Greg Laden's Blog

".... so, does this mean Amanda is actually my first wife and not my third wife?"

Must you be so linear?

Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | February 2, 2009 8:52 PM

It pretty much lost me around fifth dimension = probability, and I'm not even sure how it got there. I think I may have gotten the part about the seventh dimension, but even then I think the video handwaved the sixth.

Long story short, I think I see how string theory encompasses all possible multiverses, but it's still way too meta for me to get my head around.

Posted by: Brian X | February 3, 2009 1:03 AM

I understood the tenth as having explored all possible outcomes for all possible dimensions for all possible times.

String theory for me has always seemed to be something like:
a) Put your keys on the table.
b) Search every other possible location to be sure that your keys haven't shown up in some other place.
c) Search all possible places at exactly the same time.
d) Be somewhat impressed that the keys are on the table and appear to have remained there throughout the search.
e) Note that the keys are not exactly the same keys that you placed on the table.
f) Explore all possible changes that have or could have occurred.
g) Note that you will need to explore the exploration for possible unexplored explorables.

So we have all married each and every other [rock, plant, animal, whatever] at some time and some place. Well, if that be true, the exploration of it seems rather anti-climatic to me. However, it also is, sort of, an exploration of the christian god-idea in all its glory.

Here's the thing that gets me giggling for as long as I care to think about it. See this christian god thing had every option available to it (that is all ten dimensions, as it were). So it sets up the option where Dub Bush is elected to be the stupidest leader of all time with the full endorsement of its christians. Ha ha, ha haha ha! Also, the christian god-idea built humans in its own image. Wow! So the thing could have been anything and it choose to make itself look like a human. Sure the god-idea thing could have made a worse choice but, come on, out of any and all possible choices?

OK, one more then I'll stop (for now). This christian god-idea thing knows all and to it all is known (all ten dimensions, as it were). So it decides to set up a known test of some images that it made of itself. Well, doesn't that seem exciting! Rather like spending forever writing:
01, 10, 01, 10, 01, 10, 01... OK, Ok, one more. So I've heard often from christians after they die they will know everything just like their god-idea. So more than one of them has expressed to me that, after they die, they envision themselves walking around heaven with the god-idea thing just having general discussions about the current affairs of heaven and such. So here's this god-thing walking around its chosen burrow in the sky with its image, knowing exactly everything in advance (Sure it's simplistic but, it couldn't be significantly different, for all is known):

God-idea Thing - "Come on say it, I know you'll say it."
Image-idea Thing - "10, 01."
God-idea Thing - "See I knew you wouldn't say 01 01 10."
Image-idea Thing - "Yeah, yeah! OK you go first this time."
And on it goes. Forever!

Posted by: Notagod | February 3, 2009 2:40 AM

(I was referring to the video. At least I think so, Notagod.)

Posted by: IvanQ | February 3, 2009 10:47 AM

This is nonsense. It is not misleading analogy or a lie to children. It is utterly unrelated to anything in modern physics. It is more than even that - this is colorless-green-ideas-sleep-furiously style gibberish.

Posted by: D | February 4, 2009 1:25 PM

Fair point. That was more rant than anything else. Let me try now. Frankly, there is so much wrongness once they get past dimension three (with a semi-decent assessment of time) it is hard to know where to begin.

The biggest single difference between this and what the string theorists talk about (I'm not one myself) is that their 9+1 or 10+1 or whatever dimensions are all the usual kind of spatial dimensions, like the three we see, it's just they tend to be curled up very small in intricate geometries - there is no such thing as "dimension five" giving the probabilistic branchings of quantum mechanics or "dimension seven" providing all sets of initial conditions or "dimension nine" yielding all possible universes. Not only does that not correspond to physics, I don't know what it means, or what it could mean.

As for how they allegedly derive that string theory works with ten dimensions, here's a wikipedia article about canceling anomalies that has something to do with it - I don't understand the page either (and I'm a physicist) but I hope it is clear that it doesn't seem anything like what's on this video. There's a reason for that - the two have nothing to do with each other. These guys might as well be talking about quantum financial management for all the sense they make.

Here's an article from google about dimensions in string theory...I didn't read it fully but it seemed vastly superior, and is on a reasonably legitimate website. If you find this stuff interesting, Brian Greene (among others) has some well-regarded books on the subject.

Posted by: D | February 4, 2009 2:03 PM

It seems to me that imprecise thinking here has confused the conventional notion of temporal-spatial dimension with degrees-of-freedom of some causal process. In "dimension 5" there is a shift to the pseudo-scientific idea of different possible (essentially social) outcomes, which of course necessitates some sort of ability to make choices on the part of living organisms, and in the end brings us to undecidable philosophical musings.

There are much easier ways to work with 10 or higher dimensions. Namely imagine a rods-and-joints type of mechanical system, say like a human arm. At each juncture the system has certain possible motions, and all of these together form a "configuration space" that can be manipulated mathematically as a higher dimensional (vector) space.

I can't say much about the string theoretic interpretations of space, but I believe that the extra dimensions are thought similarly to traditional physical space, in which higher dimensional particles (strings) can vibrate and produce phenomena apparent to our senses.

Cute video, nice production, but that is not how people should be thinking about higher dimensions if they want to apply their ideas scientifically.

Posted by: Thinker | May 5, 2009 4:48 AM