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Psychology, Oneirology
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” – Nietzsche.
And Erik Hoel of Tufts University makes a strong argument for this in his recent paper on The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis: -
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.09560.pdf
A thorough study of this September 2020 paper will prove rewarding. Hoel discusses the various leading theories about why we dream and then he adds another astonishing one that perhaps supersedes them all.
Hoel draws heavily on what we have learned from trying to develop deep machine learning and machine intelligence, it seems that if you want a machine to develop a broad ability at problem solving then you need to feed it on Chaos. Or to put it more politely, Stochastic and Random inputs including Imaginary Data.
The theory goes that any information system can get a bit stuck and inhibited by the patterns it knows and expects and particularly by what it has recently learned, so it can benefit by shaking it all up and mixing it all about to provoke synthesis and integration.
Humans rarely dream ‘real’ memories, except in PTSD. Dreams usually consist of fantastical Apophenic mash ups of fragments of old memories and newer ones.
Hoel argues that the brain deliberately indulges in the hallucinations of dream to achieve this vital housekeeping function that any complex and adaptive information processing device will require. He devotes some of the paper to a discussion of dreams and creativity.
Hoel writes further in edition 3307, 2/11/20 of New Scientist and touches on the human need for unreality in general, our insatiable taste for myths and novels and entertainments about imaginary events. He suspects that we may need such inputs to prevent our minds ossifying around our often-humdrum repetitive life experiences.
This led me to wonder if some people value hallucinogens precisely because they mimic the random and hallucinatory state of dreaming, despite the potential survival costs of performing such activity whilst not safely asleep and immobile.
I have to say that I have got far more inspiration from dreaming and the liminal states of waking than I ever did from hallucinogens.
Politics
Farewell Donald Trump, you brought a stimulating dose of chaos, excitement and controversy to American politics, the highest election turnout ever, and a focus of attention upon a lot of the elephants in the room, notably the failures of multiculturalism, political correctness, neo-liberalism and globalisation, the European reluctance to pay for its own defence, the need for renewables to make economic sense, the massive drug and people trafficking across the Mexican border, and the emerging broad spectrum neo-imperialism of China.
In choosing Biden the American people seem to have opted for Conservatism with a small ‘c’, - let us hope that does not mean more social and economic neo-liberalism as usual. Social neo-liberalism means policing thought and speech. Economic neo-liberalism means elites will take an ever-larger share of the pie.
Esoteric Horticulture
Circe the Mandrake has signalled approval of her new accommodation in the greenhouses of Chateaux Chaos by producing a flower with 7 petals and 6 stamens instead of the usual pentagonal symmetry of 5 and 5, as displayed by one of her smaller companions. Who said plants cannot communicate?
Quantum Hyperspheres
The microcosm chapters of The Occultaris continue to develop and now include a possible model of quantum gravity in qualitative form at least.
Sorcery
Finally, my thanks to the hundred or so around the planet who participated in the Samhain magical attack requested in the previous blog. The tide may have started to turn, but humanity must not squander victory by a return to its bad old ways. Mother Earth has so far admonished us mildly with climatic and biological responses, but if we really annoy her, she can swat our entire civilisation, and if necessary, our entire species, all too easily.
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Samhain 2020
Magical Attack
Now seems the time to throw in some Sorcery in support of all the mounting Scientific attacks on Covid 19, if some form of vaccine can work then we can perhaps avoid a grim Fimbulwinter.
Local Midnight 31st October, prepare for a coordinated conjuration: -
1) Dress a seasonal pumpkin with spikes suggestive of the coronavirus.
2) Lay out weapons of choice.
3) Gnosis – attain mental focus either by silencing the mind with meditative procedures or by exciting the mind to frenzy by exertions and wild emotions.
4) Physically wreck the symbolic image of the target without conscious deliberation.
5) Banish with deliberate laughter and thereafter avoid thinking too much about the conjuration.
Ouranian Barbaric or Enochian incantations, sigils, nudity, or robes and black pointy hats optional.
Personally, I shall use a Hammer of Thor, an original Tibetan Purba, and all three manifestations of the current Mk127 pocket wand.
Received from Japan
This curious and rather beautiful object, thoughtfully incorporating a personalised nameplate. It glows in the dark as well, a desktop or bedside wand/chaosphere always at the ready and easily accessible in pitch darkness.
Hyperspheres in the Microcosm
Lastly, as part of the ongoing Quantum Hypersphere Mechanics project. A contemplation of Mobius strips with half twists in them: -
Suggests that spinors may arise from a hyperspherical rotation, consider an object with axes x, y, z, and a fourth-dimension w, it can have 2 independent planes of rotation, say xy and wz.
An 1800 rotation about wz will invert the z axis about which the plane of xy rotates and a 3600 rotation will restore the orientation of the z axis, but this will entail a 7200 rotation of the observable xy plane! Such non-isoclinic (not equal angled) rotations of 4D spacetime quanta may explain a lot.
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Octoblog
Pandemic lockdown has provided an opportunity for something of an Annus Mirabilis in metaphysical magical theory and The Occultaris* proceeds apace: -
TIQM + HM + WSM + HC = OM!
Basically, an Apophenic addition of Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, (for energy quanta), to Hypersphere Mechanics to Wolff’s Wave Structure of Matter, (for matter quanta), to Hypersphere Cosmology, (in eight-dimensional spacetime), yields an Omnality Matrix, partially entangling absolutely Everything, this seems metaphysically satisfying and has extensive explanatory and predictive power in both parts of Natural Philosophy – Science and Magic.
In response to questions about particle generation/flavour conservation in the previous blog: - The decay of higher generation quarks does not appear to conserve particle generation. However higher generation quarks only arise as entangled quark-antiquark pairs and a consideration of the decay products of both the quark and the antiquark reveals a perfect conservation of particle generation/flavour quantum number.
If generation remains conserved and baryons consist of uni-quarks then an 8-dimensional hyperspherical universe with quanta having 4 rotational degrees of freedom becomes an increasingly credible sub-quantum epistemology, and perhaps even an ontology and a metaphysic.
*Book to appear eventually…………….
Gardening and Board-Gaming/Building meanwhile continue to provide light relief from the mathematics.
The Mandrakes at Chateaux Chaos sprouted early this year at the autumn equinox. Their roots had become too big for their individual pots so now they reside together in a single deep and huge one. Hopefully, they will all produce some apples this winter, not just Circe the big one.
Updates to Frontier Space War 2.
The scenarios have evolved through further playtesting: -
1) Discs placed below pieces indicate the number of units of that type, but the number of groups of any type of piece remains restricted by the number of pieces.
2) Command Vessels: - Tactical Attack/Defence use next dice up in size. Psi Attack/Defence best of three dice throws. This proves much simpler than adding numbers to dice throws.
3) Fortresses all use D12 Dodecahedrons A/D unless enhanced by a Command Vessel.
4) Strange Aliens. (partly inspired by the current plague)
Aliens have just two types of units, Hives and Wasps. Wasps can move from one system to another connected adjacent system each turn, and attack or defend with D10 Decahedrons. Hives cannot move and have no attack or defence capability and become destroyed by any attack. Hives can produce Wasps at a cost of 4 production units. Wasps can turn into Hives and vice-versa. A newly created Hive cannot create Wasps in the same turn it became created, but a Hive that turns into a Wasp can move and attack in the rest of the turn.
Possible scenarios including Aliens.
1) Aliens use the Soviet Territories in place of the Soviets. They start with a Hive on Vostok.
2) An alien force of 5 Wasps can appear once at any Black Hole between any two other Faction’s turns, at the discretion of the Alien commander who then takes that turn for the rest of the conflict.
These Alien pieces consist of black Milliput over nuts and bolts, gone over with black felt tip marker to give them an eldritch organometallic sheen.
Brexit appears to proceed well. We should not negotiate. David Cameron and Teresa May both attempted to negotiate and they both failed and got sacked. We should simply say what we intend to do and do it, and that includes not imposing barriers or tariffs unless they do.
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We invite the Particle Physics Police to falsify the following hypothesis before our Geometric Algebraists endeavour to take it any further.
It may form part of the forthcoming Occultaris, a Natural Philosophical investigation of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm.
Hypersphere Mechanics.
The conventional Standard Model of Particle Physics and the accompanying (Standard?) Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics plainly remain incomplete models of the Microcosm that do not penetrate to the bottom level of reality.
Hypersphere Mechanics models both particle Physics and Quantum Physics exclusively in terms of the same dynamical Spacetime Geometry that describes the Macrocosm in Hypersphere Cosmology.
Conventional Quantum Mechanics models the nuclear force as having a threefold symmetry whilst using twofold symmetries for particle spins, electromagnetic charges, and particle generations. Hypersphere Mechanics uses twofold symmetries throughout, and it equates all four particle properties to spinorial rotations of four planes in eight-dimensional spacetime.
Hypersphere Cosmology explains the Universe in terms of a Vorticitating Hypersphere consisting of curved 3D space in time and speculates that time may also have a hyperspherical geometry.
A Hyperspherical universe finite but unbounded (closed) in both space and time, also implies curved time.
Two extra orthogonal time dimensions can explain quantum superposition and entanglement and the probabilistic behaviour of observed reality.
If the universe exists as a hypersphere in both space and time, then it has 8 dimensions.
A spacetime of n(even) dimensions has n/2 possible rotation planes. ((n-1)/2 for n(odd)).
(a 3D spatial ball has only one rotation plane, trying to rotate a rotating ball about another plane merely changes the rotation plane to one at a different angle as per the quaternion rules.)
A four-dimensional object such as a hypercube can have two independent rotation planes, the Clifford Double Rotations, such as wz and xy, or indeed any two rotation planes such as wx and yz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotations_in_4-dimensional_Euclidean_space
A ‘quantum of spacetime’ can rotate in 8 dimensions and it can have 4 independent rotation planes: -
In spacetime, a rotation of plane consisting of a spatial direction and the spatial curvature represents a direction of travel along the spatial direction. In spacetime, a rotation of plane consisting of a temporal direction and the temporal curvature represents a direction of travel along the temporal direction.
In hyperspherical Spacetime of w xy z space, and of a bc d time,
w denotes spatial curvature (as a magnitude component in the vector representation); z denotes particles direction of spatial travel
a denotes temporal curvature (as a magnitude component in the vector representation); d denotes particles direction of temporal travel.
If we regard the curvatures w and a as unobservable and the directions z and d as observer dependent, then we can denote the 4 spin planes as: - wz, xy, ad, bc.
As spins have quantisation then perhaps, we can expect spins like +xy, -xy, +2xy, etc.
All planes rotate Spinorially - their rotation puts a twist in the surrounding space or time which untwists with a full 7200 rotation. Such twists create attractive or repulsive fields, and spacetime itself.
Particles and their component spins.
± denotes plus or minus
≠ denotes plus and minus, spins of the double component Bosons which cancel each other but which nevertheless carry energy.
Chiral Spin Nuclear Electric Generation
±xy ±ad ±bc ±wz
Dirac Spinor Fermions +xy+wz -xy+wz +xy-wz -xy-wz Electrons and Quarks.
Weyl Spinor Majorana Fermions -xy+wz +xy-wz Neutrinos only.
Fermions. All with chiral spin ±1xy. (±½) in conventional notation). All antiparticles have reversed spins.
Chiral Spin Nuclear Electric Generation
Neutrino -xy (-½) - - +1,2,3 wz (e, μ, τ)
Electron ±xy (±½) - -bc +1,2,3 wz (e, μ, τ)
Quark d type ±xy (±½) +ad - +1,2,3 wz (d, s, b)
Quark u type ±xy (±½) +ad +bc +1,2,3 wz (u, c, t)
Baryons n&±xy ±½ etc +ad 0, +bc, +2bc +1,2,3 wz
Proton = u type quark. Neutron = d type quark.
Bosons. All with chiral spin of 0 or 2 (2=1 in conventional notation.)
Chiral Spin Nuclear Electric Generation
Graviton ≠xy (0) - - ≠ wz
Gluon ±2xy (±1) ≠ad ≠ wz
Photon ±2xy (±1) - ≠ wz
Z Boson ±2xy (±1) - ≠ bc ≠ wz
W- Boson -2xy (-1) - - bc ≠ wz
W+ Boson +2xy (+1) - + bc ≠ wz
Mesons n& ±2xy or ≠xy ≠ad 0 or ≠bc, or ±bc, or ±2bc various q/-q
All bosons have a ‘particle-antiparticle’ nature.
The Graviton thus consist of a zero-spin neutrino-antineutrino pair. The Z boson consists of an electron-antielectron pair with aligned chiral spins. The W bosons as electron-antineutrino or antineutron-neutrino configurations with aligned chiral spins. The component parts of Gluons, and Photons, do not exist independently. Mesons consist of various uni-quark baryon/anti-uni-quark anti-baryon pairs and come in many forms.
Bosons that do not displace wz time, remain free from the Pauli Exclusion principle, allowing them to form unlimited fluxes
Chiral spin and generational spin can interconvert with orbital angular momentum or velocity, and hence do not invariably conserve.
Nuclear Charge has a twofold symmetry not a threefold symmetry. It exists in ± form, not in a threefold colour/anti-colour form. Protons and Neutrons exist as fundamental uni-quark fermions. The Proton carries nuclear charge and electric charge, the neutron carries nuclear charge but no electric charge. At a stroke this removes the idea of fractional electric charges and all the complex confusion of QCD, (Quantum Chromodynamics). Mesons still consist of all the quark/anti-quark pairs as in conventional theory. Moreover, it makes everything consistent with the overall twofold symmetry implied by simple ± plane rotations. The +ad+wz or -ad-wz nature of quarks may represent another Weyl Spinor, or it may result from alignment of spatial and temporal directions of travel.
The whole array of short-lived Exotic Baryons and Baryon Resonances becomes explicable in this Baryon = Uni-Quark model: -
Chiral Spin Nuclear Electric Generation
Baryons n& ±xy +ad 0, +bc, +2bc +1,2,3 wz
Mesons have an overall angular momentum composed of the intrinsic angular moment of the quark-antiquark pair, ±2xy (=±1) or ≠xy (=0) plus the quantised orbital angular momentum of the two quarks around each other (denoted above as n&) of ±1,2,3 etc, to yield integer spins.
Baryons as uni-quarks have an overall angular momentum composed of the intrinsic angular momentum of the quark ±xy (=±½) plus a quantised rotational non-spinorial momentum (denoted above as n&) of ±1,2,3 etc, to yield half integer spins of ± 1//2, 3/2, 5/2, etc. The resulting degrees of freedom allow many possible varieties of distinguishable baryon particle, although only the Proton exhibits long term stability.
Early measurements of spin 3/2 Baryons played a large part in the erroneous attribution of a threefold symmetry to the nuclear charge and a tri-quark nature to the Baryons.
In general, the greater the number of spins a particle possesses the greater the energy it carries and hence the more mass and the lower stability that it exhibits, although the spins do not summate in a simple way to yield a simple algorithm for predicting masses. Chiral Spins as high as 5/2 or 7/2 seem indicated for some exotic baryon resonances. Particle generations beyond 3 do not seem forbidden by anything except huge energy requirements.
In the Hadron realm of Baryons and Mesons, a sort of Nuclear Chaos seems to reign - a sufficient concentration of energy can probably produce any imaginable type of particle, but with a lifetime inversely proportional to its mass.
Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory that quarks come in three ‘colours’ and that anti-quarks come in three corresponding anti-colours and that Baryons such as the Proton and Neutron consist of quark triplets, appears as an unnecessary complication that obstructs our understanding. It arose as a scheme for ordering the massively confusing array of Baryons and Mesons observed in high energy particle collisions, but such a model brings with it a whole slew of ad-hoc fixes. In the QCD model, quarks suffer from ‘quark-confinement’ which prevents them from ever appearing in single form, they also suffer from Asymptotic Freedom in which forces become weaker at short distances and stronger at long distances. Gluons have to come in eight different colour combinations to explain the forces inside atomic nuclei, and quarks have to subtend very complicated arrangements of virtual quarks and gluons around themselves to explain the enormous discrepancies between the theoretically predicted and the measured masses of various quark combinations. These ad-hoc fixes seem little better than the now discarded hypotheses of epicycles and phlogiston.
Hypersphere Mechanics models particles in terms of SNEG, all particles consist of ‘snegs’ in spacetime. (chiral Spin, Nuclear spin, Electric spin, Generational spin.)
The proton represents the simplest and only stable particle with all four spins, it has the SNEG signature ½ 111. The Neutron consists of ½ 101. Other unstable Baryons can have higher numbers in their signatures. Suitable choices of SNEG signatures can model all observed Baryons and Mesons and their decay products.
And on a lighter note the Lithonians now have a Fleet Carrier. Fortuitously a larger block of ceramic insulation material washed up on the shore of this lockdown hideaway. The Lithonians come from a metal poor planet and use a lot of stone in their starships and the detritus on this beach seems rather metal poor as well. Discarded vape accessories make up most of the metallic components of the vessels.
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The voyage of the Leif Erickson and the Garuda.
I would like to contact the people we had an extraordinary adventure with, in India around 1979.
A group of us built two boats in North Goa, the Leif Erickson, and the Garuda, and sailed them south. The boatbuilding took four months, so we set off rather late in the season. Both boats were about 30 feet long and based on the hulks of old rotten dugout riverboats that we bought. We added freeboard planking, outriggers, rudders, masts and sails, and rowing benches and oars that we constructed ourselves having replaced the rotten parts of the hulls with local wood and caulked them with local materials that the native fishermen showed us how to make. Each boat also towed a small dugout canoe for shore visits.
Both boats set off southwards down the coast hoping to round the cape to Sri-Lanka, but we had set off rather late in the season for favourable weather. Nevertheless, we had a couple of good weeks sailing, occasionally pulling into incredibly remote fishing villages for water and supplies, to the astonishment of the inhabitants. The ocean seemed idyllic, we saw turtles and flying fish and swam in the phosphorescence at night, but then disasters struck:
The Garuda hit a rocky offshore island partway down the coast, the crew survived but the boat did not. The Leif Erikson continued and then ran into a typhoon in the night somewhere off the Malabar coast. After a titanic struggle against the typhoon the Leif Erickson limped into Cochin harbour with most of its rigging wrecked. An hilarious scene ensued when a motor launch from the Cochin Yachting Club came to inspect our craft, having heard that ‘a British yacht had arrived’. ‘That’s us’, we said. They took one disbelieving look at the bedraggled hippies in their ramshackle vessel and made a swift exit. We swapped the remains of the boat for a few crates of beer. After a few days, the group dispersed on their travels and we have not seen them since.
About 20 people became involved in various part of the boatbuilding and sailing, we would like to contact any of them with a view to exchanging memories and photos and maybe writing a book about it all.
They say that everyone on the planet lies no more than seven links of acquaintance away from anyone else, so if you know any of these people please send them this article, or if not please forward it to someone who you think might know of them.
Herewith a list of those names we can remember: -
Leif Erickson Crew.
Pete Carroll, Christine Hutchinson, Simon Dunsford (British), Lars Jorgenson, fisherman, (Danish), Alfonso Lerna, racing driver, Alvaro Dominguez, chess master, (Spanish), Satayabodhi (Dutch guy, sannyasin name) Tony D’Souza (Anglo-Indian)
Garuda Crew.
‘Herr Robert’ as we called him, (German) he had worked on cruise liners, and a German couple. ‘Saco’ (Indonesian) and a skilled Chef. Ralph (Australian)
It would be great to hear from any of you 40 years on.
Regards, Pete and Chris Carroll,
I do not usually do verbal interviews online, I prefer the more leisurely medium of email interview as it gives more time to think, nevertheless I did become persuaded to do this one: -
https://thothermes.com/episodes/season-5-episode-4-the-birth-of-chaos-peter-j-carroll/
You can tell that I would have preferred more time as I keep saying, Well…. Erm….
Meanwhile a team of mathematicians and physicists crawl all over the Hypersphere Cosmology chapter of the Occultaris, eventually to appear in book form.