Year: 2015

Just a holding post for 3 related links, so I can draw others attention to it:

SciAm article : Dark Energy Tested on a Tabletop

Sabine Hossenfelder’s earlier “BackReaction” response to the original source paper.

Rick Ryals speculation on consequences for the cosmological constant and the standard model (from Sabine’s Facebook timeline):

Negative mass particles would fall “up”… should have negative density and negative pressure…

A cosmological constant with negative pressure *mimics* negative mass via its anti-gravitational effect, and a cosmological constant that is a less dense form of the same mass energy as ordinary matter rho<0 would have real massive particle potential when enough of it was gravitationally condensed to attain the matter density… until then the “almost material” would logically be “dark”.

It would also be virtually undetectable, except gravitationally, and in a finite model matter generation from the vacuum structure *causes* expansion via the hole that the “hole” leaves in the vacuum during matter generation which necessarily increases negative pressure via rarefaction of the ever thinning vacuum structure.

This coincidence makes me wonder if anyone has ever written down the basis of wave functions in this background, including an expansion of the field in corresponding creation and annihilation operators… computed the stress-energy tensor in that background and quantitatively described the vacua. Has anyone worked out the matrix elements of the stress-energy tensor between Einstein’s original finite vacuum and the one-particle states?

Has anyone even checked with GR to see if negative mass has negative pressure?

Anyone else share that wonder?

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[Post Notes : Since the response trail has gone cold on Sabine’s FB thread, I’m bringing forward here for future follow-up, Ricks additional inputs. It’s a worry that serious open-minded physicists can address these details beyond the initial rebuttal:

Ian : “We know there’s no explanation for the cosmological-constant problem within general relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics,” so, maybe suspend belief in the standard model for a moment, and I’d be interested in your response to Rick Ryals speculation?

 

Rick : Thanks but it isn’t exactly speculation as it all falls naturally from the mentioned cosmological model. In General Relativity’s most natural universe, the vacuum has negative density when,

P=-u=-rho*c^2

In this static state, pressure is proportional to -rho, but pressure is negative in an expanding universe, and so energy density is positive.

The vacuum energy density is less than the matter energy density, but it is still positive, so positive matter density can be obtained locally if you condense energy from this negative pressure vacuum into a finite region of space, until the energy density over this region equals that of the matter density. This will, in-turn, cause negative pressure to increase, via the rarefaction of Einstein’s vacuum energy, (as the vacuum pulls back), so this expanding universe does not run-away, because the increase in positive mass-energy is offset by the increase in negative pressure that results when you make particles from Einstein’s negative pressure vacuum.

In Einstein’s static model, G=0 when there is no matter. The cosmological constant came about because we do have matter, so in order to get rho>0 out of Einstein’s matter-less model you have to condense the matter density from the existing structure, and in doing so the pressure of the vacuum necessarily becomes less than zero, P<0.

 

Sabine : [via twitter, (max 140 chars)]
Yes, negative (gravitational) mass has a negative pressure.
No, it doesn’t explain accelerated expansion.

 

Rick : Yes it does when a greater volume of the vacuum is required each time that you make a particle pair due to the rarefying effect that matter generation has on the finite vacuum.

But the universe is held flat and stable as acceleration increases …. until said process insidiously compromises the integrity of the structure and boom… the footprint of this universe gets laid down with the matter field for physicists of the next universe to scratch their collective heads about for all eternity… or so it would appear …

Rick and I continued some private chat on the implications, but these are not worth sharing until serious physicists take the physics inputs seriously. Anyone?]

[Continuing with chat response from Sabine (Matter corrected to Energy in the header):

Sabine:
[So, to the original question] I said, “Yes, negative gravitational mass can have a negative gravitational pressure to the same extent that positive gravitational mass can. That is to say, IF it’s pressureless, then of course it wont.

[T]he rest of the comment, I don’t know what [Rick] means.
[He asked] “Has somebody considered that the cc is a field and quantized it?”
Yes, sure. You can’t quantize a constant. And the cc doesn’t have ‘holes’ because it’s, well, constant.

From my lay perspective two obvious conditional assumptions there:

One, “if” gravitational mass (positive or negative) is pressureless.

Two, “whether” the cosmological constant is (literally) a constant. It’s that very assumption that is being questioned of course. Why it has the particular value it does in the current observable universe? The same point being questioned by Unger and Smolin, the dogma that such laws and constants are fixed and not evolving in the histories of universes.]

Heard Graham Bell talk again last week, this time a LAAG event entitled: “Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?” (With scare quotes around the ‘you’ in the original.) Obviously with that title presented that way, I was prejudiced to expect the usual “You and your free-will are illusions” line of denial.

In fact, although the whole thing came too close for me to denying ourselves and our free will (because it couldn’t be compatible with scientific determinism and therefore science couldn’t logically “prove it”), it was better that I expected. Good because it aired some important sources on the topic(s) — all expounded previously here at some length.

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow from his “Prospect Theory” economics psychology work with Tversky. Good stuff, but purely labels for empirical psychology rather than any explanatory theory of what’s really going on with Fast and Slow thinking. Not mentioned by Graham, Iain McGilchrist’s “Master and Emissary” model builds on explaining the basic phenomenon in terms of how the deeply divided brain has evolved to work that way and why both halves are valuable — need to value, and be valued by, each other. The fast processes are intuitive, more “hard-wired” — almost reflex — responses necessary for flexible behaviour in broad contexts. The slow processes are reflective, more “rational” where time permits and context requires more specific targeted decisions or actions. The key process differences lie in how the divided brain communicates with itself.

Jonathan Haidt too was cited positively, though interestingly Graham backed-off from wholeheartedly recommending him as a reference — too “woo” for the scientistic. Haidt’s “Happiness Hypothesis” comes close to life-style self-help as I’ve noted before, but his empirically backed psychological explanations are nevertheless good. And Haidt’s call for “conservatism” as a restraint on “freedom” is an important message — albeit a non-PC message for those for whom freedom is the mantra. A message reinforced by Julian Baggini’s latest Freedom Regained – freedom is better if it runs on rails.

Joshua Greene is cited because it appears he too uses “empirical science” to back his decision-making — brain scans to see what’s going on in the brain as decisions are made. Problem here is that whilst these measurements are empirical, the “trolleyology” surveys his subjects take are still nevertheless “thought experiments” — not very real. In fact trolleyology and its variants are a whole industry for some in moral philosophy — but there are two real points these cases make, particularly “proximity” (how close the potentially “harmed” subjects are to you) and “instrumentality” (the extent to which your positive action “causes” the harm). The other aspect not mentioned is “historicity” or context in general, and the whole history of moral development of the subject(s) up to the decision point and their future of living with the consequences thereafter. (PS can find no references to trolleyology having anything to do with super-market trolleys, before the runaway rail-trolleys on which the cases are generally built.) Simon Blackburn, Michael Sandel, Peter Singer and others are good sources of understanding what trolleyology really tells us about moral dilemmas and their limits in reality. (In terms of limits to freedom Julian Baggini’s latest is highly recommended.)

Libet is perhaps the most famous brain-scan correlation with decision-making, and consequently the most mis-interpreted. Graham didn’t mention him. It appears to reinforce the idea that most of our decisions are made before we have any conscious part in making them. In a sense that’s true — most of it is — but the small bit in reserve is the executive override, the “free-wont” as it’s been called. I always suggest people think of the tennis player (after Daniel Wegner) returning a fast serve and how much is “pre-programmed” by experience and practice, and whether the player still has any choice in the return shot. The point is however small any physical measure of our actual free-will it’s the important — most significant – bit we retain in influencing the outcome. It’s purely a matter of efficiency evolved for maximising fitness to our environment (as indeed is the McGilchrist view earlier). We focus on what matters in the moment and delegate the rest (walking, talking and chewing gum) to subsidiary systems and “tools”.

Sadly, Graham (and LAAG generally) are too quick to dismiss — with easy ridicule — philosophy and philosophers. They’re in good company with Larry Krauss there, but no less ignorant. Which is sad, because one person with a great deal to give in the debates on what free will and our self, wielding that free will, and how they evolved to be what they really are, is Dan Dennett, a philosopher who’s has more than a little fun with his philosophy denying scientist colleagues.

Basically too simplistic a view of determinism and too greedy a view of reductionism misleads us into seeing the physical machinery of the brain as incompatible with ourselves as our minds and our free-will built on that substrate. In order to avoid some mystical dualism of independent mind-stuff incompatibilists choose(!) to deny our free will. If that logic were correct, compatibilists would be misguided too. In fact the best response is to question the causation assumed in determinism and reductionism, since ourselves and our free-will are THE most directly empirical things we can know, even accepting that knowledge can be imperfect and illusory in aspects we can know. Certainly everyone — everyone at the talk — talks about moral choices as if they are able to make choices that (a) make a difference, and (b) they can be seen as responsible for.

Sam Harris is often cited within the new-atheist movement as a fellow denier of free-will. But of course, he isn’t, as I’ve discussed before. (See also Baggini’s quotes re Sam Harris).

The whole topic is really about what our minds are — are our minds “us” and how do “we” make choices that affect the physical world. As Graham described, the moral angle of this is really a sliding scale (onion-skins) on consequential harm and how we as social animals value relative harm and benefit. Like all such topics nothing is fundamentally absolute or universal, but the result of evolution and development. Evolution of our “species” genetically and culturally, and development historically from egg to fully formed forward-thinking “individual” in the moment, and all points between. Graham is certainly a strong advocate of the “naturalistic” standpoint and, on that, he’s right.

I side with Dennett – we are our minds and our minds are collections of memes — thinking tools — and we / they are real patterns of information. But that’s another story. Looking forward to Alan Duval’s talk next month — he appears to pick-up on more sophisticated philosophical views of the “compatibilism” debate.

This is hilarious. [Hard copy of Scientific American June 2012] “The Human Brain Project”

Sad too, but since it seemed to be funded by Big Blue rather than public funds, maybe not actually criminal. But, aaaaggghh no, “The Human Brain Project” is a multi-billion EU project. Now that is criminal.

The saving grace being that latter 2015 article says The Human Brain Project is premature, it needs a rethink. I’ll say. What were they thinking of, other than all that lovely money. This is not hindsight but basic common sense, not science, obviously. Big science needs better non-scientific advisors.

I was reading the 2012 piece because I was given the hard copy last night. We were at a talk on consciousness, mind, decision-making and morality (more on which soon) and the topic came up (a la Dennett) that the key feature that makes the human brain a mind – our mind – was software, not hardware. No amount of physical scale (exa-flops) nor connectivity (connectome) makes it a mind. It makes it a very complex machine. Building an elctronic simulation may be a fine model of its physical working, as physiologiocal, elctro-thermo device, but it doesn’t come close to asking how does the brain work – as a mind.

[Post Note – not watched yet, but here another current machine-brain is a delusion piece shared by Johnnie on FB]

Today we protest another atheist blogger murdered – hacked to death in public – earlier this week, and demand the Bangladeshi government take public action to condemn such behaviour as totally unacceptable, and be seen to capture and bring the guilty to justice.

I posted on the freedom-of-expression aspect of this unacceptable train of events back here. As atheist, secularist, rationalist bloggers for democratic freedoms we share the pain, but we must not forget that the following morning 45 Ismaili Shias were publicly murdered in Karachi just for holding a different view to another murderous sect in the name of Islam.

Also recently we noted the agreement – between (atheist) Bob Churchill and (Christian) Ben Rogers – that in defense of freedom:

Art.18 is there to defend freedom for every human being.
Too often Christians speak up for Christians,
Muslims for Muslims, atheists for atheists.
Freedom should be defended [by all] for all.

When it comes to freedom of thought, belief and expression, we must not be partisan in our condemnation of violent suppression.

 

[Post Note : And some success.]

 

If it looks designed, call it designed … by evolution.

At root it’s all about (disembodied) information, and intelligence is evolved too.

(Good to have that Q&A on gender cognitive differences [9:39 to 13:23 (*)] captured for posterity too.)

Anyway – reported on this talk back in March 2015 – I was there.

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[(*)Post Note : On that gender differences issue. In fact the question is specifically on “intelligence” – tougher for reasons of meaningless scales as Dan suggests – but also that balance between scientific benefit and social disbenefit – I heard it right on the night. BUT also references to reactions to James Watson and Larry Summers statements like these – non-PC but not false, says Dan … And he really did side-step a full answer with the idea that some things we are better not knowing … to much criticism from those on the YouTube comment threads. This one is parked.]

Hat tip to Sabine Hossenfelder for this link to SciAm article by Victor Stenger, James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian. Their title is “Physicists Are Philosophers Too” misled me slightly. Misled me into the “Yes, but often not very good ones, if they prejudice their philosophy with their physics” response. What was it Max Born said? “When we are doing theoretical physics, we are doing actual metaphysics.”

In fact it’s a plea for Physicists to recognise rather than deny philosophy, whether they consider themselves to be philosophers or not. Doubly interesting to me since the arch-denier cited is again Larry Krauss, US humanist of the year – again – with whom Stenger has had much debate on the topic in 2012 before his death last year, and because one of the contributors is Peter Boghossian, darling of many an atheists fighting irrational religious dragons. The latter is someone I need to bone up on.

Also interesting, because although I’ve done Krauss position on denial to death before, it includes a link to his debate with Julian Baggini in the Grauniad back in 2012 when Krauss was making his ignorant claims, and when I was too ignorant of Baggini.

Anyway both good reads. The SciAm article in fact analyses much of the content of the Baggini piece before going on to a pretty thorough summary of the changing relationship between philosophy and the field of knowledge now generally known as science. Good stuff.

The immediate data:

Actual 2015 Result in Full.

Comparing D’Hondt PR with FPTP in 2015 Voting. (ER Tweet) (Proportionality)

Electoral Reform  and A Constitutional Convention (<<< This)

Unlock Democracy and Joint Electoral Reform Petition
(naff link, may need to search each org for fresh link)

2015Constitutionalists

[Community Union] [Paul Mason’s Blog] [Adam Bienkov’s Blog] [Left Foot Forward] [Alan Johnson] [Spiked Brendan O’Neill] [The Economist] [Laurie Penny New Stateman] [Claire Wilsher] [Rod Liddle]

That last message – we must turn anger and disappointment into constructive action, and not let it become despair and depresssion. Or as Michael Cashman put it:

My mantra for the next few months: Don’t blame others, no one sets out to fail, accept responsibility, be generous and don’t become bitter.

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My starting positions:

Liberal & Democratic & Sustainable, where Values beat Arithmetic. Freedom – individual human rights – not “individually unconstrained” but guided by values. In order to decide (things of value) you need values to start with.

Individual Representation – is first about “self-identity” – who are we, who do we see ourselves as, what constituencies are we part of, what labels to we choose.
Multiple identified constituencies National, Regional & Local, and National, European, Global/Cosmic as well as Multiple tribal constituencies on shared features and issues.
Multiple representational institutions – nationally we are bicameral, regionally/locally we have overlapping authorities. Extra-nationally we have many authorities.

So electoral reform is not about House of Commons in isolation. It’s also about relationship to second house and to lower and higher institutions, and about democratic arrangements of those other houses & institutions. (eg HoC vs HoL, UK vs Countries and Regions, UK vs EU, UK & EU vs UN, etc.)

Delegation vs representation. Pragmatism. We can never pre-agree, or decide in real time (referenda) on every decision our various representatives make (or promise to make). Authority is “delegated” UP the chain of institutions (federation). Representation is “delegated” DOWN from people to the representatives in the institutions, Our representatives cannot literally be our delegates, making the decision we would make in every case in every institution.

Life is for living according to values – mutual values (freedoms) – our individual time cannot to be taken up with governance. Governance we want to delegate efficiently to those we can trust (and hold accountable). Some of us can spend some of our life wholly bound up in campaigns for something or other, but we can’t all spend all of our time on the campaign, it’s the “something” we really want to live, not the campaign.

Trust and love (care for fellow human individuals, individuals in a shared sustainable cosmos), are the key values. Everything else is priorities and practicalities of resources, of which time is one we all value (for living, otherwise why care about sustainability).

Some immediate corollaries:

Do not want pure arithmetic solution for proportionality of popular (votes) to representation (seats). We must not replace values, or allow them to be replaced, with numbers.

Do not want same democratic representation arrangements for all houses and institutions – not all popular vote based. (eg if HoC is popular vote based, then HoL should NOT be, not entirely.) Diversity is an important component of sustainability.

Assuming a good level of trust is maintained, the best relationship between population and governance is bottom-up. Popular votes for local / regional institutions, with lower institutions delegating power and authority upwards upwards (federally) and delegating appointed representatives upwards, generally without popular voting. Exceptions should be exceptions, and in practice there will be many until and unless that trust-based state is achieved. The fact that this would be a multi-generational project, does not change the aim, the vision.

Manifestos may be filled (for practical reasons) with promises of short term plans and actions, but must not be confused with actual values and visions shared for the sustainable long-haul.

THE KEY MESSAGE:

Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, so the elected will not have electoral reform as their highest priority. Something like the Constitutional Convention is therefore essential to making progress with electoral reform in line with longer term shared values.

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
T.E.Lawrence

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Post notes:

[@RustyRockets Vlog Sweet, naive learning with a voice, real time before our eyes. Split “anti-nasty-Tories” vote. Common compassion message, needs new thinking, but the naïveté means his language inevitably hits the right words. What’s so funny ’bout …  The boy done good.]

[And a good long Facebook exchange on Clive Andrews timeline.]

[And more on voting for individuals you can trust locally – even if they’re Tory. Hat Tip to Smiffy on FB.]

[And, Oh wow, the Vive La Difference agenda too.]

[Jim Messina in The Spectator.]

Oscar Holderer, the last survivor of Wernher von-Braun’s team of “rocket scientists” (proper engineers dreaming of a sustainable future actually) based at Redstone (Huntsville) Alabama, has died. The city has a considerable German connection and von-Braun is commemorated in civic buildings and the like.

Recorded when Ernst Stuhlinger passed back in 2008 at the time we were living there, and Sylvia had some tales to tell having met the old boy.

[And the same day – the baton passes eastwards.]