Thursday, September 18, 2008

Aether and sectarian community

At the moment, we understood the significance of Aether particle models in physics we should put the question: if this concept can help the mainstream physics understanding so well, why the mainstream physicists are ignoring this concept so obstinately even at the case, they become familiar with it? Aren't these people sufficiently intelligent and creative to intercept such ideas?

Not at all, their stance is highly substantiated. The true is, the mainstream physics as a whole has changed into conservative, closed sectarian society in certain extent, by the same way, like the Holy Church of medieval era. Here are even some common aspects of both societies: for example, the Holy Church had managed its Malleus maleficarum, while the mainstream proponents have their Crackpot index, i.e. the list of less or more formal rules, which enables the mainstream proponents to distinguish the "truth" from "crackpot and fringe science" without thorough analyzing of true content of subject.



For every sectarian comunity is characteristic its biased approach to mistakes due its closed surface asymmetry. While the normal gnoseologic approach based on evolution considers the presence of mistakes as a nonvital, but unavoidable mutations in thinking, the sectarian society avoids to accept that and it covers its conceptual mistakes, whenever possible. The missunderstanding and false refusal of Aether concept is such a mistake, but not the only one. We can face the same behavior of mainstream towards the false refusal of cold fusion or the existence of many "paranormal" phenomena. At the moment, such concepts are throwen out, it becomes quite difficult for mainstream science community to reconsider or even admit them again - their refusal simply becomes an integral part of ideology. While with respect to Poppers methodology the scientific method is completely symmetric: because every hypthesis/theory should be considered untrue by definition, every negation of hypothesis is another hypothesis, which should be handled with caution as well.

Another well pronounced aspect of sectarian society is its adherence to internal formal rules ("scientific method"), which the thinking of individuals must follow (the formal thinking in particular), while ignoring the way of thinking of the rest of society - despite the fact, the formal thinking makes the understanding of concept more difficult in many cases. For sectarian communities is characteristic the long "incubation period" for novices (a "novitiate"), connected with thorough brain washing and repeated formal examines of "ready state" of novices, as practiced in high schools. By analogous way, the learning of physics involves a long term studies of its formal approach without true understanding of subject at its natural, intuitive level.

The character of contemporary educational system is adjusted by the way, the students can never met with such intuitive understanding of physics for years, so they cannot handle and use it at all during their further scientific carrier. This approach establishes the state of psychical dependence on subject, because the novices are simply worrying about abilities, which have spent so lotta of time and effort by learning of. No wonder such people will try to ignore the non-formal approach in physics obstinately whenever possible, and their educational activities in physics will remain constrained to formal description, but not explanation of subject, the finding of new paradigms the less.

But the formal approach has even its common sociological aspects - not only the strictly individual ones. Every sectarian community cultivates its specific language and formal approach (Latin words, formal math), which enables it to communicate by less or more fluous ways internally, but it enables to separate it from the rest of society by creation of less or more artificial information barriers. It prohibits the rest of society to understand, what the mainstream scientists really doing for public taxes, and to determine, if it can be useful or even safe for the rest of society at all (expensive and dangerous LHC experiments as an example). This artificially kept absence of feedback simplifies the scientists the asking for new and new money for research, while keeping their sovereignty over choice of the further subject of research. We can say, the contemporary scientists are druids and medicine mans of modern era, whose trying to keep their way of understanding of reality in secret. This can be another reason, why the common scientists aren't very happy from Aether concept, as it reveals clearly, the complex and highly formal way of physics interpretation is unsubstantiated. If they admit the Aether concept, then just in the form of sufficiently obscured way, like "vector/scalar field", or something similar less comprehensible one.

Such approach is nothing strange or new from AWT perspective. Inside of each multicomponent system (like the scientific society composed of many people) an emergent phase transition occurs, which is followed the formation of droplets and other artifacts separated from the rest by density gradient of information. Such droplets exhibits the behavior of boson condensate, which means the information is shared internally a much easier, then with their neighborhood, which is the manifestation of censorship of close-minded totalitarian and sectarian society. By such way, the mainstream science serves as an islands of communism and totalitarian thinking with respect to rest of society, not just because of its mandatory way of sources privatization without free market feedback, but because of its way of information handling, too.

The formation of boson condensate state is the manifestation of low energy state (i.e. cooling or informational crisis) and its typical behavior is, the droplets of resulting phase cannot dissolve in its environment, being quantized. Instead of this, the small droplets will evaporate without change of their state on behalf of these larger, more successful ones (the evaporation of rain droplets, or Hawking evaporation of black holes as an exaggerated example). By the same way, most of people, when facing the lack of arguments, it cannot change theirs stance, while insisting on it obstinately - until they're defeated by weight of arguments. This is the source of thixotropic and brittle behavior of sectarian communities toward foreign ideas (a sort of Meissner effect of boson condensates) - while from inside perspective (where these ideas remains separated by phase interface) they're appear superfluous, smoothly communicating and internally consistent.


 John A. Wheeler: We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.

11 comments:

Zephir said...

"If you believe in your research then fight for it. Fight for the truth." And fight is just what Technion Professor Dan Shechtman did.

When he announced his discovery of five-fold symmetric crystals — a pattern that was considered impossible under the prevailing scientific paradigm — no one believed him. But he persevered and his subsequent work turned the non-believers into enthusiasts about quasicrystals, a new form of matter.

Prof. Shechtman has since received numerous prizes in recognition of his discovery of quasicrystals, now dubbed “Shechtmanite.” The practical applications can been found in surgical equipment, the manufacture of super strong steel, and even in shavers.

Zephir said...

In discussions I occasionally met with opinions, the physicists behind LHC are behaving like single homogeneous sectarian society, that agree on everything. Actually, CERN physicists are behaving so...

For me it's symptomatic, CERN scientists are refuting obstinately to organize public scientific conference about LHC safety, as Prof. Rossler proposed. This stance is significant by itself, because scientists like doing conferences about everything remotely possible or even impossible.

This stance just indicates, group of CERN physicists remains separated even from the rest of scientific community - not just from the rest of layman society. They're dangerous ignorants, convinced about their truth in sectarian way and they're avoiding of public confrontation.

For example, CERN physicists are refuting to apply peer review of their publications, claiming the "external peer review is less stringent than our internal peer-review process" and that "only people 'qualified' (i.e. checked for loyalty) to truly review the work are within the collaboration."

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100324/pdf/464482a.pdf

They're publishing collectively, despite the list of authors exceeds many thousands of items - such cheating is indeed advantageous for most individuals, because scientists are honored for number of publications and their citations.

CERN community is saying, it's "...a cognitive bubble that you can't escape - that you don't want to escape" - another typical sign of sectarian society, characterized by brain washing and sacrificing identity.

Well - and we all paying this from our taxes...

Zephir said...

Is Peer Review Broken?

Despite a lack of evidence that peer review works, most scientists (by nature a skeptical lot) appear to believe in peer review.

Zephir said...

John A. Wheeler: "We live on an island of knowledge surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."

Richard Feynman (quoted by G.F.Giudice): "I do not understand why journalists and others want to know about the latest discoveries in physics even when they know nothing about the earlier discoveries that give meaning to the latest discoveries"

Zephir said...

Kurt Kleiner, New Scientist, 30 August 2005: Most scientific papers are probably wrong"

Most published scientific research papers are wrong, according to a new analysis. Assuming that the new paper is itself correct, problems with experimental and statistical methods mean that there is less than a 50% chance that the results of any randomly chosen scientific paper are true.

Zephir said...

If scientists want to educate the public, they should start by listening

Zephir said...

Dirac is one of the leading physicists of the 20th century, but his philosophical statements are symptomatic of the idealism that has infected modern physics; take for example the quote: "This result is too beautiful to be false; it is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment." [Paul Dirac, The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature, Scientific American 208 (5) (1963)]

Zephir said...

Philip Gibbs wrote the rules of an Anti-Crackpot Index as a parody of John Baez's Crackpot Index.

Zephir said...

M. I. Sanduk: Does Society Exhibit Same Behaviour of Plasma Fluid?
For example, Japan streets have no names. Eastern culture is oriented to holistic & collectivist thinking: the target is not important, the way is. The ways aren't important, the situation is. AWT explains this approach with density of population.

Zephir said...

Are you quack?

Zephir said...

Regarding crackpots/quacks... in physics, the Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft and physicist Warren Siegel provides an additional clue, how to identify them