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Friday, April 16, 2021

Muon g-Value Anomaly

Muon g-Value and Muonium Anolmalies

Quantum spin magnetism is really one of the most enduring quantum mysteries and yet it is still not very well explained. And yet, spin is at the root of both the anomalous g-value as well as the fine-structure constant of spin magnetism. All quantum particles have spin magnetism as well as charge and classically, that magnetism is due to the classical spin of a sphere of surface charge. However, the quantum definition of spin is much more mysterious and luxurious.

A classical particle as a charged sphere does not have any magnetism unless it is moving...or spinning. However, a classical spinning particle does not also oscillate in spin amplitude nor show any quantization of spin. The magnitude of quantum spin magnetism is also twice that of a spinning classical sphere of equivalent charge… thus the luxurious quantum mystery of spin. Like the fine-structure constant, the g-value, g = 2, has a long quantum history and the g-value is also twice the classical magnetism due to the velocity of the spinning classical sphere surface, which turns out to be the speed of light divided by the fine-structure constant, c/𝛼.

Well, quantum electrodynamics, QED, precisely predicts the g-value = 2 (1 + 𝛼 / (2𝜋) +...) as a perturbation series and so the anomalous g-value prediction was and still is the most significant validation of QED and therefore of the standard model of nuclear physics as well. Schwinger in 1948 and Feynman in 1950 independently showed that the anomalous electron magnetic spin was due to the self energy of the electron magnetism. The electric field of the electron oscillates and that electric field change generates the spin magnetic field and both of those fields affect themselves as well. Gravity has no self-energy correction since gravity is a distortion of space and time and really not a field. Quantum electrodynamics precisely predicts the g-value as a perturbation series of a progression of Feynman diagrams, whose integrals predict the g-value to an arbitrary precision.


2.00233184122(82), muon measured g-value
2.00233183620(86), muon g-value by QED calc

2.00231930436256(35), electron g-value by QED calc
2.0023193043617(15), electron measured g-value

The muon is a second generation lepton that is much heavier than the electron but as a quantum particle, its wavefunction should still have the analogous QED self-energy correction given the mass difference with the electron. So the small difference between the muon measured and calculated g-values represents a great challenge to QED and the standard model.

One of the possible reasons for a difference is that the muon has a quite short lifetime of 2.2 microseconds. However, the lifetime of a particle should not affect the standard model QED calculation of the muon g-value...unless of course, this is the missing link for grand unification between charge and gravity forces.

A similar discrepancy showed up with precision measurement of muon hydrogen, the short-lived atom formed from the muon bonded to a proton. Despite it increased mass, spectrum of muon hydrogen should correspond to the predictions of quantum mechanics and yet there is a significant difference between the prediction of quantum mechanics and the measurement. The interpretations vary from the proton diameter was incorrect or one should use quaternion calculations. Neither of these explanations depends on the muon lifetime.

 The universe is a pulse of matter in the many billions years of cosmic time that I call the Grand Wavefunction. The Grand Wavefunction of quantum gravity is not yet unified with the quantum wavefunction of muon lifetime 2.2 microsecond pulse. The ratio of the muon and universe pulse lifetimes is 2.6e-24 and the dimensions are atomic/cosmic seconds, which is a fundamental axiom of the matter-action universe. The ratio of muon mass 1.88e-28 kg and 2.2e-6 s lifetime is its decay rate as 8.54e-23 kg/s. The universal decay constant, mdot = 1.12e-10 kg/s, is what drives all force and for muon weak force decay to an energetic electron and two neutrinos as


The muon g-factor difference is 2.51e-9 and this implies that the muon decay rate is 7.06e-28 kg/s as 1.12e-10 x (2.51e-9)2, which means that the muon decay mass is 1.55e-33 kg given its 2.2e-6 s lifetime. This means that 99.93% of the muon decay ends up as an energetic electron mass and only 0.17% as neutrino mass.

Unlike a classical spinning sphere, quantum spin is also oscillating with a frequency that is in phase with its spin rotation. The oscillation of quantum spin amplitude has many very important outcomes. For example, the rotation of quantum spin by 360° or 2p radians does not result in the same quantum spin and it actually takes a rotation of 720° or 4p radians to result in the same quantum spin. The 4p rotational symmetry of quantum spin is a direct result of quantum oscillation of the spin wavefunction.

Muonic Hydrogen Spectrum

The fine-structure constant is a measure of the coupling of spin magnetism to the orbital magnetism of electron orbital motion. The coupling of spin and orbital magnetism results in spectral lines that Michelson and Morely first measured as the fine-structure constant in 1885. Nevertheless, it still took some 55 years for Sommerfeld to explain the fine structure quantum nature in 1940, some 16 years after the Schrödinger equation in 1924. 

The spectrum of muonic hydrogen shows an anomalous shift from the spectrum of electron hydrogen. Muonic hydrogen is a muon in orbit around a proton instead of an electron in orbit around a proton, which is normal hydrogen. The muon charge is the same as the electron and so binds to a proton in a very predictable way, but the muon mass is 207 times that of hydrogen and yet the muon decays very quickly with a lifetime of just 2.2 microseconds. Even with such a short lifetime, though, the quantum prediction is exact for muonic hydrogen, the quantum calculation with the same proton radius and other constants should give the same spectrum for both electron as well as muonic hydrogen. Instead, muonic hydrogen spectrum is blue shifted from that of electron hydrogen as the figure shows.

There are many fundamental constants that are the basis for this calculation and one interpretation of muonic hydrogen spectra is that the proton radius is much different for muonic hydrogen as the figure shows. There are other measurements for the proton radius such as the two shown in the figure, but neither of them agrees with the muonic hydrogen calculation. Each of the electron and muonic hydrogen spectroscopy results are valid by mainstream science and are determined within mutually exclusive uncertainties. There is therefore not a single proton radius and neither explanation is more valid than the other.

Thus, there is a dilemma. What is the real proton radius...0.8758 or 0.84087 fm? Both measurements of electron hydrogen and muonic hydrogen appear to have sufficient precision to preclude each other.

One alternative explanation is in the universal decay of aether, which means energy states also depend on their lifetimes. In aethertime, incorporation of the muon lifetime shifts the spectrum of the muonic hydrogen to now agree with that of atomic hydrogen. The shift is

which the figure above shows as 0.075 THz, which now agrees with the observed 0.072 THz and well within the precision of that measurement.

The observed 0.072 THz spectral shift of 49.885 THz is equivalent to a matter decay of 0.15% and so, once again, 99.95% of the muon decay of only 0.15% of its total mass whereas the g-value difference was 0.17% of muon mass decay.

While in mainstream science, the lifetime of a muon state does not affect its spectrum, in aethertime, the lifetime of muon does indeed affect its spectrum very slightly.

The proton diameter is a fundamental constant that describes a very slight shift in the energy of two states of hydrogen. An S state shows non-zero electron density at the proton in hydrogen and therefore shifts in energy while a P state has a near zero electron density at the proton. This energy shift defines the radius of the proton.

If the proton radius is truly fundamental, S and P states of hydrogen should show the same kind of shifts for hydrogen that has the muon instead of the electron. A very interesting experiment measures the diameter of the proton by means of the spectroscopy of the muon form of hydrogen and finds a much different shift in the frequency of muon hydrogen lines due to the finite diameter of the proton. The electron in the hydrogen S ground state has a certain probability of being at the proton surface but not inside the proton diameter and so the S state frequency shifts very slightly as a result. The electron in a P excited state on the other hand has no probability for being at the proton center and a very low probability of being at the proton surface as well.


Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Quantum Intuition is Beyond Order and Beyond Chaos

 
There are many choices that we attribute to intuition or gut feel or just to how we feel at the time and since we live in a quantum universe, this is fundamentally quantum intuition. Quantum intuition lies beyond the social inhibitions and conformity of religion and government and quantum intuition is also beyond the chaos of individual free choice. In between order and chaos, neural action potentials of quantum intuition emerge from the subconscious and primitive brain even though we are never really quite sure of the superposition precursors of quantum intuition. Indeed, there are many feeling outcomes that we have whose feeling precursors are never very clear.


Free choice is then a result of quantum intuition and is therefore beyond the order of social inhibition and also beyond the chaos of individual free choice. Beyond order and beyond chaos we find our way from the superposition of quantum intuition and rely on the grand narratives of Western Civilization as well as other people for our morals and ethics.


Monday, March 29, 2021

Easter Full Moon of Rebirth and Resurrection

The Easter full moon sets the stage for the rebirth and resurrection of Spring from the doldrums of Winter. Here is the Easter full moon and sunrise for 2021mar29...one day after the actual full moon, which was cloudy. Easter Sunday always follows the full moon after the vernal equinox. Although the Earth spin sets the day and the Earth-Sun spin sets the year, the Earth-Moon spin oscillates over an eight year cycle and so Easter changes every year with an eight year oscillation.

The oscillations of matter and action determine how things bond to each other in the universe. Oscillations bind electrons and protons into atoms, bind atoms into molecules, molecules into bodies, and bodies to other bodies. In fact, it is neural oscillations that bind people into factions as social bonds. Thus it is not surprising that the Earth-Moon oscillation is part of the social bond of civilization, Easter.

We get our sense of time from a combination of the day of Earth spin, the year of Earth-Sun spin, and month and week of Earth-Moon spin. While the day and year are now part of the oscillating spin of the Science's atomic clock, the Earth-Moon spin period oscillates 99 times over 8 years. In fact, the latest full moon on Sunday 2020mar28 is the 29th full moon of the latest 99 moon cycle and so we are in the third year of the 8 solar year cycle of 99 moons. The figure shows this full moon oscillation versus the fractional solLunar year. Easter is the Sunday that follows the first full moon of the vernal equinox and this year occurred at 11:48 am pdt on Palm Sunday 2021mar28. 


Thus, it is not only oscillations of the earth spin and earth-sun spin that gives us our feeling or time, oscillations of the earth-moon spin give us a different feeling of an oscillating time. After all, the moon cycles are what drive the tides and also drive human female menses. Full moon cycles have long been markers of oscillating time, especially for ancient night ceremonies in early times before artificial light. While there are many holidays associated with the Earth and Earth-Sun spin oscillations, there are also holidays associated with Earth-Moon oscillations as well.

The oscillation of 99 full moons to eight solar years is part of the solar eclipse oscillation that repeats every 18 years, the Saros. The Babylonians discovered the Soros cycle 2,600 years ago in the same century as the destruction of the Temple and the enslavement of Israel. These are the oscillations that bind us to our past...

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Electron Double Slit Experiment

The two-slit experiment is a very popular and widely discussed example of quantum interference. Interference is a key attribute of quantum matter as a result of quantum phase and also a very common phenomenon of classical waves. However, most common experience outside of rainbows does not show quantum phase outcomes such as interference, coherence, correlation, nonlocality, or entanglement. The double slit experiment is one particular outcome that does show the diffraction pattern of quantum phase interference and nonlocality for quantum particles.

An electron is just such a quantum particle and an electron has both mass as well as the matter oscillations of quantum phase. As a result, a quantum electron has the two dimensions of amplitude and phase as its matter spectrum. A classical electron has just mass as momentum and there is no classical meaning for the matter oscillations of quantum phase. Therefore, a classical electron does not have a matter spectrum.

Here is an electron diffraction outcome from Bach, et al., 2013, that shows each of many thousands of electron outcomes  of 600eV electron precursors passing through a double slit. The slits are each 50 nm wide and 280 nm apart and the 600 eV quantum electron has a radius of 50 nm. The classical electron has a charge radius of 2.8e-6 nm and so classical electron precursors would just show two ballistic patterns. In fact, a single slit apparently shows a ballistic pattern but in fact, even a single slit shows an interference pattern for quantum electrons. A higher resolution experiment will also show single slit diffraction and in fact, there is never really a classical electron.

A simplified schematic of the experiment shows the 600 eV electron source, the Si3N4 double slit, a mask, and the electron detector outcomes. This schematic does not show the details of collimation and focusing, which are actually important for the results. The classical electron precursor would show only ballistic electron outcomes as (b) shows for each slit. The quantum electron shows shows an interference pattern outcome as (c) and so the quantum mystery is that an electron going through one slit knows somehow about the other slit.
In fact, the electron also shows interference even with a single slit or even with an edge like the mask edges in (a). Single slit or edge interference outcomes simply occur on a different experimental resolution than the double slit experiment. Thus, an electron is never really ballistic at all because even a single electron will always interfere with itself at a edge, in a single slit, in two slits, and even in the many slits of a diffraction grating.

A very simple classical notion defines an electron as its charge radius at 2.8e-6 nm, which is just a spike on the nanometer scale as the plot below shows. The electron charge radius is only for an electron at rest and of course an electron is never really at rest as the quantum mysticism deepens. Any real electron has some momentum distribution and so the semiclassical 600 eV electron shows dispersion of its momentum at 600 eV and so actually has a 50 nm radius. Already we find that quantum mysticism creates nonlocality and smears 600 eV electron mass out over 50 nm.
The deepening quantum mysticism actually smears electron mass amplitude, the square root of mass as well as mass out over 50 nm. Unlike the nice intuition of nicely local classical mass, quantum mass amplitude is nonlocal and is both negative and positive as the plot shows. The electron quantum amplitude as the square root of mass has no classical meaning at all.
Quantum mysticism also smears electron mass, which is the square of mass amplitude, and so there is no negative mass as the next plot shows. However, quantum mass does still have extra little probabilities over the Lorenzian plot of a Drude oscillator shown above.
The classical determinism of gravity relativity associates a well defined path, a geodesic, through space and time for an electron. Classically, an electron can only pass through one slit or the other slit shown in the quantum amplitude plot. Thus a classical electron only carries one dimension of information as its momentum. A 600 eV classical electron would not show any dispersion and would always behave as a point charge.

However, quantum mysticism smears the 600 eV quantum electron mass amplitude over space and time. This means that a quantum electron shows dispersion and carries two dimensions of information as both amplitude and phase. While a classical electron mass passing though one slit has no way of knowing about the double slit, a quantum electron amplitude passes through both slits. While the double slit does not change the electron momentum or mass, the double slit does change the electron amplitude phase or dispersion.

Quantum mysticism bothers many people because despite well-defined quantum matter outcomes from action, we cannot really be certain about quantum matter amplitude precursors. Instead of the certain geodesic matter action commuting precursors of gravity relativity given well-defined and commuting outcomes, quantum mysticism shows that precursor matter and action do not commute.

Quantum matter action represents a very different microscopic nonlocal universe of reversible time that is inconsistent with the macroscopic localized universe of irreversible entropy and gravity relativity. Quantum matter action of a discrete pulse universe shows that quantum gravity relativity carries only the momentum information of space and time. Since space and atomic time both emerge from matter action, this quantum gravity is consistent with the quantum phase of matter that carries information as two dimensions of matter amplitude and phase. The universe of just the two dimensions of matter and action along with quantum phase provides a basis for all matter and all action.


Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Twelve Attributes of a Theory of Everything

A theory of everything first of all must begin with philosophy because the perpetual discourse of philosophy is really the precursor of all knowledge of truths. Truths emerge from the many Grand Narratives of Civilization and in particular truths emerge from the Grand Narratives of religion, government, and science. People recognize these truths both consciously and as subconscious archetypes and it is from those truths that a theory of everything emerges. A theory of everything is how we predict outcomes from precursors.

There are many partial theories of everything and only one complete theory of everything in the matter action of quantum phase. For example, two very important transcendent attributes of a TOE deal with nonexistence and what is unknowable. Gödel's incompleteness theorem shows the limits of matter action as what can be known and is a direct result of transcendence of what cannot be known.

The following twelve attributes then rank theories of everything for their completeness only from what Science can know.

TOE attribute

Kastrup

Hoffman

Sabine

Matter Action

terminology

complex

complex

complex

simple

matter

one mind

conscious minds

yes

yes

action

dissociation of one mind

action of conscious minds

yes

yes

quantum phase

vibrations of one mind

no

yes

yes

nonconforming

yes

yes

no

yes

free choice

no

yes

no

yes

emergence

yes

yes

no

yes

arrow of time

no

no

yes

yes

causal set

one mind

network of conscious minds

no

yes

falsifiable

no

no

yes

yes

constants

no

no

yes

yes

equations

no

no

yes

yes

1) Terminology: New TOEs tend to use confusing terminology and so it is helpful to map each TOE interview into some sort of common framework. Inconsistent TOE terminology simply causes confusion of terminology that then can then hide with identities where the TOEs are not really complete. These rabbit holes can be quite deep and keep in mind that mostly what TOE's reveal are identities, not truths.

For example, matter is what makes up the universe, action is how the matter changes, and both matter and action oscillate with quantum phase. These are simply axioms and so answer questions as identities, but any other terms for matter or action will have the same meaning.

2) Matter: It is very common for philosophers like Kastrup and Hoffman to define terms in way that complexifies their underlying concepts. Kastrup's one mind, for example, is really a redefiniton of the matter that makes up the universe where Hoffman used a network of minds for what makes up the universe. Science today really uses the Casimir vacuum to make up the mostly empty universe with only a little matter here and there.

I like to think of what makes up the universe as matter as an all pervasive aether without space and time. After all, Newton and Einstein both ascribed to the all pervasive aether, but they both filled the universe with aether as a kind of working fluid.

3) Action: Always look for a way to change the stuff of the universe. Kastrup uses the action of dissociation to break up the one mind into many minds and there is a further bonding of the pieces with vibrations and resonances. Hoffman uses the action of conscious agents in a similar way. Science uses actions from gravity and charge as well as neural action potentials to change matter and any TOE must then account for gravity, charge, and neural action. The strong and weak nuclear forces are just part of exchange bonding of charge force in this approach and so do not require any separate action.

Thus, action is the complement of matter.

4) Quantum Phase: Of course, any TOE must have quantum phase and you should always look for how a TOE deals with quantum phase. Kastrup mentioned vibrational resonances in the one mind as being important, and so this is how he introduced quantum phase. Quantum oscillations have phase and with phase comes coherence, correlation, and interference.

Both matter and action oscillate with quantum phase, but are 90 degrees out of phase. This 90 degrees is the uncertainty principle as well as where the right angles of Euclidean space emerge. The Schrödinger equation embodies the nature of quantum phase.

5) Nonconforming: Any useful TOE will not conform to mainstream Science since Science is simply not complete. There is a strong tendency for pop scientists like Sabine to conform to the party line of Science. After all, if there ever were to be a workable TOE, that TOE would put her and a lot of other scientists out of work. Conforming pop scientists just cannot really break from the party line and so their TOE's are not that useful.

6) Free Choice: Consciousness is a very, very deep rabbit hole that is better not to even go into. There is just no end to the perpetual discourse of consciousness because consciousness is just an identity: consciousness is what happens when you are conscious. Consciousness is a particularly pernicious identity because there are plenty of very smart people that truly believe that there is some deeper meaning to the identity that we call consciousness. The tell is that even very smart people cannot ever agree about what consciousness is besides that it is and so it is always a dead end for a TOE.

Free choice is a much better definition of conscious thought than consciousness. Science can even measure the neural patterns associated with free choice and so free choice is a much better thing to argue about.

7) Emergence: The emergence of space and time from universe matter action is very important for any kind of unification of gravity and charge. Space and time are just too limited and so any TOE must have emergence of space and time. You need to look carefully for the emergence of space and time.

The universe as a quantum causal set with precursors and outcomes is a very useful approach. In fact, both Katrup and Hoffman define causal sets, but use much different terminology.

8) Arrow of Time: Every TOE must explain both the irreversibility of relativistic determinism as well as quantum reversibility. Of course, these issues are simply not clear in Kastrup or Hoffman. 

With the advent of continuous spontaneous localization (CSL), it is the irreversible decay of quantum phase that differentiates macro relativity from micro charge.

9) Causal Set: I finally found out about quantum causal sets and the causal Hasse diagrams of precursors and outcomes. Hasse diagrams are the determinate and causal complement of Feynman QED diagrams. While macroscopic reality shows the arrow of time in its Hasse precursors and outcomes, microscopic reality shows a reversible time with Feynman acausal precursors interchangeable with outcomes. 

Once a TOE incorporates quantum phase with gravity relativity, the photon exchange bonds of charge become equivalent to the biphoton exchange bonds of gravity. All atoms bond themselves and with other atoms with quantum electrodynamic photon exchange and all atoms to the universe with photon exchange as well. Gravity is then simply the entanglement of photon pairs, biphotons, of each atom bonding to itself entangled with the photon that bonds each atom to the universe.

The Hasse diagram below shows this.

10) Falsifiable: Without measurements that will falsify a TOE, the TOE is simply made up of identities and is of little use for prediction.

11) Constants: There must be constants for a TOE like mass, action, force, energy, etc. Without constants, a TOE is not useful for predictions.

12) Equations: There must be equations for a TOE because without equations, there are no predictions. The Schrödinger equation represents quantum truth while the Hamilton-Jacobi action equation represents gravity truth. Therefore, a TOE should map onto these two truths to allow predictions of outcomes from precursors.

It is pleasing to me that thus far all of these other TOEs map very nicely into the quantum causal set of discrete matter action. Science does not yet accept the complementary decay of matter and growth of force of the causal set of discrete matter action.  

Science today simply accepts the many measurements that Science cannot yet explain like galaxy rotation, decay of matter as the IPK, decay of pulsars, and so on. Matter action does explain these and many other things, but matter action is subject to validation or even falsification by more careful measurements.

Free choice is a feeling that we have about a choice that we made from a large number of neural action potentials that culminate in either excitation or inhibition of action. The feeling of free choice gives us the pleasure of discovering freedom while the feeling of coerced choice is different. The primitive brain organ, the amygdala, seems to be the final arbiter for free choice and so free choice is a function of the subconscious primitive mind. Our rational mind is very quick to explain free choice, but free choice is fundamentally unpredictable. Even though neural action cascades are causal and every free choice outcome does have causal precursors, we cannot know all of the precursors for action. Our cruel quantum universe rules that even though free choice is causal, we cannot actually know all the precursors for action. This is fundamental because we ourselves are precursors that we cannot actually know…by Gödel…

There are different effective layers in physics and there is no time arrow in the Feynman diagrams of QED and so microscopic quantum Feynman diagrams are all completely reversible. However, macroscopic causal set Hasse diagrams show irreversible action and therefore show the arrow of time. While a microscopic causal set of quantum action depends on the coherence of quantum phase among its causal set, a macroscopic causal set of gravity action does not depend on quantum phase coherence among its causal set. This is because most gravity action occurs long after the decay of quantum phase coherence among its causal set. Continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) is the process of quantum phase decoherence that is the microscopic Feynman diagram precursor to macroscopic Hasse diagram outcomes.

Protons are actually made of three quarks and the Feynman diagram for the proton is completely reversible. However, once the universe decay reaches the CMB, the process freezes and proton coherence decays. Thus, we do live in a causal universe, which means that every proton outcome has precursor aether. Proton outcomes are still not determinate, though, and there is some every slow proton decay. 

The issue with free choice is about the possibility of precursor knowledge, not about whether the precursors necessarily exist. According to our cruel quantum logic, quantum precursors exist as superpositions with coherent quantum phase, not so are not classically determinate. Therefore, we simply cannot every know all of the classical precursors of free choice. This means that we cannot ever actually predict free choice outcomes better than as a superposition probability, which is of course the definition of free choice.

Quantum precursors exist as superpositions with correlated quantum phase and quantum superposition precursors are not therefore the same as classical determinate precursors, which do not have quantum phase. An electron exists as a superposition of two quantum spin phases and yet, a measurement only shows one of the two quantum spin phases. It is then the subjective neural free choice of the measurement that reveals the objective reality of an electron spin.

Since other people can measure the same electron spin, quantum spin is part of the objective reality of objective free choice even though each measurement is only part of the subjective reality of subjective free choice. Subjective free choice is only idealism until people agree on free choice measurements and then is becomes rationalism.

If free choice exists, the universe is not determinate and so determinism would necessarily exclude free choice. Determinate people often say that while free choice does not exist, they still prefer to believe in the illusion of free choice. This is because personal responsibility for action is at the root of Western Civilization.

Neural free choice occurs in all neural systems, even the hydra. A hydra is multicellular and microscopic about the width of a human hair and has about 800 neurons but no brain. But hydra neural free choice decides feeding and avoids predation. A paramecium is a single cell flagellate that has no neurons, but still also chooses to feed and avoid predation. A paramecium does not have neural free choice, but does have purposeful action driven by chemical gradients. A baby has free choice, a sleeping person has free choice, and a comatose person has free choice, but all with physical limitations. However, there are also physical limitations to free choice action even for a person who is awake and otherwise healthy.

There are thing in the world that simply are not knowable, but those things do exist. Correspondingly, there are many questions that have no answers, but it is not always possible to know. For example, “Why is there free choice?” has no answer but “Is there free choice?” may or may not have an answer. Therefore, an inescapable part of reality is an ability to transcend the unknown of quantum phase.

For example, nonexistence is a very common philosophical theme that presumes the complement of existence is nonexistence. However, the universe exists simply because it exists, which is an identity, and since there is no explanation for why the universe exists, there is no sense to explanations of either existence or nonexistence of the universe. Nevertheless, free choice gives people the ability to ask questions that have no answers and to even answer questions that have no answers as well.

For prediction of behavior, though, a TOE must transcend nonexistence because the ideas of both transcendence and nonexistence do influence behavior. People can suffer depression if they lose the meaning and purpose of their lives. Meaning and purpose both transcend the despair of nonexistence as well along the feeling that we are insignificant in the universe, which are the emotions of both anxiety and misery.





Competing Factions Limit Human Flaws

One of the great accomplishments of Western Civilization is the U.S. Constitution. Often touted as an insightful statement of inherent human rights, the Constitution enshrines certain God-given rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence along with the Constitution and its outcomes of laws and precedent have really become our shared civic religion. Morals and ethics are something, just like any religion, in which people must simply believe.

Thus the Constitution represents both a secular as well as a civic religious faction much like the many religion factions that also make up Civilization. In fact, the Constitution enshrines the many factions of co-equal government and the Federalist Papers describes in great detail the purpose of those factions. Religions like Christianity have a long history of factions, called heresies, and the great Schism of 1054 was just such a faction that resulted from a rebellion against the tyranny and corruption of the Roman pope. The later Reformation of 1644 was then another rebellion against the intolerance and corruption of Rome and the outcome was the many factions that increased the tolerance and therefore limited the flaw of sanctimony with more diverse belief.

Thus, the many faction conflicts of Civilization are all very important for the progress of Civilization and those factions include those of religion, identity, and as well as politics. People have needs and desires and Civilization helps people achieve those needs and desires, but prosperity is always at the cost of the inhibition of free choice. However, what really makes Civilization work is really not so much in how it meets the needs and desires of people, but rather in how the Civilization limits the human flaws of faction conflicts.

The faction conflicts of Civilization excite five human desires each with their measures:

    1) Power and fame; pareto distribution;

    2) Status; education and religion;

    3) Pleasure; life expectancy, education, leisure;

    4) Well being; per capita GDP, leisure;

    5) Free choice; religion, culture, language.

The five human desires also represent excesses that are the five human flaws that the factions of Civilization inhibit:

    1) Tyranny resulting from an excess of power and fame;

    2) Sanctimony that results from an excess of religion or education;

    3) Arrogance that results from an excess of pleasure;

    4) Greed that results from an excess of well being;

    5) Intolerance that results from callous free choice.

Thus, Civilization progresses not only because its factions excite human desires, but Civilization also progresses because it has many factions that inhibit human flaws.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Five Factor Personality Model

Five Factor Personality Model

Applied psychology accepts and uses the five-factor model (FFM) as an objective measure of personality among people [Hoff, et al. 2021]. Despite the subjective ranking by people’s responses to a set of questions, there is objective agreement among researchers about personality differences. These subjective self-determinations show both the objective mean of each factor within a sample as well as the variability about that mean.


Although researchers use any number of different words for the five factors, most studies use some variation of the following personality factors or their complements:


  1. Confident or Emotional Stability vs. Anxious or Neurotic

  2. Social or Extraversion vs. Independent or Solitary

  3. Creative or Open vs. Conforming

  4. Agreeable vs. Assertive

  5. Conscientious vs. Impulsive


Researchers will note but do not typically rank a number of characteristics that go along with each person even though these characteristics are also very important parts of what makes up each personality. These characteristics are: 


  1. Intelligence; 50% genetic

  2. Gender; 99% genetic

  3. Education; free choice, but linked to intelligence

  4. Well Being; free choice, but depends on good health

  5. Looks; largely genetic, but can be enhanced

  6. Family; free choice, but depends on well being

  7. Religion; free choice, but depends on parents, too

  8. Job; free choice, but depends on education, intelligence, looks


However, looks and gender are mostly genetic, while half of intelligence is genetic, and the remaining characteristics are largely free choices of education, wellbeing, family, religion, and job. In fact, our feelings determine the free choices that we make and those free choices in turn make up our personality factors. 


In addition to personality factors and characteristics, it is also important to have an emotion model for feeling. Emotions are what give us feeling and it is feeling that gives us free choice. Five emotion complements are:


  1. Pleasure vs. Anxiety

  2. Compassion vs. Free Choice

  3. Joy vs. Misery

  4. Serenity vs. Anger

  5. Pride vs. Shame


While there are many other emotions, they map onto this set as laughter (joy), sorrow (misery), disgust (shame), love (compassion), hate (anger), as well as feeling pain (misery) or rapture (joy). Free choice is the emotion that not only determines outcomes of action, free choice also inhibits action. While we are born with nearly uninhibited free choice, we learn inhibitions to that free choice as we mature. Our first awareness of inhibited action by about age 2 shows us the permanence of things since that is when we learn that things continue to exist even when we do not immediately see them. It is after all very important to learn to inhibit actions that do not result in desirable outcomes.


We learn further social inhibitions by about age 6 or so and these inhibitions form the basic moral and ethical archetypes for the rest of our lives. From age 6 on, we acquire long term memories based on those archetypes and continue to learn even further inhibitions. At age 6, Formal education begins along with intellectual, social, and physical development. Sexual maturity in particular entails a large number of inhibitions necessary for social bonding. Finally, at 18, we have learned enough inhibitions to bond with others and effectively contribute to civilization. We also have learned how to handle the inevitable social conflicts that occur with others.


A recent personality model study [Hoff, et al., 2020] showed the changes in personality over 12 years in Iceland for two different gender-balanced populations: sample 1 of 485 ages 15 to 27 and sample 2 of 1,290 ages 17 to 29. The study looked at how the FFM correlated with the three outcomes of education, prestige, income, and gender. However, there were very interesting high correlations for gender as some of the largest correlations of the study. For example, men had higher income than women even though women had more education than men.


Women having lower income than men is consistent with women being more agreeable than men, since agreeable people are satisfied with the status quo and less likely to seek higher income and less likely to change jobs as well. In contrast, men are more assertive and therefore less agreeable than women and are more inclined to seek higher income and that may mean even changing jobs.


These gender correlations are statistically significant, but gender differences still fall well within the factor ranges of both men and women. This plot shows men and women social scores are shifted normal distributions with the same standard deviations. The means of men and women shift by -/+beta*SD, respectively, where beta is the slope of the social correlation regression.

The next plot shows that women are more agreeable than men regardless of age, but both men and women become more agreeable with age. In fact, agreeableness changes peaked at ages 16 and 23 and agreeableness changes were much lower at ages 20 and 26. Agreeableness correlations are consistent with teenage conflicts with parents and authorities at ages 17-22 and partner conflicts at ages 24-27.

Of course, the job type is very important for income and so personality factors that impact job preference also impact income. The next figure shows that women are more social than men and so women tend to choose more social jobs and men therefore tend to choose less social jobs. Since incomes are lower for social jobs like health care or teaching than for less social jobs like science and engineering, this means women have a lower income because of the social factor.


Note that social peaks at age 18 for both men and women and decreases from then on for both men and women as well. This seems to be consistent with people making friends and choosing partners from 15 to 18 and then having fewer friends as they age from 18 to 27 and begin families.

Confidence is another strong correlation with income, but confidence is also strongly correlated with education and yet men are more confident than women, which is consistent with greater income for men. However, women have higher education than men despite having lower confidence. Evidently, women have higher education because they are more agreeable and more social, not because they are more confident.


Note that while men become less confident with age, women become more confident with age and by age 27, men and women show equal confidence. This convergence of confidence may be due to men and women as partners and beginning families together with convergent goals.

The above plots were only from sample 1 and yet sample 2 also showed these same trends. While sample 1 did not show a significant difference in creativity for men and women, sample 2 did. For sample 2, women were more creative than men at 17 as well as less creative than men at 29 as the plot shows. Other studies [Costa et al. 2001] also tend to show higher creativity for men than women, which is consistent with the age 29 results of sample 2. These results seem to suggest that while women tend to lose creativity with age, men tend to become more creative with age.

The complement to creative is conforming and so sample 2 shows boys are more conforming than men and that girls as less conforming than women.


Summary

The five factor model is a very useful objective measure of the variation of personality within gender-balanced sample populations as well as for gender-balanced sample populations over time. The FFM’s find statistically significant differences between men and women, but also show that those differences fall well within one standard deviation of either men or of women. This paper shows correlations of education, prestige, income, and gender with each of the five personality factors: confidence, social, creativity, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.


The women are the largest correlate of education outcomes and men the largest correlate of income outcomes. The women personality factors are anxious, social, and agreeable while the personality factors for men are confidence, independence, and assertive. However, the largest personality changes with age for women are increasing confidence and increasing conscientiousness with age. The largest personality changes for men with age are increasing anxiety and increasingly impulsive with age.


Obviously, the study associates women’s anxious, social, agreeable personalities with their higher education but lower income than men. Men’s confidence, independence, and assertive personalities are then why men have higher income, but lower education outcomes than women.





Personality Changes Predict Early Career Outcomes: 

Discovery and Replication in 12-Year Longitudinal Studies

K.A. Hoff , S. Einarsdóttir, C. Chu, D.A. Briley, and J. Rounds

Psychological Science, 32(1), 64–79, 2021.


Costa PT, Terracciano A, McCrae RR (August 2001). "Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: robust and surprising findings". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 81 (2): 322–331.