Excerpts From My "foundations Of Physical Reality"

[Rade]

Aethelwulf,....It [your brain] has already performed an astounding number of inferences based upon its solution to the problem of understanding reality; that fanciful story Eddington refers to. That is quite clearly an issue absolutely no one wants to think about. What they want to absolutely hold to, is the idea that those inferences are correct.

Well, NO... there is not a single scientist that holds the idea that those inferences are correct. This false claim you make with such confidence is astounding coming from a trained Ph.D. in physics...the complete misunderstanding that science, BY DEFINITION, seeks to form solutions to help understand reality by holding the idea that ALL INFERENCES RESULT IN UNCERTAIN KNOWLEDGE ! Earth to DD.....you make claim to have solved a problem that does not exist the way you think it exists, with the end result being a thesis titled 'foundations of physical reality' that derives from a false premise of how to form a mental image or model of reality. [edit:delete comment] Yes, there is a problem that Eddington discusses, but your approach does not address it...it is solved by understanding HOW THE BRAIN FORMS CONCEPTS FROM PERCEPTION and how these concepts undergo differentiation and integration to form a mental image of reality. [edit: delete comment].

 

Comment added: Even if we agree that your fundamental equation is derived from the assumption that "those inferences may not be correct" (which is a truth statement), your equation fails because you have make it clear many times that your equation cannot predict anything about reality, the essence or foundation of reality. How can you not see that you have invented an equation, motivated by a false assumption of how science views inference, that you proclaim with confidence that cannot predict anything about reality ?

Edited February 8, 2013 by Rade

[Aethelwulf]

Doctordick

 

''I have no idea as to what you are referring to here. You appear to assert that your understanding of the universe can be reduced to one word and nothing else. Sort of like Rade's idea that the only concept required to understand the entire universe is the idea conveyed by “it exists”. That all other concepts and/or circumstances or their internal relationships are of no interest.''

 

So we are talking about the universe, a holistic interpretation about the dynamics inside of the universe?

[Rade]

.... Sort of like Rade's idea that the only concept required to understand the entire universe is the idea conveyed by “it exists”. That all other concepts and/or circumstances or their internal relationships are of no interest.''

Hello. Please understand that DD routinely misrepresents what I say, and for sure I never made a claim that the only concept required to understand the entire universe is the idea that "it exists" !! You may have noticed that DD makes many claims about "everyone", "specific people"...and when we read these statements a red flag should be raised. See for example my post above, where I show how the claim of DD that everyone holds that inferences are certain knowledge is nonsense.

 

What I do claim is that any comprehensive philosophy must begin with either a single axiomatic concept or a limited set of such concepts that are logically integrated. Now, logically there are two ways to begin, either with an axiomatic concept that is a tautology, or its negation, which is logically known as a contradiction. I take the first approach, and thus begin philosophy itself with a single tautological concept: EXISTENCE EXISTS. Now, DD spins and misrepresents what I said like a magician, and makes that false claim I said "it exists". For DD, the concept 'universe' means all that exists and all that does not exist, which is not in any way related to what I said.

 

Let me also make something clear to all. I have told DD and others that I am very interested in his approach because I believe with minor modification he may well have solved the problem of how to mathematically explain the mental process of concept formation. So I provide continued critical review of his presentations, and if he can falsify may complaints, excellent for him, his presentation move forward. DD has absolutely no interest in working with me on my suggested modifications to his presentation, starting with changing what I hold to be his false definition of time. So, we go round and round, a sad state of affairs for all.

[Aethelwulf]

I'm not actually interested in squabbling debates. I'd rather try and see merit in something first. To be honest, Doctordicks assertions seem straight forward enough to call it child's play? If philosophy is involved, it is no longer solid physics, if it was to begin with.

[ErlyRisa]

The first sentence is a stuff up...

sadly It's one that gets repeated all the time...

 

Ie, I am to build a universe "without" presumption

 

:impossible.

 

The only possibility, is for evolution, to recreate "itself"

ie. Evolution, beyond "the fundamentality" of conceptualisation.

 

once the concept is reached , in the evolving body (ie a transgression: the logic of logic that is trangression)

that's it...

it's upto to the "deciders" in the creation, of the fundamental transgression, that convoluted the state in order for

that fundamentality to trangress... too trangress.

 

It's evil, yet beautiful at the same time - and nothing can be done about it.

[Doctordick]

Well, I ran across this thread by accident and am drawn in again to try and clarify what I am talking about: an issue everyone seems determined to avoid.

 

Earth to DD.....you make claim to have solved a problem that does not exist the way you think it exists, with the end result being a thesis titled 'foundations of physical reality' that derives from a false premise of how to form a mental image or model of reality. Yes, there is a problem that Eddington discusses, but your approach does not address it...it is solved by understanding HOW THE BRAIN FORMS CONCEPTS FROM PERCEPTION and how these concepts undergo differentiation and integration to form a mental image of reality.

 

 

The problem is to come up with a representation capable of representing absolutely any explanation of anything.  The mechanism I have chosen is quite simple.  Absolutely anything you wish to represent can be represented via a finite collection of -???- "things?" Call them what you want, words, ideas, pictures, movies, books, ... . What ever they are!  If it is possible to express your understanding, that understanding can be expressed via an ordered list of those -???- "things?": i.e., they can be represented by a collection of circumstances which, in turn can be represented by the expression [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math] where [math]x_i[/math] is no more than a numerical label a specific -?- "thing?" in that list.

 

What I assert is that the representation I have just presented makes no assumptions whatsoever as to what is being represented or what that explanation might be.  Essentially it is no more than a representation of the language being used to express that explanation.

 

What is important here is an issue overlooked by everyone.  Learning that language is part of the problem to be solved.  Everyone invariably presumes the language is a known thing! 

 

I have intentionally made no assumptions of any premises whatsoever.  I have merely defined a representation of the language required to make such premises.  You are the one making premises, not I.

 

So we are talking about the universe, a holistic interpretation about the dynamics inside of the universe?

 

No! That appears to be what you want to talk about but it is not what I am talking about!  I am talking about creating a universal representation of any conceivable explanation of anything.  I have just handed you the opening representation: a finite collection of circumstances represented by the notation [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math].  Come up with a circumstance (just look up "circumstance" in an English dictionary) which can not be so expressed and you will have broken my opening representation.

 

What I do claim is that any comprehensive philosophy must begin with either a single axiomatic concept or a limited set of such concepts that are logically integrated.
 

 

What you fail to comprehend is the fact that I am not asserting a philosophy of any kind whatsoever.  I am putting forth nothing more than a universal representation of what can be asserted!  You put forth something you think can be asserted and define the associated numerical labels required to make that assertion (sufficient to develop an understanding of the language you are using) and you will have defined the collection of required circumstances [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math].

 

I'm not actually interested in squabbling debates. I'd rather try and see merit in something first. To be honest, Doctordicks assertions seem straight forward enough to call it child's play? If philosophy is involved, it is no longer solid physics, if it was to begin with.

 

Well, to be honest, I would say my opening representation is pretty much "child's play".  Once one accepts the representation as universal, I make some rather subtle adjustments in order to make the representation (which certainly appears to be a mathematical representation: which it is not) into a valid mathematical representation without sacrificing its universality. That next step is not really child's play.

 

The first sentence is a stuff up...

sadly It's one that gets repeated all the time...

 

Ie, I am to build a universe "without" presumption

 

:impossible.

 

No where do I actually claim to be building a universe "without" presumption.  I am presenting a representation which makes no presumptions as to what is being represented.  This is quite a different issue and appears to be an issue no one wants to consider.

Edited May 27, 2014 by Doctordick

[ErlyRisa]

No where do I actually claim to be building a universe "without" presumption.  I am presenting a representation which makes no presumptions as to what is being represented.  This is quite a different issue and appears to be an issue no one wants to consider.

 

Hmm...

 

Maybe I didn't read it properly...

 

but I have heard many people use that line of thought: Which I myself have pondered many a time, and have quite summarily concluded that it is impossible, too think about possibility without data. (The something out of nothing dilemma)

 

as an alternative I have often thought that nothing is itself a requirement....an opposite as such, something all of us forget.

Thinking in this manner provides "a stuck loop" , one that procures infinite "possibilities" ... but only one of which provides the "now"

 

Many philosophers have tried to make statement about the possibilty of "creation" via a "set' logic. That is they try to find a holy grail to what is the absolute for determining the future... this is what I state is actually impossible.

 

Like even as you have stated, again, you are trying to represent your "system" - without presuming that that system is going to, for example be a universe, or just a set of bunny rabbits? (Personally I like the Bunny Rabbits better)

[Buffy]

Just to jump in and clarify here: I've been following the good Doctor for several years now and he's kindly sent me drafts of his books on this topic, so while I will not claim to completely understand it, I can tell you for certain that the main issue with what he's doing that trips people up is fairly straightforward: He's solving a problem that is (at least) one meta-level of abstraction higher than anyone assumes. I think his previous post in the thread actually gets at the crux of this, and I can attest as to how easily one can get sucked into this trap because I did it myself.

 

The hardest thing to grok about this--that I think is at the crux of why it's so contentious--is what problems it solves, and although I have not discovered any, I think that Dick would actually argue that discovering what knowing this is good for is an end goal rather than being a presumption or starting place for understanding it.

 

That is, it's really about going along for the ride and seeing where this might go. What makes it "profound" is that it does force you to think about assumptions and what the notion of assumptions mean...without making any assumptions about them! :o

 

 

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves, :phones:

Buffy

[AnssiH]

 

Just to jump in and clarify here: I've been following the good Doctor for several years now and he's kindly sent me drafts of his books on this topic, so while I will not claim to completely understand it, I can tell you for certain that the main issue with what he's doing that trips people up is fairly straightforward: He's solving a problem that is (at least) one meta-level of abstraction higher than anyone assumes. I think his previous post in the thread actually gets at the crux of this, and I can attest as to how easily one can get sucked into this trap because I did it myself.

 

The hardest thing to grok about this--that I think is at the crux of why it's so contentious--is what problems it solves, and although I have not discovered any, I think that Dick would actually argue that discovering what knowing this is good for is an end goal rather than being a presumption or starting place for understanding it.

 

That is, it's really about going along for the ride and seeing where this might go. What makes it "profound" is that it does force you to think about assumptions and what the notion of assumptions mean...without making any assumptions about them! :o

 

Pretty much like so...

 

The thing about being a meta level higher then people usually assume appears to be quite true. It does present a new way to analyze "reality", except that a central point of the analysis is that reality actually never gets analyzed; we never get beyond merely analyzing our own ideas about reality.

 

Most people think he is talking about reality when he is talking about physics, as it is extremely common that physics as a field is seen as an act of exposing reality, and any implications to the contrary are seen as attacking the validity of physics.

 

How about adding some science to science, and dropping the unnecessary beliefs; how about viewing physics as a valid representation of reality, and realizing anything in excess is a belief? The entire original purpose of "science" was to devise a method of understanding reality under the fact that our facts are always uncertain. Let's not forget that.

 

A lot of people try to remember it, but they do it for about three days and then fall back to arguments relying on their common assumptions. The entire body of so called "science" is filled with all kinds of beliefs stated as truths. Personally I find this rather ridiculous, and I would like to operate without beliefs, and just say "this is what we don't know" instead of the opposite.

 

We can look at it this way;

"What can we know about the reality itself?"

 

To be able to find a meaningful answer, we must also answer "how can we know anything about reality in the first place, without believing or assuming all kinds of things?"

 

Analysing exclusively the latter questions led DD to path where he found physics far far before finding anything about reality. That is exactly the point; definitions of physics exists without explicit knowledge about reality.

 

In some superficial ways, this should not be that surprising. We all possess a useful world view, and yet none of us founded that view on facts about nature. Our world views cannot have their original foundations on facts about nature. Hence there must exist logical mechanisms that yield a useful world view, without knowing anything about the world.

 

How much is there purely logical deductions?

How much is there purely mechanical categorization of information?

How much is there useful approximations?

How much are there guesses and assumptions?

 

Philosophically, what problems it solves... Here's one angle; as traditional religions were and are losing grounds to scientific views, a lot of people are still questioning what good does it do to believe into science instead of believing into religion.

 

That is to make a fundamental mistake about the (intended) meaning of science; it was not intented to establish a new belief system per se (although it did); it was intented to establish a method of opening new doors via stopping to believe into various things, and instead trying to research more of the possibilities. Maybe there is no God after all? Is it possible? Why seems like it is.

 

A next step into that same exact direction is made by DD's analysis. In science today, every ontological idea is based on the belief that our perceptions yield meaningful knowledge about reality, and it is the purpose of science to puzzle that knowledge together.

 

The intention of DD's analysis is to open all the doors via explicitly stopping the belief that our perceptions are knowledge, but include the possibility that they are a results of various assumptions/beliefs.

 

Not very radical considering that pretty much all the famous mainstream philosophers have already concluded this is the case. The only difference to those philosophers here is that DD has established a mathematical method of analyzing this issue.

 

And lo and behold, physics falls out without any radical ontological guesses. In effect that means, he has listed down exactly all the approximations that are necessary to establish modern physics as a belief system. Which also reduces physics into merely a mental language to validly represent expectations about reality.

 

Physicist don't like to think about their ontological ideas as a belief system because it may get them confused with traditional religions, but at the same time they know perfectly well that pure science is about recognizing what we don't know, as oppose to believing we do know.

 

So to conclude, what good does it do to recognize better what can be known and what can't be, and replacing some more of our firm beliefs with uncertainty? Just like with the scientific revolution, it makes us more rational, and allows us to make more informed decisions affecting all of us. But I understand clinging onto beliefs make some people simply feel emotionally more secure about their own life. We seem to have a psychological need to have an explanation to everything, which for some people far over-powers their desire to be rational.

 

You can read the entire book via;

http://foundationsofphysics.blogspot.com/

 

-Anssi

[Doctordick]

Hmm...

 

Maybe I didn't read it properly...

 

but I have heard many people use that line of thought: Which I myself have pondered many a time, and have quite summarily concluded that it is impossible, too think about possibility without data. (The something out of nothing dilemma)

 

 

I have no idea as to what is going on here.  I have been trying to post this for three days now.  I apparently can not edit my posts.  I don't know if it is as bug in your system or a virus on mine.  Essentially, I can not “delete” or “backspace”.  If I backspace it deletes a whole range of stuff and if I try to delete a character, it apparently inserts a quote control.  If I try to delete that quote it just adds another quote.  Essentially it ends up not allowing the post because it has too many quotes.

 

I have now typed the whole thing out in a text file and will attempt to just paste the edited result into the post.

 

ErlyRisa, what you have failed to comprehend is that the issue, “it is impossible, too think about possibility without data”, is exactly what stands behind my reasoning.

 

It is that very issue which led Sir Arthur Eddington to regard “assumptions” as an issue impossible to avoid.  What I have discovered is a subtle way around that problem.  The issue avoided by all scientists is the fact that they cannot begin to think about anything without first coming up with a language to represent their experiences.  They invariably presume the language required is a known thing.

 

Have you ever thought about discussing general relativity with a newborn child?  To my knowledge no one has ever proposed such a thing as a rational process.  Why not?  Well, that child has utterly no comprehension of any words you might try to use.  You have to wait around for something like a year before even the simplest ideas can be communicated with a child.

 

I have to tell you a story about my son.  He was born in February and thus was a babe in arms for his first summer.  I had purchased an old Chris Craft cruiser before my wife got pregnant and it needed a lot of work.  Thus much of his second summer was spent at the marina while I worked on the boat.  His mother played with him on a blanket on the shore.  There were ducks there and he loved feeding popcorn to the ducks.  The word  “duck” was probably one of the first words he learned to say.

 

At any rate, sometime in early spring of the next year, I was sitting in the living room watching television when he came running in from the front yard.  He was yelling, “daddy, daddy, there are ducks in the front yard!”  Well, I was a little surprised as I had never seen ducks in our yard.  So I went out to look.  There were a number of different kinds of birds in the yard but no ducks.  I told him they were birds and not ducks but he insisted they were ducks.  I spent a lot of the next week trying to teach him that there were different kinds of birds and that ducks were just another kind of bird.  (I had a lot of time at home since I owned a business which required little supervision.)

 

He managed to learn the names of all the birds we saw and he would tell people that they were birds and what each of them were called but when he was finished, he would always say (under his breath) “but they are all ducks”.  He even tried to feed them popcorn but they wouldn't take it.

 

About a week later, when I went past the city park, I saw ducks in the pond.  I bought a box of popcorn and went home where I asked him if he wanted to go to the park and feed the ducks. He got all enthusiastic so we went to the park where the ducks quickly crowded around us to get the popcorn.  He very quickly decided he had no interest in feeding the ducks and wanted to go back home.  He would not talk about birds or ducks for almost a year.  I guess I “broke his bird!”  Children do not like to discover they are wrong.

 

What everyone seems to ignore is the fact that everyone creates their own interpretation of the language they use.  The meanings of the required concepts are the first assumptions any child makes in there attempt to comprehend reality.

 

People have to first come up with a language necessary to communicate what they have come to believe their experiences are.  Experiencing the use of a language is a very fundamental part of learning.  Take a look at the following site and think a little about the language used there.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6b%27s_theorem

 

What is significant is the fact that the very act of learning a language constitutes making assumptions.  Excluding the learning of the appropriate language from their thoughts amounts of replacing those assumptions with beliefs: i.e., it amounts to ignoring the assumptions embedded in those beliefs.

 

I get around that problem by defining an explanation to be represented by the notation:

[math]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n).[/math]

 

The notation represents the probability (that letter “P”) that the assertion represented by [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n).[/math] is a correct assertion: i.e., the sole purpose of any explanation is to provide a way of determining the truth of a specific idea.  If you cannot accept my definition of an explanation, you are wasting your time reading anything I have to say.

 

That is apparently a rather common complaint regarding my proof.  Certainly Rade has made it quite clear that accepting that as a representation of “an explanation” is an unacceptable step.  He much prefers to work with what he has assumed to be the meaning of that word and wants me to accept his beliefs as the only appropriate way to view reality.

 

The actual serious question here is, exactly how does [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n).[/math] suffice to represent any possible assertion?  That question can only be answered after an explanation is found.  If you have actually discovered an explanation, you must also possess the entire collection of concepts necessary to express that explanation (or to think about it).  In that case you can list those concepts (note that the list must be finite as you cannot finish establishing an infinite number of concepts) and assign a different numerical label to each and every concept required.  The assertion is expressed by a collection of known concepts which can be represented as a collection of those (now known) numerical labels.

 

If you accept my definition as a working starting point then you can proceed to my opening deduction which is quite simply:

[math]\frac{P(x_1+a+\Delta a,x_2+a+\Delta a,\cdots,x_n+a+\Delta a)-P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)}{\Delta a}[/math]

 

which is quite clearly exactly the definition of a derivative with respect a.  The validity of that expression arises directly from the fact that the actual numerical references used are absolutely and totally immaterial even after one has found an explanation.  What is required is that the set of "known" valid assertions must be sufficient to deduce the required language; an issue which seems to be totally beyond comprehension for many people.

 

There is a fundamental problem with that representation as it is not a mathematical representation even though it resembles one.  It cannot be a mathematical expression as the arguments are not variables, they are instead no more than specified numerical labels. That is the critical issue being brought up in the middle of page 17.  See  http://foundationsofphysics.blogspot.com/.

 

The remainder of chapter 2 is essentially a specific logical process which transforms the above representation into a representation which can be seen as a valid mathematical representation.  At every step in that transformation it is critical that no constraint whatsoever is made on the explanation being represented.  Unless I have made a mistake in that transformation, then my fundamental equation (see page 39) must be valid for all conceivable explanations.

 

Again, the validity of that expression arises directly from the fact that the apparent arguments are absolutely and totally immaterial even after one has found an explanation.

 

This is apparently the other issue no one here can comprehend.  The deduction is entirely a consequence of the representation and has nothing to do with either the information the explanation was based upon or on what the explanation might be.  It is entirely a tautological deduction flowing from internal consistency of the underlying concepts.

 

To date, no one has ever pointed out an error in my logic (other than typographic errors which still seem to exist in that final publication).  They are much more concerned with the fact that they cannot comprehend expressing their beliefs under the representation I present.  As I said earlier, the most prevalent distortion in their arguments is their failure to include all the concepts to be represented (including those required to deduce the language).

 

When I deduced my fundamental equation (in the late 1960's) I too found it to be a rather useless deduction.  It wasn't until sometime around 1980 that a mechanism which allowed justifiable approximate solutions occurred to me.  The serious issue of "justifiable" is brought up in chapter 3 on page 45.  Again, no one has pointed out any errors in that logic either.  I suspect no one has actually managed to get that far.  That chapter seriously confronts the issue of expressing current theories in my representation.

 

If anyone finds any problems with what I have just said, let me know and I will do what I can to clarify things.

 

Have fun -- Dick    

 

 

Edited June 13, 2014 by Doctordick

[ErlyRisa]

Personally I think your complicating what is in effect simpler than you realise.

 

...but to note: GR for a child... it can be done.

 

"MAKE THEM BELEIVE THEY ARE IN THAT STATE", you could probably do it too a chimp too, and have some interesting results.

 

In other words, all "logic of life" can be faked, and has been attempted by very cruel entities before.

 

eg. Chopping your head off and showing you your body... completely alive. I am sure there is a human being in that state at this very moment of me typing this.

 

GM could be faked to a child by placing them into a VR room, and creating the experince of being light. You could even try out time travel on the entity, just for fun.

 

Of course, all the results are quite boring and easily stipulatable, that what you would end up with is a vegetable.

 

 

Back to YOUR theory.

NICE: So the minus sign is too denote "lack of" the set.

Cute.

We could complicate it:

For example [ for each set ] there is no upper limit on the data. eg. rather than working with a finite set, the set is just a random bunch of junk.

 

I for one love looking stupid: It makes you look smarter.

[Eclogite]

I feel less intelligent for having read that.