My “You Can Solve Nature” video series has a target audience of every adult that thinks it may be possible that physicists missed an opportunity to solve nature during the classical to quantum transition which took place between 1890 to 1930. This era was characterized by a major sea change. Tsunami level. There is tremendous chaos during a tsunami and things are moving so fast that there is no time to be careful and checking twice once it starts. It is a matter of survival.
It’s the same in academia or industry. At times of rapid ontological change, i.e., epicycle falsified, CRISPR, and Generative Ai w/LLMs, it is a matter of professional survival to quickly get on board with the new paradigm. Few deep questions are asked during the shift. In 1927 at Solvay, the luminaries in the field decreed to get on board with general relativity and quantum mechanics and “shut up and calculate.”
For me, it is surprising that after ~50 years of crisis in particle physics and cosmology, no scientists successfully slammed on the brakes and said “Hold up! We need to explore the possibility that there were two ontological paths in the swampland and physics took the one less traveled by and encountered quicksand and crocodiles. Where might such an ontological branch be found?” Well clearly it must be before general relativity (1910’s) and quantum mechanics (1920’s) because those are still not unified. There you find it. One of the key pillars in the classical to quantum transition is falsification of a single simple geometrical point charge model. How many point charge systems can you imagine? Oops.
The physics and cosmology introspection hasn’t yet happened, so adherents appear to be entrenched in their swampland ontology. They make agonizingly slow (and expensive: see recent P5 report!) progress but continue to have major unsolved understandings about where to explore in the swamp to find terra firma.
Hence, this series is for everyone else. In the new ontology, everyone can understand how nature works to some extent. Even toddlers. It is far less complex to understand the foundation of nature than it is to learn to speak, read, or write a language. Nature is primitive compared to state-of-the-art artificial intelligence. The assemblies of point charges that define nature are at the level of LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, K’NEX, erector sets, and TINKERTOYS.
Episode 4 has the big reveal!!! A must watch blockbuster!
J Mark Morris : Lynn : Massachusetts
Neoclassical 