Sore Grapes Principle

It seems that we are making unavoidable head-on collision with the New Year: it is now at at a distance of about 32 hours of geometric time. Many theoretical physicists silently hope that the universe resulting in this astroscopic quantum jump would be slightly less stupid and perhaps even that this violent collision would liberate us from the boredom of string theories.

They should perhaps think twice. Without string theory we would not have the marvellous parodies of string theory by Warren Siegel. The latest one is the article The Misanthropic Principle by the famous string quartet V. Gates, M. Roachcock, E. Kangaroo, and W. C. Gall.

The main result of the paper is the reduction of the Anthropic Principle to a much deeper Sore Grapes Principle (SGP):

1. I can't solve this problem.
2. Therefore, you can't solve this problem.
3. Hence, this problem can't be solved.

SGP is leading to a revolution in the philosophy of science and professional philosophers are already developing rigorous formulations of SGP. No need for a theory to predict or explain anything. The theory can be devilishly ugly. All that is needed is that theory is M-theory.

Good New Year,

Matti Pitkanen

Next year perhaps

The centennary of Einstein's anno mirabilis did not bring great breakthroughs in physics and Susskind's book and Gross's comments certainly deepened the anticlimax of those who still are doing their best to take seriously the official propaganda. It is however good that it is not anymore possible to hide the problems under the carpet. New Scientist has done good job here. And speaking seriously, number 100 is rather dull and unstable under product decomposition: I prefer 101, which is prime;-).

I added my own comment about the situation on the discussion forum of New Scientist and add it also below.

I would decompose the question "Can string theory explain the Universe, or is the concept of multiple universes, each with its own constants of nature and laws of physics, flawed?" to two independent questions since the failure of the string theory need not kill the multiverse concept.

Some words about my background. I have devoted the last 27 years to develop a generalization of string theory obtained by replacing strings with 3-D surfaces, whose "orbits" in certain 8-D space define space-times as 4-D surfaces (see my home page). I initiated the program 6 years before the first super string revolution at 1984: the motivation came from the conceptual difficulties of general relativity due to the poorly defined notion of energy. This theory has a lot of common with string theories: in particular, the crucial super conformal symmetry. Around 1984 I was certain that it would take a couple of years before string people would realize that super string models do not work as such and ask how to replace strings with 3-D objects. I couldn't imagine that it would take 21 years to see what was absolutely obvious from my personal perspective.

Returning to the questions stated in the beginning. If last 21 years are not enough to convince anyone that string theory cannot explain Universe, nothing is enough.

I however believe that the notion of multiverse makes sense in the many senses that can be assigned to it (quantum universes as quantum superpositions of classical worlds, cosmology as a Russian doll cosmology containing cosmologies within cosmologies, space-time surfaces as many-sheeted structures consisting of geometrically parallel space-time sheets, etc...).

What distinguishes this vision from that of Susskind is that various space-times share common characteristics possessed also by the universe we live in. The dimension of the space-time is four, the symmetry group of fundamental interactions is that of the standard model. Various universes correspond to the spectrum of coupling constants predicted by coupling constant evolution, and the zero modes distinguishing between different universes correspond classical degrees of freedom postulated in ad hoc manner in quantum measurement theory. The view about particle massivation is however different and no space-time super-symmetry is predicted. The theory also predicts a lot of new things, and forces a generalization of quantum theory so that Planck constant is dynamical and quantized: this allows to identify dark matter as a macroscopic quantum phases with large value of Planck constant.

There are good reasons to believe that these predictions, including space-time dimension and the symmetries of fundamental interactions, follow from the mere mathematical existence of the "world of classical worlds" as an infinite-dimensional Riemann geometry required by the generalization of Einstein's geometrization of physics program.

The irony is that the uniqueness of the geometry of the world of classical worlds was discovered in the case of loop spaces (classical worlds are now closed strings) very early by Dan Freed. This marvellous discovery was not however taken as the starting point in attempts to find a generalization of string models by replacing 2-D space-times with 4-D space-times. The probable reason is that the fierce competition did not leave for string theorists time to think about fundamentals.

In any case, Good Christmas and Better New Year for Everyone,

Matti Pitkanen

Intelligent Re-Design

Intelligent Design is one of those memes that have infected physics blogs and produced amazing amounts of cognitive noise. What surprises me that theoretical colleagues so often argue at single bit (good/bad) level without attempt to a real analysis. Lubos Motl discusses the issue more analytically in his recent posting Distasteful Universe and Rube Goldberg Machines ID and the option of Susskind that no-one can blame for intelligence.

Lubos characterizes the options in the following manner.

1. The theory that God has skillfully engineered our world, or has carefully chosen the place for His creation among very many possibilities.

2. The theory that there are uncontrollably many possibilities and "ours" is where we live simply because most of the other possibilities don't admit life like ours.

There is also a third option besides these two. This option might be called Intelligent ReDesign: briefly IRD. This option is rather democratic and does not leave all responsibilities for God: every conscious entity redesigns universe in time and length scales characteristic for it. IRD is also consistent with the laws of physics unlike ID.

Quantum consciousness briefly

IRD has developed from the need to resolve the paradoxes of quantum measurement theory and is behind TGD inspired theory of consciousness.

In TGD framework the arena of quantum dynamics is the "world of classical worlds" understood as the space of certain 4-D space-time surfaces in certain 8-D imbedding space. These surfaces are analogous to Bohr orbits and their classical dynamics obeys certain variational principle which is not completely deterministic if determinism is understood in the conventional sense of the word. This makes space-time dynamics capable of providing classical correlate for quantum non-determinism and intentionality. This is necessary if one wants to speak of re-design assuming quantum- classical correspondence.

Quantum states are superpositions of classical worlds. Simplifying unashamedly, the building brick of conscious experience is moment of consciousness and is identifiable as a recreation of the Universe in quantum jump replacing the quantum state of the Universe by a new one. Self is second basic notion: using equally unashamed over-simplification, self is to quantum jump what molecule is to atoms meaning that sequences of quantum jumps can integrate to selves.

Self hierarchy corresponds very closely to the hierarchy of bound states having the entire universe at the top: if one wishes, one can call this highest level self God. There are selves below us and above us, each of them being able to perform IRD in the length and time scale characterizing the self.

This picture conforms with the determinism of physical laws since the non-determinism of quantum jumps does not interfere classical space-time dynamics nor the quantal "Shroedinger" dynamics in the world of classical worlds. Non-determinism is in the quantum jump replacing deterministic world with a new deterministic world and thus outside the space-time and state space. Fractal "Quantum God" is like a theoretician hopping around in the space of solutions of field equations.

NMP makes RD IRD

What makes RD IRD is that this process is governed by a variational principle guaranteing evolution: quantum jump by quantum jump quantum universe becomes more complex and more information rich. Negentropy Maximation Principle states that the information contents of conscious experience is maximized.

The notion of information is needed in order to speak about intelligence

In order to speak about intelligence one must have a notion of information. Ordinary Shannon entropy is not very useful in this respect. However, for rational (algebraic) probabilities the Shannon entropies defined by replacing the arguments of logarithms with their p-adic norms, is well-defined and can be negative, and there is always a prime p for which negentropy is maximal. This prime characterizes the state.

Positive information is associated with rational (more generally) algebraic bound state entanglement: this conforms with the idea that rationals (algebraic numbers) correspond to islands of order in the chaotic sea defined by the continuum of reals. The interpretation is that the positive information is due to the conscious comparison of the entangled state pairs.

Genetic code as application of new concept of information

This information measure has applications also outside consciousness theory. For some time ago I constructed a model reproducing correctly genetic code from the maximization of the net information of the code using the above information measure. Integers 0,..,63 label DNA triplets and since the number of the numbers 0,1 together with primes smaller than 64 is 20 it is natural to identify code as a map assigning to codons 0,1 aminoacids 0,1 and to the codon n>1 the prime p(n) which maximizes the negentropy of n in the thermodynamics for the partitions of n. Which by the way can be interpreted in terms of breaking of conformal or Kac-Moody symmetry when n is interpreted as a conformal weight. This leads to ideas about quantum physics behind the genetic code.

Matti Pitkanen

Does honeybee colony have "BEEG"?

The hypothesis that only vertebrates (having EEG) correspond to k_em=4 level of dark matter hierarchy whereas insects would have k_em=3 is only a hypothesis consistent with the empirical findings about the effects of ELF em fields on vertebrate brain (for the meaning of the integer k_em see the previous postings). These findings do not imply the hypothesis and the situation need not be so simple as the hypothesis suggests in the case of social insects forming colonies. In fact, ELF magnetic field and magnetic fields are known to affect the behavior of honeybees just as ELF em fields affect the behavior of vertebrates: the model for this findings led to a model for the fractal hierarchy of EEGs.

It seems safe to assume that insect brain is so simple (in the case of honeybee the number of neurons 1/1000 of number of neurons in human retina) that it is not possible to assign k_em=4 to it: this would also mean "personal" EEG not possessed by honeybees.

The fact that a honeybee isolated from colony dies just as does the cell separated from organism, suggests that the relationship of insect to colony is like that of a cell to organism. Hence one could test whether colonies of social insects or their sub-colonies might possess an analog of ordinary EEG: this might be a rather straightforward task. What this would mean that ant colonies have sufficiently complex hyper-genome making possible collective variants of memory, sensory input, and intelligence, as well as the ability to realize collective motor actions. Even bacterium colonies have intricate social structures so that one must remain open minded.

What inspired this comment was the article Why honeybees never forget a face? of New Scientist describing evidence supporting the view that honeybees might possess long term memory in the time scale of days.

The conservative explanation is that the achievement is due to keeping the face-honey association intact in the absence of the stimulus which created it in a time scale of days. For this option the ability of honeybee to express the distance and orientation to the food source could be hardwired involving no conscious memory about the flight. Also the interpretation of the honeybee dance telling the distance and orientation of food source to advices where to fly would be completely "instinctive".

A more radical option is that honeybee hive rather than honeybee has long term memories in the sense as long term memories are interpreted in TGD framework: that is as communications with the geometric past. In this case the span of long term memories is determined by the level of dark matter hierarchy as time T(k_em) and few days span for long term memories forces the conclusion k_em≥ 6. For k_em=6 level of the dark matter hierarchy the basic "drum beat" defined by the corresponding Josephson frequency (counterpart of 5 Hz frequency in EEG) corresponds to 9 days. This would mean that also k_em=4 (EEG) and and k_em=5 (short term memory) levels would be present and the question is whether beehive indeed has "BEEG". Someone having the necessary equipment should go and make the measurements!

The possibility of "BEEG" is discussed in the last section of the chapter Dark Matter Hierarchy and Hierarchy of EEGs of "Genes, Memes, Qualia,...".

Matti Pitkanen

Dark matter hierarchy, hierarchical structure of nervous system, and hierarchy of emotions

I told already earlier about the identification of great leaps of evolution as emergence of new levels of dark matter hierarchy: here I propose a grand vision about the evolution of brain. One can of course wonder what emotions have to do with dark matter hierarchy. The brief answer is that there are two kinds of intelligences: the fast, computational intelligence and the slow emotional and holistic intelligence crucial for goal directed behavior which has evolved via the emergence of new levels in dark matter hierarchy. For a detailed representation see the last section of Dark Matter Hierarchy and Hierarchy of EEGs.

The basic picture wherefrom one can start is following.

1. The emergence of nervous system corresponds to the emergence of k_em=3 level of dark matter hierarchy. For instance, worms and insects would correspond to this level.

2. Vertebrates have EEG and thus the most primitive vertebrates (reptiles) should correspond to k_em=4. k_em=7 is the highest level for which the natural time scale is below the duration of the human life cycle but need not be the highest level present in CNS of the highest mammals.

3. The emergence of new structures need not mean the emergence of new levels of dark matter hierarchy. Rather, the most reasonable criterion for the presence of these levels is the emergence of behaviors involving long term goals and the magnetic bodies of the parts of brain assignable to the control of this kind of behaviors would correspond to higher values of k_em. Also the maximum span of memories at given level should be characterized by the value of k_em associated with the brain structures involved (hippocampus, mammillary bodies). This picture conforms with the fact that already insects possess neurons, ganglia, and head containing the predecessor of cerebrum but correspond to k_em=3 most naturally.

It is useful to list some basic time scales. 5 Hz frequency in EEG defines the characteristic "drum beat" associated with k_em=4 level. The counterpart of .2 second time scale would be 6.7 minutes for k_em=5, 9.3 days (day=24 hours) k_em=6, and 50.7 years for k_em=7 for λ≈ 2¹¹.

For goal related emotions the maximal time scale assignable to the achievement of the goal might allow to identify the time scale characterizing corresponding level of dark matter hierarchy. The lowest level emotions would be "primitive" emotions not related to any goal and would be assignable to organs consisting of ordinary cells and correspond to k_em≤ 2 levels of dark matter hierarchy. Also the typical span of memories should correspond to the time scale T(k_em).

Brain has anatomic division into midbrain, hindbrain, and forebrain. Midbrain and hindbrain (sometimes both are included in brain stem) is possessed by even the most primitive vertebrates and its emergence could hence correspond to the emergence of k_em=4 level and EEG. The emergence of k_em>4 levels relates naturally to the emergence of long term planning of motor actions in motor areas. The emergence of limbic brain, which defines the most primitive forebrain, could mean the emergence of k_em=5 level and goal related emotions. This conforms with the fact that for mammals forebrain and cerebral hemispheres dominate whereas for other vertebrates hindbrain and cerebellum are in the dominant role.

1. Reptilian brain as k_em=4 system

Reptilian brain contains only the structures corresponding to brain stem (midbrain and hind brain, in particular cerebellum) and would thus correspond to k_em=4 level of the hierarchy. Cerebellum is not believed to contribute directly to our consciousness and this might be true quite generally for k_em=4 level of dark matter hierarchy (visual awareness might be an exception as will be found).

Simplest emotions correspond to emotions involving no goal. Moods like excitement, feeling good/bad/tired/strong, etc.. could represent examples of such emotions and could be experienced already by reptilians. Of course, the scaled up variants of these emotions could appear at higher levels of hierarchy and would relate to the states of magnetic bodies (degree of the quantum coherence of Bose-Einstein condensates!).

2. Limbic system

Limbic system is not possessed by reptiles. It is responsible for emotions, control of emotions, and also emotional intelligence. Limbic system corresponds to the brain of the most mammals. The limbic brain includes the amygdala, anterior thalamic nucleus, cingulate gyrus, fornix, hippocampus, hypothalamus, mammillary bodies, medial forebrain bundle, prefrontal lobes, septal nuclei, and other areas and pathways of the brain.

1. The sub-cortical part of the limbic system involves amygdalar and septal divisions. Amygdalar division promotes feeding, food-search, angry, and defensive behaviors related to obtaining food. Septal division promotes sexual pleasure, genital swelling, grooming, courtship, and maternal behavior. These divisions are emotional mirror images of each other hand could correspond to k_em=5 with 6.7 minute "drum beat".

2. The cortical part of the limbic system contains cingulate gyrus which is the newest part of the limbic system and belongs to thalamo-cingulate division which promotes play, vocalization (e.g., the separation cry), and maternal behavior. k_em=6 level would correspond to a "drum beat" of 9.3 days.

3. Frontal lobes are often regarded as the organ of volition. The frontal lobes are involved in motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgement, impulse control, and social and sexual behavior. Prefrontal lobes representing the extreme front part of frontal lobes belong also to the limbic system and are responsible for motivation and ability to pose long term goals. This ability distinguishes humans from other primates. For these reasons frontal lobes, in particular prefrontal ones, could involve the highest levels of dark matter hierarchy in the case of humans. k_em=7 with a characteristic time scale of 50 years could be assigned naturally to this level.

   Cortico-striatal emotions like sadness, hate, fear anger, surprise, embarrassment, happiness, contentment, and joy involve goal structures and failure or success to achieve the goal in essential manner and would involve prefrontal lobes.

   k_em=7 and even lower levels can also relate to collective levels of consciousness coded by hyper genes. Hence these emotions could also relate to goals not directly related to the fate of biological body. Mirror neurons are crucial prerequisite of social behavior (autistic children seem to lack them), which suggests that hyper genes are involved at least with them.

   Social emotions (feeling embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, loved, accepted, ...) could be induced by the collective levels of dark matter hierarchy as punishments or rewards for social behavior very much like neurotransmitters are believed to provide rewards and punishments at neuronal level.

3. Neocortex and two kinds of intelligences

Neocortex is often assumed to be superior ("neomammalian") part of the brain and makes the majority of brain hemispheres. The species which are considered to be highly intelligent, such as humans and dolphins, tend to have large amounts of neocortex. The amount of neocortex is roughly proportional to the brain size for primates.

Neocortex cannot correspond to k_em=7 as a whole. The decomposition of sensory areas to layers is consistent with k_em=4 since it is time resolution which matters in the case of sensory representations. Same conclusion applies to sensory association areas. The fine tuning of the motor control performed by cerebellum is of course consistent with k_em=4. Intelligence understood in the conventional sense of the word is accurate, works fast, and is computer like. The part of neocortex responsible for ordinary intelligence would be a rapid and accurate processor of sensory and cognitive representations. Hence k_em=4 would be naturally characterize sensory areas, secondary and primary motor areas, to hippocampal representation of declarative memories, and all association areas except dorsolateral prefrontal sensory-motor association cortex where short term memories are represented.

Emotional intelligence works slowly and is responsible for visions and holistic views and would thus correspond to higher levels of dark matter hierarchy. Limbic system is involved with emotions, motivation and long term planning and would thus be responsible for emotional intelligence. Indeed, the damage to frontal lobes need not affect ordinary intelligence but affects emotional intelligence.

4. The levels of dark matter hierarchy associated with short and long term memory

The time spans of memories should correspond to the time scales assignable to the dark matter hierarchy. The span of other than visual short term memories is 30-45 seconds. Visual short term memories representing selected features of visual field are reported to have time span of few seconds whereas so called iconic memories representing entire visual field have much shorter time span.

Visual short term memories are marginally consistent with k_em=4 level of hierarchy since for the right brain hemisphere T=2 seconds is predicted to correspond to the lowest EEG frequency. Iconic memories could also correspond to k_em=4 level and to higher EEG frequencies.

k_em=5 level of dark matter hierarchy corresponds to 400 second "drum beat": hence 40 seconds would correspond to 50 Hz EEG frequency by scaling so that the time span of other than visual short term memories is consistent with k_em=5 identification. The short term memories representing stimuli to which motor system is going to respond are located in dorsolateral prefrontal sensory-motor association cortex which could thus correspond to k_em=5.

k_em=6 would correspond to memories whose span would have upper limit of 9 days. Scaling up of short term memory span would give span of about 1 day and this might relate to the sleep-wake-up cycle. Perhaps it is good to remember what I did during the day and that I existed yesterday! This could also relate to the fact that dreams use the memories of previous day as a material. Usually long term memories are defined as memories with a span longer than year so that few days time scale is a hopefully testable prediction. Frontal lobes are central for personality, which must based on some kind of a self narrative. Hence at least k_em=6 should be assignable with some regions of frontal lobes.

k_em=7 would correspond to the time scale of 50 years assignable to prefrontal cortex forming part of the limbic system. Scaling from the span of short term memories would give 10 year scale. The stimulation of some regions of temporal lobes induces vivid sensory memories. Hence also temporal lobes should contain k_em=7 regions crucial for the long term memory recall. The instantaneous communications with geometric past as a mechanism of long term memory recall involve naturally higher levels of dark matter hierarchy.

Hippocampus and mammillary bodies involved with long term memory recall are part of the limbic system. That hippocampal theta rhythm is in the range 4-12 Hz suggests k_em=4 for hippocampus itself and that hippocampus just builds kind of bit sequence which during memory recall is communicated from the geometric past to some part of the future brain or magnetic body.

5. What about transpersonal levels of consciousness?

k_em > 7 levels of dark matter hierarchy cannot relate to the biological body. They could relate to higher collective levels of dark matter hierarchy and evolution of social structures. For instance, the "god module" located to temporal lobes could correspond to k_em>7 level of dark matter hierarchy. The memories extending over personal life span claimed by meditators could have interpretation in terms of k_em>7 transpersonal levels of consciousness.

For a slightly more detailed representation see the chapter Dark Matter Hierarchy and Hierarchy of EEGs of "Genes, Memes, Qualia, ...".

Matti Pitkanen

How to write off-topic comment to Not-Even-Wrong

Peter Woit in Not-Even-Wrong has adopted a determined policy of keeping new ideas out of his discussion group by classifying any comment with a real content as out-of-topic. The basic criterion for on-topic comment is that it contains no original thought and repeats what some name has said somewhere.

It must be wonderful to be a little king of little own hill and enjoy these little emotionally rewarding censoring operations although this censorship sometimes gets humorous twists when all comments accidentally disappear and joy changes suddenly into panic;-). Below is the last comment censored out by Peter Woit. It was stimulated (inspired would be wrong word) by the never ending liturgy that there are absolutely no empirical facts serving as guidelines for quantum gravity theorists.

There of course are. The recent day physics is full of anomalies. Only the reductionistic dogmatism combined with the monumental arrogance, deep ignorance, and intellectual laziness of the modern theocracy of science can explain why these fellows are able to not see the anomalies staring directly at their face and blinking eye. But here is the comment (I am not responsible for the grammatical blunders of the text in the italics, they just reflect the general standards for on-topic comments).

Would that we could do experiments that probe quantum gravity. Since this question is not classified as off-topic I dare take the freedom to suggest my own answer. The answer depends what one believes quantum gravity to be. My personal view about the issue has developed quite a lot after I learned for a year ago about the evidence for Bohr orbit type quantization of planetary orbits with a gigantic value of Planck constant fixed by Equivalence Principle (the work of Nottale).

The outcome is a hypothesis about a hierarchy of phases of matter characterized by the values of Planck constant, the values of which are educatedly guessed. Arbitrarily large values are possible. The identification of dark matter as this kind of phase is natural. This changes completely the view about quantum gravity: dark matter quantum coherent in astrophysical length and time scales becomes the template for the formation of the patterns of the visible matter. The royal road to quantum gravity would start humbly from the roots just as in the case of QED. I do not of course expect that M-theory hegemony nor anyone believing on reductionistic dogma is willing to take this seriously for a long time (which is of course their problem, not mine).

Quantum biology is one of the most fascinating applications of the ideas related to the dark matter hierarchy at quantitative level. For reports about progress in this direction during last year see my blog and What's New-links to the four books at my homepage.

Matti Pitkanen

The situation in string theory: is some kind of truth comission needed?

The development in string theory has finally achieved the stage where the sad truth cannot be hidden anymore.

Leonard Susskind's vision

Peter Woit reviews in Not-Even-Wrong Leonard Susskind's new book The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. Susskind gives a quite realistic summary of the situation but makes rather paradoxical conclusions.

During these years we have heard again and again the liturgy about the heavenly beauty of string theory, and I have been one of those unlucky ones able to see only extreme ugliness. Spontaneous compatification is something which still makes me almost vomit. Now Susskind tells that M-theory is ugly as hell: no clear principles, no consistent set of basic equations, and a huge landscape of solutions the only hope being that anthropic principle could allow to identify our universe as a particular solution.

Even worse, all attempts to carry out this identification have failed one after another and led to increasingly complicated constructs. Even accepting that the laws of physics as we know are a result of an accidental construct involving intersecting branes of various dimensions in various angles, it has not been possible to cook up anything looking like our universe. It seems that the joke that string theory is completely unique in the sense that it fails to predict just the universe we live in, is ceasing to be a joke.

After this and other confessions the conclusion of Susskind is somewhat unexpected. "This is the answer!" We must be happy and grateful and give up hopes about theory able to explain or predict. It is interesting to see what the people deciding about the financiation of particle accelerators think about this. Does it make sense to build horribly expensive accelerators when leading theorists are telling that even at the level of principle their magnificient theory of everything cannot explain or predict anything?

The view of David Gross

There is also a second sign that the bubble is finally exploding. The recent issue of New Scientist told that David Gross, who received for a year ago Nobel for his contributions to strong interaction physics, had held a talk in Solvay conference. For a year ago I had the opportunity to listen his Nobel lecture in Helsinki: at that time he still believed in string models. Now he thinks differently.

“We don’t know what we are talking about”,

says Gross and admits

“Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory, but now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break.”

Gross says that the field was in “a period of utter confusion”, and compared the current situation to that at in 1911, at the time of the first Solvay conference, when no one had any idea what was causing radioactivity. “They were missing something absolutely fundamental, we are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then.”

I happen to have a quite precise view about what this missing something might be and I have worked for 27 years to articulate it as precisely as I can. There are four books about TGD making more than 6000 pages of precise documentation about a unification of fundamental interactions that really explains and predicts. Hence I have had time and prerequisites to form my own view about the reasons that led to the recent catastrophic situation.

Philosophy is not a luxury

One of the reasons is that the recent education of theoretical physicists make them mere technicians able to apply some very specialized technical tools but having no understanding about the basic principles of even their own restricted field of research.

The bottle neck idea leading to the development of TGD started a travel through the entire physics and eventually it became clear that the construction of the the theory forces to reconsider the basic philosophical issues and to return back to the problems of time, energy, and consciousness that served as a source of inspiration of Einstein.

With this personal history it is not difficult to realize that the basic obstacle for progress in theoretical physics has for decades been the complete lack of understanding of the basic philosophical ideas behind our recent day physics. As a consequence reductionistic materialism has been accepted without any conscious thought as a dogma. GUTs and M-theory were indeed intended to be the grand finale of reductionism extended to Planck length scale. In M-theory even space-time would have emerged from strings.

From this viewpoint it looks obvious that theoreticians choose a wrong track already when Higgs mechanism was taken as granted and brute force unification of quarks and leptons inside multiplets of single grand unified gauge group were accepted as final scientific truths. The uncritical acceptance of inflationary scenarios in cosmology now challenged by several experimental findings did not improve the situation. As a consequence, more than thirty years have been wasted on a wrong track.

The reductionistic dogma implies also the continual neglect of the anomalous findings from various field of science. Superstring theorists labelling even particle physics as "low energy phenomenology" are definitely not interested in high T_c superconductivity and even less on puzzling findings of biology. While web makes possible an instantaneous access to an endless flow of refined data from all fields of science so that the necessity to specialize is an intellectual nightmare of past, recent day theoretical physicists narrow their attention to the application of their pet method and young string theorists have difficulties even in listing the known elementary particles as I heard some time ago.

It was my luck that the interpretational problems of quantum TGD did not leave other possibility than to try to open the black box of quantum measurement theory. It became obvious that quantum theory of conciousness was the only answer to this challenge. During this strugle it became clear that pragmatic theoretical physicists have for centuries put under the rug the simple unpleasant fact that the experienced time is quite different from the geometric time appearing in equations of physics. Even child can understand the difference and Einstein's and Bohr's debate was basically about this difference but after times of Einstein and Bohr this difference has not troubled us!

The outcome of this challenging of basic dogmas is a profoundly new view about the relationships of consciousness and physical and mathematical reality (matter-mind-mathematics), a developing view about the basic mechanisms of quantum biology, and a generalization of quantum theory providing a completely new view about dark matter.

We are also moral agents

The prevailing deep moral degeneration is second reason for the sad situation. This has led to an unashamed intellectual in-honesty. For instance, very often the critics of string theory and advocates of competing theories are labelled as intellectually inferior bitter crackpots without any reference to what they are saying.

An open censorship of competing theories has become a generally accepted practice. For instance, more than decade ago it became impossible to publish anything about TGD in respected journals or to get even material to arXiv.org although the Mathematical Subject Classification Tables of American Mathematical Society have a link to TGD. The often repeated statement "String models are the only known quantum theory of gravitation" is true but the innocent reader does not realize that the emphasis is on the attribute "known", which should be replaced with "uncensored".

Where the father of the theory of everything can come from?

There are also other reasons. England has Newton and Germany has Einstein and US is eager to have something comparable. This certainly explains partially the miraculous success of string theories in sharp contrast with their failure to reproduce standard model which was clear from the beginning. Of course, also the small Finland with it small and rather narrow minded academic circles wants to pose its own condition: the father of the theory of everything can come from anywhere else but definitely not from Finland. This has meant that I have been forced to work as an unemployed a considerable part of these 27 years and got a label of crackpot for about decade ago (thanks to the two young professors who stated that my work fails to satisfy all imaginable criteria of a scientific work). The situation continues to be the same.

Could some kind of truth commission be a good idea?

The situation in theoretical physics is catastrophic and something should be done. The first thing to do is to make a map about where we have come. What comes in mind would be a kind of truth commission consisting of independent intellectually honest physicists (I hope that it is possible to still find such individuals) making a summary about the recent situation in string theory and about the situation in the community of theoretical physicists. There are many questions to be answered.

• As David Gross said, we are missing something fundamental. For these 27 years I have been desperately trying to tell what this something fundamental is. I am certainly not the only one. I already mentioned the "The only known theory of quantum gravitation" syndrome and the censorship which has made impossible to communicate competing theories to the scientific community. The first thing to do is a review of these theories carefully by people having intellectual and moral competence to do this. The censoring practices adopted in arXiv.org and by the referee system should be put under a close scrutinity.

• The heavenly mathematical beauty of string theories and the revolution in mathematics induced by string theory has been one of the basic arguments of string community during last years as it has become increasingly clear that the physical content of these theories is nil. Leonard Susskind states now that even this claim is just propaganda. Could it be that an unholy ally of string hegemony with math departments to get research money cooked up this media candy? A more recent characterization of string theory is as a theory of more than everything defining a model independent superstructure analogous to quantum mechanics. Propaganda again?

• The celebrated dualities have also contributed to the media sexy look of M-theory. At some stage it began to look that at least everything is dual with at least with everything. For instance, there are statements that practically any quantum field theory is dual to some M-theory based quantum gravity. "If you cannot prove duality wrong in five minutes, it is correct" has been said quite seriously. Does this statement characterize the extreme brilliance of string theorists or does it give a hint about how seriously this duality stuff should be taken? A critical string specialist has claimed that these dualities only reflect the fact that M-theory is non-renormalizable and therefore contains infinite number of arbitrary couplings constants so that the theory can be made to predict practically anything just as any theorem and its negation can be deduced from an inconsistent system of mathematical axioms. The non-existence of M-theory has given it an especially sexy flavor. What the dualities predicted by a non-existent theory really mean? In light of this, it would be indeed interesting to see how many of these dualities are really true.

• There is also the landscape issue. Many M-theory gurus tell that there is a huge landscape of solutions to the non-existing basic equations of non-existing M-theory. They also tell that it is not even possible to understand why the dimension of the space-time we live in is four, that the repeated attempts to reproduce standard model have failed, and that we should be happy with the situation. Some other gurus tell that there is no landscape at all and that string models have no difficulty in reproducing standard model. Who is right, who is wrong? (I was almost saying "Who lies, who tells the truth?".)

I leave for the reader the task of inventing more items to this list and sincerely hope that the talk of David Gross would encourage people in academies to finally express openly their views about the depressing situation in theoretical physics. We are also moral agents, not only physicists.

Matti Pitkanen

TGD inspired model of nerve pulse

The vision about dark matter hierarchy led to an updating of practically all chapters related to hardware of consciousness. Last updating relates to the model of nerve pulse.

The basic idea behind the model of nerve pulse is that some kind of quantum jump reduces the magnitude of membrane potential below the threshold leading to the generation of nerve pulse. Several identification of this quantum jump have been discussed during years but no really convincing option has been found. The evolution of ideas about dark matter hierarchy and associated hierarchy of Planck constants led to a breakthrough in several sectors. The assignment the predicted ranged classical weak and color gauge fields to dark matter hierarchy was the crucial step and led among other things to a model of high T_c superconductivity predicting the basic scales of cell, to a generalization of the genetic code to a hierarchy of genetic codes, and also to a generalization of EEG to a hierarchy of EEGs, ZEGs, and WEGs and of the colored variant of EEG.

A further outcome was a profound modification of the model of nerve pulse. The key notion is charge entanglement made possible by W MEs between magnetic body and cell interior making possible quantum control by inducing a deviation from charge equilibrium leading to a generation of ordinary currents. This entanglement makes possible superposition of entangled states involving ordinary ionic B-E condensate of Ca⁺⁺ ions and its exotically charged counterparts, not only at neuronal level but at all levels of dark matter hierarchy. If the membrane potential is reduced below the threshold at the exotically ionized branch of this multi-verse, nerve pulse generated at this branch. This superposition of quantum states in which quantum parallel dissipation takes place at lower dark matter levels makes also possible dissipative quantum computations in terms of nerve pulse patters, for instance during sleep. State function reduction leads with some probability to the branch at which nerve pulse is generated. Millisecond defines the time scale for these state function reductions.

Hodkin-Huxley model describes phenomenologically what happens at a given branch of the multiverse. The real course of events involves quantal currents which are essentially universal as the totally unexpected finding that membrane currents are virtually independent on the properties of the membrane demonstrated. This can be understood if the structures identified as ionic pumps and channels are actually ionic receptors and voltage sensors and ionic currents flow as quantal currents along cell membrane space-time sheet and dissipate minimally. The flow through cell membrane might involve transformation to dark phase. The quantal pulse like character of currents follows from the quantal character of the formation of join along boundaries contacts making possible the flow of currents between cell exterior and interior.

A good guess is that dark Ca⁺⁺ waves due to the oscillatory charge entanglement are responsible for the propagation of the nerve pulse. If W ME extends over the length of axon and the phase of W field varies in direction transversal to ME, Ca⁺⁺ waves can indeed result. The mysterious anesthetic action of noble gases can be seen as a direct evidence for the role of the classical weak forces.

For more details see the chapter TGD Inspired Model of Nerve Pulse of "Genes, Memes, Qualia,...".

Matti Pitkanen

Torture as a tool to make a better world

United States has adopted a policy in which torturing of those suspected for terrorism is acceptable if carried secretly in foreign countries, such as former Soviet countries. Anyone with the amount of ethical intelligence making it possible to realize what the notion of mirror symmetry in ethics means, certainly wonders who is the rogue state. The irony is strenghened as one realizes that this principle is one of the basic teachings of Christianity and that George W. Bush appears in publicity in the role of a deeply religious leader.

People in USA taking seriously basic ethical values certainly feel deep shame. I believe that in most European countries people feel deep disgust against this policy. The former president Carter wrote about the catastrophic situation an article published also in the leading Finnish newspaper. In today's Cosmic Variance there was article titled "What we have become". The all-intelligent Lubos Motl, the proud Neo-American, saw in his posting "Secret prisons of CIA" the torture as necessary for the survival of his new home country. It should not need too high emotional or ethical IQ to realize that replacing Soviet totalitarism with US totalitarism or terrorism with the free torture of terrorist suspects is nothing but a symmetry transformation which changes nothing (using the language Lubos should understand better). But somehow this challenge seems to be too difficult for Lubos.

Speaking of ordinary intelligence, if we are able to learn anything from history, we should learn that we can afford only the most capable and intelligent (with intelligence understood in the most general sense and including also its emotional and spiritual aspects) persons at the top of the power where power-greedy psychopaths surround the lonely leader. Without this prerequisite the worst forces easily take the lead. It was like a bad dream to see a technological, political, and military mega-power to elect George W. Bush a president: he might be quite nice as a private person but he simply does not have the qualities needed in this job. The bad dream transformed rapidly to a disgusting reality and situation has been compared with a good justification to what happened in Nazi Germany.

Matti Pitkanen

Dark Matter Hierarchy and Evolution

Dark matter hierarchy leads to an amazingly concrete picture about evolutionary hierarchy allowing to identify the counterparts for concepts like mineral, plant, and animal kingdom that we learned during schooldays and ceased to take seriously as students of theoretical physics as we learned that other sciences are just taxonomy. Even more, a view about what distinguishes between prokaryotes, eukaryotes, animal cells, neurons, EEG, and even about what makes cultural evolution, becomes possible.

There are two hierarchies involved with the dark matter hierarchy. The dark levels associated with weak bosons for which k_W=1 corresponds to the p-adic length scale about L_W(1)≈ 1 Angstrom with exotic weak bosons corresponding to k=113 (rather than k=89 as for ordinary weak bosons). There is also electromagnetic dark hierarchy and in a given length scale one has k_W= k_em+2. In a given scale weak sector would be ahead in evolution by two units so that weak dark bosons can be associated with more abstract functions like cognition and planning whereas em level would be related to simpler functions.

Ordinary matter corresponds to k_W= k_em=0 and ordinary value of hbar and higher levels correspond to scaled up values of hbar with scalings λ^k, λ ≈2¹¹. This mean scaling up of various quantum length scales and also the sizes of space-time sheets by λ. It seems that magnetic flux quanta are the primary structures forming hierarchy of this kind and large hbar means that cyclotron energy scales expressible as E= hbar(k)eB/m proportional to λ so that an arbitrarily weak magnetic field strength can in principle correspond to a cyclotron energy above thermal threshold at room temperature. The appearance of space-time sheets zoomed up in size by a power of λ means the emergence of new levels of structure and it is natural to identify big leaps in evolution in terms of scaling of hbar by λ and emergence of new large magnetic flux sheets satisfying magnetic flux quantization condition with the unit of flux scaled up by λ. This leap is quantum leap but in different sense as thought usually.

The emergence of higher dark matter levels would basically mean the integration of existing structures to larger structures. A good metaphor are text lines at the pages of book formed by magnetic flux sheets whose width is scaled up by λ as the new level of dark matter hierarchy emerges.

This conceptual framework gives rather strong guidelines for the identification of the levels of evolutionary hierarchy in terms of dark matter hierarchy. The outcome is a detailed vision about big evolutionary leaps.

1. Molecular life

Magnetic body with (k_W, k_em)=(1,0) corresponds to the lowest level of hierarchy with the size of the basic structures corresponding to atomic length scale. The anomalous properties of water would be partly due to the presence of this level. At least the simplest bio-molecules regarded as living organisms would correspond to this level.

2. The emergence of prokaryotes as simplest membrane bounded structures

At (k_W, k_em)=(2,0) level high T_c superconductivity predicting the basic length scales characterizing the double layered cell membrane, the size scale of the cell, and the weak length scale L_W(2)≈ .3 μm. Prokaryotic cells (bacteria, archea) without cell nucleus and other cell organelles would correspond to this level. Cell nuclei, mitochondria, and other membrane bounded cell nuclei would have evolved from prokaryotes in this framework. Also viruses and nannobacteria could correspond to this level of hierarchy. Cell membrane is responsible for metabolic functions and genome is scattered around the cell at this stage.

3. The emergence of cells having organelles

The appearance of magnetic bodies with (k_W, k_em)=(3,1) correlate with the emergence of simple eukaryotic cells, in particular plant cells. Cell nucleus would be the brain of the cell, mitochondria would be the energy plant, and centrioles generating microtubules would define the logistic system. Also other organelles such as Golgi apparatus, ribosomes, lysosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, and vacuoles would be present. These organelles would form a symbiosis by topologically condensing to (k_W, k_em)=(3,1) magnetic body controlling their collective behavior. Centrosomes associated with animal cells would not be present yet but microtubule organizing centers would already be there.

The recent observations show that centrioles are not always in the characteristic T shaped conformation. Daughter centrioles resulting during the replication of mother centriole use first ours of their lifetime to roam around the cell before becoming mature to replicate. The interpretation would be that they are also life forms and magnetic body utilizes daughter centrioles to perform some control functions crucial for the future development of the cell. For instance, centrioles visit the place where axonal growth in neurons starts.

Cytoskeleton would act as a counterpart of a central nervous system besides being responsible for various logistic functions such as transfer of proteins along microtobuli. Centrioles give also rise to basal bodies and corresponding cilia/flagella used by simple cells to move or control movement of air or liquid past them. Cntriole pair would be also used by the magnetic body to control cell division.

The logistic functions are the most obvious functions of microtubules. Magnetic body would control cell membrane via signals sent through the cell nucleus and communicated to the cell membrane along microtubuli. Basal bodies below the cell membrane and corresponding cilia/flagella would serve as motor organs making possible cell motion. Tubulin conformations representing bits would allow microtubule surface to represent the instructions of the magnetic body communicated via via cell nucleus to various proteins moving along the microtubular surface so that they could perform their functions.

TGD based view about long memory recall as communication with geometric past allows also the realization of cellular declarative memories in terms of the conformational patterns. Memory recall corresponds to a communication with geometric past using phase conjugate bosons with negative energies reflected back as positive energy bosons and thus representing an "image" of microtubular conformation just like ordinary reflected light represents ordinary physical object. This means that there is no need for static memory storage which in TGD framework would mean taking again and again a new copy of the same file.

Receptor proteins would communicate cell level sensory input to the magnetic body via MEs parallel to magnetic flux tubes connecting them to the magnetic body. We ourselves would be in an abstract sense fractally scaled up counterparts of receptor proteins and associated with dark matter iono-lito Josephson junction connecting the parts of magnetosphere below litosphere and above magnetosphere. The communication would be based on coherent photons and weak bosons of generalized EEG associate with the level of dark matter hierarchy in question. The mysterious bio-photons could be decay products of dark photons resulting via de-coherence meaning that the size of the dark photons is reduced in stepwise manner by factor 1/λ in single step.

4. The emergence of organs and animals

The emergence of magnetic bodies with (k_W, k_em)=(4,2) leads to the formation of multicellular animals. Magnetic body at this level gives rise to super-genome making possible genetic coding of organs not yet possessed by plant cells separated by walls from each other. The super structures formed from centrosomes and corresponding microtubuli make possible complex patterns of motion requiring quantum coherence in the scale of organs as well as memories about them at the level of organs.

5. The emergence of nervous system

(k_W, k_em)=(5,3) magnetic body makes possible nervous system. The period of Josephson oscillations associated with the scaled up variant of cell membrane is about 10 kHz and is consistent with the characteristic millisecond time scale of nerve pulse activity. Nerve pulse reception involves communication to the magnetic body via receptors of the neuronal membrane and the reaction of the magnetic body possibly generating a nerve pulse sequence. Charge entanglement made possible by W MEs makes possible nerve pulse generation as a quantum coherent process.

The emergence of the new level means also the integration of axonal microtobuli to text lines at the magnetic flux sheets making possible logistic control at the multineuronal level. The conformational patterns of the microtubular surface would code nerve pulse patterns to bit patterns representing declarative long term memories. An interesting question is whether the reverse coding occurs during memory recall.

6. The emergence of vertebrates and EEG

(k_W, k_em)=(6,4) magnetic body would bring in EEG possessed by vertebrates and also ZEG and WEG. Magnetic body is now of order Earth size. Natural time scale for the moment of sensory consciousness is measured as a fraction of second and basic building blocks of our sensory experience correspond to a fundamental period of .1 seconds.

7. Cultural evolution

Higher levels in the hierarchy would correspond mostly to the evolution of hyper-genome coding for culture and social structures. Introns are good candidate for the genes involved. The development of speech faculty is certainly a necessary prerequisite for this breakthrough.

For how this picture fits to a wider context see the last section of the chapter Many-Sheeted DNA of Genes,Memes, Qualia, and ...".