Doctordick

I am presuming "Scientist" did not comprehend what I proposed!! Sorry about that! If I have misinterpreted your response let me know! Have fun anyway!! -- Dick

Have I misunderstood the word "speculation"? I thought the word referred to ideas which could possibly be wrong. If there is no possibility that a specific idea could be wrong then it could not possibly be speculation! I do not understand your comment that counter evidence might be the vast infrastructure man has built using language. Do you mean that the vast infrastructure is evidence that language is not an issue to be examined? It is a fact that mankind has built a great number of languages many of which are no longer understood. My point is that there could exist an infinite number of possible languages. Does there exist any constraints applicable to all languages or is that an issue unworthy of thought? The first issue I find interesting is that no one is born knowing a language. Every child must first experience a substantial collection of interactions with others who already know a language. This, together with other experiences they associate with that language leads them to eventually come to believe they know what the language is expressing. Without such a process, understanding of the relevant elements of any language is impossible. Misunderstandings are a very important aspect of any communications and I do not concern myself with that issue. I want to discuss the significant issues of a language I do not know! But I cannot discuss anything without using a language!! So I propose to use English to discuss the relevant issues. A language I feel I know pretty well. The first issue I would like to bring up is the fact that the primary elements of a language are representations of "concepts". I have in mind here the idea expressed in English by the concept of "words". If we know (or at least think we know) the concept expressed by a particular word, then we can express a specific thought with a collection of such concepts. Of course I include in this collection of concepts elements not ordinarily seen as words in the English language. Those elements could be punctuation, spacing and any other concept meaningful to a writer in that language. (As I understand it, ancient Latin did not include spaces so the actual concepts being represented do not necessarily include all concepts being represented in a specific language.) A second important aspect of any language is the idea of a dictionary (I am referring to the English concept usually embedded in the idea of a dictionary which provides the specific thoughts being represented by a specific word.) If one knows (or at least thinks they know) the relevant concepts together with a dictionary defining those concepts they have the ability to express their thoughts in that relevant language. So I have presented three aspects of any language essential to comprehending that language: concepts, thoughts and a dictionary. If one knows the required collection of concepts and can list the thoughts essential to those concepts, they have sufficient knowledge to express their thoughts. This is the very essence of any conceivable language. If you can comprehend what I have just proposed, I will produce a valid representation of any thought in any language. It turns out that the representation has some profound consequences. Thank you -- Dick

They have given no reasons for refusing it!

There is one issue pretty well overlooked by the scientific community. That would be the issue of control by the scientific community itself. I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics achieved in 1971. I went into theoretical physics because I wanted to understand the universe. As a graduate student, I had a bad habit of reading too much. Every time some professor required us to read a journal article relevant to his work (and some referred to work published back in the times hundreds of years ago), I had the habit of reading the specific journal from cover to cover. I can't say I read every journal in Vanderbilt's library but I certainly read most of them. At any rate, reading all those articles gave me a rather unusual perspective on publication. In my opinion most of those publications were not worth the paper they were written on. By the time I got my degree, I had decided not to publish until I had something serious to say. Now add to that the fact that 1971 was a rather special year for the scientific community. Because of complaints about the meaningless of much scientific work (sex life of a butterfly for example), President Nixon pulled the federal support for scientific endeavors and turned the money over to states to distribute. Almost universally, the states used the money to benefit their interests. Scientific research money almost vanished but lots of state offices got raises. For the first time in history, there was unemployment among people with graduate degrees. One of the new faculty members in the physics department at Vanderbilt was pumping gas at a service station when I got my degree. (It was a new world.) At any rate I earned my living outside the field of physics. However, I still spent serious time thinking about an idea I had back when I was a student,. Back when I was in my second year (when I was first introduced into quantum mechanics) I noticed an issue totally ignored by the scientific explanation of relativity. That evening I took my idea to the professor teaching that class and, after about three hours, he agreed that I was correct but I should not mention it to the other students as it would just confuse them. Besides, I couldn't deduce general relativity from it so I must be essentially wrong. At any rate, I only have about three publications in my name. (With me as a party to some specific theoretical work.) As I said above, I continued to think about the issue I noticed back in 1967 and in 1982 I discovered a way to extend the issue to general relativity. So I wrote up an article and tried to publish. I ended up sending it to three different major physics journals. It was refused by all three with very similar notes. All three said it was philosophy and was of no interest to physicists. Their responses were very quick and I suspect the real problem was they didn't know what referee to send the thing to. At any rate, since the professor who I had talked to back in 67 had died, I brought my presentation to the professor who was my adviser on my Ph.D. He refused to even look at the thing (I think he was upset because I didn't earn my living in physics). Well after some discussions with a friend in 1987, I sent my article to two different philosophy journals. Both journals rejected it out of hand immediately. Again, I doubt a referee ever saw the thing. What I found extremely funny was the fact that both journals wrote the same reason for rejecting the thing. They both said it was mathematics and was of no interest to philosophers! I showed that response to a mathematician I knew at the time. He looked at the paper and said it would be of no interest to a mathematician as I presented no new mathematics as far as he was concerned it was physics and well over his head. So thus the physicists say it's philosophy, the philosophers say it's mathematics and the mathematicians say it's physics. All I can say is that all three refuse to even consider the thoughts. In 2013 I composed a well thought out version and paid for publication of a book. The Publisher never sold a single copy and eventually required me to personally purchase every copy he had printed. So, at least the thing exists. If anyone wants to look at the thing, I will provide a free pdf copy if you send a note to my e-mail "doctordick01@yahoo.com". But essentially this note goes to the issue of "scientific publication". In today's world the scientific community has become an authority much as the religious authorities were back in the dark ages. The truth of their position is based on their authority and not upon their ability to back up their theories; Have fun -- Dick

I was initially a bit disturbed by having my earlier post moved to "speculations" as I made no speculations whatsoever. But, on thinking about the issue I guess I made one serious speculation. That would be that there were people on this forum capable of thinking. Have fun -- DoctorDick

First, regarding the "moderators" decision to move this thread to "Speculation", my thread contains no speculations whatsoever and the issue I want to discuss consists of absolutely nothing but cold hard facts. (Facts most people would rather ignore!) If anyone sees an assertion I make which is not a cold hard fact, please bring it up so we can discuss the issue. Secondly, the only response so far (from Lord Antares) seems to totally ignore what I have said. His response, that "establishing a mechanism for representing any conceivable language" is "language itself" rather misses the point. People generally presume they understand the language they use. Now that is "speculation" and not defensible fact (misunderstandings occur quite regularly and to deny that such things occur is rather foolish). Secondly, Mr Antares apparently ignored the phrase "My attack requires two fundamental concepts", and simply presumed these concepts were readily available and (I guess) already known by him. Lastly, his assertion that "it will not be understood by another person just by defining it" seems to presume a rather ignorant comprehension on the part of the second party in the communication of interest. What I said was, "My attack requires two fundamental concepts: first, establishing a mechanism for representing any conceivable language and second, establishing a mechanism capable of defining the concept of understanding within that representation of the language without actually defining the language itself." I did neither of these things in my opening post. That post was made for the purpose of finding someone interested in thinking about the issue and nothing more. His further assertion that I can not define what I mean by "understanding" is again a rather extreme "presumption". Finally his question, what is "the problem" I am talking about was (as far as I am concerned) quite clearly expressed. My opening comment was, "The issue of understanding reality is something I would like to seriously discuss." That he totally missed that fact is simply beyond my comprehension. He also apparently missed my further comment that "I would like to discuss the issue without making any assumptions about the language being examined." It seems to me that even the most uneducated individual would comprehend difficulty inherent in such an attack! Without defining a language, discussion is simply impossible. My comment that I would like to use English is an admission that I fully understand the problems embedded in the presumption that the language is "understood" by the reader. That is a problem I will do my best to work around, but recognition that it is a serious problem must be comprehended by the reader. Something which seems to be totally beyond Mr. Antares comprehension. If anyone else reading this thread is interested in discussing the subject (in English, my native language which I think I understand pretty well) I will present the first fundamental concept essential to any conceivable language. That would be the fact that every conceivable language requires a collection of symbolic representations of concepts essential to representing specific thoughts via that language. If no such representations exist, the language does not exist. Please, if anyone thinks that is not a fact, please give me an example of a contradiction of that assertion. Thank you -- Dick

The issue of understanding reality is something I would like to seriously discuss. There is an aspect of that issue which no one seems to have any interest in thinking about. The issue I refer to is the fact that no one is born capable of considering the problem. Every person who has ever tried to think about that issue had to first learn the language spoken by their contemporaries. The underlying problem is that each and every one of them makes the assumption that they understand the language they have supposedly learned. I would like to discuss the issue without making any assumptions about the language being examined. This constitutes a problem as even discussing the issues requires we use a language. I have a subtle means of working around that underlying issue which is apparently difficult for people to comprehend. My attack requires two fundamental concepts: first, establishing a mechanism for representing any conceivable language and second, establishing a mechanism capable of defining the concept of understanding within that representation of the language without actually defining the language itself. In my discussion I would like to use English as the discussion mechanism in order to refer to some underlying aspects of the unknown language being represented. If anyone is interested, let me know and I will make a serious attempt to explain my thoughts in English. Thank you for taking the trouble to think about the issue.

My representation merely "locks" like mathematical notation and everyone on this forum simply presumes that, if it looks like mathematical notation, it is mathematical notation. There is utterly no defense of that position and the only reason seems to be to avoid thinking about what I am saying. I use that particular notation for the simple reason that it yields the rather surprising result totally consistent with the notation as defined. That would be: [latex]\lim_{\Delta a\rightarrow 0}\frac{P(x_1+a+\Delta a,x_2+a+\Delta a,\cdots,x_n+a+\Delta a)-P(x_1+a ,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)}{\Delta a}=0[/latex] That fact has absolutely nothing to do with mathematics and is no more than a direct consequence of the finite nature of the information being represented together with the absolute arbitrary nature of the "language" used to represent that information. Since the meanings of the elements of that language are deduced from the patterns in represented facts (which must include the language itself), the probability a represented expression is valid (true within the understanding achieved from the information analyzed) can not be a function of a ("a" is no more than an alternation in the nature of the specific arbitrary "language"). The above is not a mathematical expression; however, the result is nonetheless exactly the definition of a derivative. To me that is a very interesting fact. It must be comprehended that since the elements are finite they may be listed. If they can be listed, the list may be numerically enumerated. I prefer to work with numbers because of the ability of that representation to represent any and all possibilities. If ajb wants to use a binary representation, that is fine with me but I see no benefit arising from a binary representation. The reader should comprehend that the representation of the underlying elements is absolutely arbitrary. The statement "The earth is round!" in English can be represented as an ordered list of five concepts: 1. -- earth 55. -- round 2. -- "an explanation mark" 98. -- The 3. -- is or perhaps 21. -- "an explanation mark" 4. -- round 76. -- earth 5. -- The 12. -- is The first case yields (in my representation) (5,1,3,4,2) or, given the alternate list, it could be represented by (98,76,12,55,21). In the first case, the probability it was a true statement would be represented by P(5,1,3,4,2). That probability would be established by the explantation achieved to explain the complete set of facts known (including the facts from which the language was deduced). In the second case exactly the same probability would be represented by P(98,76,12,55,21): i.e., a difference between those two representations is non-existent. That fact is a direct consequence of the arbitrary nature of the representation (the value of [latex]\Delta a[/latex] has no bearing on the result so long as [latex]\Delta a \neq 0[/latex]). Once one has established the representation method, that same representation can be achieved for any explanation. That is exactly the reason the human race has developed so many languages. Exactly the same facts could be represented in Chinese or perhaps in Linear A (if you know somebody who knows it. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A) The issue here is, has anyone ever even taken the effort to analyze the consequences of that arbitrary nature of language? To my knowledge, no such analysis has ever been made by anyone. The expression I put forth above is not a mathematical expression at all; however, it certainly looks like a mathematical expression. It is that fact which leads me to use that representation as a starting position in my argument. My sole purpose is to perform (by pure logical analysis) a transformation of that representation into a form which does qualify as mathematics. To me the problem is very clear. What I would like is for someone to follow my logic and point out any error they see. I would appreciate any help on that issue anyone would be willing to provide. Zeno's paradox has been seen as being of no significance to science for over two thousand years. I doubt there has been one serious modern scientist who has even thought about the consequences of the finite nature of our knowledge. I can guarantee you won't find my formulation of the issue in any physics textbook. If, in your mind that makes my presentation speculation, then so be it. As far as I am concerned, I am merely defining a specific representation of the possible facts we have to base our understanding on and then logically deducing the consequences of the finite nature of that collection. What I am interested in is the possibility of error in my deductions and no one here is even willing to work with my representation. Have fun -- Dick

The [latex]x_i[/latex] have never been introduced as variables. They have been, from the very start, nothing more than numerical labels on that finite set of listed concepts. The representation [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is not a mathematical expression. It is an expression of the probability that the assertion represented by an ordered list of concepts [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is a valid assertion. It is a defined representation of supposed facts (the important point being that they are represented without defining those represented concepts). The virtue of this representation is that, not being specifically defined, the representation applies to all conceivable explanations of any collection of facts. It is an absolutely general representation of facts to be comprehended. The meaning of the various "concepts" has to be learned from their usage and the patterns inherent in that usage. A result which could be accomplished were one given the list of circumstances represented by [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] which are held to be valid (you could call that an experience of reality if you wish). The fact that those numerical labels are entirely arbitrary leads to a very significant relationship. Given the entire list [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex], the expression [latex]P(x_1+a,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)[/latex] becomes a defined mathematical function of "a". Since the simple addition of a constant makes no changes whatsoever in the patterns represented in those relevant lists, learning the meanings of the various "concepts" is a problem identical to the original problem. That implies that [latex]P(x_1+a,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)[/latex] must be identical to [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] as they are deduced from exactly the same patterns. It follows that [latex]\frac{d\;}{da}P(x_1+a,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)[/latex] must vanish for all such representations of any coherent understanding of any collections of facts. Regarding -- 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 +........................ = Well suprise, 0 You are apparently defining [latex]\frac{\partial \;}{\partial x_1}P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)=0[/latex] whereas I am regarding it as undefined since [latex]x_1[/latex] is a numerical label and not a variable. You are jumping to the conclusion that because it looks like a mathematical function [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is a mathematical function. The next step of my argument concerns changing my representation into a valid mathematical expression in such a manner that it's generality is conserved without altering the underlying meaning of the representation. That is not a trivial issues. "In the appropriate domains" is the critical limitation there. I gave my "child's perspective on relativity" because it gave exactly the same results as Einstein's 'theory of special relativity" throughout the entirety of exactly the same domain. Oh, outside that domain they don't agree but at least mine is perfectly consistent with quantum mechanics. That seems to me to be at least an interesting aspect. The moderators here put this into speculation, not I. I wish someone would comment upon where they think I have made a speculation. If you find my definitions incomprehensible, I suggest you ignore me. That won't bother me at all. And finally, imatfaal, what are those "recondite riddles" are you referring to? Have fun --Dick

I am making another post only because of the number of posts added after my last comment. First of all, nothing I have said has anything to do with GR methodology and furthermore, there appear to be a number of competent people out there complaining about GR. In essence, it seems to me to be a subject of little importance to my general analysis. Regarding the general difficulty following my line of thought, as far as I can tell, no one has yet comprehended what the devil I am talking about. (My verbose presentation was an attempt to bring context to the discussion. Something I have clearly failed to accomplish.) The issue I am trying to discuses is, "obtaining exactly the same answers is not evidence that the relevant explanations are the same". (My child's view of special relativity was what brought up the issue and serves no further purpose beyond that fact.) I gave two definitions which everyone is apparently refusing to even consider. No one has given me either acceptance as a basis for argument or any reason to reject as unimplementable. Those two definitions are as follows: One, that each and every concept necessary to express any specific explanation of any collection of facts can be represented by a numerical label "x". Once an explanation is known, a set of numerical labels may be created. Although absolutely arbitrary, a specific label [latex]x_i[/latex] is a knowable thing which can be used to refer to the relevant concept. That fact is not constrained in any way by the explanation being represented. Two, that any fact expressible via those labeled concepts can be expressed by the notation [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] where "P" is the probability that the assembled list of concepts, [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex], expresses a true statement under the specific understanding being represented. On the assumption that someone out there is willing to work with those definitions, I put forth the first step of my presentation. That first step is to observe the fact that the absolutely arbitrary nature of the labeling allows one to assert that [latex]\frac{d\;}{da}P(x_1+a,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)=0[/latex] for all possible explanations of any collection of facts. And that is exactly where I apparently lose everyone's attention! When one is speaking of specific numbers, please explain to me the difference between being equal and being identical? Have fun -- Dick

No one posting to this thread seems to understand the issue behind my presentation. I brought up my "child's perspective on relativity" for a very simple reason. I read George Gamow's book long before I had any concept of scientific analysis. Thus my interpretation bore almost no resemblance to Einstein's theory. Then in college physics (some ten years later) I realized my explanation was totally incorrect. Since I knew it was wrong, I was quite astonished by the fact that it gave exactly the same mathematical results as Einstein's theory. Even then, I knew my picture was wrong because I could find absolutely no justification for that projection I was using. I kept using my picture because I was trying to find a circumstance where it gave the wrong answer. I have never found such a circumstance. As a graduate student, I was taught the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (something never brought up in Einstein's theory of special relativity). I immediately recognized that, in my picture, momentum quantization directly provided that projection through mass quantization (via the connection between kinetic energy and momentum). At that point, a very strange realization occurred to me. I had two very different explanations of a phenomena (both totally justifiable) which yielded exactly the same mathematical results (thus experiment can not prefer one over the other). That brings up an issue not recognized by any scientist I have ever talked to. To me, the interesting issue was, "obtaining the same answers is no evidence that your explanations are the same". The question in my head was then, what possibilities does that observation open up? That is the issue I have been trying to talk about in this thread. In order to logically analyze that question, I need a representation capable of representing absolutely any internally consistent explanation of any collection of facts. That is what I was in the process of setting up when ajb wanted to know how I assign the relevant probability (see post #19). His question, as to how these probabilities are obtained, is totally beside the point. They are a direct consequence of the explanation which, in my representation, is not to be constrained in any way. My abstract definition of an explanation is: "it provides [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] for all relevant circumstances, [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]". Clearly, the moment one assigns the relevant probabilities, one has constrained their consideration to a specific explanation. My only real concern here is, exactly what constraints exist which arise only from internal consistency itself. Mathematics is a very powerful tool for logical analysis. Thus my first step is to alter the representation such that it satisfies the definition of a mathematical function while, at the same time, placing absolutely no constraints on the represented explanation beyond "internal consistency". That is not a trivial task though it involves no advanced mathematics beyond the college level. If anyone is willing to follow me, I will show some rather astounding constraints imposed on all possible explanations of absolutely all possible collections of facts. If anyone is interested, I will continue to post. If no one is interested, just forget my verbose posts, I am gone. Have fun -- Dick Please let me know if you are interested!

As I said, "they are mere numerical labels of the concepts necessary to express the circumstance of interest". They are simple references to your solution. The specific concepts required to express the facts, information, knowledge, --whatever-- which you have come to hold as necessary to understanding your mental image of reality. When you have found what you think is a solution (that is, there is some aspect of reality you feel is true) the final issue is to express that solution via a language. The language is part of the solution! The elements of that language are not variables, they do not change, they are fixed concepts. There are two very important issues here. First, the number of concepts required to express anything you know is finite and, second, once you have decided what those concepts are, they can be listed and labeled, but they do not change. Being "arbitrary" and "changing" are two totally different concepts. Consider your statement (You seem very verbose and this is distracting from the points you are trying to make.) represented by the circumstance (15,7,8,13,3,6,2,14,9,4,11,15,5,12,1,10,0) in my notation. Then P(15,7,8,13,3,6,2,14,9,4,11,15,5,12,1,10,0) would represent the probability (in your understanding) that the circumstance was true. Given that meaning of the representation, please explain to me what you think could possibly mean. Have fun --Dick (By the way guys, that is my real name and not a comment. And "Doctor Dick" has been my nickname most all of my adult life.)

"- not previous ice age, but current. We're still in it" I have always been told that the "ice ages" referred to the times when the northern continents were buried under glaciers. The ice ages end when the ice begins to recede. I am not at all an expert in the field but I had the impression that there have been five ice ages and that, in each case, the actual extent of the ice was less than the previous. My wife and I generally drive to Denver every year and in Oklahoma there is a short span of hills which are considered to be the rubble left by one of the early ice ages when the glaciers ceased expanding and began to recede. "- if arctic ocean is warm enough to not be frozen, how come in latitudes south of it it snows heavily?" Because the arctic ocean is warmed by the ocean currents flowing through the Bering Strait and gulf stream. Why was there open water north of Siberia while the ground in Siberia was still frozen? Or even better than that, why is there Snow in Iceland when the water around it is not frozen? "- I don't think ice ages are getting shorter. Could you show where you found this assumption?" I just googled "number of ice ages" and I suspect we are using different definitions of an "ice age". Apparently I am speaking of what are now referred to as "Quaternary glacial cycles". Sorry about that. "- can you give a link to the paper you're referring to?" No I can't. As I said earlier, when I was a graduate student I used to read the referenced journals from cover to cover. Not all of them but only the journals which contained the references having to do with my research. I just looked at my thesis and there are about fifty references there dated between 1952 and 1969. I know I read some journals from the 1800's and perhaps even earlier so those references must have been related to some classes I had taken. At any rate the event was better then fifty years ago. And I haven't talked about it with anyone except to that archeologist (I think he brought up his interest in those rock piles where the glaciers stopped.) Have fun - Dick

Please explain that comment!!

Well, I thought I would make a post to the Speculations category which I myself see as speculation. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics awarded in 1971 by Vanderbilt University. I went into graduate study in physics because, from my experiences, it seemed that only mathematicians and physicists were the only authorities who made any serious effort to explain the basis of their assertions. Clearly mathematics was pure logic and had nothing to do with reality (the issue I wanted to understand). Physicists gave me answers which seemed well reasoned out. Whenever they could not explain some aspect of the accepted theory, they would say "well you are above my education there, you need talk to someone with more eduction in that area". That was the pressure which led me to graduate studies in physics. Because I was interested in understanding the universe I found myself in, I had a habit not possessed by any of the other graduate students at Vanderbilt university. When I was given an assignment to read some ancient journal article, I did not read only that article but rather, read the entire journal from cover to cover. That yields a rather different impression of publication. If you read only the referenced stuff, you get the impression that scientists are intelligent people. If you read everything your impressions are quite different. My impression was that most of the published articles were not worth the paper they were printed on. None the less, I occasionally ran into a publication which, to me, made a lot of sense. One of those publications had to do with ice ages. Some marine biologist had published, in a physics journal, an explanation of the ice ages. Why he published in a physics journal is totally beyond me. at any rate, his explanation made a lot of sense to me and my reaction was "hey, someone has finally found a decent explanation of the last five ice ages. Since I was involved in physics the "ice age thing" was of no significance and I essentially forgot about it. However, several years later, Apple came up with a computer capable of interacting with the "internet" and I bought one" A guy named Que (I may have misrepresented his name) gave a course in the creation ofprograms on the machine. One of the instructions in the lessons was often "hit Q" and most of us would walk up to Que and punch him on he shoulder. We all knew the instruction had to do with the "quit instruction" but it was a fun thing anyway. AT any rate, there was an archeologist in that class with me and I brought up that article I had read. He had never heard of it and we discussed the thing. I have never spoken to him since that date but I still remember then article. A marine biologist had been looking at the fossilized stuff in the mud under the gulf of mexico. He had seen a spike in the temperature of the gulf waters which exceeded anything which could be explained by solar radiation. His concern was "where did this huge surge of energy come from", The date of the spike corresponded to exactly the end of the last ice age, His conclusion was that somewhere on earth a huge volume of water had converted to Ice. His explanation was that open water in the arctic ocean would essentially create "lake effect snows" on the northern continents. Such heavy snows would continue until the heat from the ocean currents could no longer keep the arctic ocean open water. At that point the arctic ocean would freeze over and the "ice age" would essentially be over. The glaciers would begin to melt and the whole thing just starts over. It clearly explains why each ice age is less extensive as in each case, the case previous event was terminated earlier (ice in antarctica has reduced the amount of glacier creation required to create freeze the arctic ocean). Now this is indeed a speculation. Do I have any comments? I can't give any references to the article as it was published over fifty years ago. Have fun -- Dick

Sorry ajb (again the stupid spell check rolled your name over to jab; you don't happen to know how to fix that do you?) I misunderstood the comment by swansont. I also just read that pinned thread about the purpose of the "speculations" category so I don't feel quite as insulted as I did before. But, if I don't get some serious comments I will probably quit posting. Meanwhile, I will move the essence of my answer to you to this thread. Yes, I agree that my posts are somewhat verbose but that is a consequence of my attempts to clarify some things most people fail to comprehend. As you yourself comment, you didn't find what I said to be clear. Perhaps this over simplified example will clear things up. The question is "what constraints on an explanation stem from the fact that the number of known facts is finite?" is not a mathematical expression for the very simple reason that the are not variables. They are mere numerical labels of the concepts necessary to express the circumstance of interest. For example, the circumstance expressed in your first comment, (You seem very verbose and this is distracting from the points you are trying to make.) could be represented by where the list of concepts (expressed in english) are: 0.--"." 1.--to 2.--is 3.--and 4.--the 5.--are 6.--this 7.--seem 8.--very 9.--from 10.--make 11.--points 12.--trying 13.--verbose 14.--distracting 15.--you Of course, the actual issue is that the entire basis must include enough circumstances to allow deduction of the english language: i.e., the words shown above are not given. You can think of the problem of learning as being equivalent to deciphering a secret code. What is important is the simple fact that the total number of required concepts is finite and the total number of known circumstances is also finite (someone tell me if they think that assertion is a theory or a fact). The second failure to satisfy the definition of a mathematical function is that the number of arguments is not fixed: you should comprehend from my example above that suggesting "n" is a fixed number is a ridiculous presumption. It would require every sentence describing every conceivable circumstance be expressible via a fixed number of words in every possible language. The third failure is clearly the fact that the result is meaningless under the given definition of . That is not the Dirac equation though I will admit it very much resembles Dirac's equation. As I said in my "SPECULATIVE" post, I can PROVE that equation (the one which looks like Dirac's equation) is valid for all possible internally consistent explanations of all possible collections of circumstances (facts, information, knowledge…). That proof quite easy but is not short and solving the thing is subtle as the indices end up being infinite. AS you commented, today arXiv requires a sponsor and nothing is published without one. I tried to find a sponsor and utterly failed. Oh, I got some polite rejections but they were rejections nonetheless. There are not any experts in anything similar to what I am talking about and the reaction of professionals are exactly the same as swansont's. They universally reject it as baloney without reading a word of it. One thing people don't seem to comprehend is the fact that my presentation is not a theory. Most scientific fields are based on two very different intellectual categories: first, the theory behind the fields (the issue is do experiments agree with it) and second what are the logical consequences of that theory (what kinds of things does it predict). What is important here is that errors in the logic are not found by experiment. If I can get no one to step through my logic, posting this thing (or publishing it) is of no value at all. At the moment I only have one person seriously trying to understand my proof and the solution. He is a programer and has a strong interest in AI. His understanding of mathematics is quite limited. Right now I am trying to explain the Fourier transform to him. If there is no one here with an interest in examining my logic I will just quit posting. Have fun -- Dick

Nobox, you make the comment "Time is clearly an artificial invention" I would ask, what makes you think that any of your thoughts are not artificial inventions? Studiot, what makes you think that I ever stopped at four? And John Cuthber, please define "before" without using the concept of "time". Your post is a meaningless circular thought construct. And finally, ajb (ha ha, my computer wanted to change your name to jab), you seem to be the only person here who manages to show some signs of thought. Your comments i) and ii) are exactly the standard perspective as seen in any decent presentation of Einstein's relativity and "not at all the perspective I held in my childish interpretation". And, regarding ii) photons carry no energy in the form of mass, the energy they do carry is in the form of momentum within the (x,y,z) space. As I commented, I have an earned Ph.D. in theoretical physics from a respected institution and I am well aware of both special and general relativity as presented at that institution. You assert that you understand mathematics and like the subject. If that is the case and you have the ability to think, you should be interested in my thoughts (not that I really expect such a thing). The following expresses a rather simple fact absolutely overlooked by the scientific community. It is quite simple to prove that absolutely all internally consistent explanations of absolutely any conceivable collection of facts is perfectly represented by the following rather concise mathematical expression: [latex]\left \{\sum _i\vec{\alpha_i}\cdot\vec{\nabla_i}+\sum_{i\neq j}\beta_{ij}\delta(\vec x_i-\vec x_j) \right \}\Psi = \frac{\partial \;}{\partial t}\Psi=im\Psi[/latex] The issue standing behind that expression is the fact that our knowledge, from which we deduce our explanations, can not consist of an infinite body of facts. This is an issue modern scientists have absolutely no interest in considering (Zeno's paradox has been ignored for almost three thousand years). My analysis effectively uncovers some deep and significant implications of the fact that human understanding is built on a finite collection of knowledge. Note also entire collection of languages ever spoken by mankind is also a construct based on a finite number of concepts. Normal scientific analysis of any problem invariably ignores the issue of learning (and understanding) the language in which the problem is expressed. Large collections of concepts are presumed to be understood by intuition or implicit meanings long before any thought is put into the issue. One should comprehend that they can not even begin to discuss the logic of such an analysis with a new born baby. In fact I suspect a newborn can not even have any meaningful thoughts before creating some concepts to identify their experiences. The central issue of my deduction is the fact that once one has come up with a theoretical explanation of any phenomena (that is, created a mental model of their understandings of the relevant experiences) the number of concepts they use to think about the issue is finite (it may be quite large but must nonetheless be finite). Any idiot should be capable of comprehending that, being a finite collection, a simple list of the relevant concepts could be created, at least in the abstract. (Think about the total collection of all libraries, museums and other intellectual properties together with an inventory log of the entire collection of facts.) Once one has that inventory log, numerical labels may be given each and every log entry. Using those numerical labels, absolutely every conceivable circumstance which can be discussed may be represented with the notation [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]. Note that learning a language is exactly the process of establishing the meaning of such a collection from your experiences. Anyone who had at their disposal all of the circumstances they have experienced expressed in the form [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] could use that data to construct the meaning of each and every [latex]x_i[/latex] as that is exactly what learning a language is all about. I would like to point out that, just because people think they are speaking the same language does not mean their concepts are semantically identical. Each of them possess what they think is the meaning of each specified concept. What is important here is that "what they think those meanings are" was deduced from their own experiences; i.e., what they know is the sum total of their experiences (that finite body of facts referred to above by my notation [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]). The above circumstance leads to one very basic an undeniable fact. If one has solved the problem (that is, created a consistent mental model of their experiences) then they can express those beliefs in a very simple abstract form: [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] which can be defined to be the probability that the specific circumstance represented by [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is true. In essence, if they had an opinion as to the truth of the represented circumstances, the collection of relevant probabilities [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] could be thought of as representing their explanation of the relevant circumstance [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]. It is at this point that a single, most significant, observation can be made (perhaps not by the unthinking idiot who moved this thread to "Speculation"). Those labels, [latex]x_i[/latex], are absolutely arbitrary. If any specific number is added to each and every numerical label [latex]x_i[/latex] in the entire defined log, nothing whatsoever changes in the patterns of experiences from which the solution was deduced. In other words the following expression is absolutely valid for any possible solution representing any possible explanation (what is ordinarily referred to as one's belief in the nature of reality itself) so long as that explanation is internally consistent; i.e., [latex]\lim_{\Delta a \rightarrow 0}\frac{P(x_1+a+\Delta a,x_2+a+\Delta a,x_n+a+\Delta a)-P(x_1+a,x_2+a,x_n+a)}{\Delta a}\equiv 0.[/latex] What is important here is that, if this were a mathematical expression, it would be exactly the definition of the derivative of [math]P(x_1+a,x_2+a,\cdots,x_n+a)[/math] with respect to a. If [math]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math] were indeed a mathematical expression the above derivative would lead directly to the constraint that [latex]\sum_{i=1}^n\frac{\partial\;}{\partial x_i}P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)\equiv 0.[/latex] (That result arises from the simple fact that [latex]\frac{\partial x_i}{\partial a}=1[/latex] in absolutely all cases.) However, it should be evident to anyone trained in mathematics that the expression defined above above still does not satisfy the definition of a mathematical expression for a number of reasons. The reader should comprehend that there are two very significant issues which must be handled before even continuing this deduction. First, the numerical labels [math]x_i[/math] are not variables (they are fixed numerical labels) and second, the actual number "n" of concepts labeled by those [math]x_i[/math] required to represent a specific circumstance of interest is not fixed in any way. (Consider representing a description of some circumstance in some language; the number of words required to express that circumstance can not be a fixed number for all possible circumstances.) The rest of my deduction is devoted to handling all the issues related to transforming the above derivative representation into a valid mathematical function. To begin with, any attempt to handle the two issues just brought up above will bring up additional issues which must be handled very carefully. The single most important point in that extension of the analysis is making sure that no possible explanation is omitted in the final representation: i.e., if there exist explanations which can not be represented by the transformed representation the representation has to be erroneous. There is another very important aspect of the above representation. Though the number of experiences standing behind the proposed expression [latex]P(x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex] is finite, the number of possibilities to be represented by the explanation must be infinite (the probability of truth must be representable for all conceivable circumstances [latex](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/latex]. There are a number of other serious issues to handle before the above can be transformed into a mathematical expression. If anyone here possesses the intellect to comprehend the above let them start a non-speculative thread to cover the discussion. And oh yes, years ago I submitted a presentation to arXiv which was simply rejected with no comments as I was categorized as not a publishing scientist! Have fun guys -- Dick

In 1947, George Gamow published a book called "One, Two, Three … Infinity". His book became available a short time after my father's discharge from the Army following WWII. My father had a strong interest in Science Fiction and sometimes bought books mentioned in the books he read. As the war had been ended via the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan and credited to Einstein's E=mc^2, he had an interest in understanding what it was all about. At any rate, he purchased Gamow's book. I don't think my father had much of an understanding of the presentation as he never talked about it. I was about nine years old when I first saw that book. At the time, I was interested in what this "relativity" thing was all about and read what I could (though I understood very little of most of it). One thing central to Gamow' discussion of relativity was his discussion of two people measuring the speed of light (one on the ground next to a railroad track and the other on board a train moving down the track). Gamow made it quite clear that they should get different answers because of a problem setting the correct time for the reflection at the other end of the measured path. He pointed out that both parties could easily make the erroneous assumption that they were at rest and thus their relative velocities should generate differences in their measurements. He also brought up the fact that scientists had tried to use that situation to measure the speed of the earth through space: i.e., by looking for directional variations in c due to exactly the problem mentioned above (see the Michelson-Morley experiment). They obtained zero for the earth's velocity. In essence it amounted to experimental verification that the measurable velocity of light was a constant independent of the motion of the experimentalists coordinate system. That assumption that they were at rest would give the correct experimental answer. Of course, it was clear that such an experimental result was simply inconsistent with the newtonian picture of physical dynamics. According to Gamow, Einstein's "space time continuum" solved the problem. So I will give you my interpretation of Gamow's explanation as I saw it at the time. Remember, I was an ignorant child. The first issue Gamow brought up was the idea that we lived in a four dimensional universe, not the simple three dimensional universe we perceived. Now I knew nothing of geometry but I did comprehend the "three" different directions being discussed. To me they were essentially forward and backwards, right and left and up and down. I think he used the word "orthogonal' together with his explanation. At the time, I had no knowledge of geometry to speak of. Now Gamow added a fourth axis "orthogonal" to those three well understood directions. He called that fourth axis time and asserted that it was imaginary. Now, at the time, I had utterly no concept of imaginary numbers (I also had no idea as to what a square root was so the square root of minus one was totally meaningless expression.) In my child's mind, imaginary simply meant I couldn't see it. In my mind he was essentially asserting that reality was four dimensional structure though we could only see three of them. I saw it as related to Socrates' "shadows on the wall". I suspect Gamow must have mentioned Socrates idea as I clearly remember associating it with that unobservable dimension. AT any rate, I understood the idea that our understanding arises from limited knowledge of reality and is thus analogous to trying to figure out what is happening when the only information available are shadows projected on a wall. At any rate, I used that idea as the explanation of our inability to see that fourth axis; in my mind that four dimensional universe was simply being projected in the time direction onto the three dimensional world we could see. Now shadow projection was easy for me to understand. As children, we often used lamps to project our hands on the wall and could make those shadows look like dogs, birds, bats and other things that they certainly were not. As I said, I couldn't picture a four dimensional geometry but it was quite easy to just leave out the "x" axis and picture a three dimensional universe (y, z and t) where the "t" axis was being projected out yielding a two dimensional (y,z) shadow universe. That circumstance was easy to picture in my mind and it was easy to comprehend the consequences of such a projection. First of all, in my head. the units of measure in the direction of t should actually be the same as the measures on the other axis. As far as I saw it, we clearly used a different measure as, because it was being projected out, we had no means of measuring it. It seemed clear to me that, since reality was actually four dimensional, everything was moving in both space and time. And quite clearly two entities could only interact when they were at the same position in that four dimensional space; i.e., at the same place and at the same time. It absolutely followed that when two entities interacted in that actual four dimensional universe they also had to be in the same position in the three dimensional shadow universe. Clearly, if an entity was at rest in the shadow universe, it meant that (in the actual four dimensional universe) it must be moving directly in the "t" direction. If an entity was not at rest in the shadow universe, it meant it had some motion in a direction orthogonal to the "t" direction in the actual four dimensional universe. In my head, the correct measurement in the "t" direction should be exactly the same as measurements in the other directions. As I saw it, hours, minutes and seconds were being used for changes it time only because we couldn't actually measure "t' distances because of the projection. Clearly, the fastest motion in the shadow universe had to occur when that motion was orthogonal to the "t" direction. Since things were clearly moving in the time direction it seemed to me that, if the velocity of light was the fastest velocity and thus orthogonal to the "t" direction, things at rest should be seen as moving at the velocity c in a direction parallel to the "t" direction: i.e., every second they would move 186,000 miles in the t direction. However, since the "t" direction was being projected out, where an entity was (in the "t" direction) was totally unknowable. Furthermore, as it's velocity orthogonal to the time direction could be changed by interactions, it's rate of travel in the "t" direction could change from time to time. That picture yields some very interesting effects. Photons are clearly not moving in the time direction (since clocks measure change in time, if you could put a clock on a photon it would read the same at both ends of it's path). If you accelerate something at rest in the shadow universe, you are actually adding a component of velocity orthogonal to "t" in the actual four dimensional universe thus, (if it is indeed moving at c through that universe) it's velocity changes direction and not actual magnitude. In essence, it's velocity in the "t" direction is less and a clock mounted on that entity would appear to run slower. In fact, if you think about it a bit, you will realize that you get exactly the effects predicted by Einstein's special theory of relativity including the increase in mass as seen when an object acquires relativistic velocities. That is a direct consequence of the fact that force is defined as what is required to change the velocity by a fixed amount. Since all we can actually do here is change the direction of that velocity in the actual four dimensional universe, adding a fixed change in velocity in the shadow universe becomes impossible. As the path becomes close to being orthogonal to the t axis: i.e., even an infinite force can only make a small change in that velocity. That fact is presumed to indicate mass increasing towards infinity. At any rate, I thought I understood relativity when I was ten years old. Now, prior to 1956 relativity wasn't even mentioned in high school physics. Thus I presumed my view of relativity was correct until Einstein's special relativity was brought up in a college physics. It was clear to me immediately that my explanation was a totally incorrect presentation of Einstein's thoughts. On the other hand I was quite surprised that the mathematical results of my picture gave exactly the same answers as his theory. That issue so interested me that I almost always did every problem I had to work out from both perspectives. My picture was so much simpler than his that it was as easy to work out both pictures as it was to work out his prediction. In my whole life I have never found a circumstance where the two pictures gave different results. By the time I graduated from college, I was actually quite astounded by the fact that both approaches always gave exactly the same answers. I knew that my explanation had to be wrong because I could come up with no mechanism for that projection I had presumed existed. Even after I got into graduate school, I continued to use my representation as it was so much easier and quicker than his. I could get the answers a lot quicker and the equations looked a lot like his so, unless explaining the procedure was important, I didn't bother with his attack. But I was nonetheless continually bothered by the fact that I could not come up with an explanation for that projection. I think it was in 1966, my second semester in graduate school, that I took a class which introduced quantum mechanics. Back in those days, quantum was not brought up in undergraduate physics (at least not where I went to school anyway). It was within the first couple of weeks that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was brought up. That was the fact that the product of the uncertainty in position times the uncertainty in momentum of an entity could not be zero. This is commonly written [latex]\Delta x \Delta p_x\geq \frac{h}{2\pi}[/latex] where "h" is the "Heisenberg constant". My immediate reaction was, "my god, there is the projection mechanism!" If the momentum in the "t" direction is quantized (that is, there is zero uncertainty in [latex]p_t[/latex]) the uncertainty in the "t" position has to be infinite! Since momentum and kinetic energy are, by conventional definition, proportional to half the relevant entities velocity, [latex]\frac{1} {2}mv^2 \rightarrow mv \frac{v}{2}[/latex] , it should be clear that quantized momentum in the "t" direction can be seen as mass and the uncertainty in actual "t" is infinite. Clearly light, which is moving in a direction orthogonal to "t", must have zero momentum in the "t" direction: i.e., photons are massless entities. I was so excited about that realization that, after class, I went to the professor teaching that class and explained my view of special relativity to him. It took three hours before he finally agreed that my view did indeed yield all the standard consequences of special relativity. His position was nonetheless that my presentation was of no interest, as I had not reproduced the consequences of general relativity which was directly built on Einstein's concept of the fabric of "space time". He further insisted that I not show it to any of the other graduate students as "it would just confuse them". Since, at the time, I had no understanding of general relativity, I couldn't argue with him on that issue. Essentially he held that, even though it gave all the correct answers for special relativity, I couldn't possibly be correct. He also made it quite clear that he had no interest in thinking about the issue. A side comment here, very few graduate students (or college professors) I have met have even bothered to learn general relativity. By 1970 I had extended my picture to something which covered all possibilities but I could not solve the resulting equation. Anyway I received my Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Vanderbilt University on January 19th, 1971. (My thesis consisted of a theoretical scattering calculation for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.) I learned that experimentalists do experiments and theoreticians calculate the supposed results presuming the theories are correct -- no one thinks about theories. By that time I was pretty well disappointed in the physics community and ended up earning my living outside the field. I still thought about things and, around 1980, discovered a perturbation attack which yielded solutions to that equation. I presently feel that my attack is far superior to the accepted relativistic theory and that the conflict between quantum mechanics and relativity theory is entirely due to Einstein's invalid perception of the problem. But I can not obtain professional publication. Physics journals assert that what I am presenting is philosophy and of no interest to physicists, the philosophy journals assert that what I am presenting is mathematics and of no interest to philosophers and, finally, mathematicians tell me what I am presenting is physics and of no interest to them (there is no math above undergraduate level in my presentation). I suspect none of the editors could find a referee competent to review my work. So I post to physics forums in hopes that someone on earth might find what I have discovered interesting. It appears there is no interest here either! If anyone has any interest in understanding me, please let me know. Have fun -- Dick

Well, no responses but a decent number of views. I will take it that some people are interested. I like a comment made by tar in post #41 of the closed thread “Is philosophy relevant to science”: The real beauty of this representation is the fact that the supposed language plays no role in the problem at all: i.e., this means that any generalization which can be made from this representation applies even to issues not yet thought of. It is possible that future views of the universe might very well be quite different from those we currently hold. That is simply not an issue; the communications of those views could still be represented in the notation [math](x_1,x_2,\cdots,x_n)[/math]. Oh, as an aside, I have left the number of numbers in that representation finite. That will turn out to be a very important factor. It arises directly from the definition of “infinite”. If the number of elements in a collection is infinite then it follows that, no matter how many you have considered, you have not finished considering them. Essentially, all communications must be finite in extent. Note that this does not require that the concepts being communicated are finite but merely that the number of elements used to communicate the issues be finite. If anyone has any complaints with what I have said so far, let me know; I will try to clarify anything you find difficult to understand. And, DrRocket, I am already well aware of your brilliant and insightful comprehension of my work and the detailed proof reading you have made of my earlier posts so it really serves no useful purpose for you to comment further. I wholly appreciate all the hard work you have already done. Thank you for your kind support. Have fun -- Dick

(The following has been corrected for typo errors in the original)

You guys should be asking "thinking - how does it work?' So then, why don't we do that? Now this seems to be an excellent starting point. We should not go adding to the difficulty by presuming beliefs built by that process. That attack is clearly not analytical: i.e., not something we can logically discuss. Let's get back to the underlying issue; exactly what do we mean by “thinking” and, can we formulate a logical solution embodying that final answer? I say the answer is yes! Now I think your comment is quite on point. It just doesn't provide a lot to work with. Ah, trust! But aren't you just adding to the difficulty by presuming beliefs built by the process? In other words, it seems to me that you are simply avoiding the original issue. That serves no purpose at all. Oh, I would differ with you; I think there is a major shortage of real skeptics! In my old age, I have come to the conclusion that “belief” is a totally unnecessary philosophical concept. As Bertrand Russell once said, “most people would rather die than think”. (I may have paraphrased that, but he did say something like that.) In fact, conscious analysis is not really a necessary aspect of success at all. I have known many successful people who never gave even the first thought to logical analysis of anything. But I am a rather strange person and perhaps I should tell you a little about myself. When I was three years old, I witnessed an argument my father had with my aunt's husband concerning aliens from outer space. (It was always quite clear to me that my father had utterly no respect for my uncle.) When my uncle left, slamming the door as he went, my father turned to me and said, "anyone who believes more than ten percent of what he hears, or more than fifty percent of what he reads, or more than ninety percent of what he sees with his own eyes is gullible!" At the time, I had no idea as to what percent was nor what the word gullible meant but the comment was none the less absolutely engraved on my mind in every detail, never to be forgotten. The one thing I knew is that I didn't want to be one (at the time I think I had the impression it was a birth defect of some sort that required absolute disrespect). My dad's comment may have had more impact on my life than any other experience I ever had. My single biggest worry has always been, "just how does one determine what one is supposed to believe?" I have to add to that the fact that adults just love to "pull kids legs". When I would catch them at it, they were always delighted. As a consequence, long before I even began school, I came to believe adults always lied to kids. I never saw it as malicious but rather presumed it as training not to be gullible (and, believe me, I was firmly convinced that I was indeed gullible; a problem I made every effort to hide). I simply could not tell when I was being told the truth and when I was being lied to. Now, all children like to think they are grown up and so did I. By the time I was five or six, I stopped openly catching adults in their bullshit: I began to pretend I believed everything they said (just like a real adult). Oh, I didn't act on it but I certainly didn't tell them when I thought what they said was bullshit. My mother once told me one learns a lot more by listening than they do by talking. Oh, she also told me that if I did something which I really felt was right but turned out to be wrong, I could be forgiven; however, if I ever did something which I myself felt was wrong, that was unforgivable so I always went with what felt like the right thing to do (I never made an attempt to justify it). I think she was a very intelligent person. I only brought this up to explain something about the way I lived my life and what I have to add to this thread. I thought about things all the time but I absolutely never thought out what I was supposed to do. What I always did was to "go with my gut!" All my life, I have never made decisions based on logic applied to my beliefs (because I had no idea as to what I was supposed believe, other than my gut instincts); I have always simply done what seemed to be the right thing to do emotionally. In essence I just turned control of my actions over to my subconscious. I think that was, to a great extent, exactly what padren meant by pragmatic living in his opening post and why I think what I have to say is worth listening to. I lived my life as an unthinking thoughtless entity while, at the same time, always trying to figure out how to determine what should and shouldn't be believed. Before I got to High School, the only subject I was good at was mathematics. That subject (as taught) made it quite clear, what is and is not to be believed. But, as practically every thoughtful person says, mathematics has nothing to do with reality. That is why I ended up in Physics. Physicists seemed to be the only people who provided any way to test their beliefs. I ended up with a Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from Vanderbilt University. One problem I had was that, by the time I got into graduate school, they ceased providing tests for their beliefs. As Mr Skeptic said above, when people with good credentials accepted things, we were expected to believe them (in spite of the fact that, time after time throughout history, the authorities were shown to be wrong). Believing them began to get difficult if not impossible. It is now my opinion that the source of the difficulty is belief itself. Belief is the single most potent corrupter of intellectual analysis which exists. I now find it clear that "belief" is simply not necessary in order to solve the problem confronting us. It turns out that the solution is simply sitting there in mathematics. Mathematics could, in fact, be defined to be the invention and study of internally consistent concepts. That is why physicists have consistently contributed to mathematics time after time. Our view of reality is supposed to be a collection of internally consistent concepts so, every time a scientist comes up with a new set of useful internally consistent concepts, the mathematicians adopt a representation of those concepts into their field. It follows directly that, if and when a solution is found, it will be expressible in mathematics. I have found a solution and it turns out that asking the right question is the key to the difficulty. If you ask the right question and approach the possibilities without any prejudice of belief (i.e., making sure no possibility is omitted), the solution will unravel itself. The solution is to define exactly what we mean by “understanding”. If anyone is really interested in seeing how such a thing rolls out, I will explain exactly what I am talking about. I am of the opinion that it is a serious answer to the question, "thinking - how does it work?' It is probably also a major clue to real AI. Oh, by the way, I think it is quite evident that the mental view one possesses of reality is clearly acquired via “practical thinking” not by analytical analysis: i.e., babies simply display no expertise at analytical analysis. Furthermore, you should note that “beliefs” are an acquired thing; children are not born with “beliefs”. Think about that for a moment. It implies that understanding (at least initially) is acquired in the complete absence of beliefs. If you want to be rational, you should at least give me the opportunity to express what I have discovered. Have fun -- Dick

Been a while since I posted here but thought I might look around again. I actually have a Ph.D. in Theoretical Nuclear Physics from Vanderbilt University. I posted this thread because I wanted to see if there was anyone here who understood things at that level. I am afraid that is not Dirac's equation; Oh it looks a lot like Dirac's equation (and it is relatively easy to show Dirac's equation is an approximation to it) but there are important differences with profound consequences. Apparently there is no one here capable of comprehending the consequences of those subtle differences. One exact solution I discovered leads to a rather significant geometric proof. Also shown is an interesting corollary consisting of the fact that three (and only three) such projections can be made on three orthogonal axes thus a three dimensional collection of absolutely arbitrary points can always be seen as a projection of that same trivial n dimensional structure. It follows that any collective motion of such a collection of points can be seen as a projection of that trivial structure under complex rotation in that n dimensional space. Another post which seems to have gone totally over everyone's head. Have fun -- Dick

Just out of pure curiosity, can anyone here give me any advice on the problem of solving the following differential equation [math]\left\{\sum_i \vec{\alpha}_i \cdot \nabla_i + \sum_{i neq j}\beta_{ij}\delta(x_i -x_j)\delta(\tau_i - \tau_j) \right\}\vec{\psi} = K\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\vec{\psi} = iKm\vec{\psi}.[/math] where, [math][\alpha_{ix} , \alpha_{jx}] \equiv \alpha_{ix} \alpha_{jx} + \alpha_{jx}\alpha_{ix} = \delta_{ij}[/math] [math][\alpha_{i\tau} , \alpha_{j\tau}] = \delta_{ij}[/math] [math][\beta_{ij} , \beta_{kl}] = \delta_{ik}\delta_{jl}[/math] [math][\alpha_{ix}, \beta_{kl}]=[\alpha_{i\tau}, \beta_{kl}] = 0 \text{ where } \delta_{ij} = \left\{\begin{array}{ c c } 0, & \text{ if } i \neq j \\ 1, & \text{ if } i=j \end{array} \right. [/math] Any advice on approaching this problem would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!

Well, then let me know what part you disagree with. It certainly cannot be the second paragraph as all I am doing there is telling you what I mean when I use the word “explanation” you certainly can’t contend that I am lying to you,. So you must be disagreeing with my assertion that a difference exists between the value of an explanation and the existence of an explanation. If you are referring to something else, you need to clarify your intentions. I can not make heads or tails of the rest of your post. To contest, is to disagree with! So you are saying that you cannot have random within parameters: i.e., there is no such thing as a random selection from a defined set? That seems to me to be a position quite at odds with the common understanding of the word “random”. But you then say, “but it`s still non the less Random.” I have utterly no idea as to what you are trying to say. The only thing I can grasp from this is that you are simply asserting that reality is not random. That has absolutely nothing to do with the question, “what would an explanation of the universe look like if the universe were absolutely and unconditionally random”. I take this comment to be an assertion that the universe is not totally random and that my failure to accept that as a fact is an abomination to science: i.e., you certainly are opposed to thinking about it. And yet you want to continue your pontification about Ockham's Razor VS Randomness. Now Ockham’s Razor has to do with simplicity and if there exists any hypothesis simpler than “it is just random”, I am unaware of it. And yet the entire scientific community utterly refuses to examine the consequences of such a hypothesis. I am just dumfounded by their absolute belief that examination of such a thing cannot possibly be of any value. It is exactly the same as the medieval scholars refusing to consider a thesis omitting God. Have fun -- Dick

You are in error! I can give you a very simple explanation of anything you wish: i.e., "That is what the gods desired!" Now I am not being silly there. I am making the point that you are speaking of the value of an explanation, not the existence of an explanation. They are quite different issues. Essentially I hold that "an explanation" is something which provides you with expectations (take that as my definition of an explanation: i.e., it is what I mean when I use the word "explanation"). If the universe is totally random, then your expectation should be "anything can happen" and there exist a number of explanations which yield exactly that result. Now my question was very specific, what would you expect an explanation of the universe to look like if that universe were totally random? So you refuse to even think about the matter? If I gave you a specific explanation (i.e., a specific method which would yield an exact match to everything you had ever experienced) consistent with your known past (no matter what that past was), you would not consider that a valid explanation of a totally random universe? I am ready to do that, in detail, if you are willing to examine each logical step objectively. Have fun -- Dick