#33. Emotions [evolutionary psychology, genetics, neuroscience]

EP   NE   GE

Red, theory; black, fact

A Genetics Theory 

All sexually reproducing species may have a long-range guidance system that that could be called proxy natural selection, or preferably, post-zygotic gamete selection (PGS). This is basically a fast form of evolution in which particular body cells, the gametes, are the units of selection, not individuals. Selection is conjectured to happen post-zygotically (i.e., sometime after the beginning of development, or even in adulthood) but is retroactive to the egg and sperm that came together to create the individual. 

Each gamete is potentially unique because of the crossing-over genetic rearrangements that happen during its maturation. This theory explains the biological purpose of this further layer of uniqueness beyond that due to the sexual mixing of chromosomes, which would otherwise appear to be redundant.

Emotions Represent Fitness 

Our emotions are conjectured to be programmed by species-replacement group selection and to serve as proxies for increases and decreases in the fitness of our entire species.

The Corresponding Mechanistic Theory 

A further correlate of an emotion beyond the cognitive and autonomic-nervous-system components would be the neurohumoral component, expressed as chemical releasing and inhibiting factors that enter the general circulation via the portal vessels of the hypothalamus, blood vessels which are conventionally described as affecting only the anterior pituitary gland. These factors may reach the stem-like cells that mature into egg and sperm, where they set reversible epigenetic controls on the level of crossing-over that will occur during differentiation. 

Large amounts of crossing-over are viewed as retroactively penalizing the gametes leading to the individual by obfuscating or overwriting with noise specifically the genetic uniqueness of said original gametes. In contrast, low levels of further crossing-over reward the original gametes with high penetrance into the next generation. 

Here we have all the essential ingredients of classical natural selection, and all the potential, in a process that solves problems on an historical timescale.

The Limited Scope of Crossing-over

Crossing-over happens only between homologous chromosomes, which are the paternal and maternal copies of the same chromosome. Human cells have 46 chromosomes because they have 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes. 

The homologous-chromosome-specificity of crossing-over suggests that the grand optimization problem that is human evolution has been broken down into 23 smaller sub-problems for the needs of the PGS process, each of which can be solved independently, without interactions with any of the other 22, and which involves a 23-fold reduction in the number of variables that must be simultaneously optimized. 

In computing, this problem-fragmentation strategy greatly increases the speed of optimization. I conjecture that it is one of the features that makes PGS faster than classical natural selection.

Do Chromosome-specific Signaling Pathways Exist?

However, we now need 23 independent neurohumoral factors descending in the bloodstream from brain to testis or (fetal) ovary, each capable of setting the crossing-over propensity of one specific pair of homologous chromosomes. Each one will require its own specific receptor on the surface of the target oogonia or spermatogonia. In the literature, I already find a strange diversity of cell-surface receptors on the spermatogonia. I predict that the number of such receptors known to science will increase to at least 23. None of this is Lamarkism, because nervous-system control would be over the standard deviation of traits, not their averages.

Naively, this theory also appears to require 23 second messengers to transfer the signals from cell surface to nucleus, which sounds excessive. Perhaps the second messengers form a combinatorial code, which would reduce the number required by humans to log₂ (23) = 4.52, or 5 in round numbers. This is much better. Five second-messenger systems are known, these being based on: cyclic AMP, inositol triphosphate, cyclic GMP, arachidonic acid, and small GTPases (e.g., ras). The AND-element that would be required for decoding could be implemented straightforwardly as a linear sequence of transcription-factor binding sites along the DNA strand. However, many mammalian species have many more than the 32 chromosome pairs needed to saturate a 5-bit address space. If we expand the above list of second messengers with the addition of the calcium/calmodulin complex, the address space expands to 64 pairs of homologous chromosomes, for a total ploidy of 128. This seems sufficient to accommodate all the mammals. Thus, a combinatorial second-messenger code representable as a five- or six-bit binary integer in most organisms would control the deposition of the epigenetic marks controlling crossing-over propensity.

It Gets Bigger

If the above code works for transcription as well as epigenetic modification, then applying whatever stimuli it takes to produce a definite combinatorial second-messenger state inside the cell will activate one specific chromosome for transcription, so that the progeny of the affected cell will develop into whatever that chromosome specifies, be it an organ, a system, or something else. And there you may have the long-sought key to programming stem cells. You're welcome.

The requirement that the evolution of each chromosome contribute independently to the total increase in fitness suggests that a chromosome specifies a system, like the nervous system or the digestive system. We seem to have only 11 systems, not 23, but more may be defined in the future.

Illustration credit: By Edmund Beecher Wilson - Figure 2 of: Wilson, Edmund B. (1900) The cell in Development and Inheritance (2nd ed.), Category:New York: The Macmillan Company, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3155599

#32. Big-electron Theory [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact

The Particle Model is an Approximation 

Some of the paradoxes and weirdness of quantum mechanics can be dispelled if we assume that any particle that can be diffracted isn't really there: we are only looking at the center of spherical symmetry of a much larger, possibly cosmologically large, wave function. Furthermore, this center of symmetry is only an abstraction, like the north pole of the Earth. Like the fields that we impute to them, quantum particles would have a wave function amplitude that decreases asymptotically to zero with distance from the centre, and thus would have no well-defined outer boundary: particles or wave functions would be "expansive."

Why Does the Illusion Hold?

Elementary particles seem submicroscopic in size because the wavelength of the corresponding wave functions is often submicroscopic, which imposes a requirement for the centers of symmetry of two such "particles" to coincide with very great precision before an interaction can be observed. This would be the case if the default interaction were characterized by destructive interference almost everywhere, which only switches over into constructive interference when the centers nearly coincide. An assumption needed for further development of this theory is that interaction is contingent on the development of expansive constructive interference. 

Why the Illusion Usually Holds In the Presence of Acceleration 

The common presence of  accelerations in our universe combined with a finite speed of light might suggest that expansive wave functions would quickly fill up with incoherence, destroying their usefulness as explanatory causes. However, if there are no non-expansive elementary particles, we just have expansive interacting with expansive to produce every acceleration. Once you get entirely away from the tiny-electron idea, it is not at all clear that any incoherence could ever develop. Such may well occur to a limited extent under some conditions, however. Relativity theory may be based on such limited incoherences.

Specific Experiments 

Two baffling kinds of experiment seem amenable to the big-electron treatment: diffraction of "particles" of matter like electrons, and entanglement experiments.

Electrons fired in a vacuum at a pair of closely-spaced slits, with a photographic plate situated on the other side of the slits, will produce a diffraction pattern on the developed plate consisting of alternating exposed and unexposed bands. These are interpreted as locations of constructive and destructive interference between "matter waves" emanating from the two slits under the stimulation of the electron beam. If the intensity of the beam is lowered to the point where only one electron is "in the chamber" at a time, thereby eliminating inter-electron interactions inside the chamber, the diffraction pattern develops just as before. It merely takes longer. All this could happen only if each electron goes through both slits at once. This is weird if we try to use the traditional tiny-electron picture, but much easier to visualize using the big-electron picture.

Entanglement of two particles that persists over distances measured in kilometers is also easier to understand if we remember that the experimental apparatus is itself made up of expansive wave functions and is therefore mostly overlapped with the two particles being studied throughout the experiment.

Conclusion 

If all this is true, then we live in a vast web of inter-validating illusions called the particle model.

#31. Climate Change [engineering]

EN

Red, theory; black, fact

Dusty miller, Senecio cineraria, annual, prefers full sunlight.

Bury Charcoal to Mitigate Climate Change 

Reading "Just Cool It!" by Suzuki and Hanington introduced me to the ancient terra preta agricultural technology, given as a possible solution, or part of the solution, to the global warming problem. The term is apparently Portuguese for "black earth" and the technology involves enriching the soil by ploughing it full of charcoal. Suzuki and Hanington make the point that this should sequester a lot of carbon in the soil, thereby taking it out of the atmosphere. Charcoal is nearly pure carbon. Moreover, charcoal, being indigestible to decay organisms, should stay in the soil for a very long time. The logical raw material for making the charcoal would be either wood from clearing the land for agriculture, or crop residues, the parts of the crop plant that people cannot eat.

Making Charcoal at Scale

In modern pyrolysis plants, not only is charcoal produced, but also flammable off-gasses, which could be used for fuel directly in some future scenario, or catalytically reformed to a liquid fuel for running the tractors and combines. In gaseous form, the fuel could run a steam turbine to produce electricity to supplement that from wind farms, hydro, tidal, geothermal, thorium-nuclear, and photovoltaics.

However, the off-gasses are also used to fuel the pyrolysis plant itself. Whether any would be left over for other uses would depend on careful plant design for energy efficiency and on avoiding fuelled drying operations. Thus, the feedstock should be sun-dried.

Competing Schemes 

Schemes like second-generation power ethanol are touted as carbon-neutral, but in terra preta with these additions, we have one that is actually carbon-negative.

Unintended Consequences 

However, the soil ends up black. No other color is as efficient at converting sunlight into heat, which we don't need more of at this point. This seems to be a problem with the terra preta solution. (The ideal color for avoiding heat production would be white.)

Mitigation

The use of any terrestrial artificial mirror membrane to pull the average reflectivity of the earth back up after terra preta implementation has the drawback that the membrane will get dirty rapidly from dust, pollen, and plant parts, thereby reducing its efficiency. (Commercial photovoltaics have the same problem.) Orbiting space mirrors have also been proposed as the solution to global warming but maintenance would be an issue there also; even in space, there are high-velocity particles that can cause wear and tear over time. 

However, a living means of light reflection, like a low understory of predominantly white plants (e.g., lamb’s ear, dusty miller, or bugleweed), would renew itself, gratis, each year. Plants on land have always had the problem of keeping their leaves clean and by now natural solutions will have evolved (Photovoltaics manufacturers, take note).

An alternative mitigation would be to set aside a portion of the crop residues with which to cover the soil for improved light reflectivity. If these residues are left on the field over the winter, they might become snow-bleached in the spring when the snow melts, which releases the bleaching agent ozone. This would further improve the reflectivity of the fields.

Bugleweed, Ajuga reptans, “Princess Leia” cultivar, perennial, chokes out weeds, prefers shade.

#30. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part II [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact

Continuing from the previous post, leptons may arise as electromagnetic wave functions originating in p2 that are transported into our p3 universe/condensate by ordinary diffusion and convection. Wave functions in p2 that are already leptons become our baryons when they are transported in. The only kind of wave functions that are "native" to a given frame of reference are electromagnetic (photonic) in that frame of reference. If they subsequently propagate towards increasing p (inwards) they gain mass as matter; if they propagate towards decreasing p (outwards), they first lose mass as matter until they are photonic (i.e., massless) and then gain mass as antimatter.

To produce stable leptons from in-migrating photons, the first condensates, the p2s, would have had to be rotating simultaneously about three mutually perpendicular axes. If this is impossible for p3 physics, we have to appeal to the possibility of a different physics in p1 for any of these ideas to make sense.

A "universe" is something like an artist's canvas with a painting in progress on it. First, nature makes the blank canvas, and then, in a second stage, puts the information content on it. Consider the moon. It formed out of orbiting molten spray from the collision of two similarly-sized planetesimals. In the molten state, its self-gravity could easily round it up into a perfect sphere which could have solidified with a mostly smooth surface. Call this smooth surface the "canvas." Subsequently, the very same force of gravity would have brought down meteors to cover the surface in an elaborate pattern of craters. Call this the "painting." 

Now consider the neutronium core of a neutron star, viewed as a p4, or small universe. The tremendous energy release of the catastrophic gravitational collapse in which it forms homogenizes all the matter into pure neutrons, thought to be a superfluid. This creates the "canvas." Subsequently, matter and energy from our p3 migrate into the superfluid, producing a "painting" of leptons (our photons), baryons (our leptons), and "uberbaryons" (our baryons). Indeed, the neutron-star core is actually thought to be not pure neutronium, but neutronium containing a sprinkling of free protons and electrons (as seen in p3, of course).

#29. The Russian-dolls--multiverse Part I [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact

A Matryoshka

The space we live in may have an absolute frame of reference, as Newton taught, and which Einstein taught against. This frame of reference may be a condensate, like the water a fish swims in.

The divide-and-conquer strategy that has served science so well thus far can continue with the conceptual disassembly of this space into its constituent particles. The question arises if these particles are situated in yet another space, older and larger than ours, or if we go direct to spacelessness, where entities have to be treated like Platonic forms. In the former case, does that older, larger space in turn comes apart into particles situated in a still older and larger, etc, etc, ad infinitum?

Infinities are the death of theories. Nevertheless, let us continue with the Russian-dolls idea, merely assuming that the nesting sequence is not infinite and will not be infinite until the entire multi verse is infinitely old, because the "dolls" form one by one, by ordinary gravitational collapse, from the outside in.

Wave functions would be the basic building blocks, following quantum mechanics. In the outermost space, previously called #, the wave crests always move at exactly the speed of light.

This speed is not necessarily our speed of light, c, but more likely some vastly greater value.

The space-forming particles of # are themselves aggregates with enough internal entropy to represent integers and enough secondary valences to form links to a set of nearest neighbors to produce a network that is a space. This space acts like a cellular automaton, with signals passing over the links to change the values of the stored integers in some orderly way. The wave functions are the stereotyped, stable figures that spontaneously develop in the automaton out of the initial noise mass left over from catastrophic gravitational collapse. 

The dimensionality of a space would increase steadily over time, because the number of links emanating from each node in the underlying network increases slowly but surely. Macroscopically, this dimensionality increase could look something like protein folding. 

Let us label the Russian-dolls universes from the outside in, in the sequence 1, 2, 3,...etc, and call this number the "pupacity" of a given frame of reference. (From the Latin "pupa," meaning "doll.") Let us further shorten "pupacity" to "p" for symbol-compounding purposes. Thus, the consecutively labelled spaces can be referred to as p1 (formerly "#"), p2, p3,... etc.

pn can exhibit global motions ("n" is some arbitrary pupacity), such as rotation, in the frame of reference of p(n-1): a whole universe rotating as a rigid unit. Probably, it can drift and vibrate as well.

Global motions must be subtracted from the true, outer, speed-of-light speed of the wave crest to produce its apparent speed and direction when seen from within pn. Thus, the universe's love of spinning and orbiting systems of all sizes is explained: a spinning, global-motion vector is being subtracted from the non-spinning, outermost one. As the pupacity of the frame of reference increases, more and more of these global vectors are being subtracted, causing the residual apparent motion to get progressively smaller. We would assume under current physics that the wave functions are acquiring more and more mass, to make them go slower and slower, but mass is just a fiction in this scenario. However, the reliance of current physics on the mass construct is an opportunity to determine the pupacity of planet Earth: it is three.

Three, because physics describes three broad categories of particle mass: the photon, leptons, and baryons. The photon would be native to p1, leptons, such as electrons and positrons, would be native to p2, and baryons, such as protons and neutrons, would be native to p3, our own sub-world. 

The positron atom would be a standing-wave pattern made up of oppositely rotating wave functions, an electron and a positron, both native to p2. A neutron would be exactly the same thing, but native to p3. 

#28. My Second Theory of Everything [physics]

PH

Red, theory; black, fact

How does wavelike, low-frequency light becomes particle-like, high-frequency light as frequency is smoothly increased? Waves are continuous, whereas particles are discontinuous; how, then, does the breakup occur?

You have to put the source in the picture. Recoil of the source atom sends the wave function off in a specific direction, but the wave function is known to expand (about its center of symmetry?) as it goes. Presumably, it is the vector sum of these two motions that must equal the speed of light; either one is presumably free to take on some lower speed, say, that of a pitched softball. I conjecture that as frequency increases, the particle-like drift of the center progressively dominates the mixture at the expense of the local, wave-like expansion of the wave function about its center. This is how I see waves morphing into particles as the frequency increases. 

• There is an absolute frame-of-reference, #.
• All motions seen in this frame of reference will be observed to occur at the speed of light (c); and only this frame of reference has this property.
• All speeds lower than c are illusions caused by the motion of the observer's frame of reference.
• That which moves always at c is not a wave function, but a phase marker of some sort within it, such as a zero crossing or a wave crest.
• The local wave function evolution relative to its center of symmetry combined with the drift of that center relative to # always travels at c relative to #.
• If local evolution is an expansion along all wave function radii, you have light; if it is a rotation about the center of symmetry (i.e., motion perpendicular to radii), you have matter.
• Light wave functions will be like nested spherical shells, whereas matter wave functions will have a lobar, angle-dependent structure like a p-, d-, or f-orbital in theoretical chemistry. The lobes are essential to provide a contrast pattern that could, in principle, be observed to spin.
• The presence of one axis of rotation produces the neutrino; two simultaneous axes of rotation produce the mesons; three produce the remaining stable particles, e, p, and n. If the three rotational rates are distinguishable, the resulting structure has a handedness.
• The matter/antimatter dichotomy arises from this handedness, when combined with a law of conservation of spin that would result from space initially being symmetrical. 
• The mesons should have an ability in 3-space to flip over into their corresponding antiparticles.

#27. The Origin of Consciousness [neuroscience]

NE

Red, theory; black, fact

We begin life conscious only of our own emotions. Then the process of classical conditioning, first studied in animals, brings more and more of our environment into the circle of our consciousness, causing the contents of consciousness to become enriched in spatial and temporal detail. Thus, you are now able to be conscious of these words of mine on the screen. However, each stroke of each letter of each word of mine that now reaches your consciousness does so because, subjectively, it is "made of" pure emotion, and that emotion is yours.

Some analogies come to mind. Emotion as the molten tin that the typesetter pours into the mold, the casting process being classical conditioning and the copy the environmental data reported by our sense organs. Emotion as the area on one side of a fractal line and sensory data the area on the other side. Emotion as an intricately ramifying tree-like structure by which sensory details can send excitation down to the hypothalamus at the root and thus enter consciousness.

The status of "in consciousness" can in principle affect the cerebral cortex via the projections to cortex from the histaminergic tuberomamillary nucleus of the hypothalamus. Histamine is known to have an alerting effect on cortex, but to call it "alerting" may be to grossly undersell its significance. It may carry a consolidation signal  for declarative, episodic, and flash memory. Not for a second do I suppose all of that to be packed into the hippocampus, rather than being located in the only logical place for it: the vast expanse of the human cerebral cortex.