On Mar 28, 2010, at 4:01 PM, Paul Murad wrote:
Jack:This is a useful function you are performing. However, I have some problems with the approach used by physicists in general.This is like going to church, temple or a synogogue. That is you really do not understand except if you have an annointed individual there to lead you through the steps. What this does here is it puts blinders on the use of these equations and the broader implication of what these equations really mean is sacrificed because of misunderstandings. If I look at a modification of the conventional wisdom and use it as such but it falls outside of the guidelines suggested by the annointed one, then I must be incorrect. If there is no experimental data available, who is to say who is correct and who is incorrect? If that happens then the possibility of my seriously reexamining the use of these equations would be greatly hindered.This is serious "don't touch, don't tell."Now obviously if there is an error in the intrepretation, it is useful to point it out. However, the main objective is to widen the use and applicability of these equations such that its use spreads not only to the physicists but to the engineer as well. Physicists in general do not build things whereas engineers do. We have a choice to either contemplate our navel or get serious and share the knowledge base to build something that could be real serious. In other words, one group has to mentor the other group and remember that these are not equations that cover a very narrow perspective but a far broader view of the physical phenomenon that may reveal the secrets of mother nature... and maybe even God.Paul...
Read more carefully what 't Hooft says. He clearly addresses your methodological qualms expressed below.
Anything that contradicts battle-tested mainstream physics must be rejected - certainly when it comes to funding decisions by USG - and rightly so.
Sure, anomalous data is always of extreme importance - we all agree on that. All physics theories are incomplete in principle subject to extension, but the extension must always contain the previous theory as a limiting case. The objection to string theory was that there was no way to test it experimentally - that situation seems to be changing.
Where Brian Josephson and I may disagree with 't Hooft is on the truth of anomalous data in the paranormal and UFO areas - but we do not disagree with his theoretical opinions on quantum theory and relativity in essentials. I think Brian will agree with that? As we saw in the JASON meeting evaluating the HFGW data is tricky and I could not even get them to look at Ray Chiao's work on electro-gravitic superconductor transduction. I think Ron was out of the room when I brought that up, but you and Mark Pesses were there as I recall.
"As for my "stupidity", my own knowledge of the theory does not come from blindly accepting wisdom from text books; text books do contain mistakes, so I only accept scientific facts when I fully understand the arguments on which they are based. I feel no need whatsoever to defend standard scientific wisdom; I only defend the findings of which I have irrefutable evidence, and it so happens that most of these are indeed agreed upon by practically all experts in the field."
From: JACK SARFATTI <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. >
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Sent: Sun, March 28, 2010 5:07:15 PM
Subject: My comments on Gerard 't Hooft on misconceptions of Einstein's theory of Gravity
Read the complete article by 't Hooft at http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/gravitating_misconceptions.htmlexcerpts - my comments in [ ... ] unless I say to the contrary, I agree with the quoted excerpts. I want it to be clear that I am a "radical conservative" in John Archibald Wheeler's sense. I think mainstream quantum theory and relativity are correct. All physical theories have limited domains of validity in David Bohm's sense, but all extensions of mainstream physics theories must limit to them, e.g. Antony Valentini's post-quantum theory with "signal nonlocality" violating "no-cloning" "passion at a distance" (A. Shimony) in sub-quantal non-equilibrium of the particle trajectories and classical field configuration "hidden variables" http://eprintweb.org/S/authors/All/va/ValentiniAs should be clear from my past discussions with Z, I definitely agree with 't Hooft's:"These self proclaimed scientists in turn blame me of "not understanding functional analysis". Indeed, L maintains that there is a difference between a mathematical calculation and its physical interpretation, which I do not understand. He makes a big point about Einstein's "equivalence principle" being different from the "correspondence principle", and everyone, like me, who says that they in essence amount to being the same thing, if you want physical reality to be described by mathematical models, doesn't understand a thing or two. True. Nonsensical statements I often do not understand. What I do understand is that both ways of phrasing this principle require that one focuses on infinitesimally tiny space-time volume elements."&"I emphasize that any modification of Einstein's equations into something like R μν - 1/2 R gμν = κ(Tμν + t μν (grav)) where t μν (grav) would be something like a "gravitational contribution" to the stress-energy-momentum tensor, is blatantly wrong. Writing such a proposal betrays a complete misunderstanding of what General Relativity is about. The energy and momentum of the gravitational field is completely taken into account by the non-linear parts of the original equation. This can be understood and proven easily, as I explained in the main text. Note that a freely falling observer experiences no gravitational field and no energy-momentum transfer; hence there cannot be a covariant tensor such as t μν (grav) ."__._,_.___