Danger of positive approach

Few weeks ago, Lubos Motl has won the 2008 Weblog Award price for Best European (Non UK) Blog, which may become a surprise for someone, proponents of dual theories in particular. Whereas AWT is rather invariant/symmetric with respect to string /LQG duality, we can make an attempt for independent analysis of this result. The positive thing may be, Lubos is compatriot of mine, we even both born in the same city - which is not so difficult, after all, as the Czech Republic is really tiny country. Czech Republic is birthplace of many brilliant and intelligent people and beautiful women as well, which is partly due its location in central Europe on the crossroad of many trade routes, along which the mixing of various races can occur.



On the other hand, I'm not very sure, whether Lubos is a typical representative of Czech science, society the less - which is traditionally rather balanced in its opinions, if not opportunistic due it's sensitive geopolitic role of small boundary country between zones of interest of East an West Europe blocks. Buffer countries are often playing a role of branes, which leads to the fragmentation of state boundaries in this area. Aether foam gets more dense at place of density gradient due the potential energy content, where two dual space-time branes/gradients intersects/interfere mutually.



Whereas Weblog Award is rather representative competition, it's still based on results of surprisingly limited number of votes, because the first place in Best European Blog category was a matter of just some 700 voices. Which isn't really too much in the world of anonymous proxies, whereas Goggle is doing a lot more than 1000 queries per second (about 25 queries per second per server). Anyway, Motl's price is well deserved for his frenetic activity and it's even logical in certain extent, because his postings are often quite entertaining and informative and Reference Frame blog is one of few ones, which I'm visiting regularly. Because modern people are basically consumers, Motl's graphomania plays well with their needs, because average visitor can always find something new in his blog everyday.

If so, where's the problem?

Even if we ignore the excentric and subjectively ugly design (typical for Motl's sites) and sometimes unstable behavior of scripts on his site (the purpose of which is to prohibit Motl's opponents in visiting and posting at times), we shouldn't neglect the fact, popularity of this blog is partially based on strongly biased opinions and ad hominem attacks, followed by personally motivated censorship of discussions, which manifest itself by sectarian character of people, which are allowed to post there (simillia simillibus curantur). From these reasons, Motl is often perceived as a controversial person in blogosphere. Personally, I do not believe, most of people, who voted in Weblog Award Poll didn't realize autistic and asocial character of "humble correspondent's" blog - the problem is, the system of voting didn't enable them to express their opinion. Negative voices simply don't count here.

This is a general property of contemporary voting systems, which enable only positive votes, which leads to high degree of populism in side of politicians and ignorance and lack of interests about negative aspects of politics on the side of publicity. Even morally controversial politicians may become successful in this system, if they're is sufficiently active in another areas, in self promotion of personality cult in particular. I believe, this MAY be one of reasons of society problems with its own political representations: voters simply have no veto privilege - they can be only partly responsible. In natural evolution such unbalanced approach to fitness function would suffer consequences, because it violates the equilibrium of supply and demand.

As I'm not expert in social sciences, I'm not informed, whether such approach was proposed or even tested in history and which reasons has lead people to consider only positive voting approach in anonymous elections. Maybe it could have adverse effects and it would lead to undesirable level of opportunism between politicians, I don't know. But as I've met in many cases, most trivial ideas were often ignored for long time just because of their simplicity or generally low asset, which can manifest only under high civilization density. Maybe it could even save Germany from nacism in the mid of 30's of the last century, which was rather inclined to Hitler's populism. If so, maybe the time of more dualistic/symmetric voting system just come up.

Lorentz symmetry and String theory

This post is a polemic to Motl's somewhat nervous defense of Lorentz symmetry (LS), as quoted by italics. It hope, it may be interesting for someone. By AWT the confrontation of ideas in dialectic discussion is driving tensor of new ideas: full agreement cannot serve as a both subject, both object of further thinking and extrapolations.

Moshe Rozali wrote a very sane text about the importance of LS for the search for the fundamental laws of Nature: The Universe is probably not a quantum computer. I agree with every word he wrote. He says that many people who are following the physics blogosphere want to believe that their area of expertise is actually sufficient to find a theory of everything.

.. by the same way, like string theorists and many others.. By AWT whatever theory of your personal preference can become a TOE, if you make it infinitely implicit, i.e. if you compose it from as from minimal number of postulates, as possible. The complex theories mixed from high number of postulates, like string theory would be strongly handicapped by such way, of course.

So Seth Lloyd of the quantum computing fame wants to believe that the world is a quantum computer. Robert Laughlin wants to imagine that quantum gravity is an example of the fractional quantum Hall effect. Other people have their own areas of expertise, too. Peter Woit wants to believe that a theory of everything can be found by mudslinging and defamations while Lee Smolin wants to believe that the same theory can be found by selling caricatures of octopi to the media (following some subtle and not so subtle defamations, too).

..and string theorists are believing in vibrating strings. And so? Live and let live. The world of coexisting theories illustrates the space-time world, being a low energy density projection of it into causual space.

Moshe Rozali correctly tells them that if they are going to ignore the Lorentz symmetry, a basic rule underlying special relativity, they are almost guaranteed to fail. Lorentz symmetry is experimentally established and even if it didn't hold quite accurately, it holds so precisely that a good theory must surely explain why it seems to work so extremely well in the real world.

Lorentz symmetry is violated by quantum mechanics heavily, it's simply based on dual approach be more specific. By AWT even gravitational lensing is rather quantum mechanics phenomena, then the relativity phenomena. To defend Lorentz symmetry you're simply required to fight against quantum mechanics and vice-versa.

It still doesn't mean, Universe computes something for somebody.

Moreover, the state-of-the-art theories of the world are so constrained - i.e. so predictive - exactly because they are required to satisfy the Lorentz symmetry.

Quantum mechanics is based on zero or infinite many radiative time arrows. It's invariant to LS (and other postulates of relativity, based on radiative time arrow causality), while still remains predictive. Aether theory is invariant to both, while still remains predictive. In fact, just because both LS, both quantum mechanics are mutually inconsistent apparently, here's a question, why not to start once again from complete beginning.

Because of this symmetry, quantum field theories only admit a few marginal or relevant deformations. If you assume that they make sense up to extremely high energy scales, you may accurately predict all of their low-energy physics as long as you know a few important parameters. Such a "complete knowledge" of physics in terms of a few parameters would be impossible in non-relativistic theories.

The same is true for relativistic theories. The emergence concept is still required to seamlessly connect both these branches of physics.

String theory is even more constrained than quantum field theory: it has no adjustable dimensionless non-dynamical parameters whatsoever. In some sense, you may view string theory as a tool to generate privileged quantum field theories with some massless spectrum and infinitely many very special, selected massive fields with completely calculable interactions. So all the Lorentz constraints that apply to quantum field theory can do the analogous job in string theory, too.

String theory is like every other quantum field theory in this point. It's true, most of formalism was developed under cover of string theory, because string theory has a good marketing, best experts and some nice faces in front of it. But these approaches can be used in many other theories and the best string theorists, like Ed Witten are doing so without any frustrations.

However, in string theory, the character of LS is even more direct. The very short distance physics of string theory is pretty much guaranteed to respect the LS. Whenever you look at regions that are much smaller than all the curvature radii of a D+1-dimensional spacetime manifold, the dynamics of a closed string reduces to a collection of D+1 free scalars on the worldsheet which manifestly preserves the Lorentz symmetry. And one can show that the interactions respect it, too.

String theory is based on combination of quantum mechanics and special relativity. From this point of view is apparently less general, then any theory based on combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity, like LQG. It's just one of evolutionary steps of physics, no less, no more. It opened many research perspectives, while quantum gravity has opened others.

Open strings may violate the LS spontaneously, for a nonzero B-field or a magnetic field on the brane, and one can enumerate a couple of related ways to spontaneously break the Lorentz symmetry with the presence of branes and their worldvolume fields. But none of these pictures ever hides the fact that the fundamental theory behind all these possibilities is Lorentz-invariant.

This is just one of many perspectives possible. Some others can see an infinitely fractal Universe based upon quantum mechanics units or even particle units. But fractal geometrodynamics, as expressed by double relativity based on Poincare, Cartan and deSitter groups is still in the game as well.

There's a lot of confusion in the public about the fate of the LS in general relativity. Be sure that the LS is incorporated into the very heart of general relativity. General relativity generalizes special relativity; it doesn't deny it. General relativity can be defined as any collection of physical laws that respect the rules of special relativity (including Lorentz invariance) in small enough regions of spacetime - regions that can, however, be connected into a curved manifold. All breaking of LS in general relativity can always be viewed as a spontaneous breaking by long-distance effects and configurations.

Every generalization is predestined to violate its roots less or more lately. My personal understanding is, general relativity has nothing to do with LS at all, being even much more general, then many relativists (specially those special ones) may be willing to admit. Anyway, general relativity has nothing to do with string theory, which doesn't uses postulates of general relativity at all. This belongs into realm of quantum gravity.

In fact, even in spacetimes with a lot of curved regions - such as spacetimes with many neutron stars or even black holes - one can use the tools of special relativity in many contexts: either in very small regions that are much smaller than all the curvature radii, or in regions that are much larger than stars and black holes. In the latter description, the stars and black holes may be viewed as local point masses or tiny disturbances that follow the laws of relativistic mechanics at much longer distances, anyway.

That's perfectly right. And the large systems of such particles are following a quantum or newton mechanics at another distances, and so on.

So if someone completely neglects Lorentz invariance, the player that became so essential in 1905, he shouldn't be surprised if theoretical physicists simply ignore him or her. It is not necessary for a theory to be Lorentz-invariant from the very beginning. But a theory only starts to be interesting as a realistic theory of our world after one proves that Lorentz invariance holds exactly (or almost exactly).

It was just Einstein in 1917, who completely omitted Lorentz invariance from further thoughts. Just because string theory has chosen Lorentz invariance as one of its postulates doesn't means, this approach is the only universal approach to physics. Even Einstein has recognized it - so why not some string theorists?

I am personally convinced that theories that try to break Lorentz invariance by small effects are not well-motivated. But even if I insist on the things that have been established only, the "at least almost accurate" Lorentz symmetry that has been demonstrated is an extremely powerful constraint on any theory. If you invent a random theory for which no reason why it should be Lorentz-invariant is known, it is extremely likely that the LS doesn't work at all and the theory is therefore ruled out.

The small breaking of Lorentz invariance we can observe as a quantum chaos. It's not a consequence of violating it, rather applying it in many concurrent time arrows. Because every particle itself is Lorentz invariant, the mutual interaction of many particles brings a causal uncertainty into global view. The theory based on small effects is Kostelecky theory, for example.

There are actually approaches to string theory that are not manifestly Lorentz-invariant. For example, the BFSS matrix model, or M(atrix) theory, is a 0+1-dimensional quantum field theory - a U(N) gauge theory with 16 supercharges. You can also say that it is a quantum mechanical model with many degrees of freedom organized into large Hermitean matrices. It resembles non-relativistic quantum mechanics, with some extra indices and a quartic potential.

Every theory should be defined by its postulate tensor, string theory is no exception. No theory, which is based on Lorentz symmetry can derive the violation of this symmetry by rigorous way.

There is no a priori reason to think that such a seemingly non-relativistic theory - whose symmetry actually includes the Galilean symmetry known from non-relativistic physics - should be Lorentz-invariant. Except that one can defend and "effectively prove" this relativistic symmetry by arguments based on string dualities. Although it can't be completely obvious from the very beginning, the original BFSS matrix model describes a relativistic 11-dimensional spacetime of M-theory. But the relevance of the matrix model for M-theory only began to be studied seriously when arguments were found that these two theories were actually equivalent. You simply can't expect your non-relativistic model to be equally interesting for physicists if you don't have any evidence that your model respects Lorentz invariance - or if it even seems very likely that it cannot respect it. Physicists would be foolish to treat your theory on par with QED or the BFSS matrix model because it seems excessively likely that your theory can't agree with some of the basic properties of the spacetime we know.

This is not true. In AWT the LS is provided by fact, no object can serve both like subject, both like mean of observation at the same space and time (a singular case of observation, based on zero degree causal tensor). Therefore Aether concept cannot violate Lorentz symmetry locally by its definition.

Emergence and the role of Lorentz symmetry in the grand scheme of things.

That's right, but the emergence has no relevant explanation in physics without Aether concept, not a string theory. And they're both theorems of AWT. Aether concept doesn't uses neither require any other ad hoced concepts. While emergence is required both for explanation of relativity, both quantum mechanics, I believe, we can avoid LS safely for future by the same way, like prof. Einstein did.   

The comments above should be completely uncontroversial. But let me add a few more speculations. Because space is emergent in string theory, the LS - a symmetry linking space and time - has to be emergent, too. This symmetry of special relativity is telling us that things can't move faster than light in the newly emergent geometry. What is this constraint good for? Is Nature trying to tell us something deeper than that?

The claim "space is emergent in string theory" simply mean, space is composed of many tiny strings. If you cannot realize it, then you simply don't know, what the emergence is based on. The Nature is just trying to tell us, it doesn't matter, which concept you're use in large quantity, it always loses its conceptual subtleties and becomes a pin-point singularity, i.e. "particle" from sufficiently distant space time perspective. This is what the Aether approach is based on: on particle abstract. The symmetry you're disputing just illustrates, the LS has its principal limits in anti deSitter space. From perspective of observer sitting inside of dense fluctuation of Aether the energy will spread outside of black hole by superluminal speed without problem.

Well, I am confident that special relativity is important for life as we know it because motion is very helpful for animals and the equivalence of all inertial frames is the simplest (and maybe the only plausible) method for Nature to guarantee that the very motion won't kill the animals. Imagine that you would feel any motion - you would probably vomit all the time and die almost instantly. ;-)

Stop trolling. Special relativity is important for life of (special) relativists and some fundamentalist string theorists only. Some people can become quite naturalistic, when defeating their pet theories...;-)

The Lorentz symmetry and the Galilean symmetry were the two most obvious realizations of the equivalence of all inertial frames that Nature could choose from, and She chose the LS because it treats space and time more democratically than the Galilean symmetry. (I could probably construct more robust anthropic arguments even though they would probably not be based on the motion of animals only - simply because the low value of "v/c" for animals indicates that the finiteness of "c" is not necessary for life itself.)

Nature doesn't choose the LS, the Prussian academy under Planck leadership has chosen it as its paradigm to avoid influence of Poincare's Sorbonne. This is a difference...;-)

But in the previous two paragraphs, we were talking about the 3+1 large dimensions of spacetime only. String theory has additional dimensions that can emerge in various ways and that are dual to each other - and the LS applies to all these dimensions as long as they become larger than the curvature (and compactification) radii. In some sense, that's quite shocking.

Emergence isn't miracle, it has very simple reason in AWT. Some physicists are becoming a cocooned creationists apparently, because they tend to use the concepts without their firm reasoning. This is a consequence of less or more hidden belief into reality, not the reality understanding by logical implications based on analogies.

The conclusion is, LS violation isn’t supposed to be weak at all. If we consider, particles of matter are all formed by the same vacuum, like the rest of cosmic space, then the LS violation is responsible for refraction index of both black holes, both elementary particles, everything. If LS would be complete universal, we would see anything from Universe - simply because it would be nothing to deflect path of light.

We can call this missunderstanding by proverb “The darkest place is under the candlestick”. Many scientists are spending money and their lives by obstinate search for LS violation - whereas they’re virtually sitting on it all the time. This just illustrates, why is it so important to understand subject at nonformal, conceptual level. It can save the money for all of us.

Every quantum mechanics phenomena is just a manifestation of nearly singular Lorentz symmetry violation from this perspective. Not saying about weaker effects, like CMB, gravitational lensing, photon-photon interactions and pair formation, GZK limit, dark matter… Virtually, if we can observe at least something, then the LS is violated there. We can see just this portion of curved space-time, because the places, where LS remains valid well are transparent for us by definition.

The same, just dual problem exists with quest for hidden dimensions. Because scientists are refuting Aether concept, we are forced to pay them for development of alternative models and for proposal of experiments, which could confirm the presence of hidden dimensions, albeit every quantum chaos or complex long distance interaction is demonstrating them clearly. Such ignorance may appear funny, but it's an innefective and expensive game for the rest of society, because these scientists can get involved in more usefull things.

To be sarcastic regarding string theory, I’d say, it tryies to describe by using of LS just this part of Universe, which violates it most pronouncedly. But this paradox is logical, because we can never use the same aspect of reality both the object of  observation/ description, both the mean of observation/description. We can see, the same logics, which introduces the Aether can be used even for Lorentz symmetry at the another level of reasoning. Theoretical description is dual to experimental observation in this sense. The reality is partly real, partly the consequence of theories and observable reality forms the boundary of both approaches.

Anyway, quantum gravity suffers the same conceptual problem, being dependent on equivalence principle instead of LS. It just means, it becomes wrong/singular in different part of conformal space-time: it can describe the LS violation of free space, assuming a “stringy structure” for it, while it’s missing the complex multidimensional structure of particles.

Whereas string theory depends on LS, it cannot predict the LS violation phenomena by rigorous way, because it doesn’t care about vacuum structure (with exception of string field theory and some other boundary approaches) . But it can describe well the complex structure of particles as such. These nice theories are AdS/CFT dual in fact, being separated by one derivation of Aether gradient in its description (they're mutualy orthogonal each other via Lorentz symmetry group).

AWT, emergence and Hardy's paradox

Recently, the fundamental experimental evidence of Hardy's paradox was given, which basically means, quantum mechanics isn't pure statistics based theory following Bell inequalities anymore. The non-formal understanding of this paradox is easy: if every combination of mutually commutable quantities cannot be measured with certainty, how can we be sure about it? Whether some combination exists, which violates such uncertainty? By such way, uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics violates itself on background, thus enabling so called "weak" measurements.

This was demonstrated recently for the case of entangled photon pairs - it can serve as an evidence, even the photons have a distinct "shape", which is the manifestation of the rest mass of photon. This is because the explicit formulation of quantum mechanics neglects the gravity phenomena and the rest mass concept on background: by Schrödinger equation every particle should dissolve into whole Universe gradually - which violates the everyday observations, indeed. Such behavior is effectively prohibited by acceleration following from omni-directional Universe expansion i.e. the gravity potential, so that every locatable particle has a nonzero surface curvature and its conditionally stable at the human scale. From nested character of Aether fluctuations follows, not only single level of "weak" measurement should be achievable here. After all, the fact we can interact with another people and object without complete entanglement can serve as an evidence, the "weak" observation is very common at the human scale.

By AWT every strictly causual theory violates itself in less or more distant perspective due the emergence phenomena. While the classical formulation of general relativity remains seemingly self-consistent (being strictly based on single causality arrow) - the deeper analysis reveals, derivation of Einstein field equations neglects the stress energy tensor contribution (Yilmaz, Heim, Bekenstein and others), which is the result of mass-energy equivalence. This approach makes relativity implicit and infinitely fractal theory by the same way, like the quantum mechanics (which is AdS/CFT dual theory). For example, gravitational lensing, multiple event horizons of charged black holes and/or dark matter phenomena can serve as an evidence of spontaneous symmetry breaking of time arrows and manifestation of quantum uncertainty and super-symmetry in relativity. This uncertainty leads into landscape of many solutions for every theory quantum field or quantum gravity theory, based on combination of mutually inconsistent (i.e. different) postulates.

Such behavior follows Gödel's incompleteness theorems, by which formal proof of rules valid for sufficiently large natural number sets becomes more difficult, then these rules itself - thus remaining unresolvable by their very nature. This is a consequence of emergence, which introduces a principal dispersion into observation of large causal objects and/or phenomena, which cannot be avoided, or such artifacts wouldn't observable anymore. By such way, every strictly formal (i.e. sequential logic based) proof of natural law becomes violated in less or more distant perspective and it follows "More is Different" theorem. AWT demonstrates, this emergence is followed by causal (i.e. transversal wave based) energy spreading through large system of scale invariant symmetry fluctuations (unparticles), which are behaving like soap foam with respect to light spreading and they enable to observe the universe (and all objects inside it) both from excentric, both from insintric perspective simultaneously. The mutual interference of these two perspectives leads to the quantization of observable reality, which is insintrically chaotic, exsintrically causal by its very nature.

In this connection it's useful (..and sometimes entertaining) to follow deductions of formally thinking theorists, like Lubos Motl, whose strictly formal thinking leads him to the deep contradiction/confrontation with common sense and occasionally the whole rest of world undeniably. It may appear somewhat paradoxical, just fanatic proponent of string theory - which has introduced the duality concept into physics - has so deep problem with dual/plural thinking. This paradox is still logical though, if we realize, how complex the string theory is and how strictly formal thinking it requires for its comprehension.

By such way, "emergence group" of dense Aether theory makes understanding of observable reality quite transparent and easy task at sufficiently general level. It still doesn't mean, here's not still a lotta things to understand at the deeper levels, dedicated to individual formal theories.

How the AWT affects expert's thinking in "quiet"..

Before two years a former Harvard professor Lubos Motl well known in biosphere was firmly convinced proponent of anti-aether lobby - but now he's promoting an Aether concept openly, albeit he's working in physics for years and he censored it in his blog comments obstinately.




This example just demonstrates clearly, how scrambled many people (even those most formally "qualified" ones..) can be concerning the trivial Aether concept. From AWT follows, the character of new ideas spreading corresponds a common phase transition inside of multiparticle system as a result of symmetry breaking, for example the character of boiling near water surface.



At the very beginning the new ideas are propagating like tiny isolated islands through society. Most of ideas will not survive negativistic stance of surrounding environment and they will collapse again like bubbles near boiling surface. Their proponents don't understand their common points, so they're repelled by surface tension mutually like tiny bubbles and they're even fighting mutually due energy competetion. Gradually, the number of people understanding new ideas increases and the mainstream community is starting to integrate/steal them into system of existing theories (for example, string and quantum foam, fractal or gradient reality, emergence or unparticle concept of Aether theory adopted by mainstream theories as an example).

At certain moment, an inverse population is reached and the intersubjective thinking will suddenly switch into new conceptual paradigm from distant outer perspective, so such transition appears sharp like surface of black hole event horizon. However, from internal observer perspective such transition often appears seamlessly continuous, because their proponents didn't realize change of intersubjective thinking, being isolated from reality in their ivory towers like tiny isolated black holes or elementary particles due their strong surface gradient of information density (compare the "fuzzball" concept of event horizon). These proponents of old paradigm will become isolated in their stance gradually, so they play a role of rare antiparticles persisting in diaspora inside of new conceptual continuum. And whole evolution can repeat again.

We can observe many other analogies to material world here. For example, active proponents of ideas are often attracted by super-symmetrical particles, which are playing role of opposition by the same way, like antiparticle clouds of dark matter occurs at the presence of massive objects as a result of strong gradient of gravity field. The short-seeing proponents of ideas are often behaving like black holes due total reflection, so they lose ability to exchange their ideas with the rest of society at all. We are saying, such person anticipate their time in relation to omni-directional space-time expansion.



As the result, behavior of biological systems or society and propagation of enthropy density and memes can learn us a lot about energy and matter spreading through Aether - and vice-versa.

And that's the memo. ;-)