Vixra versus Arxiv

[Jay R. Yablon]

Over at sci.physics.relativity which my sci.physics.foundations
co-moderator Fred Diether calls the "Wild Wild West," a supportive
individual (they are rare over there) suggested that I not post my
papers any more on vixra because "this is the place where crackpots
upload their 'stuff'." That gave me a chance to state my views on this
topic, about which I feel strongly. You may agree or not, but I wanted
to share these views here as well, because it is important to not only
talk about science, but about the infrastructure that we employ to do
and share science, which sometimes may inadvertently impede science.
Below is what I said on this subject.

1) As a profession, I am in the patent business, and am fortunate to
have been successful enough to be able to fund my own physics research
as a independent scientist rather than chase grants and tenure, etc. on
that churning wheel. A central part of all intellectual property is
based on establishing a dated priority for a new idea / invention /
discovery. I find it unconscionable that arxiv will kick out some
submissions, because they are denying the submitters a chance to
objectively establish their priorities. If they really have a problem
with accepting all submissions, they should at least establish a
two-tired system so that even submissions they relegate to second tier
can get a priority date recording. They do not do that, vixra does. As
I said, arxiv is unconscionable to abuse their position in that way. To
me, vixra breaks the arxiv monopoly and does allow all priorities to be
recorded, which is a good thing that I am happy to support.

2) The arxiv endorsement system creates a tremendous bias toward people
who are affiliated with mainstream institutions and against independent
researchers. Underlying this is the view that most independent physics
research is not worth the paper it is written on. As a rule, this is
true, and when I see this "relativity is wrong" baloney on vixra and
also on this s.p.relativity forum, it makes me cringe. But there are a
handful of independents, like me, who are very serious researchers who
have have decided that there are too many badly worn paths upon which
everyone is going nowhere, and are looking for the untraveled paths that
provide answers to the hardest problems in physics. So do we hurt that
small number of independents who are doing valuable work in order to
screen out the nutjobs? That is an ageless question, but I always lean
toward acquitting the innocent over convicting the guilty. Arxiv does
not do so, vixra does.

3) If I was affiliated with an institution and I needed an arxiv
endorsement, I could walk down the hall and get it in five minutes from
a colleague. But I am not. So they only way I can get an endorsement
is to solicit over the internet, and not too many people are endorsers
in the GR/QFT categories I need. To me it is unseemly to beg over the
internet for an endorsement, or to make people have to do that. I will
not stoop to that.

4) Does it hurt me because I am posted on vixra amidst quite a few
nutjobs, as an innocent among some guilty. Short term, maybe so. But I
take a long view. It took me 43 years to finally explain the proton and
neutron masses as I did at
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=30830. I
could never have done that without patience. I am not a bumper sticker
sort of person. I have little doubt that in the next 3 to 5 years,
people will come to understand that I have quietly revolutionized
physics at the highest level from out in the wilderness. In science, it
may take time, but correct work does in the end get recognized. Once
that occurs, and it becomes known and recognized that some of the most
important physics papers of the past few generations first went up on
vixra, the arvix monopoly will end.

5) At one time there was tremendous resistance, but everyone now
accepts that the earth is not flat and that the sun is at the center of
the solar system. Right now, I know, and a few who have followed me
know, that protons and neutrons are the magnetic monopoles of Yang-Mills
theory. But the rest of the world including the gatekeepers of the
physics glass ceiling has not come around yet. Fifty years from now
people will look back to that quaint era, namely today, when people had
been chasing magnetic monopoles for 150 years since the time of Maxwell
without realizing that they are hiding in plain sight in Yang-Mills
incarnation as the protons and neutrons and other baryons that
Rutherford and Chadwick had discovered almost a century before anybody
(yours truly) caught on. Secure in that knowledge, and in other correct
but revolutionary work I have written that will also see the spotlight
once my Mass Gap Solution hits the big time and in a few years wins the
Clay Prize, my research's success will ultimately be invariant with
regard to vixra versus arxiv.

Jay

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <be334n...@mid.individual.net>, "Jay R. Yablon"

<jya...@nycap.rr.com> writes:

> Over at sci.physics.relativity which my sci.physics.foundations
> co-moderator Fred Diether calls the "Wild Wild West," a supportive
> individual (they are rare over there) suggested that I not post my
> papers any more on vixra because "this is the place where crackpots
> upload their 'stuff'."

It is certainly the case that at least almost everything on vixra is
crackpot.

> 1) As a profession, I am in the patent business, and am fortunate to
> have been successful enough to be able to fund my own physics research
> as a independent scientist rather than chase grants and tenure, etc. on
> that churning wheel. A central part of all intellectual property is
> based on establishing a dated priority for a new idea / invention /
> discovery. I find it unconscionable that arxiv will kick out some
> submissions, because they are denying the submitters a chance to
> objectively establish their priorities. If they really have a problem
> with accepting all submissions, they should at least establish a
> two-tired system so that even submissions they relegate to second tier
> can get a priority date recording. They do not do that, vixra does. As
> I said, arxiv is unconscionable to abuse their position in that way. To
> me, vixra breaks the arxiv monopoly and does allow all priorities to be
> recorded, which is a good thing that I am happy to support.

I agree with your criticism of arXiv here. They do have the
general-physics category, which at least in some cases seems to be a
euphemism for "too speculative" or whatever, but it is not clear what
their criteria are. (This is another criticism: their criteria and
policies are not public.)

On the other hand, you could ask the question whether vixra establishes
priority in any meaningful sense. I think it is fair to assume that
almost no serious scientist regularly reads anything at vixra.
Presumably if someone duplicates your results, you want priority, and
can point to vixra as proof of that. But you could also deposit your
manuscript with a notary to achieve the same result. Of course, it is
(rightly) not priority per se but priority of publication. Vixra does
not count as publication while arXiv probably does. Thus, while many
might see putting something on vixra as publication, in practice it is
probably equivalent to depositing it with a notary. This means that in
court you could prove that you had the ideas before your rival published
them (not necessarily before he had them), but probably you are more
concerned with scientific than legal priority.

> 2) The arxiv endorsement system creates a tremendous bias toward people
> who are affiliated with mainstream institutions and against independent
> researchers. Underlying this is the view that most independent physics
> research is not worth the paper it is written on. As a rule, this is
> true, and when I see this "relativity is wrong" baloney on vixra and
> also on this s.p.relativity forum, it makes me cringe. But there are a
> handful of independents, like me, who are very serious researchers who
> have have decided that there are too many badly worn paths upon which
> everyone is going nowhere, and are looking for the untraveled paths that
> provide answers to the hardest problems in physics. So do we hurt that
> small number of independents who are doing valuable work in order to
> screen out the nutjobs? That is an ageless question, but I always lean
> toward acquitting the innocent over convicting the guilty. Arxiv does
> not do so, vixra does.

If arXiv were as open as vixra, then there would be too much noise.
They have to do something. With the endorser system, it is clear that
they are not the arbiters, but require only some very minimal support
from one other person in the community. I'm not saying this system is
perfect, but one can't fault them for not being completely open.

> 3) If I was affiliated with an institution and I needed an arxiv
> endorsement, I could walk down the hall and get it in five minutes from
> a colleague.

Not necessarily. I don't think a complete crackpot could get such an
endorsement. A prominent example is Brian Josephson (yes, he used to do
good work and got a deserved Nobel Prize for it, but he is now a
crackpot).

> But I am not. So they only way I can get an endorsement
> is to solicit over the internet, and not too many people are endorsers
> in the GR/QFT categories I need. To me it is unseemly to beg over the
> internet for an endorsement, or to make people have to do that. I will
> not stoop to that.

This is a false dichotomy. Soliciting over the internet (presumably in
some public manner) is not the only way. You could ask people
privately, in person or via email. OK, if you have no connections at
all to the community, this might be difficult. However, you could go to
conferences and meet people. It is probably easier to give a talk at a
conference than publish a paper. You have a captive audience. If you
cannot get even one person interested, then you have to consider the
possibility that you haven't found anything interesting. (Another
possibility is that you cannot communicate it, but in that case, a
journal paper won't help you either.)

> 4) Does it hurt me because I am posted on vixra amidst quite a few
> nutjobs, as an innocent among some guilty. Short term, maybe so.

Definitely.

> But I
> take a long view. It took me 43 years to finally explain the proton and
> neutron masses as I did at
> http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=30830. I
> could never have done that without patience. I am not a bumper sticker
> sort of person. I have little doubt that in the next 3 to 5 years,
> people will come to understand that I have quietly revolutionized
> physics at the highest level from out in the wilderness. In science, it

Should that be "I have little HOPE that in the next"? If not, it sounds
a) like a non-sequitur and b) way too optimistic (even on the assumption
that your work is correct).

> may take time, but correct work does in the end get recognized.

I generally agree here, but that goes for correct work which was not
recognized due to the fault of those who should be doing the
recognizing. If you put the stuff on vixra, I don't think that you can
fault people for not reading it.

Let me give you a few suggestions.

Submit your stuff to a serious journal. If it is really the case that
they don't even consider work from someone without an institution, then
you need to document this. I know a few independent researchers with no
institutional affiliation who regular publish in the leading journals in
their fields. It might be a different story in your field, I don't
know, but if it is you need to publicly document it.

If a paper is considered but, in your view, unjustly rejected, write to
the editor-in-chief and ask for a second and third opinion. That's his
job. If the journal sticks with rejection, make the rejection letters
public.

Check out FXQI. This is an organization which caters to non-mainstream
but potentially promising research. They have open essay contests,
which you should enter. This will definitely get the right people
reading your stuff. Apply for one of their lowest-level grants (even if
you don't need the money). They have a quite liberal policy here and I
think it is fair to say that if it is rejected a) someone will have
taken a detailed look and b) only obviously crackpot stuff is rejected.
The other side of this coin is that by far not everything which is
accepted is worth anything, but if you get past this stage, you can
apply for another and/or other grant and your work will get even more
attention from people a) who can understand it and b) who are honestly
open to new ideas (which is the raison d'?tre of the organization in the
first place). (It might be that for legal reasons they have to fund
even independent researches via some institute, but someone has set up
an institute specifically for this purpose which will basically take you
on if you get funded so this should not be a problem in practice.)

[Lester Welch]

I'm an independent researcher without an institutional affiliation and
found an endorser for my work at arXiv. I found a renowned expert in
the area I was working in. By private e-mail I succinctly explained the
work I had done, attached the paper, stated I was looking for an
endorser, and asked if he would consent. He did. He said he didn't
agree with everything in my paper but 1) thought it should be considered
and 2) he wanted to help me broaden my contacts and interact with the
relevant research community. (See http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0484 )

It is possible but if your work is so esoteric that there are no
"renowned experts" my method wouldn't work.

[Rich L.]

Jay,

I appreciate everything you say, but I have a slightly different point
of view. Science is not necessarily a logical, reliable march towards
the "Truth". It is actually a social activity involving human beings.
It is an evolutionary activity involving ideas that evolve, grow in
acceptance or go extinct. For ideas to grow in acceptance, scientists
(however that group is defined) must hear the idea and be convinced that
it is better than currently accepted ideas.

The problem with getting a radical idea accepted is one of
communication. If you want to communicate with a French man, you must
learn to speak French. If you want to communicate with a scientist you
must learn to speak their language. That means making arguments within
the paradigm of the scientist you are trying to convince. It is not
enough to claim that something is so. You have to show that there is a
logical inconsistency in the current paradigm, or that the paradigm
predicts things that are contradicted by experimental evidence. The
convincing has to be done w/in the current paradigm. And for some
people this is a bit like asking someone to change their religion.
There is a natural reluctance to change ones thinking.

There are a lot of crackpots out there. Some are even professional
scientists. We often talk about the signal to noise on the internet,
where there is no filtering. In the days of printed journals,
publishing crazy ideas that nobody was going to listen to was
economically unsound, and does not really serve the needs of the
readers. There is value to a filtering function. If you don't believe
that, just try finding something useful on sci.physics.relativity.

I don't know if your ideas on monopoles make sense or not. It is too
far from my expertise. If you are having trouble getting them published
in the mainstream press, I would rethink how you are presenting your
ideas. In particular consider who you are trying to communicate with.
They will be looking at the problem from a different paradigm. You need
to present your ideas in a way that they can understand, within their
paradigm. That likely means demonstrating that their paradigm cannot be
correct, but you have to do this w/in their paradigm! It may be a bit
like an evolutionist arguing with a creationist (or visa versa).

You may also need to present your ideas in a less controversial way.
Perhaps even a surreptitious way. By that I mean, instead of presenting
the entire idea, focus on some issue on which you can raise doubt about
the current paradigm. Get people to buy into a small change, then
another small change, etc. A man will choke if he tries to eat a cow
all at once, but over a year, in many small meals, he can do it.

As the proponent of the new idea, it is your responsibility to present
it in a way that can be understood and accepted by the people you are
trying to convince. The more radical the idea the more difficult this
will be. But just like evolution, the better idea is not guaranteed to
survive, it just has a probability to. If you are right and are
sufficiently persistent, and are successful at tailoring your arguments
to the audience, you are likely to prevail. But it will not necessarily
be quick or easy.

Rich L.

[Jay R. Yablon]

LOL, I agree 1000%. That place is a topsy turvey laughingstock. Here
and there I will float something over there, but I expect no more than
kicks and giggles in return.

> I don't know if your ideas on monopoles make sense or not. It is too
> far from my expertise. If you are having trouble getting them published
> in the mainstream press, I would rethink how you are presenting your
> ideas. In particular consider who you are trying to communicate with.
> They will be looking at the problem from a different paradigm. You need
> to present your ideas in a way that they can understand, within their
> paradigm. That likely means demonstrating that their paradigm cannot be
> correct, but you have to do this w/in their paradigm! It may be a bit
> like an evolutionist arguing with a creationist (or visa versa).
>
> You may also need to present your ideas in a less controversial way.
> Perhaps even a surreptitious way. By that I mean, instead of presenting
> the entire idea, focus on some issue on which you can raise doubt about
> the current paradigm. Get people to buy into a small change, then
> another small change, etc. A man will choke if he tries to eat a cow
> all at once, but over a year, in many small meals, he can do it.
>
> As the proponent of the new idea, it is your responsibility to present
> it in a way that can be understood and accepted by the people you are
> trying to convince. The more radical the idea the more difficult this
> will be. But just like evolution, the better idea is not guaranteed to
> survive, it just has a probability to. If you are right and are
> sufficiently persistent, and are successful at tailoring your arguments
> to the audience, you are likely to prevail. But it will not necessarily
> be quick or easy.
>
> Rich L.
>

Thanks Rich, and also to Phillip and Lester.

Rich, I agree with all that you say. I have spent untold hours getting
my work into a form that can be well-received by the human enterprise
that is physical science. This started out as a thesis that baryons
were Yang-Mills monopoles, and it was in that form that I published four
papers last year, albeit in what are regarded as middling journals.

But in fact, I also knew that this thesis was part of a larger solution
to the Yang Mills Mass Gap problem
http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Yang-Mills_Theory/, and over the last
year have through several drafts and evolved my presentation so that
now, this is presented as -- and is in fact -- the solution to this Mass
Gap problem.

So last year, this was presented as what I call a "Jay theory," and
nobody would have any particular /a priori/ reason for paying any
attention. But now, I have squarely positioned this as a solution the
problem for which two of the top physicists in the world, Jaffe and
Witten, have offered a $1 million reward via the Clay Institute. And I
am not being nor will I be shy about claiming that this is the solution
to this problem. First of all, it is! Second of all, by having this
problem out there, Jaffe and Witten have established the paradigm that
there is no known solution to the mass gap problem and that a solution
is vitally desired. So this is a rare opportunity to NOT have to argue
that there is a problem which needs needs to be solved because two top
physicists have already said there IS a problem and even gone out and
offered a bounty for the solution. Of course, the money is nothing to
sneeze at either, but more importantly than that, the Clay problem
itself creates a circumstance wherein any serious paper which claims to
have solved this problem will have to draw attention and scrutiny. So
there is already an established "market" for such a solution.

That is what differentiates my situation as regards this particular
paper, from most others in which someone who writes a paper also has to
argue why the subject of the paper is worthy of attention. Here, I do
not need to argue that a Mass Gap solution is worthy of attention; Jaffe
and Witten and Clay have already done so and that is now part of the
established physics paradigm. In my Mass Gap paper, I am responding
foursquare to that paradigm with a solution. I wrote this paper as if I
were back and MIT and had received a homework problem and needed to work
on that and hand it back in to the professors with the problem solved.
And that is what I have done.

Jay

[Lester Welch]

[[Mod. note -- Please limit your text to fit within 80 columns,
preferably around 70, so that readers don't have to scroll horizontally
to read each line. I have manually reformatted this article. -- jt]]

Most (but not) of us would agree, I suspect that the purpose of
physics is to create mathematical models of the physical world with
which we can make predictions of the outcome of not-yet-done
experiments while not not being in conflict with already-done
experiments. A model that can make no such prediction has no physics
use. Alternative mathematical formulations are certainly possible
- think of the early 20th century renditions of quantum mechanics,
i.e., matrix vs wave-function. They were later proven to be
equivalent. My point is that just because someone finds new
mathematics to describe old experiments doesn't mean it is significant.
You have to be able to make a prediction that the current paradigm
can't to be taken seriously. In my humble opinion, so many of the
"crack-pot" offerings of the non-lunatic variety are just different
mathematics. (The lunatic varieties are just plain wrong somewhere.)
If you want attention make a prediction.

[Jay R. Yablon]

How about close to twenty *retrodictions* to parts per million AMU?
Explaining experimental data that is well known but had never been
explain theoretically. Such as the 2H, 3H, 3He, 4He and eleven other
binding energies, and the proton and neutron masses? I have done
exactly that based on regarding Yang-Mills magnetic monopoles as baryons
and then using GUT to turn those baryons into protons and neutrons
specifically, then calculating the energies of the linear monopole
terms. Study my mass gap paper at
http://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/yang-mills-paper-2-1.pdf.
Then look at these:

1) Yablon, J. R., Why Baryons Are Yang-Mills Magnetic Monopoles,
Hadronic Journal, Volume 35, Number 4, 401-468 (2012)
LINK: http://www.hadronicpress.com/issues/HJ/VOL35/HJ-35-4.pdf

2) J. Yablon, Predicting the Binding Energies of the 1s Nuclides with
High Precision, Based on Baryons which Are Yang-Mills Magnetic
Monopoles, Journal of Modern Physics, Vol. 4 No. 4A, 2013, pp. 70-93.
doi: 10.4236/jmp.2013.44A010. LINK:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=30817

3) J. Yablon, Grand Unified SU(8) Gauge Theory Based on Baryons which
Are Yang-Mills Magnetic Monopoles, Journal of Modern Physics, Vol. 4 No.
4A, 2013, pp. 94-120. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2013.44A011.
LINK: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=30822

4) J. Yablon, Predicting the Neutron and Proton Masses Based on Baryons
which Are Yang-Mills Magnetic Monopoles and Koide Mass Triplets, Journal
of Modern Physics, Vol. 4 No. 4A, 2013, pp. 127-150. doi:
10.4236/jmp.2013.44A013. LINK:
http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=30830

Jay

[federat...@netzero.com]

Of course, this is a false dichotomy you're raising. Independent
research at high levels of quality is frequently posted to Scribd.

On the more general issue, I'm coming quickly to the frame of mind that
the human being simply needs to be removed from the loop, when it comes
to validation, and have dedicated much of my time (as of late) to
seeking ways to pull a Leibnitz.

There's much to be said, in that line, to verification systems that fall
in the paradigm spawned by the celebrated Curry-Howard correspondence
(the most notable grandfather, of course, being AutoMath).

It bears to point out an important point of clarification here on this
matter. One frequently hears the (rather misleading) notion "physics
cannot be reduced to pure logic", with similar statements said in other
fields.

This, of course, is a fallacy based on an ambiguous use of the term
"logic". Usually, what is meant is that an empirical statement A, posed
as an assertion |- A cannot be reduced to logic, but rather requires the
"context" of B1, B2, ..., Bn of all the stipulations and assertions that
go into the endeavor behind that statement.

But pure logic isn't merely about making assertions |- A. It's also
about making inferences of the form B1, B2, ..., Bn |- A called
"sequents" (even where n is infinite). All scientific inquiry in all
fields reduces to a list of such sequents. Different fields being
characterized by which sets of B's are used to prefix the
sequent. Moreover, one can easily trump the issue for finite numbers n
of stipulations by reducing the sequent to an assertion |- (B1 and B2
and ... and Bn) -> A.

Likewise, every expression in Physics can be rendered in such fashion by
suitable affixing of all the B's that go into the science. Once they are
fixed, then the question of the internal validity and consistency of
statements made, and of inquiry itself does indeed become a matter of
logic, and logic alone.

Even the question of *external* validity becomes a matter of logic
alone, bearing in mind that some of the statements B1, ..., Bn include
the (ever-expanding) list of statements of actual readings acquired from
the world. We need only agree on the stipulations.

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <befnvf...@mid.individual.net>, "Jay R. Yablon"

<jya...@nycap.rr.com> writes:

> > If you want attention make a prediction.
>
> How about close to twenty *retrodictions* to parts per million AMU?

Retrodictions are important. Isaac Newton retrodicted the motions of
the planets which had been observed by Tycho Brahe. Kepler had his 3
laws describing the motions of the planets, and they were correct, but
it is clear that Newton had a deeper understanding. In this case, the
chain of argumentation is straightforward, and the retrodiction is
almost as good as a prediction.

With a longer chain of argumentation, it takes much more effort to be
absolutely sure that the retrodiction could have been derived even if
the results were not known. (In other words, it is a retrodiction
because someone knew the results, but theoretically the result could
have been derived had the results not been known.) On the other hand, a
prediction---especially one which differs from predictions of rival
theories---, while not necessarily logically superior, rightly gets much
more attention: it is clear to everyone that this is an easy way to test
the theory. Moreover, it can be tested (compare prediction to
observation) even if one does not fully understand the theory. If the
prediction is confirmed, then it will be a motivation for trying to
better understand the theory. Of course, things are more interesting if
there is a chance of the prediction being tested during our lifetimes.

Do you have a concrete prediction?

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <c1d007b0-735f-4953...@googlegroups.com>,

federat...@netzero.com writes:

> Of course, this is a false dichotomy you're raising. Independent
> research at high levels of quality is frequently posted to Scribd.

I've heard of this, but have no experience with it. In many fields,
arXiv is a one-stop shop. In some cases, a monopoly is good. The
important question is: What fraction of people who work in the fields
represented at Scribd use it? In astronomy, say, practically 100% of
astronomers use arXiv, some as their only source of refereed-journal
papers.

[Jay R. Yablon]

I just poked around at Scridb; it has many diverse topics, but no
science, at least at the top nodes which is where 98% of the world will
stop. Jay

[Jay R. Yablon]

Based on a very narrow definition of a "pre" diction as opposed to a
"retro" diction, the "pre" diction I have made is in equation (13.10) of
my paper at
http://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/fermion-mass-revelation-5-2.pdf.
That prediction is for a g-factor associated with the magnetic moment of
the electron and mu and tau leptons in a *time-dependent" magnetic
field. This is NOT my mass gap paper; it is independent but it is based
on insights I developed in the course of working toward the mass gap
paper.

I will disclose that the above paper was rejected a couple of weeks ago
at the same top journal which has NOT rejected my mass gap paper, and
because they were submitted relatively closely in time that is one
reason I am cautiously optimistic that the mass gap paper will gain
traction. That is, they kicked back one but continued to review the
other.

The rejection of the above was on the grounds that (4.1) and (4.2) are
not Lorenz scalars coupled with an assertion that they must be. I
disagree, and have pointed out that expansion takes place not about the
vev, but about spinors (4.1), (4.2) and in two component form (4.19)
which sit ***at the 1.5 power of the vev*** and which are constructed
exclusively out of gauge fields. That is ***my vev is not a spinor, and
the spinors about which I expand are not a vev but are constructed at
(4.1) to (4.4) so as to reproduce a vev.*** And my vev is a Lorentz
scalar. So I have a vev which is a Lorentz scalar, and then I use that
to construct a spinor which is a ***function of the vev*** about which
the fermion expansion takes place. In my view there is no problem with
this, but the editors have not taken the time to really understand this
point, or its very important downstream implications as developed in
this paper including the ability to finally get rid of infinite
constants in renormalization as I teach in section 14.

I have chosen not to argue this right at the moment and put this paper
on the shelf at this time, though I stand by what is in there and will
go back to this in the future. My priority is the mass gap paper which
is the sum and substance of the most important thrust of my research
since 2005, and which lays the foundation for my multiple retrodictions
of nuclear binding energies and masses.

Jay

[Jay R. Yablon]

On 11/17/2013 9:08 AM, Jay R. Yablon wrote:
> On 11/13/2013 9:54 AM, Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
>> In article <befnvf...@mid.individual.net>, "Jay R. Yablon"
>> <jya...@nycap.rr.com> writes:
>>

. . .

>>
>> Do you have a concrete prediction?
>>
> Based on a very narrow definition of a "pre" diction as opposed to a
> "retro" diction, the "pre" diction I have made is in equation (13.10) of
> my paper at
> http://jayryablon.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/fermion-mass-revelation-5-2.pdf.
> That prediction is for a g-factor associated with the magnetic moment of
> the electron and mu and tau leptons in a *time-dependent" magnetic
> field. This is NOT my mass gap paper; it is independent but it is based
> on insights I developed in the course of working toward the mass gap
> paper.
>

The more general prediction here, is that the tau lepton is more
responsive to a time-dependent magnetic field than are the mu lepton or
the electron, by factor that scales with their rest masses. This is in
contrast to the regular g-factor for constant magnetic field, which does
not exhibit any discernible rest mass dependence as among these three
charged leptons. This should be observable using any experimental
facility which can detect and quantify g-factors and for which the
applied magnetic field can be made time-dependent. Jay

[federat...@netzero.com]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 2:17:59 AM UTC-6, Rich L. wrote:
> I appreciate everything you say, but I have a slightly different point
> of view. Science is not necessarily a logical, reliable march towards
> the "Truth". It is actually a social activity involving human beings.

Time will tell whether it is to remain this way or not, for this is --
in the final analysis -- simply a perspective rooted in a bygone century
and millennium.

If systematization in the ways these activities are carried out uncovers
hidden and deep flaws in the way humans pursue this effort (and there
are many that I can now clearly recognize), if it fills in missing gaps
that humans -- because of their predictability (which can be quite
extreme) persistently miss, then pursuing science as a "social activity"
may not be the best way to go in the future ... particularly when better
alternatives emerge. Add to this the bottleneck of the relatively slow
speed at which humans go.

> It is an evolutionary activity involving ideas that evolve, grow in
> acceptance or go extinct. For ideas to grow in acceptance, scientists

Part of that evolution is the evolution of the learning curve of
learning itself -- and its automation. And evolution to new and higher
forms of activity that transcend the limitations of flesh and blood that
gave rise to them. It wasn't on a lark that I put up the caption in the
picture: https://twitter.com/Federation2005

To give you a more or less concrete example, suppose you have data
collection units running at full tilt, gathering terabytes of data per
seconds (e.g. a high-powered particle accelerator) in a large particle
lab (and you do!). Now run through your sceneraio where decisions and
determinations have to pass through human beings at their incredibly
slow pace. Contrast that to a situation where by full automation you can
systematically *derive* the key hypotheses directly from the data and
even automatically schedule the needed tests to confirm or refute them,
and automatically develop the key statements for a theory that actually
fit the actual data.

Anyone who's run automated collection systems in the experimental world
knows the frustration of this bottleneck quite well and feels it in
their bones the absence of this functionality. Science being a "social
activity", in that context, becomes a major liability, rather than some
kind of virtue. Things run at too fast a pace and too high a volume to
be waiting around for theoreticians to get their dinner conversations
and mingling done ... and the mere idea of "brainstorming" makes a
mockery of what a computer is and does. In the time it takes to even
order a ticket to fly to a conference somewhere (or to even *think*
about ordering one!), an automated process could have gone light years
beyond what you'd hope to obtain by a social gathering of minds.

Now, if this sounds rather far-fetched, then you may be surprised just
how straightforward an answer there is to resolve that very matter --
and the punchline (and boom) will be lowered at the very end of this
article. Two of them.

Indeed, all you need to do is throw together all the basic statements
you want to make about the data being collected S = (S1, S2, ..., Ss),
all the observations that you made M = (M1, M2, ..., Mm). From this
comes humongous statement: A1 or A2 or ... or Am, each alternative being
the statement produced by the observation itself, e.g. if model 1 has
S1, S3 true, S2, S8 false, so then M1 = S1 and S3 and (not S2) and (not
S8).

That's called a statement in "disjunctive normal form" (DNF).

Now, convert it to "conjunctive normal form" (CNF). The result is a list
of statements H = H1 and H2 and .... and Hk, each one being a
conditional, e.g. H1 = if (S4 or S6) then S3.

These are the conjectures or hypotheses. They form the core of a body of
statements comprising a theory.

The first boom that is lowered is that there is actually a way to
incrementally update the H list of hypotheses, as new observations are
added to the list M. Moreover, this process replicates how humans
actually handle new observations when they break or falsify hypotheses
-- except it does it in a systematic and complete manner, rather than
haphazardly. It's a bookkeeping device ... one that's even useful for
data collection when you're doing it by hand with humans!

And now the second boom to be lowered: The problem of finding efficient
methods for doing DNF -> CNF conversion sits at the apex of another of
the Clay Foundation's open problems -- the P = NP problem.

The reason you don't hear much about "automated theory generation", in
fact, is because the P = NP problem is subordinate to this larger and
more elaborate process, and most people do not believe that even P = NP
has a positive resolution.

If it turns out that we find that P = NP is actually the case, then this
may very well lead to the substantial reduction in the DNF -> CNF
conversion problem too -- thereby crashing through the wall of automated
theory generation.

And that's where the second boom is lowered: for reasons I don't want to
elaborate too much on here, I think we may actually be close to seeing a
positive resolution to the P = NP problem emerge, out of which will
arise a new paradigm in which the "automated theory generation" problem
can be handled as well. It wouldn't be too far from the matter to say
that the break from the past would be about the same magnitude as that
which occurred in the history of algebra when Galois Theory (and Group
Theory) first arose.

[Homo Lykos]

Am 10.11.2013 09:46, schrieb Jay R. Yablon:
>
> 1) As a profession, I am in the patent business, and am fortunate to
> have been successful enough to be able to fund my own physics research
> as a independent scientist rather than chase grants and tenure, etc. on
> that churning wheel. A central part of all intellectual property is
> based on establishing a dated priority for a new idea / invention /
> discovery. I find it unconscionable that arxiv will kick out some
> submissions, because they are denying the submitters a chance to
> objectively establish their priorities.
>

Is it not enough to publish on your own website to establish priority?

>
> 2) The arxiv endorsement system creates a tremendous bias toward people
> who are affiliated with mainstream institutions and against independent
> researchers.

Worse: If you are plagiarised in the sense that your work is incorrectly
and mala fide (!) falsified without directly quoting your work, you
can't correct this in arXiv, if you are an independent researcher.

Is it possible in such cases to force judicially arXiv to publish a
disprove in the sense of the right of reply? I ask here because you are
in the patent business. Can I go to court only in US or also in
Switzerland? The plagiarists (in the sense above) are two swiss
physicists, but one is working in Germany at ESO.

My case is very simple and clear:

1) In [1] on page 53 you find in Fig. 3 in the lower panel the distance
of the L-CDM model relative to an empty universe model. Everybody who is
not a specialist in fitting type Ia supernova data must think, that the
empty universe model is falsified by the observations. Because at least
Leibundgut knows very well, that this is not true (e.g. Riess, et al.
became in [2] a very good chi^2 for the empty model; see table 4 on page
50), they don't say it directly. Besides, nobody must disprove an empty
universe! But if the empty model could be disproved in this way, also my
(not empty) static WPT model www.wolff.ch/astro/WPT_2012.pdf would be
disproved; Leibundgut knew this very well!

2) In [3] on page 5 in Fig. 5 you find also a curve which seems
unambiguously to prove, that the curvature dominated (empty) universe
model is falsified by observations. With Ruth Durrer's own words:
"Hence, if the error estimates of SN1a observers can be trusted, these
data indicate either that the geometry of the Universe be not Friedmann,
or that the luminosity distance is dominated at low redshift by an
accelerating component which behaves similar to a cosmological
constant." This was a willful deception, what is proven by the sentence
directly before: "In this regime, observers therefore detect a
luminosity distance which is significantly larger than the one of a flat
matter dominated or a curvature dominated Universe with the same Hubble
constant." This meens, that Ruth Durrer knows very well, that this is
only true with the generally wrong assumption of the same Hubble
constant for different models of the universe. Besides, it's true only
for the same absolute luminosity (of the type Ia supernovae) which is
not known independently of a model, what Ruth Durrer not realized or
mala fide not said.

Peter Wolff
www.wolff.ch

References:

[1] A. Gobaar and B. Leibundgut, Supernova cosmology: legacy and future,
7. Feb. 2011, http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1431.pdf

[2] Adam G. Riess, et al., New Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries of
Type Ia Supernovae at z = 1: Narrowing Constraints on the Early Behavior
of Dark Energy, 17. Nov. 2006, http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0611572v2.pdf

[3] Ruth Durrer, What do we really know about Dark Energy? 1. Version
29. march 2011, http://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.5331.pdf

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <bf22l4...@mid.individual.net>, Homo Lykos

<ly...@bluewin.ch> writes:

> > A central part of all intellectual property is
> > based on establishing a dated priority for a new idea / invention /
> > discovery. I find it unconscionable that arxiv will kick out some
> > submissions, because they are denying the submitters a chance to
> > objectively establish their priorities.
>
> Is it not enough to publish on your own website to establish priority?

In a legal sense, probably. In a legal sense, Jay could deposit a
manuscript with an attorney. However, in terms of scientific priority,
it is generally recognized that priority goes to the first person who
PUBLISHES something. A manuscript in an attorney's safe is not
publishing. Publishing in a recognized journal is. These days, putting
something on arXiv is. My view is that vixra is closer to the
attorney's safe than to arXiv in this respect.

> > 2) The arxiv endorsement system creates a tremendous bias toward people
> > who are affiliated with mainstream institutions and against independent
> > researchers.
>
> Worse: If you are plagiarised in the sense that your work is incorrectly
> and mala fide (!) falsified without directly quoting your work, you
> can't correct this in arXiv, if you are an independent researcher.

I'm not sure what you mean here. I realize that English is not your
native language. Normally "falsified" in the context of science means
showing that something is wrong and of course implies, if not quoting,
then at least referencing the work to be falsified. This is not
plagiarization.

Give an example of what you mean.

If someone steals the ideas of a paper and puts those ideas on arXiv,
then I don't see how correcting one's own paper on arXiv would have
anything to do with this. arXiv, at least in some cases, tries to
automatically detect what looks to be copied text. Even if a direct
copy is not apparent, sending a note to arXiv pointing out possible
plagiarization should get something done. One can always post a note to
arXiv in a separate paper pointing out priority.

In any case, anyone who can put something on arXiv can replace his paper
with a revised version. (Older versions are still available, and they
should be.)

> Is it possible in such cases to force judicially arXiv to publish a
> disprove in the sense of the right of reply?

I'm pretty sure this is possible.

> I ask here because you are
> in the patent business. Can I go to court only in US or also in
> Switzerland? The plagiarists (in the sense above) are two swiss
> physicists, but one is working in Germany at ESO.

OK, you are talking about your own work here, not Jay's. As far as I
know, your work has not been published on arXiv and neither will it be,
so the point is moot. (Interested readers can consult de.sci.physik for
details.)

> My case is very simple and clear:

If you think you have been plagiarized (based on the evidence you
provide in newsgroups, I don't see that you have a case), take the
normal route: take it up with the editor of the journal. If you think
you have a legal case, take it to court. The court will tell you if
they think that they don't have authority to rule on the case.

[Dan Riley]

hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes:
> In article <bf22l4...@mid.individual.net>, Homo Lykos
> <ly...@bluewin.ch> writes:
> > Is it not enough to publish on your own website to establish priority?
>
> In a legal sense, probably. In a legal sense, Jay could deposit a
> manuscript with an attorney.

Establishing priority requires some kind of verifiable timestamp.
Publication on a website controlled by the author is generally not
regarded as sufficiently verifiable, since the author has the ability
to change the contents of the document without changing the timestamp.

Publication on arXiv would probably qualify, since it has clear
policies on archiving documents, and it is run by librarians who could
(presumably) testify as to whether or not those policies are followed.
viXra's policies and procedures are much less clear, so I would be
wary of relying on viXra to establish priority.

Once upon a time, physicists would sometimes send an anagram of an
obliquely referential announcement to the letters page of a journal,
a kind of weakly encrypted announcement. The modern version is to
publish a hash of the paper someplace verifiable, preferably with a
cryptographically secured timestamp--see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping

There used to be a few publicly available timestamping services,
but I don't know if there are any still operating.

-dan

[Jay R. Yablon]

On 11/25/2013 4:17 PM, Dan Riley wrote:
> hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes:
>> In article <bf22l4...@mid.individual.net>, Homo Lykos
>> <ly...@bluewin.ch> writes:
>>> Is it not enough to publish on your own website to establish priority?
>>
>> In a legal sense, probably. In a legal sense, Jay could deposit a
>> manuscript with an attorney.
>
> Establishing priority requires some kind of verifiable timestamp.
> Publication on a website controlled by the author is generally not
> regarded as sufficiently verifiable, since the author has the ability
> to change the contents of the document without changing the timestamp.
>
> Publication on arXiv would probably qualify, since it has clear
> policies on archiving documents, and it is run by librarians who could
> (presumably) testify as to whether or not those policies are followed.
> viXra's policies and procedures are much less clear, so I would be
> wary of relying on viXra to establish priority.
>

...
...

I will give you my professional legal opinion on this question, as a
practicing intellectual property attorney for the past almost 20 years.
This is what I do for a living.

I agree that the independent, non-manipulable timestamp is critical. In
this regard, I have little doubt that if a priority and / or plagiarism
dispute were to arise in the scientific community and reach the court
system in the US, that a viXra publication would carry an equal legal
weight as an arXiv publication. They are both independently
timestamped, the author cannot change the timestamp later on, and so
they both provide equally weighted objective evidence of time sequence.
Whether scientists regard a paper on arXiv more highly than a paper on
viXra is legally irrelevant. The legal question is only an evidentiary
question of objective temporal sequencing in a non-manipulable archive.
In fact, the deposit of a copyright registration on a given date with
the US Copyright Office would equally suffice. The legal issue is
objective dating, and nothing more. To suggest otherwise would be like
saying if I have a beautiful $10,000 grandfather clock that is keeping
time and you have a $5 watch with Donald Duck printed in its face, but
both have equal timekeeping reliability, time A precedes time B if the
grandfather clock says so, but if the cheap watch says so, then we may
ignore the watch and are free to conclude at a later date at time B
actually preceded time A. I know relativity does funky things with
time, but thought that time sequencing established by the watch may be
disregarded because it is cheap is nonsense. Any scientist who steps
back objectively will see this.

Also, in all areas of Intellectual Property law, legal priorities are
established by FILING dates and first use dates, NOT by acceptance
dates. So as to the issue of priority, it does not matter when, or even
if, a good journal accepts and prints a paper. Getting a filing, which
in this case means an objective timestamp, is all that matters to
establish legal priority.

That is why I am comfortable posting on viXra from the narrow standpoint
of establishing a push-comes-to-shove priority. As to whether a viXra
publication taints a paper from gaining recognition as an important
rather than a fringe paper, that is a political question, not a legal
one. If I was advising a legal client who tried to post on arXiv and
arXiv refused, and if the client said that establishing a priority that
would win the day if a legal dispute ever arose is very important to
them, then I would advise them that if they were willing to suffer the
political slings and arrows that would be hurled at them and had
confidence in their paper, they should absolutely post to viXra and can
feel safe on the legal question of establishing priority. In posting to
viXra, I am taking my own advice, because priority is important to me,
and I have confidence that my papers will in the end prevail over the
herd mentality and prejudices of an unfortunately-large swath of today's
scientific community.

Indeed, as an objective archive, one could make a good case that in a
court of law, viXra would stand up as a BETTER archive than arXiV,
precisely because viXra does not discriminate while arXiv does
discriminate and engages in many practices which are arbitrary and would
be ripped to shreds in a court of law if someone ever mounted a test
case. In fact, if I was legal counsel for arXiv, I would advise them
that they are taking a serious risk in the way they presently do
business. Consider the following hypothetical. Any resemblance to real
people and real situations is wholly coincidental

Author A writes a paper which solves the Mass Gap Problem, or any of the
Clay Institute problems problem which have a $1 million prize. Or
author A writes any paper which is important and can win awards or gain
valued recognition. We know that with stakes of that sort, humans will
be humans and some humans will misbehave. So, some faceless bureaucrat
at arXiv (or maybe the grand poobah pulling the strings) denies them a
timestamped post. Then author B comes along and writes a similar paper,
which is either i) independently discovered, but objectively later than
author A's paper or ii) plagiarized from A. But because some faceless
bureaucrat at arXiv decides that author B is someone they know and like,
they post that paper. If B now claims that he or she has priority based
on this, A can sue the pants off of arXiv for manipulating priorities,
rigging the game, fraud, arbitrary and capricious practice, and all
sorts of things. The claim that the scientific community can establish
its own definitions of objective time priority based on preferred
authors or institutions or other arbitrary arXiv practices would be
mowed down flat if it ever went to trial, and arXiv and anyone who
backed such practices would walk away with egg all over their faces.
Relativity does not go so far as to allow arXiv to put B before A when A
was in fact before B.

I have said before that if arXiv was smart, it would at least set up an
open timestamp section accessible to all. Then people would be free to
decide if they want to read anything in the open sections at arXiv, and
arXiv would not run the risk of being seen to have a process that can be
used to manipulate priorities. As it stands, they have set themselves
up for a fall if a scenario like the one outlined above ever comes to
pass. That would be my legal advice to them, if I was their attorney.
Right, now, viXra has defaulted into that open timestamp section of
arXiv, and that is because arXiv has left this opening.

One final point, which is a statement of personal intent, not a legal
opinion. I grew up in the New York area. Many of you may remember or
may be aware of the quarterback Joe Namath of the New York Jets. Back
in the 1960s the American Football League (AFL) was new and the National
Football League (NFL) had all the better teams. Leading up to the 1969
Super Bowl, Nameth predicted that his team from the AFL would win the
Super Bowl. In previous Super Bowls, the NFL teams had always trounced
the AFL teams. The AFL was sneered at as a distinctly inferior league,
sort of like viXra versus arXiv. And Nameth received lots of flak for
having the audacity to say out loud that an AFL team could possibly beat
an NFL team. But guess what: Nameth's team did win, handily, and
football was never again the same. Soon, the two leagues merged, and it
was Nameth who had turned the tide. As soon as a truly important
scientific paper comes from viXra and is recognized as such, that will
be a game-changer, and the balance of power between viXra and arXiv will
shift dramatically. Again, while any resemblance to real people and
real situations is wholly coincidental, I personally intend to make that
exactly that, happen. I will accept any help and support in doing so,
public or private.

Cheers,

Jay

[John Forkosh]

Jay R. Yablon <jya...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
> I agree that the independent, non-manipulable timestamp is critical.

> In fact, the deposit of a copyright registration on a given date with
> the US Copyright Office would equally suffice.

Yes, isn't this the simple "sine qua non" answer to this whole problem.
Whatever else you choose to professionally do (post or submit anywhere
online, or submit to a paper journal, etc), always copyright your work,
http://www.copyright.gov/eco/
In principle, you automatically own the copyright to anything you write
the moment it's on paper. But if the matter comes under dispute,
the courts (and, by inference, anybody else) look very favorably
on you for demonstrating your intent by registering the copyright
before infringement (aka plagiarism) occurs.
There's a whole darn book about all this, although somewhat dated,
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520205130
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j...@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )