Year: 2020

Cormac O’Raifeartaigh / O’Rafferty

Just capturing a link to the AntiMatter blog pages of Cormac O’Rafferty.  (Like me he blogs about plenty of current affairs and global politics beyond his academic teaching interest in physics. For me these are in fact deeply connected via human memetics and social decision making – in both science and politics.)

Capturing the link because he was the one scientist linked by Rick Ryals in his “Einstein Was Right” agenda … turning the clock back to supplementary knowledge of Einstein that was overlooked by the science community when Relativity and QM took off after 1917 – and left us with all the paradoxes and anomalies of 21st C Physics. (Rick’s video presentation on that page.)

Topical because I’m following-up references to Peter Rowlands, who also follows the clock back to some mathematical conventions that were overlooked in development of Dirac’s version of Schrödinger. (Hamilton, Quaternions and Clifford mathematics). A Dirac Nilpotent Rewrite that leaves the reality of the symmetric elements exposed to the human reader as the algorithmic computation of much simpler maths. (Completed my read. Excellent. Recommended. Must publish a more detailed review.)

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Post notes:

(Rowlands does continue to have 2018/19/20 joint publications of papers, so he is still active out there. Intriguingly this one:

“Amoroso, Richard; Gianni, Albertini; Kauffman, Louis; Peter, Rowlands (2018). Unified Field Mechanics Ii: Formulations And Empirical Tests – Proceedings Of The Xth Symposium Honoring Noted French Mathematical Physicist Jean-pierre Vigier. Singapore: World Scientific. p. 601. ISBN 978-981-323-203-7.”

On a wiki page about the psyche in science. The plot continues to converge.)

And, whilst I remember, my original contact with Rowlands, via Peter Marcer of BCS / CASYS also included Brian Josephson and Karl Pribram. Rick Ryals was the common communication between O’Raffery and Rowlands. Need to refresh these old (email) contacts.

And, oh my, having mentioned Clifford maths above, the link has already been made here. What a tangled web.

Here a reference to Cormac by Cory Powell in Discover magazine which, given the “new” Einstein topic, is maybe where Rick picked-up the reference. (There are other Discover and Cory Powell links in Rick’s references.)

And, Cormac is also a surfer. A synchronicity one level too removed to elaborate here.

Maths Left Me Trailing

As an aeronautical engineer and an information modeller, I am more than averagely capable mathematically. Literate in the calculus and statistics of human-scale classical physics, natural science and business economics, including say, the compressible flow of Navier-Stokes for example.

Several years ago I wrote of Peter Rowlands (2007) “Zero to Infinity – The Foundations of Physics” ..

Maths Leaves Me Trailing

I could tell I was reading an important book, actually just the free peek at the introductory chapter(s) afforded by Amazon, but the maths of fundamental theoretical physics I found impenetrable as presented. I have the same problem with some of the more formal logical notations of pure philosophy, whilst we’re on the topic.

At that time, online correspondent Rick Ryals (since deceased) encouraged me by pointing out he had qualified in physics and been employed in science research, and yet in recent decades he too found it impossible to present his own latest thinking in the kind of mathematics expected. It was holding him back getting his own evolving ideas taken seriously.

Until today, I never did buy Rowlands 700 page tome, partly out of fear for the maths and partly because, as a hard-back text-book I would struggle to read, the price was scary too. Recently with all the renewed interest in the psychological and psychic aspects of fundamental physics, and the recurrence of my own informational foundations, I found myself re-reading that earlier post. I was moved to buy a second-hand copy of the 2008 hard-back reprint of Rowlands “Zero to Infinity” at last. And glad I did. Still expensive but reinforced the original impression of its importance and value.

Recently, I had also been looking at good reviews of Jim Baggott’s latest (2020) “Quantum Reality” and Tweeted a quip about the sub-editor’s use of Schrödinger’s Cat in  the headline sub-title. Like Hawking did “I reach for my gun” whenever I hear mention.

I’ve not actually ordered it yet …

because … well … imagine my surprise

… following-up the renewed Rowlands interest and discovering he has written several books including (2015) “How Schrödinger’s Cat Escaped The Box” clearly described as a popular readership version of his more formal work.

But that meme of a title?


(Hat tip to @Katoi – from a project “about Dirac”, the only human face amongst the cartoon characters, with Schrödinger as Tom – the cat – from Tom & Jerry.)

Why had I never heard of Rowlands since? A professor of physics at Liverpool Uni, many publications including many books. Hmmm. His books published by World Scientific out of Singapore, few citations to be found, and most of those from his circle of collaborators. This is thought overlooked – or rejected – by mainstream physics?

Anyway, I’ve taken the plunge and acquired a copy of “How Schrödinger’s Cat Escaped The Box“, now reading the Kindle version in advance of receiving the hard-copy.

It is a wonderful read.

I’ve read a great deal of popular, and not so popular science, even more philosophy of science and the metaphysical foundations of its ontologies and epistemologies. As Rowlands points out is his aim, it is clearly written in such a way that the maths – yes there still is a lot of maths – is presented very simply. The simplicity comes from sticking with the abstractions symbolised in the mathematical relations and dispensing with the ubiquitous thought experiments as examples; Schrödinger’s cat-in-a-box for one (hence his title) but all the rubber sheets and bowling balls, clocks and astronauts travelling on trains, spacecraft and beams of light. Let’s escape from the box of conventional thought.

I’m only two chapters in so far, and I must have read the same content hundreds of times before – the particles and forces of the standard model(s), quantum mechanics and relativity, E=Mc2, you name it. As I say, it may be the same hackneyed scope as many a popular science book on these topics, but it’s presentation is very readable and preserves the mathematical significance of the symmetries.

He does also of course make reference to his “Zero to Infinity – The Foundations of Physics” very early on. A second reason he is able to keep the maths simple in his popular work is that he is only presenting the equations that represent the model of physics. What he is not doing is presenting all the calculations that relate the model to the many physical properties, constants and observed values in the universe that lead to the current-day paradoxes, anomalies and gaps which still prevent any consensus on the unification of physics as a whole. You want that level of calculation, you go to his formal work.

If you really want to start from zero, you also dispense with the presumed realities of the human-scale physical world. It is these that make the fundamental quantum and gravitational relativity views seem weird. The only thing after zero are points of possibility, or conceivability as others have said.

“This book requires [no] prior knowledge of physics or mathematics beyond arithmetic and the simplest algebra … Trained scientist[s] will find this [not] easy. There is an immense barrier to be overcome. This difficulty is not intrinsic to the subject. Complexity has nothing to do with it. [The difficulty] comes from our own habits of thought … generations of conditioning which makes us want to see nature in a different way to the one in which it really acts.”

Nature repeats itself at different levels. Of course it’s not the actual structures and qualities that repeat, but the abstract patterns that underlie them.

[The] paradox of Schrödinger’s cat is symptomatic of our desire to compromise, to hold on to a view of nature which has some tangible connection to our ordinary world. However if Schrödinger’s cat is ever to escape from its box, we have to escape from ours.

Too true. Thinking outside the box. Any excuse to post this:

Reading on …

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Post Notes: …

Read completed. Excellent. Recommended. Keeping the maths simple, the abstractions do seem to maintain their relationship to reality. Fascinating, no longer feel “left trailing” by the maths.

[Some more references to Rowlands in my next Cormac O’Raffery post.]

Contact with Rowlands and his ongoing work established:

In his own words:

“[not] broken through yet, but a few green shoots”

Tucson 2020

I’ve been following this Science of Consciousness conference for years, since before the 3 year period we lived in the US, and now a decade since returning to the UK, thanks to Covid, I can attend (virtually) in real time for the first time.

I’ll post some reports here – as with HTLGI – impossible to do justice in real time notes.

Trump, the Cause of Forest Fire Carnage?

Is Trump right or isn’t he?

As I say, even a fuckwit is right half the time, but the “cause” of forest fires isn’t a simply binary (political poll) question.

Forest fires are natural, a natural part of the cycle of change that brings us evolution over time. The planet needs them.

The reason we’re having more forest fires, and more in previously cooler regions, is almost certainly to do with climate change. How much of that is a natural cycle of climate change (see above) and how much is “AGW” exaggerated by human activity is scarcely debatable. Whatever the proportion or form of human effects, it’s in the interests of “our” planet to work against them, to reduce and reverse our negative effects. They’re not negative because they’re human.

The reason we’re having more serious, more continuous, forest fires spreading closer to human populations more often, is almost certainly down to “light touch” eco-friendly forest management, choosing to do less maintenance for the benefit natural forest flora & fauna inhabitants  instead of the neighbours. The eco-warriors have a lot of human suffering to answer for.

These are not mutually exclusive positions. Both are likely true.

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Post Note:

Later the same day 75/25 (usual 80/20 in my book) relative contributions:

It’s perfectly possible to think differently and not be in denial. The activists are fucking it up for all of us. As a spokesperson for XR said the other day it’s not contradictory that they are climate activists and a good old fashioned anti-establishment anarchists. Don’t be fooled into thinking they care more about the planet than they do about their anti-human, anti-establishment credentials.

And there’s more Mon 21st Sept, here in The Spectator

“How environmentalists destroyed California’s forests – Short-sighted eco-measures helped cause the devastation we see today”

“We couldn’t have created better conditions for devastating fires if we’d tried. ”

“Even if every single thing that [eco-warriors] claim about climate change were to be true, it wouldn’t undo the consequences of decades of mismanagement driven by their ‘advocacy.’”

 

Metaphysical Relational Triad

2020 update to my Epistemological Ontology from 2017/18
(Minor change of wording to emphasise the ontological reality.)

Ontology because it’s a world-view of what is deemed to exist.
Epistemological because it is based on knowledge.
Metaphysical Monism because the stoff of knowledge is information and therefore the only stoff of which the whole edifice is built.

Notes:

Earliest version (June 2017) published here.

Last formed part of a description of the (April 2019) Monist Informational Realism here (aka the “Epistemological Ontology”, above).

[Dec 2021 – Need to update the “Epistemological Ontology” metaphysics to reflect Whitehead’s dynamic participation, Goff and new pan-(proto)-psychists beyond Kastrup’s idealism, and McGilchrist (Parts1&2) integration of the “ways of knowing”. Everything else already there, in need of elaboration. Maybe also re-introduce the original “Res” Informatica, Cogitans and Extensa language in the Triad figure? and then “map” orthodox modern views (eg “science”) overlaid on the figure. Broad and narrow definitions, identity and difference (also McGilchrist Part3), good fences.]

Informational Panpsychism – a Dual-Aspect Monism

In many discussions of the work of the modern panpsychists (eg Goff and more recently (Bollands) a universal-lifer who posits no distinction between the actions of living and conscious things), I have pleaded for a pan-proto-psychism / pan-proto-living world-view where the proto-stoff is information.

One obvious reason is that information exists non-contentiously at all levels in the cosmos. No reason to posit that life and/or consciousness as we know them literally exist at fundamental physical / metaphysical levels.

The second reason is that it’s possible to construct both physical and (living) conscious things from that monist stoff and in doing so not give priority to either physicalism or psychism in the language of our metaphysics.

(I use information in specific ways – both ontologically syntactical form and epistemologically semantic or significant informing way – also in an entropy-complementary / information-theoretic Shannon way – and importantly in a process / active-verb-noun way, information as the act of informing one thing of another.)

Another feature of not having to make a physical / psychical choice at the outset is we can apply quantum (Democritan atomic) thinking to the smallest “particles” of this information stoff. With an information model these can be conceived of as small as possible. That is by definition it is not conceivable to posit or discover any smaller component. (I’ve always assumed that’s what Democritus intended a-tomically before physicists decided to give smallest chemical element particles the name atom.)

In this formulation the smallest things, the smallest (conceivable) difference (on any arbitrary dimension) between any two things (this-thingy and not-this-thingy) is a bit of information, smaller than which it is not possible to be. A good candidate for the ultimate atom if ever there was one?

Since I last wrote up my most comprehensive version of the above (presented here in 2019), several things have happened. I’ve made more considered readings of Whitehead’s Process Ontology concerning the coming together nexus of awareness between one thing and another (mirrored also in Smolin’s nads.) Pre-conceptual (qualitative) awareness & response – the conscious-and-life-like behaviour – is core to radical empiricisms. Also, in evolving my thinking along with Dennett, I recently discovered I’d forgotten earlier Chalmers ideas on information underlying consciousness.  (And a zillion other references in the blog.) However …

… this morning , I read a 2016 MPhil thesis by Nino Kadić, a student of Goff, who had also positively reviewed Bollands. A paper which so far as I can see on a first reading comes very close – in much more formal philosophical discourse than I – to the metaphysics I’m suggesting above.

Rough Notes:

Phenomenal Bonding – Goff’s idea as used by Kadić – seems to be very much the solution to new objects emerging supervenient on others without direct (conventional) causal link. Always key to patterns emergent upon patterns. (Sure, the information patterns must always have an embodiment but the new patterns emerge independent of the embodiments. A car / motorcycle is not the sum of its parts, it’s the arrangement. ‘Twas ever thus, just ask Theseus (or Trigger).)

(And many more notes of Section 4 Phenomenal Bonding, Information and Panpsychism.)