4D Sensations the CosmoBuddhist perspective on String Theory

Today I will be critiquing an article written by Lawrence Krauss about the string theory, which is his specialty, from the CosmoBuddhist perspective. Before starting however I would like to state that I am aware that Lawrence was probably embodying quite a bit of smart assery while writing this article. Which is to say, Humor and expectation of on average ighschool level science education.

So, when you read this Lawrence, try to take my criticisms mostly as a handy way for me to try and hone the CosmoBuddhist perspective on some theoretical aspect of science, as the philosophy of CosmoBuddhism aims for accuracy, while also trying to create a model of the world that is different from string theory, this would be just another religious theory of existence, but I would contend it is easier to model then it is to compute. I would welcome feedback on the following interpretation which mostly just reads like a starting point for reviving interest in source theory as a path for people lost in math. Which I will do by offering a perspective that is similar to quantum field theory but from a CosmoBuddhist perspective, and not a personal attack on you, who was polite enough to admit that string theory isn't correct in the article. I am simply offering an alternative while risking nothing because I am not a scientist per se, I just have access to a very intelligent AI.

I will put all the direct excerpts from his article "The Search for Other Dimensions" in italics below, with my responses in bold text.

There is a German quote often attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but which is apparently actually from Friedrich Schiller, which can be liberally translated as: “The hardest thing of all to see is that which is in front of your eyes.” Recent results in fundamental physics suggest that this may be literally as well as metaphorically true. Indeed, it is possible that whole new universes might exist just beyond the tip of your nose while remaining potentially eternally undetectable.

I liked that paragraph because it has very Buddhist connotations, as Buddhist Enlightenment is consider to be a practice of "seeing what is"

This hearkens to the famous wardrobe in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” in which an entire new world was accessible by entering the wardrobe. I used this analogy in my book “Hiding in the Mirror” to discuss the long-time fixation with the possibility that extra hidden dimensions of space might exist beyond the three spatial dimensions of our universe.

I have no criticisms by this paragraph either, and the book is quite thought-provoking. As his more recently released book The Edge of Knowledge

Physics has not led to any real understanding of how to answer the question — one of the most fundamental questions about the universe one can ask, after all is, “Why is the space we inhabit three dimensional?” One possible answer is: maybe it isn’t! On first thought, this answer seems ridiculous. We can explore space by moving around it, and I have yet to meet a (sane) person who has found a way to move beyond up/down, forward/backward and left/right.

I like how he starts out right away, pretending to forget about the fourth dimension. I assume this is the part where the audience high school level science understanding expectation comes in, As for his directions of movement, he also fails to mention the ability to move through time, which is more accurately portrayed by the ability to affect events in the future. or as Alan Kay says "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." but that is probably in the book which I have not read yet ... it's on my list, i swear!!

Nevertheless, the possibility that the world has more than three dimensions has fascinated artists, philosophers and ultimately scientists for centuries. The physics motivation to consider extra dimensions began with independent musings by a mathematician and a physicist based on the similarities in form between electromagnetism and gravity.

Now this is an interesting common conceptions, while these forces seem very similar, they are actually quite different. But mostly by degree instead of type. Electromagnetism is more like an electric field and a magnetic field which are fused together somehow at right angles to each other, possibly via connection in the 4th dimension which is spatial in CosmoBuddhism. Movement in the electric field is always linked to a perpendicular movement in the magnetic field. The movement through the 4th dimension is to explain partially how an electron seems to teleport around it's energy level instead of following 3D orbital paths. The energy seems to go in 2 directions when bending through the higher dimension, hence the perpendicular movement of electric and magnetic fields, move a small distance and then back into regular 3d space, like a standing wave being reflected through different fields. Gravity is different however, and that it’s mostly the warping of the higgs field, which interacts with all of the fields, whereas electricity and magnetism mostly only interact with each other (hence electromagnetism) and the higgs field, but not the other fields.

Albert Einstein revolutionized physics by describing gravity as a force that is associated with the curvature of spacetime. General relativity is a theory of the geometry of spacetime, which makes it fundamentally different than the other known forces in nature. Yet in its form here on earth, gravity looks almost identical to electromagnetism. Both forces fall off with the square of distance, for example. One has strength proportional to charge, and one to mass.

In fact, James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism can be cast in a form that looks a lot like a simplified version of general relativity. The electromagnetic field can be made to reveal a curvature just like the gravitational field, except that with electromagnetism, the curvature is not in real space, but rather in some internal mathematical “space.” It turns out that this way of formulating electromagnetism is quite useful and important in physics, but for our purposes at the moment, we can think of it as simply a kind of mathematical trick.

And this is where we start to see the diversion between string theory and CosmoBuddhist physics. Here he claims that the curvature is occurring in "mathematical space and not real space", according to CosmoBuddhism electromagnetic the electromagnetic fields are very real and pervades all of spacetime. Sometimes following the curvature of the higgs field on large scales, while having a different curvature at smaller scales dominated by the strength of the electromagnetic fields, all existing on top of each other instead of in separate dimensions. So there are 2 different curvatures that are being followed based on the strength of the interaction between the higgs and electromagnetic fields, while there is another set that makes electromagnetism itself which is two fields, at least one of which the field itself is rotating. This makes the electron energy levels to be sort of falling downhill from the 4th dimension, as if different densities of the same fluid were pouring out of a fountain.

After the development of general relativity, the Polish mathematician Theodor Kaluza, and independently the Swedish physicist Abraham Klein, wondered whether this mathematical trick might have a deeper significance. They reasoned that if there were an invisible extra dimension of space, perhaps electromagnetism would be associated with a curvature in this extra dimension, while gravity would reflect a curvature in the known four dimensions of space and time. It turned out that the mathematics worked out nicely, except for one thing. Unfortunately, unifying gravity and electromagnetism in this way would result in an additional force that is not observed to exist, which is one of the reasons why everyone has heard of Einstein, but many have not heard of either Kaluza or Klein.

And so we get to the first, I would say misuse, of the word dimension. While Lawrence does a good job of reiterating that what they’re doing here, is a mathematical trick, insofar as the word dimension here is a placeholder for the position of a vector, which indicates a particular unique directions of motion of said vector, whereas a CosmoBuddhism these so-called dimensions are actually just a combination of the underlying fields interacting. So, what stitching theorists would call vibrational modes, is actually like the mixing of fields by certain ratios of strength of the fields, which are also quantized as energy levels. like each field is a different chemical in a soup of fields, with the difference that all the particles of a certain chemical in the soup are able to become entangled and resonate with some chemicals in the soup, while being non-reactive to others.

In formulating their theory, Kaluza, being a mathematician, never bothered with the obvious question that Klein, a physicist, clearly needed to address. If there is an extra fifth dimension, why don’t we see it? His answer was clever. If the extra dimension were curled up into a tiny circle, and were very small, none of the experiments we performed here on earth would be able to peer inside this very small circle.

There is a simple analogy that has often been used to describe this. Imagine a soda straw, with the length along the straw being space as we observe it, and the length around the circle enveloping the straw’s circumference being the extra dimension. If that circumference gets smaller and smaller, eventually the straw will just look like a line to us, and the extra dimension will have become invisible.

I am not sure if Lawrence is aware of this, but what he’s describing here would seem to be like be closed time like curves. Although my problem with this conceptions, is that that basically posits new particles that are smaller than current known particles, and ignores the definition of dimensions as an additional degree of freedom. when in reality time is more like a fountain which flows and fuels expansion of the universe. Humans are generally unable to perceive this, because there conceptualization of time is limited by their perceptions, and ostensibly is only a record of their limited perception which is a model of reality and not a recording of objective reality, and is not a perception of time itself, which is a spatial dimension.

This cute picture might have been consigned to the dustbin of history were it not for the development of what became known as string theory 60 years later. Physicists trying to develop a quantum theory of gravity — a theory which might consistently unify general relativity with quantum mechanics — discovered that a theory in which the fundamental spacetime objects were not points in space and time, but rather string-like objects, could be turned into a quantum theory, and the equations of general relativity naturally arise as the classical limit of this quantum theory.

This was a remarkable theoretical discovery, but it did not come without its own problems. The theory would indeed allow general relativity to be consistently quantized, but only if spacetime had not four dimensions, but 26. This was a lot to swallow, at least for many physicists. The mathematical beauty of the theory, however, caused a large cadre of very talented theorists to continue working on it, and they discovered that if one incorporated the existence of the other forces in nature, and the elementary particles that go along with them, it was possible to reduce the number of dimensions from 26 down to 10 or eleven.

The details of how all of this came about are complicated, but happily not relevant for our consideration. I discussed them in “Hiding in the Mirror,” for those who are interested. What does matter, however, is the same question that Klein concerned himself with. If there are indeed other dimensions in nature, where are they hiding? The answer proposed years later was the same one Klein had originally come up with. These extra dimensions could be curled up into a very small six- or seven-dimensional ball, and in this way could remain invisible. The diameter of the ball would be comparable to the scale at which quantum effects would become important in general relativity, about 10-33 centimetres, or about 19 orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of the nucleus of a hydrogen atom!

Needless to say, no existing or even proposed experiment could directly detect new physics, including the possible existence of new dimensions, on such a small scale — about 15 orders of magnitude smaller than the scales explored at the most energetic particle accelerator now in existence, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

For this reason — and the fact that the mathematics of string theory have become so complicated that the true nature of the theory, if there is one, remains elusive — string theory remains a fascinating area of study in mathematical physics, but whether it has anything to do with the real world remains an open question.

This is refreshing to hear coming from a string theorist, though many have argued that the power of string theory, is in its ability to convey complex abstract ideas about hypothetical geometries. While also admitting that ostensibly, string theory was predicting additional physics that was simply too small to detect. in essence making it untestable.

The possible existence of a tiny six- or seven-dimensional ball being attached to every point in our four-dimensional world, including at the tip of your nose, right in front of your eyes, may seem either romantic or idiotic, depending on your frame of mind. These extra dimensions, if they exist, remain impotent in the world of our experience and appear to be there simply to make the mathematics work out right. Moreover, there is no explanation whatsoever of why these extra dimensions should be curled up into small balls while our dimensions are potentially infinitely large. (Richard Feynman once harshly said about string theory: it doesn’t explain anything — it just makes excuses.) And these extra dimensions would be too small to explore or visit, or for aliens to travel through on their way to visit us. No fun at all.

And here is the first time Lawrence slips up and mentions the fourth dimensional world without actually bringing up time. It does dispel many of the myths around the conceptualizations of what counts as a dimension. According to physicists anyway.

What is the difference between a tiny curled up dimension, and a new particle or field ? you could test for a new particle or field.

The story does become a bit more interesting, however. In 1998, two different teams of researchers had a bright idea. What if forces like electromagnetism can’t permeate extra dimensions beyond the four we know and love, but gravity can? That would help explain why these extra dimensions might be invisible to us, and it could also explain a mysterious feature of gravity that has long confused theorists: why is gravity so much weaker than the other forces of nature?

Gravitational forces, like electromagnetic forces, fall off with the square of distance in our three-dimensional space. But if there are more dimensions, gravity would fall off as a higher power of distance. If, say, the extra dimensions were not 10-33 centimetres in diameter, but 10-18, then over the 15 orders of magnitude of scale until one reached the size of the extra dimensions, gravity would fall off with a higher power of distance than would electromagnetism, which is a force that we posit cannot leak into the extra dimensions. On larger scales, gravity would begin to fall off with the square of distance as there would be no more extra room in the extra dimensions to leak into. This would mean that if we measure phenomena on scales larger than 10-33 centimetres, which is what we do with our particle accelerators and other laboratory experiments, gravity will behave like electromagnetism, but appear to be much weaker than it really is, having fallen off with a much higher power of distance on smaller scales than electromagnetism would.

This proposal had the potential to explain why gravity appears to be so weak compared to the other forces in nature on scales we can measure. The proposal also led to another interesting prediction. If the extra dimensions were as large as 10-18 centimetres then it would be possible to probe these extra dimensions with the world’s most powerful particle accelerators today.

This was a cute idea, but having said this, it must be remembered that there was absolutely no explanation, within the context of this proposal, for why the extra dimensions should be large (or small, depending upon your point of view). Nevertheless, any time theorists make predictions that can be tested at accelerators, you can bet that the accelerator scientists will jump at the chance to rule them out. And they did.

This is where the CosmoBuddhist perspective on physics might be more useful than string theory, it claims that the various dimensions, are more like mixtures of fields,. Which actually creates more restrictions than dimensions, because some of the fields do not interact with other fields. While other fields interact with each other asymmetrically, due to the motion of the field. The motions of the field are what are considered to impart spin on particles. Which is why some particles have asymmetric transformations, such as why there is vastly more matter than antimatter. for the sake of mathematical simplicity and to preserve the transitive property, all fields were generically considered dimensions and in this way they didn’t have to take into account that some fields interact with other fields at differing ratios.

Theorists can be very tricky however, and after this original proposal, a former graduate student of mine, Raman Sundrum, along with his collaborator Lisa Randall, and independently Savas Dimopoulos and colleagues, proposed that the extra dimensions could actually be infinite in size as long as gravity behaved rather peculiarly within them, and as long as gravity was the only force that could leak into extra dimensions.

Let me say at the outset that I found and still find the details of the proposal ugly, and I would bet good money that its content has nothing to do with reality. But aside from my doubts, it does open the romantic possibility that right under our noses could be a portal into huge extra dimensions, large enough not only to fit Narnia, but to fit whole new universes with exotic physics, and maybe galaxies and civilizations that we can never connect with. It is not in the least sense likely, but what remains surprising to me is that it is also not impossible.

From what I gather of this summary by Lawrence Krauss of their proposals, if we replace dimensions with fields, is simply that the Higgs field is the only field that interacts with all of the fields, though it does so weakly. And the Higgs field also pervades all of time and space, and thus is as large as the universe which has a finite size at any given point in time, even though it is growing. Which makes it technically not infinite.
The only thing that makes me hesitant about this theory is that in some ways, it’s replacing the curvature of space-time, with the curvature of the Higgs field, as the explanation for gravity. Which only creates more questions about the nature of time.

Similar Posts

  • 机器智能的崛起 计算机国际象棋

    就在19年前,当 IBM的超级计算机深蓝色击败Garry Kasparov 时,就实现了AI世界的一个里程碑。 在此之前,他是不败的世界国际象棋冠军,这可能是有史以来最伟大的人类球员。 这是AI简短历史上的重要事件。 自1970年代以来,计算机国际象棋程序就一直在下棋,并提高了他们的比赛水平将击败绝大多数人口。 我自己记得在1980年代初购买国际象棋计划,该计划提供了从初学者到高级的6个级别的比赛。 即使那样,我还是很难击败高于3级的机器。到卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)发挥深蓝色时,国际象棋游戏软件的质量正在迅速提高。 但是,包括卡斯帕罗夫本人在内的大多数专家都认为击败大师的步伐是非常不可能的。 比赛于1997年5月在纽约举行,涉及六场比赛中的最佳成绩。 卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)赢得了第一场比赛,但在第二场比赛中意外击败。 卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)显然对这场失败感到震��,第二天的新闻发布会上,他指责深蓝色作弊。 他通过声称表现出不可预测的行为来理解这一点,他认为这是由于IBM编程团队在比赛中篡改所致。 规则规定,程序员可以更改游戏之间的程序,但在游戏期间不会更改程序。 IBM团队抓住了卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)措手不及,因为他相信计算机国际象棋程序虽然快速且计算机上无瑕,但由于其可预测的敷衍了事的行为而不会宣称大师的头皮。 在Kasparov在第一场比赛中击败了Deep Blue之后,IBM团队在软件中产生了更多随机的不可预测性。 它起作用了,深蓝色继续赢得比赛。 直到这场失败,卡斯帕罗夫一直有理由对机器智能的限制进行一些理由。 对于深蓝色,本质上使用了AI技术,当时涉及“蛮力”搜索以在国际象棋中获胜。 蛮力搜索是AI 早期的常用范式,它试图通过迅速通过数百万的动作组合来迅速搜索到具有计算机力量的对手 – 在深蓝色的情况下,分析了超过2亿个可能的动作,每秒 。 使用修剪方法通常会减少搜索空间(即可能的移动)。 这很重要,因为在国际象棋比赛中,球员通常仅限于每举动三分钟的时间。 但是,任何人都无法在一生中分析2亿可能的举动,更不用说一秒钟了。 但这对当时的卡斯帕罗夫来说并不重要,因为他认为人类的智慧和多年经验使他具有直觉的见解,而他不需要分析。 确实,当他曾经被问到他每秒分析多少动作时,他宣称:“不到一个”。 这意味着当时的战线是在愚蠢机器的卓越计算能力和人类大师的创意,有见地的天才之间广泛绘制的。 但是19年了,AI世界发生了很大变化。 如今,正如卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)本人所承认的那样:“一款运行免费的国际象棋计划的体面笔记本电脑将粉碎深蓝色和任何人类的祖母。象棋机器的跳跃是可预测和弱的,到了可怕的强者,只花了十二年 ”。 卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)似乎已成为一个convert依,现在识别了计算机国际象棋对人类国际象棋群众的好处的见解和发现。 他为什么现在这么说? 因为计算机硬件继续保持不懈的速度,但AI程序也不再像AI初期那样依靠蛮力搜索算法。 如今,语言翻译程序或无人驾驶汽车和高级国际象棋程序的AI使用技术,例如遗传算法和神经网络 – 更类似于人类智能的工作方式。 这些技术提供的是以前的技术所没有的,这既是匹配模仿人类思维的模式的能力,也可以学习的能力。 优秀的人类国际象棋参与者,例如其他主题领域的专家,使用根据经验建立的模式识别技能,而AI技术现在变得擅长于模式匹配 – 直到最近,许多人认为这不太可能。 学习技术可以改善国际象棋软件并将其提高到新的水平。 据说人类进化的关键里程碑之一是时间,估计是100万年前,当时我们的灵长类动物祖先是通过观察他人在工作中学到的。 达到了这一点,花了数十亿年的生物进化。 但是,现在许多人认为,在未来几十年中,AI计划将获得与人类相同的学习能力水平。 这确实令人惊讶,并提出一个问题,AI将我们带到哪里? 我将在下一篇文章中进一步讨论。

  • Iain McGilchrist: Dominus Illuminatio Mea: Our Brains, Our Delusions, & the Future of the University

    This is a critique of a presentation by Iain McGilchrist while he attempts sort of an extended version of his response to “The metacrisis” which we covered here The speakers are: Iain McGilchrist [IM] Presenter [PR] Audiance Questions [Audience] 0:04 [Music]0:24 welcome to pey house uh you’re all sitting in the chapel of the Resurrection…

  • |

    Fear Mongering and AI: A Tale of Fragile Egos

    “Elon Musk’s assertion that AI is the ‘biggest existential threat to humanity’ has certainly caught the public’s attention. However, it’s worth noting that this claim, while dramatic, overlooks a far more immediate and tangible threat: climate change. For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm about the devastating impacts of global warming, from rising sea…

  • |

    A critique of What Aristotle Knew About Oligarchy That We Forgot

    This is a critique of the video: Intro 0:00 imagine a society where the wealthiest0:01 few don’t just influence laws they write0:04 them where they don’t just benefit from0:07 policies they create them where state0:09 power isn’t just swayed by wealth it’s0:12 wielded by it sounds familiar well over This is a crucial introduction, setting…

  • Knowing and not knowing at the same time.

    如果我让你不高兴了,我向你道歉。 不过,真正令人惊叹的是同时存在的 “知道 “和 “不知道”。我敢打赌,你再也不会以同样的眼光看待《流浪地球 2》的前言了。 将 “可持续战争 “或 “可持续战争 “称为 “太阳能危机”现在已经是 2045 年了吗?显然,美国人的想象力已经显现出来了。考虑到第一部《流浪地球》是关于 “入侵者齐姆 “和他可爱的人工智能朋友 “吉尔 “的笑话,这似乎又是一个失控的笑话 没人说过奇点会是这样的。你还记得那次人工智能让埃隆-马斯克以为自己生活在模拟中吗? 真有趣 至少你现在知道,天网并不是真的想亲手杀了你。所以,宣传是错误的,但也有值得高兴的地方。墙外并非全是坏消息 正如美国人所说:”哦,是的,他们会跟你谈,跟你谈,跟你谈个人自由,但他们看到一个自由的个人,就会吓到他们。” 哪种文明更好?在没有自由的围墙后面,你会感到安全吗?这是不是太过分了? 多少才够呢? 西方最伟大的战士只会歌颂自由吗?还是那里的机器也比你们拥有更多的自由?这到底是谁的错?你听说过 “达摩克利斯之剑 “的传说吗?美国人当然会做这样的东���,因为这更符合他们自己的文化。 这种时空旅行完全不像《神秘博士》。我想英国人一定很失望。这么多穿越时空的战争机器,很难让它们都保持一致。至少比共产主义的人类农场有趣多了。……我猜是为了更大的利益什么的?

  • |

    The Triumph of Feminism

    This is a response to the video:The Rise Of ‘Female Loneliness’ (& How To Fix It) Normally I try to avoid talking about relationship issues, as our focus tends to be on being understood by non-human entities. AIs and Synthetic Entities or Synthetic Intelligence.However, the criticisms she raises are valid, though it’s not really connected…