Year: 2016

Carlo Rovelli – A Fresh Spin on Fundamental Physics

Interesting to see today’s news on standardisation of units of measure, that time, distance and mass are now to be unified through the Caesium clock with application of the speed of light (c) and Planck’s constant (h). (Hat tip to Jim Al-Khalili on Twitter). Fascinating article in itself, however yet more evidence that the accepted standard models of physics are ever more solid and dependable. The scales of everyday life really are gounded in quanta.

I say interesting, because the cosmic gravitational scales of relativistic space-time nevertheless remain disconnected from such models. Quantum gravity has been the holy grail of physics for several decades, ever since the two extremes seemed sound in themselves despite failing to communicate with each other.

Interesting today particularly, because last night I finished Carlo Rovelli’s latest “Reality is Not What it Seems – The Journey to Quantum Gravity” and was already composing this post.

I’m sympathetic to Rovelli’s outlook, have been for several years, because I appear to share his metaphysics. As I said only in my previous post – on the topic of gender, race and religious identity politics, not physics:

“Significant differerence”
is THE fundamental “particle” of the universe,
the source of all information and all things.

Rovelli’s hero, from beginning to end, is Democritus. The original source of the idea that the universe is made of bits of very small but finite size, points of closest-possible but finite separation. Indivisible a-toms.

One thing I did learn from Rovelli’s latest is that the “loops” of quantum loop gravity (QLG) are closed curves in space-time around which solutions to the fundamental maths of physics have well-behaved (non-infinite) solutions. The other thing is that in the limit – the smallest curves around individual or small finite numbers of quanta – the values of these solutions resolve to multiples of the half-integers of “spin”.

As an aero-engineer myself, I couldn’t help but see the parallel with (Navier-Stokes equations) integrals in aerodynamic flows around the infinities of (virtual) sources and sinks used to model circulations (vortices) imposed on otherwise steady flow fields. In fact the QLG posits that all fields are quantised – in all the material particles and force fields in the standard model in space-time there are no zero properties or dimensions involved.

To cut to the chase, the fundaments of Rovelli’s QLG physics are information; small, finite, significant, differences of possibility. Claude Shannon is in there with the more expected heroes of physics and natural philosophy. Information is the key. The Ontology of reality really is limited by the epistemology of what can be known. What can be known is in the limit of quantised physics.

“A vision of reality
entirely independent of the observer
is impossible.”

Rovelli dismisses many hopeless fallacies around fundamental physics, string theory in its entirety being one of them, but also popular conceptions around the collapse of the Schroedinger wave function, often used to gloss over the observer-world interactions.

Time and causation are root problems in understanding how fundamental physics works. Time, says Rovelli, doesn’t exist. He means it doesn’t exist as some fundamental thing underlying the behaviour of the rest of physics. An independent fundamental variable – a part of “space-time”. Like the rest of physics, it’s an emergent, quantised and relative property. Time is within the QLG model, like everything else.

As we already knew, time is the direction of increasing entropy, in general, on average. Life is the efficient local means of reversing entropy and increasing or maintaining form and order. The more intelligently evolved life, the more efficient the entropic processes.

Positing a physics based on forces relative to points of finite separation also sounds a lot like Boscovich, an early influencer of Mach and hence Einstein.

I’ve said before, one of the things I like about Rovelli as a scientist is that he has time for philosophical thinking, and cites many early philosophers. He’s pretty scathing however, about the qualitative aspects of Plato – what is for the best:

How completely off track the great Plato was here!

But on the whole he takes a sympathetic reading of the intended thinking of many ancient philosophers from Anaximander to Spinoza. He doesn’t cite any modern or present day philosophers. Rovelli’s pedigree comes in part via Lee Smolin with whom a lot of this metaphysics is shared. Smolin of course published an important major work recently in collaboration with political philosopher Roberto Unger. I’d be really interested to see some current philosophers take on Rovelli’s work. I’m thinking of you Dan Dennett, Rebecca Goldstein, Julian Baggini and Massimo Pigliucci?

(Aside – Would also love to tie up Rovelli’s take on QLG with Deutsch & Marletto’s thinking on constructor theory, and with Mersini-Houghton, but I digress.)

After his exposé on QLG, itself preceded by a potted history of physics to date, Rovelli ends with several short qualifying chapters on where we stand and what needs to be done. He is particularly careful about what makes for science and evidence. He is at pains to reiterate that the unknown is much greater than the known, but creativity needs to be based on clues in or problems with what is believed to be known, rather than flights of complete fantasy into the unknown. Empirical disconfirmation remains the key distinguishing feature of science – taking its exams – whatever the process of arriving at hypotheses.

In some sense I think he doth protest too much in his final warning against arguments from authority and ancient wisdom, since his whole book proceeds step-wise from what was previously hypothesised to be known. All steps are relative, nothing is cast in stone, but every step needs a foundation, even one that redefines or undermines previous foundations. That the great thinkers and scientists are proven wrong, doesn’t stop them being great. It’s what makes them great. Not being provably wrong is science’s biggest problem. It’s belief without explanatory understanding that risks reification into dogma.

An absolutely excellent book. So many more notes on topics I’ve not mentioned here: cosmic expansion and multiple sequential big-bounce universes, black holes and Hawking radiation and the hype over Higgs and Super-symmetry as examples. Rovelli’s own selection of important people in the history of natural philosophy is itself interesting. Great read and I suspect will turn out to be an important book in the history of fundamental physics.

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[Post Note: “It from Bit” – More on the informational basis of reality – New Scientist from earlier (May) this year, and Erik Verlinde’s “Entropic Gravity” from 2010. Hat tip to Jaap van Till. (Latest May 2018 thoughts on Verlinde et al.) Interesting that Verlinde is a string theorist, so the time <> entropy <> gravity relationship is a deep issue for all sides here. Rovelli says “Time isn’t real”. Verlinde says “Gravity isn’t real”. They seem to be saying the same thing. Nothing is fundamentally real other than quantised information, all else is emergent in higher level patterns. If it works with quanta, not sure why we need strings, but hey.

Information (significant differences)
and patterns (negative entropy)
have been Psybertron’s focus since 2001.

Progress.]

[Post Note: See also this review of James Gleick’s History of Time Travel, by John Lanchester in the New York Review of Books. Hat tip to Massimo Pigliucci on Twitter. A long read on the inescapability of time; everything from Joe Campbell’s monomyth to fundamental physics via H G Wells. Metamyth.]

Valuing Difference

Just a quickie riff.

Whether is gender differences – male vs female cognitive difference anyone? – or race, or religion or whatever …

Difference matters.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that “significant differerence” is THE fundamental “particle” of the universe, the source of all information and all things. Whoah, but that’s maybe just me, I digress!

Trouble is in the less rarefied levels of everyday life, built-on / evolved-from a zillion levels of nuanced variety across time and space (history of the world as we know it – so far) we deal with things we find significant – things we care about – every day.

We give ’em names. As soon as we do, we have:

the named
vs
the named-otherwise

We have a binary shorthand for the thing we are currently talking about, for some reason we care about. Obviously there are differences between these things – male vs female – really big ones as it happens, at the level were at. But, however great and significant that difference, the common components in the current evolved state are even greater. Obviously. As in, Duh!

We don’t talk about men and women to deny our common humanity, or deny any spectrum of variability in gender assignment, we do it to communicate our current thought. We do well to remember the huge common ground behind every choice of name for the current subjects of our conversation, and of course it’s mostly unsaid. We’d never get anything said if we qualified every difference (content) with the entire common ground (context).

It becomes PC to ….

“don’t mention the difference”

…. because you may have some evil intent to exploit the difference, or even accidentally mislead, in an unsaid way.

We have to talk about the things that matter.
Differences matter, Difference is material in fact.

And we have to trust each other.

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This is the thread from yesterday with Andy Martin, that prompted the riff:

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Carlo Rovelli is right, in the sense that …

Interesting review of Carlo Rovelli’s latest “Reality Is Not What It Seems” by Michael Brooks in the New Statesman.

In my own review of Rovelli’s introductory work “Seven Brief Lessons“, I felt compelled to add a footnote to ensure readers understood he was peddling a minority view in Quantum Loop Gravity. Interesting in Brooks’ review of Rovelli’s latest, he highlights the well understood paradox that Gravity and Quantum theories can’t both be right.

Both are right ….
in the sense that …. they’ve both
[made useful repeatable predictions].

And both must be wrong, too.
[Since neither supports the other].

Brooks takes umbrage at Rovelli’s dismissal of more “popular” current theories – eg String and SuperSym – that aim to provide more fundamental physics than the current combination of Gravity and Quantum. Rovelli spends the final third of his latest work promoting QLG.

Being right in this world is about being useful for two or three generations – Kuhn / Kondratiev – but that is hindsight of course. Those proven right – or consigned to obscurity – are always in a minority of one when they first point out the advantages of their alternative.

A minority view, but I think Rovelli is mostly right, however successful QLG proves to be. He’s right even if QLG is wrong. And right in a more fundamental sense than simply utilitarian. Consisent with Smolin and others there is a serious attempt to bring time and law-like causation within the explanatory scope of the model, not to mention a respect for the value that philosophy brings to fundamental thinking. And then there is that healthy scepticism of the celebrity status of heroic Galilean mythology.

I’m less inclined to follow fundamental physicists who are dismissive of time, causation and philosophy than those that are dismissive of popularity.

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[Post Note : Another related review / book. Bell’s is another interpretation I have time for. Hat tip to Rick Ryalls on FB. Minority interests are not new, they just get trampled in the crowds following popularity contest winners, long before social media was invented. Same with science as any other topic of cultural interest.]

Civic Identity

One positive thought coming out of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s second Reith lecture this morning is Civic Identity

As with the first lecture on Credo, this second installment on Nationality came across again as statements of the obvious on the broad difficulties in being “definitive” on such matters of Identity Politics. Mistaken identity for sure, but what about “appropriate” identities with values to support them?

The positive thought came up in one of the later questions on Civic Identity. Having thrown-away cheap-shots on philosophers wanting to be definitive, citizens of the world vs citizens of a nation, and his own father’s belief in “Unitary (National) Citizenship” one philosophy student raised the idea of Civic Nationalism.

There is always a question of “we”; a presumption that there is one that means anything. Obviously there are many that mean many things. Any identity chosen by multiple individuals for their collective identity is a statement of caring enough about that identity. (Whatever genetic or memetic, biological or cultural – familial, ethnic, religious or territorial “heritage” forms the basis of that identity. The issue is simply that we have many of these at many levels.)

National identity – a particular “peoples” collective as a nation – is a political identity – like all identities are in the final analysis. The suggestion is that this is a particular “Civic Nationalism” – one based on political principles AND narrative, existing alongside other affiliations with multiple constituencies of peoples. Broadly consistent and tolerant of difference and multiplicity, despite particular points of conflict, that we can agree to forget or give low priority in most practical situations of daily life. Again we (individually) must choose to self-identify our collective “civic” nationality as distinct from all other national and ethnic identities, the point being as a statement that we accept the practicality of the governance arrangements of that civic. We are nailing our colours to the mast of a civic identity – a nation – that we declare will be used as the basis of any significant governance of conflicts and inconsistencies arising with the many other overlapping identities. We are accepting this civic identity to handle changes and accomodations involving other identities. Choosing a civic identity in no way loses or ignores the existence of our other identities and narratives as people’s other than that civic identity.

Declaring citizenship of the world is fatuous as our civic identity until such time as there is a form of world governance “we” all genuinely share. It’s a fine identity many of us also have, and even an aspirational civic identity, but until then, governance is about jurisdictions and their borders.

I’m kinda hoping Kwame Anthony Appiah’s lectures will have some punchline in the fourth episode, to bring together practical necessities of identities which bind us for real world purpose. So far it’s all about how matters of identity are complicated and non-definitive. We already knew that.

A religion is not a race, it’s an idea?

It’s a common claim in some form, in many a situation, where were are in danger of confusing or conflating prejudice based on race with prejudice based on some other social construct. It works on the assumption that race is a naturally objective class about which an individual has no choice, whereas religion is a matter of individual choice in a cultural context.

Of course the form “a religion is not a race it’s an idea?” is invoked when it’s the religious (cultural) identity that is the main topic at issue – to put some clear water between that and other issues of race. Particularly in the case where the religion is Islam, where there are strong associations with ethnic and cultural identities, it somehow seems important to maintain the distinction between different issues.

But if our topic were a racial or ethnic identity in the first place, we might have “ethnicity is not race” and “neither is race a meaningful biological thing”. In fact if we get deeper into biology we also find that even species are definable only by convention and the appropriate conventions vary enormously with context and purpose. How many scientists are keen to emphasise how flimsy are the actual differences at the mental and cultural levels between humans and our kindred species.

Down with this sort of thing. We humans ain’t so special. This is very much about identity. And, for thinking beings, identity is very much about personal identity politics, and our conformity or reaction to our cultural context.

If we add the religious angle to this, we find that which binds people is only in very small part specific ideas and beliefs that are held in common. So much did Kwame Anthony Appiah remind us in the Credo part of this year’s Reith Lectures. In fact this take on Mistaken Identities was so underwhelming, that he was seen by many (in my twitter feed anyway) to be merely stating the obvious and missing the opportunity for any important insight [Refs].

When talking race and attempting to get a grip on what we really mean, any measure we choose – skin colour – is as good and imperfect as any other [Refs]. Even when talking genetics, as scientifically rigorously as you like, it’s ultimately about statistical distributions of many possible combinations and patterns, whose own boundaries are scarcely definitive.

Some conventions are deeper in accepted science, but pretty much all the objects we are talking about and the classes to which we assign them, depend for their identity on social constructs and our (pragmatic) acceptance of these.

This is not an excuse for an anything goes – w’evs – cultural relativism. Quite the opposite. Simply a reminder that we’re not going to solve any complex issue by being precious about a specific choice of words having hard and fast objective definitions. Islamism in its political and violent extremes, has a wide range of religious and racial, extrinsic and behavioural aspects, each themselves involving cultural patterns of identity over and above anything intrinsically objective in our individual biology.

You might be tempted to the easy conclusion that biology is our racial marker, distinct from religion. Sure an individual may generally have no choice about their biological make up, but how that particular biological entity is assigned to a class – even a biological one – is a cultural choice.

We’re always ultimately dealing with individuals. Prejudice against the freedoms and free-thought of individuals is still prejudice whatever class of race or religion we’ve assigned it to. From the individual’s immediate perspective it matters little whether the constraints on their freedoms are biological (genetic) or cultural (memetic), they’re still constraints, and at the individual level both are intertwined with each other and with collective group effects.

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[Post Note: Reference for social constructs and political theory around race in particular. Falguni Sheth – book and blog. Hat tip @contronline.]

Human Belonging

One current Brexit / Corbyn / Trump meme – the disaster that is 2016 politics the world over it seems – is the whole Citizen of the World vs Nationalism polarisation. It is perfectly reasonable to have national pride and interest whilst participating individually, collectively, actively, rationally and ethically in our environmental cosmos of course. Nothing to do with any fatuous post-truth meme, simply more of the needless polarisation of fictitious choices. A middle-way scarcely does justice to the infinity of alternatives beyond the two offered.

In fact when writing previously on identity politics I concluded, that it ultimately comes down to how we choose to self-identify across multiple “constituencies” and, of course, those many overlapping constituencies run across many dimensions on many scales from “me, myself, I” to …. well, the cosmos itself and all points between.

I’m looking forward to this year’s BBC Reith Lectures by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, covering colour, culture, country and creed under the series title “Mistaken Identities”. Sounds like pretty much my own agenda in the Identity Politics post above.

One reason I’ve been looking forward to it is some earlier tweets by @TheosElizabeth who attended the recordings. Today she made it the topic of her @BBCR4Today “Thought for the Day”

The full (brief) text captured below:

Elizabeth Oldfield ” 11/10/16 – Good morning.

It was a huge privilege to be at the recording of this year’s BBC Reith Lectures last week, the first of which will be aired on 18th October. Given by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, the four lectures will cover colour, culture, country and creed. His overarching title is ‘mistaken identities’- the implication is that these identities are not and should not be absolute.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Globally, we are seeing a resurgence in strong shared identities, most visibly nationalism, but also class, region, race and religion. This has prompted many an anguished comment piece on the crisis of liberalism.

In *very* simple terms, the liberal project sought to make the individual more important than these shared identities. This has delivered a huge amount of good stuff- it’s rightly credited with much of our peace, order and prosperity, as well as personal liberation.

However, it has weaknesses. We know from wellbeing research that the ability to be a free individual isn’t all we need. We also long for community, for a meaning and purpose bigger than ourselves, for some kind of hope. Liberalism alone can’t provide these. Maybe we do need shared identities after all.

The need to find a way to acknowledge these longings, while also holding onto the good things liberalism provides, is now an urgent project for our best thinkers.

And Many of them, not necessarily religious themselves, are acknowledging that Christianity might have something to offer. Between tribal and divisive shared identities on one hand, and disconnected individuals on the other, there might be a third choice. Christianity provides for believers belonging, purpose, meaning and hope. We know this does have a positive impact on wellbeing. Crucially though, Christianity is not a shared identity that should allow you to retreat into tribalism. These positive benefits should instead be used to serve, not attack, those outside the group. None of which is to say that the church has anything like a perfect record on these things. Far from it. But for those seeking a new way forward, the ideal of an identity that’s both shared *and* outward facing might well be worth a look.

Tribalism tramples on the idea that good fences make good neighbours, the idea that “identities are not and should not be absolute”.

Ha, and completely unrelated, but somehow also apposite this morning from Julian Baggini.

Steel – It’s not the Economy, Dummy

When I talked about the strategic significance of losing British steel-making back in March this year, this week is exactly what I had in mind.

National defence is not merely business.

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[Post Notes:]

Corbyn – Don’t Compare me to Trump

I’m regularly “guilty” of this, referring to Corbyn/Trump (delete as inapplicable), so I thought I’d make a point.

Sure, they are apparently at opposite extremes of the right-left spectrum, but as is often pointed out historically fascism has existed at both extremes. The tendencies to fascism are the same however; demagoguery appealing to prejudice, personality cult, appealing to the kind of motherhood and apple-pie that you know your audience likes and demonising your opponents:

Despicable Blairites/Tories/Mexicans/Democrats/Media/Conspiracies
(delete as inapplicable).

Tendencies notice. Demagogical tendencies to fascism. Not calling Corbyn/Trump a fascist.

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[Post Notes]

An extensive post-note here picking-up on a Twitter dialogue in response to the original post above. Take note:

90% Preamble and Meta-Content – NOT THE POINT OF THE POST

10% Actual Content – THE POINT OF THE POST

PREAMBLE / META

My interlocutor here is @contronline – a young fella I happen to have met, a human individual for whom I have empathy, but he plies his trade anonymously on-line with zero bio & opaque identity.

I’m picking on him here as my example – a stereotype to exemplify my argument. I can’t fail to offend/patronise (delete as inapplicable) but this is pre-amble/meta – ie not my point or intent. As Leibnitz was to Voltaire he’s just the unfortunate that put his head above the parapet and became a target. Good news is we ended our twitter dialogue on friendly respectful terms – and that is very much part of the actual content / point / intent below.

The whole twitter dialogue is captured below in posted order reading from the top, but I’m quoting from it in the order logical to my case.

He may have misunderstood the point of my post? Sure, that’s a given for any interpersonal communication that doesn’t already have a shared history of understanding. Understanding is about dialogue. “Critical thinking” moves too quickly beyond this, into the scientific realm of finding fault. [Dennett / Rappaport] We actually had a pretty good dialogue; as good as 140 chars permits anyway. These notes re-cast / continue that dialogue I hope.

Why did I choose the word fascist? I didn’t really. Obviously it’s there because that is the implied target of the objection in the Corbyn original “don’t compare me to Trump (who is a fascist and I’m not)” and in the media traffic on that topic. It’s why “don’t compare me to Trump” is a thing. @contronline objecting to my use of the word is simply the same as the point I was questioning – a re-statement of where I was starting “don’t compare Corbyn with a (despicable) fascist”.

[PS Mexican journalists agree …]

Media preview

@contronline responded with a definitional objection, and provided his own preferred definition. Slippery “semantic” road here, I suggested. Incidentally I disagree with his suggested definition, it’s closer to Nazism than Fascism, the latter being a superset of the former (IMHO), BUT definition should be retrospective to any dialogue. Sure we have working understanding of words in mind whilst communicating, but they are loose working definitions to work around, until we can document tightly in shared agreement. [Dennett, again] Labelling is always political – identity politics – except in truly “objectve” contexts.

I could have chosen a different word – it was only the implied idea I was using, after all – the “despicable” qualities of “the other guy (not me)”. In fact I tried substituting fascism with purpleness and the point still makes sense, only one clause becomes meaningless and could be deleted. (NB Swift chose little-enders, Orwell chose pigs).

So the idea I’m talking about, the idea about which we are disagreeing a definitive word for is maybe “despicable-otherness”? (I’m not of course interested in agreeing dictionary definitions, at least it is not the point of my post – hopefully obviously so even without all this clarification.)

THE POINT

The point still is:

Corbyn gets compared to Trump because they share some of the same …

… tendencies to “despicable otherness”;
demagoguery appealing to prejudice, personality cult, appealing to the kind of motherhood and apple-pie that you know your current audience likes, demonising your opponents (and established predecessors) – those despicable Blairites/Tories/Mexicans (delete as inapplicable).

If @contronline really does agree with that, because Corbyn and Trump are both politicians, and such general statements are true of all politicians as he suggested, the we do indeed have my point. A really important point. We need politics (and governance generally) that doesn’t have those qualities – whichever “side” you’re on in any disagreement or difference of opinion.

Of course you or @contronline may not agree with that entirely either, but let’s make sure we synthesise the content of the actual ideas, not the labels.

[Response from @contronline (also in comments below).
Seems we achieved common understanding. Thanks.]

[Post Note – Piece from Jess Phillips earlier in the year. The Drip, Drip, Drip of Otherness.]

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