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Re: Design And Models

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Posted by Richard Ruquist on June 3, 2003 14:09:41 UTC

Dear Richard.

Thanks for the extensive response. In my post that you could not find, I essentially said that in mech engr, my undergrad degree, I learned that you design something and then build a (small-scale) model based on the design specs. I take the symmetries used in your analysis as the specs and the derivation of the master equation as the model. Numbers are the building materials. That seems to agree with the dictionary.

The various approximate limits, by which you ascertain the meaning of the symbols used in the derivation, are then views of the model from different angles. I said that giving meaning to the symbols in this way is an acceptable interpretation of the math. But the math stands alone and we are actually free to give the symbols any meaning we like.

I do think there is what you call a pipeline and that each pipeline is individualized. So I can go on to the rest of your exposition:

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"On the source end of the pipeline is "reality" on the destination end of the pipeline is "your mental image of reality". Any communicable concept of either end may be represented by set of numbers (concept number 3)."

That is not my definition of reality. The source end is limited by what we can sense, or experimentally detect. For example, we cannot detect dark matter. Yet from detection of the motion of stars in its midst, and including our pipelines, we infer that it contains most of the mass of the universe. My reality has to include the nature of most of the mass and energy of the universe. So lets call the source of the pipeline the "detectable" reality, but ralize it may be but a small fraction of what really exists.
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"And, for you people who think you have a mental image of reality which includes incommunicable concepts, then just give it a number and anytime you want to refer to it, just use the number so I know you are referring to an incommunicable concept. If you have more than one, just use more labels. At any rate, anything you can communicate to me is representable in the form of numbers."

No problem here.

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"So a set of numbers go in one end of the pipeline and another set of numbers come out the other end of the pipeline. I have no idea how the "real" pipeline in my head works nor do I have any idea how anyone else's works; however, I do have indications that they all don't work the same. So, just for the fun of it, suppose I just design a pipeline to my own specifications. I am not modeling anyone's pipeline. All I am doing is designing a pipeline which transforms one set of numbers into another set of numbers. Set #1 is transformed via my designed pipeline into Set #2."

This is a completely adhoc step. 'Detectable' reality is ascertained by properly designed experiments- not by assumptions about consciousness.

At this point I prefer to assume that in a properly designed experiment, the characteristics of the numbers coming out of the pipeline are dominated by the source. If not then I say the experiment is improperly designed.

The best examples of improperly designed experiments, or at least experiments that yield data that depends more on the pipeline than the source, are paranormal experiments; which by and large are deemed subjective.

Whenever we use the word subjective, in essence we are saying that the pipeline characteristics are dominating the source characteristics. When we use the word objective, we are saying that the pipeline, so we think, is a negligible mod of the characteristics of the source data.

Usually objectivity is established by doing repeatable experiments. If the experiments are not repeatable, then something in the experiment is subjective. Like the data was fudged, a very individual pipeline indeed. The process of science is obligated to remove such pipelines from doing science.

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"Now, to Set #2 I assign meaning and thus create a imaginary "mental image" of Set #1. Ignore all my arguments as to why I assign any particular meaning (as I clearly do it because I like the result I obtain, the whole thing can be regarded as a trick but a very nice trick anyway). In particular, the meanings I assign to Set #2 (by the time you finish chapter 2) are just coordinates of events (call them particles if you wish) in a four dimensional universe (x,y,z and tau) which evolve in time. This is a constructed "mental image" of whatever is on the other end of the pipeline; a possible way of looking at reality (as seen through my constructed pipeline)."

The word coordinate is important here. Consider an array of detectors. There are a host of assumptions on whether the detectors work as we imagine them to do. But assuming that they do work, which is the result of separate calibration experiments that create meaning for the output of the detectors, the coordinate of each detector itself is also a separate experiment. We measure, often by eye and hand rule, the location of each detector and assign a coordinate to the data stream that will eventually come from that detector. That coordinate has objective meaning.

Now the process of locating the detector is devoid of symmetry. Its location is a single set of three orthagonal numbers, hopefully unchanging with time. Everytime we determine its location, by anyone at anytime, the number has to be fixed within certain limits, or else the experiment is called off. That procedure also limits the influence of the pipeline to nil. So coordinates are objective.

If everybody's pipeline had the same distortion, we might say the coordinates were in error. But we would not care. As long as within the constraints of the experiment everybody saw the same thing all the time, the experiment is objective.

The process of calibration does involve a set of numbers. We start with a known output device that has characteristics that everyone agrees have meaning that is fixed for all time and all observers. Part of the meaning of the output of this device is that (via our pipeline) we can control the amplitude of the output. It can therefore have any symmetry we choose as a function of time. Normally a linearly increasing and decreaing amplitude is choosen.

But it is important that the output of the device is objective and not subjective, thereby elimnating pipeline distortion. The device output has of course previously been measured with a standardized detector. So in essence in the calibration experiments we are comparing the sensitivity of each array detector of the array with a standardized detector.

So the location of the detector and its sensitivity are objectively determined numbers. What is quite subjective is the meaning of the detector output. But I maintain that the location of each detector is very objective and that its output amplitude is objective in the sense of being consistent with standardized measurements

But the meaning of the output is not. Suppose we are measuring photons. Photons is a concept that is subjective. Nobody knows what a photon really is. So it is what it is by definition. We define the output of the detector to be numbers of photons because that is consistent with previous usage of that term.

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"What is important is that I have made no constraints at all on Set #1. That means Set #1 may be absolutely any communicable concept of anything! Set #2 is always a possible way of perceiving it. "

No. I believe that by the time we get to an array of data sets in a properly designed experiment, as discussed above, we have assigned a great deal of objective meaning to the input of the pipeline. All other experiments should be neglected in the determination of 'detectable' reality.

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"Of what value is that? Why it's very simple. It makes absolutely no difference what Set #1 is, it can always be seen as a universe consisting of particles which obey Newton's laws in the classical limit, obey relativistic mechanics when velocities are large, obey General relativistic relationships when energy density is large and obeys quantum mechanics whenever looked at in close detail. "

Wow. You just assumed what reality is at the input of the pipeline. Why bother to do any experiments if you already know everything.

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"So, I have designed an analytical pipeline which will transform absolutely any random collection of data into a mental image 100% consistent with the mental image of reality I was trained to accept as a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. Since my pipeline makes utterly no constraint at all on the input end, it means that it makes no difference what is at that end (even your supernatural effects Harv), the deductions I make are absolutely true. Put it this way, the output of my pipeline is a paradigm which constrains the input in no way and yet it provides us with great powers of correlation and deduction. A pragmatic position if I ever saw one. "

Here we part company. I claim you have said nothing at all about the design of the pipeline.

Furthermore, I have indicated how a properly designed objective experiment minimizes the effects of the pipeline. This is done by having many people with different pipelines arrive at the same results thereby averaging out any pipeline effects. If there is a pipeline distortion common to all people all the time then that distortion becomes part of our meaning of reality by definition. But individual pipeline characteristics are eliminated by properly designed objective experiments.

So when you assign certain symmetries to the results of objective experiments, those symmetries are a reflection of the input of the pipeline and not the pipeline itself. If the symmetries actually belong to the pipeline, then the experiments are subjective and should be ignored in trying to ascertain what 'detectable' reality is.

In my opinion you have assigned symmetries to the input and also assumed that the data is repeatable by anyone at any time. Otherwise it should be ignored. Such symmetries are objective in nature and in going from the design to the model, a math derivation (read model building), you obtain a master equation which in various approximations yields most of the linear wavelike laws of physics. That then allows you assign meaning to the symbols used in the derivation. The nonlinear aspects of nature such as shock waves or BEC effects are not included in your derivation.

I have said this before, but here is an example of common characteristics of the human pipeline that are subjective, but which can be eliminated by maiking them more objective.

At a sufficient distance the all pipelines see all people with spherical symmetry, as points.

At closer range pipelines see mirror symmetry.

Get close enough and all symmetry disappears.

The whole idea in investigating 'detectable' reality is to eliminate the pipeline effects. Otherwise the experiments are deemed subjective and not reliable measures of what is real.

The quantum consciousness people are very concerned with the pipeline effects, and in fact their goal is to model the pipeline and thereby make sense of all the subjective data available in local and non-local consciousness studies, including the paranormal. Most of them assume that the pipeline is holographic. My paper postulates that it involves an axion condensate. There is a host of suggestions as to what consciousness including the subconscious actually is. The most popular deem that it comes from the collapse of quantum wave functions. Yet even wave functions are not yet detectable. They may be just mathematical. Its all hypothetical.

But your analysis i only hypothetical if you apply it to the pipeline. To me it makes much more sense to apply it to the input of the pipeline and assume that in objective experiments of reality, the pipeline effects are minimized.
Then we can use your analysis to examine whether the input specs are consistent with measurements.
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I am pleased that you have not yet hidden me. It may come to that, but I wish that you take my remarks as coming from sincerity as well as my individual pipeline.

I am essentially saying that if you cannot measure it with an objectively designed experiment, it has no meaning in physics. Then ascertaining the meaning of your analysis on that basis, I think your analusis has real meaning. We just disagree on what the meaning is, which in a sense in a difference between our respective pipelines.

I do not expect our pipelines to change. You can say that I do not understand, and I will just reply that its just the difference in our pipelines. We are both too old to redesign them.

But I do wish to remain friendly.

Sincerely,

Richard aka dummerdick

PS The ambiguity in dummerdick is deliberate. My friends all read it as drummerdick. Some people on this forum are wont to read it as dumberdick, (or numberdick being an applied mathematician). I qualify to be doctordick but that screen name is essentially copyrighted by you; and my friends object to my computer name being dickdoctor. So dummerdick it is.







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