The Fourth Dimension: “spacey” not “time-like”?

What does that mean and where does the idea come from?

I recently (Feb 2024) came across the mathematical conjectures of Marco Pereira which he calls Lightspeed Expanding Hyperspherical Universe Topology or LEHU for short. As I am not a mathematician I am not able to critique his extensive (no pun intended) examinations and adaptations/adjustments of the formulae of General and Special Relativity. I do not immediately dismiss his ideas is because

• they seem to be expressed in very rigorously constructed mathematics, and
• he applies his principals to several diverse sets of astronomical data created by numerous projects run by official government and other research orgainisations world wide.

I am disappointed to see that nobody in the mainstream astronomical/astrophysical communities has taken the time to make a principled review of his underlying hypothesis or its mathematical underpinnings. It may well be that his overly assertive and/or aggressive language has put potential reviewers off. (I intend to ask him about this.)

Meanwhile, his basic thesis is that our universe is four dimensional but the fourth dimension is not “time” as such but a spacial dimension which is expanding at the speed of light. To be clear: this dimension is definitely orthogonal (at right angles) to our “normal” 3D directions (x, y, and z) and commenced its expansion at what is called the Big Bang (BB).

In looking at his diagrammatic representations I understand that his thesis allows changes over time to the space-time distance between two separated points in space to be represented as what happens to locations on the circumference of a circle which is expanding. The difference in radius of the two circles denoting the start and end of the time period is proportionate to how far a photon of light would have travelled in that time. But note that this is a calculational tool of the thesis, and that actual distances will change based on (more or less ) Euclidian geometry and the extent to which this is affected by the expansion of the hypershpere.

From this fundamentally different description of space-time Marco Pereira deduces that many of the currently accepted mathematical descriptions used by physics need to be modified in certain ways and that, furthermore, certain features of our universe, such as gravity, are epoch dependent, ie have really changed during the evolution of our universe so far.

I cannot say more about that, and hopefully I have not misrepresented his thesis with even that short description.

Marco Pereira has placed much of his descriptions and explanations on Quora:

https://hypergeometricaluniverse.quora.com

Why this interests me: what it might mean for MOPECCA

What I like about Marco Pereira’s thesis is how it removes “time” as an ontological thing and lets it be a method if you like, which we construct and use as a means for describing changes amongst things which permanently exist in their own right. That is how the MOPECCA construes time.

Another thing is that, even if Marco P’s mathematical schema turns out to be the Earth shattering breakthrough that modern physics and astronomy both need, it will still be true that mathematics is not ontology. However the ontological implications of this idea are that it very likely reconfigures the constraints around MOPECCA and possibly allows for an explanation of anti-electrons which were not falling easily out of constrains made of 3D + “time”. I am ‘working’ on that now in my spare moments.

Response to a question in a F/b discussion group, about the meaning of life

Life exists, here on Earth even if nowhere else, because it can! It is reasonable to assume that Planet Earth being what and where it is, the evolution of life here was basically inevitable. Following that view, the evolution of conscious awareness, given enough time, was also inevitable here on Earth, barring accidents of course. We humans seek meaning because we each and all live within, through, and by means of, a description of the world. For each of us individually one’s mind is the model of our universe which we have learned so far, ie since the day we came, yelling and ignorant, into the world. One’s consciousness, rememberable awareness I call it, is what it is like to be the updating of one’s own model of self in the world, a system which is needed for navigation.

Meaning, in light of this, is one’s gut perception of how things relate to oneself. Of course as social beings our relationships with others are particularly important, indeed vital for survival and sustainable thriving. But also the relationships of us to the rest of the universe are becoming increasingly relevant as our species gains ever more knowledge about the workings of the natural world due to the application of modern scientific method.

The bottom line is you have to decide for yourself what is meaningful to you, because your are who you are, not who I am, As I see it, each one of us is an instance of the universe looking at itself from a particular point of view. To me, the amazing nature of it all is gobsmackingly awesome.

But here is something to ponder:

One essential feature of how human beings originally saw themselves, based on what indigenous Australians tell us about how their people lived before the white man’s holocaust hit them in 1788, was as custodians of the country they lived on. “Looking after country” is the expression that is always used as English translation of their purpose on Earth. And they had been doing that for upwards of 60,000 years!

To put that in a Eurasian mythological (or dreamtime) context, the “Garden of Eden” was surviving and thriving in what we now call Australia right up until 1788 in the east of the continent, and up until 1829 in the west!I think we have to retrieve a big part of that understanding of responsibility for the well being of the land and ocean, ie the ecological communities which we share this planet with and upon whose survival and integrity our own survival depends absolutely!

Updating Model of Self In The World – what the CANONIZER says

The Canonizer has a Consciousness topic.

My response to the latest update of the Representational Qualia camp statement on the Canonizer Consciousness topic

(NB: I have published this, as is so far, but intend to add some explanatory detail when I have clarified the simplest way of explaining what I believe is missing from the current Representational Qualia camp statement.

As I see it the subjective experience of redness, indeed any shade of any hue, any timbre of sound, any taste, any aroma, etc, is what it is like to be a particular current behaviour of a certain population of neurons within the brain. It is a particular pattern of activity which I call a dynamic logical structure (DLS).

In relation to the most recent update of the camp statement my point here is to emphasise that all such DLS are learned behaviours. As such I take it for granted that, because the learning has taken place within the one particular brain of an individual whose personal history is, ultimately, unique, there is no way that a DLS in that person’s brain is going to be identical to a DLS in the brain of another person in the same situation at the same time and place. I fully agree that there will be – or at least ought to be –  very significant similarities because we are all members of the one species. There may also be quite significant differences for the same reason that we humans all have finger prints which are unique in their exact details but generally seem to manifest in namable patterns. 

The reason for the similarities and differences is basically the same for brain structures as it is for fingerprints: there must be structures which effectively accomplish certain functions but the precise ‘final’ layout in each case is achieved through epigenetic adaptation to the particulars of the location and activities of the cells building the structures. In the case of fingerprints the need is to have skin on the fingertips which is robust and resistant to wear yet has good grip, and is prolifically endowed with contact sensory neurons. The evolved solution of our species has been to grow fingertip skin with lots of corrugations which maximise the surface area, underlaid with good quality connective tissue which holds the corrugations in place while allowing flexible adaptation to the shapes of things being touched. The genetic coding which produces this has not been selected to ensure the precise location of each wrinkle just as the the genes which causes some skin cells to differentiate early on so as to produce body hair do not “need” to specify the precise location of each hair.

In analogous manner our brains have evolved topologies which reflect the need to systematically map the patterns of sensory inputs and to dynamically match up the inputs of different sensory channels so as to create sufficiently comprehensive and exact representations of objects and entities in the current environment. As well as this we have equally comprehensive output maps which create the patterns of muscle movements we need to respond to threats and/or resources currently important in our surroundings. 

Insofar as the purpose of brains is to make animals’ muscles move in the right way at the right time we can reasonably assume that the subjectively experienced, non linguistic, description of the world of the members of any particular species is likely to be very similar because their neural architecture is the outcome of their species’ history of natural selection. Us humans, by and large, should also have such basic similarities in our pre linguistic experience of the world. However, given that we have also evolved to live within, through, and by means of a linguistic description of ourselves and our world it is open to speculate that the individual variability now embodied in the brains of all of us may include a much wider range than was present before our ancestors came to rely absolutely on tool using culture and language with versatile grammar. 

MOPECCA – Can a neutron reasonably be considered as a proton plus an electron?

Answer: No.

Next question: Why not?

Answer: Because empirical evidence rules it out.

Other questions:

• Why ask that question in the first place? (See below);
• What is the MOPECCA resolution of the challenge? (See below);
• Where do we go next? (See below and future posts and pages).

Reason for the question: From the MOPECCA point of view, which is fundamentally ontological rather than mathematical, it would allow that the amount of charge on the electron is the smallest unit of electric charge, whether positive or negative.

The QM description of quarks asserts that normally they only exist in triplets which we call protons and neutrons and assigns them an electric charge of either 2/3 positive for up quarks or 1/3 negative for down quarks. This allows that these can combine, normally, as 2 up and 1 down which is a proton or 1 up and 2 down which forms a neutron. Of course there are also quarks named Strange, Charmed, Top (or Truth), and Bottom (or Beauty) which are very rare because they embody enormous amounts of extra energy which makes them very unstable therefore very shortlived…. in our universe anyway. The MOPECCA can consider them as manifestations of various kinds of harmonic standing waves.

Most of this is strongly supported by empirical evidence from the world’s most powerful particle accelerators.

A question arises about this: what specific empirical evidence underlies the ascription of partial electic charges to the quarks?

I have read that partial charges as such are required to explain how quarks, which are stable only as triplets, make up protons and neutrons. Quarks can also, apparently, exist in pairs of a quark and anti-quark with exactly matching opposite charges, but these things do not last long either so must also be very unstable.

The fractional charges however, have been confirmed by electron scattering experiments so any attempt to explain what quarks are must effectivly account for electric charges of +2/3e and -1/3e. Occam’s Razor strongly advises against conjecturing complex, ad hoc, jiggerdy-pokery to explain anything where a much simpler explanation is available so, on the face of it, the Standard Model theory of quarks is validated and the short answer to the original question must be “no”.

The question then becomes: Why is the charge on the electron 3 times the -1/3e charge of the down quark?

MOPECCA has an answer

Electrons

The MOPECCA asserts that even though electrons (and quarks for that matter) seem to act like points with no cross section they are in fact Qnotted loops (entanglements) of threads or filaments of two or more primary absolutes (PA). The Qnot structure however is very small compared to the range of influence of the electric charge. So we can conjecture that each electron is a node of PA(e) that connects in 3 directions to the rest of PA(e) in such a way that the entangled PA(weak) and PA(vac) do not prevent an excess of bigwards over smallwards occurring in each of the three PA(e) connections. This can be visualised as an expansion of PA(e) away from the electron Qnot.

The reason for this ‘allowing’ of excess bigwards is that, as explained elsewhere, in the MOPECCA different PA have different intrinsic speeds which should have some kind of mathematical relationship to their relative strengths as QM force fields. EM force is stronger than the Weak force so the speed of PA(weak) will be less than that of PA(e). This is discussed in more detail below but the upshot here is that, at the node, the internal cross section of the junction of the three PA(e) filaments is relatively greater than the cross section of each of the filaments and thus always has an internal volume not constrained by the PA(e) outer surface/boundary. This internal region always manifests as bigwards, because that is what PA do (according to MOPECCA). 

Up quarks

In the case of quarks however we can conjecture that each up quark has only a loop of PA(e), ie is not a node as such, but it is Qnotted with PA(strong), PA(weak), and PA(vac) such that it is connected to the rest of PA(e) in two opposite directions only and its net effect is an excess of PA(e) smallwards in each of those directions. This is similar to the previously conjectured explanation of gravity as the breakage/contraction of PA(vac) strings entangled with Qnots because the intrinsic speeds of the other PA are all greater than that of PA(vac).

• That is to say, around every manifestation of each of the other PA, PA(vac) goes smallwards at the  boundary. This manifests as an excess of PA(vac) smallwards over bigwards near each of the other PA. ‘Within’ PA(vac) this happens at the speed of c, which we call ‘the speed of light’, and cannot happen any faster which provides a de facto resistance to the encroachment of the other PA.
• To be consistent this effect must occur for each PA, so that wherever a PA boundary is abutting the surface of another PA both will manifest smallwards; however the abutting surface of the PA with the faster speed will be ‘replenished’ at a faster rate. This will result in a translation of the virtual surface/locus of interaction ‘into’ the slower PA limited by the intrinsic speed of that PA. The outcome and, potentially, the duration of such penetration however will be affected by everything else which is going on in the neighbourhood.
  • One factor will be the degree of perturbation of the surface of each PA, likely to be in the form of wave motions induced by harmonic resonances within each PA related to the oscillation of nodes.
  • Another may be the occurrence of ‘bounce’ ie the ceasation of motion smallwards at some minimum cross section characteristic of the particular PA and its (possible) reversal. For PA(vac) the MOPECCA assumes this is the Planck length. The conjecture is that bigwards always occurs if the location is not right at a boundary.

• This idea would seem to indicate that the EM mutual repulsion of up quarks may be more like a manifestation of attraction away from each other because they don’t connect one to the other but rather they connect to the rest of the PA(e) which surrounds their current location. They are held in place of course by their Qnot entanglement with PA(strong) mainly and to some extent because of PA(weak).

Down quarks

Down quarks on the other hand, following this topology, will be three way nodes of PA(e) like the electons but where the confining effects of the PAs strong, weak, and vacuum allow two connections to be net bigwards and the other one to be net smallwards. In this way the neutron quark triplet has a net neutral effect on the surrounding PA(e) whilst participating in the strong and weak forces which are attractive at short range.

Note: from this MOPECCA point of view, ‘conventional’ thinking, ie the attribution of the symbol “+” and the word positive to the up quark charge, with “-” and negative to the down quark charge, is sort of ‘back to front’ in the same way as the conventional description of the direction of electric current in a wire being from positive to negative. In fact electron flow in metal conductors is from the negative cathode end towards the positive anode end.

In a somewhat similar way the MOPECCA description of the electron seems to entail a form of virtual radiation of PA(e) outwards from each electron and a smaller net radiation from each down quark: -3/3e in the case of the electron and -1/3e in the case of the down quark.

Hypothesis about the origin of the oldest creation stories

The conjecture is that the oldest details of the creation stories have been transmitted orally from the time of the start of the last ice age.

My reason for thinking this is that the Noongar creation story tells of the sky and earth touching together at the very beginning so there was no space in between and it was very cold. Then, in summary, totem spirits confered and discussed at length about what to do after which the Ancestor spirit beings created what is now country. Each ancestor spirit performed one or more specific tasks including: raising the sky off of the land and the ocean, carving out the river valleys and establishing lakes, rivers and water sources, pushing up mountians, and then becoming the motivating incarnations which created and maintain all the living spieces as well as forming many specific locations.

There is all manner of extra detail in the story of which one of the most important to Australian indigenous peoples has been the explicitly mentioned and culturally assumed principle of looking after country: caring for the land and all the plants, creatures, and people who live on it. This is a core concept of Australian indigenous culture. It is equal to and not really separate from the absolute importance of moort (= family). Unfortunately most wadjela (= non-indigenous people living in, on, at, and near Noongar Boodja = country) simply do not understand this.

But what I am interested in here is the idea of a time when it was very cold and land appeared as the sky separated from the surface of the waters. This was the Nyidiny “Coldness” (NB “ny” is said like the “ni” in English “onion”.) I propose that this description of dry land appearing as the sky lifted away from the ocean surface at a time when it was very cold, sounds just how elders of nations living on regions of continental shelf would describe the distant past as their country became exposed by the retreat of the ocean as the last ice age came upon the world.

(Last glacial maximum (LGM).)

(Quarternary Period)

(Sahul: Greatest terrestrial extent of the Australasian continental shelf )

A very interesting question arises here: Just when did this knowledge arise and/or arrive in Australia?

NB: is it plausible that the very start of the Garden of Eden story indicates a similar “raising of the sky off the waters” to reveal a beautiful land? I believe it is.

There is little reason to doubt that the oldest suviving stories of just about every culture arose when all knowledge was passed from generation to generation through oral tradition, dance, artwork, and careful copying of behaviours. We can also accept that, apart from Australian first nations and some other indigenous peoples around the world, just about all other ancient origin stories have been affected by the stories of victorious clans who became the ruling classes of the neighbouring societies they conquered. I am implying that the Garden of Eden story and similar others have been overlayed with patriarchal rationalisations of the terrible inequalities which resulted from the accumulations and theft of moveable and portable wealth such as accrued to herders and settled farmers after the end of the last ice age.

In the case of indigenous Australian peoples, I am thinking that much of the continental shelf around Australia does not extend far out from the coast except the north where, as the Sahul link above shows there was a vast area stretching from the north west of Australia (the Kimberley) stretching northwards almost to Timor and across to New Guinea and including the whole of the current Gulf of Carpenteria.

(Sea level changes over the last 200,000 years)

There is evidence of human beings living on the Australian continent 65K years ago, which was an intermediate glacial maximum time before the colder, last glacial maximum (LGM), of about 20K years ago. Therefore it is reasonable to accept that people lived for thousands of years on continantal land that became exposed over a period of several thousand years leading up to the LGM. From the LGM to the present the graph shows that global sea level has been rising consistently and a fair bit faster than the sea level had previously fallen to the lowest level of between 120 to 130 metres below current sea level.

MOPECCA – does the nature of quarks indicate/demonstrate that it is the boundaries of PA, and their abutments which determine the properties of Qnots?

This thought was prompted by wondering how the entanglements of PA(strong|colour) with PA(electro/magneto) can produce fractional electric charges.

Well the fractional charges of quarks may only be a result of needing to allocate net positive or net neutral charge amongst the proven grouping of three quarks per stable hadron – ie proton or neutron – and a net negative charge to the electron. The MOPECCA takes protons, neutrons, and atomic nuclear coalitions of these the be Qnots of entangled PAstrong, PAelectro, PAmag, PAweak, and PAvac. Electrons are taken to be Qnots of PAelectro, PAmag, PAweak, andPAvac only.

The tripartite nature of protons and neutrons per QM are attributable to the strong colour force/s of quantum chromo dynamics (QCD). These seem to be taken as ontological variations which are given and not otherwise explained.

The MOPECCA allows that the strong(green), strong(blue), and strong(red) components are orthogonal modes of oscillation manisfested by PAstrong because it has the fastest intrinsic speed of propagation.

Keep in mind

1. the MOPECCA assertion that “nothingness” is just a concept with no actual instantiation and, that
2. each PA is its own unique manifestation of the two opposite directions of bigwards and smallwards which are motions occurring at a unique rate intrinsic to each respective PA.

These give us the basis for understanding that tubes of each PA, where constrained by being entangled/Qnotted with at least one other PA, can sustain all manner of intrinsic resonant oscillations. The strong and weak nuclear forces are described by QM as ‘short range’ forces, whereas the electromagnetic force and gravity are described as, potentially at least, reaching to infinity. The MOPECCA on the other hand describes

• PAstrong and PAweak as each being unitary but with vastly different internal speeds of propagation, whereas
• PAelectro and PAmag are everywhere entwined which enforces an intrinsic chirality to their combinations and a fundamental direction to each in relation to the other, and
• PAvac which is also unitary but slower than all the others such that its filamentery tubes are much more easily disrupted and disconnected than the others.

Note that this idea of disconnections of PAvac should not be thought of as a cutting or chopping, although that in effect is what the outcome is like. Rather it should be seen as differences of resonant ocsillation frequencies such that the faster PA’s manifest as “stronger” forces which cause PAvac to seem to shrink back from certain encounters with other PA and to reconnect with itself when the Qnot of faster PA has passed by. The paradigm for this would be the passage of an EM photon from one part of the universe to another. It is the ‘unzipping’ of PAvac in front of the photon and PAvac reconnection behind it which governs the speed of passage of the Qnot on its journey.

PA insides versus boundaries

To be parsimonious in the way advocated by William of Occam it is reasonable to assume that each different PA, as a manifestation of existence per se, need only differ from any other in one significant feature. The MOPECCA takes this to be the intrinsic speed of propagation of disturbance through the PA in question. It considers that “c” the so-called speed of light, is the relevant speed of causality of PAvac, and that each of the other PA has a different intrinsic speed. These different speeds of propogation of disturbance are taken to be the causes of the different strengths of the fundamental physical forces and that c is the slowest of them all making gravity the weakest force. Occam’s Razor also provokes the MOPECCA to assert the simplest conceivable set of fundamental attributes for PA such that for and within each and all of them there are just two ‘directions’: bigwards and smallwards. It seems feasible that bigwards might have no limit other than encountering a boundary at which the PA abuts another PA. Smallwards is what occurs then until the smallest/thinnest possible instance of the PA is reached at which, the MOPECCA assumes, some sort of ‘bounce’ occurs.

Strings, filaments, tubes

The reason for speaking of “tubes” of PA is that, in order for each different PA to remain connected with every other instance/part of itself – which is a foundation of the MOPECCA – it is necessary that instances of the very smallest possible extent of each respective PA are only transient. A way to understand this is to note that such a region of the PA is effectively a boundary in every direction except where it is immediately connected with two neighbouring regions. It is as near to being a mathematical point as is possible for that PA. As such, if it cannot bounce into bigwards, it seems that disconnection must occur.

The thinking here is somewhat similar to, and much inspired by, that proposed by Gerard t’Hooft in his essay Time, the Arrow of Time, and Quantum Mechanics. In that paper he considers the fundamental nature of space-time to be analogous to the famous _Game of Life_ computer program of John Conway, but in 3D. I must admit that I was only transiently (grin) able to understand (at least some of) Gerard t’Hooft’s reasoning about strictly deterministic Planck level quantum life histories, and how this obviates the dire paradox of the so-called “delayed choice” version of quantum non-locality. Fortunately the MOPECCA is not beholden to non-locality as such because c is taken to be the topmost speed only of changes and disturbances of the vacuum. Another deep question I would put to Gerard t’Hooft is: Why should the whole universe apparently be subject to just one “clock”?

This question is relevant because the way the Game of Life works is that each update of the situation for each cell – which is based on the number of full or empty cells immediately adjacent to it – requires that a stored memory matrix containing the whole game ‘board’is sequencially analysed and the outcome for each cell is written into a second separate memory matrix. Only when the whole of the new matrix has been filled with cell outcomes can this new arrangement be displayed. Obviously that cannot be how the real world works! (One could argue that this necessity for the running of simulations is a decisive argument against”Matrix” (the movie) type conceptions of reality.)

Of course Gerard t’Hooft’s conjecture is not a simulation but involves an intrinsic universal oscillation of space-time on the scale of the Planck length for every pointlike volume of space-time such that Game of Life type rules of absolute existence determine what happens next at each location. Thus his conception relies on the fact that non-existence entails its own negation as does the MOPECCA. He however assumes that each such point oscillates between existence and potential non-existence with the actual outcome each time rigidly determined by the limited number of possible conformations adjacent to each point. From this he argues that regular structures and patterns of evolution will occur spontaneously in 3D/4D as happens in the 2D board of Game of Life. And that is a very neat idea!

Meanwhile, for the MOPECCA, it seems to imply that each smallest possible stable region of a PA must be adjacent to at least three others and maybe the minimum number is four or even higher than that. This is needed to ensure that any boundary region is adjacent to at least one completely “internal” region of the PA. How big such an internal region must be in order to balance the contraction of adjacent boundaries could potentially be another variable attribute of PA.

Surface tension versus expansion

The challenge for the MOPECCA is to minimise untestable assumptions. Because of this, further speculation about the internal nature of PA is not wise. It does seem however that if bigwards and smallwards are to be coherent concepts then the smallest dimension of a stable and enduring region of any PA would have to be the cross section of a tube where the diameter is at least three of four times the smallest possible manifestation of “smallwards” applicable to that PA.

One simple analogy for visualising how this works is the surface tension of water. Smallwards is a much more drastic attribute for a surface than the Van de Vals and other short range interactions of the electrons, etc in water molecules but the net effect must be similar. The extent to which this surface tension

MOPECCA – The importance of 3

The acronym is for Most Powerful Existential Conjecture Currently Available. Hopefully this will encourage someone or more people to take its refutation as a real challenge! This is the only way it can evolve from mere conjecture to hypothesis , let alone theory.

From the point of view of MOPECCA the number 3 is fundamentally important because this is the minimum number of connections to a PA node. (Mathematicians call conections of this sort ‘edges’.) A network of course can have nodes where more than three edges meet. If we think of a fish net, tennis net, or netting type fences, it is more common to have nodes of four edges meeting but this is because each node as such is made where two lines or wires are looped or knotted  around each other and/or welded together and each one leaves the node in a different direction from that in which it entered. In the simplest cases it is just tension and/or stiffness of the material which keeps the node from slipping along one of the lines – eg Cyclone brand wire fencing. The complex networks of each PA however are composed of one substance/entity/existence so each node is in no way a discontinuity but, rather, an extension of the whole.

3 way nodes as vectors

If we conjecture that all PA are ontologically unique but similar to PA-vac (our vacuum), in each manifesting:

• the direction of smallwards at their respective boundaries, and
• the direction of bigwards away from their boundaries, ie everywhere else within it, and that each has
• its own characteristic speed of motion in either of these directions – analogous to the maximum speed  “c” of PA-vac, and for each there is
• a characteristic smallest possible distance for each – analogous to the Planck length of PA-vac, then

it is reasonable to consider that each such smallest filament (AKA edge) of any PA is effectively a minimalistic tube of smallwards-moving boundary surrounding a bigwards moving-interior.

The MOPECCA already conjectures, heretically in this day and age, that for each PA the speed of propagation of influence or movement is different and the speed of causal propogation in PA-vac “c” is slower than the analogous speed in each of the other PA. In fact it seems reasonable that the maximum speed for each other PA is tightly related to the relative strength of the force associated with it in quantum mechanics (QM).

If we couple this with the realisation that nothingness is a concept only – because viewed ontologically there can never be any persistent manifestation of it – then the movement smallwards of a PA at (every part of) its boundary seems to allow for the idea of an intrinsic oscillation being manifest wherever any PA is confined to the state of a stretched  filament as just described.

Furthermore, because we have the clear example of intrinsic direction along filaments of electromagnetic force, we can accept that for some PA at least a filament of the smallest possible size will manifest an intrinsic motion of its boundary in one direction or the other along its length! And this is where the three edges of the simplest node of such a PA impose an intrinsic imbalance:  it will be one of the following situations: two going ‘in’ towards the node and the other going out, or two going ‘out’ and the other going in, or three going out. (Three “going in” does not fit with the concept of the central cross section of a 3 way node being greater than the smallest of its connected edges.) This would imply that each simple 3-edge node of such a PA will be either net outwards or net inwards; in other words the node will be either positively or negatively “charged”.

A question arises here. On the one hand the conjecture of PAelectro nodes being either net positive or net negative due to the status of their 3 edges lends itself to accounting for electric charge, for electrons anyway. On the other hand the fractional charges of quarks, where the Up quark has a +2/3 charge and the Down quark a -1/3 charge, need explaining!

This discussion is continued, and the question of fractional charges answered at another page: MOPECCA – Can a neutron reasonably be considered as a proton plus an electron?

MOPECCA – a dedication

Judith May Browning 1950-2015 was the person who, back in the mid ‘eighties first challenged me with the thought that: The opposite of ‘something’ is not ‘nothing’ it is ‘something else’. Being a bit of a slow-learner, it took me about three decades to actually understand the full implications of this realisation. Eventually however, “the penny dropped” and the MOPECCA has since coalesced around this understanding.

The concept of nothingness, I now think, is an anthropocentric conceit. It seems to imply that if we cannot imagine something then it can’t possibly exist. Given that the concept arose as a rhetorical toy long before the modern concept of vacuum was discovered I think it came about as an adjunct to the concept of a supernatural Supreme Being.

I say anthropocentric rather than anthropic because the latter term only says that we see and discover that which is as it appears from our particular viewpoint because it is what it is – _already_, so to speak. We happen to be what we are and where we are and therefore the pre-existing great It appears to us as It does. Anthropocentric on the other hand says that we are special and therefore where we are is ‘special’ in some way that needs further explaining. In short, ‘anthropocentric’ implies everything is ‘about us’ whereas, in a 13.8 thousand million year old universe, we are just lucky observers who happen to have evolved and who are still learning, very slowly, how to properly take responsibility for our own actions.

The MOPECCA is anthropic only. It quite naturally implies that ‘our’ universe is unique only in the sense that it is one amongst potentially infinitely many others which are probably all different and probably very few are connected with each other.

The realisation that nothingness is basically a self contradictory fantsy implies that the vacuum of our universe has properties which constrain, if not actually define, what can happen here. The MOPECCA currently asserts that _c_ is a property of the vacuum (PAvac) which manifests as the fastest speed at which any other PA can disturb PAvac. Occam’s Razor type reduction implies that _c_ is not necessarily a limit applicable to any other PA within or to itself. Insofar as each PA is a unique network of being, inter-penetrated and/or entangled, with each other PA out to and beyong the ‘edge’ of our universe, the phenomenon of spooky action at a distance is explained quite naturally.

Evidence for existence of DLS in the brain

My F/b response to Bill Trowbridge about evidence for existence of dynamic logical strucutes (DLS) in the brain

Bill’s question:

• Mark A Peaty   “Do you have a good reference with neurological evidence for these DLS ? I’d prefer something general, maybe summarizing all we know about them (if such a thing exists), rather than a deep dive for a specific case. But whatever … use your discretion.
  • Only in cortical columns?
  • Connecting nearby columns?
  • In other areas of the brain?
  • Distributed everywhere?
  • Only in certain area?
  • Are there specializations from place to place?”

My Answer:    Bill, I learned of cortical columns from reading Vernon B Mountcastle’s contribution to the book The Mindful Brain which he and Gerald Edelman wrote. From Gerald Edelman’s contribution I learned of the concept of neuronal group selection (AKA neural Darwinism). G.Edelman used the term repertoires for the informational-causal effectiveness of such coalitions. He also pointed out that neuronal groups as such are by far most likely to be the underlying parts/bearers of mental information because having a large membership gives:

• robustness through redundancy and the capacity for “graceful degredation”,
• allows widespread interconnectivity across different cortical areas (and elsewhere) which allows exactitude and nuances of meanings, and
• allows associations to occur because individual neurons can be members of many different coalitions. There are other useful attributes also but I can’t think of them right now 😉

Jean Pierre Changeaux in his book Neuronal Man called them singularities and explained that their ‘figurative meaning’ is embodied in the locations of their component parts.

Cortical columns are the fundamental sub components of neural cell assemblies and they are spread all across the cortex, a bit like the pixels of a digital screen. Each local area of cortex therefore has a two dimensional array of columns which can each embody different features of two different environmental (or conceptual) variables.

I first read of the fine detail and processing potential of these arrangements in a Scientific American article in the early ’90s. Some researchers had experimented with bats suspended in little swings which set them moving back and forth. Electrodes set into the bats’ cortices showed various two dimensional representations of things like ‘target’ angular direction versus delay time of echo, ‘target’ direction versus fequency of echo, and so forth. Interlinking of these cortical arrays with other arrays receiving signals from primary processing arrays allows for cross referencing of the analyses performed by primary sensory sheets and synthesis of an analogue representation within the bat’s brain of a moving target insect’s location, velocity, size, and probably other significant features. These ‘other features’ would enable the bat to learn to identify target types and how best to catch them.

This U/T video, from 22:2o onwards for a fair while deals specifically with Vernon B Mountcaste’s discovery. The earlier parts of the video discusses the cortex and its layers (which are visible under a microscope), ie similarity of neuron types prominent at specific distances in from the cortical surface.

NB, I am still processing his (Jeff Hawkins’) assertion that each column has a model of the environment embodied/processed within it. I’m thinking this is akin to the idea that each part of a hologram has the whole of the subject image within it.

His statement may be true but I think that in order to make sense of it one needs to consider the effect upon each and every neuron of its participation in each of the (potentially vast number) of such activations it participates in.

As I understand it the hippocampus is coordinating and sustaining several sets of potential global gestltaten, and the pre frontal cortex is ‘deciding’ which is the most important to be fully activated as the most up to date snapshot of self-in-the-world. The basis of this decision rests upon the emotional charge that has been connected to the component memory/sensory data of each representational ensmble. That emotional charge is the ‘feeling’ related to the item and is the cortical representation of the initial emotion reaction to the raw perceptual information.

I read recently that researchers have discovered that the hippocampus outputs its signals in two waves 90° out of phase with each other. I’m guessing that the first output provokes/sustains/updates the currently active global model of self in the world, whereas the second wave sustains all the other items in short term memory and the parts of other items that were part of the model of self in the world earlier in the day. I imagine there is a kind of fading queue of such ‘new’ memories which are sustained until sleepy time by occasional bouts of reactivation due to enhanced spontaneous bursts of signalling by the member neurons. During sleep of course new memories are consolidated, which may well involve the updating of older forms of the representations involved.

I’m hoping you can see why I use the term dynamic logical structures (DLS) for each of the neuronal ensembles which becomes a self sustaining coalition due to the mutual reciprocal “re-entrant’ cortical signalling they engage in. A point I feel is important is that, for the time such DLS are active, they fulfil the basic requirements of a real thing which exists. Each one is a process which acts as a pathway for degrading the energy of their particular environment, which is a characteristic or all self-sustaining processes, and they also have effects upon their immediate environment which result, in either short term or long term, in increasing the probability of their reactivation in the future.

What makes us move?

Response to F/b question about: what makes us move?

My response was to this question by Scott F: Mark A Peaty – not sure your bottom line conclusion follows from your interesting observations, but thank you for this dialog. Since you focused on movement a lot in your reply precisely how do you believe movement is initiated and via what agency?

The ultimate motivating ‘force’ is homeostasis that drives us to stay alive!

I’m sure you are as familiar as I am with the basic idea here. There are many biochemical and physical requirements in the form of food stuffs, water, maintenance of body temperature, breathing in fresh air, etc. The parameters relating to these and their monitoring is the business of the brain stem some regions of which have ultimate control over our being awake versus being asleep, etc. Our interactions with the environment are monitored and assessed by the thalamus and basal ganglia, limbic system, etc, which are all close to the brain stem and have first access to sensory registration of changes in the world around us.

To put this explicitly, our emotions are our animal responses to the apparent changes and potential changes around us in terms of danger of harm or threat of danger versus resource value and life enhancing utility. These are “prompt” responses which apply relevant emotional charges to percepts. Our feelings are the registration of these emotional charges in the cortex while the higher level, and slower, detailed processing of sensory information takes place in the posterior regions of the cortex.

So the direct answer to your question is that basic stimulation/motivation to activity comes from the brainstem, and the general impetus to action or reaction is mediated by thalamus/basal ganglia/limbic system.

The detailed and hopefully appropriate specific activity which deals with the current situation is generated in the anterior parts of the cortex with executive control of these being mediated in the pre frontal area.

The point I keep stressing is that the regional responsibility description I have just given needs to be understood in terms of the brain being host to many thousands of patterns of temporarily self-sustaining, neuronal assemblages – DLS – which embody the particular affective or effective information content and intention/aboutness of all the perceptions, thoughts, and behaviours which constitute our minds. As you know, the brain is always active, using at least 20% of our metabolic energy even when asleep.

As to whether or not this constant activity is generating patterns of muscular movements or is systematically cycling through the different global wave motions doing the job of consolidating useful memories and fuzzing out random junk patterns depends on the particulars of time, place, and circumstances.