I've been reading
Existential Physics by S. Hossenfelder lately. I consider Sabine an
decently intelligent and interesting person, correct about many things but very wrong about some.
She has confined herself to established theories and fallen into a trap of blind reductionism. In
other words, she's abusing reductionism by applying Occam's razor everywhere. She doesn't seem to
like holism. Fear of holism is the common issue of mainstream science. Why? Because nature is so
obviously holistic. Everything is interconnected. Nature does not seek independent solutions to
independent problems, it's generally evolving solutions that solve multiple problems at
once. Therefore, applied solution to a particular problem generally won't be the simplest
solution possible. The more problems it solves the more it could grow in complexity.
Thus, when Sabine says that the notion that particles have consciousness
is non-scientific (or
ascientific, as she calls it) because it is unnecessary to explain
their behavior, she is revealing a couple of things:
- anthropocentric approach (who cares if particles or planets have consciousness, we want
to exploit them, we do not need to understand them),
- shortsightedness, or abuse of reduction.
If one would observe human population at the same resolution one looks at particles one would not
need to involve consciousness to explain human behavior either. By the reasoning of Sabine, the
notion that humans have consciousness would then be non-scientific too.
Sabine also expects that all consciousness is extroverted (externally expressed). Particles, as
well as planets, generally don't have limbs nor means for self-propulsion. But neither do
paralyzed people. Are paralyzed people not conscious? What about extreme introversion? Isn't it
logical that a convergence to extreme introversion is coupled with a loss of complex extroverted
physical expression and increasing fortification of outer layers of energy ensuring increasingly
important passive protection due to loss of conscious extroverted mobility?
Sabine doesn't see how an elementary particle can be a black box hiding its complexity
from us but she readily accepts the idea that anything beyond a black hole event horizon cannot
escape outside, unless radiated out as, virtually impossible to detect, Hawking radiation. Not
only that, she effectively believes that a black hole is hiding an infinitely
dense point of energy, an absolute singularity. Why such bias Sabine?
And yet, we do have consciousness. If something is unnecessary to solve one particular
problem I wouldn't call it non-scientific (or
ascientific), I would call
it "unnecessary to solve that particular problem". It might be unnecessary for particles to
have consciousness in order for us to explain or predict their behavior (when we look and
disturb them!) but it might be necessary for something else. And that something else could be
our consciousness. In fact, in my theories, our consciousness is carried by
particles (gravitons, or souls, as I also call them). Sabine believes that if one would
replace neurons with transistors nothing would change regarding
consciousness. I don't agree. In fact, there are complex computers,
neural networks
built with billions of interconnected transistors already and none of them are conscious.
She correctly recognizes that observable universe resembles a brain but, bound with a belief in
absolute (scale-invariant) constants or metric, she expects its components to communicate at
the same or similar speed our neurons communicate. How can someone expect that?
In CR I postulate discrete states of relative invariance of physical laws and, by these, things of
vastly different magnitude communicate at significantly different speeds (relative to
an
independent observer). Doesn't that sound more
natural Sabine?
Sabine also believes elementary particles are absolutely elementary because we haven't been
able to break them down into smaller particles. Why does she expect humans to be almighty?
We're not almighty gods (far from that,
we might have a mighty complex though) and we
can't break absolutely everything we touch with our greedy hands. An absolutely elementary
particle is the simplest solution to a particular mathematical problem. That's all that it
is. It solves nothing in nature and is, therefore, impossible in nature. Absolutely, that is.
To Sabines of mainstream science:
Observing equations made you understand mathematics. Now go observe some nature if you
want to understand nature.