

                                                            Vladimir Fedorov Thank you, CeruleanJackal. Yes, irrespective of details, it seems we see the real possibility of modern science problems solution in the same direction of a much more "honest", i.e. truly consistent, analysis of real interaction processes involved in the world structure formation and evolution.