Basic course in misunderstanding publicly what TGD is

I have had interesting debate with person X in Facebook about TGD. The following is not a personal attack against X or anyone. I have enjoyed the discussions. TGD is for me not much about my ego but implications of a marvellous idea that for some reason happened to become aware of decades ago. My apologies for all colleagues for producing so much green colored suffering: this idea just came to my head. I feel that it is appropriate to summarize the essence of what I have learned from these discussions.

During years I have learned a lot about the scientific arrogance - this arrogance is not a personal sin but cruelly forced by the social pressures in science community - basically the deep fear to lose membership of the community as a sanction for using own brain and making un-cautious remarks about the clothing of the Emperor.

This leads to the crackpot hunter syndrome very similar to what young nazis are suffering also at the streets of finnish cities nowadays. This syndrome plagues almost all researchers and only retired scientists sometimes manage to get rid of it and realize that nothing prevents them from thinking with their own brains. Those who do this too early, are mercilessly kicked out from the community. Science is today what church was at medieval times. This is just sociology. Being outsider is not however fatal at all for a thinker who does not need expensive laboratory equipment - just the contrary since it gives the precious freedom.

1. Did you see the gorilla?

How to achieve a complete misunderstanding about some new idea? In email discussion about this I was told about "Did you see the gorilla" effect. If you totally direct your attention to something almost anything can happen and you fail to perceive it. For instance, gorilla can walk through the scene repeatedly and you do not notice it.

Gorilla effect explains why it is almost hopeless to discuss with a person - call him X - who identifies himself as "serious scientist" about something, which involves new thinking.

The basic attitude of X is that person Y with the new theory is a crackpot. X directs his attention to single task: to find a fatal mistake in the arguments of Y instead of trying to understand what is the new idea - the gorilla - is. X is convinced that Y as crackpot building his "theory" by picking up pieces from the "real" theories and combining them in some silly fashion.

And indeed: X finds that this is the case! Gorilla can stare X at face, tap X on shoulder, kick X on knee, and X does not notice anything! X concludes that Y is indeed a complete crackpot as he actually new before hand - these randomly picked pieces simply do not form any coherent whole. X is fitting left shoe to the right leg and when this does not work he accuses the right hand leg or being a crackpot leg.

2. How to achieve a complete misunderstanding of TGD?

A concrete application helps to understand the secrets of successful debunking. I try to formulate my experiences about being debunked as a recipe for achieving complete misunderstanding about what TGD is.

1. Take care that you are young and arrogant enough. Arrogance is necessary since it implies that you regard all scientists without academic position crackpots irrespective of what they say. Do not care about such minor details like
   3 published books and 17 online books and numerous articles. All this only tells that this crackpot is really tragic case: spend 40 years writing all this nonsense!
   
   
2. Spill first out the standard generic accusations carefully avoiding to say anyhing about contents. You can tell that the logic is circular, that Y just picks up this and and that from "real" science and puts them together to build an a meaningless world salad - his "theory". Tell that Y has no source criticism. Tell that he has mis-understood all principles of science. Tell that the work of Y fails to satisfy all imaginable requirements to be posed on scientific work.
   

   These generic accusations are standard bad rhetorices and it would be easy to program a chatbot producing them with slight variations: it is already now possible to write poems composed of sentences from existing poems as also ironic statements. Kind of database for generic academic hate speech would be needed.
   

   Layman usually does not notice this rhetoric trick. In the unfortunate case that this happens publicly X is forced to read something from Y or patientely listen to him. Professional of course realizes the trick but are silent and certainly the victim Y understands what you are trying.
   
   

3. If you do not manage to put Y down with general purpose rant you are forced to discuss with him or even read something written by him. This is irritating but you must do it if you are in public forum. You can start by throwing some random claims about the work of Y and see how Y reacts to them and demonstrate that he is a crackpot and make a theatrical exit telling that you have got enough.
   
   

If you are forced to say something about contents, you can attack on two fronts. The core of the argument that crackpots are in war against "serious" science and that Y is in war against serious science. Audience can make its own conclusions. I continue with the same example in which Y is theoretical physicist.

1. Argue that Y is in war with general relativity.
   
   
2. Argue that Y is also in war against quantum theory and understands nothing about quantum theory and tries to mimic quantum theory by picking some pieces and trying to put them together.
   
   

2.1. Y is in war against special and general relativities

1. Tell that Y loses Poincare invariance in his theory.
   

   Y however tells that it is general relativity i(GRT) in which Poincare in invariance is lost. This is true but do not comment: in the audience very few understand this delicacy.
   

   Y tells that the very starting point of his theory was just the acceptance of Poincare invariance as an exact symmetry of Nature. He is only fusing special and general theories of relativity so that relativity principle (RP) is consistent with Equivalence Principle (EP) and General Coordinate Invariance (GCI) and that already Einstein might have discovered this but did not.
   

   Y claims of having discovered something that Einstein did not!!!: god grief - a clear sympton of crackpotness: Haha! Do not listen [laugh from audience].
   

   Y tells that the whole idea is to lift Poincare invariance to the imbedding space M⁴× CP₂: symmetries do not shift point of space-time surface along space-time surface (they would be general coordinate transformations in this case) but rotate or translate entire 3-surface which is like rigid body. Do not listen.
   
   

2. Tell that Y loses GCI by introducing some special coordinates but formulate it so that it is impossible to understand what you mean (neither do you understand but this does not matter since also audience fails to understand).
   

   Y tells that his theory relies on GCI and this implies in his framework holography. Even strong form of GCI is highly motivated and implies what he calls strong form of holography: construction of quantum theory needs only data at string world sheets and partonic 2-surcaces (or possibly also at their light-like orbits). Do not listen.
   

   Then Y makes a fatal mistake. Y tells also that the extension of physics to adelic physics involving introduction of p-adic physics as correlates for cognition brings in description of cognition. The worlds in which theoretician uses spherical coordinates resp. linear coordinates are indeed a little bit different since the discretization of the symmetry groups implies tiny effects assignable to cognition. No need to say anything. Y has finally crucified himself as pseudo-scientists by talking about consciousness and cognition. Congratulate yourself.
   
   

You can also make questions about blackholes. All popularizers talk about blackhole interiors as scientifically proven concept and typical theoretician believes this. And of course ordinary laymen: what else they could do?

Y tells that experimentally one does not know anything about blackhole interiors and that they are a source of myriads of problems since at blackhole horizon GRT begins to fail.

Now Y makes a second fatal mistake. He tells that in this theory blackhole interiors are replaced by regions of space-time surface with Euclidian signature of metric so that time and space are in completely symmetric position unlike for blackholes for which the roles of radial coordinate and time coordinate are changed below horizon.

Y also tells that any physical object is accompanied by this kind of space-time sheet containing smaller space-time sheets glued to it and talks about fractals. Now Y has finally demontrated his crackpot character! Tell that all respectable theoreticians believe in blackhole interiors [laugh from audience].

Y does not give up. He tells that these respectable theoreticians also routinely use a calculational trick replacing Minkowskian metric with Euclidian. Could it be that the presence of these Euclidian regions could make functional integral replacing path integral in this theory convergent and mathematically well-defined. Could it be that behind the trick there is a reality? Do not listen.

Y might also tell about the notions of field body and magnetic body as basic distinctions between TGD and ordinary classical field theory.This becomes really bad. Y must have lost his mind. Do not listen.

2.2. Y is also in war against quantum theory

This is the second theme.

1. Tell that the theory of Y is inconsistent with basic quantum mechanics.
   

   Y says "No!" and tells that he accepts linear superposition, tensor products, quantum entanglement, Born rules: actually the entire calculational apparatus of quantum theory. Only quantum measurement theory, which is the black sheep of quantum theory is replaced by its modification based on what he calls zero energy ontology and that this modification leads to a theory of consciousness with a lot of non-trivial predictions. Y also tells that physics is essentially the study of regularities of conscious experience.
   

   Take a fatherly attitude and tell that quantum measurement theory is completely understood and that talking about consciousness as something interesting in some sense is medieval nonsense. Perform a theatrical loss of temper and leave the stage: Nooo-noooo-noooo!! Why am I discussing with this miserable crackpot?!
   
   

2. Tell that Y tries to reduce quantum theory to classical space-time dynamics (not true but it does not matter).
   

   Y tells that classical dynamics of preferred extremals is exact part of quantum theory in this theory. He does not try to reduce quantum theory to a classical theory: this would be idiotic. Do not listen.
   

   Y tells that his preferred extremals are not an outcome of stationary phase approximation or Bohr rules. Y tells that the preferred extremal property - or Bohr orbitology - is necessary to realize GCI for the geometry of WCW. The definition of metric - Kähler function - must assign to 3-surfaces a unique space-time surface. Y compares this approach to what happens in integrable theories, where path integral reduces to sum over extremals of action. Do not listen.
   
   

3. Tell that the theory of Y does not even involve quantization and is therefore total trash.
   

   Y tells that he does not perform quantization since it is not needed and that quantization is a childhood disease of quantum theory! How arrogant! [Laugh from audience].
   

   Y claims that 80 per cent of quantum theory is group theory and the enormous symmetries of his theory reduce quantization to the study of representations of his funny infinite-D symmetry algebra (he calls it super-symplectic algebra: do not waste time to look what it might mean).
   

   Do not take Y seriously and say that Y does not understand quantum theory at all. Say that only crackpot can claim that quantization is not needed.
   

   To this Y says that geometrization of quantum theory as generalization of Einstein's program for classical physics in terms of infinite-dimensional geometry of WCW
   
   

   • requires only that WCW (space or 3-surfaces roughly) has Kähler geometry in order to geometrize hermitian conjugation and that this geometry boils down to an identification of Kähler function,
     
     
   • that its definition must assign to a given 3-surface a unique space-time surface,
     
     
   • and that this is achieved if Kähler function is defined by action for a space-time surface identified as preferred extremal of certain action consisting of Kähler action and volume term having interpretation in terms of cosmological constant and emerging from the twistor lift of his theory possible only for M⁴× CP₂ so that TGD is also mathematically unique and not only implied by standard model symmetries.
     
     
   Do not listen.

   Y also tells that quantum states of Universe are classical spinor fields in WCW: entire quantum theory is classical apart from state function reduction and that its proper description leads to consciousness theory. Now it is time to get emotional: Y is claiming that quantum theory is classical theory [laugh from the audience].

   Tell that Y should quantize since all serious scientists quantize. Tell that Y must perform at least geometric quantization to make his theory physical. Give a friendly advice: the least Y could do is to replace his WCW with its phase space bringing in canonical momenta (or densities) and forcing to select somehow the configuration space. Hope that Y admits this. Then you could tell that geometric quantization is not unique since there is an infinite number of manners to select the configuration space as sub-manifold with vanishing induced Kahler form (symplectic form). Haha!!: the whole thing is highly non-unique and Y is utterly wrong in his dreams.

   Irritatingly, Y says that this no need for geometric quantization or any kind quantization apart from second quantization of induced spinor fields at space-time level forced by the anticommutation relations of WCW gamma matrices expressible as linear combinations of fermionic oscillator operators so that also Fermi statistics is geometrized. Do not listen.

   Y gives even an example. In CP₂ one can construct spinor harmonics without any need for selecting Lagrangian sub-manifold. Same for WCW. The infinite-D symmetries of WCW reduce quantization to group theory very much analogous to but generaling that needed in the construction of representations of super-conformal algebras. Do not listen.

4. Y also tells that his theory introduces also some new elements to quantum theory.
   
   
   • The identification of quantum states as spinor fields of world of classical worlds (WCW),
     
     
   • zero energy ontology (ZEO),
     
     
   • hierachy of phases of matter with non-standard value of (effective) Planck constant,
     
     
   • hyper-finite factors of type II₁ and their inclusions as correlate for finite measurement resolution.
     
   No need to comment. Planck constant is known with several decimals and all serious scientists believe that dark matter is some exotic particle or few of them: they are not yet found but will be found [laugh from audience].