Hi Edwin,
Thanks for stopping by to leave a comment. I sincerely appreciate your kind words.
I do have serious reservations about the physical validity of the model presented in my essay, though at the very least it does make for a nice toy. Even if the mechanism is not useful for physicists, perhaps it could be somehow useful in a (video) game. I guess the main point of the exercise was to find an assumption, overturn it and see what falls out, all the while keeping things as absolutely simple as possible. I'd like to think that the essay at least does that one job well enough to stand up on its own -- it's what the essay contest was about, after all.
I hadn't seen your analog-digital essay before, and I will read it in its entirety over the next week and let it really sink in. Just by peeking/skimming through it now, I've already come across quite a few interesting things related to the topics we've been discussing on Robert and Lorraine's pages. I notice that the essay also has some things to say about dark energy and dark matter, and so I'm looking forward to digging into that part. Needless to say, I've been in a total learning frenzy since all of your essays have come out, and I really appreciate all of the new thoughts that I've been able to have because of everyone here. I also notice that your essay mentions D. Sweetser. I really like how that guy has put a lot of effort into teaching people about mathematics. About 8 or so years ago I started writing an open source software to generate quaternion fractals, and I learned all of the math for the trig functions from the examples that he gave on his website. The dude is awesome.
Aside from all of this, your comment reminds me of one other time when someone said something very nice about another simple idea that I had. I had been thinking about how the interference pattern shows up in the double-slit machine even when individual particles are sent through the machine one at a time, and barring the possibility that the effect had something to do with interaction between the particles and the edges of the slits, I was left with the impression that perhaps the particles were leaving behind some kind of semi-permanent trail in space that would affect the particles that would subsequently pass through the machine. Like skiers in snow, leaving behind trails that affect the runs of subsequent skiers, I suppose. I was wondering then if we could somehow wipe away these trails by filling the machine with a hot gas and then re-evacuating it, after each time a particle is sent through the machine. Like recovering the ski hill with fresh snow after each time a skier makes their run, I suppose. The hot gas idea sure is a simple way to prove or disprove the trail hypothesis, regardless of its physical validity (no need to rely on lofty arguments for or against dissipative gravity, etc). I decided to write to a very prominent, vocal and respected physicist to see what they thought of the idea that such trails could occur, and they said "not according to our current interpretation of quantum physics, but that's an ingenious troubleshooting method" -- which is basically the same thing that you're saying. It's nice to know that there are people with experience and knowledge who are realistic enough to critique the validity of ideas, but do it in a nice way. It doesn't happen this way often at all, in my experience. Thank you for indirectly reminding me of this other time that someone said something very nice too. :) In any case, I'm now leaning toward Robert's interpretation of the double-slit experiment -- I won't be filling any double-slit machines with hot gas to satiate my curiosity anytime soon. :)
I spent several years fixing computers, so maybe this is why I have a habit of breaking things down into the simplest terms and then troubleshooting them.
I hope you're having a nice weekend. Take care!
- Shawn