Difference between revisions of "A Portal Special Presentation- Geometric Unity: A First Look"

<p>[00:00:47] I thought that this was probably the best time to launch an idea that I've been playing with for years. And that idea is that it is dangerous to have a world in which we are afraid to talk about what we think is true. When I think about what happened during the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I find that we were, in general, intimidated from sharing our fears about the virus.

<p>[00:01:12] We were told that if we wore masks, that we were acting in a peculiar fashion. If we refuse to shake hands, that we were behaving in a strange and unpleasant social way. We did not want to be alarmist. We did not want to be seen as Chicken Little, and in fact, it was extremely important that we not be seen as xenophobic, given that the outbreak was originating in Wuhan, China.

<p>[00:01:36] In fact, perhaps the most dangerous idea was that this outbreak might've been connected to some research being done in a lab, perhaps a bioweapons lab. We really don't know where this epidemic began. What is the etiology of something that is causing me entire world economy to effectively shut down?

<p>[00:01:55] What I believe is that that silence has been deadly. We have many people who have now lost their lives because we did not feel free to exchange ideas to think and to talk. And, in fact, many of the people who warned us first were the freest members of society having been previously canceled by standard mainstream institutions and their associated media.

<p>[00:02:17] So what I thought would be important for an April Fool's Day that no one wants to actually participate in was to deal with an idea that maybe one day a year we should all be free to share crazy ideas that are going around between our ears and in our head. We're having conversations with ourselves wondering, "Is anyone else seeing the same thing that I'm seeing?"

<p>[00:03:56] As I've discussed before on the program, I believe that this has a singular etiology. That is that because of Embedded Growth Obligations coming from the previous era of unsustainable post-war growth from about 1945 to 1971-73, something like that, we built in expectations to our system that cannot currently be met.

<p>[00:04:37] There is not the wherewithal to continue many of our programs because we do not actually have the ability to continue to simply grow our way out, at least so far. So what's today's program about? Well, I thought that what I would do is to let go of something that I've been keeping pretty close for I think about 37 years. When I was around, um, 19, I started. It's hard to talk about it.  

<p>[00:05:37] It is effectively equivalent to saying, I'm interested in perpetual motion machines. Or that I have a private cure for cancer that I'm trying on rabbits in my backyard. However, I actually think that it's important to fess up, because that's exactly what this is. Now in my situation. Um, I have an extremely unusual history and I really don't want to get bogged down in all of the things that happened while I was a student trying to develop this theory, because it is not a particularly happy story.

<p>[00:07:25] Now, why is that? Well, many people confuse a Theory of Everything as if they imagine that it's a theory in which you can compute every eventuality. And it is absolutely not that, because the computational power is very different than the question of whether or not the rules are effectively given. I've analogized it to a game of chess.

<p>[00:07:46] And knowing all of the rules is equivalent to a theory of everything. Knowing how to play chess well is an entirely different question. But in the case of a [[Theory of Everything]], or a unified field theory, if you will, many people also take it to be an answer to the question, why is there something rather than nothing?

<p>[00:08:05] And I don't think that this is in fact, what a Theory of Everything is meant to be either. Now, why is that? Well, because I believe at some level it is impossible for most of us to imagine, an airtight argument, mathematically speaking, which coaxes out of an absolute void, a something. However, there's a different question which I think might actually animate us and which is the right question to ask of a potential candidate [theory].

<p>[00:08:35] And that is, how does one get everything from almost nothing? In the MC Escher drawing or lithograph "Hands Drawing Hands" or "Drawing Hands" what we see is that the paper is presupposed. That is, if you could imagine a theory of everything, it would be like saying, if I posit the paper, can the paper will the ink into being such that the ink gives rise to the pens and the pens draw the hands, which in fact, manipulate the pens to use the ink?

<p>[00:09:07] That kind of a problem is one which is of a very different character than everything that has gone before. It is also, in my opinion, an explanation of why the physics community has been stalled for nearly 50 years since around 1973, when the standard model was intellectually in place.  

<p>[00:09:26] Now consider this. We have never had, in modern times a drought where no person working in pure fundamental theory has taken a trip to Stockholm, just as a rough indicator, for contributing to the Standard Model. No one, in my opinion, since let's see, [[Frank Wilczek]], who was born in 1951, no one born after that time has, in fact, contributed to the [[Standard Model]] in a clear and profound way.

<p>[00:09:54] That is not to say that no work has been done, but for the most part, the current generation of physicists has for more than 40 years and almost 50 years remained stagnant within the standard paradigm of physics, which is positing theories that are then verified by experiment. Now, my belief, which is relatively radical, is that there is no way to get to our final destination using the tools that have gotten us to where we are now.

<p>[00:10:21] In other words, what got you here cannot get you there. And in particular, one of the biggest problems we have is the political economy of science. We have effectively starved our scientific enterprise for resources creating a dire and cutthroat competition, which has completely deranged the scientific tradition.

<p>[00:10:43] And so one of the things that's going to happen in this lecture is that I'm simply going to announce that I have broken, and have broken for many years with just about every expectation of standard science. That is not to say that the equations or the style of presentation is going to be foreign.

<p>[00:10:58] Quite the contrary. I have every intention of writing up some results, in standard terminology, wherever possible, using a popular mathematical type-setting programs. But it goes far deeper than that. My belief is that what we've created is a career structure, a journal structure, and employment structure, and access structure that cannot possibly complete the job.

<p>[00:11:49] And I believe that that's exactly what's been going on through the so-called string theory revolutions one, two, and perhaps three. Now, in that case, what happened was a theory became fixed in the minds of really the Baby Boom generation of physicists, because it allowed for infinite elaboration within a mathematical or more particularly, a geometric context.

<p>[00:12:14] And those supposedly physicists spent their time submitting papers to what's called the high energy section of the so-called preprint [[arXiv]]. But in fact, most of these papers have nothing to do with high energy physics (HEP) whatsoever. And if you're looking for the designation, it's hep-th, high energy physics dash theory.

<p>[00:12:36] Now, if you look through those papers, they don't seem to have much to do with particles. They don't seem to have to do with forces and spacetime. They seem to have to do with very strange and obscure mathematical issues. And in the years since the string theory program got particularly reanimated, I guess that would be around 1984 with the [[anomaly cancellation]] of [[Green]] and [[Schwarz]], what you'll find is that physics became very active and simultaneously ground to a halt. It failed to remain a physical subject. It became something like a medieval quest for the number of angels to dance on the head of a pin. Now, in this circumstance, I think it's very important to realize that this is not a paper, and we are not submitting to the arXiv.

<p>[00:13:21] In fact, the arXiv requires people who are not employed at universities to get permission from some member of the community, which is called an endorsement, which I find absolutely insulting and I refuse to go along with. Furthermore, we are expected to cite papers sometimes which are behind paywalls.

<p>[00:14:26] Now. Why was that? It was because they had decided that they needed to transfer a trillion dollars over 10 years, and that they had found a devious way of doing it, which is to adjust the CPI by backing out the amount of adjustment needed to get a trillion dollars. They decided that a 1.1% overstatement in the CPI would cause a reduction in entitlements, that is, Medicare and Medicaid payments together with Social Security, as well as an increase in taxes, because tax brackets are also indexed. Now, to my mind, it is absolutely unconscionable to say that you have a right to transfer wealth cryptically by adjusting a fundamental barometer. That would be like saying, in order to meet our global warming targets, we have to recalibrate all the thermometers to show that, in fact, things have cooled.

<p>[00:15:18] One simply can't do that in science. But Tyler's response, I found it was very interesting. His perspective was that this was, in fact, not a terrible thing because it was "directionally correct". And in general, he believed that because the CPI should be considered overstated that this was not the world's most terrible thing to do as an economist.

<p>[00:15:41] I respect Tyler a great deal and I enjoy his company, but I have to say that I am absolutely of a different opinion. My belief is that one has no rights and no ability as a scientist to fudge the data to meet social goals in this fashion. Another interesting interaction was the interaction with Professor [[Agnes Callard]] of the University of Chicago.

<p>[00:16:05] Now, when she listened to [[episode 19]] about [[Bret Weinstein]], she found that it was a very compelling episode, but strangely, even though the point of the episode was to surface Bret's long forgotten theory, because Bret had not been acknowledged as having predicted that laboratory mice would in particular have radically elongated [[telomere]]s where it was thought that all mice had long, radically elongated telomeres which has incredible potential implications for drug testing and all of the work that is done on laboratory, rodents as model organisms.

<p>[00:16:43] This is an episode you should definitely listen to if you haven't already. But Agnes's perspective was very different than mine. Her feeling was that because we were in a situation in which the work actually surfaced, that the system worked, even if it was the case that Bret's name was erased from the history of the development.

<p>[00:17:02] And that his theory was put in a situation in which it was not able to carry the day, because in fact, there was no record of the fact, that a prediction had been made. Now, I disagreed with Agnes on that program vociferously. But what I found was is that it was very telling, in general, our academic population has given up on the previous and quaint idea of decency, propriety, truth, fairness, because there simply isn't [enough] resources for everyone.

<p>[00:17:35] Now, I believe that current science is not necessarily unsalvageable, but it will be unsalvageable if we don't get the very people that I rail against far more money. And I know that's very confusing, but my belief is that the inadequate resources that we have put aside are very similar to the inadequate masks that we have put aside for our doctors.

<p>[00:17:56] We have asked some of the world's most gifted and smartest people to devote their lives to the study of science and technology. And we've inadequately prepared them. We've put their lives and their family's lives under incredible pressures. And what I wished to do is to, in fact, point to the very people who I have been most angry at for years, and say that part of the problem is that we need to take a hard look at how we've invested in science and technology, and give the very people that I'm most angry at more money.

<p>[00:18:26] I will explain more about this later, but I do want to give you an introduction to this episode. What I will be doing is to screen a very unusual and somewhat awkward lecture at the University of Oxford. Now, why is it so awkward? Well, first of all, I had left standard research, perhaps 20 years earlier, almost.  

<p>[00:18:49] Further, I'm not a physicist and I have only taken one or two courses in the physics major sequence. I think I've taken one semester of mechanics. And perhaps I took an advanced general relativity course in college, but in general, no one goes into a theoretical physics department and attempts to lecture physics physicists on physics.

<p>[00:19:11] And why is that? Well, because physics is incredibly demanding, and this is almost certainly the world's most interesting and most accomplished intellectual community. These are guys that don't miss a trick. There are so many things to know and it is such a difficult field that it is effectively almost impossible to contribute from outside.

<p>[00:19:29] Chemists don't do it. And once in a blue moon, mathematicians will attempt to talk about actual real physics. So one thing that you're seeing is a very unusual circumstance where somebody is trying to figure out how to give their first lecture in a physics department. And it concerns the possibility of a theory which attempts to solve the problem of "How does a fire light itself?" Another thing that you'll see is, is that it's relatively difficult to read my handwriting. I'm not gonna make any bones about it. I've been very vocal about having learning differences, [[dysgraphia]], [[dyslexia]], all sorts of different issues.

<p>[00:20:08] Symbols come extremely difficult to me. I don't want to spend this time making excuses. What I do want to say is the following, I will be attempting to record a short PowerPoint presentation for after the lecture to say at least some of what some of the constructions are more clearly. This is not meant to be the actual presentation of the theory.

<p>[00:20:52] You see, a hundred years ago, or perhaps 105 when [[Albert Einstein]] gave us [[General Relativity]], he effectively consigned us for life to the solar system. Why is that? Well, his model, his geometric model of space and time effectively creates a speed limit known as $$c$$ or the speed of light. Now there are three rocks that are at least interesting for habitation by humans, although two of them are marginal -- the moon and Mars -- one of them, of course, is unbelievable the Earth, but I doubt that we're going to be able to steward the Earth through our new godlike powers, which I've called the twin nuclei problem of cell and atom. We've unlocked the power of both, and I don't think we have the wisdom to stay all in one place. So the question that I had was, if there is any ability to escape to the cosmos that we can see in the night sky, where would it come from? We are almost positive that Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity is in some weird way incomplete.

<p>[00:21:50] The [[Schwarzschild singularities]], which give us black holes, and the initial singularities of the [[Friedmann Robertson Walker]] universe, which are associated with the Big Bang, are some clue that there is some subtle flaw in Einstein's theory. So, how to go beyond Einstein? I mean, what Einstein did to [[Newton]] was to recover Newton as a special case of a more general theory that is more flexible.

<p>[00:23:02] What I will say is that I think that [this] theory is the first of its kind that I've seen. I believe that in part, what you will see is that, at a minimum, it is like fool's gold. It appears to explain why we think we see three, three generations, but it also says that perhaps, they aren't really three generations of matter.

 

<p>[00:23:24] Perhaps there are only two. Even though physicists tell us that there are at least three or perhaps more. I believe that physics tells us that the universe is [[chiral]] that is left-right asymmetric, but the theory is itself [is] not chiral. Instead, it chooses to present a different idea, which is that perhaps chirality is emergent much the way our hands are individually left-right asymmetric. As our pinky is not a reflection of our thumb, but the thumb on each hand is a pairing to the other one. As is the pinky. Now, what does that mean? It means that if perhaps there is matter and there is force that is decoupled from our ordinary world that that matter might restore the parity or the chirality.

<p>[00:24:06] Rather it would break the chirality and restore parity between these two halves the matter we see and the matter that is missing. There are a good number of other things that happened in the theory. It replaces spacetime with what I've termed an [[observerse]]. Now an observerse is an unusual gadget in that it's thought of as two separate places where physics takes place connected by a map.

<p>[00:24:32] That means effectively that we are in something like a stadium. There are stands and there is a pitch/playing field that we think we see; [the pitch/playing field] may not in fact be where most of the action is taking place. In fact, not all of the fields live on the same space. So when we see waves and particles dancing around, they may have separate origins in each of the two components of the observerse.

<p>[00:24:56] What I hope to do after this is to gracefully and gradually develop the theory under my leadership. Now, why do I say that? There is a belief in physics, and, in most fields, that the field should behave in a communal fashion. And that people should put forward their ideas and other people should joyously build upon them and that the community should be allowed to name the various accomplishments for whoever they say accomplish those things.

<p>[00:25:29] There's not a way, there's not a way in hell, that I'm letting that happen. My experience with this community is that it simply can't be trusted to behave equitably, given the fact that it is so resource-starved and constrained. People simply do not have the freedom to be generous, kind, and accurate, as to who did what.

<p>[00:25:48] Furthermore, there is an incredible premium on cherry-topping. That is who finished something off is considered bizarrely much more important than who found something to begin with. Imagine you located an island. And you named the island after the first person who could plant the flag on the top of the highest peak.

<p>[00:26:06] This is patently offensive and ridiculous. There's a story, years ago, about how Hilbert almost scooped Einstein by giving the Hilbert action from which Einstein's equations could be recovered. Really. Not a chance. So, if Hilbert came up with the Hilbert action and recovered Einstein's equation, so what?

<p>[00:26:26] I mean the real theory actually takes place in Einstein and Grossmann, before Albert Einstein even works out a lot of the flaws in the original theory. It's about the ideas. It's not about the formulas, and it's not about racing to the final form. Now, I know that the community won't agree with that, but think about this.

<p>[00:26:45] What I'm doing is taking an incredible risk. I'm addressing you here on April Fool's Day. And I'm saying that if there is a fool, it is certainly me because I have sat on this theory for almost 40 years. Now, I've never known. Is it true? Is it false? It's impossible to tell when you're only talking to yourself, but in this situation, what I've done is I've taken a tremendous amount of risk, and now I'm trying to share it with you.

<p>[00:27:11] Hopefully I know that. Well, Newton did his greatest work when he was sheltering from a great plague in England, and I would like to think that, perhaps whether or not this is correct, simply the act of somebody trying earnestly to share hope and some path forward would be uplifting. Now, under the worst circumstances, if this doesn't work?

<p>[00:27:45] "What do I think" is the question I'm asked frequently and there are two things that I'll say. Many years ago, around 1987, I put forward some equations that I thought might become my thesis at the Harvard department of mathematics. And they were disallowed for a variety of reasons. Those equations were later discovered in, I believe 1994 and I sat in a lecture in which I saw these equations go up on a board, the very end at MIT.