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  • Post #21

"consciousness that created it, or through which it emerged?"

-Michael Cecil wrote on Dec. 11, 2007 @ 11:56 GMT

Not so much. If I were write down 2+2=4. that doesnt tell you anything about my consciousness. Nor does it tell you anything about its "inventors" consciousness. Of course 2, +, =, and 4, are all different theories, the most basic part of these theories were developed in multiple places without any intereference from outside forces. (Unless there was aliens! woooOOOoo!, but I'll put that theory on the dusty shelf where it belongs for now) Because the same theory was developed by multiple, and entirely different consciousness' it is impossible to say that the theory has anything to do with its inventor, the theory is of itself.

I think you are trying to say that there may be "bias" in the equation, which is a perfectly valid question. But some things simply "can't" have bias. But of course I can not tell you for sure about this quation, because I havn't read All of the original creators work. And to have an equasion work out, while biasing the numbers to your own "whim" is an accomplishment of its own accord.

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  • Post #22

Not so much. If I were write down 2+2=4. that doesnt tell you anything about my consciousness.

Eric Bremer wrote.

Of course it does. It tells me that the origin is the 'classical' consciousness originating in self-reflection and thought.

And, if I tell you that thought originates in fear and desire, that also tells you something about the consciousness that makes this observation: it is not the 'classical' consciousness, which is incapable of observing thought.

The bias I am referring to is the bias which requires the preservation of the 'classical' consciousness itself. Descartes, for example, postulated the thought of the 'thinker' in order to escape the psychosis described in the opening passages of Meditation II. Of course, it is necessary, in some sense, to preserve sanity; but, at the same time, the resultant view of reality is distorted by that motivation. It is not an objective view of reality.

The observations of the "observing consciousness", on the other hand, have nothing to do with fear or desire; and, for that reason, can provide an objective view of reality beyond the view of the 'classical' consciousness.

17 days later

mike:

We always see randomness in events, but I think self conscious life is a question, not an answer.

Tommaso:

Yes, this is a great way to proceed. And I think LQG is the best place to start if one is going to work up to a fully quantum description of the whole enchilada.

TG:

Amusing, but within the realm of coincidence.

Tom:

The theory isn't developed well enough yet to say anything definitive about dark matter.

anna:

Yes, the appeal of symmetry has spanned many centuries. It's interesting to consider to what degree this aesthetic appeal is grounded in the fundamental nature of the universe.

Daniel:

Sounds kinda weird.

Phil:

Shh! Don't give away my sources!

Michael:

For the paper's title, I used "Theory of Everything" in the technical sense of combining a description of general relativity and gauge symmetries as parts of a single, larger symmetry group. The theory has nothing to say about consciousness. If you want to build up from fundamental physics to an understanding of consciousness, that's a long hard path -- but a potentially worthwhile and successful one.

Eric:

Yep.

Michael:

You're correct that we're all biased. However, science works, so this is promising.

17 days later

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  • Post #24

I've been looking at E8 and a couple other TOE mathematical models that imply unobserved dimensions. The thought occurred to me that what we percieve as a 2 dimensional timeline could potentially be a vector through multidimensional time.

While this concept can very neatly address the issue of missing dimensions, proving it experimentally is an interesting exercize.

Perhaps this idea may prove of some use to your work...

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  • Post #25

Yahou !!

Me, I found the exeptionnaly simple theory of nothing :

"

"

Garett, What do you think about my theory ?

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  • Post #26

Great Job Mr Lisi, this is a really logical theory. I hope you will soon be able to test this with the new CERN scientist toy. ;)

But... I started reading your AESTE and it seems you postulate the Higgs' boson exists. As the Higgs as been created to fill the holes in the standard theory and as far as I heard of, it's never been seen (maybe it will with the LHD but who knows...)don't you think it's going to bias (blow) the geometry if the actual gravity explanation is false.

I read another Theory by Lafreniere that explains all the forces maybe it will help... or not. but both your theories seems valid, well Lafreniere is not a physician and is axplainations are far less mathematical but it sounds coherent too...even if is...hum writing style is... weird. just take a look if you have some time and let us know what you think of it.

5 days later

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  • Post #27

Dear Dr. Lisi,

I'm sorry - I posted in the the wrong thread, which won't be replied to, so once more my question regarding TOEs:

Kurt Gödels Incompleteness Theorem ...

means *any* TOE will end up being a "TO almost E".

Guess this doesn't touch your present work at all, but in the long run you must have some sort of opinion about it ... ? Hope it's not too indiscreet to ask.

One more thing - I like your statements about a beautiful theory. The search for truth and the search for beauty are in a way related - the ancient Indian seers called the Ultimate Reality they found:

Satyam, Shivam, Sunderam - the True, the Good and the Beautiful.

- And pardon me for mentioning still one more thing - you have a nice way of using words. The titling of your paper, "Pieces of E8" ...

7 days later

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  • Post #28

Can anybody translate this theory in Ukrainian,or russian?

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  • Post #29

Dr. Lisi-

I know you are a "surfer dude", but somehow, I think it is best to start off with a salutation more appropriate for someone who really has earned his PhD.

Anyway, on to the real topic: I see you say you have a lot of calculation to do. Have you found a Computer Algebra package suitable for it? Is Octave, Axiom or Sage suitable? As I read the descriptions of these packages, they sound somewhat promising, but they all seem to be missing something. GAP, for example, my old favorite, only handles Lie Algebras over fields of prime characteristic and small dimension or over GF(2). But if you want to know the Normalizer etc. of the Weyl group, that GAP can do -- if you tell it the Weyl group;)

Then again Atlas sounds promising too, though the only description of it I found on the Net is rather dated

(www.liegroups.org), and sparse in describing what else other than "Kazhdan-Lusztig-Vogan polynomials" it will compute. Somehow, "structure theory and admissible representations of real groups" still sounds too vague. And their "Spherical Unitary Explorer" works only for the Classical Groups.

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  • Post #30

Hi Lisi,

(Condensed matter physicist speaking :-)

The action in Eq. 3.8 involves an integral over a 4-manifold. I assume this is a Cartesian 3+1 space, is this correct?

So, how would you quantize the theory? Would you find the field modes and their conjugate momenta on this manifold and proceed in the usual way?

a month later

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  • Post #31

Dear Lisi,

How does this have anything to do with 42?

5 days later

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  • Post #32

Hi,

As your theory is a gauge theory with all its apparatus, for it to make sense it should be renormalizable or even finite(what string theory are). I just run across your papers, but didn't took the time to read it, so I ask you:

Is your theory renormalizable ? (which is, as far as I can remember the main plague of quantum gravity and the reason to look at supersymmetry and string theory. Is it not so ?)

Thanks for you answer.

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  • Post #33

What fun it's been reading about this new idea!

Just like I may never be able to play linebacker in a pro football game, I can still love the game as a spectator.

Being new to this game, there are so many *really* basic questions. I'll just ask one or two here:

- The dimension thing. Very confusing. (Except, strangely enough, for the vertices corresponding to elementary particles. Perhaps because it's such a neat idea (as in tidy): So, E8 is an 8-dimensional polytope. But has a 248-dimensional surface. To help me encapsulate this concept, how many dimensions would the surface of a 3-dimensional *dodecahedron* have? (Would that be 20 dimensions? Same as vertices?)

*A little homage to the late Gary Gygax.*

- So, we have an 8-dimensional polytope. A 248-dimensional surface. Where/how does 4-dimensional space-time fit into E8?

- Okay, three questions: So, it looks like this might describe all the fundamental particles in nature and all their possible interactions. But, does General Relativity naturally arise from the model? Can it explain why there are three spatial dimensions and only one time dimension? Or, why time is so different?

Really more than three questions. But hey, it's such a fascinating idea!

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    • Post #34

    I'm a complete layman, not at all a amthematician, so I hope it's OK for me to post here with a very basic question, because I don't know where else to ask.

    Is the rlationship between the E8 shape, and particles, in any way similar/parallel to the relationship between position on the Periodic Table, and characteristics of elements...? Similarly, would the "colored lines" connectivng the vertices relate to some sort of commonality and/or transition from the qualities of one particle, to those of adjoining particles? IOW, if one "line" is blue, and anotehr "red", do the colors represent different correspondences of qualities between the particles, where A could have X in common with B, but Y in common with other adjoining particle C...?

    TIA, and thanks for your patience with my simple question...

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    • Post #35

    Neat stuff, Dr. Lisi.

    I am excited about progress with this theory so I won't hinder it by posing you self-indulgent questions. I trust understanding will filter down to me in time. You keep at it, and good luck!

    10 days later

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    • Post #36

    And if 'All' happened in the Bulk?

    Big Bangs, big explosion's big 'everything', Branes colliding and so on...

    In the out there Dark is just what we can yet see, if we ever seen...

    We are happy to be in a small universal blt of stars...

    5 days later

    Tom:

    A lot of people have considered multiple timelike dimensions -- it is a neat idea, but tends to run into problems by predicting tachyons.

    bidou:

    It lacks something.

    David:

    I'm more curious about his fanatical followers...

    Kotatsu:

    There are some theories that work without a Higgs, but they tend to be more complicated. It's a good bet that the Higgs will be seen in a few months at the LHC.

    I'm afraid I don't have time to look at Lafreniere's stuff.

    N. Tantilov:

    I'm not sure that just because Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem can be posed and proved within the universe that it is a fundamental part of its structure. I'm convinced that the universe can be described by mathematics, but not that it is mathematics -- though it's an interesting idea. Also, good to know you enjoy humor -- it sees us through the dark times.

    Sava:

    The mathematics should translate easily enough.

    Matt:

    "Dr. Surfer Dude" maybe? I've been using Mathematica a lot ( > 20 years!), and sometimes Maple. GAP looks very cool, and I may end up using it. I think the Atlas website isn't particularly user friendly yet. Maybe all the attention will motivate some improvement, there and with my stuff too.

    JKD:

    Aren't we all condensed matter physicists? The base manifold is naked -- it's a four-manifold of arbitrary topology. It doesn't have a signature or metric -- these are part of the E8 fiber moving over it.

    I like the path integral approach to quantization. But using canonical quantization in a flat spacetime approximation would be fine.

    Ford:

    What do you get when you multiply 4 by 2?

    Guglielmo:

    It should be accessible to some of the same tools as non-abelian quantum field theory. However, it's a lot messier since the spacetime frame is part of the fiber, and this spacetime can be curved. So the usual QFT methods probably won't give a fully consistent quantum E8 theory. I'm counting on using the methods being developed by the quantum gravity community to consistently quantize this theory.

    Albert:

    Being a linebacker isn't as much fun as it sounds... A twenty sided die lives in 3 dimensions, otherwise you'd never make your saving throws. The E8 Lie group is a 248 dimensional smooth surface -- there are 248 directions one could move in when on this surface. Each of these directions is a symmetry which can be plotted as a unique point in an abstract 8 dimensional space, giving the E8 polytope. (Does that make things clear?)

    The four dimensional base spacetime, over which the E8 Lie group moves, must be assumed from the beginning. General relativity does come from considering how part of the E8 Lie group surface moves over our base spacetime. To get time, we have to assume a specific noncompact form of E8, and it's not clear why nature would make that choice.

    Kris:

    Yah, that's pretty close.

    Ray:

    Thanks. Coming up with good questions isn't a hinderance though -- it helps clarify this stuff for me and others.

    Nelson:

    Whoa, dude, cosmic... It is lunch time though, so I'm gonna make a small universal blt.

    13 days later
    10 days later

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    • Post #87

    Dear Dr. Garrett Lisi,

    I recently published a book on "New Approaches Towards A Grand Unified Theory" and noticed some interesting similarities between your research paper "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" and my book - despite the fact that we approached the problem from very different perspectives, and I just read your paper (so it didn't influence the ideas in my book).

    Similarities - 1) Both approaches expect at least a minimal left-right symmetric weak force, 2) both approaches need 16 Higgs scalars (my book uses two complex Higgs scalar doublet fields, one of the complex doublets couples to the Standard Higgs vev of 246 Gev, and the other appears to couple to an energy scale of 20,000 TeV), 3) both approaches may explain the CKM and PMNS matrices (my book unifies and complicates these matrices), 4) both approaches contain SO(8) algebras that may not have been expected, 5) both approaches may explain the three generations of matter - your "triality" - although my book predicts a total of five generations that condense into three low-mass generations, and 6) both approaches derive their gravity representations from Clifford algebra (although they yield different conclusions).

    Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that a 14-dimensional Supersymmetric SU(15) Lie Algebra may be the best effective theory (short of the over-kill "True" 26-dimensional theory), and that this theory can condense into a 10-dimensional SU(11) "Boson GUT", an effective 8-dimensional SO(16) "Fermion GUT", and a 4-dimensional SU(5) Supersymmetry. Within the framework of my book, your E8 representation may be a good effective theory in 8 dimensions, and with an order of 8 x 31 it is large enough to contain two SO(16)'s of order 8 x 15. It isn't clear to me whether the 10-dimensional SU(11) "Boson GUT" is collapsing into an effective 8-dimensional SU(9) or whether it is being misrepresented by an 8-dimensional SO(16).

    Most of my ideas on GUT Lie Algebras are in Chapter 7. The earlier parts of my book address grand unification from a thermodynamic perspective. And I have a few pages on the Creation -Design - Chance - Necessity Debate as it relates to the Anthropic Principle that might appeal to your "blog followers".

    I received my Ph.D. in Particle Physics from Florida State University in 1996 under Prof. Howie Baer, taught full-time until 1999, taught part-time until 2003, and I've been in the business world full-time since 1999.

    Sincerely,

    Dr. Ray Munroe

    Tallahassee, FL

    10 days later

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    • Post #88

    Hi Garrett,

    Have you had an opportunity to read my book "New Approaches Towards A Grand Unified Theory" yet? I'm trying to resolve my ideas with your ideas with String Theory and with Supersymmetry.

    My wife, daughter and I came to the beach this weekend. The Florida Gulf coast doesn't have the waves that you're used to, but it is relaxing. And suddenly, the answer hit me in the middle of the night.

    The E8 group is based on the 5-simplex, the Hexateron (which has 30 nearest neighbors). I think that the natural extension to E8 would be based on the 6-simplex, the Heptapeton (which has 42 nearest neighbors), and this group would have an order of 430 (10 x 43), and a rank of 10. For lack of a proper name, can we call this E(10)? In my book, I related rank and dimension - thus, I expect this group to exist in 10 dimensions, which should delight the String Theorists. (Yippee!) With an order of (10 x 43), it is large enough to include my 10-dimensional SU(11) "Bosonic GUT" of order (10 x 12), and a 10-dimensional SO(21) "Fermionic GUT" of order (10 x 21), and 100 (10 x 10) of my Supersymmetry operators.

    Although my book gives the background for these ideas, these are new extensions of my theory. I didn't push fermions to the natural limit, and I was happy with two SO(16)'s of fermions, but the 21 charges of SO(21) arise from: SO(21) → SO(10) basic "Fermion GUT" + 7 subtypes of Hyperflavor + 2 New Generations (for a total of five fermion generations) + 2 new types of Leptoquarks (a, ψ). Now 21=10+7+2+2, and SO(21) has an order of 210 that reflects both the seven-fold symmetry of hyperflavor and the five-fold symmetry that we expect from five generations.

    Regarding the 100 Supersymmetry operators, I had a supersymmetric SU(15) that decomposed into an SU(11) "Bosonic GUT" and an SU(5) of supersymmetric operators that related the spin quintet: (0,½,1,1½,2). SU(15) has an order of 224 and SU(11) has an order of 120. 224-120=104. Of these 104 supersymmetric operators, four are diagonal components that do not affect spin, whereas the other 100 components do affect spin. You thought you had GHOSTS in the machine, but you may have relic operators from Supersymmetry (and what I called Hyper-SUSY).

    There it is! I'm only good for models - you are the Differential Geometry Master! Now go include Hyperflavor, WIMP-Gravity and Supersymmetry into an "Exceptionally Complicated" E(10) Theory of Everything, and RIDE THAT WAVE!

    Ray Munroe