Literary advisor?

[quiet]

Hi. I have been summoned as a free literary consultant. Without receiving a penny? So is. The wife of my lifelong friend, when he heard something I once said, began to plan a novel. On that occasion I said the following.

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Take the Euclidean geometry as an example. Euclid chose as postulates the simplest and most intuitive notions. He derived from them theorems, in increasing order of complexity. The Euclidean geometry, presented in that form, is coherent and complies with all the logical rules.

Someone could change the order of the presentation. How would that be? Instead of postulating the most intuitive notions, propose as postulates some of the high-level theorems obtained in the original presentation, to deduce from them the rest of the geometry. In this way, to arrive at the five postulates proposed by Euclid, the only possibility is to deduce them as theorems, starting from a set of counterintuitive postulates.

The counterintuitive presentation would be perfectly valid, perfectly coherent, perfectly logical. Didactically it would be disastrous. The deductions would be horrifyingly complicated, horrifyingly extensive, and whoever succeeds in completing an important deduction will have carried a titanic effort upon his intellect. It really would be too late research in geometry. To qualify as progress the task of the Euclidean geometers would seem an excess.

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When her husband and I discuss frustrating issues, she hears something about the counterintuitive style that physics has acquired after the sixth decade of the 19th century. She also hears when we say that all corporate-funded research does not reach public education. These groups pay and reserve exclusivity in matters considered strategic.
 
 
Why does she prefer to consult me before her husband? Because her husband is not a teacher, he does not have patience and they end up arguing.

He wants to end the novel with the majority of the world population forced to remain on Earth, enduring the poisoned and brutally cataclysmic nature, while the corporate elite, with all its entourage, teleports to colonies prepared outside the Earth, carrying everything necessary to continue their lives serenely.

The woman has very well defined the plan of the novel. He only asks me for advice on a crucial detail, which is the next question. Would it have been possible in 1867, or impossible, to replace the intuitive presentation of physics with a counterintuitive one?

From a person dedicated to literature I received a question too embarrassing. From the point of view of the logical structure and the mathematical formulation, the change of postulates is perfectly possible in any coherent theory. But in the context of the novel, possible means that the reader find some degree of plausibility, at least the minimum degree to ask if a powerful group, in 1867, could achieve that counterintuitiveness is imposed in the public education of physics. That exceeds my information base, because to discuss something like this, knowledge of history, macroeconomics, the formation of visible and hidden power groups, plus a whole set of information and knowledge that I do not have, are necessary.

My hope is that some people in the forum can contribute ideas that help resolve the dilemma.

Edited September 15, 2018 by quiet

[Strange]

On 15/09/2018 at 3:05 PM, quiet said:

Take the Euclidean geometry as an example. Euclid chose as postulates the simplest and most intuitive notions. He derived from them theorems, in increasing order of complexity. The Euclidean geometry, presented in that form, is coherent and complies with all the logical rules.

Someone could change the order of the presentation. How would that be? Instead of postulating the most intuitive notions, propose as postulates some of the high-level theorems obtained in the original presentation, to deduce from them the rest of the geometry. In this way, to arrive at the five postulates proposed by Euclid, the only possibility is to deduce them as theorems, starting from a set of counterintuitive postulates.

I'm not sure why (or even how) anyone could do this. The whole point of postulates or axioms is that they are supposed to be self-evidently true and not need proof. They are also supposed to be few in number. How would someone start from (all?) the results proved by Euclid and work back to the postulates? Why would they do that?

On 15/09/2018 at 3:05 PM, quiet said:

The woman has very well defined the plan of the novel. He only asks me for advice on a crucial detail, which is the next question. Would it have been possible in 1867, or impossible, to replace the intuitive presentation of physics with a counterintuitive one?

(Just a note: I know English is not your first language but it is usually very good. However, you have referred to the woman as "he" several times, so you might want to be a bit more careful about that.)

I'm not sure how this idea of doing maths or physics "backwards" is useful to the idea of the plot. It seems it would just introduce an unnecessary complication to the story. But if it were possible now (or in Euclid's day) then it would be equally possible in 1867. (Personally, it seems impossible at any time.)

And are you suggesting that the story is set in 1867 but with advanced technology such as teleporting? Or is it set in the modern day with the availability of such technology? In either case, adding a bizarre obstacle to the development of maths and science would seem to make that technology less likely, rather than more. 

 

Or have I totally missed the point of your question?

[quiet]

Argument (part that I should advise):

After understanding the scope of physics, in 1867 corporations decide to take over that science, dominating the mechanisms of financing, education, publication and promotion. No one should notice that domain. In front of the society everything must have the appearance of a transparent and fair system.

How can it be achieved that, in the public sphere, physics progresses very slowly and that, within the private sphere of corporations, it grows exponentially?

At this point appears the decision to disrupt the public version of physics to present it in a counter-intuitive way, choosing as postulates propositions that in the intuitive version are high-level theorems. In logical and mathematical terms, the counterintuitive version is perfectly coherent and consistent. In terms of favoring development, it is a formidable obstacle, an almost perfect shield. To match what is achieved in 20 years with the intuitive version, the counterintuitive form takes too many centuries. That's what the novel proposes. Then it ends with the corporations and their entourage teleported to colonies outside of Earth, while the rest of humanity remains on the planet, poisoned and scourged by atrocious cataclysms.

Is there any hope of diagramming that section of the argument with some degree of plausibility, so that the reader savors the story and does not tend to ridicule it?

[Strange]

Ah, i see what you mean now. Sounds difficult to convey (and make plausible). Wouldn’t it be easier to just have them keep the advanced technology secret?

She could have the powers in charge release reports of lots of experiments with false results to send people off in the wrong direction, perhaps. 

Any particular reason for 1867? Start of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Or the USA cutting off relations with the Vatican?

Edited September 18, 2018 by Strange

[quiet]

That is the point. She intends to justify with a collection of strange facts, UFO, out of time objects, cicles and figures in the fields, strange clouds on Geneva (just over LHC), known human objects on Mars, etc. This is a collection of real notices without known explanations.

Edited September 18, 2018 by quiet

[quiet]

Sorry. The previous post has been writen with the cell phone and I do't know why appears big size and blue background.

[Ghideon]

Interesting topic, I'll try to add some thoughts and ideas*.

1: Intuitive vs counter-intuitive. It sounds like the corporations have access to physics that is easier to use that allows them to make quicker progress. Does that imply a very large scale and continuous cover-up or conspiracy? Corporations must stop universities or other "non-corporative" partes from discovering the intuitive physics. The corporations in the plot have advantage by controlling a immaterial asset, any leak of knowledge must be tracked down to stop further spread of the information. The knowledge of the intuitive physics seems easy to copy and reproduce. In other plots I've seen there's often one side, such as a corporation or villain, in control of an asset that is hard to reproduce or spread. Example: advanced weapon, fuel, nutrition etc.

2: What happens if the plot is approached from another angle by turning intuitive vs counter-intuitive around and combining that with the comment from @Strange? Something like:
Corporations discover that there are strange and unknown "counter-intuitive" aspects of nature such as relativity and quantum mechanics. To hide possible progress from the public the corporations start a program intended to strengthen the belief that physics is simple, intuitive and "almost complete". Newtons mechanics etc is good enough for many aspects of daily life and equipment such as LHC and other advanced stuff can be kept out of reach. False results are released, such as "LHC crew fails again to find evidence of ...".
The connection I try to make is that I guess quite a few potential readers are not scientists. If the "average reader" find relativity kind of counter-intuitive, and the general public in the book has access only to intuitive but limited part of the "corporate physics", does that help the story to appear more plausible?

 

*) Disclaimer, I've not checked why 1867 may be important and that may render some or all of the notes invalid. Also, I'm writing in the context of a possible plot where scientific correctness is not super important.

[quiet]

May the author forgive me, but I liked your proposal very much. It has swing, dynamics and humor.

Not with your style, but some of that I have proposed to the woman. Do you know what he said? He said this: What you and my husband talked about several times gave me inspiration to conceive the subject. I always believed that corporations paid a lot to the best minds to advance in the middle of an inextricable jungle of hyper-complicated theories. You two, who spend hours talking and writing math, have been surprised many times because you glimpsed the possibility of formulating, intuitively, subjects that are taught counterintuitively. And do not tell me you two think very highly of corporations. If you had never said that the counterintuitive parts of physics can be intuitively reformulated, I would never have been interested and nothing would have inspired me. It is very crazy, but very original, a novel based on my idea. There are too many books and too many movies that show corporations hiding advances that come from complicated theories. I want my novel not to be one more of that kind. Success or failure, but with originality.

[Strange]

Any comment on why 1867?

[quiet]

The husband and I are surprised by what happened after the publication of Maxwell's treatise on electrodynamics. For the public domain the following happened.

1. Campaign of de-prestige against electric displacement in a vacuum, precisely the phenomenon that Maxwell was forced to take into account to achieve a complete, coherent and consistent theory.

2. Reformulation of the electrodynamics doing everything possible to do without the electric displacement in the vacuum.

3. Goodbye quaternions and with them, goodbye intuitivity, especially in regard to the spatio-temporal nature of the electromagnetic field.

4. Hello vectors in spatial coordinates, which hide the spatio-temporal nature.

5. When it became evident that it was impossible to treat spatial vectors and time separately, with spatial vectors and time in a separate compartment, instead of reappearing quaternions, the Lorentz transformation and quadrivectors appeared. Scheme coherent, but highly counterintuitive.

6. When it became evident that the quadrivectors are insufficient to analyze the blackbody radiation, instead of reviewing the electrodynamic versions without the essential field, which is the electric displacement in the vacuum, to look for a possible fault there, the Scientific work was directed out of electrodynamics, until Planck re-interpreted Boltzmann's statistical thermodynamics and introduced a hypothesis that, presented outside the electrodynamic context, appears highly counterintuitive.

7. With gravitation the same thing happened. Instead of developing the original electrodynamics of Maxwell, with the electric displacement in the vacuum, which virtually functions as a charge density wave, the effort turned out of the electrodynamics until ending up schema of space-time molded by the mass, it is say, General Relativity, another highly counterintuitive presentation. If the charge density wave had been thoroughly studied, the gravity would have been formulated intuitively, with the charge density wave functioning as a link between the bodies that gravitate. This gives a completely general gravitational formulation, capable of taking into account all the circumstances and all the effects, capable of explaining situations where gravity is repulsive and where it is equal to zero.

8. The list goes on, but what is indicated is enough to understand that, on repeated occasions, the husband and I have hated the year 1867 as the date of the beginning of a great counterintuitive version of physics.

[Ghideon]

10 hours ago, quiet said:

There are too many books and too many movies that show corporations hiding advances that come from complicated theories. I want my novel not to be one more of that kind.

Cool! I’ll add some new ideas and try to stay within the requirements

First, some “facts”. These statements are part of a possibly long list, intended to be very short pop-sci/layman versions of mainstream science. In the story these “facts” are part of what the general public believes to be “true”. The statements does not necessarily apply to theories the corporations have available. They also may not be known at all times in the story, especially not at 1867.
1: Nothing can travel faster than speed of light in vacuum
2: Anti-gravity is not possible.
3: Some problems that are really hard to solve would be easy to solve with a quantum computer.

Now some discussion. I’m trying to address the topic from the point of view of the individuals in the story, not from what is scientific in real world.
For the general public, scientific theories works in two ways: 
1: It looks like any scientific progress means a more complex and counter intuitive-theory replaces and extends the old one. Examples: Newton --> einstein -> … ?
Bohr atom model ->“quantum stuff” -> … ?

2: It looks like the theories limits what is possible. Even if a new theory should make it possible to incorporate gravity in the standard model of particles it likely does not allow for FLT or anti gravity. The speed of light as a limit from Einstein’s model still applies. 

No let’s try to combine 1,2 and 3 into the story. Again, this is an attempt to make it look logical in the context of the story and has little to do with “real” science. The corporations discover is that behind the more and more complex models of the nature there seems to be something strange and unexpected lurking. Some problems that are extremely hard to solve using “traditional” math and theories are easy once a some really hard obstacle is passed. Example: It looks extremely hard to build a quantum computer compared to a pocket calculator, but once done the quantum computer solves “impossibly hard” problems.
The corporations discover that a similar analogy applies to other areas; once math is advanced past a certain point, quantum mechanics, relativity etc just logically follows and are treated intuitively with ease. Corporations also discover that “traditional limits” such as speed of light, can be broken under some circumstances. The corporations now starts a program to keep this discovery for themself. Any publicly released result is always new evidence that the old limits apply and/or that “new progress” means “more complex” and “harder”. They keep track of the very few individuals or groups that may be able to break “through the barrier” outside of the corporations. Normally they do not have to sneak around and use violent methods, instead they reason like:
-“Those guys at university XYZ are heading in a dangerous direction, they might actually be able to figure out the possibility of anti gravity.”
-“That’s not good, we better keep them occupied with the general gravity version. How about helping with founding a really large particle accelerator? It will take them a good 2-3 decades just to confirm the damn Higgs Boson.”
-“Good point, by that time we should have made some real progress on the wormhole theory.”
 

[Strange]

10 hours ago, quiet said:

The list goes on, but what is indicated is enough to understand that, on repeated occasions, the husband and I have hated the year 1867 as the date of the beginning of a great counterintuitive version of physics.

OK. Sorry I asked. 

[quiet]

First, sorry for the blue background and the  big size. I don't know why this occurs on my cell phone.

 

Hello Ghideon. I translated your post and I sent it to the woman. Good, if brief, twice good, she said. Ask if you give permission to place your post textually in the novel, like what Dr. Cortina says in an interview. In Spanish Cortina means Curtain. She believes that your text is ideal to show how corporations manipulate the public mentality.

Edited September 19, 2018 by quiet

[Ghideon]

Thanks for the feedback Quiet! 

6 hours ago, quiet said:

Ask if you give permission to place your post textually in the novel

That is OK with me. Just remember to PM me when the novel is released, I'll try to get hold of a copy

 

[quiet]

4 hours ago, Ghideon said:

Just remember to PM

 

Agree. Be patient, because people of literature are never happy with what they write and remake the novel a dozen times before showing it.