Our present-day science is interested in discovering laws that describe the behavior of our universe. But there is a presumption implicit in our methodology: that there are such laws, that they don’t vary from place to place, and they don’t change over time. There are no miracles. How different would our science be if we regarded this principle not as an axiom of science, but as a testable hypothesis?
The Zeroth Law of Science
23 days later
It seems to me that the author is a researcher in the field of parapsychology. It is evident that his knowledge of statistics is very good. He wrote "Here, there are real experiments that have been done to attempt to answer the question directly, and there is solid evidence that the answer is, “no”.". I am interested in whether orthodox science has any credible arguments against this claim about REGs?
He writes about zeroth law in science. Here would be useful to mention John Webb and his "Spatial variation in the fine-structure constant" https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4758, although this is not in direct connection with his theory.
He wrote also: "include the accepted value within their error bars, but only 2 actually do." Can he explain more about this 2? It seems to me that this is a lapse, is it maybe 3?
He wrote also: "Human-designed machines are engineered to perform reliably" and he compare this with the human brain. It is a very good theory.
I hope that he will upgrade his theories also with a more intense focus on neuroscience.
I am also surprised that there is no comments for this essay...
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A)just because something correlates / aligns with human intentions doesn't necessarily mean, is caused by human intention,
B) given an aboundance of (scientific/mental/ experimental) tools people can farely -easily overuse them, and omit little details .
C) chain of thoughts
comments up to page 5
now i read page 6 ..
flying people is harder to replicate than people sitting in a room intending to influence random(pseudorandomwith deterministic source) outcomes; the writing look like an invitation to try to replicate the 0,00X
Dear Saffron Swallow and dear Ruby Ermine,
quite interesting points you both raise here!
Concerning the point that the laws of physics should hold any time and everywhere, I wonder why the author does not want to distinguish between our descriptions of reality and reality itself. If we consider our descriptions as approximations to a potentially more complicated reality, then we would expect our laws of nature (let's call them the more fundamental representations/descriptions) to come to their limits at some point. For instance, we expect Newton's law of universal gravitation to hold any time and everywhere unless we are located in the vicinity of a very strong mass density curving spacetime. Taking General Relativity as a more fundamental theory, it even shows its own breakdown in terms of spacetime singularities. Hence, based on the status-quo of science, have we found universal laws obeying the "zeroth law of science"? For me, the answer would be negative.
Interesting that John Webb's test of the fine-structure constant is mentioned here, this is a masterpiece of interdisciplinary work, unifying quantum chemistry and astrophysics! Yet, one may ask in how far the result already uses the hypothesis of universality in the prior assumptions to interpret the data because these quasars are so far away that we cannot examine them as we could any spectrum measured on earth and over the years, many biasing effects have been found to contaminate the evaluations (see e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.00434). Hence, is it possible that we are able to create universality in our fundamental descriptions at the cost of complicating the "perturbing biases" that need to be subtracted?
Last but not least, from my own experiences in life sciences, I can confirm that experiments seldomly lead to robust results. Yet, the essay only briefly mentions that such experiments are usually performed on a very high level of modelling abstraction (see my essay for details on a definition). I would like to add that the Duhem-Quine thesis (DQT) plays a significant role on the interpretation of the results. Often, researchers focus on a particular part to be tested and get surprised by the strong effect of parts assumed to only have minor impact on the results. This was exactly my motivation to think of a better way to rank necessary and sufficient theoretical/modelling assumptions when interpreting data because I'd hope that a more systematic approach to modelling alleviates the DQT and thereby allows us to gain a better understanding even at a higher level of abstraction.
Bests,
Beige Bandicoot.
...concerning the "mystical part" of the essay, I wonder why no relation to the experiments of Robert Sheldrake were mentioned explicitly.
But if the bottom line here is that the way we as individuals (want to) see the world has an impact on the things we experience, doesn't that rather imply that our description of the world and the interpretation of our data is subjective, rather than concluding that "nature is not objective"?! After all, we cannot know or probe several pathways through spacetime for us to compare with alternative histories...
Bests, BB.
A very original but valid question and good analysis. It reflects a couple of my finalist essays in recent years. Can you consider the 'certainty' of deciding 'left or right' motion if interacting with a spinning sphere (the Earths surface) ever closer to the poles? Then deciding on + or - polar 'curl' when interacting ever closer to the equator? I've found those very important questions with respect to QM. The Alien view in my own essay appears to agree, and hints at the implications! Thoughts? Well done anyway.
13 days later
Thanks for the reference to measurements of the fine structure constant at great distances. I'll look into the Duhem-Quine thesis, but my first impression is that it is true, of course, but not helpful. The job of science is to come up with models that help us understand reality, manipulate reality, and predict reality. The models are full of interrelated assumptions, -- that's true.
And of course I'm familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's lifelong efforts to expand the range of scientific inquiry.
I'm not a parapsychologist -- I'm an astrophysicist who has turned to theoretical biology. But I think that the literature of parapsychology has a message for anyone who thinks about the fundamental nature of reality, and most scientists have been in denial about the robustness of evidence of telepathy and precognition, precisely because to assimilate this message into our world-view will be so disruptive to science.
Lastly: the message of Bell's Theorem is also a challenge to assimilate. It's fair to say that Bell's Theorem disposes of the idea that there is an objective reality that can be queried in different ways by the choices that different observers may make. Bell's Theorem establishes that reality is created by a hash of the wave function "out there" and the observer's subjective choices. John Wheeler made this point better than any words I can put together. https://futurism.com/john-wheelers-participatory-universe
24 days later
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a receipt/ (algorithm/way/ procedure/ guideline/experimental design/necessarily conditions/) for experimenting with coincidences, is firstly to create ,( have/ construct/ ) a(/an ) rich diverse environment (/media/place/space/location/) where such synchronicity could (/are enabled to/ are allowed) happen. (or/ can be sampled/detected)
yesterday i was watching a video about scroll lock function on old keyboards, and at the same time , a blanket placed to dry for a serious couple of hours on a pipe in the upper door frame of a room in the nearby front of me "decided" to fall/ scroll down on the floor , [i saw the light of the outside suffering a short interruption, and moved my head on the right to verify and confirmed that indeed was the hanging (maybe complete dried) blanket.]
i count it as a valid weird unusual synchronicity/ events alignment
if i would have been in a scarce place like a desert or a empty- uninteresting room, such things could have not possible happen in the first place to begin with.
a month later
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how to interpret / synchronicity /use
(are there anyother names/ phenomena beside this?,superstitions ,)
what is their meaning ,a reciept
first make sure they are true coincidences, not arranged by someone else
i'm not sure how this can be done
the fact that it has been noticed observed, remarked, it might be enough,
wanting to react on it at the same moment or 10 years later is a space of options
a synchronicity does not mean anything .what you do with it, and why it happens are the questions
write a report,take it as it Is, use it to make a decision,go by as nothing has happen and forgett it, stop still and wait to see what happens next, dont' tell anybody, tell everyone,..//?/
controlling this phenomena might mean doing other things that are typically associated with control
everything around it is as same as important attitude,thoughts
just writing about it it is affecting the potential of such events for me to encounter from now on
lets call it hyper reactive spacetimematter- strings those events that somehow appear to connect with each oder
like keeping balance in some multidimensional field gradient
in this view no matter how big large appear in time space or matter or complexity is in a way, small ready to take of
before the conscious senses
for example when two or more seemliness unretaled objects matches sizes
novel synchronicity means doing something unusual things
what would be good framework to experiment with?
what comes to mind is smalleffects and influences, that have a very low probability of interacting in normal evry day life, and and the experimenter mind should hold the idea of obtaining the small efectsm y trying or considering that tiny tiny influence (that is established by experimental Convention) as being true.
if sun and moon have tidal ocean water displacement, than by experimental example absourdum the little way trash like foodpackages or who knowswhat) are being aranged in the bin(constructed with metal plastic or wood) to have an (gravitatio-chemsitry!) effect on the vegetation around the bin in a circle of 15 meters,
i have other ideas cant remember them now.
control has the word time in its definition the very idea of feedback means, -line- returning a past state in present time miroring a present state, giving feedbackforthe future not thepast or some other lateral alternatives, so this would explain a little why/how beliefs matter or other steady notmovable things
(multifeedbacks interactions)
if quantum mechanical experiments are real(ihave not yet seen any proof/experiment with my own eyewitness that /and how they /actually work) than the future might reserve very weird by today's standars situations and worlds/ behaviors
20 days later
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references from various sources
a)it's easier to explain quantum mechanics to an absolute beginner than to a classical physicist
b) error correcting code at the hearth of quantum mechanics
c) locality space or time
d) empty space at the atom level
e)universe vastness
abcde) it may be therefore, reasonable to try to imagine what if human flight or telekinesis is possible by some not yet known means ; why humans and not bees or lizards ostrich or walrus or ants ?, and after answering that , next question how would such magic could be possible ?
infinite sequence of finite fields
firstly with lifeless objects
lets say there is a certain order of movements(physical actions/ measurements changes,) of an inanimate object
that can release/ or unlock a special properties
considering only movements, like on a board game , where to start, there are lots of objects that can be moved and also lots of various ways those movements can happen. it is there something with minimal effort that anybody at a desk can do or it is needed special vehicles with speed control,
than comes the animate why/how would reality care about what happens with the animate or inanimate?
maybe there are symmetries or other rules for this caring, like going out of moving sands, if a person moves to fast is being abducted, only by certain pressure balance swimm on surface float is there a possible escape
this time only considering an entire universe , if the universe is like the cube- a horror movie, with only a solution find it or not
or the entire universe body has some way to start small and find a smaller subset of the solution (with detectable reactions) (of transforming the entire itself ) or there is only a reverse action for all at once
why would there be an apparent 13 billion years of evolution ,if we are stuck in a simulation
is the mechanism that links consciousness to physical reality unique? is this link stronger or weaker, what are the characteristics of this links, can i use words /sentences to describe those characteristics?
does consciousness/ (layer of simultaneous causality) apply equally to al objects (things observed by consciousness play an active role in the consciousness itself)an all encompassing substrate, how does the study of consciousness affect the consciousness?, are there a reason for a strong local appearance ?
what is a question , what would an ET language questions be ?
is language like a telescope to random sample choices? are there other such interacting mechanism that extract choices out of reality,
are humans life detectors for choices like particle detectors in an accelerators,
do all of this choices grows / gathers/ have an interconnected effect?
can ai be built to have such similar degree of freedom
how would communication look if the decision /thought process is not opaque
would that lead to a better understanding of a random seed substrate that generate those thoughts
are there random social experiments
how can utility be maximized / optimized for any particular placement of atoms ?
is any reaction (words) a measure/quantification of past experience?
does a deaf language has a blurred/ different , higher level experience
is there an uncertainty (knowledge) principle, manifold surface for doing science in terms of consciousness
does reality consciousness, has an edge / surface
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tinnitus is an attention refocus condition , learning to isolate the sensation is a first step towards coping with it
is a way of forgetting that is there , like forgetting that you have legs or a face until you don't move or bring it to the conscious attention,
maybe something similar can happen with physical reality such that there are inaccessible realms because the governing groups interacting attention is focused on other processing, and ignore potentially obvious
at the interface between neuroscience and quantum research
does reality/ consciousness, has an edge / surface ?
this surface/ or volume might be with hills and valleys , caves or bridges
what is this relief made of? constraints in the space of actions
so going in weirder than usual places might be just a refocus shift of attention
external viewpoint ,- i am in the movie of my life attitude
using all the experiences to learn as much as possible maybe
or using all the life-data given like in a math proof ,
when you are stuck and you dont know what is the next step check if al the memories data have been used
if something seems random ( it might be from a relfex of ignoring to survive )
if used at maximum all the choices given reality might statr to pixelize, time to flow entirely backward.
changing the subject
lets say there is a connection * between accelerated universe expansion and the number of humans and this connection can be probed only with a 1000 year experiment . the more people wants the faster the universe is accelerating :))
* someone
already had a similar idea
why not considering a 5 billions years delays and some remapping of scales life is a serious issue , is affecting the past retro causally
an other idea is about historical past-future disbalance ( or hidden symmetry)
for example
most of the famous physicist that worked on development of quantum theory were doing their activity before the widespread of television
the order of physical discoveries(history) might tell something of physical nature
maybe every moment in the past is exactly the same like every moment in the future