Good summary of Bogdanov controversy
A good summary of the Bogdanov controversy is in the New York Times today. URL is http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/arts/09PHYS.html Some of the folks we like to quote here are quoted in the article, including Lee Smolin, John Baez, Carlo Rovelli, etc. Also, the latest Wired print issue has a fairly good survey article by Kevin Kelly about theories of the universe as a cellular automaton. Konrad Zuse gets prominent mention, along with Ed Fredkin. I didn't read the article closely, so I didn't notice if either Tegmark or Schmidhuber were mentioned. The usual stuff about CA rules, Wolfram's book, etc. Things have been quiet here on the Everything list. I haven't been commenting on my own reading, which is from books such Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale and Entanglement. Isham's collection of essays on QM should arrive momentarily at my house. My interest continues to be in topos theory, modal logic, and quantum logic. --Tim May (.sig for Everything list background) Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986. Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality, cosmology. Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
oscillons as an outstanding but unknown TOE candidate
hi all. I dont recall I mentioned the oscillons phenomenon on this list before (the archive seems to be down as I write this). so, FYI. some months ago I was going thru an old file of paper physics clippings/leads and ran into one on oscillons from 1996 based on a new york times article (see below). at the time I found the article in the 1st place, despite the cautiously optimistic tone in it by the quoted scientists, I was sure that huge momentum would soon grow be built around it. here it is over a half decade later, I had forgotten entirely about it, and went back and looked into the literature. there are indeed a smattering of oscillon papers out there, including several in the arXiv. oscillons are very similar to solitons, and solitons are well appreciated as a very interesting mathematical model that involves emergent schroedinger eqn. like properties. there are several entire books written on solitons. (particle like phenomena emerging from fiendishly complex nonlinear differential eqns.) however it seems to me that the full implications of oscillons have not been pursued. so far nobody is seriously suggesting they may be a big picture theory of everything. but it seems obvious to propose them as a very viable/provisional candidate highly worthy of further research. I would certainly like to take credit for this hypothesis, but it would probably at least require me to write a real paper on the subject for anyone to cite/credit me (haha). this is my conceptual sketch of a TOE. I propose that some fairly simple CA rules on a 3D grid give rise to the same nonlinear oscillon equations. next, oscillons are a model for particles. oscillons can combine and separate into superparticles, that has already been demonstrated empirically in papers and experiments. (in fact a triad-like phenomenon is found already, and I immediately reminded of the quark model which come in 3's.) they have attraction and repulsion properties. I propose gravity is just a very subtle emergent attraction property arising from large collections of superparticles. perhaps one of the most striking aspects of oscillons that almost nobody has realized yet: the models give predictions for **fundamental masses** of (super)particles as an emergent property of the deeper simulation dynamics parameters, something that no other theories I know of can come close to, including (most conspicuously) the massive venerable Standard Model built from decades of massive and painstaking 20th century research. frankly, I just dont know why there is not much excitement about oscillons in the larger physics community esp among particle physicists at this point. Im hoping its just the relative obscurity of the subject that it will change in the near future. imho, they could very well be the fundamental framework for 21st century physics. its a natural conjecture/hypothesis. yet I cannot find a single paper proposing that yet so far. moreover, recently on sci.physics.research I proposed that some fraction of the vast billions spent on supercolliders be invested into large oscillon simulations investigations running on supercomputers or perhaps ongoing physical experiments, as a hedge in the [expensive] bet. seems only reasonable to me. (physicists are right now planning a $6-8Billion dollar international supercollider.) there is no doubt one can create oscillon like supercollider experiments based on existing theory (projecting one oscillon into others either via a simulation or physical experiment), but nobody has tried that obvious idea yet. imho, its a vast open frontier/terra incognita worth exploring ASAP. following is a set of odds ends, links, papers etcetera Ive collected/compiled on oscillons recently for your convenience. --- nice AMS article on solitons by Terng and Uhlenbeck with all the equations http://www.ams.org/notices/21/21-toc.html these are movies by Oleg Lioubashevski who is working with jay fineberg. clay oscillons notice a dipole tripole configurations. the tripole configuration reminds me of quarks which combine in triplets as I understand it!! http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~olegl/Localized_states.htm michael cross caltech java simulations pattern formation in nonequilibrium systems http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/Patterns/index.html this paper by crawford riecke considers mathematical eqns for solitons and some of the attraction properties. I didnt notice if they observed repulsion. am still looking for a single paper observing attraction repulsion in general. http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/patt-sol/9804005/ imho the above pictures seem eerily reminscent of ***quark*** interactions, possibly. I cant believe particle physicists seem not to be studying oscillons at all!!! patt-sol/9801004 Title: A Continuum Description of Vibrated Sand Authors: Jens Eggers, Hermann Riecke patt-sol/9703009 Title: Localized and Cellular Patterns in a Vibrated Granular
Re: Good summary of Bogdanov controversy
From: Osher Doctorow [EMAIL PROTECTED], Sunday Nov. 10, 2002 5PM Thanks to Tim May for the site reference. I read the story, and it's quite interesting. It's the first time I've looked at this in detail, although I heard a rumor about it. I have a few comments that I'd like to make now. 1. The acceptance of nonsense for publishing or Ph.D.s or M.A.s or M.S.s is obviously wrong. 2. The cause of the acceptance needs to be investigated by scientists and philosophers and others. 3. History tells us a few things about nonsense if we study it carefully, especially the history of Creative Geniuses like Beethoven, Shakespeare, Paul Dirac, Einstein, Schrodinger, Socrates, Plato, Mozart, etc. I will itemize these below beginning with 4, but I'll just mention that they fall under Mediocrity, Ingenious Imitation, and Creative Genius. 4. Mediocre scientific people in my definition don't even have the ability to imitate (see below). 5. Ingenious Imitators in science (and similarly for music, literature, etc.) imitate other scientists but only go 0 or 1 step ahead of whomever they are imitating. 6. Creative Geniuses go more than 1 step ahead of anybody else working on the same or similar problem or anybody else in the field or subfield. 7. Having spent most of my 63 years of life in Academia, both as a student and as a teacher/researcher in mathematics including statistics and mathematical physics, it is my opinion that more than 99% of mathematicians and physicists are Ingenious Imitators, and I have a stong suspicion that this is the case in most other academic fields. 8. Peer review is the usual way of determining which papers are published in scientific journals, and it follows from 7 if I am correct that most peer reviewers are Ingenious Imitators, and therefore that what gets published in most journals is at most one step ahead of the previous person (and possibly 0 steps ahead). 9. The solution to the problem of 8 and similar difficulties with Ph.D. and Masters Degrees is in my opinion a positive one rather than a negative one, namely, to foster more Creative Geniuses in Mathematics and Physics (and other fields). 10. In my opinion, Ingenious Imitators can become Creative Geniuses with sufficient education, tolerance, practice in accepting and thinking up new ideas, learning tranquility rather than anger or fear, and guidance from other Creative Geniuses or Creative Problem Solvers (a sort of borderline type between Creative Genius and Igenious Imitators, which I'll explain another time hopefully). Giving up Materialism, including Money-Related Materialism, Power Materialism, and Sensation Materialism, which includes giving up bureaucracy or the interest in becoming part of it, is key in this. Osher Doctorow, Ph.D. One or more of California State Universities and Community Colleges (Mathematics, Statistics) - Original Message - From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 12:44 PM Subject: Good summary of Bogdanov controversy A good summary of the Bogdanov controversy is in the New York Times today. URL is http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/arts/09PHYS.html Some of the folks we like to quote here are quoted in the article, including Lee Smolin, John Baez, Carlo Rovelli, etc. Also, the latest Wired print issue has a fairly good survey article by Kevin Kelly about theories of the universe as a cellular automaton. Konrad Zuse gets prominent mention, along with Ed Fredkin. I didn't read the article closely, so I didn't notice if either Tegmark or Schmidhuber were mentioned. The usual stuff about CA rules, Wolfram's book, etc. Things have been quiet here on the Everything list. I haven't been commenting on my own reading, which is from books such Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale and Entanglement. Isham's collection of essays on QM should arrive momentarily at my house. My interest continues to be in topos theory, modal logic, and quantum logic. --Tim May (.sig for Everything list background) Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986. Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality, cosmology. Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
Re: Good summary of Bogdanov controversy
From: Osher Doctorow [EMAIL PROTECTED], Sunday Nov. 10, 2002 5:45PM Duraid, Well said! I am very happy that some Australians have a sense of humor, which I hadn't realized until now. I know that British and Irish humor are excellent. USA humor varies between the mediocre and the sublime. This reminds me of the last time that I wrote similarly about Creative Genius on the internet to a forum of rather incompetent (mostly) teachers, after which one teacher replied with a hysterical email accusing me of implying that I am a Creative Genius and everybody else is ___ (expletive deleted). Her argument was that teachers are so dedicated and loving and kind and generous and...etc., that to criticize them was tantamount to blasphemy. I hesitated to tell her (and I did not) that expletives deleted as a way of life are more common among the Mediocre than other categories in my opinion. My wife, Marleen J. Doctorow, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist for over 30 years, would be very proud of me if she had any time left after her patients. Oops! Did I imply anything about her? If so, I withdraw my last sentence. : ) Osher - Original Message - From: Duraid Madina [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 5:39 PM Subject: Re: Good summary of Bogdanov controversy 1. The acceptance of nonsense for publishing or Ph.D.s or M.A.s or M.S.s is obviously wrong. 4. Mediocre scientific people in my definition don't even have the ability to imitate (see below). Why are you being so hard on yourself?? Tongue firmly pressed against cheek, Duraid
Riffing on Wolfram
Any comments? Can anyone point me to similar speculations? Thanks, Eric A collection of thoughts (very much a work in early progress) provoked by chapters 9 and 12 of A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram. --- Caveat: The following was written hastily and in somewhat sloppy, informal terms, with casual or vague use of some arguably pseudo-scientific terms, like de-quantized or classicized by which I mean something like the process whereby a single state or average of quantum probabilities seems to take on importance so as be considered the actual state of some particle etc. after it is observed. --- Wolfram postulates that space-time is a network (of nodes and connections), manipulated by simple programs which have the characteristics that: 1. the only thing they do is make local adjustments to the configuration of the network (e.g. replace a node by 3 nodes joined by connections, erase a connection etc.) 2. They are order-invariant (causally-invariant he calls it) in their global effect. It doesn't matter which time-order the local replacement rules fire in. and he goes on to begin to prove how relativity, gravity, matter etc. work out nicely in such a model. But he doesn't say what the substrate of the universe network is, and he cannot yet fit quantum theory into his model, which got me to thinking: --- Quantum Computational Cosmology?? - E.H. 2002 --- --- --- The universe is information. More specifically, it is emergent --- order within an infinite-bandwidth signal, or in other words, is just --- a particular, priveleged view of all-possible information, all at once. --- On reading Wolfram's book, and in particular the part about physics as CAs operating on a network to produce space-time, matter, energy, I was prompted to have the following ideas. Please excuse the lack of rigour. I'm just trying to convey intuitions here and get some feedback on whether anyone thinks there's promise in this direction or if there are other references people can point me to. These questions arise: 1. What would the network of nodes and arcs between nodes, in Wolfram's spacetime-as-network be made of? i.e. what is the substrate of Wolfram's universe network? 2. How do we define the time arrow and what makes the universe as it appears to be? My essential concepts are these: Principle 1 - The substrate is simply (all possible arrangements of differences) - or perhaps put another way, the substrate of the universe is the capacity for all possible information, The fundament is the binary difference. Each direct difference is an arc, and network nodes are created simply by virtue of being the things at either end of a direct difference. Let's posit that there is a multiverse, which we can think of as all possible states of all possible universes, or as the information substrate of the universe. An information-theoretic interpretation of the multiverse might say that it is defined as: a universe with just one thing and no differences (boring) + a universe with one difference (ergo, two things) + all possible configurations of two differences + all possible configurations of three differences + etc. ----- A binary difference - the fundamental unit of information A --- B -- two things, A and B, created just by virtue of being defined to be at the opposite poles of the binary difference. To define a particular configuration of the universe, that is, a network of binary direct-difference relationships between a certain number of postulated individuals, you can use binary bits, as follows: The individual things are denoted A,B,C... A 1 in the matrix (below left) denotes that a direct difference exists between the column-labeling individual and the row-labeling individual. E D C B AB - C E 1 0 1 1 / \ D 0 0 1 equivalent to A - E C 1 0 \ / B 1D Every fundamental-level thing that exists is either at the end of a direct difference from another thing, or is reachable by some chain of direct differences from the other thing. things which are not reachable by a chain of direct differences from some other thing do not exist. So why don't we posit that the Wolfram network that describes the form of spacetime at its smallest-grained (i.e. plank-length) level is in fact comprised of nodes and arcs which have no other reality (no other material that they are made of) other than binary differences. i.e.
