The fairness principle and the ultimate theory of not everything by Giovanni Amelino-Camelia

Giovanni,

I think that our approaches to science may not be as different as you think. If my understanding of your concept is right (you can tell me if I am wrong) we both believe that in order for science to stay connected to reality it must be based on observation rather than man made math models, etc. without observational input and confirmation. We seem to both believe that observational data must be looked at for patterns that would lead us to possible rules of the structure of, and possible relationships of interaction between, the entities that we observe that generate the resulting data patterns that we observe. These conjectures of the causes of the observed data are the hypotheses. You are right that if one can remain completely neutral in his selection, there is no faith involved. This is usually not completely possible because there are usually several possible interpretations of the data patterns and to select the appropriate experiments to run one must often chose to go with just one of them because of limited time and resources, etc. This action of choice (even if the data seems to lead one more to that choice than to another one) is usually based on the belief that following that hypothesis is more likely to result in the true or best understanding of the cause of the observed data patterns. This belief is faith based on observation even if you are willing to give it up if data from further experiments proves it to be wrong or leads one to believe that another hypothesis is more likely to be a better one to follow. As a result of that faith you make a decision to act that will make it easier to come to the best understanding of the cause(s) of the observed data if you're faith is right, but may make it harder to get to that best understanding if you are wrong because you will then need to change to a different hypothesis (belief or faith) and do new experiments based on it. Faith is belief and as I said before it can be based on observation or not. What I didn't cover yet is that faith can be either open or closed. Closed faith does not allow a change in belief even if the observational evidence indicates that it is wrong. Open faith, on the other hand, continually looks at new data and allows belief to be changed if the data indicates a change is needed to make the belief correspond closer to reality. Many people think of faith as existing only in the blind and closed variety, but this is not the case. We cannot function without forming and having beliefs or faith in things and concepts, etc. because they are prerequisites to making intelligent choices or decisions and intelligent choices or decisions are prerequisites to taking intelligent actions, such as deciding what experiments will likely be the most useful ones to perform which leads to actually performing those experiments. If the resulting data from the experiments that are performed always agree with the hypothesis over a period of time, that belief or faith becomes more established in the minds of people as more likely to be a true representation of reality or at least as a close similitude of reality and is then called a theory. One with an open belief system (as I believe you are describing in your communication) will still not consider the theory to be an established closed belief or faith, but will still keep his mind and faith open to further observational data that might show it to be lacking in detail or even to be false. Since all of our observations are indirect, we can never actually have absolute knowledge from those observations. All of our knowledge is, therefore, truly based on belief or faith. It is just faith based on more and more observational data as we make more and more detailed observations over time. The important thing is to keep our faith open and based on observation to the greatest degree that we can in all things. This applies not only to science, but applies to all areas of life, even including areas such as religion, etc. When one understands things at this level it becomes apparent that all things are joined together and that such things as religion and science that most consider to be mutually exclusive really are not. That belief is usually based on the belief that religion is necessarily based on blind and closed faith or belief, but that is not necessarily true because the form of faith that one uses is determined by the user and not by the subject or object of the faith. One is perfectly able to use open faith directed by observation to arrive at the most reasonable religious belief based on observational data. One can even use hypotheses based on observations to direct one into making further observations to test those beliefs and consider the hypotheses that always agree with the observed data to be theories, etc. I realize that this last part may go beyond what you are used to thinking about as a valid object of scientific study depending on how open you have kept your mind in this area, which I don't at this time know since you have not mentioned your belief in this area in detail at least as far I remember. I do believe from what I have read of your writings here that you may consider faith in a more limited context than I am presenting here, however. It, of course, would be apparent if people were either open minded or closed minded on all things, but that is another one of man's quirks in that a person can be very open minded in one area and very closed minded in another area because we not only have the ability to chose to keep our faith open or closed and based on observation or wishful thinking, we also have the ability to make different choices concerning one belief than we do for another. In reality we all come short of always keeping our minds open and basing all of our choices on observation concerning all topics or areas of thought. All we can do is to try to do so the best we can.

Cristinel,

I believe it probably is possible to completely describe the world using math, but the end result would be well beyond the ability of any man to follow and completely understand because of the limitations of the math subset of language. As an example, you could probably completely describe a car with a series of math formulas that would give all of the details of the size, shape, and connection, etc. of each part to others, etc., but it is generally easier for us to understand the car for our practical uses by observing the car and its parts and having the purpose of each part described to us in general terms and receiving the information as to how each part's purpose fits into and is joined with the purposes of all of the other parts to generate all of the functions of the car in the same way. All of reality is an extremely complex hierarchical structure with many levels of structure built up upon each other. It is not possible to look at the top level and determine from that alone what all sub levels are like. It would be like looking at a car drive down the street and extracting from its outside appearance and actions every detail about all of its internal parts and how they all work together. If you go back a little over a hundred years to the time that the atom was considered the absolute smallest entity of matter it would not have been possible to construct a math theory based on what was then the limits of current knowledge that would have described all of the details of the next lower hierarchical level of sub atomic particles because you would not have access to all of the necessary variables of that level because they had not yet been observed at that time. The same thing is true today. Man has not yet recognized that matter particles are composed of several motions, so he does not understand why collisions between particles of matter do not always yield the same result, but instead yield several different results with various probabilities of each occurring. Two things must occur to rectify the problem. The first and actually the easiest is to understand a matter particles basic motions and how they interact in the dimensional system to generate the particle's structure and behavior in interactions. Since matter particles are composed of one motion in each of five dimensions, it is not an extremely difficult concept to understand how they work generally, but making a math model that fully describes the interactions of all of a particle's motions and all the variations of how the motions of two particles can interact with each other to generate all of the observed output results and their various probabilities is somewhat harder. The hardest part though is to find out how to be able to observe those motions dynamically so that they can be synchronized to produce the desired outcome from a given collision. An understanding of how to do that cannot be gained until the general understanding of how the motions work in relation to each other and the structure of and interaction of motions in the dimensional system through its various interfaces between the dimensions, etc. is understood on a conceptual level because until then all of the applicable variables will not be known, but I will tell you this much. The key is in the fifth vector (dimensional) velocity.

You might be able to construct a mathematical model so comprehensive that you could be sure that there is a place in it to place any possible variable that could exist in reality, but until all of those variables were discovered and inserted it would be of little use. To some degree this is somewhat the condition that string theory finds itself in today, although that group of theories is really not that complete yet.

I will also tell you one more important thing in trying to make a theory of everything, which is that even when you understand all of these things you still won't be at the lowest level. The world contains many more things and places that man still has no conception of.

To give you a general idea of what you would have to model, consider an entity that is traveling in the lower three dimensions at a composite three-dimensional velocity of about the speed of light. As it travels its dynamic mass (angular motion component at ninety degrees to its composite three-dimensional motion) is dynamically changing from zero to some maximum that depends on its fourth vector velocity and back to zero and then back to the maximum again, but this time the dynamic mass angular component travels in the opposite direction in the three lower dimensions. At the same time it is taking a three-dimensional curved path due to its fifth vector velocity such that its path closes back upon itself to create a cyclical enclosed path of motion. As it travels in its enclosed path it generates a continuously changing three-dimensional angular motion component that generates its rest mass/inertia effect. This gives a basic concept of how a matter particle works. You can see why you do not always get the same result when two of them collide unless you can cause the collision to occur at a point in the cyclical motions of both particles that will generate the desired result. Energy Photons are similar, but they do not possess a fifth vector velocity, so they travel in a straight line and don't have a rest mass effect. Sub energy particles do not have a fourth vector velocity, so they do not have a dynamic mass effect at ninety degrees to their direction of travel. They only have a very small in line mass effect in their direction of travel. They travel at a three-dimensional composite velocity less than the speed of light and have not yet been discovered by man. Develop the math model that fully describes these entities and you should get the Noble Prize. Man's current theories seem to accept the probabilities as the limit of man's ultimate ability to resolve the results of such collisions. They even include grand rationalizations as to why man can never know such things as the position and velocity of a particle accurately at the same time. This may seem true with man's current understandings and technologies, but it is a fatalistic approach that will only hinder advancement.

I tried to look at your World Theory article, but I could only get to the abstract. When I selected the links that were present on the first screen they only lead me to other links or other abstracts rather than any actual article text. Maybe you can tell me how to navigate to the actual article.

Dear Paul,

I understand your viewpoint and explanation of the difficulties, which we encounter when we try to describe the world. I will rephrase the idea, since I think that I can do this in a way which avoids the discussions about math and new hidden levels of complexity.

The idea is that at any time t we have a set of experimental data, say Dt (I will use such symbols as short names, not equations). For each set of data, there is a set of possible theories (=explanations/descriptions, possibly not limited to mathematics, if this is really a limitation) of reality, E(Dt), compatible with that set of data. I consider that E(Dt) should contain all possible theories. I will assume that the data increase with time, hence for t smaller than t', we have Dt included in Dt'. What happens with E(Dt)? I claim that E(Dt) contains E(Dt'). Clearly, each possible theory can be infirmed by new data. No new theory can occur because of new data at t', because it must also be compatible with the data at previous t, therefore it must be already contained in E(Dt).

So, my claim is that there is an abstract set of all theories, and this set is only reduced by new data, and not increased. And I give as example the true theory, the one that really describes the world, which must exist, because the world exists, but we don't know it yet. Therefore, I claim that E(D2009-11-08) is not empty, only that we don't know yet what it contains.

I would say here that E(Dt) should contain also incredibly complicated explanations, which contain unobservable data at that time, and are usually ruled out by the physicists of the time because of Occam's razor. These theories are more complicated that the current data, but may become meaningful with new data. Such example may be the string theories, and some other quantum gravity approaches (if they would explain all the data we observed so far).

Taking your example with atoms, I would say that E(D1800-01-01) should contain explanations based on indivisible atoms, but also explanations based on composite atoms (which were not available at that time, and we recognized this only because of new data). So, I would say that there is a knowledge of the possible theories explaining all the data at a time t, Kt:= K(E(Dt)), which changes in a more unpredictable way. Perhaps at the end of the XIXth century it contained a theory, based on Newton's and Maxwell's equations. But now it is empty, because we don't have an accepted theory explaining all the data we have now. And possible it will contain at least one theory, in time. And, of course, it may become again empty, because of new data.

According to this view, it is imaginable that Kt will change with time, so that we will feel that we are going closer, but we will never be confident enough that this is all. But it is also imaginable that we will be able to find a theory which will never be invalidated by new data. So, I would keep my mind open to all possibilities. That's what I wanted to say in my previous comment.

I want to emphasize that even if we would find someday a theory fitting all the data at that time, and which will never be invalidated, despite the new data, there will be potentially infinitely many consequences to be explored, and tests to be passed by the theory (perhaps this is a weak version of the fairness principle?). It is even possible the principles be already known, but the consequences not understood, and that the future generations will understand asymptotically that the theory fits the data.

Thank you for your interest in the link I gave in the previous comment, I give here the direct link to the pdf.

Best regards,

Cristi

Paul has elaborated in detail that some of us mentioned briefly about the methodology followed in sciences. There is hardly any further need to discuss the issue as he has been very realistic in his detailed elaboration.

This is true.

I referred to rephrasing the idea I presented in the previous comment, not Paul's explanation.

Dear Giovanni,

The voting has closed, but better late than never. I do have some questions about your essay.

First about the fairness principle. Mathematics is infinite and we are always being intrigued and challenged by math. Because of emergent phenomena, the same will be true for physics even if a TOE is found. Here is an example. Maxwell's equations are the TOE of electromagnetism. Still, light propagation in optical fibers is described in a certain approximation by qualitatively different math which by now has a domain of its own.

Linking the lack of progress with the pursuit of a TOE. Define progress. Is it experimentally verifiable predictions? If yes, due to the energies involved, there are none, but this is not because of the TOE pursuit, but because of the out of reach energy scale, and this is an unfair criteria. Do we know more now than 25 years ago? Yes, and the progress was significant. However, the rate of progress was unsatisfactory. I will argue that not the TOE mindset prevented progress, but the resource monopoly and clout string theory inherited from particle physics is to be blamed for starving alternative approaches. When no genuine predictions are offered, the research program should wait in line with other research programs for funding.

Not even wrong, not even fair, not even fun.

Not even wrong: This is derogatory and only fans the flames of Lubos' rhetoric.

Not even fair: Is it not fair that Einstein already discovered relativity, or that Maxwell discovered his equations? What is the difference between those 2 examples and the hypothetical TOE?

Not even fun: After the invention of automobile, the world lost the fun in making horse whips. So what? We got Nascar.

Florin

Nice comment, Florin.

Dear Giovanni,

I wonder, considering that the fairness principle is true, what will happen after 1000 generations: will they have to understand first the previous 1000 theories (of the passed generations) of increased complexity, starting with our present physics, before making the contribution of their own generation? You see, we have to know what was done before, and it is already inconceivably more than it was four generations ago. What about after a billion generations? (This entails speculations about the increased capacity of human mind.) How is this fair?

What about the passed generations, before Galilei? Or did fairness started in the modern world? Should we then expect it to last forever?

Best regards,

Cristi

Author's response to the 'fairness' principle have not been responded, as desired by Cristi, Florin and may i now add myself to that query too. The contest is over for voting but scientific discussions never have any deadlines!It is fair to seek the author's response in a healthy competition.

i enjoyed the struggle Giovanni has shown by explaining 'fairness' principle as a side conclusion to his main theme contained in the earlier 2/3 of his esssay. Then, he also suggests that he is not really a person who holds faith very close to his heart. Such struggles affect a large number of we humans, as we do tend to live in contradictions. The later really are a product of our minds which is wayward and jumpy by nature. The discipling of the mind can only result in a profound presentation. Alternately, it can come out of the blue, as indicated by Einstein for his famous discoveries. He attributed these to be a product of ideas that were not a part of his regular thinking process as these appeared suddenly from outside. What he did was to realise their importance/significance, as he had the tools to implement these ideas.In other words one may associate outside inspiration for this kind admission. Thus, it is best to remain very humble about our works, as a lot of credit may well go to 'others' that we may not wish to acknowledge/admit/confess about!

The dictatorship of TOE

Dear Giovanni,

It was a pleasure to read your interesting and fair answers to the questions of various visitors of your thread. It is obvious that your fairness principle raises nice discussions, despites being based on faith, as you said. But isn't every new hypothesis based on faith? What are required then to collapse the superposition of hypotheses into a concrete result, are one or more crucial experiments. On this basis, it is clear that neither the statement "we can find a TOE", nor its negation, can be falsified. Any candidate to a unified theory, no matter how well is corroborated by the current data, can be rejected by a future experiment. Being rejected, doesn't exclude the possibility of another TOE, but we can always advocate the fairness principle by saying that there may appear new data which contradicts our most recent theory.

I think that a TOE is unfair, in one particular sense: a theory which survived several decades tends to evolve into a dictatorship. Imagine a theory which made prediction after prediction, confirmed for one thousand years. This will make any proponent of an alternative to be regarded as a crackpot anarchist. In fact, there are already such dictatorial attitudes supporting theories, despite not being confirmed yet, or even not being falsifiable. Should we be prepared for such a TOE dictatorship era, by already taking measures to protect the future dissidents? My belief is that we should be prepared, because it is always possible to have a TOE candidate which survives for many years.

Let's assume that from the fundamental physical laws, completed with the emergent phenomena, and by using powerful computers, we can predict the optimal moral laws, the optimal political system, the optimal president of a country or of the world, the optimal religion belief (including among the possibilities various forms of atheism), or the optimal race. I mean, if there is a Theory of Everything, we can develop in a large, but finite amount of time, scientific algorithms optimizing various such "parameters". We can have, as some ex-communist countries had not too long ago, "scientific politics", "scientific atheism" (or maybe a "scientific religion"), only this time "really scientific". And we will add, of course, algorithms predicting optimal mate-matching, and "scientifically designed DNA" for our progenies.

It may be scary to have a TOE, isn't it? It will take our freedom, because any choice other than the optimal one will be unscientific. And how many will take risk of being non-optimal?

I apologize if these words may look like an extreme slippery slope type of arguments. But I think that we should always be aware of "the ultimate truth" and "the right way", as they can take our freedom.

Or, who knows, perhaps a TOE may prevent us from wasting precious time drifting in wrong behavioral patterns, and may allow us concentrate on the essential and effective things, keeping, in the meantime, always open the possibility that our TOE may be totally false. An "open society" of the TOE.

Kind regards,

Cristi

Words are words and deeds are deeds. Let us continue our search for truth with faith, devotion, as selfless scientists in the persuit of truth and there is nothing to worry about. Right and wrong are just two words of the same coin! Both Author and Cristi appear equally right to me.

Butler--Stoica dialogue moved to Butler forum:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/543

Cristinel,

I answered your latest comments to me on my forum (What's Ultimately Possible in Physics by Paul N. Butler,) per the desire of the powers that be in FQXI. You can answer it there so as to please them. I'll look for it there so you won't have to let me know here.