Dear Stefan,

Thank you for your precision. At first reading, I missed that connection between your 1/3 and the ratio of violation of Bell's inequality in Alain Aspect's experiment. Do you have a reference for that amount? I thought it was square root of two. But I could look up in Aspect's thesis.

I published one of your quotes on my twitter profile, which you may find by googling my name. Thanks.

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Dear Stefan

I read your essay. I see that our theories are very compatibile. So it is easier to search differences.

1. One difference is that at you common QM gives consciousness by iteration. I give that every collapse of wave function is decision. In independent micro-world this gives the same mathematical formalism that is known. In macro world there are some correlations between these decisions, so QM need correction. (I have also one article, which is in references)

2. I also give, that, probably, very light particles are a necessary cause for biological world.

3. About Gödel it seems to me, that it is not necessary. But I am not sure. I read about Gödel in Penrose's book.

4. About TOE: I think that QG theory and consciousness theory are very close to us. Those two theories are almost TOE, with some unimportant corrections.

Regards Janko

About Tegmark's articles: He shows how absurd conclusions are given by the mainstream thinking of physicsts: "Mathematics is everything".

Greetings Stefan,

I just read and then expanded on some of the comments you just left on Stephen Wolfram's essay forum. I like what you said there a lot, and your abstract sounds interesting, so I guess your essay is one I'll need to read today. I'll report back with questions or comments, once that's accomplished.

All the Best,

Jonathan J. Dickau

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Hi Jonathan,

thanks for your interest in my essay and my lines of reasoning!

I am looking forward to your questions and comments!

Best,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Stephan, Georgina, Tejinder, Cristi, and Amrit,

I would like to draw your attention to the summary of comments between myself and Jonathan in regard to the observer-participant MC-QED formalism", which are presented below. Since many of you have been skeptical about the ideas

present in my essay it would be helpful to me if we could we have critical group discussion on these comments.

Thanks for your interest and I am looking forward to hearing more from all of you.

Dr. Darryl Leiter

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COMMENT 1. Dear Jonathan,

You commented that: You seem to move directly from the microscale to the macroscopic observer, however, without any attention to what is between, and according to decoherence theory (DT) that's where all the fun is! The whole transition from Quantum to Classical behavior merges because although decoherence is swift, it is not immediate. And DT asserts that the wavefunction does not simply collapse, but rather gets spread out through entangling interactions, and with the larger environment.

My answer to your comment is as follows:

WHY MC-QED IMPLIES AN INTRINSICALLY TIME REVERSAL VIOLATING DECOHERENCE PROCESS WHICH INCLUDES A WAVE-FUNCTION COLLAPSE.

It has been shown [Leiter, D., (2009), On the Origin of the Classical and Quantum Electrodynamic Arrows of Time, ArXiv:0902.4667] that for a sufficiently large aggregate of atomic systems (which are described by the bare state component of MC-QED Hamiltonian and assumed to exist in an "environment" associated with the retarded quantum measurement interaction component of the MC-QED Hamiltonian), the net effect of the quantum measurement interaction in MC-QED will generate intrinsically time reversal violating decoherence effects on the reduced density matrix in a manner which can give large aggregates of atomic systems apparently classical properties.

This is in contrast to the time reversal symmetric case of QED where the local quantum decoherence effects only appear to be time irreversible. This occurs in the time symmetric description of decoherence in QED because a local observer does not have access to the entire wave function and, while interference effects appear to be eliminated, individual states have not been projected out.

Hence we conclude that the resolution of the problem of the asymmetry between microscopic quantum objects and macroscopic classical objects inherent in the laws of quantum physics can be found in the MC-QED formalism, because the intrinsically time reversal violating quantum decoherence effects inherent within it imply that MC-QED does not require an independent external complementary classical level of physics obeying strict Macroscopic Realism in order to obtain a physical interpretation.

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COMMENT 2. Dear Jonathan,

(JONATHAN QUESTION) When you are talking about Measurement Color, this is an an attempt to quantify the fact that the process of making a Measurement will Color what we measure, because the observer is also acting as a participant. This statement is true even if both the observer and observed are sub-atomic particles. Therefore you are apparently asserting that it is possible to accomplish quantifying measurement's effect by imposing an Abelian gauge symmetry, associated with this observer-participant aspect of measurements, upon the structure of QED. Is this correct?

(DJL ANSWER) Congratulation! You have got the idea exactly right!

(JONATHAN QUESTION) That is; by figuring in how each measurement will color what is measured, and applying this rule to every microscale interaction, you are able to alter or expand QED.

(DJL ANSWER: Yes this is correct! In MC-QED I have mathematically used the word "Measurement Color" in as an extension of the concept of color is used in the Standard Model to denote the different kinds of quantum particle forces. I am extending the QED formalism by using an additonal Abelian microscopic quantum particle field operator has an integer name which I call its MEASUREMENT COLOR to impose and operator type of "observer-participation" onto the field theoretic formalism. In the Standard Model the Abelian observer-participant symmetry of Measurement Color can be used in addition to the non-Abelian SU3 x SU2 x U1 symmetries.

(JONATHAN QUESTION): And you have extended QED in such a way that by adding in the coloration of measurement, you derive a theory that is explicitly causal, or reveals the directionality of time.Am I getting closer to understanding what you are talking about?

(DJL ANSWER): Yes! The impostion of the observer-participant Measurement Color operator symmetry, onto both the electron-positron and the photon operator fields in QED, leads to the MC-QED formalism which has the form of a non-local quantum field theory is C, P, and CP invatiant but spontaneosly violates the T symmetry. The resulant violation of the CPT theorem implias that the photon carries the causal arrow of time. This observer-particpant formulation of quantum electrodynamics has the potential to open the door to finding the connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness. In this way we may be able to find a connection between our minds and the "mind of the universe".

What could be more incredible!

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COMMENT 3: Jonathan replies,

Glad I got past the verbal stumbling block, and have made sense of things. It's not the color of the measurement, but how the measurement is colored by the act of measuring. Great how you have married that with QED.

A worthwhile idea indeed. Incredible it is, but quite credible at the same time. And worthy of the extra time taken to understand it.

Greetings Stefan,

Thanks for a thoughtful and intriguing essay. I think perhaps your writing style could use some work, but the ideas you explore are well thought out and clearly explained. There were several good points which, for me, are especially relevant. I like your statement that our ability to discover a TOE hinges both on such a theory being possible to reasonably encode and for our brains to offer enough computational space to encompass that coding. My own contest essay also takes up the question of what is knowable, but I speak of the generalities where you spell out specific limits.

I had heard the one oft-quoted phrase stated as "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" which seems more precise. But it's certainly appropriate to point out given that you are connecting what is un-knowable with what is mathematically or logically undecidable. You seem to be hinting at mathematical constructivism, in a few places, so I was wondering if you are aware of the connection. You might like these lecture notes from Jeremy Avigad, contrasting classical and constructive logic.

I think you may be on to something, in suggesting that Math can arise from the arena of conscious observation and participation in a creative process. I see that there is an observer effect even in pure Mathematics, as powerful as that in Physics, because the elaboration of any mathematical field or system is necessarily dependent on the evolution of levels of abstraction sufficient to contain the concepts generated thereby. To elaborate this; I see the rudiments of geometry to be a necessary step in evolving topology, from which we get distinctions. Combining this lets us develop set theory, and from the basis of these three number theory emerges. I am only trying to point out here that the hierarchy of dependencies and pre-requisites defines some aspects of the structure that emerges.

On the other hand; I feel strongly that mathematical objects like the Mandelbrot Set or the Monster Group have an existence independent of our discovering or elucidating them. The fact that we can plumb their depths arises from the fact that they exist, not the other way around. I deal with some of this in a paper in Quantum Biosystems Journal.

I have more to say, but must get back to other work.

All the Best,

Jonathan

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Greetings Jonathan,

thank you very much for studying my essay and for your encouragement.

I will read yours and Jeremy Avigad's work as soon as i have the time and will give you my feedback on your essay on yours page here.

In my essay, i tried to grasp some fundamentals of existence/ultimate reality. My assumption was (and is), that firstly, every creature or entity, be it a flower, an animal, a human being or a subatomic particle, can only arise/exist with the help of the essential process of distinction. For us humans, it isn't imaginable that there could exist a realm - maybe more "real" as our realm here in the physical universe - where there aren't distinctions but nonetheless there is perception and creativity. The first step of this creative "entity" to step out of its very own essence - namely the "void", the "nothing", the "undistinguishable" - is, to make a distinction. This "initial" step of creation is an *unconditional* act of creation. "After" this initial step, every distinction is contextual, creating its own context and therefore creating a part of reality. One could replace the term "contextuality" by the well-known term "polarity". Polarity in my opinion flows out of the ability of *infinity* (or *eternity*) to make a distinction. So the very fact that every act of knowledge, every act of the (human) mind, every act of physical action and higher creativity needs distinctions, reveals that there has to be another side of the polarity, the undistinguishable, the "oneness".

Mathematics only works, if there are distinctions; that's the ground for every countable operation in maths. Maths deals with counting, so maths emerged out of the process of the initital distinction. BUT: We should not try to imagine this initial distinction as a mere quantitative operation. In my opinion it must be more an act of a qualitative meaning, qualitative in the sense of meaning and - deeper sense of gratification of values. In the latter sense, such things like the mandelbrot set or the monster group are not constructed by a single mathematician nor by 1000 mathematicians, but these phenomenons are expressions of a deeper reality, are symbols of a deeper meaning. In my opinion they aren't just quantitative phenomenons, evaluated by the number of their iterations or the number of their dimensions. They are facets of the potential/actual properties of the "oneness" from wich all reality flows.

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additional thoughts on my previous post:

The fact of distinctions is only a fact in our contextual world.

The (initial) idea of actual distinctions, in my opinion isn't a fixed property of the oneness from wich all reality flows. It is more a *concept*, figured out by the oneness to bring its (infinitely?) many ideas into *actual* reality by quasi-dividing itself into a part that seems to be external (actual) and a part that remains internal (potential).

Nonetheless this oneness can't really divide itself in the sense that after this there are two absolutely disconnected entities. At the deepest level this oneness stays always the same, - namely oneness.

All the Best,

Stefan

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Another remark on my previous post (i should not send my posts so fast...):

If it is true that there's a oneness and that oneness can camouflage itself by making a quasi-distinction between itself and *not-itself*, without loosing the interconnectness of these both parts, because the "void" is always and forever all there is and can be - then we have found an ultimate impossibility in ultimate reality and at the same time we have found the reason why we can conclude out of one thing to the properties of a seemingly disconnected other thing. Say, we have found the possibility to discover the main structures of ultimate reality, because ultimate reality exists in every part of its components.

Greetings,

As per your request, I am attaching my paper from the journal Quantum Biosystems to this post. I hope you find "How Can Complexity Arise from Minimal Spaces and Systems?" interesting and helpful.

I must find a few minutes to comment about your lucid account of decoherence. But I need to elaborate somewhat, to say what I want, and I'll probably have to re-read portions of your essay to convey my meaning effectively.

More later,

JonathanAttachment #1: 1_QBS11pg3143.pdf

Wow!

I just saw your answer to my earlier e-mail, and I have to agree whole-heartedly right away. Taoist scholars called the unformed essence Wu-Ji - neither light nor dark, not hot nor cold, and neither large nor small. It is regarded as pure process without form, or as the forming essence which remains itself formless. It is sometimes identified with the ineffable nature of the Tao. In some respects; this has an analog in Noncommutative geometry.

I view distinction-making as the Observer effect of the process of abstraction itself, but it's obvious that it has a connection with how the universe arises, as well. Making distinctions in the indistinguishable creates levels of abstraction, and before long a hierarchy emerges - all from the process of observation/measurement, which is also a creative process. We can't be an observer without being a participant.

Too much to say for now, but I will re-visit this thread.

All the Best,

Jonathan

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Dear Jonathan,

thanks for your remarks to my considerations.

I would like to make some additional remarks to the Tao.

The Tao is always a oneness, interconnected. There are some (interconnected) impossibilities within the Tao. Firstly, it cannot destroy itself. Secondly it cannot diminish itself. Thirdly, it indeed can heighten itself. Means, it can manage to transform itself to be more than it was before - in a qualitative and hierarchical way, not in a quantitative way. The "quantitative" is one side of a polarity and within the Tao, there are no such distinctions. But there's quality within it, because the Tao managed to heighten itself from a non-dualism, from the formless, via dualism back to non-dualism. What was gained is the very one side of the polarities that is considered by human beings as the "bright side" of the polarities. Namely light, love, the good, leight etc. These aspect of the Tao are heighten by its operations of making a distinction and returning back to the oneness, the non-dualism.

Time is a consequence of the Tao to not being able to diminish itself or even destroy itself but able to heighten itself. That's a one-way-process.

I my discussions with Florin Moldoveanu i declared that i think the very concept of infinity could be more a qualitative property of the Tao instead of a mere quantitative concept. The concept of infinity is for me the same as the concept of non-definiteness, means infinity = undefined. In this sense even Bertrand Russells famous antinomy can be understood and resolved. Because the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as elements must have the same *qualitative* properties of all the other sets. This property is for me, that all these sets don't contain themselves infinitely many times. That's the *qualitative* distinction that gives new meaning and achives a new level of structure and oneness at the same time.

I now read your paper attached above.

"So; more is not necessarily better, for adding content, or building complexity". Yes! It is all a question of quality. In this sense, fractal structures have an additional quality beyond their scale-invariance, beyond their infiniteness. This additional quality is in my opinion intimately linked with meaning, perception and the ecoding of deep emotional ideas into a symbol like fractals or monster groups. The paper from yours from which i cited from is very well written, contains good and well examined ideas and is elegant because it tries to look at old things from a new perspective. That's similar to the process of heightening the Tao, in the sense that the Tao does the same to heighten its perspectives and to gain a sharper and sharper picture of the whole potentiality of itself.

Very good work of yours!

All the best,

Stefan

Hello,

Thank you, Stefan, for your thoughtful comments. I still lack sufficient time to offer remarks on decoherence, right now, but I see you've left a bunch of thoughts on the earlier commentary worthy of note. They are noted, and will be reviewed in more detail later. You raise some really interesting points, and I will enjoy expounding - asking questions - and comparing notes further.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Hi Stefan:

Your essay is very good. I have read some very fine posts from you as well.

You said:

"Finally we arrive at the conclusion that for our hitherto most successful scientific theories to be true and consistent, it is necessary to assume the existence of consciousness to be at least as fundamentally necessary as these theories seem to be."

Consider that in keeping with this:

The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience.

What certain essay contestants on here fail to realize is that time has 3 parts -- past, present, and future. Any TOE must not only address the integrated extensiveness of experience in general, but it must address this as well. You cannot have a TOE whereby time is dimininished, in other words. The integrated extensiveness of being/thought/experience must address the integrated extensiveness of time. The totality of time must be understood in conjunction with, and inseparable from, the present. Physics, to date, has failed miserably at this.

You see these essay authors discussing the possibility of a TOE without even understanding that the mathermatical union of gravity and electromagnetism/light in a fourth dimension of space MUST BE PLAINLY AND SIGNIFICANTLY PRESENT IN OUR EXPERIENCE. In fact, some of the essays that talk about TOES (or the mathematical possiblility thereof), amazingly, do not even reference said unification -- and yet, amazingly, they are still highly rated!!

What increases the integrated extensiveness of being, experience, and thought?

Dreams do. Dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general.

You said:

"There may exist other forms of conscious beings in our universe that have a totally different perceptive framework as we have and thus come to other conclusions about the underlying reality."

The self represents, forms, and experiences a comprehensive approximation of experience in general. Because we experience the unification of electromagmnetism/light and gravity in dreams, we are (on balance) effectively outsmarted by the experience.

Kindly consider rating my essay, and leaving comments/questions as well. Please see my three posts under the essay as well. When you see what my essay says about astro. obs. as well, I think that you will agree that the world requires and involves man.

Dear Stefan Weckbach,

I was drawn by your comments on the Platonic world of math (on another essay). I have now read your essay several times, and would like to offer the following.

But first I would like to "assume" that my theory is correct. so I can address the consequences without being distracted by having to justify each point.

Your insightful and well organized exposition treats important questions. Your linkage of undecidability to "free will" (your 'outside' vs 'inside' perspective) seems original and brilliant. Yet it seems to be based on the existence of mathematical governing laws of the universe. If the universe is self-governing, then it is the free will aspect that has reality. Undecidability is a "mechanical" feature in James Putnam's terminology.

You rightly state that "there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality." (Korzybski's "the map is not the territory"). In my opinion, this is the major dividing line in physics today. Many essayists apparently believe that territory can be created from maps.

Many of your arguments seem aimed at debunking ideas whose root is the belief that math "underlies" physical reality. If it does not, these arguments are a waste of time, but today it seems necessary to argue these points.

To sketch a view that addresses key questions that you ask, I begin with Casey Blood's comment that "consciousness is as basic as matter." I believe he considers it to be non-physical, but capable of somehow filtering awareness of which "branch" of the wave function materializes.

I propose that consciousness *is* a physical field, and argue this elsewhere. This field, like all physical fields, has energy, hence mass, and, like gravity, interacts with mass, therefore with itself. If consciousness is awareness plus volition (free will), self-interaction implies self-awareness. Further, the rotational field supports vortices, which, interacting with their own mass, tighten the spiral until a limit of curvature is reached. This effectively creates the "distinction" you discuss--between the "oneness" and a "distinction". In essence, the massive field "condenses" to a massive particle, a physical distinction that allows our material universe to evolve. See details in "Chromodynamics War".

Having followed our primordial (gravito-consciousness) field to the production of particles, we now have material building blocks for our universe, where initially there was only a field, assumed expanding from the big bang. Eventually, building blocks can build logic elements, and these easily produce counters, whose outputs are integers, and, per Kronecker, once we have the integers, man can produce the rest of math. How is this associated with physics? A threshold detector attached to a counter produces measurements, and, properly programmed, a robot can manipulate these measurement integers, using a distance measure to perform clustering algorithms--based on intraset and interset distance--to group the numbers into feature sets. Between the center of each pair, a line can be drawn, then a bisecting line can be drawn to divide one feature from another, and a feature vector constructed, (see "The Automatic Theory of Physics"). The feature vectors yield physics as we know it.

So, your "mother of all distinctions", is the distinction between the distributed mass/energy of the field and the localized mass/energy of the (vortex induced) condensed particle and, once we have particles, we have the basis of computing machinery--logic elements built of atoms (or other).

Consciousness is awareness plus volition and I distinguish consciousness from intelligence, defined as: intelligence = consciousness plus logic.

We begin with consciousness, evolve logic, and the interaction between the two is intelligence, which increases with complexity of the logical machinery.

But consciouness does not evolve from machinery. The machinery evolves from consciousness, and that is key to your question number 3:

"Perceptions from math or math from perception?"

Logic circuitry counts, compares, calculates, stores and accesses info, all using the physical circuitry available (neural network) to constitute the physically real "models" which the brain builds-- whose interaction with the consciousness field creates "thoughts", "ideas", "imaginings", etc.

Thus physical reality did not come from math. Math, beginning with integers, derives from physical circuitry, evolving under the "guidance" of the consciousness field. No abstract Platonic world out there somehow condensing into physical reality.

Continued in next comment---

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Stefan,

continued from prior comment:

This brings us to your question 5:

"Linking quantum mechanics with consciousness."

Let's reverse the order and try to link consciousness with quantum mechanics. The consciousness field exerts a Lorentz-like force on moving mass (see essay) and this force implicitly includes the "awareness" of the moving particle and the "free will" of the consciousness field. This free will, however weak at the local level, *must* exhibit an unpredictability, which is almost indistinguishable from randomness. But random means "for no reason at all" (if there is a reason, it's not random.)

You see that I am proposing a "generalized" hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics wit the distinction that Bohm's hidden variable was assumed to be deterministic, whereas the free will aspect of the consciousness field is indeterminate, but *not* random. Hence quantum mechanics is probabilistic at root, due to the inherent unpredictability of free will. That, I believe, is compatible with your summary statement that "we assume that microcosmic entities can exhibit a tiny bit of self-government."

You further "contemplate the explanation of consciousness by evolutionary theory." If we distinguish between consciousness and intelligence, we see instead that intelligence is driven by evolution; it is the consciousness field that is the driving force. This scheme agrees with you that "there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality". I've tried to show a path from reality to abstraction.

The above outline is highly compressed; my essay and scattered comments will fill in some of the blanks. I hope you read my essay and welcome any response.

I believe that you will find your final conclusion and mine to be identical.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Dear Edwin Eugene,

thank you very much for your very detailed and interesting comments.

I am happy to see that there are several authors here who consider consciousness not as an epiphenomenon, but as a key feature of ultimate reality.

I will read your essay carefully at the beginning of next week and will give you my feedback on it, though i am not a trained physicist and perhaps i cannot comment on the technical parts of it.

But for now, let me state a line of reasoning which i wrote elsewere here (i think it was on the essay page of Dr. Leiter) about the concept of randomness.

"if there is a reason, it's not random"

Yes, and the other way round is "if there is *no* reason, it's random".

Consider the last statement to be true; many theoretical physicists believe in this statement, but i doubt that truly random events really *can* exist.

Imagine therefore the case that our universe (or multiverse) has it's roots in this kind of quantum mechanical randomness. Then, one is forced to ask, where the quantum mechanical laws do come from? If these quantum mechanical laws are the thing we call "ultimate reality", the question seems to offer a paradoxical answer. Because, if we assume this QM-randomness to be the everlasting, eternal ground of ultimate reality, we have to notice that "randomness" (in the sense of *no rules*, not even a probability-rule!!!) cannot have no rules - it must obey the one-and-only rule of unconditioned happening. So, in this framework, every scientific conclusion, be it as consistent and evident as it may could be, could nonetheless be absolutely misleading and simply false. Because, if there's really *true randomness* at the root of ultimate reality, then, this reality could manage to pop up worlds that could really be fakes; be it as Bolzmann-Brains or whole universes with some insightfull rules, but nonetheless with the problem to decide which rules are ultimately features of ultimate reality and what rules are *random*.

Surely, in this scenario, all rules are randomly composed - "composed" in a way that camouflages sense and structure. But at the end of the day, we cannot come to an explanation of ultimate reality via the concept of randomness, because the core feature of randomness is that it seems to be truly meaningless. So i doubt that this kind of randomness could be the root of ultimate reality, because if it nonetheless would, this would mean that a meaningless ultimate reality is able to discover its own meaninglessness via meaningfull lines of reasonings and via the random composition of structured, "meaningfull" worlds like ours. This seems to be paradoxical to me and i doubt, that such a randomness - especially without any probability-weight attached to it - makes sense (it cannot make sense because there is no "sense" in it due to the very definition of it).

If this scenario would really be the case, science would nonetheless be able to discover new laws, new connections and meaningfull phenomenons in our universe, but it would never manage to explain what random behaviour is and by what forces it is driven. Indeed, there wouldn'*t be any forces for such a reality and our very concept of "forces" would be only of practial value, not of ontological value. So at the end of the day, in this scenario there couldn't be an ultimate TOE, the unification of all forces, because there are *no* guarantees that our 4 fundamental forces have any deeper connections to each other. They could be simply syncronistic, coincidental accidents. In fact, in a truly random, eternal environment, there is no probability-weight, via one could estimate if one's conclusions are really "realistic". Something could be, but also couldn't.

The other scenario would be to assume randomness as just an important part of ultimate reality - that would lead to probability-weights of several possibilities. This would lead either to many-worlds-considerations or to developments, where potential and actual reality has to be distinguished and considered as somewhat "complementary" features of a yet to be discovered underlying reality. I prefer this second scenario of complementary aspects of ultimate reality. I am driven to do so, because of my very existence and my ability to think logical and to conclude out of this ability that there must be an area in which logics isn't the ruler of my all-inclusive existence, but instead rather qualities like meaning and sense. To come to the conclusion that logics (especially the Boole's logic of either-or) can't be all-inclusive is meaningfull and makes sense, but the other way round - trying to conclude out of an all-inclusive randomess and meaningless ground - to an all-inclusive meaning of ultimate reality is really senseless, i think. If one nonetheless does so, there will be always something left, maybe something very important and an ultimate TOE will forever not be able to explain its exclusiveness -if it indeed could be developed.

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Just an additional thought to clarify my above lines of reasonings...

Imagine a physicist who himself develops deep thoughts about the nature of ultimate reality. He has a mathematical or another systematized tool to come to a somewhat deep conclusion. There are two cases, in which ultimate reality could reflect his findings.

The first case is, his findings are truths about ultimate reality.

But the second case is, his findings are false but only seem to be true. How can he decide between these two possibilities? Indeed, he can make an experiment to confirm his assumptions. But that wouldn't mean that his conclusions about ultimate reality are true. Because ultimate reality could be of such a kind that it camouflages true insights via - unbeknown and *truly random* - events in the physicists brain. It could even be possible that an accident, a random coincidence lead to the verification of his experiment. All this would be surely possible in an arena which is only driven by randomness without causes. The main point here is, that in such an arena we aren't able to estimate the possibility of such coincidental events, because this arena hasn't a probability-weight at all. So all conclusions about TOE's could indeed be senseless. It also could be the case, that we are in a part of the random arena, in which there emerged mechanisms that have randomly build a rule to camouflage *almost all* our deductions of ultimate reality to be wrong - with the exception of the deduction that ultimate reality is indeed no more than a senseless and random arena of events without causes. All this is possible if one asumes ultimate reality to be of ultimate randomness.

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Hi Stefan and Edwin:

You both agree/say:

"there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality" -- (by Stefan). Now consider these three ideas in relation to this statement:

1) "The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience."

This is a FACT, and it is perfectly written. The limits of both physics and the understanding in general cannot be properly understood apart from this central and most important idea.

2) "From dreams and abstract (or general) ideas to the experience of great music itself, the worlds of thought and sense are encompassed by the self as desire. Desire consists of both intention and concern, thereby including interest as well. Nothing is ever experienced or understood APART FROM desire (as defined). The instincts allow for the increase, advancement, extension, and differentiation of desire. Consciousness advances desire and consists of advanced instinct. The instincts involve the projection, integration, connection, and extension of feeling, energy, desire, emotion, and thought."

3) "Consciousness involves the extent to which the experience and expressiveness of the self comprehensively approximate to reality."

4) "Given the successful and increased (yet limited) involvement of the unconscious, the highest (or ideal/true) form of genius involves a superior integration of a greater totality of experience, thereby achieving a fundamental integration, growth, and spreading of being and experience (and of desire, thought, and emotion). Attention and memory are both improved and relatively sustained in conjunction therewith. Elevated and sustained desire (i.e., both intention and concern) and energy are connected with both courage and genius, and with the advancement of consciousness and life as well. In opposition to this, the reconfiguration (i.e., disintegration, alteration, reduction, and/or replacement) of sensory experience in general (including range of feeling) is progressively involving a disintegration and contraction of being and experience (including thought). This is evident in (and includes) sleep disorders, autism, cancer, obesity, depression, anxiety, and the experience of television."

Modern physics is one of the greatest threats to our very health and survival.

We all know that money is made by changing experience from what is natural.

What happens when we "outsmart"/replace/reduce/reconfigure feeling and sensory experience (as happens similarly in the dream)?-- Consider television as: dream vision AS waking vision. Also consider: The rapid rise in sleep disorders due to the replacement/reconfiguration of waking sensory experience (and feeling) in ALL FORMS (processed/unnatural foods, television, being indoors, etc., etc.). This discussion could not be any more important.

This entire discussion of what is ultimately possible in physics is ultimately inseparable from the question of: "What should be ultimately possible in physics."

You will find me to be highly critical, and rightfully so, of any thinkers on here who are advocating/advancing ideas that are significantly diassociated with/from reality. I am glad that you two truly seek to open your minds. If we walk away from reality, reality will walk away from us. Frank

Your comments and questions are most appreciated and needed. Thanks.

Dear Stefan,

Like you, I doubt that truly random events "can" exist. A universe in which things happen for "no reason at all" begs all sorts of questions and seems to engender severe paradoxes. As you point out, randomness obeys the one-and-only rule of unconditional happening, so how do "probability rules" get a grasp on such an ultimate reality? And, since randomness seems to imply meaningless, then how does an ultimately meaningless universe discover meaning?

These and other issues seem not to have been thought through by most physicists, who classically understood "randomness" as a "noise" issue in the sense of unrecoverable signals. But the randomness of quantum field theory is a different beast -- the one we've been discussing. It's the real thing, and it needs to be analyzed.

You present an alternative in which randomness is not the ultimate reality, but just an important part of it. You analyze it well, but I have difficulty grasping how this could really be.

J Haldane said "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have no reason to believe that my brain is composed of atoms."

None of these ideas of randomness make sense to me as explaining the reality we share. But a physically real consciousness field, with the innate aspect of free will, seems to inherently imply unpredictability without implying meaninglessness.

I hope you enjoy my essay and look forward to any comments you might make.

Edwin Eugene Klingman