I was a sometimes-reader of Overcoming Bias back in the day, and particularly fond of the articles on quantum physics. Philosophically, I’m an Objectivist. I identify a lot of people as Objectivist, however, including a lot of people who would probably find it a misnomer.
I created my account pretty much explicitly because I have some thoughts on theoretical (some might prefer the term “quantum”, but for reasons below, this isn’t accurate) physics and wanted (at this point, needed might be more accurate) feedback, and haven’t had much success yet getting anything, even so much as a “You’re too stupid to have this conversation.”
So without much further ado...
Light is a waveform distortion in gravity caused by variation in the position of the gravitic source; gravity itself has wavelike properties at the very least (it could be a particle, it could be a wave, both work; in the particle interpretation, light is a wavelike variation in the position of the particles, caused by the wavelike variation in the originating particle’s position). Strong atomic forces, weak atomic forces, gravity, and the cosmological constant/Hubble’s constant are observable parts of the gravitic wave, which is why the cosmological constant looks a lot more variable than it should (as it varies with distance). A lot of the redshifting we see is not in fact galaxies moving away from us, but a product of that the medium (gravity) that light is traveling in is spreading out (for reasons I’ll get into below) as it attenuates. Black holes are not, in fact, infinitely dense, but merely extremely so.
Gravity moves at the speed of light—light is, in effect, a shift in gravity. This is why matter cannot exceed the speed of light—it cannot overcome the infinitely high initial peak of its own gravitic wave. I believe this is also the key to why the wavelength of gravity increases with distance—the gravitic wave is traversing space which has already been warped by gravity. The gravitic wave moves slower where gravity is bending space to increase distance, and faster where gravity is bending space to increase space. This results in light becoming spread out in certain positions in the spectrum, and concentrated in others; a galaxy that appears redshifted to us will appear blueshifted from points both closer and further away on the same line of observation, and redshifted again closer and further away respectively yet still. Most galaxies appear redshifted because this is the most likely/stable configuration. (Blueshifted galaxies would either be too far away to detect with current technology, or close enough that they would be dangerously close. This is made even more complicated by the fact that motion can produce exactly the same effects; a galaxy in the redshift zone could appear blueshifted if it is approaching us with enough velocity, and the converse would also hold true.)
The nomer of quantum mechanics is fundamentally wrong, but accurate nonetheless. Energy does not come in discrete quanta, but appears to because the number of stable configurations of matter is finite; we can only observe energy when it makes changes to the configurations of matter, which results in a new stable configuration, producing an observable stepladder with discrete steps of energy corresponding to each stable state.
I go with a modified version of Everett’s model for uncertainty theory. The observer problem is a product of the fact that the -observer’s- position is uncertain, not the observed entity. (This posits at least five dimensions.) Our brains are probably quantum computers; we’re viewing a slice of the fifth dimension with a nonzero scalar scope, which means particles are not precisely particulate.
Dark matter probably has no special properties; it’s just matter such that the substructure prohibits formative bonds with baryonic matter.
Particularly contentiously, there probably are no “real” electrical forces, these are effects produced by the configurations of matter. Antimatter may or may not annihilate matter; I lean towards the explanation that antimatter is simply matter configured such that an interaction with matter renders dark matter. (The resulting massive reorganization is what produces the light which is emitted when the two combine; if they annihilate, that would stop the gravitic wave, which would also be a massive gravitic distortion as far as other matter is concerned. Both explanations work as far as I’m concerned)
(For those curious about the electrical forces comment, I’m reasonably certain electrical forces can be explained as the result of modeling the n-body problem in a gravity-as-a-wave framework, specifically the implications of Xia’s work with the five-body configuration. I suspect an approximation of his configuration with a larger number of his particles becomes not merely likely, but guaranteed, given numbers of particles of varying mass—which results in apparent attractive and repulsive forces as the underlying matter is pushed in directions orthogonal to the orbiting masses, an effect which is amplified when the orbits are themselves changing in orthogonal directions. The use of the word “particle” here is arbitrary; the particles are themselves composed of particles. Scale is both isotropic and homogeneous. As above, so below.)
Time is not a special spacial dimension. It’s not an illusion, either. Time is just a plain old spacial dimension, no different from any other. The universe is constant, it is our position within it which is changing, a change which is necessitated by our consciousness. The patterns of life are elegant, but no more unusual than the motions of the planets; life, and motion, is just the application of rules about the configuration of contiguous space across large amounts of that space.
This means that the gravitic wave is propagated across time as well as all the other spacial dimensions; we’re experiencing gravity from where objects will be in the future, and where they were in the past, but in most cases this behavior cancels out.
The general mile-a-minute solve-all-of-physics style of presentation here is tripping my crackpot sensors like crazy. You might want to pick one of your physics topics and start with just that.
Also, wondering how much you actually know about this stuff. I’m not a physicist, but ended up looking up bits about relativistic spacetime when trying to figure out what on earth Greg Egan is going on about these days. Now this bit,
Time is not a special spacial dimension. It’s not an illusion, either. Time is just a plain old spacial dimension, no different from any other.
seems to be just wrong. A big deal with Minkowski spacetime is that the time dimension has a mathematically different behavior from the three space dimensions, even when you treat the whole thing as a timeless 4-dimensional blob. You can’t plug in a fourth “spatial dimension, no different from any other”, and get the physics we have.
Minkowski spacetime is primarily concerned with causal distance; whether event A can be causally related to event B. Time has a negative sign when you’re considering causality, because your primary goal is to see whether any effect from event A could have been involved in event B. Using the Minkowski definition of time, an object A ten million light years away from object B has a negligible spacetime distance from that object ten million years in the future and ten million years in the past from any given point in time.
Light is a waveform distortion in gravity caused by variation in the position of the gravitic source
This sounds like nonsense from the start. It’s a bunch of words put together in a linguistically-acceptable way, but it’s not a meaningful description of reality. I suspect the reason you have had trouble getting feedback is that this presentation of your theory sets off immediate and loud “crackpot” alarms.
For example: light, photons, are quanta of the electromagnetic field. To get more technical, photons are a mixture of the two neutral electroweak bosons B_0 and W_0 due to electroweak symmetry breaking. I have done these calculations (in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory) as well as some of the many experiments which support them. I understand these claims as beliefs which constrain my anticipated experiences.
If you are going to attempt to replace apparently all of contemporary physics with a new theory, you must specify how that theory is better. Does it give better explanations of current results, trading complexity with how well it fits the data? Does it predict new results? How can we test the theory, and how does it constrain our expectations? What results would falsify the theory? Answering these questions, i.e. doing science, requires careful mathematical theory along with support from experiment. A few pages of misused jargon—essentially gibberish—does not qualify.
I’m not interested in engaging with this theory point-by-point; there’s not enough substance here to do so. My goal here is to provide you with some idea of how to be taken seriously when proposing new scientific theories. Throwing around a bunch of unsupported, incomprehensible claims is not the way.
It has a few predictions, and a few falsifications; for light as a waveform, it predicts, for example, that any region of space where light cannot escape, also will not propagate gravitic waves. It also predicts that singularities with sufficient energy will disperse in a manner inconsistent with Hawking Radiation, and may predict an upper bound on the mass of singularities.
The light as a gravitic wave idea you take particular offense to here would predict that the frequency of blackbody radiation is exactly the same as the frequency of motion, and more broadly that the frequency of motion of particles is precisely the same as the frequency of light emitted by those particles. Any object in motion should generate electromagnetic waves. Two particles in a spacetime-synchronous oscillation should exhibit no apparent electromagnetic effects on one another. Also, a particle in electromagnetic radiation should exhibit predictably different relativistic behavior, such that the idea could be tested by exposing a series of particles with short half-lives to high-amplitude, low-frequency electromagnetic radiation and seeing how those half-lives change; because light would represent gravitational density, it should be possible to both increase and decrease the half life in a predictable manner according to relativity.
It’s good that you have predictions, although this is still just words and math would be much clearer.
Fundamentally, light as a representation of gravitational density or as a gravity wave does not make sense. We know the properties of photons very well, and we know the properties of gravity very well from general relativity. The two are not compatible. At a very simple level, gravity is solely attractive, while electromagnetism can be both attractive and repulsive. Photons have spin 1, while a theoretical graviton would have spin 2 for a number of reasons. They have different sources (charge-current for photons, stress-energy for gravity). There is a lot of complicated, well-developed theory underlying these statements.
The frequency of light emission is not the same as the frequency of motion of the particle. In matter, light is emitted by electrons transitioning from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. A simple model for light emission is an atom exposed to a time-dependent (oscillatory) perturbing electric field. The frequency of the electric field affects the probability of emission but not the frequency of the light; that is only determined by the difference in energy between the high and low energy levels. (This must be true just from conservation of energy.) The electric field need not be resonant with the expected light frequency for emission to occur, though that resonance does unsurprisingly maximize the transition probability. This model comes from Einstein and there are many good, accessible discussions at an undergraduate level, e.g. in Griffith’s Quantum Mechanics. It makes many validated predictions, such as the lifetimes of excited atomic states.
Further, not all motion has a frequency, and not all objects in motion emit EM radiation. Neutrinos are constantly in motion and have never been measured to give off electromagnetic waves. If they did, they’d be a lot easier to detect! In the Standard Model, they don’t couple to photons because they have no electromagnetic charge.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “spacetime-synchronous oscillation,” but two electrons with the same rest frame definitely interact electromagnetically.
The experiment you describe for testing half-lives with varying electromagnetic radiation could be done in an undergraduate lab with barium-137. I don’t know of any experiments demonstrating such a variation in half-life.
Note that I challenge this assertion about gravity a bit later on, stating that it itself is a wave, both attracting and repelling at different distances.
The perturbing electric field in your case isn’t moving matter, though; it takes sufficient levels of energy to force an electron to transition to a different energy level, which corresponds (in a very loose sense) with a different orbit. I’ll leave that alone, though, because either way, there’s an experiment which can confirm or deny my suspicions.
Not all waves have a frequency, either, in the strictest sense; waves can be non-oscillatory. Doing some research into Cherenkov radiation on this matter, as I may be able to formulate a test for this.
Also, two electrons with the same rest frame -don’t- interact electromagnetically, hence why electrons in cathode ray tubes travel in straight lines. (I’m pretty sure this holds; let me know if there’s something I’m missing here.) (Unfortunately, standard theory already explains this, which is disappointing.)
(Thank you very much for your responses. They’re pointing me in some very good directions to do research.)
Note that I challenge this assertion about gravity a bit later on, stating that it itself is a wave, both attracting and repelling at different distances.
Yes, you state that, without proof or support. Electromagnetism and gravity are different forces, both with infinite range but different strengths and behaviors, to the best of our experimental and theoretical knowledge. People measure these things at every scale we can access.
The perturbing electric field in your case isn’t moving matter, though; it takes sufficient levels of energy to force an electron to transition to a different energy level, which corresponds (in a very loose sense) with a different orbit. I’ll leave that alone, though, because either way, there’s an experiment which can confirm or deny my suspicions.
Not all waves have a frequency, either, in the strictest sense; waves can be non-oscillatory. Doing some research into Cherenkov radiation on this matter, as I may be able to formulate a test for this.
Now you’re moving goalposts and contradicting your earlier claims.
Also, two electrons with the same rest frame -don’t- interact electromagnetically, hence why electrons in cathode ray tubes travel in straight lines.
Yes, two electrons in the same rest frame interact electromagnetically. Of course, if there is not some restoring force opposing their repulsion, they will accelerate away from each other and no longer be in the same rest frame. Cathode rays travel in straight lines because they are subjected to a potential large enough to overcome the repulsion between the electrons. If you have just an electron gun without the rest of the apparatus, the beam will spread out.
I have some thoughts on [...] physics and wanted (at this point, needed might be more accurate) feedback, and haven’t had much success yet getting anything
I don’t know very much physics, but this is wrong:
Time is not a special spacial dimension. [...] Time is just a plain old spacial dimension, no different from any other.
Everything I’ve read about special relativity says that the interval between two events in spacetime is given by
%5E2%20+%20(y-y_0)%5E2%20+%20(z-z_0)%5E2%20-%20(t-t_0)%5E2}), the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences in their spatial coordinates minus the square of the difference in the time coordinate; the minus sign in front of the t^2 term says that time and space don’t behave the same way.
That’s the special relativity interval; it’s used to determine the potential relationships between two events by determining if light could have passed from point 0 to 1 in the time between two events in two (potentially) different locations. It can be considered a lower bound on the amount of time that can pass between two events before they can be considered to be causally related, or an upper bound on the amount of space that separates two events, or, more generally, the boundary relationship between the two.
Or, to be more concise, it’s a boundary test; it’s not describing a fundamental law of the universe, although it can be used to test if the laws of the universe are being followed.
Which leads to the question—what boundary is it testing, and why does that boundary matter?
Strictly speaking, as Eliezer points out, we could do away with time entirely; it doesn’t add much to the equation. I prefer not to, even if it implies even weirder things I haven’t mentioned yet, such as that the particles five minutes from now are in fact completely different particles than the particles now. (Not that it makes any substantive difference; the fifth dimension thing already suggests, even in a normal time framework, we’re constantly exchanging particles with directions we’re only indirectly aware of. And also, all the particles are effectively the same, anyways.)
That aside, within a timeful universe, change must have at least two reference points, and what that boundary is testing is the relationship between two reference points. It doesn’t actually matter what line you use to define those reference points, however.
If you rotated the universe ninety degrees, and used z as your reference line, z would be your special value. If you rotated it forty five degrees, and used zt as your reference line, zt would be your special value. (Any orthogonal directions will do, for these purposes, they don’t have to be orthogonal to the directions as we understand them now.)
Within the theory here, consciousness makes your reference line special, because consciousness is produced by variance in that reference line, and hence must measure change along that reference line. The direction the patterns propagate doesn’t really matter. Z makes as good a line for time as T, which is just as good as ZT, which is just as good as some direction rotated twelve degrees on one plane, seven degrees on the next, and so on.
Which is to say, we make time special, or rather the conditions which led to our existence did.
It doesn’t actually matter what line you use to define those reference points, however. [...] Within the theory here, consciousness makes your reference line special [...] The direction the patterns propagate doesn’t really matter.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Can you describe a real or hypothetical experiment that would have different results depending on whether or not time is an artifact of consciousness?
Not directly, but a proof that gravity propagates through time as easily as through space should go some of the way towards demonstrating that it is a normal spacial dimension, and I’ve considered a test for that -
Gravity should, according to the ideas here, affect objects both in the past, and in the future. So if you have a large enough object to reliably detect its gravitational force, and a mechanism to stop it very suddenly, then, if you position yourself orthogonal to its resting place respective to its line of motion, at the moment the object stops, the center of gravity of its gravitational field should be further behind its line of motion than its current center of mass.
if you have a large enough object to reliably detect its gravitational force, and a mechanism to stop it very suddenly, then, if you position yourself orthogonal to its resting place respective to its line of motion, at the moment the object stops, the center of gravity of its gravitational field should be further behind its line of motion than its current center of mass.
But it sounds to me as if this is just saying that gravity takes time to propagate, which I’m told is already a standard prediction of relativity, so it doesn’t help me understand your claim. Can you express your ideas in math?
When I try to make the setup you describe more concrete, I end up thinking something like this: imagine a hypothetical universe that works in a mostly Newtonian way but with the exception that gravity propagates at some finite speed. (Of course, this is not how reality actually works: relativity is not just Newtonian physics with an arbitrary speed limit tacked on. But since I don’t actually know relativity, I’m just going to use this made-up toy model instead with the hope that it suffices for the purposes of this comment—although the whole idea could just turn out to be utterly inconsistent in some way that isn’t obvious to me at my current skill level.) Fix a coordinate system in space, choosing units of length and time such that the maximum speed is 1. Say there’s an object with mass m traveling towards the origin along the negative y-axis at a constant speed of 0.5, and say furthermore that I have mass n, and I’m floating in space at (1, 0, 0). Then, at the moment when the object crosses the origin (you said it stopped suddenly in your setup, but I don’t understand how that’s relevant, so I’m ignoring it), I can’t feel the gravity coming from the object at the origin yet because it would take a whole time unit to arrive at my position, but I should feel the gravity that’s “just arriving” from one of the object’s earlier positions—but which earlier position? Well, I couldn’t figure that out in the few minutes that I spent thinking about the problem …
But hopefully you see what I’m trying to do here. When you say the English sentence “Light is a waveform distortion in gravity caused by variation in the position of the gravitic source,” I don’t really know how to interpret that, whereas if I have a proof a theorem or a worked problem, then that’s something I can do actual work with and derive actual predictions from.
The effect should continue past the point that gravity arrives from the current position—it will be very minute, as distance in time is related to distance in space by the speed of light (where the C in the interval formula comes from—C in m/s, time in s, very short periods of time are very “far away”), but if I’m correct, and gravity propagates through time as well as space, it should be there.
We stop the object very suddenly because otherwise gravity from the future will counter out gravity from the past—for each position in the past, for an object moving in a straight relativistic line, there will be an equidistant position in the future which balances out the gravity from the position in the past. That is, in your model, imagine that gravity is being emitted from every position the particle moving in the line is at, or was ever at, or ever will be at; at the origin, the total gravitic force exerted on some arbitrary point some distance away is centered at the origin. If the particle stops at the origin, the gravity will be distributed only from the side of the origin the particle passed through.
A second, potentially simpler test to visualize is simply that an object in motion, because some of its gravitic force (from the past and from the future) is consumed by vector mathematics (it’s pulling in orthogonal directions to the point of consideration, and these orthogonal directions cancel out), exhibits less apparent gravitational force on another particle than one at rest. (Respective to the point of measurement.)
Drawing a little picture:
.
…..................> (A single particle in motion; breaking time into frames for visualization purposes; the first and the last period, being equidistant and with complimentary vectors, cancel out all but the downward force; the same gravitational force is exerted as in the below picture, but some of it cancels itself out)
versus, over the same time frame:
.
.
The second particle configuration should result in greater apparent gravity, because none of the gravity vectors cancel out.
As for interpreting it, imagine that gravity is a particle (this isn’t necessary, indeed, no particles are necessary in this explanation, but it helps to visualize it). Now imagine a particle of mass M1 moving in a stable orbit. The gravitic particles emitted from M will vary in position over time according to the current position of M1, and indeed will take on a wavelike form. According to my model, this wavelike from -is- light; the variations in the positions of the gravitic particles create varying accelerations in particle M2, another mass particle some distance away, resulting in variable acceleration; insufficient or disoriented acceleration on particle M2 will merely result in it moving in a sinelike wave, propagating the motion forward; sufficient acceleration of the proper orientation may give it enough energy to jump to another stable orbit.
Again, I suspect people will have a much better chance at understanding your ideas if you make your explanations much more concrete and specific—maybe even to the point of using particular numbers. Abstraction and generality and intuitive verbal descriptions are beautiful and great, but they only work if everyone involved has an adequate mental model of exactly what it is that’s being abstracted over.
What do I mean, specifically and concretely, when I speak of specific and concrete explanations? Here’s an example: let’s consider two scenarios (very similar to the one I tried to describe in the grandparent)---
Problem One.
There’s a coordinate system in space with origin [x, y, z] = [0, 0, 0]. Suppose my mass is 80 kg, and that I’m floating in space ten meters away from the origin in the x-direction, so that my position is described as [10, 0, 0]. A 2000 kg object is moving at the constant velocity 10 m/s towards the origin along the negative y-axis, and its position is given as r(t) = [0, −50 + 10t, 0]. Calculate the force acting on me due to the gravity of the object at t=5, the moment the object reaches the origin.
Problem Two.
Everything is the same as in Problem One, except that this time, the object’s position is described by the piecewise-defined function r(t) = [0, −50 + 10t, 0] if t < 5 and r(t) = [0, 0, 0] if t >= 5---that is, the object is stopped at the origin. Again, calculate the force on me when t = 5.
Solutions for Newtonian Physics
The answers are the same for both problems. Two objects with mass m and M exert a force on each other with magnitude GmM/r^2. At t = 5, I’m still at [10, 0, 0], and the object is at the origin, so I should experience a force of magnitude G(80 kg)(2000 kg)/(10 m)^2 = (6.67 10^-11 m^3/(kgs^2))(80 kg)(2000 kg)/(100 m^2) = 1.067 * 10^-7 N directed toward the origin.
Now, you say that “for each position in the past, for an object moving in a straight relativistic line, there will be an equidistant position in the future which balances out the gravity from the position in the past,” which suggests that your theory would compute different answers for Problem One and Problem Two. Can you show me those calculations? Or if the problem statement doesn’t quite make sense (e.g., because it implicitly assumes an absolute space of simultaneity, which doesn’t actually exist), could you solve a similar problem? I realize that this may seem tedious and elementary, but such measures are oftentimes necessary in order to explain technical ideas; if people don’t know how to apply your ideas in very simple specific cases, then they have no hope of understanding the general case.
To use a slightly different problem pair, because it would be easier for me to compute:
Problem one. I have mass of 80kg at point [10,0] (simplifying to two dimensions, as I don’t need Z). A 2,000 KG object is resting at position [0, 0]. The Newtonian force of 1.0687 10^-7 N towards the origin should be accurate. [Edit: 1.06710^-6 N, when I calculated it again. Forgot to update this section]
Problem two. I have mass of 80kg at point [10,0] A 2,000 KG object is moving at 10 m/s along the Y axis, position defined as r(t) = [0, −50 + 10t]. Using strictly the time interval t = 0 → t = 10, where t is in seconds, calculating the force when t=5...
distance(t) = sqrt(10^2 + c^2((5 - t)^2)
Gravity(t) = 6.67 10^-11 sum(802,000distance(t), for t > 0, t < 10) (10 / distance(t)) [Strictly speaking, this should be an integral over the whole of t, not a summation on a limited subset of t, but I’m doing this the faster, slightly less accurate way; the 10 / distance(t) at the end is to take only the y portion of my vectors, as the t portion of the gravitational vectors cancel out.]
Which gives, not entirely surprisingly, 1.067 * 10^-6 N directed to the origin. (I think your calculation was off by an order of magnitude, I’m not sure why.)
The difference between Newtonian gravity and gravity with respect to y is 3.38 * 10 ^-33. Which is expected; if the difference in gravitational force were greater, it would have been noticed a long time ago.
I probably messed up somewhere in there, because my brain is mush and it’s been a while since I’ve mucked about with vectors, but this should give you the basic idea.
I must apologize for the delay in replying. Regretfully, I don’t think I can spare any more time for this exchange (and am going to be taking a break from this and some other addicting sites), so this will likely be my final reply.
distance(t) = sqrt(10^2 + c^2((5 - t)^2) Gravity(t) = 6.67 10^-11 sum(802,000distance(t), for t > 0, t < 10) * (10 / distance(t))
Now I think I sort-of see what you’re trying to do here, but I don’t understand what’s motivating that specific expression; it seems to me that if you want to treat space and time symmetrically, then the expression you want is something more like
(80)\,dt}{10%5E2+(-50+10t)%5E2+c%5E2(5%20-%20t)%5E2}), which should be able to be evaluated with the help of a standard integral table.
Please don’t interpret this as hostility (for this is the sort of forum where it’s actually considered polite to tell people this sort of thing), but my subjective impression is that you are confused in some way; I don’t have the time or physics expertise to fully examine all the ideas you’ve mentioned and explain in detail exactly why they fail or why they work, but what you’ve said so far has not impressed me. If you want to learn more about physics, you are of course aware that there are a wide variety of standard textbooks to choose from, and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
I do not interpret it, or any of your other responses, as hostility. (I’ve been upvoting your responses. I requested feedback, and you’ve provided it.)
I did indicate the integral would be more accurate; I can run a summation in a few seconds, however, where an integral requires breaking out a pencil and paper and skills I haven’t touched since college. It was a rough estimate, which I used strictly to show what it was such a test should be looking for. Since we aren’t running the test itself, accuracy didn’t seem particularly important, since the purpose was strictly demonstrative.
(Neither formula is actually correct for the idea, however. The constant would be be wrong, and would need to be adjusted so the gravitational force would be equivalent to the existing formula for an object at rest.)
My apologies. I looked for rules, but couldn’t find any.
“If you’ve come to Less Wrong to discuss a particular topic, this thread would be a great place to start the conversation.” seemed to indicate that this is where I should start.
Hey! Welcome to LW. I’ve upvoted you too, but if you’re looking for feedback on your OP, I’m too stupid to be having this conversation. :-)
Edit, since you mentioned you’re an objectivist, you might be interested in the general prevailing opinion on Rand around these parts. That being said, LW does have a number of members who were, at one point, or perhaps still are, respectful of Rand.
I’m not sure strict Randian Objectivists would agree that I’m an Objectivist; I use the term pretty broadly to describe anybody who ascribes to the philosophy, not necessarily the ethics. I take Ayn Rand at her word when she says people should think for themselves (the closest she got to a proscription in any of her works), and am not terribly impressed by much of her fan club, which refuses to.
That said, I’m not particularly impressed by that criticism, which, like most criticisms of Ayn Rand, revolves mainly around her personal life.
Hm. I don’t necessarily agree it revolves around her personal life. The main gist of the post is A. Rand acknowledged no superior, B. If you don’t acknowledge some way in which you are flawed you can never improve, so C. This is kind of a stupid thing to say.
I used to call myself a neo-objectivist, mostly because it was a word that had no definition, so I could claim I meant whatever I wanted. And I have a lot of respect for many of the conclusions that Rand came to. But the arrogance of her system is pretty off-putting to me.
Related, “Mozart was a Red”, a play Murray Rothbard wrote parodying the time Rand invited him to come meet her.
I’ve yet to meet somebody better than me at arguing politics; that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for me to get better, however, which is one of my motivations in continuing to do so. I’m not sure that A logically leads to B.
I’ve yet to meet somebody better than me at arguing politics
Are you measuring this in times that you think you lost a political argument, times your opponent thought you won a political argument, or times you learned something interesting by discussing politics?
I measure this in terms of a personal judgement that an objective or hostile third party would declare that my opponent has failed, which is not the same as “winning.” It’s impossible for me to win an argument, only to lose it. “Winning” would imply that there’s no additional argument which could not be constructed to defeat my current argument. I can’t prove the nonexistence of such an argument.
(I argue against the ideal, not the opponent; my opponent can lose, but my argument cannot win.)
There’s a difference: you (presumably) acknowledge that it’s possible for you to get better at arguing politics. Rand did not. Rand believed it was impossible for anyone to be better than her.
Howdy.
I was a sometimes-reader of Overcoming Bias back in the day, and particularly fond of the articles on quantum physics. Philosophically, I’m an Objectivist. I identify a lot of people as Objectivist, however, including a lot of people who would probably find it a misnomer.
I created my account pretty much explicitly because I have some thoughts on theoretical (some might prefer the term “quantum”, but for reasons below, this isn’t accurate) physics and wanted (at this point, needed might be more accurate) feedback, and haven’t had much success yet getting anything, even so much as a “You’re too stupid to have this conversation.”
So without much further ado...
Light is a waveform distortion in gravity caused by variation in the position of the gravitic source; gravity itself has wavelike properties at the very least (it could be a particle, it could be a wave, both work; in the particle interpretation, light is a wavelike variation in the position of the particles, caused by the wavelike variation in the originating particle’s position). Strong atomic forces, weak atomic forces, gravity, and the cosmological constant/Hubble’s constant are observable parts of the gravitic wave, which is why the cosmological constant looks a lot more variable than it should (as it varies with distance). A lot of the redshifting we see is not in fact galaxies moving away from us, but a product of that the medium (gravity) that light is traveling in is spreading out (for reasons I’ll get into below) as it attenuates. Black holes are not, in fact, infinitely dense, but merely extremely so.
Gravity moves at the speed of light—light is, in effect, a shift in gravity. This is why matter cannot exceed the speed of light—it cannot overcome the infinitely high initial peak of its own gravitic wave. I believe this is also the key to why the wavelength of gravity increases with distance—the gravitic wave is traversing space which has already been warped by gravity. The gravitic wave moves slower where gravity is bending space to increase distance, and faster where gravity is bending space to increase space. This results in light becoming spread out in certain positions in the spectrum, and concentrated in others; a galaxy that appears redshifted to us will appear blueshifted from points both closer and further away on the same line of observation, and redshifted again closer and further away respectively yet still. Most galaxies appear redshifted because this is the most likely/stable configuration. (Blueshifted galaxies would either be too far away to detect with current technology, or close enough that they would be dangerously close. This is made even more complicated by the fact that motion can produce exactly the same effects; a galaxy in the redshift zone could appear blueshifted if it is approaching us with enough velocity, and the converse would also hold true.)
The nomer of quantum mechanics is fundamentally wrong, but accurate nonetheless. Energy does not come in discrete quanta, but appears to because the number of stable configurations of matter is finite; we can only observe energy when it makes changes to the configurations of matter, which results in a new stable configuration, producing an observable stepladder with discrete steps of energy corresponding to each stable state.
I go with a modified version of Everett’s model for uncertainty theory. The observer problem is a product of the fact that the -observer’s- position is uncertain, not the observed entity. (This posits at least five dimensions.) Our brains are probably quantum computers; we’re viewing a slice of the fifth dimension with a nonzero scalar scope, which means particles are not precisely particulate.
Dark matter probably has no special properties; it’s just matter such that the substructure prohibits formative bonds with baryonic matter.
Particularly contentiously, there probably are no “real” electrical forces, these are effects produced by the configurations of matter. Antimatter may or may not annihilate matter; I lean towards the explanation that antimatter is simply matter configured such that an interaction with matter renders dark matter. (The resulting massive reorganization is what produces the light which is emitted when the two combine; if they annihilate, that would stop the gravitic wave, which would also be a massive gravitic distortion as far as other matter is concerned. Both explanations work as far as I’m concerned)
(For those curious about the electrical forces comment, I’m reasonably certain electrical forces can be explained as the result of modeling the n-body problem in a gravity-as-a-wave framework, specifically the implications of Xia’s work with the five-body configuration. I suspect an approximation of his configuration with a larger number of his particles becomes not merely likely, but guaranteed, given numbers of particles of varying mass—which results in apparent attractive and repulsive forces as the underlying matter is pushed in directions orthogonal to the orbiting masses, an effect which is amplified when the orbits are themselves changing in orthogonal directions. The use of the word “particle” here is arbitrary; the particles are themselves composed of particles. Scale is both isotropic and homogeneous. As above, so below.)
Time is not a special spacial dimension. It’s not an illusion, either. Time is just a plain old spacial dimension, no different from any other. The universe is constant, it is our position within it which is changing, a change which is necessitated by our consciousness. The patterns of life are elegant, but no more unusual than the motions of the planets; life, and motion, is just the application of rules about the configuration of contiguous space across large amounts of that space.
This means that the gravitic wave is propagated across time as well as all the other spacial dimensions; we’re experiencing gravity from where objects will be in the future, and where they were in the past, but in most cases this behavior cancels out.
The general mile-a-minute solve-all-of-physics style of presentation here is tripping my crackpot sensors like crazy. You might want to pick one of your physics topics and start with just that.
Also, wondering how much you actually know about this stuff. I’m not a physicist, but ended up looking up bits about relativistic spacetime when trying to figure out what on earth Greg Egan is going on about these days. Now this bit,
seems to be just wrong. A big deal with Minkowski spacetime is that the time dimension has a mathematically different behavior from the three space dimensions, even when you treat the whole thing as a timeless 4-dimensional blob. You can’t plug in a fourth “spatial dimension, no different from any other”, and get the physics we have.
Minkowski spacetime is primarily concerned with causal distance; whether event A can be causally related to event B. Time has a negative sign when you’re considering causality, because your primary goal is to see whether any effect from event A could have been involved in event B. Using the Minkowski definition of time, an object A ten million light years away from object B has a negligible spacetime distance from that object ten million years in the future and ten million years in the past from any given point in time.
This sounds like nonsense from the start. It’s a bunch of words put together in a linguistically-acceptable way, but it’s not a meaningful description of reality. I suspect the reason you have had trouble getting feedback is that this presentation of your theory sets off immediate and loud “crackpot” alarms.
For example: light, photons, are quanta of the electromagnetic field. To get more technical, photons are a mixture of the two neutral electroweak bosons B_0 and W_0 due to electroweak symmetry breaking. I have done these calculations (in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory) as well as some of the many experiments which support them. I understand these claims as beliefs which constrain my anticipated experiences.
If you are going to attempt to replace apparently all of contemporary physics with a new theory, you must specify how that theory is better. Does it give better explanations of current results, trading complexity with how well it fits the data? Does it predict new results? How can we test the theory, and how does it constrain our expectations? What results would falsify the theory? Answering these questions, i.e. doing science, requires careful mathematical theory along with support from experiment. A few pages of misused jargon—essentially gibberish—does not qualify.
I’m not interested in engaging with this theory point-by-point; there’s not enough substance here to do so. My goal here is to provide you with some idea of how to be taken seriously when proposing new scientific theories. Throwing around a bunch of unsupported, incomprehensible claims is not the way.
It has a few predictions, and a few falsifications; for light as a waveform, it predicts, for example, that any region of space where light cannot escape, also will not propagate gravitic waves. It also predicts that singularities with sufficient energy will disperse in a manner inconsistent with Hawking Radiation, and may predict an upper bound on the mass of singularities.
The light as a gravitic wave idea you take particular offense to here would predict that the frequency of blackbody radiation is exactly the same as the frequency of motion, and more broadly that the frequency of motion of particles is precisely the same as the frequency of light emitted by those particles. Any object in motion should generate electromagnetic waves. Two particles in a spacetime-synchronous oscillation should exhibit no apparent electromagnetic effects on one another. Also, a particle in electromagnetic radiation should exhibit predictably different relativistic behavior, such that the idea could be tested by exposing a series of particles with short half-lives to high-amplitude, low-frequency electromagnetic radiation and seeing how those half-lives change; because light would represent gravitational density, it should be possible to both increase and decrease the half life in a predictable manner according to relativity.
It’s good that you have predictions, although this is still just words and math would be much clearer.
Fundamentally, light as a representation of gravitational density or as a gravity wave does not make sense. We know the properties of photons very well, and we know the properties of gravity very well from general relativity. The two are not compatible. At a very simple level, gravity is solely attractive, while electromagnetism can be both attractive and repulsive. Photons have spin 1, while a theoretical graviton would have spin 2 for a number of reasons. They have different sources (charge-current for photons, stress-energy for gravity). There is a lot of complicated, well-developed theory underlying these statements.
The frequency of light emission is not the same as the frequency of motion of the particle. In matter, light is emitted by electrons transitioning from a higher energy level to a lower energy level. A simple model for light emission is an atom exposed to a time-dependent (oscillatory) perturbing electric field. The frequency of the electric field affects the probability of emission but not the frequency of the light; that is only determined by the difference in energy between the high and low energy levels. (This must be true just from conservation of energy.) The electric field need not be resonant with the expected light frequency for emission to occur, though that resonance does unsurprisingly maximize the transition probability. This model comes from Einstein and there are many good, accessible discussions at an undergraduate level, e.g. in Griffith’s Quantum Mechanics. It makes many validated predictions, such as the lifetimes of excited atomic states.
Further, not all motion has a frequency, and not all objects in motion emit EM radiation. Neutrinos are constantly in motion and have never been measured to give off electromagnetic waves. If they did, they’d be a lot easier to detect! In the Standard Model, they don’t couple to photons because they have no electromagnetic charge.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “spacetime-synchronous oscillation,” but two electrons with the same rest frame definitely interact electromagnetically.
The experiment you describe for testing half-lives with varying electromagnetic radiation could be done in an undergraduate lab with barium-137. I don’t know of any experiments demonstrating such a variation in half-life.
Note that I challenge this assertion about gravity a bit later on, stating that it itself is a wave, both attracting and repelling at different distances.
The perturbing electric field in your case isn’t moving matter, though; it takes sufficient levels of energy to force an electron to transition to a different energy level, which corresponds (in a very loose sense) with a different orbit. I’ll leave that alone, though, because either way, there’s an experiment which can confirm or deny my suspicions.
Not all waves have a frequency, either, in the strictest sense; waves can be non-oscillatory. Doing some research into Cherenkov radiation on this matter, as I may be able to formulate a test for this.
Also, two electrons with the same rest frame -don’t- interact electromagnetically, hence why electrons in cathode ray tubes travel in straight lines. (I’m pretty sure this holds; let me know if there’s something I’m missing here.) (Unfortunately, standard theory already explains this, which is disappointing.)
(Thank you very much for your responses. They’re pointing me in some very good directions to do research.)
Yes, you state that, without proof or support. Electromagnetism and gravity are different forces, both with infinite range but different strengths and behaviors, to the best of our experimental and theoretical knowledge. People measure these things at every scale we can access.
Now you’re moving goalposts and contradicting your earlier claims.
Yes, two electrons in the same rest frame interact electromagnetically. Of course, if there is not some restoring force opposing their repulsion, they will accelerate away from each other and no longer be in the same rest frame. Cathode rays travel in straight lines because they are subjected to a potential large enough to overcome the repulsion between the electrons. If you have just an electron gun without the rest of the apparatus, the beam will spread out.
I don’t know very much physics, but this is wrong:
Everything I’ve read about special relativity says that the interval between two events in spacetime is given by
That’s the special relativity interval; it’s used to determine the potential relationships between two events by determining if light could have passed from point 0 to 1 in the time between two events in two (potentially) different locations. It can be considered a lower bound on the amount of time that can pass between two events before they can be considered to be causally related, or an upper bound on the amount of space that separates two events, or, more generally, the boundary relationship between the two.
Or, to be more concise, it’s a boundary test; it’s not describing a fundamental law of the universe, although it can be used to test if the laws of the universe are being followed.
Which leads to the question—what boundary is it testing, and why does that boundary matter?
Strictly speaking, as Eliezer points out, we could do away with time entirely; it doesn’t add much to the equation. I prefer not to, even if it implies even weirder things I haven’t mentioned yet, such as that the particles five minutes from now are in fact completely different particles than the particles now. (Not that it makes any substantive difference; the fifth dimension thing already suggests, even in a normal time framework, we’re constantly exchanging particles with directions we’re only indirectly aware of. And also, all the particles are effectively the same, anyways.)
That aside, within a timeful universe, change must have at least two reference points, and what that boundary is testing is the relationship between two reference points. It doesn’t actually matter what line you use to define those reference points, however.
If you rotated the universe ninety degrees, and used z as your reference line, z would be your special value. If you rotated it forty five degrees, and used zt as your reference line, zt would be your special value. (Any orthogonal directions will do, for these purposes, they don’t have to be orthogonal to the directions as we understand them now.)
Within the theory here, consciousness makes your reference line special, because consciousness is produced by variance in that reference line, and hence must measure change along that reference line. The direction the patterns propagate doesn’t really matter. Z makes as good a line for time as T, which is just as good as ZT, which is just as good as some direction rotated twelve degrees on one plane, seven degrees on the next, and so on.
Which is to say, we make time special, or rather the conditions which led to our existence did.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Can you describe a real or hypothetical experiment that would have different results depending on whether or not time is an artifact of consciousness?
Not directly, but a proof that gravity propagates through time as easily as through space should go some of the way towards demonstrating that it is a normal spacial dimension, and I’ve considered a test for that -
Gravity should, according to the ideas here, affect objects both in the past, and in the future. So if you have a large enough object to reliably detect its gravitational force, and a mechanism to stop it very suddenly, then, if you position yourself orthogonal to its resting place respective to its line of motion, at the moment the object stops, the center of gravity of its gravitational field should be further behind its line of motion than its current center of mass.
A direct test… I’ll have to ponder that one.
But it sounds to me as if this is just saying that gravity takes time to propagate, which I’m told is already a standard prediction of relativity, so it doesn’t help me understand your claim. Can you express your ideas in math?
When I try to make the setup you describe more concrete, I end up thinking something like this: imagine a hypothetical universe that works in a mostly Newtonian way but with the exception that gravity propagates at some finite speed. (Of course, this is not how reality actually works: relativity is not just Newtonian physics with an arbitrary speed limit tacked on. But since I don’t actually know relativity, I’m just going to use this made-up toy model instead with the hope that it suffices for the purposes of this comment—although the whole idea could just turn out to be utterly inconsistent in some way that isn’t obvious to me at my current skill level.) Fix a coordinate system in space, choosing units of length and time such that the maximum speed is 1. Say there’s an object with mass m traveling towards the origin along the negative y-axis at a constant speed of 0.5, and say furthermore that I have mass n, and I’m floating in space at (1, 0, 0). Then, at the moment when the object crosses the origin (you said it stopped suddenly in your setup, but I don’t understand how that’s relevant, so I’m ignoring it), I can’t feel the gravity coming from the object at the origin yet because it would take a whole time unit to arrive at my position, but I should feel the gravity that’s “just arriving” from one of the object’s earlier positions—but which earlier position? Well, I couldn’t figure that out in the few minutes that I spent thinking about the problem …
But hopefully you see what I’m trying to do here. When you say the English sentence “Light is a waveform distortion in gravity caused by variation in the position of the gravitic source,” I don’t really know how to interpret that, whereas if I have a proof a theorem or a worked problem, then that’s something I can do actual work with and derive actual predictions from.
The effect should continue past the point that gravity arrives from the current position—it will be very minute, as distance in time is related to distance in space by the speed of light (where the C in the interval formula comes from—C in m/s, time in s, very short periods of time are very “far away”), but if I’m correct, and gravity propagates through time as well as space, it should be there.
We stop the object very suddenly because otherwise gravity from the future will counter out gravity from the past—for each position in the past, for an object moving in a straight relativistic line, there will be an equidistant position in the future which balances out the gravity from the position in the past. That is, in your model, imagine that gravity is being emitted from every position the particle moving in the line is at, or was ever at, or ever will be at; at the origin, the total gravitic force exerted on some arbitrary point some distance away is centered at the origin. If the particle stops at the origin, the gravity will be distributed only from the side of the origin the particle passed through.
A second, potentially simpler test to visualize is simply that an object in motion, because some of its gravitic force (from the past and from the future) is consumed by vector mathematics (it’s pulling in orthogonal directions to the point of consideration, and these orthogonal directions cancel out), exhibits less apparent gravitational force on another particle than one at rest. (Respective to the point of measurement.)
Drawing a little picture: . …..................> (A single particle in motion; breaking time into frames for visualization purposes; the first and the last period, being equidistant and with complimentary vectors, cancel out all but the downward force; the same gravitational force is exerted as in the below picture, but some of it cancels itself out)
versus, over the same time frame: . . The second particle configuration should result in greater apparent gravity, because none of the gravity vectors cancel out.
As for interpreting it, imagine that gravity is a particle (this isn’t necessary, indeed, no particles are necessary in this explanation, but it helps to visualize it). Now imagine a particle of mass M1 moving in a stable orbit. The gravitic particles emitted from M will vary in position over time according to the current position of M1, and indeed will take on a wavelike form. According to my model, this wavelike from -is- light; the variations in the positions of the gravitic particles create varying accelerations in particle M2, another mass particle some distance away, resulting in variable acceleration; insufficient or disoriented acceleration on particle M2 will merely result in it moving in a sinelike wave, propagating the motion forward; sufficient acceleration of the proper orientation may give it enough energy to jump to another stable orbit.
Again, I suspect people will have a much better chance at understanding your ideas if you make your explanations much more concrete and specific—maybe even to the point of using particular numbers. Abstraction and generality and intuitive verbal descriptions are beautiful and great, but they only work if everyone involved has an adequate mental model of exactly what it is that’s being abstracted over.
What do I mean, specifically and concretely, when I speak of specific and concrete explanations? Here’s an example: let’s consider two scenarios (very similar to the one I tried to describe in the grandparent)---
Problem One. There’s a coordinate system in space with origin [x, y, z] = [0, 0, 0]. Suppose my mass is 80 kg, and that I’m floating in space ten meters away from the origin in the x-direction, so that my position is described as [10, 0, 0]. A 2000 kg object is moving at the constant velocity 10 m/s towards the origin along the negative y-axis, and its position is given as r(t) = [0, −50 + 10t, 0]. Calculate the force acting on me due to the gravity of the object at t=5, the moment the object reaches the origin.
Problem Two. Everything is the same as in Problem One, except that this time, the object’s position is described by the piecewise-defined function r(t) = [0, −50 + 10t, 0] if t < 5 and r(t) = [0, 0, 0] if t >= 5---that is, the object is stopped at the origin. Again, calculate the force on me when t = 5.
Solutions for Newtonian Physics The answers are the same for both problems. Two objects with mass m and M exert a force on each other with magnitude GmM/r^2. At t = 5, I’m still at [10, 0, 0], and the object is at the origin, so I should experience a force of magnitude G(80 kg)(2000 kg)/(10 m)^2 = (6.67 10^-11 m^3/(kgs^2))(80 kg)(2000 kg)/(100 m^2) = 1.067 * 10^-7 N directed toward the origin.
Now, you say that “for each position in the past, for an object moving in a straight relativistic line, there will be an equidistant position in the future which balances out the gravity from the position in the past,” which suggests that your theory would compute different answers for Problem One and Problem Two. Can you show me those calculations? Or if the problem statement doesn’t quite make sense (e.g., because it implicitly assumes an absolute space of simultaneity, which doesn’t actually exist), could you solve a similar problem? I realize that this may seem tedious and elementary, but such measures are oftentimes necessary in order to explain technical ideas; if people don’t know how to apply your ideas in very simple specific cases, then they have no hope of understanding the general case.
To use a slightly different problem pair, because it would be easier for me to compute:
Problem one. I have mass of 80kg at point [10,0] (simplifying to two dimensions, as I don’t need Z). A 2,000 KG object is resting at position [0, 0]. The Newtonian force of 1.0687 10^-7 N towards the origin should be accurate. [Edit: 1.06710^-6 N, when I calculated it again. Forgot to update this section]
Problem two. I have mass of 80kg at point [10,0] A 2,000 KG object is moving at 10 m/s along the Y axis, position defined as r(t) = [0, −50 + 10t]. Using strictly the time interval t = 0 → t = 10, where t is in seconds, calculating the force when t=5...
distance(t) = sqrt(10^2 + c^2((5 - t)^2) Gravity(t) = 6.67 10^-11 sum(802,000distance(t), for t > 0, t < 10) (10 / distance(t)) [Strictly speaking, this should be an integral over the whole of t, not a summation on a limited subset of t, but I’m doing this the faster, slightly less accurate way; the 10 / distance(t) at the end is to take only the y portion of my vectors, as the t portion of the gravitational vectors cancel out.]
Which gives, not entirely surprisingly, 1.067 * 10^-6 N directed to the origin. (I think your calculation was off by an order of magnitude, I’m not sure why.)
The difference between Newtonian gravity and gravity with respect to y is 3.38 * 10 ^-33. Which is expected; if the difference in gravitational force were greater, it would have been noticed a long time ago.
I probably messed up somewhere in there, because my brain is mush and it’s been a while since I’ve mucked about with vectors, but this should give you the basic idea.
I must apologize for the delay in replying. Regretfully, I don’t think I can spare any more time for this exchange (and am going to be taking a break from this and some other addicting sites), so this will likely be my final reply.
Now I think I sort-of see what you’re trying to do here, but I don’t understand what’s motivating that specific expression; it seems to me that if you want to treat space and time symmetrically, then the expression you want is something more like
Please don’t interpret this as hostility (for this is the sort of forum where it’s actually considered polite to tell people this sort of thing), but my subjective impression is that you are confused in some way; I don’t have the time or physics expertise to fully examine all the ideas you’ve mentioned and explain in detail exactly why they fail or why they work, but what you’ve said so far has not impressed me. If you want to learn more about physics, you are of course aware that there are a wide variety of standard textbooks to choose from, and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
I do not interpret it, or any of your other responses, as hostility. (I’ve been upvoting your responses. I requested feedback, and you’ve provided it.)
I did indicate the integral would be more accurate; I can run a summation in a few seconds, however, where an integral requires breaking out a pencil and paper and skills I haven’t touched since college. It was a rough estimate, which I used strictly to show what it was such a test should be looking for. Since we aren’t running the test itself, accuracy didn’t seem particularly important, since the purpose was strictly demonstrative.
(Neither formula is actually correct for the idea, however. The constant would be be wrong, and would need to be adjusted so the gravitational force would be equivalent to the existing formula for an object at rest.)
Thank you for your time!
I would normally downvote an out-of-context wall of text like the above, but upvoted in accordance with Welcome post norms.
My apologies. I looked for rules, but couldn’t find any.
“If you’ve come to Less Wrong to discuss a particular topic, this thread would be a great place to start the conversation.” seemed to indicate that this is where I should start.
Hey! Welcome to LW. I’ve upvoted you too, but if you’re looking for feedback on your OP, I’m too stupid to be having this conversation. :-)
Edit, since you mentioned you’re an objectivist, you might be interested in the general prevailing opinion on Rand around these parts. That being said, LW does have a number of members who were, at one point, or perhaps still are, respectful of Rand.
Howdy!
I’m not sure strict Randian Objectivists would agree that I’m an Objectivist; I use the term pretty broadly to describe anybody who ascribes to the philosophy, not necessarily the ethics. I take Ayn Rand at her word when she says people should think for themselves (the closest she got to a proscription in any of her works), and am not terribly impressed by much of her fan club, which refuses to.
That said, I’m not particularly impressed by that criticism, which, like most criticisms of Ayn Rand, revolves mainly around her personal life.
If you’re interested in more recent discussion of that article, you can find some here.
Hm. I don’t necessarily agree it revolves around her personal life. The main gist of the post is A. Rand acknowledged no superior, B. If you don’t acknowledge some way in which you are flawed you can never improve, so C. This is kind of a stupid thing to say.
I used to call myself a neo-objectivist, mostly because it was a word that had no definition, so I could claim I meant whatever I wanted. And I have a lot of respect for many of the conclusions that Rand came to. But the arrogance of her system is pretty off-putting to me.
Related, “Mozart was a Red”, a play Murray Rothbard wrote parodying the time Rand invited him to come meet her.
I’ve yet to meet somebody better than me at arguing politics; that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for me to get better, however, which is one of my motivations in continuing to do so. I’m not sure that A logically leads to B.
Are you measuring this in times that you think you lost a political argument, times your opponent thought you won a political argument, or times you learned something interesting by discussing politics?
I measure this in terms of a personal judgement that an objective or hostile third party would declare that my opponent has failed, which is not the same as “winning.” It’s impossible for me to win an argument, only to lose it. “Winning” would imply that there’s no additional argument which could not be constructed to defeat my current argument. I can’t prove the nonexistence of such an argument.
(I argue against the ideal, not the opponent; my opponent can lose, but my argument cannot win.)
There’s a difference: you (presumably) acknowledge that it’s possible for you to get better at arguing politics. Rand did not. Rand believed it was impossible for anyone to be better than her.
No reason to take my preferences as generally normative.
Though I do.