HMS Beagle wrote:

What's that you say there sonny? You say chemistry
is not equal to quantum mechanics?
OMFG you are a damned genius, ZICK!!! </sarcasm>

AIUI, what he is saying is a variant of an observation
expressed more pithily by Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745):

So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.

Although his lyrical over-the-top style understandably
invites ridicule, he may well have a point, even if it
is a long-established one (as the above ditty shows).

I have been mulling over an idea that strings do exist and
form an infinite heirarchy, separated by vast differences
in scale, and stable structures at any given scale can be
formed only by strings at the next lower scale lining up
in parallel "vector fields", like proteins assembling
themselves into a virus coat.

In my model, picturing strings as straight segments somewhat
like iron filings, stability between two strings at the same
scale is found only when they are parallel, for the simple
reason that when adjacent strings are not parallel then
their frequencies combine to form a group wave (soliton?)
in the sea of strings at the next smaller scale, which
carries away some energy to make the strings more
parallel.

What is this "frequency", I hear you ask? It is a periodic
group wave caused by the same mechanism occurring in the
parallel-packed smaller-scale strings that comprise each
of the pair of strings in question.

This seething quantum foam we read about is no more than
a sea of these strings constantly exchanging group waves.

As line segments cannot be packed everywhere parallel on a
sphere, one assumes that "strings" must be tori ("donuts")
or Mobius strips, or higher-dimensional surfaces that
allow everywhere-parallel vector fields.

If we assume the vacuum is a sea of these strings, then
"curvature" of spacetime can be interpreted as a measure
of how their average orientation differs from a symmetric
distribution.

Inside a black hole, I believe the string distribution
approaches a limiting torus, which is the "singularity",
however slowly the black hole rotates and whether or
not mass inflation occurs. (This "infinite mass point"
stuff we hear about is a load of tosh!)

I won't go into detail now, but this idea of gravity,
and the other forces, being solely a manifestation of
strings "trying" to become more parallel leads naturally
to the idea that our Universe (i.e. the "visible" Universe,
including all observer-connected parts) must expand and
that expansion must accelerate, and eventually any black
holes it contains evaporate, at which point the toroidal
singularity each contains will pinch off at a point and
start evolving into a sphere, as best it can considering
the strings that compose it can no longer be everywhere
parallel.

To an observer composed of smaller-scale strings within
the torus-becoming-a-sphere, this process resembles a past
"Big Bang" and expansion towards a future state where the
smaller-scale strings are arranged in a global minimum
energy configuration of concentric spherical layers within
each of which the strings have the same frequency and point
radially outward (and are hence parallel in the limit).

Curiously, this is corresponds exactly to the way in
M-theory in which toroidal branes becomes surrounded by
a shroud (analogous to an event horizon) then pinch off
at a point inside to form a banana shaped object, which
then expands and becomes a sphere in the limit - At the
next scale above ours, our entire Universe is no more
than a single brane going pop!

Hopefully all this doesn't sound too amateurish, or even
nonsensical; but as I'm sure you can imagine it isn't at
all easy expressing these tail-chasing recursive concepts
clearly, any more than it is thinking about them!

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 01:04:41 -0400, HMS Beagle <bgates@microsoft.org>
in comp.ai.philosophy wrote:

What's that you say there sonny? You say chemistry is not equal to
quantum mechanics?

Actually what I say on this subject is that quantum mechanics is not
mechanics and not whatever you would like to imagine I say. As for
what you say, I said circular regressions are anchored by homunculi.
That's what homunculi are. Now as far as your arguments against what
I say perhaps you might like to address what I say instead of bitching
like a teenage girl who's just been dumped.

OMFG you are a damned genius, ZICK!!! </sarcasm>


On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:57:56 GMT,

Homuncular Reduction
--------

There seems to be considerable ambiguity as to what a homunculus is
and its raison d'etre. Homunculi are just figments of rationaization
in the form of terminological reductions for circular regressions.

Homunculi are only needed to anchor circular arguments. Most empirical
science is founded on otherwise unjustified assumptions. Empiricists
simply select some aribitrary concept and claim its true of all things
great and small. Thus they perform a terminological regression instead
of a mechanical reduction and claim the result is science.

Little people were the original homunculi but the environment is a
homunculus for environmentalists; behavior is a homunculus for
behaviorists; matter is a homunculus for materialists; neurology a
homunculus for cognitive theory; the suc( ) axiom a homunculus for
modern math. Even Bob Kolker's little dots are a homunculus for
physical theories but at least he has the courtesy to explain his
appeal to a homunculus on the explicit basis that no non circular
regressions are possible in general whereas most others can only see
homuncularity in the circular claims of others but not in their own.

I use "not" in a similar way to anchor all things great and small but
the difference here is that the regression or reduction is mechanical
and not simply terminological because alternatives to "not" are self
contradictory whereas there is no reductive regression of a homunculus
through itself. There is no environment of the environment, behavior
of behavior, matter of matter, neurology of neurology, nor little dots
of little dots. All these things are just names for various homunculi.

Joy is everywhere, homunculi, homuncula.

~v~~

~v~~