I loved this discussion so much! Thanks for letting me be an observer.
Angela Collier is a brilliant young physics professor who produces a wonderful YouTube channel. She made it her goal to read every book written by Richard P. Feynman. Please take a look. I highly recommend this recent episode, "The Sham Legacy of Richard Feynman." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
I laughed, cried, and shook my head, sometimes in amazement and disbelief. You won't regret watching her video for at least a few minutes. It's well thought out and well-presented. Since you and Julian are huge fans of Feynman, you may find that the information presented could ground your thinking in unexpected ways.
What makes me a credible "witness" in this instance? I'm a practical "physicist" - a retired "strings physicist." Isn't that what an orchestra director is? I've studied and taught "strings theory" for over 30 years. I have perspective! Don't let anyone dismiss the importance of the "strings theory" from around 1650 to 1750! The modern "strings theory" germinated and evolved and is now ubiquitous worldwide! Yea for "strings theory!"
I enjoyed your conversation and look forward to more mind-bending episodes in the future. I'm so excited to have found Infinite Loops!
One other thing. Have you thought of having Iain McGilchrist on? He wrote the 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. It's a brilliant work that I could not put down. Not only did I buy the book, but I also got the Audible version so that I could listen and read simultaneously. His latest is "The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" and is unfortunately unavailable for listening. The printed version is $112.95, but I got the Kindle version for $39.95. The two books have a 4.8-star rating on Amazon after one year on the website!
Blurb about McGilchrist's "The Matter With Things":
"Is the world essentially inert and mechanical - nothing but a collection of things for us to use?
Are we ourselves nothing but the playthings of chance, embroiled in a war of all against all?
Why, indeed, are we engaged in destroying everything that is valuable to us?
"In his international bestseller, The Master and his Emissary, McGilchrist demonstrated that
each brain hemisphere provides us with a radically different 'take' on the world, and used this
insight to deliver a fresh understanding of the main turning points in the history of Western
civilisation.
"Twice before, in ancient Greece and Rome, the perception that evolved in the left hemisphere,
which empowered us to manipulate the world, had ultimately come to eclipse the much more
sophisticated take of the right hemisphere, which enabled us to understand it.
"On each occasion this heralded the collapse of a civilisation. And now it was happening for a
third, and possibly last, time.
"In this landmark new book, Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest
questions humanity faces - ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today.
"Who are we? What is the world?
"How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time?
"Is the cosmos without purpose or value?
"Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?
"In doing so, he argues that we have become enslaved to an account of things dominated by
the brain's left hemisphere, one that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality that is all around us,
had we but eyes to see it.
"He suggests that in order to understand ourselves and the world we need science and
intuition, reason and imagination, not just one or two; that they are in any case far from being
in conflict; and that the brain's right hemisphere plays the most important part in each.
"And he shows us how to recognise the 'signature' of the left hemisphere in our thinking, so as
to avoid making decisions that bring disaster in their wake. Following the paths of cutting-
edge neurology, philosophy and physics, he reveals how each leads us to a similar vision of the
world, one that is both profound and beautiful - and happens to be in line with the deepest
traditions of human wisdom.
It is a vision that returns the world to life, and us to a better way of living in it: one we must
embrace if we are to survive."
Thanks again! I'm looking forward to your entire season!
see esp. "Compression, Entanglement and a Possible Basis for Morphic Fields", "Universe, Physics and Simulation", "Thermodynamics, Information and the Afterlife" and most of all, "A First Approximation to Mindspace".
*
Skeptics of the big bang:
Eric J. Lerner (born May 31, 1947) is an American popular science writer and independent plasma researcher. He wrote the 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened, which advocates Hannes Alfvén's plasma cosmology instead of the Big Bang theory. He is founder, president, and chief scientist of LPP Fusion. [Lawrencevile Plasma Physics, of New Jersey, which had the highest demonstrated fusion efficiency as of 2023] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner
Thomas Charles Van Flandern (June 26, 1940 – January 9, 2009) .... attended Yale University on a scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO), joining USNO in 1963. In 1969, he received a Ph.D. in astronomy from Yale after completing his dissertation on lunar occultations. Van Flandern worked at the USNO until 1983, first becoming Chief of the Research Branch and later becoming Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch of the Nautical Almanac Office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Van_Flandern
Can physics laws be derived from monogenic functions?
Jose B. Almeida
This is a paper about geometry and how one can derive several fundamental laws of physics from a simple postulate of geometrical nature. The method uses monogenic functions analysed in the algebra of 5-dimensional spacetime, exploring the 4-dimensional waves that they generate. With this method one is able to arrive at equations of relativistic dynamics, quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. Fields as disparate as cosmology and particle physics will be influenced by this approach in a way that the paper only suggests. The paper provides an introduction to a formalism which shows prospects of one day leading to a theory of everything and suggests several areas of future development.
Other Almeida papers with evocative titles:
The null subspace of G(4,1) as source of the main physical theories
An hypersphere model of the Universe - The dismissal of dark matter
4-Dimensional optics, an alternative to relativity
A theory of mass and gravity in 4-dimensional optics
*
Many of the best GA papers are by Chis Doran and available at the MRAO (Cambridge radio observatory) website linked above. Prof. Doran's company, Geomerics, introduced real-time lighting in games and was acquired by ARM. He's Director of Studies in Natural Sciences for Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He set forth in his PhD. thesis Gauge Theory Gravity, the only alternative to General Relativity in accordance with observations and the best way to understand black holes. Prof. Brian Josephson seemed impressed with, or at least quite interested in, his thesis, which later developed into this paper:
A new gauge theory of gravity is presented. The theory is constructed in a flat background spacetime and employs gauge fields to ensure that all relations between physical quantities are independent of the positions and orientations of the matter fields. In this manner all properties of the background spacetime are removed from physics, and what remains are a set of `intrinsic' relations between physical fields. The properties of the gravitational gauge fields are derived from both classical and quantum viewpoints. Field equations are then derived from an action principle, and consistency with the minimal coupling procedure selects an action that is unique up to the possible inclusion of a cosmological constant. This in turn singles out a unique form of spin-torsion interaction. A new method for solving the field equations is outlined and applied to the case of a time-dependent, spherically-symmetric perfect fluid. A gauge is found which reduces the physics to a set of essentially Newtonian equations. These equations are then applied to the study of cosmology, and to the formation and properties of black holes. The existence of global solutions enables one to discuss the properties of field lines inside the horizon due to a point charge held outside it. The Dirac equation is studied in a black hole background and provides a quick derivation of the Hawking temperature.
Comments: 112 pages, 6 figures. Published in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 356, 487-582 (1998). Revised [May 2004] version with some corrections and improvements
*
Neural Darwinism – The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection – Gerald Edelman (Nobel for antibody structure)
A favorite of mine back when I was a senior in high school in 1990, but it's very dense. The structure of the universe at the largest scales resembles neural tissue.
*
From a comment he likely didn't read, on a post on Julian's substack:
Relevant: "[Bob] Forward earned his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1965, with a thesis entitled Detectors for Dynamic Gravitational Fields, for the development of a bar antenna for the detection of gravitational radiation." .... "He described his first novel, Dragon's Egg, as 'a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel.'"
"Dragon's Egg is a 1980 hard science fiction novel by American writer Robert L. Forward. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures the size of sesame seeds who evolve, live, and think a million times faster than humans." .... "Half a million years ago and 50 light-years from Earth, a star in the constellation Draco turns supernova, and the star's remnant becomes a neutron star. The radiation from the explosion causes mutations in many Earth organisms, including a group of hominina that become the ancestors of Homo sapiens. The star's short-lived plasma jets are lop-sided because of anomalies in its magnetic field, and set it on a course passing within 250 astronomical units of the Sun. In 2020 AD, human astronomers detect the neutron star, call it "Dragon's Egg", and in 2050 they send an expedition to explore it. ... The rest of the story, including almost the whole history of cheela civilization, spans from 22 May 2050 to 21 June 2050. By humans' standards, a "day" on Dragon's Egg is about 0.2 seconds, and a typical cheela's lifetime is about 40 minutes."
Julian is go good, he will be remembered as a pioneer who conceptualized this view.
One thing that I find thinking about: when we travel to various planets and moons (and stanets and ploons) and find them barren, maybe it is an cosmo-ethical responsibility to seed them with bacteria and other critters that I think will survive there even if we’re sure humans can’t?
To give life another chance, to become what creationists talk about?
I loved this discussion so much! Thanks for letting me be an observer.
Angela Collier is a brilliant young physics professor who produces a wonderful YouTube channel. She made it her goal to read every book written by Richard P. Feynman. Please take a look. I highly recommend this recent episode, "The Sham Legacy of Richard Feynman." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
I laughed, cried, and shook my head, sometimes in amazement and disbelief. You won't regret watching her video for at least a few minutes. It's well thought out and well-presented. Since you and Julian are huge fans of Feynman, you may find that the information presented could ground your thinking in unexpected ways.
What makes me a credible "witness" in this instance? I'm a practical "physicist" - a retired "strings physicist." Isn't that what an orchestra director is? I've studied and taught "strings theory" for over 30 years. I have perspective! Don't let anyone dismiss the importance of the "strings theory" from around 1650 to 1750! The modern "strings theory" germinated and evolved and is now ubiquitous worldwide! Yea for "strings theory!"
I enjoyed your conversation and look forward to more mind-bending episodes in the future. I'm so excited to have found Infinite Loops!
One other thing. Have you thought of having Iain McGilchrist on? He wrote the 2009 book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. It's a brilliant work that I could not put down. Not only did I buy the book, but I also got the Audible version so that I could listen and read simultaneously. His latest is "The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World" and is unfortunately unavailable for listening. The printed version is $112.95, but I got the Kindle version for $39.95. The two books have a 4.8-star rating on Amazon after one year on the website!
Blurb about McGilchrist's "The Matter With Things":
"Is the world essentially inert and mechanical - nothing but a collection of things for us to use?
Are we ourselves nothing but the playthings of chance, embroiled in a war of all against all?
Why, indeed, are we engaged in destroying everything that is valuable to us?
"In his international bestseller, The Master and his Emissary, McGilchrist demonstrated that
each brain hemisphere provides us with a radically different 'take' on the world, and used this
insight to deliver a fresh understanding of the main turning points in the history of Western
civilisation.
"Twice before, in ancient Greece and Rome, the perception that evolved in the left hemisphere,
which empowered us to manipulate the world, had ultimately come to eclipse the much more
sophisticated take of the right hemisphere, which enabled us to understand it.
"On each occasion this heralded the collapse of a civilisation. And now it was happening for a
third, and possibly last, time.
"In this landmark new book, Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest
questions humanity faces - ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today.
"Who are we? What is the world?
"How can we understand consciousness, matter, space and time?
"Is the cosmos without purpose or value?
"Can we really neglect the sacred and divine?
"In doing so, he argues that we have become enslaved to an account of things dominated by
the brain's left hemisphere, one that blinds us to an awe-inspiring reality that is all around us,
had we but eyes to see it.
"He suggests that in order to understand ourselves and the world we need science and
intuition, reason and imagination, not just one or two; that they are in any case far from being
in conflict; and that the brain's right hemisphere plays the most important part in each.
"And he shows us how to recognise the 'signature' of the left hemisphere in our thinking, so as
to avoid making decisions that bring disaster in their wake. Following the paths of cutting-
edge neurology, philosophy and physics, he reveals how each leads us to a similar vision of the
world, one that is both profound and beautiful - and happens to be in line with the deepest
traditions of human wisdom.
It is a vision that returns the world to life, and us to a better way of living in it: one we must
embrace if we are to survive."
Thanks again! I'm looking forward to your entire season!
Sincerely, George "jorge" Tate
It would take a few days to say all I'd like to about this discussion between Jim O'Shaughnessey and Julian Gough.
Here's a few links, sorry Substack doesn't allow posting them in a nice-looking way:
My blog, "Mindspace and Mind's Basis":
https://mindsbasis.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2014-07-30T14:20:00-04:00&max-results=7
see esp. "Compression, Entanglement and a Possible Basis for Morphic Fields", "Universe, Physics and Simulation", "Thermodynamics, Information and the Afterlife" and most of all, "A First Approximation to Mindspace".
*
Skeptics of the big bang:
Eric J. Lerner (born May 31, 1947) is an American popular science writer and independent plasma researcher. He wrote the 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened, which advocates Hannes Alfvén's plasma cosmology instead of the Big Bang theory. He is founder, president, and chief scientist of LPP Fusion. [Lawrencevile Plasma Physics, of New Jersey, which had the highest demonstrated fusion efficiency as of 2023] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner
https://www.lppfusion.com/science/cosmic-connection/plasma-cosmology/the-growing-case-against-the-big-bang/
https://www.lppfusion.com/science/cosmic-connection/plasma-cosmology/the-growing-case-against-the-big-bang/astrophysics-references-2005/
https://cosmology.info/org/open-letter-on-cosmology.html
Thomas Charles Van Flandern (June 26, 1940 – January 9, 2009) .... attended Yale University on a scholarship sponsored by the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO), joining USNO in 1963. In 1969, he received a Ph.D. in astronomy from Yale after completing his dissertation on lunar occultations. Van Flandern worked at the USNO until 1983, first becoming Chief of the Research Branch and later becoming Chief of the Celestial Mechanics Branch of the Nautical Almanac Office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Van_Flandern
https://metaresearch.org/cosmology/cosmology2/the-top-30-problems-with-the-big-bang
The redshift problem: redshifts are not reliable indicators of distance, some very high redshift quasars are connected to low-redshift quasars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton_Arp
https://metaresearch.org/cosmology/cosmology2/quasars-near-versus-far
https://arpgalaxy.com/
*
The best explanation I have found for how the illusions of the big bang and dark matter arise has gotten basically no traction, even in the little field of Geometric Algebra (applied real-valued Clifford algebras; no relation to Artin -- https://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/ and https://slehar.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/clifford-algebra-a-visual-introduction/ for introductions)
https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601194
Can physics laws be derived from monogenic functions?
Jose B. Almeida
This is a paper about geometry and how one can derive several fundamental laws of physics from a simple postulate of geometrical nature. The method uses monogenic functions analysed in the algebra of 5-dimensional spacetime, exploring the 4-dimensional waves that they generate. With this method one is able to arrive at equations of relativistic dynamics, quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. Fields as disparate as cosmology and particle physics will be influenced by this approach in a way that the paper only suggests. The paper provides an introduction to a formalism which shows prospects of one day leading to a theory of everything and suggests several areas of future development.
Other Almeida papers with evocative titles:
The null subspace of G(4,1) as source of the main physical theories
An hypersphere model of the Universe - The dismissal of dark matter
4-Dimensional optics, an alternative to relativity
A theory of mass and gravity in 4-dimensional optics
*
Many of the best GA papers are by Chis Doran and available at the MRAO (Cambridge radio observatory) website linked above. Prof. Doran's company, Geomerics, introduced real-time lighting in games and was acquired by ARM. He's Director of Studies in Natural Sciences for Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He set forth in his PhD. thesis Gauge Theory Gravity, the only alternative to General Relativity in accordance with observations and the best way to understand black holes. Prof. Brian Josephson seemed impressed with, or at least quite interested in, his thesis, which later developed into this paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0405033
Gravity, Gauge Theories and Geometric Algebra
Anthony Lasenby, Chris Doran, Stephen Gull
A new gauge theory of gravity is presented. The theory is constructed in a flat background spacetime and employs gauge fields to ensure that all relations between physical quantities are independent of the positions and orientations of the matter fields. In this manner all properties of the background spacetime are removed from physics, and what remains are a set of `intrinsic' relations between physical fields. The properties of the gravitational gauge fields are derived from both classical and quantum viewpoints. Field equations are then derived from an action principle, and consistency with the minimal coupling procedure selects an action that is unique up to the possible inclusion of a cosmological constant. This in turn singles out a unique form of spin-torsion interaction. A new method for solving the field equations is outlined and applied to the case of a time-dependent, spherically-symmetric perfect fluid. A gauge is found which reduces the physics to a set of essentially Newtonian equations. These equations are then applied to the study of cosmology, and to the formation and properties of black holes. The existence of global solutions enables one to discuss the properties of field lines inside the horizon due to a point charge held outside it. The Dirac equation is studied in a black hole background and provides a quick derivation of the Hawking temperature.
Comments: 112 pages, 6 figures. Published in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 356, 487-582 (1998). Revised [May 2004] version with some corrections and improvements
*
Neural Darwinism – The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection – Gerald Edelman (Nobel for antibody structure)
A favorite of mine back when I was a senior in high school in 1990, but it's very dense. The structure of the universe at the largest scales resembles neural tissue.
*
From a comment he likely didn't read, on a post on Julian's substack:
Relevant: "[Bob] Forward earned his doctorate from the University of Maryland in 1965, with a thesis entitled Detectors for Dynamic Gravitational Fields, for the development of a bar antenna for the detection of gravitational radiation." .... "He described his first novel, Dragon's Egg, as 'a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel.'"
"Dragon's Egg is a 1980 hard science fiction novel by American writer Robert L. Forward. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures the size of sesame seeds who evolve, live, and think a million times faster than humans." .... "Half a million years ago and 50 light-years from Earth, a star in the constellation Draco turns supernova, and the star's remnant becomes a neutron star. The radiation from the explosion causes mutations in many Earth organisms, including a group of hominina that become the ancestors of Homo sapiens. The star's short-lived plasma jets are lop-sided because of anomalies in its magnetic field, and set it on a course passing within 250 astronomical units of the Sun. In 2020 AD, human astronomers detect the neutron star, call it "Dragon's Egg", and in 2050 they send an expedition to explore it. ... The rest of the story, including almost the whole history of cheela civilization, spans from 22 May 2050 to 21 June 2050. By humans' standards, a "day" on Dragon's Egg is about 0.2 seconds, and a typical cheela's lifetime is about 40 minutes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg
Bob was a great guy, and one of the most original thinkers of all time.
*
And so to bed.
Julian is go good, he will be remembered as a pioneer who conceptualized this view.
One thing that I find thinking about: when we travel to various planets and moons (and stanets and ploons) and find them barren, maybe it is an cosmo-ethical responsibility to seed them with bacteria and other critters that I think will survive there even if we’re sure humans can’t?
To give life another chance, to become what creationists talk about?