A scientific theory is a logically coherent story about the reality in which we live. Human beings rely on stories to make sense of reality, for without stories about reality, there is no way for us to function. The most basic of questions as “who am I” is answered by a number of such stories without which we would have difficulties with the most elementary aspects of our lives. Thus we are all scientists in this way. The stories we accept about the reality in which we find ourselves determines a great deal of our reactions to different situations. There are around 6.7 billion human beings on the planet, and an almost unlimited number of stories in our minds, in our literature and history. Of these various stories, only a very small number of stories can have a chance of describing what is true. The scientific tradition, which focuses attention on objective phenom-ena has developed various strategies to determine which stories are more likely to be true than others based on empirical evidence, which usually translates to a set of measurements, and thus data. Given a set of data of measurements of some variables, the ansatz is accept or reject particular stories based on their fit to data. Once a dataset is available, the quantitative comparison of theories is the object of study of statistical theory. A cornerstone of statistical theory was laid in 1922 by Sir Ronald Fisher in a paper where he introduced the concept of fitting parameters to data using the method of maximum likelihood. This method, roughly, is to note that ifP(X|p) denotes the probability of observing data given parameter pthen one could speak of the likelihood of the param-eters given the data, L(p|X) and thus one could determine the parameter p
by maximizing the likelihood. Fisher spent approximately a decade 1912-22 to clarify for the statisticians of the day the issue that maximizing the likelihood is quite different from the method of inverse probability, the method of Bayes of the type of assuming a uniform prior distribution and maximizing the posterior probability given the data. The likelihood L which is not a probability, has critical points that are more robust than an analogous method of maximizing posterior probability would have.
Obviously the set of all stories in our minds, archives, and literature do not often come with clean, or indeed, any dataset on which quantitative techniques such as Fisher’s maximum likelihood technique could be applied. Indeed the complexity of objective phenomena overwhelm us to such an extent that there are widely differing views about even such basic phenomena as the behavior of light. Human beings are individuals with our own minds and thus differing viewpoints is natural. Thus we all understand experiences of our lives through an individual view point. At the same time, we cohabit a single objective universe. Thus it is of paramount interest for us as a planetary civilization to find a common ground on how we can agree on what is true.
Scientific tradition gives us two criteria for comparison of two scientific the-ories. Two scientific theories can be compared by the criteria of (A) simplicity or the principle of parsimony, and (B) predictive power beyond the data or in-formation used to construct the theory. These are not arbitrary as enormously powerful scientific theories about the universe, such as Maxwell’s equations de-scribing the electromagnetic fields have shown us the mathematical elegance that can be achieved when describing the functioning of the objective universe.
There are analogues in statistical analysis of these criteria that are used in model selection problems for a particular datasetX which in one formulation is the balancing of a bias-variance tradeoff in model selection in order to select a model on the data which might generalize beyond the dataset in which a model is trained. Recall that training a model to a datasetX is the operation of fitting parameters of a model usingX. It appears in the context of dividing a dataset into two groups, the first for training a model and the second for testing the accuracy of the model on a subset of the data that was not used to train the model. As a simple example, if we consider the data to consist of N pairs of measurements of time, distance, and velocity of an object not subject to accel-eration, then the equation d−d0 = vt is an example of a parametric model.
In principle, different physical theories with differing equations describing such a dataset could be compared by comparing the values of the log-Likelihood of the maximum likelihood of their parameters given X. Then one a likelihood ratio test could be employed to decide which of the scientific theories are better at explaining the data. Recall that the likelihood ratio test is a well-developed hypothesis testing scheme where the ratio of likelihoods is compared against a threshold to decide whether to reject a hypothesis. Thus statistical theory af-fords us with several methods to compare parametric models for a fixed dataset. An interesting new phenomenon introduced when physical theories about the actual universe being tested on data is that mathematical consequences of basic relations tested on data are included within the test of basic relations and there-fore the test of a fundamental relationship implies a test for all mathematical consequences of the relationship.
Logical consistency is often assumed without comment for scientific theo-ries, and not emphasized often. But it is clear that consistensy is a powerful criterion to eliminate false theories about the universe in which we live. This is doubly important in the chaotic situation in which we find ourselves where disagreements lead to conflict, strife, wars, and atrocities. Strife, deceit, and fear are use by agents who follow theories of political manipulation of popula-tions. Thus the consistency criteria are essential for individuals to sift through the morass of stories and for the human civilization to reject those stories that cannot be true. Counterexamples are reasons to reject scientific theories rather than merely modify them. The obvious example of this use of counterexamples in a simplified picture of a criminal trial is that a person who was in London at the time when a physical crime was committed in Beirut cannot possibly have committed the crime in Beirut. Logical consistency is a more powerful condi-tion when applied to those stories about reality that forms the basis of social functioning for whole societies. The obvious example of interest for the whole human civilization is the issue of who were responsible for the attacks in New York and Washington DC in the morning of September 11, 2001. There are too many differing accounts of what transpired on that day and who were responsi-ble which would produce a digression from the general issue of consistency, but it is not difficult to find inconsistencies, like the alleged passenger who made a last minute desperate phone call to his mother and provided his full name to his mother that to me is sufficient to conclude that 9/11 was a western conspiracy
for various reasons. I bring up this particular example because details of the 9/11 theories have provided a great deal of contentious debate across the world and has drained a great deal of collective energy of the human civilization. Con-sistent resolutions of stories that affect the whole human civilization is a task that is necessary for healthy functioning of humanity for obvious reasons. Con-sistency gives us a destructive criterion, to eliminate many stories as invalid. This can reduce distractions that are unnecessary for our minds.
These abstract considerations are purely intellectual exercises if they lead to intractable problems. But I shall show that there is a simple physical theory that is all-encompassing in its scope that can provide a foundation for tractable method for determining a large class of stories about the universe as false. In this theory, the universe can be modelled mathematically as a four dimensional sphere of a fixed radius, 1/hin length units where his the Planck’s constant, which is around 2.5 million light years. The three dimensional physical uni-verse is a subspace, in this theory, which can wrap around the four dimensional sphere. Thus the diameter that has been observed of the universe, around 50 billion light years, can be explained by a three dimensional subspace that wraps around the sphere in the order of 20,000 times. Time, in this theory, is directed, linear, and independent of space. The physics is deterministic and hence there exists a single metronome for the universe and there is a unique destiny of the universe that reveals itself at every moment of time. Electromagnetism is the only force in the universe but it is a four dimensional electromagnetism with gauge groupSU(2) rather thanU(1); and there is an Einstein structure equa-tion, which is similar to the gravitational field equations, that describes how the three dimensional universe is immersed in four dimensions. This model matches some key observations: for instance, it can explain quantization of energy as a consequence of the shape of the universe rather than requiring a separate quan-tum hypothesis. The model can also explain the order of magnitude of the cosmological constant, which according to the established cosmological theory Lambda-CDM, is around h2. Therefore it is equivalent to a so-called “grand
unification theory”. Quantum mechanics posits irreducible stochasticity in the subatomic scale, but this can also be explained as the effect of observing four dimensional phenomena from the vantage point of an observer of a vibrating three dimensional universe. Indeed, the analogy of the three dimensional uni-verse as a soap bubble – an area-minimizing hypersurfaces – is approximately correct and can provide some intuition for why there is apparent randomness in the electrons in the hydrogen atom.
The decoupling of time and space in this physical theory, as well as the extra symmetry of electromagnetism enormously simplifies the ability of this physical theory to have consequences for application. But more important for our interests is that it can provide a scientific basis for the study of spiritual phenomena which are purely four dimensional. According to S4 theory, the universe must have existed eternally in the past if we can trust that Planck’s constant is invariant in time, which the principle of parsimony suggests we accept. Therefore, there cannot have been a time at which it was created and hence there cannot have been a creator who created it. As a consequence,
all spiritual theories that posit a creator of the universe can be eliminated as a correct description of the universe in which we live. A new magnetic axis is introduced with a fourth dimension which can be identified with light and darkness. The reason for this naming is to match observations I have had with an open third eye. This is considered inadmissible evidence in the current scientific establishment, but as an individual, these observations for me are no different from any other reasonable observation. Moreover, since these lead to a coherent mathematical theory coherently, I am using the metaphysical observations as a practical guide to developing a precise physics for non-physical phenomena that does not contradict a theory that describes physical phenomena.
Counterexamples and rejection of theories inconsistent with a coherent phys-ical theory is a powerful tool for human beings to reject living in false realities, especially internally. While it is true that human beings are not purely ratio-nal agents by a wide margin; we are driven far more by our emotions, moods, and feelings rather than rational decision-making. As a simple example, the arithmetic of 2+2=4 is not hardwired in most of our minds and we must learn such things as children. At the same time, it cannot be denied that rationality is an important component of our human-ness. The useful concept in under-standing our difference from cats and dogs is that of self-awareness: we are less animal and more human to the extent that we are more self-aware. This is not to suggest that it is a good idea to attempt to categorize human beings into a ranking of inferiority and superiority based on self-awareness but to point out that rationality is not a precise criterion to distinguish us from the animals. We all have convictions about what we believe and what we do not; without convic-tions about our reality, we would not be able to function. But it is precisely our convictions that require the greatest efforts for examination if they are to be in accordance with objective reality beyond doubt. Incorrect convictions lead to a disconnect between the reality in the mind and that which exists in the universe objectively. They lead to decisions that are irrational and in error, to unpleasant surprises.
Clearly, consistency checking is not a creative but a destructive act. For this reason, it is often relegated as activity in the domain of accountants, statisti-cians, scientists, philosophers and others whose interests are primarily technical rather than those whose interests are in the arts, politics, psychology and other human enterprises. Those educated in public education systems of nations often show a remarkable division of in interests early in life, and the non-technically inclined people have various negative attitudes towards the former often with the prejudice that there is a narrow-mindedness in destructive consistency check-ing. This attitude has some merit, for the modern sciences have not addressed very successfully some fundamental questions of interest to people about the human spirit. Indeed, in the modern west, there developed a consensus that the heart is simply a physical blood pumping organ rather than an older – and I will argue more correct – view of the heart as espoused by, for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson, that the heart is a central and valid object of study via a four-dimensional view of the human spirit. Facile distinction between the rational man and the superstitious man can then be challenged because the accepted
resolution of this distinction by modern western scientists is not sensible in a universe that is four dimensional. Recall that the evidence for the existence of four macroscopic dimensions is not murky; it is quite clear from observations of symmetries of orders 5, 8, 10, and 12 in crystals observed since 1984 when R. Shechtman and his colleagues first produced what are currently referred to as “quasi-crystals” while their X-ray diffraction pictures do not show any qualita-tive difference from those of any ordinary crystal. The mathematical theorem called the crystallographic restriction theorem does not allow these symmetries for three dimensional crystals and puts a lower bound on the number of macro-scopic dimensions to four.
Human beings are busy with thinking and doing things that we consider important for our lives. Our minds are bombarded by thoughts, stories, and opinions from our environment. In modern capitalism whole industries exist to analyze and attempt to grab parts of our minds to focus attention on particular issues and particular interests. This is what advertisement, political campaigns, and even ideological newspapers are designed to do. No newspaper story ex-ists in a vacuum, and none can be quite successful without any reference to feelings, emotions, prejudices of the target audience. It is not only the profes-sionals in capitalism who categorize us based on our opinions and prejudices but often we do this ourselves, consciously, to identify ourselves to others. Thus we accept being considered “a writer” or “a mathematician” or “a painter” or “an economist” or “a libertarian” or “socially liberal” or “fiscally conservative”. None of these things are particularly deep in their foundations but they may or may not allow navigating the social organization of the modern world with a set of expectations of particualar freedoms and particular restrictions. The planetary political system respects such categories and treats people differen-tially based on them. As an unpleasant example, having a Muslim name in an American airport leads to a particular type of treatment that is not suffered by someone without a Muslim name since September 11, 2001. Thus these cate-gories, although artificial and not naturally occuring from internal experiences per se, are realized when engaging with the political and social system. That this phenomenon is a grave failing of the political system is not much in doubt by anyone who has considered the problem seriously, but the solution to the problem seems at first glance intractable. However, there is little reason for us, as humanity, to agree to adhere to this particular arrangement and indeed there are many possible ways for us to collectively become more coherent as a planetary civilization by considering the paths to solving this problem globally. A key issue here is the resolution of contested claims to what is true, for often deep convictions are in conflict. It is here that a careful analysis that uses the principle of consistency to reject theories that are impossible by consistency shows its strength.
Expertise, argues Paul Feyerabend in his groundbreaking ideas of philosophy of science in “A Farewell to Reason” is inmical to the practice of science. No true scientist would accept anyone’s word simply by authority, especially when their own research is focused on a particular problem. But this self-sufficiency is central to all human beings for expertise is an enemy of truth, in a sense, for all
thinking human beings. I claim no expertise on anything but my own reality; I present my thoughts based on research that I have undertaken myself over the years to make sense of objective truth for myself. I present these to any audience as my truth and I claim many things among these to be universal. I use the consistency principle to navigate large areas of human knowledge, theories, and stories to avoid getting bogged down on paths that are fundamentally flawed. At the expense of closing off paths and thereby becoming more narrow minded, I gain efficiency in use of energy to explore truth in wider areas of inquiry without a priori divisions. Perhaps a proud “hardcore econmist” will make a great distinction between the rigorous study of economic theory and practice while keep away from “spiritual hocus pocus” but I take the opposite view. The foundational assumptions of economics are far from firm, and therefore there is an intellectual dishonesty that underpins in such a great faith that indeed economics is “hardcore” and spiritual claims are, by comparison, “hocus pocus”. But a quick glance at the foundations of economics shows that the strength of economics as a science is weak. Economic theory based on rational agents is far from what is observed in human social functioning, which Kahneman and Tversky have shown in their work. But there is a more obvious, and far deeper, reason for this phenomena. Economic theory within modern capitalism has roots in social prejudices and misunderstandings of what constitutes a human being. A basic assumption of economic theory is that there is an essential component of human needs that fuels the enterprise of economics, of politics, and of social sciences. The need for food, it is often agreed, is a fundamental constraint on the human functioning. Counterexamples exist for such assumptions: the world record for a hunger strike without death is 94 days; my personal record, for verification that this is not a deceptive claim, is around 10 days. These counterexamples are sufficient to invalidate the fundamental assumptions that underlie modern economic theories to an extent. We can safely conclude that economic theories that make assumptions about the absolute necessity of food, for example, are theories that do not apply to all human beings and thus for that reason are strictly invalid scientific theories. Perhaps it applies to a subset of the human population who accept, for practical reasons, that food is an absolute daily necessity, but it does not apply to 6.7 billion. Thus it is perfectly reasonable and rational for either a small or large portion of human population to reject claims of truth of theories that do make such assumptions. Indeed, not only do I do so, but I claim that errors of these type, of assumptions about human beings whose range of validity is actually limited but whose acceptance is large, have significant costs to the human civilization because they lead to policies and decisions that affect everyone.
Purely destructive use of consistency checking will not produce any positive solution to the issue of what can we agree on rather than what must we reject. This is clearly a delicate problem and anything I can say about this must be taken as provisional and preliminary. But one conclusion one could draw is that any thoughts about a planetary political system cannot be based on assumptions that are not universal. Furthermore, since the universe is four dimensional and in the past millenia at least, our conclusions about human nature did not include
this crucial bit of information, we should be open to a re-examination of our orthodox assumptions about human nature. It is not uncommon for us to experience the dysfunction of human civilization and sigh in resignation and attribute this vaguely to “human nature”. This reaction is equivalent to taking some implicit models of human nature that has been developed in the past, perhaps based on observations, but in no way certain. The fact that there exist quite different behavior of people on many fundamental issues across cultural boundaries which are quite porous themselves show that facile assumptions about human nature are likely to be incorrect. I have personally happily chosen to abandon my material possessions for my political convictions, and I know myself to be an extremely rational human being. If the calculus of risk and reward of material possessions were fundamental to human nature, this would be an impossibility for me. Nietzsche has analyzed this possibility and had concluded this process of thought with his development of the concept of “will to power”. I believe he was very close to right in postulating that the whole universe is composed of particles of will to power, and I identify will to power with spiritual darkness in terms of dark four dimensional magnetic monopoles. The parsimonious division that is most natural for a self-aware being is that between the self and the external universe. The parsimonious division political functioning, untainted by the effects of recent history is between the self and the mass of 6.7 billion human beings. In the modern political systems, entrenched divisions by nation and religion are widely accepted. But these divisions require severe questioning, for they are not ordained by the natural laws of the universe but enforced by societies and institutions. A most famous attempt for political enforcement of such distinctions is Hitler’s appeal to blood and race as funda-mental characteristics that distinguished a “Teutonic race” from inferior races. While it is widely agreed that Hitler’s division was wrong and harmful based on the horrors that ensued his vision that appealed to a swathe of Europe, the same critical view is not often applied to the divisions that we accept today. Once again this question is of current interest following the massacre in Gaza, and I use the term ’massacre’ with full understanding that it is an anti-Israeli political stance, in late 2008 to early January 2009 from Israel’s Operation Cast Lead which killed at least 300 children and which in some cases targeted schools and hospitals. The political situation in Israel/Palestine is obviously delicate but regardless of what the specific political conditions are, any reasonable person anywhere around the world can agree that this was unjust and unjustifiable. The event highlights for us the issue of what are the justified limits of state power, and I would extend the question to whether there is any justification for state power at all. An examination of the fundamental roots of what can and what cannot be politically legitimate brings us to the issue of human ideals. Constitutions of nations all rely on appeal to the human ideals to gain their legitimacy, but they all have to deal with the issue of what then provides legit-imacy to their security interests. The fundamental contradiction is that by its very nature national security brings with it the squashing of human ideals for those who do not belong to a nation. This immediately, logically, breaks the legitimacy of the constitution. A vast amount of cleverness goes into balancing
these irreconcilables in political rhetoric. In a delicate balancing act on hiding this fundamental logical flaw, we have created the issues of “human rights”. Of course human rights are nothing more than a particular set of consequences of the fundamental human ideals, TRUTH, FREEDOM, and JUSTICE. But in the current planetary political system these are treated, without much comment, as a sort of special interest. In a true planetary Republic, “human rights” would not exist because that is the the responsibility of a Republic, to guarantee these things we call human rights for 6.7 billion.
Now consider our differences, for while there are various ways in which we believe equality is an ideal, it is worthwhile noting that the four dimensionality of the universe provides a new impetus to re-open the questions of the differences between people. We have to set aside what we have diligently worked towards to gain some understanding of who we are, how we function, and what differentiates us. This is a question that has dominated many years of my life because I have never been able to fully understand the various characterizations that others had suggested of me. In other words, I have been fully engaged with my internal life and while I have ventured out to work in industry and travel and meet many people across nations, social classes, and other superficial distinctions, I had not quite understood why it is that people who have very little idea of who I am or what I am like seemed quite convinced of their characterizations of me and have proceeded to react in particular ways with their assumptions, often with little choice for me to react without contention. It is of course impossible for me or anyone else to truly accept external characterizations which are incorrect without resentment. I have become extremely vocal and outspoken not merely out of my natural habits but because it became clear to me that the problem of superficial prejudices affect not only myself but everyone on the planet, to varying extents. Every single person on this planet suffers from a debilitating amount of prejudices based on all sorts of completely ludicrous metrics because of possibly complex reasons. This situation is a severe problem for healthy functioning of human civilization and hence addressing with any tools at our disposal by any means that is not unjust. It is with this in mind that I propose consistency checking as a primary method to redress some of these civilizational errors that lead to these prejudices. The absolute truth, whatever it may be, is preferable over falsehood even in the case that such truth are unpleasant and disturbing. This is because it we cannot address the unpalatable situations if we are not able to face them.
India did not exist as a unified political entity before the British Empire was fully established. At the same time, Indian nationalism thrives on being liberators from British colonialism. The one thing that the nationalists did not liberate themselves from is the British construction of India which did not exist before their rule of India. Political emotions thus are not good guides for what is true and what is intermediate drama. It is a commonplace that victors write the history books, but what is not often emphasized is that we have the freedom not to believe the history of the victors of any situation. We have the independence, if we so choose, to reject such histories, to question them, and demand that such questioning takes center stage in our political functioning.
1
Dangers of revolutionary thought
Human beings, often, enjoy comfort and routine especially when these provide us with a stable platform in which to accomplish our fundamental goals. One whose passion is painting, for example, might balk at being pulled far away from painting because of concerns that are independent from his passions. Thus for expedited convenience for what we want to accomplish, for the purposes of min-imizing expenditure of energy into concerns that distract from our passions, we often arrange practicalities of life to minimize disruptions. This seems em-inently sensible for us, often, especially when our practical arrangements do provide the comforts necessary to focus on our goals. For the small proportion of 6.7 billion residing on the planet who are sufficiently privileged to attain such a comfortable situation, great political upheavals that threaten this comfort are disruptive and hence are to be avoided. The vernacular wisdom tells us, “If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.” There are stronger forces also whose purpose in avoiding upheavals is to protect their power and privilege that have been perhaps attained by skill, hard work, talents, and therefore worthy of protec-tion. Although there is some truth to the enormous inequalities that provide differential opportunities to attain wealth and power in the planetary political system, the vast majority of those who have achieved themselves wealth and privilege in the current system and have not inherited it from their family or benefactors have done so through hard work, perhaps. For such people, it is senseless to consider a revolutionary change to a new political reality.
Others, for whom opportunities are not available equally, around the world, have much less reason to avoid political upheaval not simply because they resent those who have wealth and power but because the planetary political system fails to take their interests into account with sufficient seriousness. For them, it is not as serious a disruption to their work whether there is or is not revolutionary change because they are not able to avoid the practical inconveniences and demands to focus on what their passions might be. Witness the restaurants full of waiters and waitresses in Greenwich Village in New York whose dreams are perhaps to pursue art or some other activity that is incompatible with what they do to earn a living. I make no claims about who among them is capable of producing great art and who is not, but note that this phenomena is not unusual. Regardless of nation, regardless of cultural differences, people in the current planetary system are often unhappy with what they do to earn a living because they often do so for practical reasons, while their passions are kept on the side perhaps as a hobby. This situation seems the reverse of what makes sense simply as a human being to me. It is obvious to me that human beings are happier when they follow their passions and less happy when they feel tied down to labor for practical necessities. If this is the result of some natural process in an equilibrium of some kind, then it is a strange equilibrium from my view.
Revolutions should be avoided, we are often told, because there are processes that are available for social change. Within nations there are judicial systems; across nations there are organizations that have formed to address particular social ills. These efforts are hollow. In a recent meeting of the G20, the
fi-nancial controllers of the planetary money supply could not even come to a concrete plan to produce 5 billion dollars that they had promised over the last few years. These kinds of ineffectiveness affects the fortunes of billions of peo-ple. Indeed, fixing these very large scale systemic problems cannot be achieved without revolutionary changes. Revolutionary change is often portrayed as be-ing accompanied by physical violence. This does not have to be the case, and is in fact counterproductive because a revolution to a planetary Republic would be hollow if violations of the ideals of TRUTH, FREEDOM, and JUSTICE leads to claims of establishing a new system where such ideals are protected. Thus, it must be possible to spark a revolution without violating ideals at all. I will have more to say about possible concrete approaches on how this can be accomplished even without violating national laws in the process. It is for the moment sufficient to emphasize that a planetary revolution does not require physical violence. Moreover, it is my firm conviction that the planetary politi-cal system fully controls the means of physipoliti-cal violence and hence any politipoliti-cal opposition that attempts to use violence for political change is guaranteed to fail and produce no positive results. In fact, I believe the last time that physical violence had any positive effects were during the independence of Algeria from France. Today it is impossible.
Over the past thousand years, political revolutions and attempts at politi-cal revolutions had been violent and bloody. The French Revolution gives us a perfect example of a bloody Revolution, not to mention the decolonization movements throughout the last two centuries. Many of these had violent com-ponents. Many of the militant tactics of violent guerilla warfare were developed during the Algerian independence from France. But despite all these examples to bloody revolutions, there is no certainty that political revolutions have any necessity to be accompanied by violence. Both the examples of the leadership of Gandhi and of Martin Luther King, Jr. have shown us how nonviolent po-litical revolutions are possible. In this case, one has counterexamples to the statement: All political revolutions necessarily must involve physical violence. There cannot be, thus any essential restriction of human beings that force us to be physically violent while experiencing a political revolution. Regardless of finer issues of cultural determinism that we often are tempted to bring up on these issues, such arguments require further assumptions about essential dif-ferences between cultures or ethnicities that I believe are not sound. By the time Bastille was stormed, there were very few prisoners in it. Thus while the drama of the revolution took place, the revolution had already taken place in people’s minds. There are no laws of the universe that I am aware of that dis-allows nonviolent revolutions in general and a planetary political revolution in particular.
Of course physical violence is not the only danger that accompanies a polit-ical revolution, at least in the popular imagination. We treat Germany under the Third Reich as a moral tale of dangers that might accompany political rev-olutions. The particular period of history is complex, and there is a gigantic literature studying many aspects of this history. However, in considering this cautionary tale, it is worthwhile to consider that not all political revolutions
are similar in their aims. Hitler’s particular ideals were blood and race, clearly a divisive revolution that promised to be repressive for those not of whatever classified Hitler’s preferred race and blood. Universal ideals, such as TRUTH, FREEDOM, and JUSTICE are inherently not divisive, and hence provide a very different class of ideals than Hitler’s. These ideals are human ideals, not ideals of a false racial category and are thus implicitly does not contain a nec-essary conflict within 6.7 billion that must reveal itself. Rather such conflicts are coded into national, racial, and ethnic identities that the planetary system enforces. Indeed, although India has suffered greatly in its social functioning because of its caste system, this system was made rigid under British adminis-trators rather than removed, because “divide and conquer” has been a natural choice of administration and control of populations for Empires. I do not believe there is any fundamental difference between myself and anyone from Israel, to pick a simple example, spiritually, although I was told many stories when I was young about my nationality, race, religion, ethnicity, social rank, and various other artificial metrics. These metrics have not been particularly helpful or im-portant for me and have instead hindered my life in a million ways in different circumstances because of acceptance of such metrics by society. Therefore, I suspect that this is indeed the case for everyone in the planet to an extent. I am not ashamed of visceral anti-Israel propaganda, but it is not because I believe I am fundamentally any different from those claimed by Israel but for purely personal, political, and strategic reasons.
2
Uses of consistency for political stories
National governments, special interest groups in capitalism, and a thousand other organizations compete for political influence in the current planetary po-litical system. There exist no source of mass media news on the planet that is balanced and fair. That would be almost impossible technically under the best of circumstances because a story about a situation has necessarily to use judgment to choose particular details and ignore others. The process is under-stood better when compared with the visual artist seeing visual phenomena. It is the particular talent of a visual artist to see a visual phenomenon without falling prey to the same set of symbolic associations as one trapped within a symbolic system. This talent of the visual artist points out the impossibility of a choice-less story. Newspaper and mass media accounts of news, regardless of the attempted neutrality, makes choices and judgments and assumes partic-ular symbolic connections. Choices need to be made regardless of attempts to be neutral, and therefore perhaps the most honest approach is to identify the choices made and the symbolic system chosen openly so that the point of view is not hidden but open, and the political stances are clear at the outset. This is often missing. There is a great deal of hypocrisy in the claims of “Fox News” in America as “fair and balanced” for in the case of Fox, there is not even an attempt to stay neutral on as trivial a matter as left or right slant. Less appar-ent are the political symbolic system of a more highly regarded news medium,
The New York Times. In their case, at least historically, the lack of neutrality was much more subtle. In Edward Said’s Orientalism and other books he had treated specific studies of The New York Times in reference to particular biases against Muslims and Arabs.
Assuming that various detailed criticism of biases of various types in various news media are accepted, for there are voluminous studies that deconstruct these assumptions. The question then remains: what sort of neutrality is possible at all? This question is important to answer because in the criticism of various scholars and political activists of particular biases and particular sources of news, the question often unanswered is whether these biases can be removed in an ideal news medium, and if so, what symbolic system would have to be accepted to be as close to such an ideal as possible; the next question is how can we achieve this if it is possible.
I propose several criteria as a contribution to thought in this direction. First, some negative characterizations to help with the problem. Any national, reli-gious, or political affiliation of a newspaper immediately puts its neutrality into doubt for obvious reasons and thus must be carefully and explicitly made clear to the reader. Second, an apriori international point of view helps enormously because the plurality of international public opinion provides an antidote to provincial local political opinions. Third, if a symbolic system is chosen, it is better to choose a universal symbol system such as human rights around the world, which has a well-developed symbol system and does not suffer from the provincial biases of
3
Consensus is not an ideal
The ideals of REPUBLIC are TRUTH, FREEDOM, and JUSTICE. In partic-ular CONSENSUS is not an ideal of REPUBLIC. Because we have lived in a planetary political system where consensus is held in high regard for various reasons, it is worthwhile to consider several problems with consensus and the particular systems of Representative Democracy that is constructed from this emphasis on consensus. The first criticism of Representative Democracy is that strictly, representation of an individual is an impossible task. This is because our uniqueness dominates any attempt at representation. This reasoning however does not provide a great deal of practical insight into alternatives to Represen-tative Democracy. The more serious problem of RepresenRepresen-tative Democracy in practice is that it is not difficult for charismatic politicians to make extraordi-nary promises with no ability to keep them once elected. In particular, it is not an impossibility for a politician to make extraordinary promises to gain power and deliberately choose to pursue a strategy once in power of ignoring all the promises. This could happen in a situation where the politicians loyalties, after gaining power, is no longer to the constituency who elected him or her in a Representative Democracy but to other interests, for whatever reasons.
Whether such dangers are realized is immaterial to the argument against Representative Democracy above. This is because the existence of such a danger
itself is a deep flaw in any system that employs Representative Democracy. The corruption rampant around the world in the planetary political system reinforces the argument I am making. For a simple example, the extent to which Hamid Karzai has represented the Afghani people is severely in doubt since the initial American invasion of Afghanistan. In this case, at least initially, his loyalties were certainly more to the American authorities than the Afghan people. This type of situation has been a common occurrence in planetary politics under the current system of capitalism. While it may or may not be interesting to point out more such examples and produce specific criticisms of the persons involved, the problem is systemic. It is a problem with Representative Democracy rather than particular political agents.
Another more technical example of how consensus can mislead is the example from mathematics. The value ofπ is the area of a unit radius circle, and has several other definitions. It is however, not something that can be fruitfully determined by consensus. Thus there exist issues for which seeking consensus is absurd. At least in this situation it is very clear that consensus is completely unimportant to an issue. I will claim that whatever is absolute truth, whether known or unknown to us, is always beyond CONSENSUS.
Participatory politics is an important issue, but the particular implemen-tation of such participatory politics employing Representative Democracy is simply not in accordance with the ideals of the REPUBLIC. In particular, the question of implementation of a REPUBLIC that does not rely on a fixed par-ticipatory politics is an interesting open question. I have proposed the solution of a private company of 6.7 billion equal owners where regardless of consensus, certain rules are beyond the power of a bloc to change.
4
Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm
A scientific community consists of the practitioners of a scientific specialty. Bound together by common elements in their education and apprenticeship, they see themselves and are seen by others as the men responsible for the pur-suit of a set of shared goals, including the training of their successors. Such communities are characterized by the relative fullness of communication within the group and the relative unanimity of the group’s judgment on professional matters. To a remarkable extent the members of a given community will have absorbed the same literature and drawn similar lessons from it. Because the attention of different communities is drawn to different matters, professional communication across group lines is arduous, often giving rise to misunder-standing, and may, if pursued, isolate significant disagreement.
What shared elements account for the relatively unproblematic character of unproblematic communication and for the relative unanimity of professional judgment? To this question the The Structure of Scientific Revolutions licenses the answer “a paradigm” or “a set of paradigms”. This sense of paradigms can be replaced by the phrase “disciplinary matrix”. “Disciplinary” because it is the common possession of of the practitioners of a professional discipline and
“ma-trix” because it is composed of ordered elements of various sorts, each requiring further specification. Constituents of a disciplinary matrix include all or most of the objects of group commitment described in the book as paradigms, parts of paradigms, or paradigmatic. Three such objects are symbolic generalizations, models, and exemplars.
Symbolic generalizations are those expressions deployed without question by the group, which can be readily applied in some logical form likex)(y)(z)φ(x, y, z). They are the formal components of a disciplinary matrix. Models provide the group with preferred analogies, and when deeply held, into an ontology. At one extreme the are heuristic: the electric circuit regarded as a steady-state hydrodynamic system or a gas as microscopic billiard balls in random motion. At the other extreme they are objects of metaphysical commitment: the heat of a body is the kinetic energy of its constituent particles. Examples are concrete problem solutions, accepted by the group as paradigmatic.
To understand how a scientific community functions as a producer and val-idator of sound knowledge, we must understand the operation of these three elements of the disciplinary matrix. Kuhn focuses attention to what he calls a scientific community by which he means a specialist group of a relatively small size, in the order of hundreds of people, who share a single paradigm. Sym-bolic generalizations for such a community will include equations likef =ma
and mathematical and logical manipulations of such symbolic generalizations are accepted without contention by members of the group even if there may be disagreements on specific interpretation of the symbols themselves as they relate to observation and experiment.
The change in the disciplinary matrix itself is what Kuhn means by paradigm shift that accompanies a scientific revolution. Since I am interested in a scientific revolution to a purely four dimensional view of the universe, it is incumbent upon me to study such paradigms. The mathematical background required to study the purely geometric S4 science is well-known by geometers and analysts but perhaps not well-known among the various scientific communities. These include riemannian geometry and spectral theory on compact manifolds, the study of minimal submanifolds, principal bundles on four dimensional manifolds, the hypersurfaces of the four dimensional sphere.
How do scientists attach symbolic expression to nature? Kuhn says, “I do not doubt that the examination of given scientific community would disclose a number of [correspondence] rules [of how to apply symbolic generalizations to specific situations] shared by its members ... and few others could be derived from their behavior.” But for an adequate body of such rules the philosopher has to reconstruct them himself. He should be wary of reconstructing such rules from collected examples of the community’s past practice because they may not have applied to the next new example they consider. If he is concerned with Ohm’s law,V =I/Rand he knows that the members of the group he studies measure voltage with an electrometer and current by a galvanometer. Seeking a correspondence rule for resistance, he may choose the quotient of voltage divided by current, in which case Ohm’s law becomes a tautology. Or he may instead choose to correlate the value of resistance with the results of measurements
made on a Wheatstone Bridge, in which case Ohm’s law provides information about nature.
5
Symbolic generalizations of S4 science
The universe is a four dimension eternal sphere of constant radius 1/hin length units where h is Planck’s constant. It can be thought of as a gigantic living magnetic toy. All life results from the sea of light and dark magnetic monopoles that fill the universe. There is a single force in the universe in the physics sense, and that is electromagnetism with an SU(2) gauge group on the Hopf fibrationS7−> S4. The three dimensional universe is described by the Einstein structure equation that is precisely the Ricci curvature of the three dimensional submanifold of the four dimensional sphere with the second fundamental form terms containing the matter and energy in the three dimensional universe.
In the energy spectrum of the hydrogen atom we can hear the pure tones of the universe.
Gravitation is fully described by the Einstein structure equation, which de-scribes the shape of the three dimensional universe within four dimensions. Electromagnetism operates on the whole spherical four dimensional universe. Both the weak and the strong nuclear force can be described as a consequence of electromagnetism and the structure equation geometrically. This is because the Einstein structure equation holds independently of scale. Particles in three dimensions have three principal curvatures. They are stable if and only if the mean curvature is zero. Quarks are principal curvature directions rather than particles; for a proton in free space, the mean curvature is zero while for a neu-tron it is not explaining why the former is stable while the latter is not. Quarks have never been observed in isolation and the theory of strong nuclear forces relies on a strange phenomenon where the strength of the force does not depend on distance. In accelerator experiments, hadron sprays are much more similar to geometric perturbations of the three dimensional universe than to breaking up of particles held together by an attractive force.
Once we have a mathematical model of the universe with a single force, we have before us a gigantic puzzle of piecing together the enormous variety of phenomena studied in the last three centuries within this mathematical model. The task seems daunting at first glance, but since the model is much simpler than the accepted physical models in science, this could be a tractable problem. As an example, great simplifications can be achieved by noting that the divi-sion between bosons and fermions may not be required, for the only true boson, the photon, could be described by spherical harmonics, and the other hypo-thetical bosons like the graviton and the Higgs boson need not exist. Second, from the model it is clear that mass is not a well-defined concept for any object without zero mean curvature, as such objects are unstable and thus their mass will change. Indeed mass could be reinterpreted as a type of potential energy for objects with zero mean curvature. These claims require further justification and consistency checks with such elementary physical examples as conservation
of momentum in elastic collisions. What is true, however, is that mass as a potential energy is encoded in the Einstein gravitational field equations, which we have called the Einstein structure equation in the context of the model to honor the fact that the equation holds not only in cosmic but also in subatomic scales.
6
Consistency checking for beliefs about our
uni-verse
The demarcation between science and pseudoscience is a problem in the philos-ophy of science that is more relevant today when the population of 6.7 billion on the planet have enormous strife based on differences in spiritual beliefs. Spir-itual beliefs are beliefs about our universe, and hence fall under the sway of science, which can be broadly defined as the study of objective phenomena of the universe. Some schools of thought regard spiritual claims to be false based on unclear explanations or regard them simply as superstitions, but for those – like myself – who have a volume of personal metaphysical experiences, such facile dismissals are obviously not compelling. A four dimensional universe af-fords us an opportunity to begin addressing the issues of spirit in a rigorous manner – for there is little doubt from my own experiences that that which is seen by an open third eye occurs not in the mind but in the objective universe. As a first example of an application of the S4 model is that there cannot have been a creator of the universe which must have existed eternally in the past if Planck’s constanthis actually constant in time. This is an encouraging application because contending religions claim the existence of a creator being and the will of this nonexistent being is often used to justify much activity that is harmful to the human civilization.
7
Kuhn on Conservation of Energy
Between 1842 and 1847 the hypothesis of energy conservation was announced publicly by four widely scattered European scientists–Mayer, Joule, Colding, and Helmholtz–all but the last working in complete ignorance of the others. The coincidence is conspicuous and yet these four announcements were unique only in combining generality of formulation with concrete quantitative applications. Sadi Carnot, before 1832, Marc Seguin in 1839, Karl Holtzmann in 1845, and G. A. Hirn in 1854 all recorded their independent convictions that heat and work are quantitatively exchangeable, and all computed a value for a conversion coefficient.
8
Substance of truisms
Truisms and platitutes are banal and often without substance. The lack of substance of truisms derives either from counterexamples which nullify them or from a difficulty of concrete interpretation. Some truisms, such as, “A scientific discovery must fit the times” lacks substance because both “the times” and “fitting” are completely unspecific and rely on the imagination of the reader to provide any concreteness. In Karl Popper’s framework, such a truism is unfalsifiable. There are two such vague truisms by which I am compelled. These are: (a) The karmic flow of DESTINY is the greatest force in the universe, and (b) ABSOLUTE TRUTH is the greatest weapon in the universe. I would like to defend the substance of these truisms by making concrete their interpretation and providing some arguments as to why they are true.
First, let me explicate what DESTINY means and what KARMIC FLOW of DESTINY means and why. Time in our universe has a single direction and is linear. The physics of our universe is purely deterministic and driven bySU(2) electromagnetism. Therefore at any given point of time, the state of the universe is uniquely determined by states in previous times, and every moment is the unfolding of a unique DESTINY of the entire universe. Given that the universe is a complex dynamical system on a four dimensional sphere with long distance interactions, it is possible that there exist no isolated systems a priori, and hence knowledge of a future state of the universe will be impossible without complete knowledge of an earlier state. This principle is formalized in our mathematical study of ordinary differential equations generally, and there exist many examples of precise formulations of this principle that future states are determined if the initial state is known. The problem of knowledge of the future states of the universe, although deterministic, is that we have no (easy) way of knowing the full state of the universe at any given point in time; indeed possibility of attaining such knowledge seems intractable independently of technological or spirit abilities.
What are interesting implications of this state of affairs? First, from deter-minism of the physics, we may conclude that there exists an unknown DES-TINY of the universe that unfolds every moment in time. This is a nontrivial observation because it implies that phenomena such as synchronicity of events, as studied by C. Jung as well as many other esoteric strategies of divination may have more substance than we had assumed. Second, a priori, knowledge of future states of the universe is impossible for an individual entity. This is consistent with the conviction of artists like Stanley Kubrick who had a deep conviction that the future is unknowable.
The ideal of DESTINY, in my view, is made concrete by these considerations. What about the more nebulous term “karmic flow” of DESTINY? The Maxwell’s system for the S4 universe, is an ordinary differential system, and therefore its solution provides a flow on S4(1/h). I identify the solution of the Maxwell
system with the phrase “karmic flow”. This at first seems like a strange thing to do, but it is sensible from my perspective because the four dimensional magnetic poles I identified with “light” and “dark”. If the Maxwell system specifies the
law governing the time evolution of our universe, then it follows that nothing can defy these laws, and therefore the karmic flow is the most powerful force in the universe, where by “force” I mean agency.
As for the second truism, “TRUTH is the greatest weapon in the universe,” I argue as follows. The action of any being in the universe is presumably to have an effect on the universe, and thereby change the universe. Any weapon has a more specific purpose as a tool that is used for an effect, defeat of an enemy or provide deterrence of aggressors. Given that we accept that the flow of DESTINY is the most powerful force in the universe, we have inherent lim-itations on the effectiveness of any weapon, abstract or concrete, physical or spiritual. If we thus seek among all possible abstract weapons those capable of affecting the universe in the most far reaching manner, we must conclude that actual knowledge of the four dimensional conditions that are true will always produce more powerful impact than those which are based on local and specific information. This is a nontrivial claim because we see in nature many forms of deception that have arisen, by whatever mechanism, to inform interactions between predators and prey. The stripes of the zebra deceive the lion who sees only in black and white and after his hunt begins the movement of the zebra produces a blurry confusion in his eyes.
Such general claims require some criteria for their use that is more concrete than purely philosophical. The second of the two statements can be used to produce a useful negative criterion for abstract weapons: any weapon based on fewer DECEPTIONS about the actual conditions of the four dimensional uni-verse is a stronger weapon than one based on more DECEPTIONS. This mild refinement of the second proposition, while sensible abstractly, requires more examples to clarify to produce concrete use. Let us proceed with attempting to understant what I mean by TRUTH and DECEPTION in small steps, not in order to insult the sophistication of the reader, but to begin a process of elucidation. Our model of the entire universe, all that can said to have exis-tence, is a four dimensional sphere and electromagnetism on the Hopf fibration
S7−> S4. Therefore all that is true are configurations within this system. In particular, any in principle falsifiable statement –and I say in principle because we currently have meager means of studying four dimensional phenomena at our disposal but there are no obstructions to developing such instruments in the future–about events in the universe is either true or false. Whether we con-sider mundane statements like “I bought a pack of cigarettes today at 10:00 am at the Ameristop grocery store,” or spirit statements such as “I met an angel in my spirit journey last night” are in principle falsifiable, although the procedure for falsification of the second of these statements is not clear to us yet. The latter type of statement is only sensible in the context of indirect evidence of joint metaphysical interactions of human spirits that we had hitherto consigned to imaginary fiction for lack of a four dimensional science. Seventeenth century witch trials provide interesting firsthand accounts of accused witches who re-veal various metaphysical joint interactions of human spirits. The mechanism by which they achieved these is unclear to me and irrelevant to my point, that some spiritual claims to truth of events is in principle falsifiable. Of course,
nebulous and unspecific claims to truth are not falsifiable even in principle and therefore cannot under any circumstances be regarded as either a true or a false statement. Such statements are without any substance at all.
I must make clear that I am not, in these arguments, claiming that we should believe all spiritual claims; quite the opposite. I am saying that we should disre-gard those claims which are unfalsifiable even in principle as without substance until these are explained in a coherent manner with full consistency with a physical theory that at least matches the less problematic matching of three dimensional observational data. There are an infinite variety of theories about the spiritual reality of the four dimensional universe we inhabit. Most of these may arise from mere speculation, or the machinations of deceptive spirits, or unclear and nebulous association between observation and terms that describe the observation. It has been my experience over many years that especially when discussing spiritual matters, terms we use are unspecific because it is a difficult problem for us to agree that we are speaking of the same thing. This is not helped by the fact that established modern consensus of what constitutes mental illness seems driven by concerns quite unrelated to health, as Michel Foucault analyzes in his works beginning with “Discipline and Punish”. What-ever the reasons for the current state of communication–or lack thereof–about spiritual matters worldwide, it is clear to most of us that the political and social consequences of such disagreements are detrimental to the entire human race.
There are those who, based on their metaphysical experiences, claim that the universe is seven dimensional, or fifty dimensional. Such claims simply cannot be true by the S4 model of the universe and I suggest that it is right to disregard them as false. The concept of dimension is precisely defined by mathematicians and physicists and it seems to me unwise to deform these definitions of spatial dimensions to suit one’s fancy as is often done by those who claim very high dimensions. Furthermore, in the 26 years since the first crystals were observed with 5, 8, 10 and 12 fold rotational symmetries, there is little evidence of clear crystals of rotational symmetries that can be construed as objective evidence for higher dimensions: 7 or 9 fold symmetry requires at least five spatial dimensions by the crystallographic restriction theorem. This is an example of a RESTRIC-TION to what is possible spiritually in the universe and the existence of such restrictions is invaluable for objective discussions of a spiritual reality that could be agreed upon, in principle, by the human race. The restriction is nontrivial in the sense that many spiritual claims can be now dismissed as impossible by this criterion, especially many spiritual theories that circulate around the world currently. On the other hand, there are unlimited possible true accounts of the spiritual reality that remains, which makes this restriction not very much of a restriction for those who are truly motivated for the grasping of absolute truth. Every hard restriction of what must necessarily be impossible is a step that gets us closer to what could be true.
The ideal of FREEDOM can be placed in the context of this model of the universe because a narrow political view of FREEDOM is not satisfying at all for a human spirit who aspires to freedom. The political usage of the term is unfortunately often associated with such things as freedom to choose among
various brands of shampoos in the supermarket, which could make sense in a very narrow sense which is of little consequence for a human spirit who may or may not care about the ability to conveniently choose between different types of shampoos. As a simple example of a type of freedom that is perhaps more mean-ingful is the freedom to live a heroic life, for according to Arthur Schopenhauer, while it may be impossible to live a happy life, it is possible to live a heroic one. Emerson, Nietzsche, and Plato have analyzed heroism in various ways so I do not belabor this point, but simply point out that it is perhaps possible to arrive at an understanding of what the ideal of FREEDOM could mean that is consistent with what is true about the universe, and that narrow political contexts are immediately suspect when any substantial meaning of FREEDOM is demanded. Indeed my conviction is that ideals of TRUTH, FREEDOM and JUSTICE are anterior to those of political systems and it is always an error to ask for their elucidation within the narrow confines of a political or social theory.
