Tying Up the Multiverse with String

You speak for yourself and I disagree with your main points.

Personally, I try to be a good citizen of planet Earth, enjoying the beauty and majesty of nature, encouraging others to adopt enlightened self-interest, and watching as the grand pageant unfolds. I strongly resist the temptation to fall into depression or cynicism.

Should we not break down the limitations of the past and begin working confidently towards a new world? Beats depression and defeatism!

RLO

www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

We might survive considerably longer, but honestly I think it will be due to a "wing and a prayer" more than because of some new paradigm about things.

Cheers LC

Humans have a very unfortunate characteristic: even when they are as dumb as a fence posts or certified crackpots of the educated variety, they tend to have an unshakable faith in their personal intuitions.

Since the fools outnumber the men of wisdom by about 1,000,000 to 1, mankind bumbles along chaotically.

However, sometimes men like Jefferson come along and the benighted masses have enough innate intuition to know that they should let the Jeffersons create the new way of thinking or form of government, and should show deference to the power of reason.

You might consider learning some history.

RLO

www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

There are other sides to American history, and the revolution. It can be seen that the American Revolution was a way for land owners and the wealthy to establish their own system freed from British constraints. In particular the 7 Years War, called the French and Indian War in America, established the Cherokee, Choctaw and other nations as recognized nations with treaty rights existing between the British and French American territories. This chafed the land owning classes, in particular the plantation owners, for they wanted to extend their agrarian power and wealth. By the 1820's the native nations were extinguished, particularly under Andrew Jackson.

We like to think this nation's pre-national history was established by Pilgrims or Puritans escaping oppression from the Anglican Church and the Crown. Of course that did play a role, but really the drivers were people who were the third sons of Earls and other margraves in England who lacked inherited titles to land. Initially many of them went to Ireland to set up their own shop, where they carved up the counties of Ireland as their own fiefdoms. The problems of "England in Ireland" and the religious problems continue to this day. Later these guys came to the Americas, particularly Virginia and Carolinas. They then had the coin to kick out or kill off the natives on the land, and then import Africans to do the dirty work. Hell of a damned deal.

Remember that while Jefferson, Adams and others were men influenced by the age of reason, and the ideals of Thomas Paine, they were also powerful and wealthy. Jefferson was a slave owner up to the day he died. Of course one can also take these guys within the context of their age. However, things were not at all the heady idealisms we are often told they were. The influence of the plantanocracy, slave holding and the racism against the people previously dwelling here continues to influence American society, and in very negative ways.

Cheers LC

If you were criticizing your own intuition, what would you say are your weakest points?

RLO

I am not always the best at reading people. My intuition is not always perfect, but I am usually able to recognize that later.

Cheers LC

"strings and D-branes and the like are emergent aspects of an underlying exceptional matrix system that has Skyrmion physics"

Hmmm, I recomend large doses of mental ex-lax. When your mind is free of crap, try rebooting and filling it with definitively testable science instead of untestable post-moderm landscaping and Platonic fairy tales.

RLO

www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

I had planned to add this story to my pre-existing gravitational

coupling "constant" thread at the "CosmoCoffee Blog", but the

thread seems to have been censored and removed. Well, it

was a good run. About 75 posts and about 2200 views.

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In 1955 a conference was organized in Italy to celebrate

"Fifty Years Of Relativity". Einstein was invited, but could

not attend because of health reasons. Instead, he wrote up

an essay on his most recent efforts at further generalizing

General Relativity and formulating a unified theory that would

incorporate electromagnetism and atomic phenomena.

In this essay he noted that a general property of the unified

field equations, one that kept appearing and could not be

avoided, was the fact of solutions that were "similar, but not

congruent". In modern terms, it seemed that self-similar

solutions were generic to a more unified relativity.

But, he said, we know the atoms have definite sizes

and masses, and one does not find atoms that are

1.2 or 2.5 times bigger than the familiar ones. This

paradox between the intrinsic self-similarity of a more

unified relativity and the the apparently absoluteness of

scale in nature bothered Einstein greatly. He said it

might mean he was totally on the wrong track.

One thing he had not considered was discrete self-similarity.

There were no atoms that were 2.5 times bigger than "normal",

but might there be atoms that were 5.2 x 10^17 times bigger.

For example a neutron star is 5.2 x 10^17 times bigger than

an atomic nucleus and a galaxy is 5.2 x 10^17 times bigger

than a neutron star. This discrete self-similarity might be

consistent with observation - and solve Einstein's paradox.

If Einstein had lived long enough, I think he would have

come around to developing this idea. Alas, he died not long

after writing the essay. So his last student has taken up the

quest for that unified description of nature based on

discrete self-similarity.

Is that really so radical [unacceptable]?

Seems like sensible, testable science to me.

RLO

www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

On Nov 15, 7:24 pm, Igor Khavkine wrote:

>

> > On Nov 14, 10:11 am, Igor Khavkine wrote:

> > > As far as we know, all the time asymmetry that we have seen is due to

> > > initial conditions.

>

> I have a feeling you are trying to make a statement with a rhetorical

> question. Unfortunately, for the life of me, I can't figure out what

> it is. I've pointed out scientific consensus, which has been tested

> and prodded since the time of Boltzmann. If you have a comment or

> objection, please state it plainly.

>

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I will be happy to offer an explicit comment, but first you must

explicitly explain how "all ...time asymmetry...is due to initial conditions".

Peter's colleague has stated the explicit idea that the strict

directionality of causality defines the arrow of time. Nothing

else is required, including an ex nihilo "creation" event.

Can your explanation for the arrow of time, or Sean Carroll's,

be stated in an explicit scientific form that does not involve

entities or processes that are unobservable?

Is it possible that the fact that an egg cannot be unscrambled

has nothing to due with the big bang?

How could the converse be scientifically tested?

Yours in science,

RLO

www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

"How can physics live up to its true greatness except

by a new revolution which dwarfs all its past revolutions?

And when it comes, will we not say to each other,

'Oh, how beautiful and simple it is!

How could we have missed it for so long!'."

John Archibald Wheeler, 2000

Amen, brother

RLO

www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw