Toggle light / dark theme

Complexity decomplexified: A List of 200 Results Encountered over 55 Years

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Science, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

The present list was compiled by a “specialist for non-specialization” who owes this scientific identity to the masters of three disciplines: physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker, biologist Konrad Lorenz and mathematician Bob Rosen. With the best findings compressed into a line or two by heart, the synopsis brings hidden patterns to the fore. Simultaneously the individual results become maximally vulnerable – so as to facilitate improvement or falsification.

(August 28, revised September 16, 2012)

Philosophical Preface

Descartes re-invented the rational world of Heraclitus. Specifically, he asked the following question (paraphrased): “Do the ‘assignment conditions’ that we find ourselves glued to (the body, the now, the qualia including color and joy) represent an acceptable state of affairs?” The answer is “yes,“ Descartes proposed: if and only if the other two conditions that hold us in their grip (the “laws” and the “initial conditions”momentarily applicable within the laws, to use Newton’s later terms) are consistent. As long as this “machine conjecture” is empirically fulfilled, an infinite privilege separates the conscious observer from all other inhabitants of the world: The others become “mere machines” in the experience of the first (so that he may, for example, do a brain operation on one of them to save his life). Levinas called this state of one’s being totally outside the other’s interior side, “exteriority.” The subject has the option of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority by acting fairly towards the poor “machine” of the other so as if it possessed a subjective side of its own – even though this cannot be proven and indeed is absurd to assume (were there not the miracle of the consciousness of the first). A single act of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority, performed by the inmate of the dream of consciousness on a fellow machine, would then put the Dream-Giving Instance to shame – unless it is benevolent itself. The fact that this risk is being taken by the DGI is a living proof, according to Descartes, that the chain of colorful subjective nows imposed on the victim of consciousness is not a “bad dream.” But this applies only as long as the “steel fibers” of the Cartesian coordinates, proposed to mathematically fit the colorless sub-portion of experience (its “Hades part”), prove to be consistent. This empirical question endows the study of their properties with a maximal dignity. In the Greek Hades, all quantitative relations valid in our upper world were preserved – except for the “blood” that endows them with color and substance. Hence the merely relational (“shadow”) part becomes an instrument by which to do good to one’s fellow inhabitants of the dream who, by their being machines, are totally given into the dreamer’s hand as hostages. This “exteriority theory” (Levinas) endows science with an infinite dignity – as long as it is empirically consistent. The task to include quantum mechanics – with its indeterminism and nonlocality explained by micro assignment – was singlehandedly taken up by Everett in the footsteps of Einstein. (I thank Ali Sanayei and Ivan Zelinka for discussions and Stephen Wolfram for encouragement. For J.O.R.)

The List

• Energy-saving voice-signal proportional amplitude-modulation (made distortion-free by negative feedback between rectified high-frequency output and low-frequency input)

• Z-incision (a non-mutilating circumcision method)

• “Invisible machines”: virtually infinitely many non-negative chemical variables that are almost all zero for most of the time (with arbitrarily long delays incurred at very low concentrations)

• Chemical evolution as a special case: forms an Erdoes-type growing automaton (similarly Stu Kaufmann, Joel Cohen and Koichiro Matsuno)

• Far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics and chemical kinetics jointly predict the emergence of life with C-C-C- backbones in liquid water on earth and Europa (and with B-N-B-N- backbones in liquid ammonia inside Jupiter)

• Teilhard’s “second arrow” in statistical thermodynamics is a valid description of the implied asymptotic approach towards “point Omega”

• “Recursive evolution”: evolution improves evolution in the first place (with Michael Conrad, in the footsteps of John Holland and John von Neumann)

• Unlike “metabolic adaptation” (Darwin) which is non-predictive in its history-dependent details, “positional adaptation” (discovered in a discussion with Konrad Lorenz as being of equal rank) is predictive

• “What are brains for?” is a well-posed scientific question (in the new science of deductive biology)

• “The Rossler task” (Michael Conrad) or the “decision-type traveling salesman problem” (as its re-discoverers, Garey and Johnson, called it in their book “Computers and Intractability”)

• Ric Charnov’s “optimal foraging theory” is closely related (finding things “just in time” is what brains are made for)

• Goedel’s incompleteness theorem can be seen as a limiting solution to the NP-complete traveling salesman problem (so incompleteness becomes intuitive)

• “The bacterial brain” (residing in the cell membrane with both sensors and motors) implements a local solution to the “smoothed-out” traveling-salesman problem (with Hans Bremermann)

• “The brain equation” yields a highly efficient local solution to the decision-type traveling-salesman problem

• The brain equation attaches a positive or negative weight to all neighboring sources of different types in a distance-, angle- and time-dependent fashion (so that an optimum “sum direction” results, with all directions attached an either finite or infinite, positive or negative weight)

• Nonexistence of an “eusocial brain equation” (with Thimo Böhl and Oswald Berthold)

• “A universal brain”: the brain equation combined with a powerful “universal simulator” (or synonymously “cognitive map system” or Virtual-Reality machine “VR”)

• The combined system (brain equation plus artificial cognitive map system with overlap buffer and long-term storage device) is what Bill Seaman calls a “Neosentient”

• The “sinc algorithm” (real-space equivalent to a Fourier window in frequency space) can be approximated by a multi-level, multi-resolution, both ascending and descending Reichardt-von-Foerster type neural net (with Bernhard Uehleke)

• “Tolerance attractors”: form under recurrence in such a neural net (implementing Poincaré-Zeeman-Poston-DalCin “tolerance theory” in their realizing von Foerster’s prediction of “Platonic ideation”)

• The technical problem of “fast picture-shifting” in such multi-resolution level neural nets or wavelets, while solved by nature, still eludes science (with Michael Klein)

• “Pandaka-pygmaea Institute“ proposed to solve the Platonic and other brain problems by investigating the smallest fish’s brain (along with that of its normal-sized close relative, Gobius niger)

• The positive sum potential in the brain equation – “happiness” – is displayed by the young of social animals

• One of the sub-potentials in the brain equation – “bonding” – is displayed by all social animals

• Two distinct displays (like happiness and bonding) can acquire a functional overlap through an evolutionary accident called “Huxley evolutionary ritualization”

• Huxley’s accident happened independently in the evolution of two mammalian species: tail-wagging signals both bonding and happiness in wolves, and the Smiley face signals both happiness and bonding in humans (similarly Jan van Hoof and Frans de Waal)

• “All Animals Are Autistic” (AAAA): because the brain equation, an autonomous optimizer, is autistic by definition

• Every brain-equation-carrier is “alive” independently of hardware because it solves the positional-adaptation problem which is no less vital than the metabolic-adaptation problem (“chemical life” and “brain life” have equal ranks)

• Universal brains are “mirror-competent” (owing to their high simulational capability)

• Unlike humans and some other species, wolves do not have a universal brain (their VR component is too weak for mirror-competence)

• Smile-laughter overlap + strong bonding + mirror-competence = sufficient condition for an “epigenetic function change” in the sense of Robert Rosen to occur: the “personogenetic function change” (PFC)

• The PFC consists in the invention of the “suspicion of benevolence shown by the other” (which then leads to a state of “being moved” in a positive feed-back comprising both sides in the elicited bonding bout)

• The PFC represents an example of “creation out of nothing” (the suspicion of, and then production of, benevolence)

• “Was Mom totally moved like scrambled eggs?” [the German word “geruehrt” means both being moved and being stirred], asked 3-year-old Jonas (in “Jonas’ World – The Thinking of a Child” edited by Reimara Rossler and the author)

• “Person attractor” (Detlev Linke): the new stable mode of functioning arising in the PFC

• The PFC can be seen to be nothing but a misunderstanding (a mistaken convergence concocted in the universal simulator): were it not interactively confirmed

• The fact that the PFC represents a joint functional trap allows one to speak of “Nature’s Shadchen trick” (with Roger Malina)

• The person attractor resembles a “folie à deux” (a form of “animal schizophrenia”) compared to the physiological autistic functioning of the two autonomous optimizers with cognition

• The PFC constitutes a miracle, worked by the toddler

• Watching this creation-out-of-nothing being achieved by the toddler is a maximally moving event (there appears to be no recorded documentation of this “holy of holies” of humankind)

• The mutually confirmed suspicion of benevolence acquires the character of an “objective truth” (there is no older objective truth)

• The “miracle” goes still further: a third fictitious person is involved in the personogenesis (called “god” or “Buddha” etc. in different cultures): the Dream-Giving Instance DGI or synonymously the “non-I” (or even the “palpable emptiness behind the dream”)

• The “non-I” arises concomitantly with the “I” and the “you” (the two other persons created in the PFC)

• Women are probably more religious (they statistically have more “heart” in the sense of bonding and in regard to the presence of the bonding hormone oxytocin, and moreover form in the majority of cases the partner in the PFC

• Friendly teasing jokes (“humor”) are implicit in the PFC

• Being able to ask a factual question is a new behavioral trait made possible by the PFC

• “Nonautistic languaging” automatically develops as a consequence of the PFC (similarly C. Andy Hilgartner)

• Human society in all its essential aspects is formed as a consequence of the PFC: society is based on asking questions and giving answers on the basis of the mutual trust between persons

• “Personology” – “Adam” means: person made out of soil (with Michael Langer)

• The “physiological autism” of every autonomous optimizer with cognition persists in human beings with an innate “smile blindness” (if the latter is strong enough to prevent the epigenetic PFC from occurring)

• Most alleged autism in humans is “pseudo-autism” (a lesser fluency in some social conventions)

• The causal explanation of autism enables a causal therapy: the caretaker can deliberately produce an “acoustic smile” whenever momentarily happy (the acoustic smile consists in a tender bonding noise made)

• The fact that the caretaker must be the essential bonding partner proves that modern child cribs are a collective tragedy (their uninformed use explains the global rise in autism)

• The “causal therapy of autism” has been shunned by the profession for 37 years (only Gregory Bateson approved of it)

• The reason for the silence seems to lie in the fact that the person attractor is “too easy to elicit”: young mirror-competent bonding animals can predictably be lured into the personogenetic function change, too

• “Galactic export” is the technical term for the export of the personogenetic bifurcation towards non-human mirror-competent bonding animals (since the “small step” of recruiting a second terrestrial life form is the “giant leap” involved)

• Evolutionarily speaking, the epigenetic PFC is a “lethal factor” (since it replaces natural selection by person-controlled caring)

• The PFC nevertheless is the opposite of being “evolutionarily lethal” since it represents a jump up into the heart of point Omega (which thereby ceases to be asymptotic in the sense of being unreachable in finite time)

• The planet-wide shying-away from galactic export is an example of a collective-subconscious “speciesism”

• The fear is palpable ever since Gregory Bateson and John C. Lilly’s joint student, Margaret Howe, tried to adopt a male dolphin 47 years ago; Koko (Francine Patterson’s gorilla life partner) and Kanzi (Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s grown-up bonobo child) are both underrated

• Stephen Spielberg played on the same taboo in his movie “AI” – which brings-in the added feature that his non-biochemical person is potentially immortal (a fact he played down tactfully)

• Leo Szilard introduced non-human persons in his 1948 sci-fi story “The Voice of the Dolphins” (written in the aftermath of his failure to prevent his other brainchild, the bomb, from being dropped)

• The “Rosette phenomenon” of sperm whales (the carriers of the most sophisticated brains on earth) deserves to be taken seriously: what function has their daily meeting? (Cf. the unpublished sci-fi story “The Tale of the Whale” mentioned in the book “Neosentience” by Bill Seaman and the author)

• “Horizontal exteriority” in the sense of Emmanuel Lévinas is the omnipotence of the PFC, re-activated in an act of fairness

• “Vertical exteriority” is the matching term in the theological sense of Edmond Jabès (with Nils Roeller, Kai Grehn and and Klaus Sander)

• “A program can force the programmer to reply” (with Christa Sommerer and Adolf Muschg)

• “Simulacron Three” (by Daniel F. Galouye 1964) and “A Puppeteer’s World” (‘Welt am Draht’-movie by Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1973) are anticipations of the same insight, followed by the “Matrix” movie and Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity Theory”

• The “Turing test” – a test for personhood – got first passed in ancient Rome by the Cretan slave and subsequent stoic philosopher Epictetus (as I learned from Bob Rosen)

• A mathematical proof that the orangutan brain is functionally superior to the human brain (with Michael Langer, homage to Willie Smits)

• An equation for a universal immune system (with Robert A. Lutz)

• A chemical universal circuit (with Dietrich Hoffmann)

• Differentiable automata exist mathematically (because certain ordinary differential equations can, approximately-if-consistently, be described by automata theory)

• Well-stirred automata exist physically

• Reaction scheme for a temperature-compensated chemical clock

• An “ultra long-term continuous-stirred-tank-reactor version” of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, proposed: to check for a “late explosion” in the number of variables produced (with Michael Conrad)

• “Traffic-light” version of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (with Wolfgang Engelmann and Reimara Rossler)

• “Slinky attractor” (with Okan Gurel and Eberhard Hopf)

• “Reinjection principle”: is valid in more than two-dimensional phase spaces (independently Floris Takens and Christian Mira)

• A chaotic electronic multivibrator (built with Hartmut Waible)

• “The Rossler attractor” (Norman Packard and Ralph Abraham)

• “Spiral chaos”

• “Screw-type chaos”

• “The sound of chaos” known to everyone (idling motor, hoarse voice)

• Chaos (a stereoscopic sound movie made with Reimara Rossler and Thomas Wiehr 1976)

• “Chaos = disciplined tangle” (with Alfred Klemm who turns 100 this year)

• Hyperchaos (name courtesy Paul Rapp)

• “The sound of hyperchaos” (like raindrops falling on a car’s roof)

• “Running electric fan suspended from a long rope” (Olafur Eliasson’s experimental hyperchaos)

• X-attractor in 3 D (still unidentified)

• “Playdough task” (to be given to thousands of toddlers to find the hoped-for X-attractor)

• Atrio-ventricular heart chaos (with Reimara Rossler and Herbert D. Landahl)

• “Endocrinological chaos” (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Sadowski, independently Colin Sparrow)

• Chaos in the Zhabotinsky reaction (with Klaus Wegmann, in parallel to John L. Hudson)

• “Cloud attractor” (with James A. Yorke)

• “Folded-towel map” (in parallel with Masaya Yamaguti’s “folded handkerchief map”)

• “Punctured hyperchaos” as the source of any transfinitely exact 2-D self-similarity or self-affineness (with Michael Klein)

• “The chaotic hierarchy” (the simplest equation was subsequently found by Gerold Baier and Sven Sahle)

• Explicit differentiable Smale-Urysohn solenoid (with Pal Fischer and W.R. Smith)

• “Transfinitely invertible attractors” (almost everywhere so)

• An explicit Poincaré recurrence (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• A generic Milnor-like attractor (with Francisco Doria and Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann, and with Vela Vilupillai in late homage to Richard Goodwin)

• A “society of flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Hyperfat attractors” (with John L. Hudson)

• “The fat etc. hierarchy” (with Erik Mosekilde)

• Particle indistinguishability is transfinitely exact (with Hans Primas, Martin Hoffmann and Joe Ford)

• Deterministic entropy (with Hans Diebner)

• “Gibbs-Sackur cell” in phase space

• Classical unit action (the system-specific Sackur cell)

• Micro time reversals in the Sackur cell of the observer (with Richard Wages)

• An estimate of Planck‘s constant (based on Sackur cell)

• Causal (exo) explanation of quantum mechanics (with Peter Weibel)

• Endophysics (with David Finkelstein and John Casti)

• “Boscovich covariance” (with Edgar Heilbronner, Jens Meier and Matthias Schramm)

• Causal (exo) explanation of spin (with Michael Conrad and Debbie Conrad)

• “Single-spin chemistry” in ultra-strong magnetic fields (with Dieter Froehlich, Guenter Haefelinger and Frank Kuske)

• Second Periodic Table of Elements (single-spin chemistry)

• “Cession twin of action” with h/c as its quantum (with Claudia Giannetti)

• Everett’s global Psi-function is replaced by Boltzmann’s global H-function on the exo-level (with Siegfried Zielinski)

• Everett’s observer-centered explanation of nonlocality (1957, p. 149, left column), confirmed

• The momentarily consciousness-bearing Sackur cell in the brain determines both h and c - a conjecture (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Weibel)

• “VX-diagram” (correlated photons measured in two mutually receding spaceships): the completed Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (with John S. Bell, in parallelism to Susan Feingold and Roger Penrose)

• Partially satellite-based VX experiment: will prove that more than one quantum world exists (with Anton Zeilinger)

• Locally-counterfactual superluminal telegraph (with Uwe Niedersen and Jürgen Parisi)

• Everett immortality (with Markus Fix and Bryce DeWitt)

• Aging equation (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• An evolutionary explanation of the higher female longevity (with Reimara Rossler, Peter Kloeden and Bob May)

• A constant-temperature physico-chemical time-of-life clock in the body, predicted (with Reimara Rossler)

• Melatonin as a likely “handle” of the time-of-life clock (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• Lampsacus, hometown of all persons on the Internet (with Valentino Braitenberg and Gerhard J. Lischka)

• An attempt to found Lampsacus in homage to Anaxagoras (with Ezer Weizmann and Mohamed ElNaschie) [quote from Beer Sheva: “This is what Israel was meant for”]

• “Earth-Moon University” in Lampsacus (with Wilfried Kriese, Artur P. Schmidt and George E. Lasker)

• The 16-level “pyramid of knowledge” in Lampsacus

• “WM-diagram”: simultaneous signals sent up and down in time across different levels, in gravity (with Dieter Froehlich)

• A gravitational-redshift proportional size increase, implicit in the WM diagram (with Dieter Froehlich, Heinrich Kuypers and Jurgen Parisi)

• The most energetic photon possible (with Heinrich Kuypers)

• All black holes are “almost-black holes” since they are never finished in finite time (with Dieter Froehlich, Heinrich Kuypers, Hans Diebner and Mohamed ElNaschie)

• Non-uniqueness of simultaneity on the rotating cylinder (with Dieter Froehlich, Normann Kleiner and Francisco J. Muller)

• Correct proof of angular-momentum conservation in gravity (with Heinrich Kuypers and Martin Pfaff)

• Only apparent invariance of transverse size in the new locally isotropic gravitational size increase (in parallel to the only apparent invariance of the transverse size in the likewise locally isotropic Lorentz contraction)

• Einstein’s gravitational Time dilation possesses three new corollaries: Length, Mass and Charge suffer a proportional or antiproportional change (“TeLeMaCh” theorem)

• General relativity is in for a far-reaching mathematical and physical re-interpretation

• c is globally constant (Max Abraham rehabilitated)

• Nonexistence of gravitational waves (as a corollary)

• Nonexistence of gravitons (as a corollary)

• The famous “indirect evidence for gravitational waves” (Hulse-Taylor) explained instead by tidal friction (with Dieter Froehlich and René Stettler)

• A “Reeb foliation in spacetime” exists around every rotating black hole (with Dieter Froehlich following stimulation by Art Winfree)

• Kerr metric disproved (as a corollary)

• Ur-meter disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-kilogram disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Charge conservation in physics disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Black holes are haved of one of their 3 hairs: charge (while mass and angular momentum remain)

• Reissner-Nordstrom metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Eddington-Finkelstein transformation disproved (with apology to my good friend David)

• Bekenstein theory disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Hawking radiation disproved (with apology to a world hero)

• “Coordinate singularity at the horizon”: rehabilitated as a physical singularity (via Telemach theorem)

• “Interior Schwarzschild solution” disproved

• “Singularity theorem” inside black hole horizon disproved (with apology to my friend Roger)

• “Wormholes” disproved

• Upper half of “Flamm’s paraboloid” replaced by a generic 3-pseudosphere (the lower half disappears)

• The Sackur-cell explanation of h entails non-existence on the exo level of all field particles

• The exo-nonexistence of the field particles implies that Supersymmetry is nonexistent

• The human Lorenz matrix of facial expressions: a universal natural facial-expressions simulator (with Wilfried Musterle)

• An equation for a one-dimensional – purely temporal – brain (with Michael Conrad, similarly Susie Vrobel)

• Evil is a contagious disease (unlike the good, evil cannot arise spontaneously)

• Children and adults form two different species, ethologically speaking (with Konrad Lorenz)

• “Pongo goneotrophicus” (meaning “the parent-feeding ape”) is a more appropriate biological name for Homo sapiens

• Biochemical life (including Robert Forward’s nuclear-chemical life) on the one hand, and “brain life” on the other, are functionally disjoint (Hanns Ruder introduced me to Forward’s book “The Dragon’s Egg”)

• Electrons have finite volume (owing to Telemach)

• As a corollary, string theory is qualitatively (but not quantitatively) confirmed

• The empirical confirmation of string theory implies that a successful generation of black holes at particle colliders has become much more likely

• Freshly generated black holes are undetectable by the detectors of particle colliders

• The empirical ten-orders-of-magnitude “quasar scaling law” extends downwards by some 50 orders of magnitude (owing to the new properties of black holes)

• There exist no more unstoppable and voracious parasites in the universe than black holes

• Miniature black holes grow exponentially inside solid matter (once they get stuck)

• “Clifford conjecture”: finite-universe solutions to the Einstein equation are unphysical (with Walter Ratjen); if so, there exists no “Gödel solution” and no time travel

• Fractal dimensionality of the cosmos is close to unity, not only empirically but also theoretically (“Fournier-Mandelbrot solution” to the Einstein equation)

• A first consistent history of galaxy formation is taking shape

• The newly discovered very far-away mature old galaxy BX442 (more than ten billion light years) is only the first – optically little-distorted – example of its kind (besides the many still older quasars)

• Low-surface-brightness galaxies (“black galaxies”) are about 50 billion years old (with Henry Gebhardt)

• Giacconi’s ultra-faint equidistributed X-ray sources most likely are ultra-distant ultra-high-redshift quasars – so that redshift measurements are highly desirable (with Dieter Froehlich)

• The microwave background radiation is predicted to merge smoothly with equal-temperature galactic-halo objects (hence the raw data of the Planck mission deserve to be published)

• There exist differentiable dynamical systems that are made up, not of 1-D locally parallel threads as customary, but of 2-D locally parallel surfaces (Bouligand-Winfree theory)

• Inadvertent re-discovery of Zwicky-Chandrasekhar “dynamical friction” (with Dieter Froehlich and Normann Kleiner, in contact with Ilya Prigogine, Alfred Klemm, Joachim Peinke and Jurgen Parisi)

• The not quite straight Hubble-Perlmutter line holds true in a non-expanding Fournier-Mandelbrot cosmos (with Dieter Froehlich, Ramis Movassagh and Anthony Moore)

• Dynamical friction numerically confirmed (with Klaus Sonnleitner)

• “Deterministic statistical thermodynamics” (with Hans Diebner)

• “Deterministic statistical cryodynamics”: exists as a new fundamental science side by side with deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Klaus Sonnleitner, Frank Kuske and Christophe Letellier)

• “Deterministic ectropy” in statistical cryodynamics (with Ali Sanayei)

• The smaller (almost) black hole in a pair-collision predictably gets re-circulated with all the still in-falling particles which jointly make it up (with Dieter Froehlich)

• Black hole mergers are a source of both charged and uncharged cosmic rays of moderate energies

• Conjecture: 50 percent of all matter in the cosmos is (almost) black holes (with Dieter Froehlich)

• “Metabállon anapaúetai” (metabolizing it remains at rest): Heraclitus’ transfinitely recycling cosmology, proven valid after 2 ½ millennia

• Abramowicz’s “topology inversion” near a black-hole’s horizon, confirmed (with Dieter Froehlich)

• “Identity jumps” between 3 indistinguishable classical particles on a ring (with Peter Weibel and Richard Wages)

• In a classical radiationless atom containing two indistinguishable electrons, two spherical shells are formed (with Dietrich Hoffmann and George Kampis)

• Is the “flotor” (Ralph Hollis) a transluminally fast measuring device? (with Peter Plath)

• The counterfactual superluminal telegraph is “subluminally confirmable (with Uwe Niedersen)

• A counterfactual world-change machine (with Jürgen Parisi and Koichiro Matsuno)

• History of the transfinitely exact indistinguishability (Anaxagoras, Gregorius of Naziance, the Mutakallimún, Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz, Gibbs, Pauli), in exchanges with Martin Hoffmann, Joe Ford, Hans Primas, Peter Weibel, Alexandre Ganoczy, Richard Wages, Rudolf Matzka Elisabeth von Samsonow, Jurgen Heiter, Anna-Sophie Mahler)

• “Everett-Schrödinger Russian Roulette” (with Markus Fix)

• Unit “el-action” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit action)

• Unit “el-cession” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit cession)

• “G-zero” is a new fundamental constant replacing the universal gravitational constant G and the universal vacuum permeability constant mu-zero, which both remain unchanged locally (similarly Richard J. Cook and György Darvas)

• The nonlinear simultaneity generator in the brain forms a qualitative analog of general relativity (with Eva Ruhnau)

• Cryodynamics and thermodynamics, combined, allow for an eternal cosmology in the footsteps of Heraclitus

• No WIMPs since cold dark matter was disproved

• No dark energy, in the absence of accelerated expansion

• No Big Bang and no space expansion since cryodynamics explains the Hubble-Perlmutter law in a stationary fractal cosmos

• “No Big Bang” also follows directly from the global constancy of c

• No inflation, in the absence of space expansion

• No “primordial” nucleosynthesis, in the absence of space expansion

• No Sunyaev-Zel’dovich cutoff, in the absence of a distant origin of the background radiation

• The decades-old problem of the “survival conditions of the scientific-technological world” (C.F. von Weizsäcker) remains a pressing problem of humankind

• The new results on black holes (facilitated production, non-evaporation, unchargedness, exponential growth inside matter) change the safety equation of any attempt at producing them on earth

• The LHC experiment, designed for producing black holes (amongst other courageous aims like finding the Higgs field), is being run at history-making energies and luminosities for almost two years

• Simultaneously CERN refuses to update its 4-years old LHC safety report – even though a stop may soon come too late

• An attempt to convene an “LHC safety conference” (with Markus Goritschnig and many other scientists) fizzled, although a court would humbly suggest it and a whole country had briefly left CERN out of concern (and the United Nations’ Security Council is concerned with the matter for more than a year – which fact explains the media curfew)

• Leo Szilard’s 1948 proposal to slow-down scientific progress by introducing the modern peer review system (which admits only differentiable increments in the fractal landscape of truth) is co-responsible for the current “Sleeping Beauty” period in science which may prove suicidal

• Proposal to employ the new science of cryodynamics to stabilize Tokamak-type fusion reactors so as to generate unlimited free energy for humankind just got published (I thank Eric Klien for encouragement)

(Friedrich Valjavek kindly compiled an annotated bibliography in 2002: http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/RosslerBibliography.pdf )

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905134912.htm

It is a race against time- will this knowledge save us or destroy us? Genetic modification may eventually reverse aging and bring about a new age but it is more likely the end of the world is coming.

The Fermi Paradox informs us that intelligent life may not be intelligent enough to keep from destroying itself. Nothing will destroy us faster or more certainly than an engineered pathogen (except possibly an asteroid or comet impact). The only answer to this threat is an off world survival colony. Ceres would be perfect.

Christian Astronomers

Posted in asteroid/comet impacts, biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, climatology, complex systems, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, finance, futurism, geopolitics, habitats, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, lifeboat, media & arts, military, nuclear weapons, open source, physics, policy, space, sustainability, transparencyTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments on Christian Astronomers

“The more anxiety one produces, the more the discussion there would be about how real and how possible actual existential threats are.”

John Hunt recently queried me on what steps I might take to form an organization to advocate for survival colonies and planetary defense. His comment on anxiety is quite succinct. In truth the landing on the moon was the product of fear- of the former Soviet Union’s lead in rocket technology. As we as a nation quelled that anxiety the budget for human space flight dwindled. But the fear of a nuclear winter continued to grow along with the size of our arsenals.

Interestingly, at the height of the cold war, evidence of yet another threat to human existence was uncovered in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico in 1981; Chicxulub. But even before the dinosaur killer was discovered, perhaps the greatest threat of all to humanity was born in 1973 when Herb Boyer and Stanley Cohen created the first genetically modified organism. The money to answer both of these threats by going into space continues to be expended by the military industrial complex.

Mile wide rocks in space and microscopic organisms on earth are both threats to our existence, but the third and undoubtedly greatest threat is our own apathy. Why do we expend the tremendous resources of our race on everything BUT keeping it from going extinct?

The answer to this important question is our own fear of death. As I have written previously, we are as individuals in the predicament of a circus freak on death row. It is a bizarre yet accurate characterization. None of us expect to live forever, but then we do not expect to die tomorrow either. We are in limbo between certain death and temporary life and cannot face the reality of the first while obsessing over the banalities of the second.

Examples of our determination to stay distracted can be found in the babbling of gravity modifiers, CERN doomsday prophets, and various other fruit flavored contributors to this blog. We desperately want to believe in UFO’s, conspiracies and fantastical solutions so we do not have to face the disquiet we experience whenever we pass a funeral home or graveyard. I am happy to pummel these idiots with the harsh language they deserve- especially when they destroy the credibility of sites like this which are trying to accomplish something worthwhile.

So I am thinking there is so much anxiety being monopolized that there is little market left for me capitalize on. Something different is required; as Bill Gates advised young entrepreneurs recently, “Don’t do what I did.” It has all been done and no clever marketing or deceptive advertising is going to build cities on other worlds. Space tourism is not going to save us- if anything it is a dangerous waste of time and money.

What is required is a popular culture renaissance that can focus the energy of several generations in a single direction. The uniqueness of this crossroads in history can be found in considering the nearly unbelievable difference in the level of scientific knowledge today compared to a half century ago. There is nothing more evident to the mature members of the western world than it’s age- our standard of living has brought about fewer children while the less fortunate parts of the world have accelerated their reproductive rates. Disparities in wealth and standards of living are stark evidence of the circus freak scenario. Very few of us are aware that there is a possible escape from this death sentence we are all born under. A standby of science fiction for decades has been the freezing of human beings for space travel. To delay death indefinitely and be resurrected when a cure for a disease or old age is found is a familiar concept. The parallels with Christianity are unmistakable.

We, as in my fellow human beings who were born around 1960, are seeing the culture we grew up in fade away as no other generation ever has. We lived through decades of threatened nuclear holocaust only to see our hoped for space age future dismantled by consumerism and profiteering. Personally, I find the presence of skulls everywhere to be the most poignant and disturbing portent of things to come. The veterans who fought in World War II and were everywhere when I was a boy would never have allowed this emblem of the Nazi SS to become so popular. It was the symbol of ruthless and murderous force as being the only meaningful feature of reality. 60 million human beings were killed in the fight against the evil it represents. And now it is back.

To counter to the present lack of vision I would like to introduce an agent of change in the form of a idealized past age. What better ideal than the movement that conquered fascism originally? Christianity did in fact conquer the Roman Empire- and as it is said we are all children of Rome, then we are also children of the carpenter from Nazareth. A technological analogy that can be discerned when considering the original Christianity and the modern world is the Gladius and the Atom Bomb. The Romans learned the fine points of using their infamous short swords by watching gladiators fight to the death- a funerary tradition they inherited from the Etruscans they assimilated. The training of professional gladiators was applied to the military and made “Drill a bloodless Battle and Battle a bloody Drill.”

The sword made the Roman Empire and Christianity inherited this prize. The Atom Bomb has kept modern civilization from World War for over a half century- but so far there is no great social movement that will inherit this mighty construct before it falls into a new dark age. The Fermi Paradox points to the possibility that this empire could well be the last; there will be no more cycles of civilizations rising and falling if we become extinct. If so then this really may be the end of the world- with no need to throw away reason in favor of the Book of Revelation.

What is most curious is that while the sword had no utility outside of murder, the Atomic Bomb holds the power to transcend this arena of earth and allow humankind to populate the galaxy. If this civilization can survive to travel to new worlds then the last empire will have risen- the last because it can never fall again.

So, to form a society of believers in life, in the future of the human race, the goals must be clear and easily understood;

If the human race is to survive, the individual must have some hope of surviving. The immediate need is a way to delay death and that procedure is practically a reality with advances in cryopreservation.

If the human race is to survive, new worlds must be found and colonized. The immediate need is for survival colonies off-world and atomic spaceships to establish those colonies and defend the earth from impact threats.

If the individual and the race as a whole is to survive, action must be taken. The immediate need is an organization to take money in and distribute it to the corporations and politicians that can direct the massive governmental resources necessary to accomplish a great rescue with cryopreservation and to construct spaceships to establish off world colonies and deflect impact threats.

Figuratively, metaphorically, the Christians conquered the old empire and the Astronomers who harness the power of the sun will inherit this empire. Since the more catchy titles have been taken by religious cults, I suggest the organization that will initiate action be called,

The Society of Christian Astronomers

My first call is for the money to copyright the title of the society and a brand I have in mind.

The Truth about Space Travel is Stranger than Fiction

Posted in asteroid/comet impacts, biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, climatology, complex systems, cosmology, counterterrorism, defense, economics, education, engineering, ethics, events, evolution, existential risks, finance, futurism, geopolitics, habitats, homo sapiens, human trajectories, life extension, lifeboat, media & arts, military, neuroscience, nuclear weapons, physics, policy, space, sustainability, transparency, treatiesTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments on The Truth about Space Travel is Stranger than Fiction

I have been corresponding with John Hunt and have decided that perhaps it is time to start moving toward forming a group that can accomplish something.

The recent death of Neil Armstrong has people thinking about space. The explosion of a meteor over Britain and the curiosity rover on Mars are also in the news. But there is really nothing new under the sun. There is nothing that will hold people’s attention for very long outside of their own immediate comfort and basic needs. Money is the central idea of our civilization and everything else is soon forgotten. But this idea of money as the center of all activity is a death sentence. Human beings die and species eventually become extinct just as worlds and suns also are destroyed or burn out. Each of us is in the position of a circus freak on death row. Bizarre, self centered, doomed; a cosmic joke. Of all the creatures on this planet, we are the freaks the other creatures would come to mock- if they were like us. If they were supposedly intelligent like us. But are we actually the intelligent ones? The argument can be made that we lack a necessary characteristic to be considered truly intelligent life forms.

Truly intelligent creatures would be struggling with three problems if they found themselves in our situation as human beings on Earth in the first decades of this 21st century;

1. Mortality. With technology possible to delay death and eventually reverse the aging process, intelligent beings would be directing the balance of planetary resources towards conquering “natural” death.

2. Threats. With technology not just possible, but available, to defend the earth from extinction level events, the resources not being used to seek an answer to the first problem would necessarily be directed toward this second danger.

3. Progress. With science advancing and accelerating, the future prospects for engineering humans for greater intelligence and eventually building super intelligent machines are clear. Crystal clear. Not addressing these prospects is a clear warning that we are, as individuals, as a species, and as a living planet, headed not toward a bright future, but in the opposite direction toward a dead and final end.

One engineered pathogen will destroy us forever. One impact larger than average will destroy us forever. The reasoning that death is somehow “natural” which drives us to ignore the subject of destruction will destroy us forever. Earth changes are inevitable and taking place now- despite our faith in television and popular culture that everything is fun and games. Man is not the measure of all things. We think tomorrow will come just like yesterday- but it will not.

The Truth about Space Travel is that there are no stargates or warp drives that will take us across the galaxy like commecial airliners or cruise ships take us across oceans. If we do wake up and change our course, space voyages will take centuries and human expansion will be measured in millenia. We will be frozen when we travel to distant stars. And this survivable freezing will mark the beginning of a new age since being able to delay death by freezing will completely transform life. The first such successful procedure will mean the end of the world as we know it- and the beginning of a new civilization.

Though unknown to the public, the atomic bomb and then the hydrogen bomb marked the true beginning of the Space Age. Hydrogen bombs can push cities in space, hollow moons, to some percentage of the speed of light. These cities can travel to other stars, such as Epsilon Eridani with it’s massive asteroid belt. And there more artificial hollow moons can be mass produced to provide new worlds to live in. This is not fiction I am speaking of but something we could do right now- today. We only lack the procedure to freeze and successfully revive a human being. It is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

In Beam Propulsion we have the answer to bending the rocket equation to our will and allowing millions and eventually billions of human beings to migrate into space. Just as Verne and Wells made accurate predictions of the decades to come, we now are seeing the possible obvious future unfolding before our eyes.

But the most possible and probable obvious future at this moment is destruction. The end of days. Unless we do something.
You and I and everyone you know is involved in this. Let’s get started.

Whether via spintronics or some quantum breakthrough, artificial intelligence and the bizarre idea of intellects far greater than ours will soon have to be faced.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819153743.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815131137.htm

One more step has been taken toward making whole body cryopreservation a practical reality. An understanding of the properties of water allows the temperature of the human body to be lowered without damaging cell structures.

Just as the microchip revolution was unforeseen the societal effects of suspending death have been overlooked completely.

The first successful procedure to freeze a human being and then revive that person without damage at a later date will be the most important single event in human history. When that person is revived he or she will awaken to a completely different world.

It will be a mad rush to build storage facilities for the critically ill so their lives can be saved. The very old and those in the terminal stages of disease will be rescued from imminent death. Vast resources will be turned toward the life sciences as the race to repair the effects of old age and cure disease begins. Hundreds of millions may eventually be awakened once aging is reversed. Life will become far more valuable overnight and activities such as automobile and air travel will be viewed in a new light. War will end because no one will desire to hasten the death of another human being.

It will not be immortality, just parole from the death row we all share. Get ready.

Over the years some of the themes I’ve touched upon in this blog have been about the outdated paradigms shaping public policy. The realisation came to our acute attention with the ongoing economic crisis since 2008. The crisis has precipitated and energised new thinking in economics, as evidenced by the creation of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. The Institute is a place to explore cutting edge ideas, and challenge calcified theories that have prevented the field from keeping pace with the intellectual advances in the natural sciences. However in the coming years the social sciences and humanities will also see great leaps forward in thinking that can potentially transform our political and socio-economic systems.

A book to be published by IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research contributes to bringing about this transformation. The book, ‘Complex new world: Translating new economic thinking into public policy’, explores various economic complexities that challenge traditional economic theory.

We live in uncertain economic times. The financial crash and subsequent downturn have shaken the global economic system to its core. If one thing is certain, it is that the events of recent years have thrown mainstream economic thinking into disrepute. In the aftermath of the crash, scholars and commentators are turning to new, heterodox economic theories as a way of better understanding how the economy really works and how the economic system might be managed more effectively. Yet although new economic thinking offers a far better account of how the economic system functions, we don’t yet have a clear idea of its implications for policymaking. In economic policymaking, orthodox economics remains the only game in town.

The shaking of disciplines is also evident in history as the field of cliodynamics attempts to apply scientific methods to understand human history. There are some historians who are deeply sceptical, which a Nature article highlighted earlier this month,

Most historians have abandoned the belief in general laws.


SOURCE: Turchin, P. J. Peace Res. 49, 577–591 (2012)

The challenge for humanity’s intellectuals is to unravel the complexities of human systems and discover the ‘laws’ which govern them so that we are able to meet the great challenges facing us this century. As my colleagues keep telling me we need more social scientists, as we try to build a great team of thinkers. It’s a good time to be in the arts, social sciences and humanities. Great changes are afoot.

.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…
Image

The image shows research by Peter Turchin who “analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way.”

AI scientist Hugo de Garis has prophesied the next great historical conflict will be between those who would build gods and those who would stop them.

It seems to be happening before our eyes as the incredible pace of scientific discovery leaves our imaginations behind.

We need only flush the toilet to power the artificial mega mind coming into existence within the next few decades. I am actually not intentionally trying to write anything bizarre- it is just this strange planet we are living on.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813155525.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813123034.htm

It’s the centennial year of the Titanic disaster, and that tragedy remains a touchstone.

The lifeboat angle is obvious. So is the ice hazard: then it was icebergs, now it’s comets.

But 100 years of expanding awareness has revealed the other threats we’re now aware of. We have to think about asteroids, nano- and genotech accidents, ill-considered high-energy experiments, economic and social collapse into oligarchy and debt peonage, and all the many others.

What a great subject for a Movie Night! Here are some great old movies about lifeboats and their discontents.

Lifeboat Triple Feature: https://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=3764

They’re full of situations about existential risks, risk assessment, prudential behavior, and getting along in lifeboats if we absolutely have to. The lesson is: make sure there are enough lifeboats and make darn sure you never need to use them.

Anyway, I finally got my review of the show done, and I hope it’s enjoyable and maybe teachable. I’d welcome additional movie candidates.

Creative Commons License
Party LIke It’s 1912… by Clark Matthews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at https://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=3764.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://lifeboat.com.

“If the rate of change on the outside
exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near”
- Jack Welch

Complex societies are heavily addicted to expensive, vulnerable and potentially hazardous infrastructure. We rely on a healthy environment for production of food and access to clean water. We depend on technological infrastructure for energy supplies and communications. We are deeply addicted to economic growth to support growing populations and consumption. If one of these pillars of modern society crumbles our existence will collapse like a house of cards.

The interdependencies and complexities of the system we call modern society has become so intertangled that finding a robust and simple solution to our problems has become close to impossible. Historically the cold war gave us the logic of a “balance of terror”. This logic, originally concerned with a balance of U.S. vs. Soviet military capacities, has lead to an increasingly expensive way of reducing risk and ever expanding bureaucracies to keep us “virtually safe”.

With the onset of a global economic recession, drastic climate change, deadly natural disasters, raging civil wars and diminishing natural resources we need a new logic. A set of moral laws for reducing risk and mitigating consequences applicable at a low cost from the bottom up of entire societies.

The concept of resilience is based on the idea that disasters are inevitable and a natural part of existence. Our best defense is preparedness and engineering systems that not only can withstand heavy strains but also absorb damage. The Institute for Resilient Infrastructure at the University of Leeds gives this definition of “Resilience”;

Resilience can also be explained in terms of durability. A durable material, component or system is one which can cope with all the known, predictable loads to which it will be subjected throughout its life. As well as physical loads – stresses and strains – we include environmental loads (e.g. temperature, weather), economic loads (e.g. the scarcity of resources or financial turmoil) and social loads (e.g. changes in legislation or of use, terrorist attack, changes in demography or society’s expectations and demands).

In the 1970s about 100 disasters were recorded worldwide every year. According to the International Disaster Database an average of 392 disasters were reported per year in the last decade. In 2011 we saw record greenhouse gas emissions, melting Arctic sea ice, extreme weather and the earthquake in Japan resulting in the world’s second worst nuclear disaster. Current systems for mitigation of risk are obviously not capable of handling the overwhelming challenges confronting us.

The price tag for disasters in 2011 reached a record high of $265 billion. Most of that cost ($210 billion) came from the tsunami in Japan, but flooding in Australia, tornadoes in the United States and earthquakes in New Zealand contributed substantially. The increasingly turbulent weather patterns wreaking havoc across the planet may only be the beginning of a period of drastic climate change.

In addition to climate change industrial society faces depleted natural resources, degradation of infrastructure and systemic limits to growth. The ongoing economic crisis is a symptom of a deeper structural failure. Governments are running out of options when solving a debt crisis with more debt is the last resort. We rely on short term solutions for long term problems.

We are facing a different type of threat originating from within the system itself, an endogenous and internal failure of our civilizational paradigm. Growing populations stress our dependency on non-renewable resources supported by potentially hazardous nuclear power. The case of the Fukushima nuclear accident illustrates that large population located on limited land is extremely vulnerable to unpredictable events like earthquakes or other catastrophic “wild cards”. From the perspective of risk analysis the state of Japan is a model of the entire planet.

To make the situation even more acute the horizon of Homo Sapiens is full of threats like global pandemics and emerging technologies that could permanently wipe us off the face of the earth. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology and geoengineering hold the promise of a quick fix but also have the potential to cause irreversible harm to the biosphere and human life.

Technology is without a doubt a part of a permanent solution for sustainable life on the planet. The bottom up approach to resilience is about awakening a culture that rewards autonomy and self-sufficiency. Resilience is more than durable engineering. Resilience has to become an obligatory way of thinking and eventually a way of life.

10 robust resilient strategies:
1. Sustain a culture that rewards autonomy and self-sufficiency.
2. Share practical solutions and stockpile resilient ideas instead of canned food.
3. Support intra-generational sharing of knowledge on how to live in accord with nature.
4. Develop alternative economic systems; use Bitcoins and barter when possible.
5. Refine high-tech solutions but favor low tech; HAM radios beat cell phones in emergencies.
6. Grow your own food; become an urban gardener or start a farm revival project.
7. Reduce energy consumption with geothermal energy, local water mills, wind mills and solar panels.
8. Use a condom; think eugenically — act passionately.
9. Keep a gun; if you are forced to pull it – know how to use it.
10. Stay alive for the sake of the next generation.

This article is co-published on Interesting Times Magazine.