Hi Terry Bollinger

Very nice idea about "binary conciseness lies behind the most powerful and insightful equations in physics and other sciences. The principle is that if two or more precise descriptive models (theories) address the same experimental data...." is very progressive for understanding of consciousness, very good... Bythe way....

Here in my essay energy to mass conversion...

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Hi Terry Bollinger

Very nice idea about "binary conciseness lies behind the most powerful and insightful equations in physics and other sciences. The principle is that if two or more precise descriptive models (theories) address the same experimental data...." is very progressive for understanding of consciousness, very good... Bythe way....

Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed...……..….. yours is very nice essay best wishes …. I highly appreciate hope your essay and hope for reciprocity ….You may please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

-No Isotropy

-No Homogeneity

-No Space-time continuum

-Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

-No singularities

-No collisions between bodies

-No blackholes

-No warm holes

-No Bigbang

-No repulsion between distant Galaxies

-Non-empty Universe

-No imaginary or negative time axis

-No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

-No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

-No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

-No many mini Bigbangs

-No Missing Mass / Dark matter

-No Dark energy

-No Bigbang generated CMB detected

-No Multi-verses

Here:

-Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

-Newton’s Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

-All bodies dynamically moving

-All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

-Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

-Single Universe no baby universes

-Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

-Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

-UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

-Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

-Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

-21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

-Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

-Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

- Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true….Have a look at

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.h
tml

I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information……..

Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from “http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ ”

I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

Best

=snp

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Dear Terry Bollinger,

Thanks for a most enjoyable essay. I first fell in love with information theory in 1967 when I encountered Amnon Katz's "Statistical Mechanics: an Information Theory Approach". Later I realized that ET Jaynes had done this circa 1951, and had noted that equating thermodynamic entropy to information entropy led to a lot of nonsense theorems being...

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Dear Terry Bollinger,

Thanks for a most enjoyable essay. I first fell in love with information theory in 1967 when I encountered Amnon Katz's "Statistical Mechanics: an Information Theory Approach". Later I realized that ET Jaynes had done this circa 1951, and had noted that equating thermodynamic entropy to information entropy led to a lot of nonsense theorems being proved.

Your Kolmogorov approach reminds me somewhat of 'Software Physics', circa 1977, relating the complexity of software to the number of operations and data types. I discovered the literal truth of this when I designed and built a prototype for Intel and Olivetti while they kept adding functionality (more operations) to the original spec.

Anyway, I found your essay easy to read and understand and significant for the question "What is fundamental?" Congratulations.

You say "the defining feature of the message is that it changes the state of the recipient." I have in a number of comments remarked that energy flows through space. If it crosses a threshold and changes the structure (or state) of a physical system, it 'in'-forms that system and the information, or record, or number of bits, comes into being. It has meaning only if a codebook or context is present: "One if by land, two if by sea." The proof of information is in the pudding, in my opinion it is energy that flows across space, there is nothing "on top of" that energy that is 'physical information'. If the frequency or modulation or what have you causes the change of state, that change is information (if it can be interpreted). While messages carrying "information" provide a very useful way to formulate the problem, I believe many physicists project this formulation on to reality and then come to believe in some physical instantiation of information aside and apart from the energy constituting the message. In that sense I enjoyed your section "Physics As Information Theory" in terms of "foundation messages".

I believe your second and third challenges have essentially the same answer, but current theories based on false assumptions get in the way – one reason I am currently working to uncover the false assumptions.

I like that you mention Pauli's treatment of spin. His projection of the 'qubit' formulation onto Stern-Gerlach data was one of the first (after Einstein's projection of a new time dimension onto every moving object) instances of physicists accepting the utility of projecting mathematical structure onto physics, and then coming to believe in the corresponding physical structure. My belief is that until the current belief in the structure of reality imposed by mathematical projections is overcome, your second and third challenges will not be satisfied. For brief comments on related topics, review three or four comments prior to yours on my essay page.

You conclude by suggesting new insights are most likely to come from data. My belief is that the only solution to our current problems (your three challenges for instance) is to unearth the false assumptions that are built into our current theories and have been for generations. That is not a popular proposition. Almost all working physicists would prefer new ideas to add to their toolbox, not ideas that contradict things they have taught and published and that got them where they are -- another reason to value FQXi. I hope your experience is such that you will come back year after year. And I hope you enjoy your newly gained retirement. It's a good time in life.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Dear Terry

Thank you for your feedback on my essay, ‘

I will use a similar marking system to that used by you.

What I liked:

Easy to read. Well set out. Your core idea came through well.

What I thought about as I read it:

The initial idea seemed quite a lot like Occam’s razor, shifted from a philosophical stance to a mathematical...

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Dear Terry

Thank you for your feedback on my essay, ‘

I will use a similar marking system to that used by you.

What I liked:

Easy to read. Well set out. Your core idea came through well.

What I thought about as I read it:

The initial idea seemed quite a lot like Occam’s razor, shifted from a philosophical stance to a mathematical stance.

Einstein’s derivation of E=mc^2 was moderately complex at certain points, and each step represented the last, using more letters, yet each says the same thing, so must express the same level of fundamentality. The difference is only in he or she who reads it. Fundamentality would then be in the eye of the beholder?

There is an implicit assumption in your example of replacing a gigabyte file. Say I write this program, but before it ends, I pull the plug! The program is time dependent while the gigabyte file is more space dependent. This was a cool idea, but I don’t think the file and the system are equivalent, only potentially equivalent. Also, reproducing the original file by a computer, even a perfect computer, would require an expenditure of energy under Landauer’s ‘information is physical’ correlation that would require more effort to retrieve than simply keeping the original file. I mention this because it hints at hidden aspects that make some things seem more fundamental than they really are.

I thought the reference to pi was quite fun. It occurred to me that given pi is irrational, if one had some way of referencing a point in its decimal expansion, then every finite number would be expressed within it and the larger the number, the more efficient it would be to specify the start and end point? I see this would likely have some limit due to a trade-off, but it is fun to think about. I suppose the same would apply to any irrational number.

You say, ‘the role of science is first to identify such pre-existing structures and behaviors, and then to document them in sufficient detail to understand and predict how they work.’ For philosophical reasons, there is a well-known (Hume, Kant, Popper) strong epistemic schism between science and reality. We can never identify, from an empirical standpoint, pre-existing structures. We can only guess at them from hints provided by experiment. But you probably know this already. My essays were written exactly to span the gap from a rationalist perspective.

On the Spekkens Principle. I haven’t read that essay, but the terminology suggests his work echoes that of Raphael Sorkin and his Causal Set Theory, only interpreted in an informational universe context (I think). It is exactly the dynamics, the ultimate cause, which my work addresses.

On your ‘Challenge 3’. I am a bit surprised that you didn’t mention in your comments on my essay argument for an increasing baryon mass (whether due to intrinsic change of the baryon or extrinsic change due to the ‘shape of space’, for which my model is not yet sufficiently advanced) which would answer at least one part of this challenge, namely why the ration of electron to proton mass is at it is.

‘The Standard Model qualifies overall as a remarkably compact…framework.’ Oi! Are we reading the same model? That said, I see you point that compared to SUSY and string theory and so forth, it is relatively compact, but with all those parameters, might they be hiding a very large set of other theories?

I hope you take the time to read my previous essay in ‘It from Bit’. In it there may be a gemstone of simplicity. My whole model comes from a single principle, and that principle is no more than an expression of our idea of equivalence.

I am providing a short response to your comments on my paper.

Best wishes,

Stephen

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Dear Terry,

With great interest I read your essay, which of course is worthy of the highest praise.

I found in the forum thread of Kadin your questions, which are much more interesting and relevant than the questions of FQXi.

My opinion on these issues:

(1) Entanglement - is the only remote mechanism in the Universe for forming the force of interaction between the...

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Dear Terry,

With great interest I read your essay, which of course is worthy of the highest praise.

I found in the forum thread of Kadin your questions, which are much more interesting and relevant than the questions of FQXi.

My opinion on these issues:

(1) Entanglement - is the only remote mechanism in the Universe for forming the force of interaction between the elements of matter, which is realized as a result of the interaction of the de Broglie toroidal gravitational waves at the common frequencies of the parametric resonance.

This quantum mechanism of gravity is shown in a photo of phenomena observed in outer space (essay 2017) "The reason of self-organization systems of matter is quantum parametric resonance and the formation of solitons" (https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2806).

For example, a molecule is a state of entanglement (interaction) of atoms at common resonant frequencies of the de Broglie toroidal gravitational wave complex (including tachyon waves) belonging to different levels of matter.

(2) Full fundamental fermion zoo - is described by simple similarity relations of the fractal structure of matter, on the basis of the parameters of the electron and the laws of conservation of angular momentum and energy.

Fermions of different levels of matter are neutrinos for each other. All this is given in the essay 2018 "Fundamental" means the underlying principles, laws, essence, structure, constants and properties of matter (https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3080).

Also given are the ratios for the deterministic grids of all the main resonance frequencies of the zoo of toroidal gravitational waves (fundamental fermions), and comparisons are made with known observed resonant frequencies.

(3) Recreating GR predictive power - is possible only after understanding the fact of the existence of potential stability pits in all fundamental interactions, both in strong interaction.

After such an understanding, logically easily is solved the paradox of electrodynamics, when the orbital electron does not radiate.

Potential stability pits (de Broglie toroidal gravitational waves, orbital solitons) are formed due to quantum parametric resonance in the medium of a physical vacuum.

With understanding of potential pits comes an understanding of inertia and mass.

(4) Clarifying waves vs superposed states - This is the result of the interaction of the toroidal gravitational waves of de Broglie (fundamental fermions), it can be determined by solving classical quantum parametric resonance problems, for example, using the Mathieu equations (as in radio engineering).

The solutions of these equations can be represented as a Fourier series, which is actually a set of real toroidal gravitational waves interacting (entangled) in a system on deterministic grids of a set of resonance frequencies.

I'm sorry that everything is wrong, «how very much like space curvature could create such observed effects».

Instead of curvature of space-time, there is a derivative of spatial coordinates in time. Equivalent of "curvature of space" is the speed of propagation of gravitational interaction.

I hope that my modest achievements can be information for reflection for you.

Vladimir Fedorov

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3080

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Terry,

This is a fine essay with many interesting points, eminently clear and sensible. On your main theme of simplicity, you should check out Inés Samengo’s excellent essay. She has a similar take, but also considers the scope of a theory as a second key factor in determining what’s fundamental. And she makes the point that these two criteria are not necessarily in synch. FYI,...

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Terry,

This is a fine essay with many interesting points, eminently clear and sensible. On your main theme of simplicity, you should check out Inés Samengo’s excellent essay. She has a similar take, but also considers the scope of a theory as a second key factor in determining what’s fundamental. And she makes the point that these two criteria are not necessarily in synch. FYI, though essay ratings have to be done by 2/26, I believe we can continue reading and posting comments afterwards. So no rush!

As you know from looking at my essay, I agree that “a better way to think of physics is not as some form of axiomatic mathematics, but as a type of information theory.” And I like the way you characterize the difficulties we face when we have a theory that seems close to being fundamental -- your description of “the trampoline effect” was especially vivid and on point, with the Standard Model. Most of all, though, I like your general attitude – you can get seriously involved in specific issues (your “challenges”), but also really broad ones – like the “lumpiness” you mention in your comments to Karen Crowther’s essay: “Our universe is, at many levels, “lumpy enough” that many objects (and processes) within it can be approximated when viewed from a distance.”

You were writing about renormalization, and making an interesting shift in perspective. Physicists have tried to understand this by delving into the mathematics, which by now is apparently well-understood. You suggest that a different viewpoint might also help, comparing this with many other cases in which the “approximate” (or “effective”) properties of a complex system define it more usefully at a higher level. I agree that this is a deep and important characteristic of our universe, where lower-level complexity supports new and simpler kinds of relationships, where new kinds of complexity can become important. I hope this perspective can eventually elucidate the amazing complications of our current physics.

Your summary credo is excellent: “the belief that simplicity is just as important now as it was in the early 1900s heydays of relativity and quantum theory.” The wonder of our situation is that we’re still trying to grasp exactly what kind of simplicity those two foundational theories are showing us.

By the way, I’m much in sympathy with your remarks to Flavio, above. The earliest-submitted essays in these contests can be discouraging, and it’s a marvelous relief when a really good one shows up – in my case it was Emily Adlam’s that rescued me from despair. So thanks for joining in!

Conrad

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Dear Terry,

I was most impressed, even inspired. Your ability to find the right questions is leagues above most who can't even recognize correct answers! Lucid, direct, one of the best here.

I entirely agree on simplicity as the title of my own essay suggests, but isn't a reason we haven't advanced that our brains can't quite yet decode the complex puzzle (information)?

But...

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Dear Terry,

I was most impressed, even inspired. Your ability to find the right questions is leagues above most who can't even recognize correct answers! Lucid, direct, one of the best here.

I entirely agree on simplicity as the title of my own essay suggests, but isn't a reason we haven't advanced that our brains can't quite yet decode the complex puzzle (information)?

But now more importantly. I'd like you to read my essay as two of your sought answers are implicit in an apparent classical mechanism reproducing all QM's predictions and CSHS>2. Most academics (& editors) fear to read, comment or falsify due to cognitive dissonance but I'm sure you're more curious and honest. It simply follows Bell, tries a new starting assumption about pair QAM using Maxwell's orthogonal states and analyses momentum transfers.

Spin 1/2 & 2 etc emerged early on and is in my last essay (scored 8th but no chocs). Past essays (inc. scored 1st & 2nd) described a better logic for SR which led to 'test by QM'. Another implication was cosmic redshift without accelerating expansion closely replicating Euler at a 3D Schrodinger sphere surface and Susskinds seed for strings.

By design I'm quite incompetent to express most thing mathematically. My research uses geometry, trig, observation & logic (though my red/green socks topped the 2015 Wigner essay.) But I do need far more qualified help (consortium forming).

On underlying truths & SM, gravity etc, have you seen how closed, multiple & opposite helical charge paths give toroid... ..but let's take things 2 at a time!

As motion is key I have a 100 sec video giving spin half (+, QM etc.) which you may need to watch 3 times, then a long one touching on Euler but mainly Redshift, SR, etc. But maybe read the essay first.

Sorry that was a preamble to mine but you did ask! I loved it, and thank you for those excellent questions and encouragement on our intellectual evolution.

Of course I may be a crackpot. Do be honest, but I may also crack a bottle of champers tonight!

Very best

Peter

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Dear Terry,

It has always been the case that the very high-end computing requirements of theoretical physics produce machines and codes specialized to the theoretic structure. So of course the IT community is always a key player. Lattice Gauge Theory, among others, are very compute-intensive stuff! But lets get to the fundamental physics of the subject...

Have you, in your 'broad'...

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Dear Terry,

It has always been the case that the very high-end computing requirements of theoretical physics produce machines and codes specialized to the theoretic structure. So of course the IT community is always a key player. Lattice Gauge Theory, among others, are very compute-intensive stuff! But lets get to the fundamental physics of the subject...

Have you, in your 'broad' research on the subject, run across the Rishon model? It requires only two type of quanta (T & V) to create the algebraic group of quarks and leptons (QC/ED actually).

H. Harari and N. Seiberg, “The Rishon Model”, Nucl. Phys. B, Vol 204 #1, p 141-167, September 1982.

So the reductionist approach to the 'minimal quantum basis' problem does reveal a somewhat 'binary' solution.

More to the IT-ish point, though, your software skills and devotion to the algebra of the quantum subjects could well be of GREAT use. Do you by chance write javascript? There is a nice java code for displaying the QC/ED group theory for some academic research applications as well as public explanations.

Another interesting point you raise earlier

In it, you offer Challenge #1 - "What is the full physics meaning of Euler’s identity, ?^??+1=0 ?". That is actually an elegantly simple fundamental question /criterion, but just a little off the mark. Of course mathematically we known that for physics to have a unique solution it must have a cyclic variable. At least, all the best formal Proofs of Uniqueness reduce a conformal mathematics problem to a cyclic variable, removing all true singularities (including the point-like particle approximation).

So how does ?^?0 fit in?? Well, it seems that the universe is cyclic in mass and time... NOT radius and time as the astronomic observables would hope /make easy. So the general Theta is actually Thetamass-time! For a more complete answer why this works read my essay, if you please.

Further you discuss: "If someone can succeed in uncovering a smaller, simpler, more factored version of the Standard Model, who is to say that the resulting model might not enable new insights into the nature of gravity?" so please see

C.W. Misner, K.S. Thorne and J.H. Wheeler, Gravitation, W.H. Freeman and Co., p 536, 1973. in which the Nobel-winning author (Thorne) notes that mass is area-like at small (planck) scale.

Here the discussion can go into the finite representation geometries, which are area-like, and their respective quantum state algebras. Or it could look at the influence of ralpha'/R on BH theory,as I've long advocated with Prof Mathur (see his essay), in which the strong (conical) lensing effects observed are due to "PRESERVED" matter in Black Holes. Interesting inquest, again read further into the literature.

Best regards,

Dr Wayne Lundberg

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3092

p.s.

I too have a 30yr civil service career but started publishing on physics topics in 1992. More dod stories...

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Dear Terry,

Congratulations for the essay contestant pledge that you introduced (goo.gl/KCCujt) --- I think we should all follow it, and I will certainly attempt to from now on. Congratulations also on the truly constructive comments that you have left so far on the threads of many of the participants in this contest. I thought I would use a similar format and comment on your...

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Dear Terry,

Congratulations for the essay contestant pledge that you introduced (goo.gl/KCCujt) --- I think we should all follow it, and I will certainly attempt to from now on. Congratulations also on the truly constructive comments that you have left so far on the threads of many of the participants in this contest. I thought I would use a similar format and comment on your essay!

What I liked:

- Your essay is well written and interesting to read: at the end, I wanted more of it!

- You introduce vivid/memorable expressions to describe your main points: the principle of binary conciseness, the trampoline effect, foundation messages. I specially like the trampoline effect, defined as the bouncing-off of the near-minimum region of Kolmogorov simplicity by adding new ideas that seem relevant, yet in the end just add more complexity without doing much to solve the original simplification goal. I think you will agree that, when you read some of the essays submitted to your typical FQXi contest, you can observe spectacular examples of the trampoline effect. It seems easy to diagnose a trampoline effect in accepted theories that we find lacking, or in alternative theories that we find even more flawed. True wisdom, of course, would be to be able to become aware of the trampoline effect in our own thinking… which is so hard to do!

- You directly address the specific essay contest question, “What is fundamental?” (at least, in the first half of your essay)

- Nicely worded and accessible introduction to the famous equation E = mc²

- Pedagogical presentation of Kolmogorov complexity for the reader not already familiar with the concept

- Interesting parallel between the increased difficulty in reducing Kolmogorov complexity in an already well-compressed description and the increased difficulty in improving an already well-developed theory

- It was interesting to end with challenges to the physics community, although it fits only tangentially with the essay topic (it would make a great essay topic for a future contest!)

- Your challenges #2 and #3 are profound questions: WHY the spin-statistics theorem? WHY the three generations in the Standard Model? There is certainly much to be learned if we can make progress with these fundamental “Why?” questions --- although the particular physics of our particular universe might just be arbitrary at the most fundamental level, forever frustrating our hopes of ultimate unification and simplicity.

What I liked less / constructive criticism:

- You say that the content of foundation messages (data sets expressing structures and behaviors of the universe that exist independently of human knowledge and actions) must reflect only content from the as-is-universe, despite the extensive work that humans must perform to obtain them. But this presupposes that we can have a reasonably access to the “as-is” universe, which many historians and philosophers of science would deny, saying that observations are always more-or-less theory-dependent (no such thing as a pure observation, independent of the previous knowledge of the observer): see for instance the articles “Theory-ladenness” and “Duhem-Quine Thesis” in Wikipedia.

- You say that in physics, the sole criterion for whether a theory is correct is whether it accurately reproduces the data in foundation messages. It is true that reproducing data is an important criterion, but is it the sole one? For example, a modern, evolved, computer assisted epicycles-based Ptolemaic model (with lots and lots of epicycles) could probably reproduce incredibly well the planetary positions data, but we could use other criteria (simplicity, meshing with theories explaining other phenomena) to strongly criticize it and ultimately reject it.

- I am not sure that the map analogy and the associated figure helps clarify the concept of a Kolmogorov minimum. Maybe it’s because I was distracted by the labels: Why pi-r-squared in one of the ovals? Why Euler’s identity? Why the zeros and ones along the path? Why is the equation E = mc2 written along a path that goes from Newton to Einstein, since it is purely an Einsteinian equation?

- Your short section on the “Spekkens Principle” is very compact and will probably remain obscure to many readers (it was for me). It might have been beneficial to expand it (I understand there was a length limit to the essay…) or to drop it altogether.

- Concerning your challenge no. 1… Like many mathematicians and physicists, I am in awe with Euler’s identity, but I am not sure that there is explicit undiscovered physics insight hiding within it. Once you understand that the exponential function is its own derivative, that the exponent i in e to the i*t comes in front when you derive with respect to time, that multiplication by i rotates a vector by 90° in the complex plane and that the velocity vector in uniform circular motion is perpendicular to the position vector, it becomes “evident” that you can model circular uniform motion (hence, the trigonometric circle) with an exponential function with an imaginary argument: Euler’s identity then follows from the fact that pi radians corresponds to half a turn, which is the same as multiplying by -1! If there is anything truly remarkable in all this basic math, it is perhaps that the ratio pi (or, more often, 2 times pi) appears so often in the fundamental equations of physics, even in phenomena that do not seem related in any way to circles or rotations.

And finally, a question:

In your expression “principle of binary conciseness”, what does the "binary" stand for exactly? The fact that it deals with TWO (or more…) theories that address the same data, or the fact that Kolomogorov complexity is often applied to strings of BINARY digits?

Congratulations once again, and welcome to the FQXi community! I hope you have the time to take a look at my essay and leave comments --- especially constructive criticism, which is unfortunately so hard to get in these contests, because of the fear of rating reprisal.

Marc

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Dear Terry,

You presented your essay from a viewpoint with which I have little familiarity, and as a result I truly enjoyed having familiar ideas examined from a perspective that was novel to me.

A few comments:

1. Your example involving the sequence which can be found in the decimal expression of pi reminded me of the fact that most irrational numbers are still unknown to us....

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Dear Terry,

You presented your essay from a viewpoint with which I have little familiarity, and as a result I truly enjoyed having familiar ideas examined from a perspective that was novel to me.

A few comments:

1. Your example involving the sequence which can be found in the decimal expression of pi reminded me of the fact that most irrational numbers are still unknown to us. But with the irrational numbers we do know, your example gave me the idea that one might try the following cookie cutter approach which requires little creativity to help more efficiently compress a sequence: take a set of irrationals, take their representation in base 2,3 etc. up to 10 (if one wants to incorporate the compression of sequences which contain letters, then go higher) and create a table which contains the numbers and their expansions up to some number of digits, say, 50 million (the larger , the better). It seems that one then has a ready-made 3D "coordinate system" in which the three coordinates are: A symbolic representation of the irrational number, its n-ary expansion, and the position of the first digit of the sequence in that expansion. The sequence could then be compressed by just giving its coordinates. Due to my ignorance in these matters, I am not sure if this is too naive, elementary or unworkable of an idea, but I believe one cannot learn if one does not take the risk of occassionally embarrassing oneself.

2. Your reconceptualization of theory development in physics as data compression strikes me as an abstraction that could be useful for comparing the historical development of different theories. Perhaps it has some unexpected use and application in the history and philosophy of science. Unfortunately, I know too little about data compression to be able to assess the merits of this possibility, but it seems that you might? Another idea you discussed for which I see connections with the philosophy of physics is the trampoline effect applied to the standard model, which reminds me a bit of Kuhn's crisis phase.

3. Your discussion of the Kolmogorov minimum at times reminded me of the variational principles. Do you know whether such connections exist?

4. With regard to your first challenge, I am glad that you, as what appears (to me, at least) a hard-nosed physicist, ask the meaning of the mathematics we use to model the phase of the quantum state. All too often I find that people are not even aware of how little we know about its phyiscal origin. Saying that it is the time-dependent solution to Schrödinger's equation is too me little more than a fig leaf for our ignorance. I admit that my perspective is influenced by the fact that I have thought about this question quite a bit.

5. With regard to your second challenge, I think that there will be a convergence with respect to what from the Kolmogorov approach would be considered a simple answer and one that might in more qualitative terms be considered philosophically satisfying. I am glad that you called out the all too-convenient method of "solution by denial that a problem exists".

6. With regard to your third challenge, I believe that a refactoring of the Standard model will not happen before a paradigm change occurs. In my view, what is missing to discover a simpler understanding of the standard model is a conceptual framework which redefines its conceptual building blocks, analogous to how what was missing for the ancient mayas for a simpler understanding of astronomy was the concept of planets orbiting the sun. I am receptive to your call to lay off gravity when trying to simplify our understanding of the standard model, but that is only because I already hold the view (or bias) that if nature wanted gravity to be quantum, it would have given us more (actually, any) experimental evidence that it is quantum.

7. Your principle of Kolmogorov simplicity reminds me a little of Zeilinger's principle that the most elementary system carry only one bit of information. Any thoughts on the relationship between these principles?

Overall, I do agree that the way to advance our understanding of fundamental physics is to find simpler reconceptualitions. My background knowledge of Kolmogorov simplicity is too incomplete to be able to tell whether it is the definitive criterion for simplicity, but it certainly seems promising.

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Dear Heinrich Luediger,

I took the liberty to read your “Context” essay before attempting to respond to your comments, to make sure that I understood fully what you are attempting to say. If you have read enough of my posting comments for this year’s (2017) contest, you will surely be aware that I hold philosophy as an approach to life in high regard, and that some of my favorite...

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Dear Heinrich Luediger,

I took the liberty to read your “Context” essay before attempting to respond to your comments, to make sure that I understood fully what you are attempting to say. If you have read enough of my posting comments for this year’s (2017) contest, you will surely be aware that I hold philosophy as an approach to life in high regard, and that some of my favorite essays this year were written by philosophers.

My first warning that your essay might be rather unique was when you quoted a line from Kant that eloquently restates what every mother or father of an enquiring child already knows, which is that we humans like to ask “why” in situations where no one has an answer. Here is the Kant line you quoted:

“… it is the peculiar fate of human reason to bring forth questions that are equally inescapable and unanswerable.”

From that simple observation you somehow (I do not yet see how) inferred this:

“… we may read Kant’s disturbing assertion as: human knowledge is without false floor, irreducible and hence not tolerating questions.”

I would estimate that well over 95% of readers would instead interpret that line from Kant as a gentle and basically humble reminder of how deeply ingrained curiosity is in most of us, and that the hard questions that such curiosity engenders are a good thing, rather than something to be discouraged. That you instead interpreted his comment as an assertion that people should stop asking questions is very unexpected.

Thus I was genuinely curious to find out why you interpreted this line in this way, and so read your essay in detail to find out why.

As best I can understand your worldview from that careful reading, you believe sincerely that special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics are all unreal mathematical fantasies whose complex, incomprehensible mathematical structures are used by a small group of people, positivist scientists mostly, in positions of power and privilege. In contrast you believe that only the older Newtonian physics that is more accessible to your direct senses is valid. Finally, you believe that the same group that uses these false mathematical frameworks to maintain positions of privilege are also very worried that people such as yourself might join together to ask hard questions that would uncover the falseness of their mathematical fantasies, and so undermine their positions. You believe therefore that this same group works actively keep suppress people like you even from speaking about the falseness of their QM, SR, and GR frameworks.

Let me specific about which lines in your essay led me to the above inferences:

Pages 2-3: “Since both SR/GR and QM 5 are not associated with phenomena whatsoever, modern physics, by having taken us into the never-Here and never-

Now, has become speechless, i.e. cannot translate logic and mathematics back to meaning other than by fantastic speculation and daring artistic impression.”

Page 3: “Hence it doesn’t come as a surprise that mathematically driven physics moves tons of data just to remain void of experience. In other words, much of modern physics stands in false, namely affirmative-logical, relations to the rest of human knowledge.”

Pages 3-4: “So, I’m absolutely convinced that classical physics has not been falsified in the sense of contradicting human experience.”

Page 4: “Of course I’m not denying that there are instrumental observations that don’t agree with classical physics, but that is not what theories primarily are about. Rather they are meant to ‘make observable’ novel domains of experience and in order not to ‘sabotage’ established domains of experience they are to be incommensurable, i.e. orthogonal, and thus additive.”

Page 4: “Positive, that is, logical knowledge does not permit rhetorical questions for the reason of creating strings or networks of affirmations and precipitating as unscientific whatever is not tractable by its analytical methodology. And by successively entraining us into its network we are becoming ants in an ant colony, fish in a fish school and politically-correct repliants of ever-newer, the less intuitive the better, opinions.”

The next-to-last quote above is to me the most fascinating. I was genuinely scratching my head as to how you were handling instrumental observations that do not agree with classical physics, of which there are shall we say, quite a few? I see that you do not deny the existence of such observations — I was actually a bit surprised by that — but that you instead seem to interpret them as ultimately irrelevant data that have very little impact on everyday Newtonian-framework reality and observation, and so do not really mean much… except to the positivists, who jumped on them collectively (additively) to create huge nonsensical mathematical fantasies that make bizarre and incomprehensible predictions that are unrelated to reality.

However, I think it is the last quote above that is the most evocative of how you feel about what you perceive as the situation, and your level of anger about it. You seem convinced in that quote that this group has dedicated itself to ensuring that even that tiny remaining group of true, reality-believing inquirers such as yourself, the ones who still believe in the readily observable reality of the Newtonian world of physics, will be scooped up relentlessly, utterly isolated, driven to silence, and made into nothing more than mindless, unquestioning ants.

Such a perspective helps make more comprehensible your unexpected view of the simple observation from Kant, the one about the incessant and unanswerable curiosity of most humans. I suspect (but am not sure) that you are reading Kant’s line not as some gently intended general observation on the nature of curiosity in both children and adults, but as some sort of subtle warning from Kant to his followers that there exist people such as yourself who understand what he and his followers are really up to — creating indecipherable scientific fantasies that they can then use to build up a power base — and that this group needs to be shut down to keep them from asking unanswerable questions that would expose the unreal nature of their mathematical fantasies.



I’ll end by pointing out that I think you have a serious inconsistency in your beliefs, one that leaves you with two choices.

You say you do not accept the reality of quantum theory, yet your daily actions powerfully contradict that assertion. Even as you read this text you are reaping enormous personal benefits of from these supposedly imaginary mathematical frameworks.

Why? Well, are you or are you not using a personal computer, laptop, or cell phone to read this posting, and to post your own ideas?

The problem is that semiconductor chips on which all of these devices depend cannot even exist within classical physics. They can only be understood and applied usefully by applying material and quantum theory. So, if you insist that only objects you can see with your own sense are real, look at what you are doing right now on your electronic devices. Ask anyone you can find with a solid-state electrical engineering background how such device work. Take the time and effort to let them teach you the basic design of devices that you can see are real and right in front of you, both at the laptop level and by using a Newtonian microscope to look at the complexity of the resulting silicon chips. Let your own senses convince you, with the help of someone you can trust—and surely you can find at least one electrical engineer whom you know well enough on a personal basis that you trust them to be honest about how those clearly real chips were designed and built?

There are other examples. Do you have lights that turn on at night? Einstein was the one who created quantum mechanics when he explained why such sensors cannot be explained by classical waves.

Do you recall the old cathode-ray tubes? Were you aware that the electrons that write images on the screens of such devices travel fast enough that you cannot design such devices without taking special relativity into account?

But if you insist that none of this is real, I must ask: Shouldn’t you then stop buying and using all such devices? Their very existence compromises your fundamental premise that they are based upon mathematics that are not real, and are designed only to perpetuate power. How then can you continue using them?



The only other alternative I can suggest is that you examine more closely both why your feel there is a conspiracy.

For whatever it’s worth. I assure you as someone whose friends will testify to my honest and who has worked in high tech and science areas for decades that until I read your essay today, I had never before encountered the idea that QM, SR, and GR might be fantasies that some group of people uses to maintain power and suppress questions. The people I have known just found these mathematical constructs to be incredibly useful for building things (QM hugely, but also SR) and for understanding observational data (GR for astronomy). They would have been horrified (and literally unable to do their jobs) if someone had taken those tools away from them.

Since you seem to be a thought leader for this idea that QM, SR, and GR are part of a large, centuries-old mathematical power conspiracy, I don’t seriously expect you to be persuaded to abandon your belief in a conspiracy to promulgate false mathematics as physics. But I can attest to you that from my decades-long personal experiences at many levels of science and applied technology that I simply have not encountered anything that corresponds in to the kind of false math or false intent that you describe. So, I at least want to point out to you the option of changing your mind.

Sincerely,

Terry Bollinger

Fundamental as Fewer Bits (Essay 3099)

Essayist’s Rating Pledge by Terry Bollinger

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Hello Terry,

imo your contestant pledge is right on target, makes specific some of the concerns and disappointments i've felt in exploring many of the threads, and particularly the offers to barter good scores. Only point on which i hesitate is your contention that one should avoid rating an essay highly because its conclusions are agreeable to a given reader's perspective. After all the...

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Hello Terry,

imo your contestant pledge is right on target, makes specific some of the concerns and disappointments i've felt in exploring many of the threads, and particularly the offers to barter good scores. Only point on which i hesitate is your contention that one should avoid rating an essay highly because its conclusions are agreeable to a given reader's perspective. After all the rationalizations are done most folks just do what they feel like doing, and to accept that reality seems to yield a less complex world view.

Many thanks for the short and clear explanation of Kolmogorov complexity. Agree it is a good metric.

Your three challenges seem for the most part well chosen and relevant to the present muddle in particle physics theory.

the first, the Euler identity, seems perhaps the most difficult, as the compression is greatest there. Expressing it in terms of sin and cos suggests amplitude and phase of the wavefunction. And the presence of '1' suggests unitarity. Beyond that there seems to be only our desire to see what connections might 'pop out' in a deeper understanding of the physics, for which we as yet have no clear perpsective.

the second, the quest for a simple explanation of fermion-boson statistics, also remains to be had. My sense again is that we need a deeper understanding of the wavefunction. Point particle quarks and leptons with intrinsic internal properties leave us lost in almost meaningless abstraction.

and the third, to 'refactor' SM without adding gravity or complexity... Certainly to simplify, to reduce rather than increasing complexity in our models, is an essential aspect. Agree with the hope that such a simplification would have a natural place for gravity, that it would not be necessary to put it in 'by hand' so to speak.

It seems to me that to meet your challenges will require improved models of the wavefunction.

Finally i think it is good to keep in mind that the geometric interpretation of Clifford algebra, geometric algebra, has shown the equivalence of GR in curved space with 'gauge theory gravity' in flat space. Introduction of the concept of curved space came not from the physicists, from Einstein in particular, but from the math folks. Einstein was looking for math tools to express his physics understanding. Geometric interpretation was lost with the early death of Clifford and ascendance of the vector formalism of Gibbs, was not rediscovered until the work of Hestenes in the 1960s. What was available to Einstein was the tensor calculus. History is written by the winners, and Einstein's true perspective has perhaps been distorted by those who most readily embraced the formalism he adopted, the math folks and their acceptance of Riemann's view of his creation.

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Dear Terry,

I enjoyed very much your essay, and I take the opportunity to say that your pledge is great and we should all adopt it. I think the idea "Fundamental as Fewer Bits", using Kolmogorov complexity, is great, and I am also using it to propose to identify the simplest theory in section 5 of this reference. Of course, this is not an absolute measure, because each equation has behind...

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Dear Terry,

I enjoyed very much your essay, and I take the opportunity to say that your pledge is great and we should all adopt it. I think the idea "Fundamental as Fewer Bits", using Kolmogorov complexity, is great, and I am also using it to propose to identify the simplest theory in section 5 of this reference. Of course, this is not an absolute measure, because each equation has behind it implicit definitions and meanings. Your examples E=mc2 and Euler's identity, reveal this relativity when you try to explain them to someone who doesn't know mathematics and physics. But there is a theorem showing that the Kolmogorov complexity of the same data expressed in two different languages differs only by a constant (which is given by the size of the "dictionary" translating from one language into the other). So modulo that constant, Kolmogorov complexity indicates well which theory is simpler. This is a relativity of simplicity if you want, and of fundamentalness, because it depends on the language. But the difference is irrelevant when the complexity of the theory exceeds considerably the length of the dictionary. One may wonder what if the most fundamental unified theory is simpler than any such dictionary? Well, in this case the difference becomes relevant, but I think that if the theory is so simple, then we should use the minimal language required to express it. So if the dictionary is too large, it means we are not using the best formulations of the theory. This means that once we find the unified theory, it may be the most compressed theory, but we can optimize further by reformulating the mathematics behind it. For example, Schrödinger's equation is a partial differential equation, but the language is simplified if we use the Hilbert space formulation. Compression by reformulation occurs also by using group representations for particles, fiber bundle formulation of gauge theories, and Clifford algebras.

Another idea I liked in your essay is the trampoline effect. I would argue here that I see the trampoline as being again relative, in the following sense. Let's see it as an elastic wall, rather than a trampoline, or if you wish, as a potential well. Once you go beyond the wall, or outside the potential well, the trampoline accelerates you instead of rejecting you back. I would take as an example each major breakthrough. Once the wall between Newtonian mechanics and special relativity was left behind, special relativity reached a new compression level, unifying space and time, energy and momentum, the electric and the magnetic fields in a single tensor etc. Then other trampolines appeared, which separated special relativity from general relativity, and from quantum mechanics. Similarly, when we moved from nonrelativistic quantum mechanics to relativistic QM, the description of particles became simply in terms of representations of symmetry groups, the Poincaré and gauge groups. It is true that at this time we are hitting from decades the wall which separates our present theories from quantum gravity, and there's a similar wall separating them from a unified theory of particles. And at least another wall beyond which we expect to find the unified theory. So my hypothesis, based on previous history, is that the trampoline rejects us back as long as we don't break through, in which case it will accelerate both the discovery and the simplification. And until we will get to the terminus, more complexity may wait us beyond each wall, as usually happened so far, since every time when we found the new simplicity, new phenomena were discovered too. It's a rollercoaster. But I believe at the end there will be a really short equation, and underlying it some simple mathematical structure but initially not so simple to express. We will see.

Thank you for the great essay, and good luck in the contest!

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica, Indra's net

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Dear Terry

If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don’t rate them at all. Infact I haven’t issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to...

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Dear Terry

If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don’t rate them at all. Infact I haven’t issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.

Beyond my essay’s introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity’s effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me and my essay in questioning this circumstance?

My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a “narrow range of sensitivity” that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn’t then gas accumulation wouldn’t be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.

Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn’t we consider this possibility?

For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we “life” are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.

My essay is attempt of something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up a potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond formation activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemistry processes arose.

By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might explain for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.

To steal a phrase from my essay “A world product of evolved optimization”.

Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest

Kind regards

Steven Andresen

Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin

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Dear Terry,

An original and daring idea, to define a numerical measure to answer the question ‘what is fundamental’. It is really interesting to literally view scientific theories as a concise way to represent measurement data.

I have a few comments. Your example of decimals of pi nicely illustrates that an unambiguous measure of Kolmogorov complexity is not possible. The example...

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Dear Terry,

An original and daring idea, to define a numerical measure to answer the question ‘what is fundamental’. It is really interesting to literally view scientific theories as a concise way to represent measurement data.

I have a few comments. Your example of decimals of pi nicely illustrates that an unambiguous measure of Kolmogorov complexity is not possible. The example doesn’t suffice, however, because the string of decimals is too short. I’m quite sure that in the space of 20 decimals, you cannot write a program that enumerates the decimals of pi. So probably the shortest way to represent your example string is the string itself (or a zipped variant). But of course, if you would take a string of decimals of pi that is much longer, the example does work.

A more serious objection on your view on physics as information theory is that I would want to see arguments why it makes sense to view a physical theory as a concise way of reproducing data. This view misses the semantical part, the meaning of the theory. In practice, the question on how to check measurement data against the predictions of a theory, is not a straightforward one. A lot of theory interpretation is needed to calculate what outcome the theory predicts for a certain measurement. This aspect is absent from your view.

Let me put it in a different way: if I understand you right, I can rephrase your claim that the most fundamental physical theory is somewhat like the best compression algorithm. Both are the shortest possible way to represent a set of data. But there is an important difference, because any scientific theory is a finite description of an infinite set of data, whereas the size of a compressed set of data still scales with the size of the original data. This indicates that there is an important difference between the two.

In the end, I tend to think that how fundamental a theory is, is not a concept that can be given a numerical measure. But I admit that the idea is really interesting.

Let me read up on the Spekkens principle, because I don’t think I understand it. And I really like the three challenges you conclude with. I must confess, as a physicist, that I never appreciated the mysteries around spin and the difference between fermions and bosons. My bad, because indeed this must be profound.

All the best,

Paul Bastiaansen

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All,

I’m introducing a new FQXi process idea here, which is this: I want to create a new format for capturing important essay contest conversations in a more explicit, more accessible form that makes them easier to cite and reference.

Specifically, I will be posting for reference a number of supplemental "mini-essays" that capture, clean up, and document some of the particularly...

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All,

I’m introducing a new FQXi process idea here, which is this: I want to create a new format for capturing important essay contest conversations in a more explicit, more accessible form that makes them easier to cite and reference.

Specifically, I will be posting for reference a number of supplemental "mini-essays" that capture, clean up, and document some of the particularly interesting ideas that have emerged from what have been for me very stimulating interactions with other essays and their authors. My goal is to make these synergistic outcomes more explicit and easier to reference in the future. Putting aside the competitive aspects of the FQXi Essay contests, I would judge that the greatest value of these contests emerges instead from the interactions between essay authors. Our essays are far more valuable as an interactive whole than they are if viewed only in isolation.

The Crowley Criteria posting is my first example of such a mini-essay, though it is more an example of a reference summary than a mini-essay. For any of the mini-essays I post, please free to add your thoughts with (preferably) a reply-to at that posting. Note however that in the case of the Crowley Criteria I'm just trying to capture her ideas in a simple format. So if you want to debate any of the points in her list you should go to her essay thread rather than mine.

I’m posting the Crowley Criteria in part because I need them as a reference for a rather unusual mini-essay that I will be posting soon. To be frank, that mini-essay ends up directly contradicting her CC#4. I didn't expect to wind up there, but such an unexpected journey is worth documenting!

Each time I post a mini-essay I will try quickly (I was slow this time) to post a short addendum that provides links to the mini-essay. Below is my link addendum for the Crowley Criteria post.

--------------------

To link to the mini-essay titled:

The Crowther Criteria for Fundamental Theories of Physics

… Please copy and paste either the named link above or the direct URL below:

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3099#post_14555
1

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Terry, some quick short notes as I work my way to your essay:

1. FQXi Essay Contestant Pledge = Suggested FQXi Voting Pledge

Your Pledge is so refreshing that I've hot-linked it above. LHS wording of the title is yours; to me, it reads "official" and is thus too hopeful (for now). RHS is my suggested edit as we work with FQXi to improve things!

2. Under current...

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Terry, some quick short notes as I work my way to your essay:

1. FQXi Essay Contestant Pledge = Suggested FQXi Voting Pledge

Your Pledge is so refreshing that I've hot-linked it above. LHS wording of the title is yours; to me, it reads "official" and is thus too hopeful (for now). RHS is my suggested edit as we work with FQXi to improve things!

2. Under current circumstances, my own position is clear:

(i) As an independent researcher, I'm here to discuss, learn, teach, debate, respond to every question, critique others, etc. Result = Fail; eg, next-to-no questions, few responses.

(ii) I'm not here for the votes: Result = Just-as-well; eg, given a 0 without explanation: how can I learn, respond, correct, defend, revise, acknowledge, etc?

3. While we await (with many others) for FQXi improvements, why don't we develop an OPEN voting system? Add to your Pledge a (say, for argument's sake) 5-category [each numbered; #1-5] scoring sheet [maximum vote per category = 2??] with space for explanations, plus identifier (say, for you, hot-linked Terry Bollinger [or with hot-linked email-addresses also allowed] so that we ALWAYS get an alert -- with easy-return access. [You get the idea.]

Recipient can respond to Terry Bollinger#2, for all to see: thus promoting open learning, debate, progress, support for one view or the other, or a middle view, etc. Given the teaching/learning, who then here, as a serious researcher, would focus on "fake-scores"?

The advantage of this OPEN proposal is that you, with your background, could lead us to something truly useful, actionable, within the current rules, a worthwhile experiment, ready for the next "contest" (surely the wrong word here) -- which FQXi can monitor before refining (if need be), and accepting as the new gold-standard in OPEN teaching/learning/essay-exchange; etc: ready for the next + 1 "contest"!

4. To your (for me) excellent essay:

(i) I counted 8 important fundamental symbols in Challenge #1.

(ii) Re Challenge #2: in my [hurried] essay, see hot-linked Reference [12], p.639! It's part of my theory.

(iii) NB: Your editorial red-pen will be very welcome there at any time; hopefully after you've read [in the first thread], the Background to my theory (which dates from 1989).

(iv) Maybe, with hard work and insight, you might just become the person who finds a hidden gemstone of simplicity by unravelling the threads of misunderstanding that for decades have kept it hidden.

PS: Terry, if/when you reply to my post (at any time), please copy it to my essay-thread so that I'm alerted to it. I will do likewise.

Enough (for now): With many thanks and much appreciation for your lovely work;

Gordon Watson More realistic fundamentals: quantum theory from one premiss.

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Fundamental as (Literally) Finding the Cusp of Meaning

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02-25 Feb

NOTE: The purpose of a mini-essay is to capture some idea, approach, or even a prototype theory that resulted from idea sharing by FQXi Essay contestants. This mini-essay was inspired primarily by two essays:

The Perception of Order by Noson S Yanofsky

The Laws of Physics by...

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Fundamental as (Literally) Finding the Cusp of Meaning

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02-25 Feb

NOTE: The purpose of a mini-essay is to capture some idea, approach, or even a prototype theory that resulted from idea sharing by FQXi Essay contestants. This mini-essay was inspired primarily by two essays:

The Perception of Order by Noson S Yanofsky

The Laws of Physics by Kevin H Knuth

Relevant quotes:

Yanofsky (in a posting question): “I was wondering about the relationship between Kolmogorov Complexity and Occam's razor? Do simpler things really have lower KC?”

Knuth: “Today many people make a distinction between situations which are determined or derivable versus those which are accidental or contingent. Unfortunately, the distinction is not as obvious as one might expect or hope.”

Bollinger: “…the more broadly a pattern is found in diverse types of data, the more likely it is to be attached deeply within the infrastructure behind that data. Thus words in Europe lead back ‘only’ back to Proto-Indo-European, while the spectral element signatures of elements on the other side of the visible universe lead all the way back to the shared particle and space physics of our universe. In many ways, what we really seem to be doing there is (as you note) not so much looking for ‘laws’ as we are looking for points of shared origins in space and time of such patterns.”



Messages, Senders, Receivers, and Meaning

All variations of information theory include not just the concept of a message, but also of a sender who creates that message, and of a receiver who receives that message. The sender and received share a very special relationship, which is that they both understand the structure of the message in a way that assigns to it yet another distinct concept, which is that of meaning.

Meaning is the ability to take specific, directed (by the sender) action as the result of receiving the message. Meaning, also called semantics, should never be confused with the message itself, for two reasons. The first is that a message in isolation is nothing more than a meaningless string of bits or other characters. In fact, if the message has been fully optimized — that is, if it is near its Kolmogorov minimum — it will look like random noise (the physical incarnation of entropy) to any observer other than the sender and receiver. The second is that the relationship between messages and meaning is highly variable. Depending on how well the sender and receiver “understand” each other, the same meaning can be invoked by messages that vary wildly in length.

This message-length variability is a common phenomenon in human relationships. Couples who have lived together for decades often can convey complex meaning by doing nothing more than subtly raising an eyebrow in a particular situation. The very same couple in the distant past might well have argued (exchanged messages) for an hour before reaching the same shared perspective. Meaning and messages are not the same thing!

But the main question here is this: What makes the sender and receiver so special?

That is, how does it come to be that they alone can look at a sequence of what looks like random bits or characters, and from it implement meaning, such as real-world outcomes in which exquisitely coordinated movements by the sender and receiver accomplish joint goals that neither could have accomplished on their own?

In short: How does meaning, that is, the ability to take actions that forever alter the futures of worlds both physical and abstract, come to be attached to a specific subset of all the possible random bit or character strings that could exist?

Information Theory at the Meta Level

The answer to how senders and receivers assign meaning to messages is that at some earlier time they received an earlier set of messages that dealt specifically with how to interpret this much later set of messages. Technologists call such earlier deployments of message-interpretation messages protocols, but that is just one name for them. Linguists for example call such shared protocols languages. Couples who have been together for many years just call their highly custom, unique, and exceptionally powerful set of protocols understanding each other.

But it doesn’t stop there. Physicists also uncover and identify shared protocols, protocols that they had no part in creating. They have however slowly learned how to interpret some of them, and so can now read some of the messages that these shared protocols enable. Physicists call such literally universal protocols the “laws” of physics, and use them for example to receive messages literally from the other side of the universe. For example, these shared protocols enable to look at the lines in light spectra and, amazingly, discern how the same elements that we see on earth can also be entrained within the star-dismantling heat and power of a quasar polar plasma jet billions of light years distant in both space and time.

Protocols as Meaning Enablers

While the word “protocol” has a mundane connotation as the rules and regulations by which either people or electronic equipment interact in clear, understandable ways (share information), I would like to elevate the stature of this excellent word by asserting that in terms of the meta-level at which all forms of information theory first acquire their senders and receivers, a protocol is a meaning enabler. That is, to create and distribute a protocol is to create meaning. They enable previously isolated components of the universe, at any scale from that of fundamental particles to light from distant quasars, to enable receivers to alter their behaviors and adopt new sets of coordinated, “future selective” behaviors that no longer leave the future entirely open to random chance. This in turn means that the more widely a protocol is distributed and used, the “smarter” the universe as a whole becomes. The enhancements can vary enormously is scale and scope, from the tiny sound-like handshakes that enable electrons to pair up and create superconductive materials, through the meaning exchanged by an aging couple, and up to scales that are quite literally universal, such as the shared properties of electrons. The fact that those shared electron properties define a protocol can be seen by imagining what would happen if electrons on the other side of the universe did not have the same quantum numbers and properties as the electrons we know. The protocol would be broken, and the light that we see would no longer contain a message that we understand.

Historically such protocol deficiencies, that is, a lack or misunderstanding of the protocols that enable us to assign meaning to data, is the norm rather than the exception. Even in the case I mentioned earlier of how the electrons-photons-and-elements protocol enabled us to know what elements are in a quasar on the other side of the universe, there was a time in the 1800s when scientists mourned that we would never be able to know the composition of distant stars, which by that time they had realized were forever unreachable by any means of transportation that they could envision. It was not until the electrons-photons-and-elements protocol was deciphered that the availability of this amazing information became known.

And even then that new information created its own mysteries! The element helium should have and would have been named “helion” had it been known on earth at the time of its discovery in solar spectra. That is because “-ium” indicates a metal (e.g. titanium, while “-on” indicates a gas (e.g. “argon). In this case the newly uncovered electron-photon-element protocol sent us a message we did not yet understand!

Many more such messages are still awaiting protocol, with biology, especially at the biochemical level, being a huge and profound area in need of more protocols, of more ways to interpret with meaning the data we see. Thus for example, despite our having successfully unearthed the protocol for how DNA codes amino acids and proteins at the connection level, we remain woefully lacking in protocols for understanding how the non-protein components of DNA really work, or even of how those amino acids, once strung together, almost magically fold themselves into a working protein.

Naturally Occurring Protocols

To understand the full importance of protocols, however, it is vital as Kevin Knuth strongly advocates in his essay that we get away from the human-centric view that calls such discoveries of meaning “laws” in the human sense. In particular, the emergence and expansion of meaning-imbuing protocols is not limited just to relationships between humans (the aging couple) or ending with human-only receivers (we blew it for helion). The largest and most extensive protocols exist entirely independently of humans, in domains that include physics and especially biology.

In the case of physics, the protocols that count most are the shared properties and allowed operations on those properties that enable matter and energy to interact in a huge variety of extremely interesting, and frankly bizarrely unlikely, ways. Kevin Knuth dives into some of these anthropic issues in his essay, primarily to point out how remarkable and, at this time at least, inexplicable they are. But in any case they exist, almost literally like fine-tuned machinery custom made to enable still more protocols, and thus still more meaning, to emerge over time.

The First Open-Ended Protocol: Biochemistry

Chemistry is one such protocol, with carbon-based biochemistry as an example in which the layering of protocols — the emergence of compounds and processes whose very existence depends on earlier protocols, such as proteins out of amino acids — is essentially unlimited.

It is flatly incorrect to view computer software and networks as the first example of open-ended protocols that can be layered to create higher and higher levels of meaning. The example of truly open-ended protocols capable of supporting almost unlimited increases in meaning was the remarkable cluster of basic protocols centered around the element carbon. Those elemental protocols — their subtleties include far more than just carbon, though carbon is literally the “backbone” upon which the higher-level protocols obtain the stability they require to exist at all —enabled the emergence of layer upon layer of chemical compounds of increasing complexity and sophistication. As exploited by life in particular, these compounds grow so complex that they qualify as exceptionally powerful machines capable of mechanical action (cutting and splicing DNA), energy conversion (photosynthesis), lens-like quantum calculation (chlorophyll complexes), and information storage and replication (DNA again).

Each of these increasingly complex chemical machines also enable new capabilities, which in turn enable new, more sophisticated protocols, that is, new ways of interpreting other chemicals as messages. This interplay can become quite profound, and has the same ability to “shorten” messages that is seen in human computer networking. Fruit for example responds to gas ethylene by ripening faster, a protocol created to create enticing (at first!) smells to attract seed-spreading animals. The brevity of the message, the shortness of the ethylene molecule, is a pragmatic customization by plants to enable easy spreading of the message.

Humans do this also. When after an extended effort (think of Yoda after lifting Luke Skywalker’s space ship out of the swamp) we inhale deeply through our nose, we are self-dosing with the two-atom vasodialator nitric oxide, which our nasal cavities generate slowly over time for just such purposes.

Cones Using Shared Protocols (Cusps)

To understand Kevin Knuth’s main message, it’s time to take this idea of protocols to the level of physics, where it recursively becomes a fundamental assertion about the nature of fundamental assertions.

Minkowski, the former professor of Albert Einstein who more than anyone else created the geometric interpretation of Einstein’s originally algebraic work, invented the four-dimensional concept of the light cone to describe the maximum limits for how mass, energy, and information spread out over time. A 4D light “cone” does not look like a cone to our 3D-limited human senses. Instead, it appears like a cone, but like a ball of included space whose spherical surface expands outward at the speed of light. Everything within that expanding ball has potential access to — that is, detailed information about — whatever event created that particular cone. The origin of the light cone becomes the cusp of an expanding region that can share all or some subset of the information first generated at that cusp. Note that the cusp itself has a definite location in both space and time, and so qualifies as a well-defined event in spacetime, to use relativistic terminology.

Protocols are a form of shared information, and so form a subset of the types of information that can be shared by such light cones. The cusp of the light cone becomes the origin of the protocol, the very first location at which it exists. From there it spreads at speeds limited by the speed of light, though most protocols are far less ambitious and travel only slowly. But regardless of how quickly or ubiquitously a new protocol spreads, it must always have a cusp, an origin, an event in spacetime at which it comes into being, and thereby creates new meaning within the universe. Whether that meaning is trivial, momentous, weak, powerful, inaccurate, or spot-on remains to be determined, but in general it is the protocols that enable better manipulations of the future that will tend to survive. Meaning grows, with stronger meanings competing against and generally overcoming weaker ones, though as in any ecology the final outcomes are never fixes or certain. The competitive multi-scale ecosystem of meaning, the self-selection of protocols as they vie for receivers who will act upon the messages that they enable, is a fascinating topic in itself, but one for some other place and time.

In an intentional double entendre, I call these regions of protocol enablement via the earlier spread of protocols within a light cone “cones using shared protocols”, or cusps. (I hate all-cap acronyms, don’t you?) A protocol cusp is both the entire region of space over which the protocol applies or is available, but it is also the point in spacetime — the time and location — at which the protocol originated.

Levels of Fundamentality as Depths of Protocol Cusps

And that is where Kevin Knuth’s focus on the locality and contingency of many “fundamental” laws comes into play. What we call “laws” are really just instances where we are speculating, with varying levels of confidence, that certain repeated patterns are messages with a protocol that we hope will give them meaning.

Such speculations can of course be incorrect. However, in some instances they prove to be valid, at least the degree that we can prove it from the data. Thus the existence of the Indo-European language group was at first just a speculation, but one that proved remarkably effective at interpreting words in many languages. From it the cusp or origin of this truly massive “protocol” for human communications was given a name: Proto-Indo-European. The location of this protocol cusp in space was most likely the Pontic-Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe, and the time was somewhere between 4,500 BCE and 2,500 BCE.

Alphabets have cusps. One of the most amazing and precisely located examples is the Korean phonetic alphabet, the Hangul, which was create in the 1400s by Sejong the Great. It is a truly masterful work, one of the best and most accessible phonetic alphabets ever created.

Live is full of cusps! One of the earliest and most critical cusps was also one of the simplest: The binary choice between the left and right chiral (mirror-image) subsets of amino acids, literally to prevent confusion as proteins are constructed from them. Once this choice was made it became irrevocable for the entire future history of life, since any organism that went against was faced with instant starvation. Even predators cooperate in such situations. The time and origin of this cusp remains a deep mystery, one which some (the panspermia hypothesis) would assign to some other part of the galaxy.

The coding of amino acids by DNA is another incredibly important protocol, one whose features are more easily comparable to the modern communications network concept of a protocol. The DNA-amino protocol is shared with minor deviations by all forms of life, and is a very sophisticated. It has been shown to perform superbly at preventing the vast majority of DNA mutation from damaging the corresponding proteins. The odds of that property popping up randomly in the DNA to amino acid translation mechanism are roughly one million to one. I recall from as recently as my college years reading works that disdained this encoding as random and an example of the “stupidity” of nature. It is not, though its existence does provide a proof of how easily stupidity can arise, especially when accompanied by arrogance.

The Bottom Line for Fundamentality

In terms of Kevin Knuth’s concepts of contingency and context for “fundamental” laws (protocols) and rules, the bottom line in all of this is surprisingly simple:

The fundamentality of a “law” (protocol for extracting meaning from data) depends on two factors: (1) How far back in time its cusp (origin) resides, and (2) how broadly the protocol is used.

Thus the reason physics gets plugged so often as having the most fundamental rules and “laws” is because its cusp at the same time as the universe itself, presumably in the big bang, and because its protocols are so widely and deeply embedded that they enable us to “read” messages from the other side of the universe.

Nearly all other protocol cusps, including those of life, are of a more recent vintage. But as Kevin Knuth points out in his essay, and as gave examples of through the very existence of physics-enable open protocols in biochemistry, deeper anthropic mysteries remain afoot, since strictly in terms of what we can see, the nominally “random” laws of physics were in fact direct predecessor steps necessary for life to begin creating its own upward-moving layers of protocols and increased meaning.

It was a huge mistake to think that DNA-to-amino coding was “random.”

And even if we haven’t a clue why yet, it is likely also a huge mistake to assume that the protocols of physics leading so directly and perfectly into the protocols of life. We just do not understand yet what is going on there, and we likely need to do a better job of fully acknowledging this deeply mysterious coincidence of continuity before we can make any real progress in resolving it.

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The Illusion of Mathematical Formality

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02-26 Feb

Abstract. Quick: What is the most fundamental and least changing set of concepts in the universe? If you answered “mathematics,” you are not alone. In this mini-essay I argue that far from being eternal, formal statements are actually fragile, prematurely terminated first-steps in perturbative...

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The Illusion of Mathematical Formality

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02-26 Feb

Abstract. Quick: What is the most fundamental and least changing set of concepts in the universe? If you answered “mathematics,” you are not alone. In this mini-essay I argue that far from being eternal, formal statements are actually fragile, prematurely terminated first-steps in perturbative sequences that derive ultimately from two unique and defining features of the physics of our universe: multi-scale, multi-domain sparseness and multi-scale, multi-domain clumping. The illusion that formal statements exist independently of physics is enhanced by the clever cognitive designs of our mammalian brains, which latch on quickly to first-order approximations that help us respond quickly and effectively to survival challenges. I conclude by recommending recognition of the probabilistic infrastructure of mathematical formalisms as a way to enhance, rather than reduce, their generality and analytical power. This recognition makes efficiency into a first-order heuristic for uncovering powerful formalisms, and transforms the incorporation of a statistical method such Monte Carlo into formal systems from being a “cheat” into an integrated concept that helps us understand the limits and implications of the formalism at a deeper level. It is not an accident, for example, that quantum mechanics simulations benefit hugely from probabilistic methods.

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NOTE: A mini-essay is my attempt to capture and make more readily available an idea, approach, or prototype theory that was inspired by interactions with other FQXi Essay contestants. This mini-essay was inspired by:

1. When do we stop digging, Conditions on a fundamental theory of physics by Karen Crowther

2. The Crowther Criteria for Fundamental Theories of Physics

3. On the Fundamentality of Meaning by Brian D Josephson

4. What does it take to be physically fundamental by Conrad Dale Johnson

5. The Laws of Physics by Kevin H Knuth

Additional non-FQXi references are listed at the end of this mini-essay.

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Backgroun
d: Letters from a Sparse and Clumpy Universe

Sparseness⁶ occurs when some space, such as a matrix or the state of Montana, is occupied by only a thin scattering of entities, e.g. non-zero numbers in the matrix or people in Montana . A clump is compact group of smaller entities (often clumps themselves of some other type) that “stick together” well enough to persist over time. A clump can be abstract, but if it is composed of matter we call it an object. Not surprisingly, sparseness and clumping tend to be closely linked, since clumps often are the entities that occupy positions in some sparse space.

Sparseness and clumping occur at multiple size scales in our universe, using a variety of mechanisms, and when life is included, at varying levels of abstraction. Space itself provides a universal basis for creating sparseness at multiple size scales, yet the very existence of large expanses of extremely “flat” space is still considered one of the greatest mysteries in physics, an exquisitely knife-edged balancing act between total collapse and hyper expansion.

Clumping is strangely complex, involving multiple forces at multiple scales of size. Gravity reigns supreme for cosmic-level clumping, from involvement (not yet understood) in the 10 billion lightyear diameter Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall down to kilometer scale gravel asteroids that just barely hold together. From there a dramatically weakened form of the electromagnetic force takes over, providing bindings that fall under the bailiwick of chemistry and chemical bonding. (The unbridled electric force is so powerful it would obliterate even large gravitationally bond objects.) Below that level the full electric force reigns, creating the clumps we call atoms. Next down in scale is yet another example of a dramatically weakened force, which is the pion-mediated version of the strong force that holds neutrons and protons together to give us the chemical elements. The protons and neutrons, as well as other more transient particles, are the clumps created by the full, unbridled application of the strong force. At that point known clumping end… or do they? The quarks themselves notoriously appear to be constructed from still smaller entities, since for example they all use multiples of a mysterious 1/3 electric charge, bound together by unknown means at unknown scales. How exactly the quarks have such clump-like properties remains a mystery.

Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson¹ speculates that at least for higher level domains such as biology and sociology, the emergence of a form of stability that is either akin to or leads to clumping always the result of two or more entities that oppose and cancel each other in ways that create or leave behind a more durable structure. This intriguing concept can be translated in a surprisingly direct way to the physics of clumping and sparseness in our universe. For example, the mutually cancelling of positive and negative charges of an electron and a proton can combine to leave enduring and far less reactive result, a hydrogen atom, that in turn supports clumping through a vastly moderated presentation of the electric forces that it largely cancels More generally, the hydrogen atom is an example of incomplete cancellation, that is, cancellation of only a subset of the properties of two similar but non-identical entities. The result qualifies as “scaffolding” in the Josephson sense due to its relative neutrality, which allows it for example to be a part of chemical compounds that would be instantly shredded by the full power of the mostly-cancelled electric force. Physics has many examples of this kind of incomplete cancellation, ranging from quarks that mutually cancel the overwhelming strong force to leave milder protons and neutrons, protons and electrons that then cancel to leave charge-free hydrogen atoms, unfilled electron states that combine to create stable chemical bonds, and hydrogen and hydroxide groups on amino acids that combine to enable the chains known as proteins. At higher levels of complexity, almost any phenomenon that reaches an equilibrium state tends to produce a more stable, enduring outcome. The equilibrium state that compression-resistant matter and ever-pulling gravity reach at the surface of a planet is another more subtle example, one that leads to a relatively stable environment that is conducive to, for example, us.

Bonus Insert: Space and gravity as emerging from hidden unified-force cancellations

It is interesting to speculate whether the flatness of space could itself be an outcome of some well-hidden form of partial cancellation.

If so, it would mean that violent opposing forces of some type of which we are completely unaware (or have completely misunderstood) largely cancelled each other out except for a far milder residual, that being the scaffolding that we call “flat space.” This would be a completely different approach to the flat space problem, but one that could have support from existing data if that data were examined from Josephson’s perspective of stable infrastructure emerging from more mutual cancellation by far more energetic forces.

The forces that cancelled would almost certainly still be present in milder forms, however, just as the electric force continues to show up in milder forms in atoms. Thus if the Josephson effect — ah, sorry, that phrase is already taken — if the Josephson synthesis model applies to space itself, then the mutually cancelling forces that led to flat space may well already be known to us, just not in their most complete and ferocious forms. Furthermore, if these space-generating forces are related to the known strong and electric forces — or more likely, to the Standard Model combination of them with the weak force — then such a synthesis would provide and entirely new approach to unifying gravity with the other three forces.

Thus the full hypothesis in summary: Via Josephson synthesis, it is speculated that ordinary xyz space is a residual structural remnant, a scaffolding, generated by the nearly complete cancellation of two oppositely signed versions of the unified weak-electric-strong of the Standard Model. Gravity then becomes not another boson force, but a topological effect applied by matter to the the “surface of cancellation” of the unified Standard Model forces.

Back to Math: Is Fundamental Physics Always Formal?

In her superb FQXi essay When do we stop digging? Conditions on a fundamental theory of physics, Karen Crowley² also created an exceptionally useful product for broader use, The Crowther Criteria for Fundamental Theories of Physics.³ It is a list of nine succinctly stated criteria that in her assessment need to be met by a physics theory before it can qualify as fundamental.

There was however one criterion in her list about which I uncertain, which was the fourth one:

CC#4. Non-perturbative: Its formalisms should be exactly solvable rather than probabilistic.

I was ambivalent when I first read that one, but I was also unsure why I felt ambivalent. Was it because one of the most phenomenally accurate predictive theories in all of physics, Feynman’s Quantum ElectroDynamics or QED, is also so deeply dependent on perturbative methods? Or was it the difficulty that many fields and methods have in coming up with closed equations? I wanted to understand why, if exactly solvable equations were the “way to go” in physics for truly fundamental results, why then were some of the most successful theories in physics perturbative? What all does that work really imply?

As it turns out, both the multi-scale clumpiness and sparseness of our universe are relevant to this question because they lurk behind such powerful mathematical concepts as renormalization. Renormalization is not really as exotic or even as mathematical is it is in, say, Feynman’s QED theory. What it really amounts to is an assertion that our universe is, at many levels, “clumpy enough” that many objects (and processes) within it can be approximated when viewed from a distance. That “distance” may be real space or some other more abstract space, but the bottom line is that this sort of approximation option is a deep component of whatever is going on. I say that in part because we are ourselves as discrete, independently mobile entities are very much part of this clumpiness, as are the large, complex molecules that make up our bodies… as are the atoms that enable molecules… as are the nucleons that enable atoms… and as are the fundamental fermions that make up nucleons.

This approximation-at-a-distance even shows up in everyday life and cognition. For example, let’s say you need an AA battery. What do you think first? Probably you think “I need to go to the room where I keep my batteries.” But your navigation to that room begins as a room to room navigation. You don’t worry yet about exactly where in that room the batteries are, because that has no effect on how you navigate to the room. In short, you will approximate the location of the battery until you navigate closer to it.

The point is that the room is itself clumpy in a way that enables you to do this, but the process itself is clearly approximate. You could in principle super-optimize your walking path so that it minimizes your total effort to get to the battery, but such a super-optimization would be extremely costly in terms of the thinking and calculations needed, and yet would provide very little benefit. So, when the cost-benefit ratio grows too high, we approximate rather than super-optimize, because the clumpy structure of our universe makes such approximations much more cost-beneficial overall.

What happens after your reach the room? You change scale!

That is, you invoke a new model that tells you how to navigate the draws or containers in which you keep the AA batteries. This scale is physically smaller, and again is approximate, enabling tolerance for example of highly variable locations of the batteries within a drawer or container.

This works for the same reason that in Feynman’s QED is incredibly accurate and efficient for modeling an electron probabilistically. The electron-at-a-distance can be safely and very efficiently modeled as a point particle with a well-defined charge, even though that is not really correct. That is the room-to-room level. As you get closer to the electron, that model must be replace by a far more complex one that involves rapid creation and annihilation of charged virtual particle pairs that “blur” the charge of the electrons in strange and peculiar ways. That is the closer, smaller, dig-around-in-the-drawers-for-a-battery level of approximation. In both cases, the overall clumpiness of our universe makes these special forms of approximation both very accurate and computationally efficient.

At some deeper level, one could further postulate that this may be more than just a way to model reality. It is at least possible (I personally think it probable) that this is also how the universe actually works, even if we don’t quite understand how. I say that because it is always a bit dangerous to assume that just because we like to model space as a given and particles as points within it, those are in the end just models, ones that actually violate quantum mechanics in the sense of postulating points that cannot exist in real space due the quantum energy cost involved. A real point particle would require infinite energy to isolate, so a model that invokes such particles to estimate reality really should be viewed with a bit of caution as a “final” model.

So bottom line: While Karen Crowley’s Criterion #4 makes excellent sense as a goal, our universe seems weirdly wired for at least some forms of approximation. I find that very counterintuitive, deeply fascinating, and likely important in some way that we flatly do not yet understand.

Perturbation Versus Formality in Terms of Computation Costs

Here is a hypothesis:

In the absence of perturbative opportunities, the computational costs of fully formal methods for complete, end-to-end solutions trends towards infinity.

The informal proof is that full formalization implies fully parallel combinatorial interaction of all components of a path (functional) in some space, that being XYZ space in the case of approaching an electron. The computational cost of this fully parallel optimization then increases both with decreasing granularity of the path segment sizes used, and with path length. The granularity is the most important parameter, with the cost rapidly escalating towards infinity as the precision (inverse of segment length) decreases towards the limit of representing the path as an infinitely precise continuum of infinitely precise points.

Conversely, the ability to use larger segments instead of infinitesimals depends on the scale structure of the problem. If that scale structure enables multiscale renormalization, then the total computational cost remain at least roughly proportional to the level of precision desired. If no such scale structure is available, the cost instead escalates towards infinity.

But isn't the whole point of closed formal solutions is that they remain (roughly) linear in computational cost versus the desired level of precision?

Yes... but what if the mathematical entities we call "formal solutions" are actually nothing more than the highest-impact granularities of what are really just perturbative solutions made possible by the pre-existing structure of our universe?

Look for example at gravity equations, which treat stars and planets as point-like masses. However, that approximation completely falls apart at the scale of a planet surface, and so is only the first and highest-level step in what is really a perturbative solution. It's just that our universe is pre-structured in a way that makes many such first steps so powerful and so broadly applicable that it allows us to pretend they are complete, stand-alone formal solutions.

A More Radical Physics Hypothesis

All of this leads to a more radical hypothesis about formalisms in physics, which is this:

All formal solutions in physics are just the highest, most abstract stages of perturbative solutions that are made possible by the pre-existing clumpy structure of our universe.

But on closer examination, even the above hypothesis is incomplete. Another factor that needs to be taken into account is the neural structure of human brains, and how they are optimized.

The Role of Human Cognition

Human cognition must rely on bio-circuitry that has very limited speed, capacity, and accuracy. It therefore relies very heavily in the mathematical domain on using Kolmogorov programs to represent useful patterns that we see in the physical world, since a Kolmogorov program only needs to be executed to the level of precision actually needed.

Furthermore, it is easier and more compact to process suites of such human-brain-resident Kolmogorov programs as the primary data components for reasoning about complexity, as opposed to using their full elaborations into voluminous data sets that are more often than not beyond neural capacities. In addition to shrinking data set sizes, reasoning at the Kolmogorov program level has the huge advantage that such program capture in direct form at least many of the regularities in such data sets, which in turn allows much more insightful comparisons across programs.

We call this “mathematics.”

The danger in not recognizing mathematics as a form of Kolmogorov program creation, manipulation, and execution is that as biological intelligences, we are by design inclined to accept such programs as representing the full, to-the-limit forms of the represented data sets. Thus the Greeks assumed the Platonic reality of perfect planes, when in fact the physical world is composed of atoms that make such planes flatly impossible. The world of realizable planes is instead emphatically and decisively perturbative, allowing the full concept of “a plane” to exist only as unobtainable limit of the isolated, highest-level initial calculations. The reality of such planes falls apart completely when the complete, perturbative, multi-step model is renormalized down to the atomic level.

That is to say, exactly as with physics, the perfect abstractions of mathematics are nothing more than top-level stages of perturbative programs made possible by the pre-existing structure of our universe.

The proof of this is that whenever you try to compute such a formal solution, you are forced to deal with issues such as scale or precision. This in turn means that the abstract Kolmogorov representations of such concept never really represent their end limits, but instead translate into huge spectra of precision levels that approach the infinite limit to whatever degree is desired, but only at a cost that increases with the level of precision. The perfection of mathematics is just an illusion, one engendered by the survival-focused priorities of how our limited biological brains deal with complexity.

Clumpiness and Mathematics

The bottom line is this even broader hypothesis:

All formal solutions in both physics and mathematics are just the highest, most abstract stages of perturbative solutions that are made possible by the pre-existing “clumpy” structure of our universe.

In physics, even equations such as E=mc² that are absolutely conserved at large scales cannot be interpreted “as is” at the quantum level, where virtual particle pairs distort the very definition of where mass is located. E=mc² thus more accurately understood as a high-level subset of a multi-scale perturbative process, rather than as a complete, stand-alone solution.

In mathematics, the very concept of an infinitesimal is a limit that can never be reached by calculation or by physical example. That makes the very foundations of real mathematics into a calculus not of real values, but of sets of Kolmogorov programs for which the limits of execution are being intentionally ignored. Given the indifference and often lack even of awareness of the implementation spectra that are necessarily associated with all such formalisms, is it really that much of a surprise how often unexpected infinities plague problems in both physics and math? Explicit awareness of this issue changes the approach and even the understanding of what is being done; math in general becomes a calculus of operators, of programs, rather than of absolute limits and concepts.

One of the most fascinating implications of the hypothesis that all math equations ultimately trace back to the clumpiness and sparseness of the physical universe is that heuristic methods can become integral parts of such equations. In particular they should be usable in contexts where a “no limits” formal statement overextends computation in directions that have no real impact on the final solution. This makes methods such as Monte Carlo into first-order options for expressing a situation correctly. As one example, papers by Jean Michel Sellier⁷ show how the carefully structured “signed particle” applications of Monte Carlo methods can dramatically reduce the computation costs of quantum simulation. Such syntheses of both theory (signed particles and negative probabilities) with statistical methods (Monte Carlo) promise not only to provide practical algorithmic benefits, but also to provide deeper insights into the nature of quantum wavefunctions themselves.

Possible Future Expansions of this Mini-Essay

As a mini-essay, my time is growing short for posting here. Most of the above arguments are my original stream-of-thought arguments that led to my overall conclusion. But as my abstract shows, I have a great many more thoughts to add, but likely not enough time to add them. I will therefore post this following link to a public Google Drive folder I’ve set up for FQXi-related postings.

If this is OK with FQXi — basically if they do not strip out the URL below, and I’m perfectly fine if they do — then I may post updated versions of this and other mini-essays in this folder in the future:

Terry Bollinger’s FQXi Updates Folder

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Non-FQXi References

6. Lin, H. W., Tegmark, M., and Rolnick, D. Why does deep and cheap learning work so well? Journal of Statistical Physics, Springer,168:1223-1247 (2017).

7. Jean Michel Sellier. A Signed Particle Formulation of Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics. Journal of Computational Physics, 297:254–265 (2015).

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An Exceptionally Simple Space-As-Entanglement Theory

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02-26 Feb

Abstract. There has been quite a bit of attention in recent years to what has been called the holographic universe. This concept, which originated somehow from string theory (!), postulates that the universe is some kind of holographic image, rather than the 3D space we see....

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An Exceptionally Simple Space-As-Entanglement Theory

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02-26 Feb

Abstract. There has been quite a bit of attention in recent years to what has been called the holographic universe. This concept, which originated somehow from string theory (!), postulates that the universe is some kind of holographic image, rather than the 3D space we see. Fundamental to this idea is space as entanglement, that is, that the fabric of space is built out of the mysterious “spooky action” links the Einstein so disdained. In keeping with its string theory origins, the holographic universe also dives down to the Planck foam level. The point of this mini-essay is that except for the point about space being composed of entanglements between particles, none of this complexity is needed: there are no holograms, and there is no need for the energetically impossible Planck foam. All your need is group entanglement of the conjugate of particle spin, which is an overlooked “ghost direction” orthogonal to spin. Particles form a mutually relative consensus on these directions (see Karl Coryat Pillar #3) that allows them to ensure conservation of angular momentum, and that consensus becomes xyz space. Instead of a complicated hologram, its structure is that of an exceptionally simple direct-link web that interlinks all of the participating particles. It is no more detailed than it needs to be, and that number is determined solely by how many particles participate in the overall direction consensus. Finally, it is rigid in order to protect and preserve angular momentum, since the overriding goal in all forms of a quantum entanglement is absolute conservation of some quantum number.

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NOTE: A mini-essay is my attempt to capture an idea, approach, or prototype theory inspired by interactions with other FQXi Essay contestants. This mini-essay was inspired by:

1. The Four Pillars of Fundamentality by Karl Coryat

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Introduction

Fo
r this mini-essay I think the original text gives the thought pretty well “as is,” so I am simply quoting it below. My thanks again to Karl Coryat for a fun-to-read and very stimulating essay.

A quote from my assessment Karl Coryat’s Pillar #3

If space is the fabric of relations, if some vast set of relations spread out literally across the cosmos, defining the cosmos, are the true start of reality instead of the deceptive isolation of objects that these relations then make possible, what are the components of that relation? What are the “bits” of space?

I don’t think we know, but I assure you it’s not composed of some almost infinite number of 10^-35 meter bubbles of Planck foam. Planck foam is nothing more than an out-of-range, unbelievably extrapolated extremum created by pushing to an energetically impossible limit the rules of observation that have physical meaning only at much lower energies. I suspect that the real components of space are much simpler, calmer, quieter, less energetic, and well, space-like than that terrifying end-of-all-things violence that is so casually called “Planck foam.”

I’ll even venture a guess. You heard it here first… :)

My own guess is that the units of space are nothing more radical than the action (Planck) conjugation complements of the angular momenta of all particles. That is, units of pure direction, which is all that is left after angular momentum scarfs up all of the usual joule-second units of action, leaving only something that at first glance looks like an empty set. On closer examination, though, a given spin must leave something behind to distinguish itself from other particle spins, and that “something” is the orientation of the spin in 3-space, a ghostly orthogonality to the spin plane of the particle. But more importantly, it would have to be cooperatively, relationally shared with every other particle in the vicinity and beyond, so that their differences remain valid. Space would become a consensus fabric of directional relationships, one in which all the particles have agreed to share the same mutually relative coordinate system — that is, to share the same space[/]. This direction consensus would be a group-level form of entanglement, and because entanglement is unbelievably unforgiving about conservation of conserved quantum numbers such as spin, it would also be extraordinarily rigid, as space should be. Only over extreme ranges would it bend much, to give gravity, which thus would not be an ordinary quantum force like photon-mediated electromagnetism. It would also be loosely akin to the “holographic” concept of space as entanglement, but this version is hugely simpler and much more direct, since neither holography, nor higher dimension, nor Planck-level elaborations are required. The entanglements of the particles just create a simple, easily understood 3-space network linking all nodes (particles).

But space cannot possibly be compose of such a sparse, incomplete network, right?

After all, space is also infinitely detailed as well as extremely rigid, so there surely are not enough particles in the universe to define space in sufficient detail! Many would in fact argue that this is precisely why any phenomenon that creates space itself must operate at the Planck scale of 10^-35 meters, so that the incredible detail needed for 3-space can be realized.

Really? Why?

If only 10 objects existed in the universe, each a meter across, why would you need a level of detail that is, say, 20 orders of magnitude more detailed for them to interact meaningfully and precisely with each other? You would still be able to access much higher levels of relational detail, but only by asking for more detail, specifically by applying a level of energy proportional to the level of detail you desired. Taking things to the absolute limit first is an incredibly wasteful procedure, and incidentally, it is emphatically not what we see in quantum mechanics, where every observation has a cost that depends on the level of detail desired, and even then only at the time of the observation. There are good and deeply fundamental quantum reasons why the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that found the Higgs boson is 8.6 km in diameter!

The bottom line is that in terms of as-needed levels of detail, you can build up a very-low-energy universal “directional condensate” space using the spins of nothing more than the set of particles that exist in that space. It does not matter how sparse or dense those particles are, since you only need to make space “real” for the relationships that exist between those particles. If for example your universe has only two particles in it, you only need one line of space (Oscillatorland!) to define their relationship. Defining more space outside of that line is not necessary, for the simple reason that no other objects with which to relate exist outside of that line.

So regardless of how space comes to be — my example above mostly shows what is possible and what kinds of relationships are required — its very existence makes the concept of relations between entities as fundamental as it gets. You don’t end with relations, you start with them.

Conclusions

Quite few people who are reading this likely do not even believe in entanglement! So I am for you the cheerful ultimate heretic, the fellow who not only believe fervently in the reality of entanglement, but would make it literally into the very fabric of space itself. Sorry about that, but I hope you can respect that I have my reasons, just as I very much respect localism. Two of my top physicist favorites of all time, Einstein and Bell, were both adamant localists!

If you are a holographic universe type, I hope you will at least think about some of what I’ve said here. I developed these ideas in isolation from your community, and frankly was astonished when I finally realized its existence. I deeply and sincerely believe that you have a good and important idea there, but history had convoluted it in very unfortunate ways. Take a stab at my much simpler 3D web approach, and I think interesting things could start popping out fairly quickly.

If you are MOND or dark matter enthusiast, think about the implications of space being a direct function of the presence or absence of matter. One of my very first speculations on this topic was that as this fabric of entanglement thins, you could very well get effects relevant to the anomalies that both MOND and dark matter attempt to explain.

Finally, I gave this fabric a name a long time, a name with which I pay respect to a very great physicists who literally did not get respect: Boltzmann. I call this 3D fabric of entanglements the Boltzmann fabric, represented (I can’t do it here) by a lower-case beta with a capital F subscript. His entropic concepts of time become cosmic through this fabric.

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It’s Time to Get Back to Real String Theory

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02026 Feb

Abstract. There is a real string theory. It is experimentally accessible and verifiable, at scales comparable to ordinary baryons and mesons, as opposed to the energetically impossible Planck foam version of string theory. It has perhaps 16 or so solutions, most likely, as opposed to the...

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It’s Time to Get Back to Real String Theory

Terry Bollinger, 2018-02026 Feb

Abstract. There is a real string theory. It is experimentally accessible and verifiable, at scales comparable to ordinary baryons and mesons, as opposed to the energetically impossible Planck foam version of string theory. It has perhaps 16 or so solutions, most likely, as opposed to the 10⁵⁰⁰ vacuums of Planck foam string theory. It was abandoned in 1974. It’s time we got back to it.

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NOTE: A mini-essay is my attempt to capture an idea, approach, or prototype theory inspired by interactions with other FQXi Essay contestants. This mini-essay was inspired by:

A well-founded formulation for quantum chromo- and electro-dynamics by Wayne R Lundberg

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A Long Quote from my Lundberg Essay Assessment

Most folks aren’t aware of it, but nucleons like protons and neutrons have additional spin states that appear like heavier particles built from the same set of quarks. Thus in addition to uud forming a spin 1/2 proton, the same three quarks can also form a heavier particle with spin 3/2 (1 added unit of spin) and spin 5/2 (2 added units of spin). These three variations form a lovely straight line when plotted as mass versus spin, which in turn implies a fascinatingly regular relationship between mass and nucleon spin.

These lines are called Regge trajectories, and back in the late 1960s and early 1970s they looked like a promising hint for how to unify the particle zoo. Analyses of Regge trajectories indicated string-like stable resonance states were creating the extreme regularity of the Regge trajectories. These “strings” consisted of something very real, the strong force, and their vibrations were highly constrained by something equally real, the quarks that composed the nucleons (and also mesons, which also have Regge trajectories). These boson-like resonances of a string-like incarnation of the strong force were highly unexpected, extremely interesting, and experimentally accessible. Theorists were optimistic.

Then it all went to Planck.

Specifically, the following paper caught on like wildfire (slow wildfire !) and ended up obliterating any hope or future funding for understanding the quite real, experimentally accessible, proton-scale, strong-force-based string vibrations behind Regge trajectories. They did this by proposing what I like to call the Deep Dive:

Scherk, J. & Schwarz, J. H., Dual Models for Non-Hadrons, Nuclear Physics B, Elsevier, 1974, 81, 118-144.

So what was the Deep Dive, and why did they do it?

Well, it “went down” like this: Scherk and Schwarz noticed that the overall signature of some of the proton-sized strong-force vibrations behind Regge trajectories were very similar to the spin 2 signatures of the (still) hypothetical gravitons that were supposed to unify gravity with other three forces of the Standard Model. Since the emerging Standard Model was having breathtaking success in that time period for explaining the particle zoo, quantum gravity and the Planck-scale foam were very popular at the time… and very tempting.

So, based as best I can tell only on the resemblance of these very real vibration modes in baryons and mesons to gravitons, Scherk and Schwarz made their rather astonishing, revelation-like leap: They decided that the strong-force-based vibrations behind Regge trajectories were in fact gravitons, which have nothing to do with the strong force and are most certainly not “composed” of the strong force. The Planck-scale vibrations of string theory are instead composed of… well, I don’t know what, maybe intense gravity? I’ve never been able to get an answer out of a string theorist on that question of “what is a string made of?” This is not an unfair question, since for example the original strings behind Regge trajectories are “composed” of the strong force, and have quite real energies associated with their existences.

I still don’t even quite get even the logic behind the Deep Dive, since gravity had exactly zero to do with either the substance of the strings (a known force) or the nature of the skip-rope-like, quark-constrained vibrations behind Regge trajectories. Nonetheless they did it. They took the Deep Dive, and it only ended up costing physics the following:

… 20 orders of magnitude of and shrinking size, since protons are about 10^-15 meters across, and the gravitons were nominally at the Planck foam scale of 10^-35 (!!!), which is a size scale that is inaccessible to any conceivable direct measurement process in the universe; plus:

… 20 orders of magnitude of increased energy costs, which is similarly universally inaccessible to any form of direct measurement; plus:

… a complete liberation from all of those annoying but experimentally validated vibration constraints that were imposed in real nucleons and mesons by the presence of quarks and the strong force. That’s a cost, not a benefit, since it explodes the range of options that have to be explored to find a workable theory. Freeing the strings from… well… any appreciable experimental or theoretical constraints… enabled them instead to take on the nearly infinite number of possible vibration modes that a length or loop of rope gyrating wildly in outer space would have; and finally:

… just to add yet a few more gazillion unneeded and previously unavailable degrees of freedom, a huge increase in the number of available spatial dimensions, always at least 9 and often many more.

And they wonder why string theory has 10⁵⁰⁰ versions of the vacuum… :)

Oh… did I also mention that the Deep Dive has cost the US (mainly NSF plus matching funds from other institutions) well over half a billion dollars, with literally not a single new experimental outcome, let alone any actual working new process or product, as a consequence?

This was only to be expected, since the Deep Dive plunged all research into real string-like vibrations down into the utterly inaccessible level of the Planck foam. Consequently, the only product of string theory research has been papers. This half a billion dollars’ worth of papers has built on itself, layer by layer of backward citations and references, for over 40 years. In many cases, the layers of equations are now so deep that no human mind could possibly verify them. Errors only amplify over time, and if there is no way to stop their propagation by catching them though experiments, it’s the same situation as trying to write an entire computer operating system in one shot, without having previously executed and validated its individual components.

In short, what the US really got for its half billion dollars was a really deep stack of very bad programming. Our best hope for some eventual real return on string theory investments is that at least a few researchers were able to get in some real, experimentally meaningful research in all of that, to produce some real products that don’t depend on unverifiable non-realities.

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"The World’s Most Famous Equation" is also one of the most misunderstood. First, it was first derived by Poincaré, not Einstein, and it is better written as

E₀ = mc²

"Thus the 20 digit sequence could in principle be replaced by a short binary program that generates and indexes pi". Which would consume more memory than simply storing the original 20 digit...

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"The World’s Most Famous Equation" is also one of the most misunderstood. First, it was first derived by Poincaré, not Einstein, and it is better written as

E₀ = mc²

"Thus the 20 digit sequence could in principle be replaced by a short binary program that generates and indexes pi". Which would consume more memory than simply storing the original 20 digit string.

"In physics the sole criterion for whether a theory is correct is whether it accurately reproduces the data in foundation messages." A theory can be refuted without even running a single experiment. We have other criteria to evaluate data, including internal consistency checks.

"The implication is that a better way to think of physics is not as some form of axiomatic mathematics, but as a type of information theory". It is neither.

Challenge 2. Bosons are in reality virtual combinations of Fermions that arise in the formalism when one switches from a non-local real picture to the approximate local picture of QFT. All the properties of bosons are derived from the properties of fermions, including spin. E.g. for photons the available spin states are

(+-1/2) - (+-1/2) = 0,1,-1,0.

The Standard Model needs to postulate the properties of bosons: mass, spin, charge. I can derive those properties from first principles.

"There are after powerful theoretical reasons for arguing that gravity is not identical in nature to the other forces of the Standard Model. That reason is the very existence of Einstein’s General Theory of relativity, which explains gravity using geometric concepts that bear no significant resemblance to the quantum field models used for other forces". Gravity can be formulated non-geometrically. So there is nothing special about it regarding this. On the other hand the gauge theory used in QFT for the other interactions can be given a geometrical treatment with the gauge derivatives playing a role similar to the covariant derivatives in GR, and the field potentials playing a role similar to the Christoffel symbols.

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Biomolecular Renormalization: A New Approach to Protein Chemistry

Terry Bollinger, 2018-03-05

Abstract. In every cell in your body, hundreds of proteins with very diverse purposes float in the same cytosol fluid, and yet somehow rapidly and efficiently carry out their equally diverse tasks including synthesis, analysis, demolition, replication, and movement. Based on an...

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Biomolecular Renormalization: A New Approach to Protein Chemistry

Terry Bollinger, 2018-03-05

Abstract. In every cell in your body, hundreds of proteins with very diverse purposes float in the same cytosol fluid, and yet somehow rapidly and efficiently carry out their equally diverse tasks including synthesis, analysis, demolition, replication, and movement. Based on an earlier 2017 FQXi Essay contest mini-essay on the importance of renormalization and the Nature paper below, I propose here that the many protein chemistry pathways that go on simultaneously in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells are enabled, made efficient, and kept isolated by a multi-scale biomolecular renormalization process that breaks each interaction into scale-dependent steps. I conclude by discussing ways in which this concept could be applied both to understanding and creating new biomolecules.

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NOTE: A mini-essay is my attempt to capture an idea, approach, or prototype theory inspired by interactions with other FQXi Essay contestants. This mini-essay was inspired by:

1. What does it take to be physically fundamental by Conrad Dale Johnson

2. What if even the Theory of Everything isn’t fundamental by Paul Bastiaansen

3. The Laws of Physics by Kevin H Knuth

4. The Crowther Criteria for Fundamental Theories of Physics

5. The Illusion of Mathematical Formality by Terry Bollinger (mini-essay)

Non-FQXi References

6. Extreme disorder in an ultrahigh-affinity protein complex, March 2018, Nature 555(7694):61-66. Article in ResearchGate project Novel interaction mechanisms of IDPs

7. Extreme disorder in an ultrahigh-affinity protein complex, March 2018, Nature 555(7694):61-66. NOTE: This article is behind a (large) paywall.

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Background: Scale-Dependent Protein Interactions

In the March 2018 Nature paper Extreme disorder in an ultrahigh-affinity protein complex, the authors provide a fascinating and extremely detailed description of how certain classes of “intrinsically disordered proteins” (IDPs) can bind together based initially on large-scale charge interactions that are then followed by complex and remarkably disorderly bindings at smaller size scales. The purpose of this essay is not to analyze this specific paper in detail — this excellent paper does that very well for its intended biochemistry audience — but to show how an external set of physics-derived, scale-dependent renormalization framework can be used not only to provide an alternative way to look at the interactions of these proteins, but to understand a broad range of large-molecule interacts in a new and potentially more unified and analytical fashion. This broader framework could in principle lead to new approaches to both understanding and designing proteins and enzymes for specific objectives, such as how to bind to a wide range of flu viruses.

The Importance of Approximation-At-A-Distance

The initial approach of two IDP proteins via simple, large-scale difference of electrical charge appears to be an example of biological multi-scale physics-style "renormalization." By that I mean that the proteins are interacting in a hierarchical fashion in which large, protein level charge attractions initiate the process while the proteins are still at some distance from each other and details are irrelevant due to charge blurring. This is the central concept of renormalization in, say, the QED theory of electron charge: You can at large distances (scales) approximate the electron charge as a simple point, much as you are approximating the complex protein charge as a "lump charge" in first stage.

As the proteins approach, more detailed patterns grow close enough to become visible, and the initial lump-protein-charge model fails. One must at this point "renormalize," that is, drop down to a smaller, more detail scale that allows analysis in terms of smaller patterns within smaller regions of the protein. In the case of the dynamic and exceptionally disorganized IDP proteins, these later stages result in surprisingly strong bindings between the proteins. More will be discussed later about this intriguing feature, which I believe can be reinterpreted as a more complicated process that only appears to be random and disorganized from an outside perspective. It is at least possible, based on a renormalization analysis, that this “randomness” is actually a high-density, multi-level transfer of data. This transfer would be enabled by the large number of mobile components of the protein behaving more cogs and wheels in a complicated machine than as truly random parts. Alternatively, however, if binding truly is the top priority for the proteins, the moving parts could also accomplish that without using the resulting bindings as data.

Broadening the Model: Multi-Level Attraction and Rejection

However, even more interesting than detailed binding when proteins grow closer is the possibility that the interactions at that level reject rather than encourage further interactions. Such cases might also be very common, possibly even dominant. You would have a "dating service" that allows the proteins to spend a small amount of time and mobility resource to check out a potential match, but then quickly (and this is important) realize at low cost the match will not work. Amplify such low-cost rejections by huge numbers of protein types and individual instances, and the result is a very substantial overall increase in cellular efficiency.

If however the next level of charge-pattern detail does encourage closer attraction, the result would be to head down the path of repeated downward renormalization of scale, as individual sheets and strands move close enough to "see" more detail. If the proteins were exact matches to begin with, then renormalization (which in this contex just means "scaling down to see greater levels of charge pattern detail") would proceed all the way down to the atomic charge level. The "dating service" would be a success, and the match accomplished. But more importantly, it would be accomplished with high efficiency by avoiding getting into too much detail too quickly.

Broader Implications of Multi-Scale Protein Interactions

There are a number of very interesting potentials in such a renormalization interpretation of protein-to-protein binding. Importantly, most of these potentials apply to pretty much any form of large-bio-molecule binding, including emphatically DNA) and (to me even more interesting) enzymatic creation of novel molecules. These potentials include:

o Efficient, low-time-cost, multi-stage elimination of non-matches.

Proteins (or DNA) would be able to approach at the first scale level based on gross charge, then quickly realize there is no match, and so head off to find the right "machinery" for their tasks. The efficiency issue is huge: Repeated false matches at high levels of detail would be very costly, causing the entire cell to become very inefficient.

o Increased probability of correct protein surface matchups.

Or, conversely: Lower probabilities of protein matchup errors. A huge but somewhat subtle advantage of multi-scale attraction is that it gives each new level of smaller detail a chance to "reorient" its components to find a better local match. One way to think of this advantage is that the earlier larger-scale attractions are much like trip directions that tell you which interstate highway to take. You don't need detail at that level, since there will in general be only one interstate (one "large group area match") that gets you to the general region you need for a more detailed matchup. Only after you "take that interstate" and approach more closely do the detailed "maps" show up and become relevant.

o Complex "switch setting" during the multi-scale matchup process.

Since proteins are not just static structures but nano-scale machines that can have complex levels of local group mobility (more later on the implications of that), such lower-scale matchups can be more than just details showing up at the finer scales. They can also re-orient groups and structures, which in turn can potentially "activate" or "change the mode" of one or both proteins, much like turning a switch once you get close enough to do so. These "switches" would of course themselves be multi-scale, ranging e.g. from early large-scale reorientations of entire beta sheets down to later fine-scale rotations of side groups of individual amino acids. What is particularly interesting about this idea is that you potentially could program remarkably complex sequences in time and space of how such switches would be reset. There is potential in multi-scale, multi-time switch setting for a remarkable degree of relevant information to be passed between proteins.

o Multi-scale adjustment of both specificity and "stickiness".

As with gecko feet, if the goal of the protein is aggressive "grabbing" of a range of some broad class of proteins, this can be programmed in fairly easily via the multi-scale model. It works like this: If the purpose of the protein is to bind and entire class of targets based on overall large-scale charge structure (and please note the relevance of this idea to e.g. ongoing efforts for universal flu vaccines), then the next lower level of scale in the protein should be characterized by extreme mobility of the groups that provide matching, so that they can quickly rotate and translate into positions that allow them to match essentially any pattern in the target molecule.

Conversely, if certain patterns at lower scales indicate that the target is wrong, then those parts of the program should present a rigid, immobile charge pattern upon closer approach. Mobility of groups thus becomes a major determinant of both of how specific the protein is, and how tightly it will bind to the target.

o Energetic activation of low-probability chemical reactions.

This is more the enzyme interpretation, but it's relevant because multi-scale provides a good way to "lock in" just the right sequence of group repositions to create highly unlikely binding scenarios. Imagine first large groups then increasingly smaller and more specific groups all converging in attraction down to a point where some small group of atoms is forced into an uncomfortable positioning that normally would never occur. (This is a version of the multi-level-switch scenario, actually.)

At that point a good deal of energy is available due the higher-level matchups that have already occurred; the target atoms are under literal pressure to approach in ways that are not statistically likely. And so you get a reaction that is part of the creation of some very unlikely molecule. This is really quite remarkable given the simplicity and generally low-overall-energy level of amino acid based sequences, yet it comes about fairly easily via the multi-level model.

Another analogy can be used here: Imagine trying to corral wild horses who have a very low probability of walking into your corral spontaneously. Multi-scale protein matchup energetics then are like starting with large-scale events, say helicopters with loudspeakers, as the first and largest-scale way of driving the horses into a certain region. After the horses get within a certain smaller regions, the encirclement process is then scaled down (renormalized) to use smaller ground vehicles. The process continues until "high energy" processes such as quickly setting up physical barriers come into play, ending with full containment.

o Enablement and isolation of diverse protein reaction systems within the same cytosol medium.

The idea that in terms of interactions, molecules can both immediately reject and reject at low cost interactions not relevant to their purpose is another way of saying that even if a huge variety of molecules with very diverse purposes are distributed within the same cytosol, they can behave in effect as if they do not "see" any other molecules except the ones with which they are designed to react. These subnetworks thus can focus on their tasks with efficiency and relative impunity against cross-reactions.

There is a fascinating and I think rather important corollary to this idea of multi-scale enabled isolation of protein chemistry subnetworks, which is this: It only works if the proteins are pre-structured to stay isolated. That is, on average I would guess that high levels of mutual invisibility between protein reaction subnetworks is not likely, and that the subnetworks must in advance agree to certain "multi-scale protocols" about how to distinguish them from each other. This distinction would begin and be most critical at the largest and most efficient scales of charge blurring, the same levels that your paper abstract describes.

So, a prediction even: Careful analysis of the charge profiles of the many types of proteins found in eukaryotic (and prokaryotic, likely more accessible but not your main bailiwick) will reveal that multi-scale isolation of multiple subnetworks of interactions that are based first on high-level, "blurred" charge profiles between the proteins, with additional isolations at lower scales. It will be show statistically that the overall level of isolation between the subnetworks is extremely unlikely without all such reaction paths sharing the charge-profile equivalent of a registry in which each reaction subgroup has its own multi-scale "charge address".

o Possible insights into the protein folding problem.

Finally, it is worth noting that the hierarchical guidance concept that underlies biomolecular renormalization could well have relevance to the infamous multi-decade protein folding problem, which is this: How does a simple string of amino acids fold itself into a large and precisely functioning protein “machine”? This feat is roughly equivalent to a long chain of about twenty different link types somewhat magically folding itself into some form of complicated machine with moving parts.

Either directly through multi-scale attractions or indirectly through helper molecules, it is at least plausible that biomolecular renormalization may play a role in this folding process. With regard to helper molecules, one intriguing hypothesis (nothing more) is that previously folded proteins of that same type could provide some form of multi-scale guidance for how to fold new proteins.

While an intriguing idea, it is also frankly unlikely for the following reason: Such assistance would almost certainly require the existence of some class of “form transfer” helper molecules that would look at the existing molecules and from them find and present that information to the folding process. It is hard to imagine that such a system could exist and not have already been noticed.

Nonetheless, the concept of folding-begets-folding has an intriguing appeal from a simple information transfer perspective. And in one area it would resolve a very interesting resolution to a long-term mystery of large biomolecules, prions. Prions are proteins that have folded or refolded into destructive forms. Once established, these incorrectly folded proteins show a remarkable, even heretical ability to reproduce themselves by somehow “encouraging” correctly folded proteins to instead adopt the deleterious prion folding.

Folding-begets-folding would help to explain this mysterious process by making it a broken version of some inherent mechanism that cells have for reproducing the folding structures of proteins. Whether any of this is possible, and whether if so it is related to biomolecular renormalization, is an entirely open question.

Conclusions and Future Directions

As a concept, biomolecular renormalization appears to have good potential as a framework not only for understanding known and recently uncovered protein behaviors, but also to provide a more theory-based approach to designing proteins and enzymes. It may also provide insights into cell-level biological processes that previously have seemed opaque or mysterious under other forms of analysis.

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Giovanni,

It is good to hear from you again! Your essays and those you recommended (Coryat, Losev, Becker, and Bastiaansen I think it was), along with others (Tejinder Singh for example) were among that most helped me appreciate and to at least some degree better understand broader, more philosophical approaches to understanding reality. Given the paucity of answers that science has to...

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Giovanni,

It is good to hear from you again! Your essays and those you recommended (Coryat, Losev, Becker, and Bastiaansen I think it was), along with others (Tejinder Singh for example) were among that most helped me appreciate and to at least some degree better understand broader, more philosophical approaches to understanding reality. Given the paucity of answers that science has to offer even on why we are here at all, that is a humbling and valuable perspective.

In fact, the title of one of my planned mini-essays is Time, Life, and Awareness: A Physics Perspective. The only reason I have not completed and posted it is that I realized that I needed to complete a physics paper on the nature of time and time symmetries in special relativity to make my points about life and awareness more than just speculation. The nature of time is quite a bit different from most speculations about it, yet the arguments for how it really works are neither complicated nor easily dismissed once you frame the physics so as to avoid unnecessary redundancies and inefficiencies.

Our universe is almost unbelievably accommodating of inefficient theories, allowing (as Spekkens speculated in his 2012 FQXi essay) an incredibly diverse range of theories to predict the same results. Sharpening some of the classic arguments of special relativity to better address the causality that Spekkens postulated as a unifying principle can at the very least provide some insights. Remarkably, those insights are also relevant to understanding the deep relationship that living organisms have with time, and the inverse relationship of awareness that allows us to connect more directly with how the universe works.

That sounds like a highly abstract statement, but I assure you it is not: There is a very real, experimentally accessible difference between intelligence using only classical time, and intelligence focusing on causal state change as defined by the laws of all of physics. In that broader perspective, the use of classical time is an important but incomplete subset of how the universe changes state, a simplification necessary for surviving in the (very friendly overall) part of the universe in which we exist.

More later. Paper on causal symmetry in special relativity first!

Thank you also for the information on how the FQXi announcements work. I think the official date for posted announcements is May 8? In any case, for me it's all water under the bridge at this point, since I feel much happier assuming that it's all said and done, and so time to move on.

Cheers,

Terry

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Hi Giovanni,

I think the American equivalent of "a stretto giro di posta", at least for older Americans like me, is "by FedEx", that is, by Federal Express. This phrase was used most often back when FedEx was the only company capable of shipping items overnight via their centralized receive-sort-ship facility in Memphis, Tennessee. The founder of FedEx, Frederick Smith, famously got...

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Hi Giovanni,

I think the American equivalent of "a stretto giro di posta", at least for older Americans like me, is "by FedEx", that is, by Federal Express. This phrase was used most often back when FedEx was the only company capable of shipping items overnight via their centralized receive-sort-ship facility in Memphis, Tennessee. The founder of FedEx, Frederick Smith, famously got an average-only grade when he first proposed this idea in a college paper.

You are exactly correct that space is different in a critical way from time, and that way is this: A space-only separation between two objects can always be made completely symmetric, while a time-only separation between two points (e.g. two images of the same object) can never be made fully symmetric due to one image always being farther back in time than the other.

That broken symmetry is saying something very important about the nature of time, which to be specific is that space is more fundamental than time, not less. Or to be more precise: Space-time symmetry is at its roots all about how objects in space change relative to each other, with time emerging as a result of that set of relationships. Thus in special relativity, the merger of space and time that Minkowski so delighted in (more so than Einstein at first) is due not to the independence of the two, but to the fact that time has no meaning at all without matter and energy changing state in space.

"Changing state" I should note is not the same thing as classical time, since classical time has an entire suite of precise and often space-like features that are narrower and more constrained than the concept of state change in isolation. Giving away a bit of my argument in Time, Life, Awareness: A Physics Perspective, this is also why less "scientific" practitioners of traditions that emphasize instantaneous sensor perception over history-based processing and interpretation of that sensory data are on to something non-trivial: They are recognizing that traditional classical time is far more of an in-your-head information processing construct than is generally realized, and that any full theory of how the universe changes state necessarily must extend beyond that model. I say "necessarily" because, trivially, neither classical not quantum concepts of time are sufficiently broad to enable full envelopment of how the universe actually works. Only a change model that enables classical and quantum time to emerge from a broader set of state change rules can suffice, and that model is, remarkably, a lot closer to instantaneous awareness than it is to ponderous (but also incredibly useful) entropic-based past-and-future perception and modeling of time.

This is of course delightfully in opposition to the views of a great many physicists, to whom the supremacy of time as reality is a psychologically paramount and simply not something to be questioned. But then again, that is exactly how you end up with both cultural and individual cognitive log jams: The very assumption that must be questioned in order to break the log jam seems so obvious, so fundamental, so sacred, that no person in that culture dares even to suggest otherwise.

Concerning that disregard, in my approach to physics I rely significantly on my involvement with new research directions in machine cognition, that is, with artificial intelligence. Good machine cognition is culturally oblivious in a way that is extraordinarily difficult for humans. Machines don't worry about what thesis advisors will think, or where funding will come from, or whether like the sad but brilliant Boltzmann they will be ostracized and driven to suicide by smart but vile geniuses like Mach. Instead, they worry about mathematical symmetries, data reduction, exploration paths, and heuristics for reducing the total search space. Machines don't forget or minimize those annoying dangling threads that have never been explained well. Instead, they place them at highest priority for both further exploration and path assessment, precisely because such unresolved issues are the gaps in the armor of existing theory that are most likely to lead to breakthroughs.

Again, good talking to you again, even though I will confess to doing a bit of a monologue from my side! I look forward to looking up your 2015 FQXi essay and reading it on Saturday, Cinco de Mayo. In the US this is a popular holiday for eating all types of Mexican food. Tacos and Time, a delicious dual delight!

Cheers,

Terry

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Kolmogorov Minimums and Wheeler-Feynman Emission-Absorber Theory [ABSTRACT ONLY]

Terry Bollinger, 2018-05-05

Abstract. While the predominant reason for arguing the existence of a block universe is the Einstein assumption that there is no other way to reconcile the many possible multiple-angle space foliations of special relativity, quantum mechanics also contains...

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Kolmogorov Minimums and Wheeler-Feynman Emission-Absorber Theory [ABSTRACT ONLY]

Terry Bollinger, 2018-05-05

Abstract. While the predominant reason for arguing the existence of a block universe is the Einstein assumption that there is no other way to reconcile the many possible multiple-angle space foliations of special relativity, quantum mechanics also contains theories that appear to argue powerfully for the simultaneous existence of all past and future points. Foremost among these is Wheeler-Feynman emission-absorption theory, in which the acceleration (recoil) of a photon-emitting electron in the present is modeled as the result of another type of photon that has traveled backwards in time from the electron that eventually receives the first photon. This second absorbing electron could easily exist billions of years in the future. In this mini-essay, both the forward (advanced) and backward (retarded) photons of Wheeler-Feynman theory are reinterpreted as examples of complementary “path expansions” of some still-unknown Kolmogorov Minimum (KM) representation that integrates both types of photons into a single atemporal “photon interaction” class of state changes. Wheeler-Feynman theory is then examined as an example of how KMs can explain many types of physics dualities as stemming from the necessity to pair each path “out” from a KM with a structurally very similar path back “in” to the KM representation of the event. This duality is especially explicit in Wheeler-Feynman theory, in which the assumption that all radiation events are direct particle-to-particle interactions drives the need for dual theories for future-directed advanced photons and past-directed retarded photons. Finally, the argument that Wheeler-Feynman theory supports a block universe is shown to be tautological, a direct result of the initial Wheeler-Feynman assumption that photon emissions must be triggered by direct, electron-to-electron interactions across indefinitely large spans of time. In KM theory this assumption instead becomes an “expansion driver” for elaborating and complicating the compact but highly adaptable KM model of photon interaction. In the Wheeler-Feynman case, these outward-and-return elaborations result in dual theories of very similar but reversed-in-time advanced and retarded photons that largely cancel out each other’s effects, but still accomplish the underlying atemporal goal of a photon exchange between two electrons.

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