Dear Edwin,

thank you so much for your very kind comments.

I did want to write something really foundational, that answers the foundational questions and paradoxes as well as the essay question but is also comprehensible and interesting.I am really glad to hear that you think I have succeeded in that.

Rather than just repeat everything I have said before I have also tried to extend the ideas to show how they could be useful to practical situations, conducting experiments and understanding observations, rather than being mere philosophy.

I thank Peter Jackson for his advice on fqxi blogs to highlight the non conscious aspect of image reality formation. The subjective human interpretation is a bit of "a minefield" and immediately distracts from the simple physical process that is occurring.

I will read your essay with much interest.

Peter,

thank you very much indeed for your very kind comments.

Time dilation does not "do the job". It is an interpretation of the observed image reality. So although it is an explanation that fits the evidence it is not a cause of anything. Time does not exist as a dimension in object reality and therefore can not stretch but the distribution of the data that gives the input for image reality formation can be perturbed by the trajectory of the mass through space.

Thank you very much for all of the references to look at. I have read your essay through and found it very interesting. (Also your video.) As you said I need to take time with it, which I sincerely intend to do before commenting further.

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  • Post #18

Dear Georgina,

Soon after I posted my essay I thought about you. I considered posting a message in the blogs section encouraging you and Tom to submit essays. Before I did that your essay appeared. We enterred on the same day. I printed your essay off but have not yet read it. I just wanted to say that I am glad that you enterred, but, not quite so glad to see that you quickly burried me in the ratings. Really, my message is one of 'good luck to you'.

James

    Hi James,

    thank you, I appreciate your good wishes. I too was glad to see that you had entered the competition. Your essay is among the first I have read. I enjoyed reading it. There are now a lot of essays posted and I do not think I will manage to read them all.

    It is good to have people's ideas collected in one place for future reference rather than just scattered over numerous blog and forum threads. I also think that all of the essays will receive more public attention than the various blog posts. So that in itself is a good thing. Good luck to you too.

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    • Post #20

    Georgina,

    Excellent essay. It says something about the state of physics that such a clear and well reasoned description of the relationship between objective and subjective concepts of reality bumps enough sacred cows off the road that it likely won't get the attention it deserves. We can always hope though.

    Good luck and thanks for the mention.

    Hi John,

    thank you very much indeed. This was my third attempt to produce something that was readable to the end and not indigestibly content rich. It did mean leaving out other things that I would also have liked to talk about. I feel that I have said enough to make a reasonable argument.

    Our discussions on FQXi blogs, of various topics, have been helpful.In particular you have made me think hard about the direction of time, and what that means, and the concept of absolute space. What ever the outcome of the competition the ideas contained in our essays will receive wider attention. Which is progress imo. I am delighted with the feedback so far.

      Dear Eckard,

      thank you for reading my essay and for your support. I do hope that my essay proves to be relevant and useful to others.

      I have read your own essay but as it is largely concerned with mathematics, I will have to take time to gradually assimilate its content.I admire your knowledge and abilities and have no doubt of the very good sense with in it. Though our essays are very different in their approaches, we both share the desire to de mystify physics and restore realism. Let us hope that others will grasp the many reasons, you and I have given, for it to be so.

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      • Post #23

      Georgina,

      It's nice to see someone giving the idea of space as absolute some consideration. By it's nature, it's much harder to conceptually pin down than the point about time, but instinctively it fills a very large void in the theories. Pun intended.

      On my previous comment about what modern physics would look like if it has originally evolved in the east, it occurs to me that it wouldn't even be called physics, but possibly "contextuality." With physics, we isolate the object and then try to place it back in context by finding an opposing particle to balance it. With an eastern view the balance wouldn't be hidden. It's yin and yang. Positive and negative. Black and white. Left, right. The opposites don't cancel each other out, they give each other dimension and balance. They not only exist in everything, they are everything.

      I'm not confident of getting any attention yet. The politics is a function of complexity. Like what's going on in the Middle East, it won't be a rational evolutionary change, but a breakdown of a system under increasing pressure. Far too many people have far too much invested in the whole multiworlds/multiverses meme to drop it willingly. Given the willingness to accept all the far fetched ideas that are being taken seriously, it's safe to say their logical integrity is compromised. Having seen it in many other aspects of life, I find people are all too willing accept whatever pays the bills.

      The older I get, the more bizarre the world gets and I suspect we "ain't seen nothin yet."

      John,

      I don't agree with you on all of your technical points, but I do agree with your last paragraph (and with your last sentence.)

      It appears to me that many of the people who thoroughly reject God as the creator of the universe are in process of getting ready to believe in the Computer that created the universe.

      Go figure.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

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      • Post #25

      heoh dear friends, she is already married hihihih

      they become crazzy Georgina, you saw now .They take gloves,hihihi they are real gentlemen wawwww

      Don't be grumpy or angry ,I am laughing I am laughing.

      Steve

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        • Post #26

        I speak as a child but in fact it's true your essay is very interesting.Your relativistic vue of the space time is relevant.

        Regards

        Steve

        Hi Georgina, thanks for your essay. Could an Archimedes screw be the visualisation of a particle/wave duality which is currently referred to as a paradox? Do you see what I mean?

          Hi Steve,

          it is good that you feel like laughing again.

          Thank you for reading my essay and commenting. I am glad you think it is a relevant view point as we have disagreed in the past. That was perhaps because of my choice of description, which did not express clearly enough what I meant. I have avoided using those terms that seem divisive.

          I am also glad that you found it interesting. A lot of what I said will not have been new to you but I have tried to extend the ideas to show how they can be useful to practical science.

          I think I have managed to show that there most definitely is a place for relativity and that it will continue to be relevant to the observations that are made.Though it is only part of a greater reality that exists without observation. Without both aspects of reality we are left with paradox, superstition, mystery, quasi reality or non reality of everything. I suspect that some people who love the mysterious will not approve of a simple physical mechanisms that overcome the need to accept unscientific notions.

          Hi Alan ,

          did you read the essay? What did you think? I am a little disappointed if it only made you think of a screw.

          We can of course visualise whatever we like. Visualising the particle as an Archimedes screw is still trying to retain the mysterious duality without admitting a medium.If I place a beach ball on the sea and it bobs up and down on the waves and forward and back on the tide I do not say the ball has ball/wave duality.

          I was going to say more about the movement of planets and galaxies which leads on to gravity. However I avoided talking about that in the essay as it was not particularly relevant to the competition question and so is not particularly relevant now.

          If you would like to -tell me- what you mean then please go ahead.

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          • Post #31

          Hi Joseph,

          thank you for your feedback.I am glad you liked it.

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          • Post #32

          Edwin,

          If you look at spirituality as bottom up, that of the essence of awareness slowly evolving ever more complex forms, rather than the monotheistic top down version, in which we represent a fallen copy of a moral and intellectual ideal, the computer makes an extremely insightful metaphor. The primary biological control is the attraction of the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. Amoebae act on on this and it is the basis of our primal concept of good vs. bad. We intellectualize it as yes and no and then on to the on/off switches of computers.

          The classical concept of God, no matter how much power and transcendence we assign it, is fundamentally weak, since it cannot prevent injustice, keeps having to retreat into the woodwork as we gain knowledge, allows the amoral to prosper, etc.

          On the other hand, if we view it as that continuously striving raw awareness, it explains these ambiguities of elemental striving and yet ever evolving knowledge to repair the damages encountered and inflicted. Death is not evil, not a necessary resetting of the system and way to clear out old ways and gain energy, so that while we become biologically and intellectually complex, we are not encased by the implicit structures, but must constantly push against all forms.

          Computers are a tool and extension of this awareness, just as the simple tool is an extension of the hand and the hand is an extension of the mind.

          This isn't stated as clearly as I'd like, but it's a germinating idea that I'm working through.

          Sorry to highjack your thread, Georgina.

          John,

          you are always welcome.

          It is an amusing irony that Edwin has spotted.

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          • Post #34

          Georgina,

          Computers are digital. Our mental processes are a function of distinctions. In essence, a God of judgement is digital. To the extent religion treats God as some sort of engineer/creator of the universe, it is a God of calculation. I think it works much better to just have God as the spirit. Whatever form it takes.

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          • Post #35

          Hi Georgina,

          The theories evolve,it's a real road of harmonization in fact. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we desagree, sometimes, we doubt, sometimes we are sure, sometimes ....once upon a time...the sphere ...and its spheres.....and this SPHERE........

          I wish you a good contest.

          regards

          Steve