'Theory of everything' tying researchers up in knots

SFGate.com ^ | March 14, 2005 | Keay Davidson

[snarks_when_bored]

'Theory of everything' tying researchers up in knots
- Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Monday, March 14, 2005

The most celebrated theory in modern physics faces increasing attacks from skeptics who fear it has lured a generation of researchers down an intellectual dead end.

In its original, simplified form, circa the mid-1980s, string theory held that reality consists of infinitesimally small, wiggling objects called strings, which vibrate in ways that yield the different subatomic particles that comprise the cosmos. An analogy is the vibrations on a violin string, which yield different musical notes.

Advocates claimed that string theory would smooth out the conflicts between Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics. The result, they said, would be a grand unifying "theory of everything," which could explain everything from the nature of matter to the Big Bang to the fate of the cosmos.

Over the years, string theory has simultaneously become more frustrating and fabulous...

[snip]

 

[longshadow]

string-like placemarker

[nmh]

"Truth may not evolve but human statements about it do."

Now THAT is a timeless truism!

:)

[snarks_when_bored]

It's happened before. In the 1960's, all the theorists were into dispersion relations, S-matrices, Pomerons, and Regge poles. A few mavericks worked with quantum field theory, but most people regarded it as a dead end. Nowadays everyone works in quantum field theory, and those other formalisms aren't used.

Pretty much the case, although I seem to recall that Hawking recently used some S-matrix ideas in arguing that black holes don't violate 'conservation of information' (as he thought they did for many years). Am I remembering that correctly?

[snarks_when_bored]

We have a handful of these guys in our physics dept.

They're a little bit out there, even by our standards. :P

Niels Bohr is reputed to have said to a young physicist who had just presented a paper:

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

We need those 'really out there' folks.

[UCANSEE2]

My instinct tells me that String Theory is just a rickety scaffold for mathematicians to play on before the next genius comes along to show us how everything really works.

ah..... an open mind. And very perceptive.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

BTTT

Fascinating....

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you both so much for your concerns!

AdmSmith The mere fact that Sirag is mentioning something does not mean that it is right or wrong, it is the way he connect it to other things. The totality of what he writes is still crap. Sorry for that.

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but it would be much more helpful if you would be specific with your criticisms. I can do nothing with a unspecific criticism.

snarks_when_bored Such mixtures of legitimate mathematical terminology with undisciplined talk of 'universal consciousness' and 'a kind of supermind' are a sure-fire clue that the author has lost his way. For example, what could it possibly mean to "identify the E7 reflection space (a 7-d complex space) with universal consciousness"? What sort of identity might that be?

Thank you for your concerns!

It appears that you are chagrined by the concept of a “universal consciousness”.

If you are of the Pinker worldview, that the mind/consciousness/soul is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain – then your denial is part of that worldview. And we are in hopeless disagreement and there is nothing further to discuss. We’ve covered Pinker exhaustively on a number of threads already – the latest being on the Meyer thread starting at 513.

The reason I found the Sirag article interesting is two-fold. First, betty boop and I are pursuing the pivotal question of ”what is life v non-life/death in nature” (The latest discussion is on the Monist thread) Secondly, I share in Einstein’s dream to transmute the base wood of matter to the pure marble of geometry – at bottom, the physical realm is all geometry. Thus, when we speak to a field-like will to live common to all of life we are suggesting that it exists in all points of space/time. This could also be seen as dimensional, hence my interest in Tegmark’s Level IV universe and also in the ADEX theory proposed by Sirag.

I can’t find much more on Sirag’s speculations on consciousness except for these Notes on Hyperspace and an email dialogue he had with Sarfatti here: Science Archive Institute The following excerpt might be interesting to Lurkers:

"My approach to a theory of reality, which includes consciousness, is to postulate that reality is the vast entity (cf. Phillip K. Dick's VALIS) that underlies the entire set of A-D-E Coxeter graphs (and even goes beyond these graphs as V.I. Arnold has led the way)."

I think this is close to the Level IV Super Platonism in Max Tegmark's "Parallel Universes" in May 2003 Scientific American? All mathematics is implemented physically is his idea. You agree? You further think that V.I. Arnold's math may be the Mother of All Math - The Mathematical Theory of Everything. Then we have Wigner's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Physics."

On the VALIS theme, its historical roots are well-presented in Erik Davis's "Tech Gnosis."

"This means that each of the many types of mathematical object that is A-D-E classified is a separate window into this vast reality. [Note: Mathematicians are wondering what mathematical entity underlies the A-D-E graphs. I say it is not a mathematical entity, but reality itself--physical, mental, and perhaps more than these (much debated) categories entail. The mathematics is the set of mathematical categories classified by the A-D-E graphs, each providing a different "map" of the territory of reality. The overall name for my approach is ADEX-theory -- the study and application of all the A-D-E graphs, with the X indicating the (mostly unknown) reality underlying the set of A-D-E classifications; and X also indicates the aspect of going beyond the A-D-E graphs via the three E type graphs as doorways into the enormous extension of the graphs (which has been only partly explored by V.I. Arnold and his students)."

OK. Good. This is the clearest you have been on this. I would like you to include this in the third book of the Space-Time and Beyond Series

Since AdmSmith reacted with such disdain to Sirag, I went searching further into his past. He is a published theoretical physicist, though clearly not a mainstreamer. Sarfatti is also a physicist and mathematician – though he amusingly calls himself a “theatrical physicist” - he appears to be connected in the Hollywood circles. By appearance and approach, they strike me on first blush, as being into Eastern mysticism – their group is called the “Physics Consciousness Research Group”. That network reaches to the likes of David Finkelstein, Russell Targ, Karl Pribram, Henry Stapp, Phillipe Eberhard and Ralph Abraham. Sadly, it also reaches to the likes of Uri Geller – sigh….

Saul-Paul Sirag himself was also associated with the International Space Science Organization which was evidently run by a Creon Levit who was a NASA Ames nano-technology scientist. The outfit was formed by Joe Firmage a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who evidently had a huge interest in space and related mysteries, enough so to fund physics projects outside the mainstream. His ISSO venture was consolidated with others and is now called Motion Sciences Organization. He is also associated with Cosmos Studios (a Carl Sagan related venture), Institute for Noetic Sciences (again, that Eastern mysticism touch), and Integral Institute.

Evidently these scientists are quite respectable but at the same time, not in the “mainstream”. That never bothers me because even the lowly turtle cannot make progress without sticking his neck out.

[timer]

Yes, new ideas are sometimes WILD when you first hear them, and for good reason : most new, right-brain ideas ARE crazy and if everyone went running after every new idea there would be utter CHAOS in society(which needs ORDER to survive). Anyway, get over your smirk, see infinite-energy.com and look at the past issue that has the article on Ledbetter and Bezant. It sure makes sense to me, and verifies what string theorists have been coming up with too.

[snarks_when_bored]

I rarely smirk. But I see no reference on the site you mention to the men you mention. How about a precise link?

[LogicWings]

Thank you for sharing your views!

You're welcome.

In other words, the two paradigms disagree on which is more basic, the frog perspective of the observer or the bird perspective of the physical laws. The Aristotelian paradigm prefers the frog perspective, whereas the Platonic paradigm prefers the bird perspective....

Lousy analogy.

A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time.

Unproven, unprovable, therefore, irrelevant theory. There is no evidence that anything "exists" outside space/time.

If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape.

It isn't a movie, therefore, irrelevant.

Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. There is no such thing. In four-dimensional spacetime--the bird perspective--these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta--a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information.

This is just a pile of hypotheticals that mean absolutely nothing. No one knows what a frog sees, or a bird, or a horse or whatever. It is all fantasy projection to prove a point that cannot be proven.

Fact is Platonism has no, can have no, verifiable evidence for its existence. Therefore, it is irrelevant.

[r9etb]

I’d love to hear any arguments for why mathematics should not be given a higher seat in our body of knowledge than science!

I guess the real question still centers about the nature of the "unreasonable effectiveness of math." Yes, math does seem to describe things unusually well.

But is that because math is in some sense intrinsically descriptive of the universe? Or is it the more like "Junkyard Wars" teams hunting around in a junk-pile for likely-looking parts? (I.e., I have an idea, and here's somebody's esoteric math thing that looks handy in describing it?)

I guess another way of putting it is: is math invented, or is it discovered?

[js1138]

I’d love to hear any arguments for why mathematics should not be given a higher seat in our body of knowledge than science!

I'm preparing the following label to be placed on all high school math textbooks. Kids need to be taught the controversy.

New sticker for math textbooks:

Warning: this axiomatic system includes propositions whose truth is undecidable within that system and its consistency is, hence, not provable within that system

[r9etb]

The ugly truth is that TRUTH doesn't evolve.

Are you sure? Are there perhaps "classes" of truth for which that's not true?

For example, "he was not born yet," "he is alive," and "he's long-dead" are all "true" statements that apply to, say, Beethoven. They're all true, and they're all mutually exclusive, and they all apply to the same object.

Why is that not an example of an "evolving truth?"

[general_re]

I guess another way of putting it is: is math invented, or is it discovered?

I used to ask my math professors that exact same question. The answers were quite interesting.

[snarks_when_bored]

Not to ignore the other points you raise in your post, Alamo-Girl, but I'm responding just to this point:

If you are of the Pinker worldview, that the mind/consciousness/soul is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain...

I wouldn't put it quite that way. Above the level of, say, viruses, the properties of living cells and their organized assemblages are fairly easily distinguished from the properties of non-living matter. But in every case, cells and their assemblages utilize environmentally available energy resources to maintain and reproduce themselves. These processes (living and reproducing, or, as C.S. Peirce put it, "feeding and breeding") are what living things do. In more complex organisms, consciousness (and, in our special case, self-consciousness) appears as a feature of the operations of living and reproducing. I incline to the view that consciousness 'emerges' as cellular assemblages reach a certain (as yet not easily specifiable) level of complexity (although I wouldn't be prepared to claim that that view has been shown to be true). Rather than a 'mere epiphenomenon', consciousness appears to be a rather interesting mode of operation of highly complex cellular assemblages.

And I would add: without a ramified physical substrate of some sort (a substrate capable of stably supporting the variety of structures and functions which underlie conscious behavior), it's most unlikely that consciousness can exist. There is a heavy burden of proof on those who would posit the possibility of disembodied consciousness (or 'universal consciousness' or 'supermind').

Finally, I would still like to know what it means to "identify the E7 reflection space (a 7-d complex space) with universal consciousness." I'm unable to attach significance to the identification of a mathematical object with a (presumably) physical process the existence of which is entirely unsupported by evidence.

[r9etb]

I incline to the view that consciousness 'emerges' as cellular assemblages reach a certain (as yet not easily specifiable) level of complexity (although I wouldn't be prepared to claim that that view has been shown to be true). Rather than a 'mere epiphenomenon', consciousness appears to be a rather interesting mode of operation of highly complex cellular assemblages

If we employ a crude analogy, though.... isn't this like saying there can't be radio waves until you build a radio? If I'm reading it properly, the alternate view (all that E7 whatsis) would posit that the brain is something like a radio receiver -- receiving and operating on consciousness in the form of a physical "field" of some sort.

I'm not taking any stand on the matter -- but wouldn't it have an interesting effect on a lot of aspects of science if the fella was correct?

[timer]

What more can I tell you? Contact infinite-energy.com and ask for their back issues-list. Things there have been in dis-array since the assassination of Editor Eugene Mallove last may 14th, but they keep sending me my monthly issues, so there must be warm bodies there somewhere. KNOCK and the door will be OPENED.

[snarks_when_bored]

I incline to the view that consciousness 'emerges' as cellular assemblages reach a certain (as yet not easily specifiable) level of complexity (although I wouldn't be prepared to claim that that view has been shown to be true). Rather than a 'mere epiphenomenon', consciousness appears to be a rather interesting mode of operation of highly complex cellular assemblages

If we employ a crude analogy, though.... isn't this like saying there can't be radio waves until you build a radio? If I'm reading it properly, the alternate view (all that E7 whatsis) would posit that the brain is something like a radio receiver -- receiving and operating on consciousness in the form of a physical "field" of some sort.

I'm not taking any stand on the matter -- but wouldn't it have an interesting effect on a lot of aspects of science if the fella was correct?

The analogy has been suggested before (as you probably know)...the brain as a 'receiver' and (perhaps) a 'transmitter' of consciousness. But, so far, to my knowledge, not a single piece of evidence for this analogy has been adduced, whereas radio waves are quite easily received and produced. I was careful to say in my post that I thought it likely (but not proven) that consciousness is an emergent operational property of complex cellular assemblages, but I also pointed out that those who would claim the existence of much more remarkable properties of consciousness carry a heavy burden of proof.

I'm not denying outright that there's a 'field of consciousness', but I am denying that such a view has any evidentiary support.

[Samwise]

It sounds like they need a new Infinite Improbability Drive.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for sharing your views of Max Tegmark's article!

By your comments, I conclude that you must be a Nominalist. Since I am a philosophical Realist we have precious little common ground to share views.