Friday, April 20, 2018

Have you ever felt like being a unified theorist living at wrong century?

What it is to be a unified theorist living at wrong century? You have a wonderful idea, an (or even the) idea of century, and you have devoted four decades of your life to develop it. Your life has been really difficult but it has been a fascinating adventure. Even more, wonderful new ideas are usually wrong or not even wrong that this was a success! You have developed a brand new world view, which you can apply routinely and there is continual flow of observations from internet to which you can apply it. You live in a paradize of theoretician.

There is however a little problem. You realize that you and your colleagues live at different centuries. There is no hope of communicating your marvellous idea to them. They are like primitive natives who hate you as taboo breaker. In past centuries taboo breaker was zombied or simply torn into pieces in bloody orgy. My luck is that the latter treatment is not used anymore but the experience of becoming academic zombie is not pleasant.

So, you want to convey your message but it is obvious that the colleagues in your generation and even later generations are unable to absorb it. They are not idiots or barbarians as individuals but as members of collective they behave so. They do not hate you bitterly as individuals but members of community. But why? Why your message is so irritating? In the following I explain the historical background to understand why they feel so negative about TGD.
I also discuss the problem of communication over the barrier between different centuries.

More than four decades of stagnation in theoretical physics

Theoretical particle physics and related fields such as theoretical cosmology have been in a state of deep stagnation for more than four decades. This period is an Odysseia, which started when GUTs were invented. Probably the inventors of this amazingly un-imaginative generalization of standard model never believed that it would become a dogma within few years. In any case, the astonishing proposal was that there would be no new physics between electroweak scale and GUT scale, something like 1000 times Planck scale: 13 orders of magnitude! Sound irrational and extremely implausible. GUTs led immediately to severe problems like proton instability but for some reason these problems were not taken seriously. Perhaps only the notion of Zeitgeist - also a notion related to collective consciousness - can explain this.

After GUTs came supersymmetric theories built using the same format, supergravity theory emerged, and eventually superstring theories leading to M-theory. At the last stages the contact with empirical reality - or low energy phenomenology as it was called- was lost completely.

Now the situation is dead calm. Most of colleagues probably regarded M-theory as dead and some of them have even courage to say it aloud. It is admitted that some big principle is missing from superstring theories. It is however impossible to even think about returning to the roots and admitting that string world sheets are 2-dimensional rather than 4-dimensional as space-time is. A jump of 4 decades to past is much more difficult than jump from electroweak scale to Planck length scale. It would be extremely painful to admit that the victorious parade was the self deception of century.

What is so irritating in TGD

Natural sciences to day rely on two basic dogmas and the blind acceptance of these dogmas has led in theoretical physics to a state of stagnation, which began from GUTs.

  1. The first dogma is reductionism as length scale reductionism representing natural sciences as a march towards shorter and shorter length scales. With the invention of M-theory we would have been taking the last glorious giant step from electroweak scale to Planck scale. The formulas of particle theorists would dictate all that can happen in Universe, everything.

    This creates in particle physicists a feeling of being Overlords of the Universe and explains the legendary arrogance of particle physicists noticed by Penrose. Arrogance does not help in communications or at least it makes them uni-directional.

    The story did not however go as was expected. Already the first step - GUTs led to a wrong track. Superstring models and M-theory were doomed to lead to even more astray. The misery is characterized using words like multiverse, landscape, and swampland. The connections with empirical reality have been lost completely.

  2. Second dogma is that consciousness is only an epiphenomenon, an illusion as David Dennett puts it. This simplifies the challenge of reductionism dramatically since there is no need to ask to questions like "What life is?", "What after death?", "What is consciousness?" and all the related questions.

    This dogma makes world very simple. You just identify the correct action principle and invent some tricks to do the path integral and this is it.

    On the other hand, belief in this dogma implies that theoretician loses gigantic amounts of information that could help to develop theories. Particle theoreticians become totally dependent on what comes out at LHC. Even worse, if some anomaly comes out and is not an allowed kind of anomaly, it is forgotten. Quantum gravity theorists suffer the same problem: Planck scale dogma states that the needed data bits are obtained only by making experiments using galaxy sized accelerators. Biologists get stuck to the belief that everything is just chemistry and electromagnetism. The list continues. The extreme narrowing of the cone of attention to the personal specialization explains much of the power of science but has also lead to the recent situation.

TGD challenges these beliefs and suggests radically new world view: new view about space-time, new view about time, seeing life and consciousness as something fascinating and pointing the way to a generalization of quantum theory. Even pet peeves of serious scientist, such as homeopathy, water memory, and cold fusion have place in this new world view. TGD is certainly not the manner to win friends and influence people in particle physics circles.
  1. TGD challenges general relativity (GRT) by talking aloud about its basic problem - difficulties with the classical conservations laws (energy, momentum, and angular momentum) related to the symmetries of empty Minkowski space of special relativity and lost when space-time becomes curved by the presence of matter.

    Even more irritating, TGD predicts an elegant solution. Identify allowed space-times as 4-D surfaces in certain 8-dimensional space-time M4× CP2. The additional bonus is geometrization of standard model symmetries and classical fields.

    One can of course develop a large number of objections and I have done this. The eventual outcome however is that the idea works and one can understand GRT as a long length scale limit in which the extremely complex topology of what I called many-sheeted space-time is replaced with trivial topology of GRT space-time in long length scales. Much is however lost at this limit, in particular the understanding of living matter and also gravitational physics in galactic length scales.

  2. Many-sheeted space-time forces to replace length scale reductionism with fractality. The implications are far-reaching: strong predictions emerge in all scales and the entire spectrum of length scales provides data allowing to te test TGD. Situation is totally different from that in reductionistic theories and one begins to become aware of the failures of the reductionism: no real bridge between atomic physics and chemistry, between chemistry and biochemistry, between QCD type description and hadron physics, and between hadron physics and nuclear physics. One becomes also aware of the numerous anomalies put under the rug during the last century of reductionistic materialism.

    This information feed plus theory with explanatory power makes of course possible productivity. Internet provides continually information about anomalies and strange findings in various branches of physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience,.... During more than year the average rate of articles has been rouhgly one per week. Colleagues are of course are thunderstruck. This is unashamed. They are producing with pains the obligatory item in CV once per year or even less often! This guy must be total mad.

  3. TGD forces also a generalization of quantum theory. The hierarchy of Planck constants heff/h=n is one aspect of this generalization and follows from the number theoretic generalization of physics motivated by the need to identify physical correlates of cognition. This is achieved by introducing p-adic number fields labelled by primes and by fusion them to what I call adelic physics. In adelic physics n corresponds to the dimension of extension of rationals characterizing the adele. Evolution reduces to the hierarchy of extensions of rationals. As a matter of fact, I did not end up with this generalization from theory of consciousness but from particle physics by realizing that p-adic physics allows to replace the phenomenological description of particle massivation using Higgs mechanism with what I call p-adic thermodynamics.

    Second aspect of generalization is zero energy ontology (ZEO). This modifies the standard ontology in which physical state is time=constant snapshot of time evolution. In ZEO physical states are zero energy states, which can be seen as physical events: pairs of initial and final states connected by deterministic time evolution: at space-time level preferred extremal. This generalization solves the basic problem of quantum measurement theory and leads to a distinction between experienced time and geometric time. They are closely correlated but not same. This gives also rise to a theory of consciousness: observer, which is outsider in standard quantum theory becomes a self, fundamental notion of new quantum physics, which can be characterized as generalized Zeno effect or series of analog for a sequence of weak measurements. Even the death of self has precise characterization in ZEO. Needless to say that this kind of claims take colleagues to the brink of madness.

    What is remarkable that this notion of quantum state has a close resemblance to the notion of function in biology, the notion of behavior in neuroscience, and the notion of program in computer science. Free will would select between deterministic programs rather than breaking laws of physics by interfering deterministic time evolution. This gives hopes that the fields now in strong phase of development might find TGD.

    This picture opens floodgates for applications to quantum biology, neuroscience, and consciousness. Totally new era in these fields of science could begin but their is a little problem - colleagues. They simply refuse to listen. This is like domestic dispute at worst: the other party simply puts fingers in ears , makes faces, and only repeats "I do not listen!".

In this kind of situation the question is how to communicate. Is it possible to communicate at all?

Should I write "real" books?

Last night I pondered again the problem how to communicate TGD. The reason was that I was again asked once again to write a book about the material at my homepage - something like 17 long books about TGD proper, its applications to various branches of hard science like physics and even chemistry, about TDG inspired theory of consciousness and the emerging new world view, and about TGD inspired quantum biology and neuroscience. There are also numerous articles, which can be found in Research Gate and are published in journals edited by Huping Hu.

This kind of requests are flattering but I am 67 years old and at this age one cannot expect to have too many active years anymore. I want to use these years to do just what I see most relevant for TGD: to develop it further and articulate it as precisely as I ever can. Communication of TGD must be left to others or be achieved with the help of others.

The reason is that writing a book does not mean just collecting the material. There are colleagues doing their best to prevent the publication: the most imaginative attack last time was accusations about self plagiary. The core idea of the trick was that I have written about TGD at my homepage and the material at TGD home page is clearly about TGD about which I am writing a book. Therefore I have perpetrated to the crime of self plagiary.

Also the endless text editing to make it consistent with the requirements of publisher is quite too time consuming and frustrating taking into account how primitive the tools available are. In good old times publisher did this kind of things themselves (in fact Springer does this still as I learned while publishing a text about adelic physics).

For these reasons I have said 'No' but I feel uneasy about my unwillingness to co-operate. Communication might be also quite too premature taking into account the situation in theoretical physics, where the people possibly understanding something about the mathematics and physics of TGD can be found.

Are there other means of communication?

Are there any other means to communicate TGD than using a lot of precious time to editing and fighting with hostile colleagues? Particle theoreticians would have excellent prerequisites to learn TGD but it has become clear that particle physics community is not mature to receive the message for the simple reason that they would be forced to admit that they have been on wrong track for more than four decades. This is simply too embarrassing for them.

There are of course also other branches of physics. In condensed matter physics the notion of tensor net finding in TGD a topological realization in terms of many-sheeted space-time is fashionable, and TGD provides simple models for various strange experimental discoveries: high temperature super-conductivity is one example.

In experimental biology and neuroscience there is an intensive period of progress taking place and since theoretical biology and neuroscience are virtually non-existent, I dare guess that people are ready to consider also ideas, which do not fit to the standard reductionistic biology -as- nothing-but-biochemistry framework. Bio- and neuro-technology are making rapid progress and here the control of academic belief system is even weaker. AI is second field, where there is readiness for revolution even if it would challenge the materialistic dogma of AI. The problem is that these people talk very different language and are pragmatic people not too interested in philosophical delicacies crucial for TGD inspired quantum biology and consciousness. This communication problem is basically created by the reductionistic view applied in science education: people become specialists in very narrow fields.

It seems that the only imaginable-to-me option is to find a person understanding theoretical physics, willing to learn TGD, and ready to prepare books from the material at my homepage (there are something like 17 long books about TGD and related applications plus articles). Using the tools provided by AI it should be easy to collect shorter books about specific topics from this material.

This would however require publisher and allowance to publish in prestigious forums. I am afraid that many colleagues would do their best to prevent the publishing. The reason is not that TGD is something new but that it works alarmingly well and could demonstrate that particle physics community has been on wrong track for these cursed more than four decades. This kind of humiliation particle physicist refuses to swallow. I am afraid that it takes decades before it becomes possible to admit the defeat. Also funding is needed to hire a person to perform the editing. This is impossible since the official academic world sees me as an enemy.

Therefore it seems that I must continue as hitherto - doing my best to polish and develop TGD. I dare trust that when I am not here anymore, there are intelligent people realizing the importance of my lifework and they will act accordingly. Posthumous communication might be even easier since it is not much point to misuse the formal academic power and refuse receiving the message if this does not insult its sender anymore. This might sound melodramatic but I want to emphasize that I do not feel myself as martyr: this option is probably the best one since it gives the needed maximal freedom because there is no fear about the loss of face. And the release of adrenaline induced by the behaviors of colleagues is an excellent intellectual stimulant: peeved brain thinks very clearly!

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ask Tesla.