What can we know of reality?

Kriminal99 · 07-10-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctordick

That is a patently false statement. If it were true, any newborn baby could handle any employment currently available in the job market. In growing up, they create (in their minds) understanding of many things they have never experienced before.

For the life of me I can not comprehend your overwhelming desire to put forth totally unthoughtout conclusions.

Have fun -- Dick

Or perhaps they reorganize the things they have seen.

I can show that every human idea no matter how complex is really just some basic functions of things that person has seen, heard etc.

What do you suppose I meant by reorganizing things they have seen into new things? An example would be a unicorn. A person who creates a creature like a unicorn and draws it in detail might be said to be creative. Perhaps relatively speaking, he is. But if you were to say something like "But that uses parts of things we have all seen. Make up something entirely new", he would be at a loss. Maybe next he would try a manticore, but again we would be able to recognize the parts. Eventually he would come up with something more complex where he perhaps took tiny parts of how different things looked and put them together in some odd manor, perhaps by using a random distribution to determine how to put them together. Or perhaps he would even use a random distribution to create the building block. But if he uses such a distribution is he really the creator? (I could get into how cause and effect is not challenged by QM but lets leave that out for now)

IMO the fact that humans are not fully creative is proven by the way the word creativity is used by us. When someone does something creative, we often ask the question "thats great how did you come up with this?", to which there is always an answer of the form "Oh I saw this thing" or "that proof was kind of like this other one" or "This proof reminded me of a philosophical argument".

If we were truly creative, the one and only answer to that question would be "I created it".

There are ways to reorganize our experiences into the ability to function at a job, or into ideas like god etc. There is no way to organize our experiences of 3 spatial dimensions into a 4 spatial dimensions.

AnssiH · 07-11-2009

Hi Kriminal. I think I know what you mean; I would certainly take that as a rational description of so-called "human creativity".

Also I think I understand why you bring it up upon the question of "why do we intuitively conceive things in 3D form", as in, in the context of us visualizing - consciously in our mind - all kinds of things in a 3D form.

There was a rather inconvenient miscommunication somewhere in there though, as this is a bit different issue from what DD was talking about though. The issue is about starting off the world model, when no information about the world yet exists. Upon close analysis, there are good reasons as to why information would become ordered in exactly the kind of newtonian 3D form that we are all familiar with (that is, very good reasons without any references to ANY information about reality). The consequences are quite interesting and important (for instance, in the context of what quantum mechanical relationships mean).

I think if you were to trace those logical steps, you would find that few steps down that road, this aligns quite exactly with what you are saying. As the whole thing can be seen as a data compression mechanism; what we are coming up with is a handy way to refer to a huge amount of data, and to predict its future. Of course, as you pretty much already described, creativity is an instance of taking all sorts of little things whose behaviour we can predict, and make a prediction about how they work together (like when we make "an invention"). I.e. our idea of how something works is dependent on our idea of the context that exists in the situation.

But, you shouldn't look at the analysis as something that just prooves these sorts of musings, it is actually quite a bit more. It is a careful explanation of the fundamental reasons why we think the way we think, getting into quite fine detail about why do we understand the reality the way we do; in terms of modern physics.

Take care,
-Anssi

Doctordick · 09-25-2009

The issue of spin effects has arisen in my discussion of Dirac's equation and it brings me back to a comment made by Qfwfq a couple of years ago:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Well, I still don't get how the combination of that vector notation with

$\sum_{i=1}^n \frac{\partial}{\partial x_i}\vec{\psi}(x_1,\tau_1,x_2,\tau_2,\cdots,x_n,\tau_n,t)=0$

could include all the cases I have proposed.

There is an issue I think has to be made clear here. Complex numbers are a very valuable concept as they bring ordinary addition and multiplication to a two dimensional vector picture which is applicable to many rather complex physical problems. But, in another sense, they can be seen as a short term solution to a very important complex problem embedded in any internally self consistent explanation of anything.

The original problem here was to obtain "a way of getting the probability of finding a specific set of numbers" which would include all possibilities. The issue initially brought up was shift symmetry and it was shown that any function which was consistent with shift symmetry (“a” added to each and every member of that set of specific numbers can result in no changes) led to $\frac{d}{da}P(x_1+a,x_2+a, \cdots, x_n+a)=0$ . The second point was the fact that $\vec{\Psi}(x_1,x_2, \cdots, x_n)$ (since it by definition, defines a process from getting from one specific set of numbers to another) can represent any conceivable mathematical function. The squared magnitude of that function summed over all possible arguments is a number N (we can worry about infinity if you are concerned). Thus it is that $\frac{1}{N}\vec{\Psi}\cdot\vec{\Psi}dV$ can always be seen as a probability. Or rather that absolutely any conceivable mathematical function can be seen as generating a probability via a very specific process. The problem then degenerates into finding the function which yields the desired probability; essentially a search problem.

This is where the vector nature of $\Psi$ becomes significant. As you have said many times, all that $e^{im\vec{x}}$ does is generate a phase relationship which has no consequence in $P(x_1,x_2, \cdots, x_n)$ . What we are really talking about here is the fact that shift symmetry requires that $P(x_1,x_2, \cdots, x_n)$ cannot depend upon those coordinates: i.e., P must equal a constant. If $\Psi$ is a real scalar function (i.e., not a vector function) then the requirement of shift symmetry also yields $\Psi$ equals a constant, a rather useless paradigm. On the other hand, since we want to include "ALL" possibilities, it could be a vector function. It follows that there must be another constraint which will guarantee that the consequences of it not being a constant will not carry over to P. That constraint is the simple fact that the various components of that inner product (the process of obtaining the squared magnitude) must be phase related such that the required sum of that inner product will exactly cancel out all the variations in $\Psi$ depending upon specific values of the coordinates.

Clearly if the abstract vector space of $\vec{\Psi}$ is two dimensional, the vector can be seen as possessing two components ninety degrees out of phase with one another. Rotation in that in that two dimensional space can easily provide exactly the required complementary terms. In other words the two vector components of $\vec{\Psi}$ must be intimately related to one another. In the two dimensional circumstance, that relationship is essentially handled by the fact that [imath]1^2+i^2=1-1=0[imath]: i.e., we need only allow $\Psi$ to be complex and define the other component to be exactly the same except for a change in the sign of the imaginary components (the standard meaning of $\Psi^\dagger$ ).

Thus it is that allowing $\Psi$ to be complex (which is totally equivalent to a two dimensional abstract vector space) totally alleviates the required constraint that the requirements of shift symmetry demand that P equal a constant without requiring $\Psi$ to be a constant. At the same time, the idea that $\Psi$ can be an n-dimensional abstract vector opens up a complexity with profound consequences. The opening example would be Pauli's spin matrices. These matrices (in the abstract vector space of $\Psi$ ) specificly designed to fill the purpose of the required anti-commuting $\vec{\alpha}$ operators used in my deduction of my fundamental equation, allows the possibility of new complex constructs of $\Psi$ which would otherwise be difficult to assign meaning to. These things are called “spin” matrices for a very simple reason: their commutation properties are exactly the same as the commutation properties of ordinary angular momentum as conceived of in classical mechanics. The “isospin” interpretation of charge quantization is no more than an extension of the same phenomena into the tau dimension.

As I have said many times, I am not a mathematician and I leave mathematics to those more qualified than myself. I only use mathematics as a language able to express complex internally self consistent relationships which are fundamentally beyond expression in ordinary verbal logic. I leave it to the professional mathematicians to guarantee that their constructs are indeed logically consistent. All I am doing here is pointing out that the vector nature of $\Psi$ (in an abstract space) opens up many possible internal relationships consistent with the symmetries defining the constraints on the probabilities of interest to us.

It is my opinion that the physics community has chosen to see those various possibilities embedded in that abstract space as real characteristics of the ontological elements underlying their explanation. My interpretation, on the other hand, is that they are no more than additional possibilities, available within the definition of $\Psi$ (which I have defined to be “the collection of "ALL Possible" mathematical functions”), consistent with the symmetries required by the fact that the ontological elements can not be defined.

As one moves to higher dimensional abstract space, the possibilities have to include additional quantized rotational phenomena. I do not have this extension worked out in detail but I strongly suspect the requirements will be pretty well in alignment with the experimental results as clearly the additional symmetries, being fundamentally rotations in that abstract space, are going to yield quantized results analogous to those up/down, charm/strange, and top/bottom designations taken as fundamental ontological qualities desired by the physics community.

At one point Qfwfq asked me if these symmetries were represented by Lie algebra and I sort of pulled away from commenting on the issue. The reason was my ignorance of Lie algebra. I have looked into the subject a bit and now strongly suspect that there is an intimate connection there. The standard model, which is apparently the consequence of considering SU3 symmetries was introduced in the early seventies which is a number of years after I left the physics community so I really have little familiarity with it.

But seriously folks, if what I have presented is correct, is it really necessary for me to work out the whole of physics before my paradigm is even considered to be worth looking at? I would really like to see a reason for such an extreme attitude.

Have fun -- Dick

AnssiH · 09-27-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctordick

As one moves to higher dimensional abstract space, the possibilities have to include additional quantized rotational phenomena. I do not have this extension worked out in detail but I strongly suspect the requirements will be pretty well in alignment with the experimental results as clearly the additional symmetries, being fundamentally rotations in that abstract space, are going to yield quantized results analogous to those up/down, charm/strange, and top/bottom designations taken as fundamental ontological qualities desired by the physics community.

At one point Qfwfq asked me if these symmetries were represented by Lie algebra and I sort of pulled away from commenting on the issue. The reason was my ignorance of Lie algebra. I have looked into the subject a bit and now strongly suspect that there is an intimate connection there. The standard model, which is apparently the consequence of considering SU3 symmetries was introduced in the early seventies which is a number of years after I left the physics community so I really have little familiarity with it.

But seriously folks, if what I have presented is correct, is it really necessary for me to work out the whole of physics before my paradigm is even considered to be worth looking at? I would really like to see a reason for such an extreme attitude.

Indeed; having looked at how Schrödinger's Equation and Special Relativity is arrived at via symmetry arguments, in my mind it certainly stands to reason to expect that the definitions of the elementary particles of Standard Model can also be drawn from the same circumstances.

I also cannot help but think that the present time might be little bit more ripe for your perspective, than what it has been some decades ago. For one, I know that Steven Weinberg - a contributor to the Standard Model - has commented on the fact that in order to query to the structure of atoms required a pre-existing idea about what we expect to find. I.e. yielding a valid model of an atom/reality is not a matter of naive-realistic probing of ontological reality, but rather we get the answers in the terminology we have already chosen.

I really think that that "extreme attitude" is a bit amplified in these forums, as people here are not prepared to spend the necessary time to the issue. People who think they see a trivial problem are the ones making comments, but I know there are lurkers who see the validity of the "sort of" attack that you are presenting, even if they don't have the chops or time to follow the exact raw logic of it.

Well you know I think this is important issue and I'm doing what I can to help, even if I'm not the most qualified in terms of mathematical skills.

-Anssi

Doctordick · 09-27-2009

Hi Anssi,

Your help is appreciated. My desire is to leave this world with at least one other person comprehending my discovery and it appears that the fate falls on your shoulders. If you would do your best to assure some others come to understand it, I would count the effort as worthwhile. There is something I wrote many years ago (as a preface to my first attempt to explain my discovery) that I think still stands today as a very important observation.

Quote:

Any scientific field may be seen as a body of assumptions (what I am referring to here are those things taken to be true without any examination) together with postulated relationships (and here I mean those things specifically held forth as the basis of the field including any specified assumptions) and the logical deductions which may be obtained from those relationships. Errors may occur in any of those three areas; however, the character and consequences of those errors vary quite considerably.

It should be clear, even to the uninitiated, that errors in the logical deductions only occur when an attack is newborn and are quickly eliminated by careful examination of those deductions. Errors in deduction are the easiest to eliminate and, in fact,seldom persist long enough to pervade the field. Certainly, if any idea survives long enough to be part of the body of knowledge passed from one generation to another, one can expect to find few if any errors in the deductions; too many people will have been led through those deductions to allow anything but extremely subtle errors to stand for long.

The category I refer to as postulated relationships are usually referred to as theories. Inventing theories and developing their logical deductions is the central work of the most esteemed in the scientific society. Errors in those theories are discovered through comparison to reality: i.e., experimentation. The process of designing and performing the experiments critical to a theory may take time but it is, none the less, a well understood process and sufficient diligence will eventually discover those errors.

That brings us to the errors in assumptions. Errors in these assumptions are a completely different issue. The primary problem with finding errors in the kind of assumptions I am referring to here is that the scientist usually has no idea of what they are. Remember, the kind of assumptions I am referring to here are those things which he assumes are true without thinking about them at all. If one reviews the history of science one will find that most of the major breakthroughs can be seen as flowing from the realization that their predecessors had made some subtle unexpressed assumption which was actually without foundation. Errors in these kinds of assumptions usually betray their presence by allowing seemingly contradictory results to be well defended.

$\cdots$

What I have to present is an alternative world view: a different way of looking at the universe designed to absolutely avoid assumptions by explicitly including all possibilities.

You and I are actually not involved in the “errors in the logical deductions”, as that is completely set by my deduction of my fundamental equation. What we are looking at is the ease with which accepting that equation as fundamental truth leads to many modern theoretical relationships which otherwise cannot be seriously developed by logic alone. As I have said many times already, the history of scientific discovery has, for the most part, been “a guess and by golly” attack and they ought to take my perspective serious if only clarify their own examinations.

Thanks for your help -- Dick

AnssiH · 09-28-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doctordick

What we are looking at is the ease with which accepting that equation as fundamental truth leads to many modern theoretical relationships which otherwise cannot be seriously developed by logic alone.

Well I can only whole heartedly agree with your post. On top of walking through the algebra myself, I am certainly trying to think of what might be the best way to communicate the work onwards.

I am still little bit dumbfounded by the general (lack of) reaction. I mean I can understand why most people would find it little bit too thick for walking through themselves, much like any involved presentation of standard physics. Also, I can understand why some people would find the implications to be in violation with some personal ontological fantasy that they very much take as unquestionably true. And I can certainly understand that the general reaction on a public forum is for the most part useless noise having nothing to do with the presented issue. But I still would expect the display of explicit connection between data mapping symmetries and most of definitions of modern physics to spark some interest in some circles, especially since it resolves exactly the strange implications of modern physics that many people write whole books about, and make careers out of.... ....wait a minute! A cynic would say something about that!

(Nah, I'm not that cynical really; I think anyone writing those books have a genuine interest in understanding what the physical relationships might mean in ontological terms, and they would very much embrace this perspective if they put in the time to understand it, rather than keep parroting all those ontological fantasies that have been created so far)

-Anssi

HydrogenBond · 09-29-2009

After pondering the nature of reality, there is a way to separate reality into layers so we can address reality in a piecemeal fashion. The lowest level of reality is what I will call 1-D reality. This is the reality of an affect, regardless of cause. For example, if we are looking at the sky and see the moon, the affect is reality, even if we don't know the cause. Light energy is entering the eyes and reaching the brain. It creates a physical affect that stimulates our awareness. With 2-D reality we attempt to add cause to this affect.

The 1-D reality affect is not language dependent. Language is not needed to experience 1-D reality, since the affect will be conscious via the brain using natural neural pathways and sensory systems. Where language comes in is the ability to extend the reality of the 1-D affect in space and time, when direct sensory input is gone.

At a time without language, when the affect "moon" sets over the horizon, since there is no longer any real affect entering the brain, its reality is lost. I know it is hard to think without language but with the energy input gone, the brain is not creating awareness if there is no input. Language creates an association for a memory of the affect, that can trigger the affect within the mind/memory, so when there is no direct sensory input, it is still lingering in reality because it was stored in the brain via original reality. When the moon sets without language, the non-language 1-D reality affects ends, since there is nothing there to trigger the brain. Language by saying the word "moon", triggers the lingering memory of this 1-D reality, within the imagination, so even with the moon out of sight, its 1-D reality extends beyond the need for direct reality.

If a tree falls in the woods and someone is there to see it, this is 1-D reality even without language. You will jump due to the noise affect. If one is not there to see it, without language, it is not a reality in their brain, since there is no affect on them. With language, the image of a previous tree falling, will appear in the mind, so the reality of the distance event can be seen, even without an sensory affect in 1-D. If one never saw a tree fall and had no memory to trigger with a word, it is not reality for you. This is all based on simple 1-D reality without 2-D cause for the affect.

Language led to the next aspect of reality, which I will call 2-D reality, where we try to provide a cause for the 1-D reality affect. In ancient times, the moon was associated with a goddess using the 2-D reality construct called astrology. She was the cause for the affect. Language allows the 1-D affect to linger in space and time, even when the moon was out of sight. Language also allows the cause for the effect to linger, even when the goddess is out of sight. Later science uses the laws of physics to define the cause for the affect to create a better 2-D reality for the 1-D reality.

One of the problems with some 2-D reality constructs is connected to the 1-D reality of affect overlapping the 2-D reality of cause. One can be reacting to the 1-D reality, and think this means the 2-D is real. In ancients times, ships could navigate using the 2-D astrology cause construct, providing practical utility or reality test. Their reality perception was more based on the 1-D realty of star positions, making it appear the 2-D construct was also reality. Someone could say the goddess made the tree fall. Then they ask, did you see the tree fall? Yes I did. Therefore the affect was real. There is a level of 1-D reality mixed with an erroneous 2-D construct which, if one is not fully rational, can appear to overlap seeming to justify the other.

There is another affect created by language. Just as the word moon can trigger a memory of an actual 1-D reality affect, so that 1-D reality can appear in the mind and extend in space and time, even when the sensory data is cut off (moon over the hill), language can also appear to create 1-D reality, that was never observed, creating the impression it is part of 1-D reality.

For example, the strings of string theory appear from a 2-D construct of math to create the impression of the 1-D reality affect of strings, even though these have never been witnessed in 1-D reality. This may be observed someday, but words and 2-D constructs but can be used to detach us from the 1-D reality affect to create a 1-D reality of its own starting at 2-D. Without words, this would not be possible. But without words, it would not be possible to extrapolate into 2-D reality.

There is another layer of reality called 3-D. Whereas 1-D reality is affect and 2-D reality is cause and effect, 3-D reality is affect, cause and affect. An easy example to see might be evolution. The initial affect is random, to create the cause and affect, evolution. It is possible this science precursor to 3-D reality, will someday crystalize out and remove the random affect for cause and effect, just like science removed the random from 2-D reality in the middle ages.

There is another language affect that becomes sort of a wild card when it comes to reality. Language can be used to create fiction. A good author can create an imaginary time and place, that makes use of words and language to activate shared human experiences. The reality of the story only exists within the mind, but it is made almost real by triggering the reality of shared human experiences, our ability to empathize, and our ability to extrapolate what we know is real, into what could be. We are observing the drama of the story, relating to the characters and seeing the majestic terrain and smelling the flowers in the mind. But none of this is reality. The words become the affect for the cause and affect to create a type of 3-D reality loosely connected to 1-D reality, via the extrapolation affect of words.

Doctordick · 09-29-2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

After pondering the nature of reality, there is a way to separate reality into layers so we can address reality in a piecemeal fashion.

You are missing the whole point. How do you get to a starting point; how and where did the first element you conceive of arise? Without a single piece, you cannot talk about "piecemeal".

Have fun -- Dick

Rade · 10-01-2009

.....how and where did the first element you conceive of arise? .....

The "where" is where-ever this universe first came into existence. It is of no importance the spatial location or amount of time from present the where of the "where".

The "how" is unknown, called the Singularity Problem of Cosmology. See this for information: http://th-www.if.uj.edu.pl/acta/vol29/pdf/v29p0949.pdf M-Theory suggests it was an interaction of two universes, each with wavelike boundaries, within the 11th dimension of space and time.

Of greater important is how one defines "element", "conceive", "arise" to the topic of discussion--What can we know of reality ?

What can we know of reality?

Hypography?

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