Comment by JSchneider321
18 days ago
I missed the part where Gough claimed to be a mathematician.
How do you propose we get to a mathematical model or testable simulation without considering the theory first? Must all theories be mathematically complete before they're presented to the world?
I find it strange that an account created 21 hours ago and which has seemingly only commented on this post is so adamantly defending the author and their work. It's almost like someone created a second account to help shush naysayers?
I follow Julian on substack and found out about this discussion from there. I read this post months ago and have been itching to discuss it with people since, so I jumped at this chance. I didn't have an account yet, so I had to make one to comment. I do think it's strange that adamant defense draws suspicion, but adamant criticism does not.
I have no idea if this theory (or fun idea or whatever people want to derisively call it) is correct, but it's wild how unwilling people are to even consider alternative ideas when there are unquestionably issues with the current prevailing theory.
I've read a great deal of Julian's substack, watched a few interviews, and I find him to be deeply thoughtful and quite entertaining, and I'll admit I do find it frustrating to see people dismiss or berate him as just a crazy idea guy without having a good sense of how much has actually gone into this. It's seriously the same thing that happened to Smolin when Susskind brought his weak arguments against CNS and the theory just gathered dust.
Anyway, feel free to write me off as a bot, alt, or some rabid idiot fanboy. As a cosmology enthusiast (but certainly not a scientist by any definition) I was hoping for a discussion of the ideas in the post, but this has been enlightening in other ways, which is not without value.
Without math, a physical theory is not a theory, it's just a story, a speculative hypothesis at best.
Okay, let's call it a speculative hypothesis. What do you think of it? Or each part separately, if you prefer. Could it be something worth pursuing to see if the math works out?
I think if someone thinks it’s interesting they can throw money at it to hire physicists to explore the idea properly. Everyone has a substack. I’m not even saying that there needs to be a peer reviewed article. But if you could build a simulation that could be used to test the hypothesis and throw that on GitHub then others could play around with the ideas. Currently that’s not possible but seems like an obvious next step when trying to convince others of the idea. It would also allow you to explore the failure modes in the theory because that’s something that’s hard to do when you are constructing thought experiments of your pet theory. Because that’s all this really is, there’s no application [1] to cosmology except our understanding of large scale evolution of the universe. So it’s just bragging rights that others accept your explanation.
1. I suppose there could be some kind of high concept sci-fi rigmarole that could be arrived at via cosmology or perhaps it could inform exotic material construction in particle accelerators or something like that. I suppose by “application” I mean something more down to earth like building a new kind of computer, solving climate change, producing a fusion reactor, etc.
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