Believe me, I sympathize. You are in possession of a truly incredible breakthrough that offers the prospect of changing the very face of science as we know it, if not more. The only problem is, you’re coming at things from an unorthodox perspective. Maybe your findings don’t fit comfortably with people’s preconceived notions, or maybe you don’t have the elaborate academic credentials that established scientists take for granted. Perhaps you have been able to construct a machine that produces more energy than it consumes, using only common household implements; or maybe you’ve discovered a hidden pattern within the Fibonacci sequence that accurately predicts the weight that a top quark would experience on Ganymede, expressed in femtonewtons; or it might be that you’ve elaborated upon an alternative explanation for the evolution of life on Earth that augments natural selection by unspecified interventions from a vaguely-defined higher power. Whatever the specifics, the point is that certain kinds of breakthroughs just aren’t going to come from a hide-bound scholastic establishment; they require the fresh perspective and beginner’s mind that only an outsider genius (such as yourself) can bring to the table.
Yet, even though science is supposed to be about being open-minded, and there’s so much that we don’t understand about how the universe works, it’s still hard for outsiders to be taken seriously. Instead, you run up against stuffy attitudes like this:
If there are any new Einsteins out there with a correct theory of everything all LaTeXed up, they should feel quite willing to ask me for an endorsement for the arxiv; I’d be happy to bask in the reflected glory and earn a footnote in their triumphant autobiography. More likely, however, they will just send their paper to Physical Review, where it will be accepted and published, and they will become famous without my help.
If, on the other hand, there is anyone out there who thinks they are the next Einstein, but really they are just a crackpot, don’t bother; I get things like that all the time. Sadly, the real next-Einsteins only come along once per century, whereas the crackpots are far too common.
And that last part is sadly true. There is a numbers game that is working against you. You are not the only person from an alternative perspective who purports to have a dramatic new finding, and here you are asking established scientists to take time out from conventional research to sit down and examine your claims in detail. Of course, we know that you really do have a breakthrough in your hands, while those people are just crackpots. But how do you convince everyone else? All you want is a fair hearing.
Scientists can’t possibly pay equal attention to every conceivable hypothesis, they would literally never do anything else. Whether explicitly or not, they typically apply a Bayesian prior to the claims that are put before them. Purported breakthroughs are not all treated equally; if something runs up against their pre-existing notions of how the universe works, they are much less likely to pay it any attention. So what does it take for the truly important discoveries to get taken seriously?
Happily, we are here to help. It would be a shame if the correct theory to explain away dark matter or account for the origin of life were developed by someone without a conventional academic position, who didn’t really take a lot of science classes in college and didn’t have a great math background but was always interested in the big questions, only for that theory to be neglected because of some churlish prejudice. So we would like to present a simple checklist of things that alternative scientists should do in order to get taken seriously by the Man. And the good news is, it’s only three items! How hard can that be, really? True, each of the items might require a nontrivial amount of work to overcome. Hey, nobody ever said that being a lonely genius was easy.
So let’s begin at the beginning:
1. Acquire basic competency in whatever field of science your discovery belongs to.
In other words, “get to know what is already known.” If you have a new theory that unites all the forces, make sure you have mastered elementary physics, and grasp the basics of quantum field theory and particle physics. If you’ve built a perpetual-motion machine, make sure you possess a thorough grounding in mechanical and electrical engineering, and are pretty familiar with the First Law of Thermodynamics. If you can explain the cosmological redshift without invoking an expanding universe, make sure you know general relativity and have mastered the basics of modern cosmology and astrophysics.
Just as an example, if fundamental physics is your bailiwick, Gerard ‘t Hooft has put together a list of subjects you should get under your belt, complete with bibliography! Many of them are online lecture notes; some of them are by me. So start reading! It may seem like a daunting collection at first; but keep in mind, this kind of curriculum is completed by hundreds of graduate students every year. Most of whom are not singular geniuses who will transform the very face of science.
Now, you may object that steering clear of such pre-existing knowledge has played a crucial role in your unique brand of breakthrough research, and you would never have been able to make those dazzling conceptual leaps had you been weighed down by all of that established art. Let me break it down for you: no. There may have been a time, in the halcyon days of Archimedes or maybe even Galileo and Newton, when anyone with a can-do attitude and a passing interest in the fundamental mysteries could make an important contribution to our understanding of nature. Those days are long past. (And Galileo and Newton, let us note, understood the science of their time better than anybody.) We’ve learned a tremendous amount about how the universe works, most of which is “right” at least in some well-defined regime of applicability. If you haven’t mastered what we’ve already learned, you’re not going to be able to see beyond it.
Put it this way: it’s a matter of respect. By asking scientists to take your work seriously, you are asking them to respect you enough to spend their time investigating your claims. The absolute least you can do is respect them enough to catch up on the stuff they’ve all made a great effort to master. There are a lot of smart people working as scientists these days; if a basic feature of your purported breakthrough (“the derivation of the Friedmann equation is wrong”; “length contraction is a logical contradiction”) is that it requires that a huge number of such people have been making the same elementary mistake over and over again for years, the fault is more likely to lie within yourself than in the stars. Do your homework, first, then get back to me.
2. Understand, and make a good-faith effort to confront, the fundamental objections to your claims within established science.
Someone comes along and says “I’ve discovered that there’s no need for dark matter.” A brief glance at the abstract reveals that the model violates our understanding of perturbation theory. Well, perhaps there is something subtle going on here, and our conventional understanding of perturbation theory doesn’t apply in this case. So here’s what any working theoretical cosmologist would do (even if they aren’t consciously aware that they’re doing it): they would glance at the introduction to the paper, looking for a paragraph that says “Look, we know this isn’t what you would expect from elementary perturbation theory, but here’s why that doesn’t apply in this case.” Upon not finding that paragraph, they would toss the paper away.
Scientific claims — whether theoretical insights or experimental breakthroughs — don’t exist all by their lonesome. They are situated within a framework of pre-existing knowledge and expectations. If the claim you are making seems manifestly inconsistent with that framework, it’s your job to explain why anyone should nevertheless take you seriously. Whenever someone claims to build a perpetual-motion device, scientist solemnly reiterate that the law of conservation of energy is not to be trifled with lightly. Of course one must admit that it could be wrong — it’s only one law, after all. But when you actually build some machine that purportedly puts out more ergs than it consumes (in perpetuity), it does a lot more than violate the law of conservation of energy. That machine is made of atoms and electromagnetic fields, which obey the laws of atomic physics and Maxwell’s equations. And conservation of energy can be derived from those laws — so you’re violating those as well. If you claim that the position of Venus within the Zodiac affects your love life, you’re not only positing some spooky correlation between celestial bodies and human affairs; your theory also requires some sort of long-range force that acts between you and Venus, and there aren’t any such forces strong enough to be relevant. If you try to brush those issues under the rug, rather than confronting them straightforwardly, your credibility suffers greatly.
For example, imagine you say, “I have a method of brewing a magical healing potion that bypasses the ossified practices of your so-called `medicine,’ and I’ve personally known several people who were miraculously cured by it, and also there was a study once in some journal that didn’t conclusively rule out the possibility of an effect, and besides you don’t know everything.” No non-crackpot person is going to pay a whit of attention to you, except perhaps to poke fun in between doing serious work. But now imagine you say “It’s true that my claimed magical healing potion appears to violate this famous law of chemistry and that well-established principle of medicine, which have been painstakingly developed and stringently tested against experimental data over the course of many decades, and it’s natural that you would be skeptical of such a claim — but here is the empirical evidence that is dramatic enough to overcome that skepticism, and this is the reason why there might be a loophole in those laws in this particular circumstance.” People will be much more likely to take you seriously.
3. Present your discovery in a way that is complete, transparent, and unambiguous.
What we’re getting at here is that scientific discoveries, unlike sonnets or declarations of love, are universal rather than personal. They belong to everyone, and once they are presented to the world, they can be explored equally well by anybody. By almost any standard, I understand general relativity better than Einstein ever did. (Most parts of it, anyway.) Not because I’m anywhere nearly as smart as Einstein, but because we’ve learned a lot about GR since Einstein died. Once the theory was invented, he didn’t have a monopoly on it; it was out there for anyone to understand and move forward with. Even if he had repudiated his own theory, it would have had no effect on whether or not it was correct.
Your discovery should be the same way. If it’s a revolutionary new theory, it should be a theory that anyone can use. That means it needs to be clearly expressed and unambiguous. I’ve had more than one long and fruitless discussion with alternative scientists who would say “You tell me the experimental result, and I will explain it with my theory.” That’s not the way it works. Your theory should have a life of its own; it should be a machine that I (or anyone) could use to make predictions. And if it’s a physics theory, let’s face it, it’s going to involve math. In this day and age, nobody is going to be moved by a model of elementary particles that comes expressed as a set of three-dimensional sculptures constructed from pipe cleaners.
Likewise, if your breakthrough is an experiment, it had better be a dramatically obvious one — and the more you are violating cherished scientific beliefs, the more dramatic the effect had better be. If what you’re claiming requires a re-arrangement of the energy levels in organic molecules, in flagrant disregard of the Schrödinger equation, you are going to need much more than a two- or three-sigma effect. And, equally importantly, you have to be up front about what the apparatus is, so that anyone can reproduce the experiment. No fair saying “Well, if you come into my lab, I’ll turn it on and show you how it works.” And “This experiment was done in the ’70’s in a secret underground lab in Gdansk, and the KGB has suppressed the lab notebooks” isn’t any better. If you’re actually playing the role of a scientist, share your procedure with everyone, so that they can become true believers themselves. If, on the other hand, you just want to make money, then by all means don’t tell anyone; just start producing the free energy (or amazing stretchy widgets, or whatever) and sell it on the open market. The millions of dollars that will doubtless flow your way will be very comforting as you rail against the establishment for failing to appreciate your genius.
So there you go! Modesty aside, this post might be the single greatest favor that has ever been done for the loose-knit community of non-traditional scientists. We’ve been very explicit about what is expected, if you want to get the recognition you believe is your due. Three simple items, start checking them off!
Also, one last thing. Don’t compare yourself to Galileo. You are not Galileo. Honestly, you’re not. Dude, seriously.
Hi Dirk,
I’m afraid I’ve only had a chance to glance over your paper, so I can’t really comment on its validity. I do know of a number of people who have thought about cellular automata rules which would give rise to the physics we percieve, and it strikes me as a very worthwhile excercise.
CAs certainly give rise to emergent phenomena at larger length scales, which I suppose can be thought of in as analgous to biology. But this is largely my point. Physics aims to understand the fundamental rules of interaction, where as other sciences seek to classify and describe the behaviour of emerging patterns. The rules of thumb which govern the time evolution of structures within a CA do not really lend insight into the fundamental pdate rule, although it can perhaps be infered by studying enough patterns.
As regards the fundamental constants, I don’t know why they have their present value. I suspect that nobody really knows. Obviously some are dependent on others, so they are fixed. I’d like to think that as we learn more about the universe we will find more and more dependencies, and be able to eliminate all the free parameters, but I have no reason to think this will happen.
Reread the sentence you quoted. I said I didn’t believe that biological ideas were at the root of fundamental physics, I didn’t say that no emergent phenomena came from fundamental physics (as clearly lots do).
I think we are in agreement about broadly how physics should be modelled mathematically, although you may well completely disagree with me about the specific details of how this may work out.
In http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3379 I argue (albeit at the thought-experiment level of rigor) that if a discrete physics model, with certain natural characteristics, is to successfully model reality, then there must be `Self-Replicating Space-Cells’. These Space-Cells are basically information encoding the familiar laws of physics, including all the Standard Model constants, and I argue that these must be distributed throughout space, at a roughly constant near-Planck density, and copies must be replicated as space expands.
This means that these Self-Replicators emerge at an even more fundamental level than the familiar GR and QFT, so I am claiming that just to get to the stage of getting familar physics to emerge from a fundamental model of physics, you cannot avoid dealing with Self-Replicators. Of course you don’t need to regard such Replicators as `biological’ per se. Instead you can say that Self-Replication, is really just a phenomenon that can emerge from any sufficiently rich dynamical mathematical model.
Hi Dirk,
I’ll try to have a proper read of the paper tomorrow, but let me ask you a quick question:
Are these replicators you describe classical or quantum (i.e. can they exist in superpositions/can they store quantum information). If so, then surely this would require a violation of the no cloning theorem. But maybe I’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick…
Maybe I should have addressed this in the paper, as the question was bound to be asked, but I was trying to keep the length down. In any case, I was envisioning that a fundamental model would not have quantum theory built in, but instead that quantum theory would be one of the things needing to emerge from it. So the no cloning theorem would not apply.
If the fundamental theory is fundamentally classical, and from what you’re saying it sounds necessarily local, then surely it is ruled out by Bell inequality measurements. How do you get around these? Or are you relying on one of the loopholes in current experiments?
I’d certainly very interested in what you are saying, but perhaps it is inappropriate to the current comment section. If you’d like to continue this discussion by email instead, my email address is firstname.lastname@materials.ox.ac.uk, where firstname and lastname are my first name and my surname respectively.
If you don’t look at them there both in the same states, theres no problem copying that.
Qubit: No, you’re incorrect. It is fundamentally impossible to copy quantum information.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem for an explanation.
Joe, I just emailed you. And my email can be found in the paper http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3379 (also anyone else with thoughts on the paper can email me).
I’ll still add a few comments here.
Since some kinds of replicators exist (e.g. DNA and computer files) I expect that there cannot be an argument against models on the grounds that such models can give rise to replicators. If anything there is an argument against models that cannot give rise to replicators.
Whatever kind of mathematics ends up modelling physical reality, that mathematics may not end up looking much like what is currently recognizable as `quantum’ or `classical’ but could be something quite different. So I don’t think there is a quantum/classical dichotomy that covers all possibilities.
Also locality in a fundamental model need not correspond exactly to locality in the familar space that emerges from it.
Hi Dirk,
I’ve started working through you paper, but haven’t finished it yet.
My concern about replication is that there is way to replicate quantum information. I’m sure that you are aware of the no cloning theorem, but if not, see the link in my last comment to Qubit.
Basically my concern is that, since general quantum states cannot be replicated, then the fundamental units of information, whatever that may be, must also be unclonable. The reason for this is that quantum information is surely some special case of whatever this general information is, just as classical information is a special case of quantum information.
It is possible to come up with a process which clones some subset of quantum states, and that is exactly what copying classical information does. You’re photocopier, even if it made perfect copies could not copy a superposition of two documents.
So this leads me to conclude that if the information in your model can always be copied, then it must essentially be classical information. The problem this causes for me, though, is that it would seem to cause problems with Bell’s inequality, since it would correspond to a hidden variables model of quantum mechanics.
That said, I’m only on page 3 of your paper by now, so I may have misinterpretted what you were saying.
Yeh but, you can make a Quantum computer out of anything esp Water. Or even wood, the copy rule only applies to small things.
No, qubit, it applies to any quantum state. Unknown quantum states cannot be copied. You can only copy classical information, not quantum information. I have no idea why what material might be used in a quantum computer has any bearing on this.
Qubit, you said “the copy rule only applies to small things”. Well Self-Replicating Space-Cells are Planck scale replicators, so there are about a googol of them within the space occupied by your body. I hope that doesn’t bother you too much.
Joe, it is certainly worthwhile trying to see if what I am claiming could be inconsistent, and I can see how having some kind of replication could set off an alarm re the no cloning theorem. But I only need that certain very specific information be replicated, and even the no cloning theorem allows that. I don’t need any kind of general copying mechanism, so I don’t think there is any violation of the no cloning theorem.
Also, the information representing matter should probably behave like quantum information. But the information being replicated in Self-Replicating Space-Cells is information representing the laws (including all the Standard Model constants etc) and there is no particular reason why this information would have to behave like quantum information.
The no-cloning theorem is only an issue if you are copying non-orthogonal states. If you are copying orthogonal states in a known basis, then it is not an issue.
As far I Know, a Qubit can be Ether 0 or 1 or a superposition of both. H2O can have 3 states ice, water and steam, I know that this is a bit of a cop out, but you should be able to copy a H20 molecule. Then create water manifolds from it, which can have an imaginary potential to be ether ice, steam or a superposition of both. Quantum mechanics is just about information, any information can be copied. To be honest I really think Quantum physics is complete nonsense and that everything in this universe can be explained without it… Everything you can do with Quantum computer you can do on magic mushrooms or LSD, all they show you massive amounts of information, all they do is get you high! Quantum Physics should be made illegal, like all class A drugs!
Qubit: You are talking about phases of matter. Theses are properties of an ensemble of molecules, not a single molecule. If you have only one molecule you cannot comment on what phase it is in.
When we talk about the state of an atom or molecule, we are usually talking about the state of the system in terms of its energy levels, or some other well defined basis.
The internal state of a water molecule, as in you example, cannot be copied. It is simply impossible, being ruled out by the structure of quantum mechanics (see the wikipedia article).
You seem to be confusing the idea of copying a quantum state with the idea of entangling quantum systems.
Contrary to your assertion, it is very clear that not all information can be copied.
As regards your other comments, all I can say is that I doubt LSD will help you factor large numbers, simulate quantum systems or perform secure key distibution.
If you choose to believe that quantum mechanics is nonsense, and that the world is fundamentally classical, you are simply ignoring an enormous amount of evidence gathered over the last 100 years. If you choose to ignore this, then I’m not going to bother trying to convince you. It’s like arguing over creationism.
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No theory, just a question about how you do things.
There is a discussion in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories concerning possible alternative words for “fringe. The thought is (probably mostly by me for obvious reasons) that “fringe has become a pejorative remark. There is currently an essay on the subject that may become policy, so some of us are trying to make it so that Wikipedia can be seen as fair to mainstream and alternative subjects alike.
What terms do you use to characterize subjects that are far off the mainstream without being insulting or insinuating that they are somehow flawed?
In advance, I thank you for the input.
Tom Butler
I looked at your page regarding the alternative to dark matter. It seems you have attacked a strawman. The relevant theories (in my view) are summarily dismissed without explanation in the first paragraph.
I think the burden is in the dark matter camp to explain the correlations found by Milgrom. Modified GR does not say there is no dark matter at all. It simply says that dark matter is not as prevalent as usually assumed. And, more importantly, it permits one to ask, on a case-by-case basis, whether a given galaxy or cluster contains dark matter, and it finds yes for some and no for others.
There are, of course, some apologists who try to use modified GR to deny all dark matter. But they are not the ones whose theory I’m asking about.
Island wrote:
I think they already have. What they haven’t found is guts. They cannot come out and say “Being religious doesn’t make me an ID”, because their colleagues won’t believe them. So they pretend to be atheists.
If GR and QM are exact, the universe can be considered to be a mathematical “dream” in which we don’t exist but are too stubborn to admit it. 🙂
But if GR and QM are merely approximations to something more realistic, one might ask Who could set up such a clever approximation.
We may have an answer to this question as far as our own faith, but we do not want to discuss it, nor should we have to. However, in the face of intimidation by paranoids looking for a hidden agenda in our theories, we may be tempted to do one of the following:
1. Give up our brainpower and become religious fanatics.
2. Give up our scientific honesty and become revisionist classical alchemists.
3. Give up our personal honesty and become fake atheists.
I choose none of the above.
Colin – then what do you choose?
It seems that the anthropic nature of our universe leads us to have to make an act of faith – in either an unobservable ‘creator’, in which only one creation – this fecund universe – can be observed, or in an unobservable multiverse, in which only one member of the ensemble – this fecund universe – can be observed.
There are four questions that science leaves open:
1. Why is there something rather than nothing – “What breathed fire into the equations to make a universe for them to describe?”
2. Why is the universe comprehensible?
3. Why is the one observable universe propitious for life and not otherwise?
4. Why did chemistry evolve into intelligent consciousness?
My own personal choice is to put my faith in a God who is the author and guarantor of the laws of science.
Garth
I, too, put my faith in God. However, although my search for a realistic formulation of physics is motivated by faith, it does not include God.
The important thing about this attitude is that I do not have to look for a unifying simplicity in physics, which I suspect does not exist. I only have to figure out how the “mess” of what we know about physics can fit together, and assume that God takes care of the rest.
The new concepts I would introduce would be defined solely by the assumption that they support the known scientific facts. I would not need to ascribe any independent properties to them — that is where most crank theories go wrong.
Meh, no such thing as a god. Until you can find an argument that argues for a deity that works for god X, but doesn’t work for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you have nothing.
If you’re a deist or pantheist, of course, the arguments get more subtle. But those aren’t that common.
That said, the four questions:
1. Why is there something rather than nothing? Well, the simple answer to this is that we don’t know, but there are some tantalizing hints. One thing that we do know, for example, is that if a certain type of particle can exist in a region of space-time, then that particle necessarily pops in and out of the vacuum. It might potentially be the case that the same is true for a universe like our own: the mere [i]possibility[/i] of existence may force existence to occur. But, of course, we only have hints that this may be the case, it may not be. The fundamental objection to this question, however, is there merely recognizing that we don’t know something does not indicate a deity.
2. Why is the universe comprehensible? Because it’s real. It’s just that simple: in a real universe, the law of non-contradiction must apply. That is to say, any sufficiently-specific statement about reality cannot be both true and false. This simple truth is necessary for a real universe, and is all that is needed for the universe to be comprehensible.
3. Why is the universe habitable? This question is nonsense. Were it not habitable, we couldn’t observe it. Might as well ask why we live on Earth instead of Mercury.
4. Why did chemistry evolve into intelligent consciousness? Here we know bits and pieces of the answer. It’s to be found in evolution. There are many gaps in our knowledge of course, but we’re piecing it together. As with the first question, though, simply not knowing is no reason whatsoever to assume a deity.
Jason,
Thank you for your answers to those questions, we all answer them in different ways and choose to place our faith in different reasons behind reality.
However, I bring your attention to my use of the interrogative adverb “why” – here I was not seeking a mechanism, I am interested intensely with the mechanisms of ‘why’ or ‘how’ things happen but that is another question.
Here the purpose of asking these questions was to seek a comprehension, the deeper reason, of why it should be so…..
Garth