Saturday, April 21, 2012

Higgs and finnish folklore


The belief of the average physics blogger has been that Higgs has been discovered and that experimentalists are just too conservative to say it aloud. Gradually this belief has begun to shatter as I have told in previous postings.

Lubos Motl was one of the most fanatic believers in Higgs and labeled Higgs skeptics as madmen and idiots whereas I had to take the non-rewarding role of a wise guy. This wise guy appears also in finnish folklore telling about the people of "Hölmölä" and - believe or not - has name "Matti";-). I did not find any direct translation for "Hölmölä" in English. In any case, it is a village populated by friendly but rather simple fellows getting into trouble all the time and Matti has to solve their problems. I cannot avoid the feeling that physics blogs might define the counterpart for "Hölmölä" in weblore.


Name obliges and I have tried to fulfill my duty by repeatedly telling to the web villagers that this signal at 125 GeV does not look quite like Higgs and that Higgs mechanism is mathematically an extremely ad hoc and ugly manner to reproduce the particle masses. It seems that in vain.


In his last posting related to growing suspicions about the real nature of Higgs signal Lubos makes clear that those who have dared to suspect the correctness of the interpretation of 125 GeV state as Higgs, are mentally unstable. Lubos himself however considers now seriously the possibility that it is not Higgs after all, and reveals to the reader that even him - Lubos! - can be wrong!


Lubos promotes the interpretation as a "radion", a prediction of an extremely ad hoc theory known as Randall-Sundrum model deriving its respectability from the claim that its inspiration comes from string theory. Surprisingly, Lubos does not regard himself as mentally unstable whereas those who were more far sighted are such according to Lubos. Could the reason be that the radion model has been developed by Names! Or is this just a new example about the strange non-Boolean logic of Lubos? Reader perhaps remembers from the postings of Lubos that standard SUSY should have been found long time ago. Lubos also revealed the rumor about discovery of stop and hinted about possession of super-secret information about the discovery of SUSY to be revealed within few months.


In light of this reader perhaps understands why I find difficult to avoid the association between physics blog community and "Hölmölä".

Addition: Colleagues seem to be realizing that something might be wrong with the interpretation of 125 GeV signal as Higgs. For instance, J. W. Moffat suggests interpretation of 125 GeV state as pseudo-scalar analogous to pion. Also TGD based interpretation corresponds to pseudoscalar: the fact that one works 8-D context however forces to modify pseudoscalar to the analog of pseudo-vector in CP2 degrees of freedom having both neutral and charged components. Moffat does not propose charged companions.

20 comments:

PlatoHagel said...

Hi Matti,

We are all in the end looking for the truth of things. Some are better visionaries then others so classic imaging helps.

Strictly speaking, scientists do inhabit qualitative worlds describing every crack and corner, while some of us are lead to it. For us lay people we need a firm footing in this world to see beyond. So thanks for your efforts

Best,

matpitka@luukku.com said...

When one doesn't know, one must imagine! Thanks for encouragement.

Matti

donkerheid said...

I found this:
"...
- Matti, thanks a lot, thanks a lot!
The Hölmölä people wanted to give Matti a good salary for this, and the life in the village went on happier than ever."

As it seems we might live in Hölmömpilä actually. :)

Ulla said...

Lubos should listen to his teacher :)

Geometric stochastic resonence http://dml.riken.jp/pub/nori/pdf/PRL_104_020601_2010.pdf

I am maybe not so good in listening myself. At least I know you can think. It is harder for me to catch up.

What is sensing? A reaction? You said a ZEO? This would point to the fact that the sensing creates the quantization (thermodynamic square?)? So there is a law behind second law, as Holger Nielsen thought? But thermodynamics as INVARIANCE?

See also http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0896627306007276/1-s2.0-S0896627306007276-main.pdf?_tid=efb021e7d70bf01d6dde10627b9acb35&acdnat=1335120095_094a7395634fc8c856f93e5d9717c952

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Donkerheid:

I confess that I was not quite realistic. The people in the real life Hölmölä are not so friendly as in the village of the fairy tale: the latter also listen to the advice of Matti but usually misunderstand. The real life villagers do not like Matti at all, have banished him, and would not listen him under any circustances;-).

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Ulla:

It seems that the visit to Harward did not do good for Lubos;-).

I have discussed stochastic resonance in the model of EEG as a mechanism to generate "coctail party effect". See
http://tgdtheory.com/public_html/tgdeeg/tgdeeg.html#eegII

I have concentrated mainly to topics which distinguish TGD from other theories: in particular from theories which could be called generic: catastrophe theory, chaos theory, stochastic resonance, etc.. Most of the model building during last four decades relies on the assumption that gauge theories are somehow generic: you such take standard model, select gauge group, select representations for particles, select symmetry breaking and calculate beta function. This is completely mechanized waste of time but has produced impressive number of thesis works and publications. Super string theories continue the noble tradition and with some additional recipes making able to move in landscape one ends up to similar procedure. All goes wrong already at the first step: proton is predicted to decay but there is not a single thread of evidence for this.


ZEO implies two kinds of symmetries. The zero energy states themselves become the symmetry algebra of the zero energy states. Amusing self referentiality again. This symmetry is non-local in the sense that point like particles are replaced by partonic 2-surfaces and one has something analogous to conformal algebra. It is also multilocal with respect to the partonic 2-surfaces - even at the point-like liit - as is generalization of Yangian symmetry. ZEO implies that the products for Hermitian square roots of density matrices forming a basis multiplied by powers of S-matrix S defined the algebra and this algebra generalizes the Kac-Moody type algebra.

This must be extremely powerful symmetry but I am unable to deduce its consequences.

There is second symmetry. It is due to finite measurement resolution which one might call "thermodynamical". In the representation of finite measurement resolution as gauge invariance, one has complete gauge invariance so that these non-observable degrees of freedom are eliminated. In ordinary gauge invariance same holds true almost: almost because the gauge charges can be non-vanishing. For a complete gauge symmetry they would vanish. I remember that HB had talk about
his idea of immensely large gauge symmetry which would break down to observed: I am not enthusiastic: proton stability kills the extension of gauge symmetry as a recipe to produce theories of everything.

Ulla said...

I am aware that the SR is emergent, but it explains the biological effects and meridians/chi. It also explains the hierarchy and topology. The creation of borders not that much (harmonic oscillations is just a small bit, quasichrystals, etc?)? It partly explains the cognition, in clearly showing that it relates to environment. Cognition and memory can both be manipulated from outside, also emotions. If it use a different kind of math like p-adics is an assumption. The ZEO for the sensing/answer is also an energetic effect due to the oscillation of the threshold (membrane?). The massgap indicates a crossing of symmetries as the interference? This is the tip of the cone?

Earlier you talked of the interference between spacetime sheets (membranes?)?

I have been accused of being stupid, and I really feel stupid. I must go back to the TGD lessons and ZOE. Maybe I then can understand it?

Ulla said...

http://physicsforme.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/there-are-no-particles-there-are-only-fields/

◘Fractality◘ said...

Matti:

In TGD ToC, how is subjective consciousness differentiated from consciousness?


I would imagine that in TGD ToC, left and right brain hemispheres are indeed distinct from one another but they form a coherent whole through entanglement.

Some thoughts on the hemisperic roles of the brain:

Right Hemisphere: High-Speed Pattern Recognition
"Emotional contagion exemplifies what can be called the brain's 'low road' at work. The low road is circuitry that operates beneath our awareness, automatically and effortlessly, with immense speed. Most of what we do seems to be piloted by massive neural networks operating via the low road -- particularly in our emotional life."

The "high road," writes Goleman:

"... in contrast runs through neural systems that work more methodically and step by step, with deliberate effort. We are aware of the high road, and it gives us at least some control over our inner life, which the low road denies us."

"Low road" = higher layer or lower layer of dark matter/magnetic flux tubes?

"High road" = lower layer or higher layer of dark matter/magnetic flux tubes?

Well regards.




Any new thoughts on neural networks as they pertain to TGD ToC?

◘Fractality◘ said...

Jaynes points out the "authority" of spoken words, and he supplies extensive data from schizophrenics and commissureotomized patients. The right brain under these conditions issues commands, not solutions or suggestions. This is not different, he claims, from what was experienced by the people of Mesopotamia and Egypt during the period up to about 1500 or 1000 BC.

It is the development of written texts (claims Jaynes) which opened up a new vista: the possibility that words could be independent of a person and thus "voice" could be abstracted into silence. This is an amazing concept which filtered down into society over the next few hundred years as parents modeled such silent consciousness to children. And with that the voices disappeared.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Fractality:

This command nature is interesting. Does it tell about the character of collective consciousness, which is also subject to evolution. From a despot teasing Job and killing his own son to more civilized God feeling mercy and telling that one should love even one's enemy.

Armies might represent extreme example of a collective mind belonging to the lowest level of development: blind obeying of commands and no personal ethics.

Also in Kalevala, which is finish national epic language is regarded as something magic. To say is to do. For instance, Väinämoinen - the ancient finnish wise guy- is able to build a boat only after he has words for related things.

I have the feeling that the progress in science also takes place in this manner. First the language is discovered and after that begins the pearl game producing models and predictions which can be tested.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Fracality:

I am not sure what you mean with subjective consciousness. Or with subjective.

Maybe "high road" be assigned with higher levels of hierarchy, to us and selves above us with time scales longer than ours. Pattern recognition is not a local process and I would assign it with high road rather than low road which would be recognition of features. I see emotions as something holistic and therefore assignable to high road rather than low road.

Low road would correspond to lower levels where information processing takes place in shorter time scales and statistical. I would assign right hemisphere with "high road", selves above us. Very large magnetic flux quanta with weak magnetic fields.

◘Fractality◘ said...

Matti:

For subjective consciousness:


What Jaynes suggests is that subjective consciousness is learned by children at about age 7 or 8. It involves recognizing themselves as seen by others -- an "analog I" which is then internalized and placed into the spaces of the imagination.


I have had TGD-inspired thoughts wondering if songs like national anthems induce semitrance ;)

In TGD ToC, do the left-brain and right-brain reside on the same level of the self-hierarchy?

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Fractality:

Thank you. Your mean with subjective consciousness what I would call self having model for itself. Ego could be called this model. I myself remember that at this age I indeed became conscious about me as seen by others. Not an accident that we went to school at the age of seven and in Christmas I got the first certificate classifying me using some numbers in the range 4 to 10;-). Already at time my officially established ego model told that I am unable to sign, and since the I have refused to sign.

I mentioned Krishnamurti who talks a lot about the problems brought by ego if one does not realize that it is just a model and in need of continual updating.

Hymns. And military marches. Unfortunately!;-). Also religious rituals and religious music. Many people (me included) do not take seriously organized religion but love music inspired by religion.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Fractality:


You ask: Do left brain and right braid reside at the same level of hierarchy?

I am unable to give yes- no answer. I just try to formulate the question more precisely. I might well say something very stupid in following;-).

a) As 3-D biological structure they are at the same level. Does this mean same level in self hierarchy? Brain is 4-dimensional object in TGD Universe. Same about selves. Therefore not necessarily.

b) Are left and right hemisphere as 4-D at same level of self hierarchy. This would bring in CDs and space-time sheets inside them. Magnetic bodies would be the relevant structures.

*One could assign the difference between hemispheres to the mode of information processing. Right brain sings, left brain talks. Right brain holistic- left brain reductionistic. This might apply only when one compares parts of left and right brain, not as a whole.

*Mathematician would use the representation of function of time as metaphor for what left brain does and construction of its Fourier transform as a metaphor for what right brain does (local-holistic). Tight brain hemisphere (or some parts of it) would correspond to much longer time scale of information processing and therefore to higher level of dark matter hierarchy. Larger CD too. Jaynes assigned assigned the emergence of long term memories to right hemisphere: their were sung! In dreams I often hear mystic singing. This temporal holism in music is strong: right hemisphere makes it possible for us to somehow remember the initial scale for a long time and we want that piece even after modulations happily ends with a return to the basic scale and basic chord and tone.

*This temporal holism would make possible for right hemisphere to guide left hemisphere as Jaynes suggests. Semitrance would mean that right hemisphere is in close contact with the collective mind and serves as a kind of medium. Collective mind experiencing the piece as much larger 4-D structure remembers the basic key (this would perhaps help to understand what makes possible musical geniuses like Mozart and Beethoven).


c) I have already included the magnetic bodies of hemispheres by including CDs. One can bring them in also explicitly to get different view.

*The time scale of memories and planned actions would differentiate between different species. This would relate to the integration of neural genomes by flux sheets going through genomes and integrating them to higher level structures. The higher this kind of structure the higher the evolutionary level. Planck constant would be the IQ characterizing this level. The sheets can go even through different organisms.

*Right brain would be more integrated in this sense: do these sheets connect right brains together to form large collective structures. Semitrance would be the entanglement of right brain with collective mind. Becoming part of the body of this bigger collective structure. Too naive?

Ulla said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2005/feb/12/weekend7.weekend2

Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly. Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think." "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone."

They use the right hemisphere.

Consciousness can only be diminished, you use to say. It is the raw material used especially by left brain to create a meaning, some logic. This means that the tighter tissue is not reåresenting consciousness, but the result of computations (time) and what we call intelligence, awareness? So the diamond of consciousness must decrease and the diamond of intelligence must grow? This is why I say that humans are the least conscious of all creatures (most intelligent). In spiritual sense this also holds true. If we want to experience something with our right brain we must shut down the external noise and sensings, also the left brain chatter, if possible. This is the big lecture by Jill Bolte Taylor.

Savant Syndrome is a rare, but spectacular, condition in which persons with various developmental disabilities, including Autistic Disorder, have astonishing islands of ability or brilliance that stand in stark, markedly incongruous contrast to the over-all handicap. In some, savant skills are remarkable simply in contrast to the handicap (talented savants). In others, the ability or brilliance is not only spectacular in contrast to the handicap, but would be spectacular even if viewed in a normal person (prodigious savant).

Newer findings on cerebral lateralization, and some imaging and other studies that do show left hemisphere damage in savants, suggest that the most plausible explanation for Savant Syndrome to be left brain damage from pre-natal, peri-natal or post-natal CNS damage [neurotoxic testosterone?] with migratory, right brain compensation, coupled with corresponding damage to higher level, cognitive (cortico-limbic) memory circuitry with compensatory take over of lower level, habit (cortical-striatal) memory. This accounts for the linking of predominately right brain skills with habit memory so characteristic of Savant Syndrome (Treffert, 1989).In talented savants, concreteness and impaired ability to think abstractly are locked in a very narrow band but, nevertheless, with constant practice and repetition can produce sufficient coding so that access to some non-cognitive structure or unconscious algorithms can be automatically attained. In prodigious savants, some genetic factors any be operative as well, since practice alone cannot account for the access to vast rules of music, art or mathematics that seems innate in these persons. Once established, intense concentration, practice, compensatory drives and reinforcement by family, teachers and others play a major role in developing and polishing the savant skills and memory linked so characteristically and dramatically by this unique brain dysfunction. http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/SavantSyndrome.htm

Ulla said...

"Our experience of ourselves as something separate from the rest is a kind of optical illusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
~Albert Einstein

growing consciousness = larger diamond = free us from intelligence? and borders of selves? This is what is done by schizo people? High dopamine acts as an antenna (island for connection?), also high Fe etc.

The big error is to think that growing consciousness means growing intelligence too. They are opposite.

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Ulla:

Growing consciousness and intelligence are opposite if we accept the standard definition of intelligence as ability to perform highly left brain activities. Precise calculations are a good example. Sticking to mechanical methods is necessary for this intelligence to flourish.

This form of intelligence dominates in science, especially so in now. The consequence is that we have been on a wrong track for four decades now in particle physics.

The dual and equally if not more important aspect of intelligence is intuition. Seeing the wood from trees. In art it dominates. It also dominated in the first decades of previous century when great theories of physics were created. Einstein's saying looks like eastern philosophy: nowadays no leading figure would say anything like this. He would talk of funding instead!;-)

matpitka@luukku.com said...

To Ulla:

I feel myself always worried when using right-left dichotomy. Many neuroscientits do not take it seriously. A dangerous habit!

I have considered a possible explanation for some numerical feats of idiot savants. For instance, it is rather easy to imagine "geometrodynamical" processes representing the decomposition of integers to factors. Primes are represented as stable basic objects and integers are unstable decaying to composite integers in various manners. I would guess that they simple "see" this process occurring. Numbers are form them objects with size and shape.

The decomposition into a product of integers would represent basic vertex -the analog of Feynman 3-vertex- but represented as decomposition to a tensor product of Hilbert spaces: co-product would be the mathematical term. Prime Hilbert spaces are like stable particle with respect to this operation. Maybe this could be the fundamental realization for the physical process representing the decomposition and maybe idiot savants are able to "see" it. Note that the process is reverse for the multiplication for which we have algorithm and is much easier.

The usual manipulation of numbers is based on simple basic arithmetic rules and usually their application is very tedious without the use of auxiliary tools. Totally different procedures.

◘Fractality◘ said...

Matti:

Thanks for the extensive reply. I am still internalizing it.