Lifeboat Foundation

Complexity decomplexified: A List of 200 Results Encountered over 55 Years

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Science, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

The present list was compiled by a “specialist for non-specialization” who owes this scientific identity to the masters of three disciplines: physicist Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker, biologist Konrad Lorenz and mathematician Bob Rosen. With the best findings, compressed into a line or two by heart, the synopsis brings hidden patterns to the fore. Simultaneously, the individual results become maximally vulnerable so as to facilitate either improvement or falsification.

(August 28, 2012)

Philosophical Preface

Descartes re-invented the rational world of Heraclitus. Specifically he asked the following question (paraphrased): “Do the ‘assignment conditions’ which we find ourselves glued to (the body; the now; the qualia including color or joy) represent an acceptable state of affairs?” The answer is “yes,“ Descartes proposed, if and only if the other two conditions that hold us in their grip (the “laws” and the momentarily applicable “initial conditions” in Newton’s later parlance) are intrinsically consistent. As long as this “machine conjecture” is fulfilled empirically, an infinite privilege separates the conscious observer from all other inhabitants of the world: The others become “mere machines” in the experience of the first (so that he can, for example, do a brain operation on them to save their life). Levinas calls this state of one’s being totally outside the other’s interior side, “exteriority.” The subject then has the option of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority – by acting fairly towards the poor “machine” of the other so as if it possessed a subjective side too even though this cannot be proven and indeed is totally absurd to assume were there not the miracle of the consciousness of the first. A single act of not misusing the infinite power of exteriority performed by the inmate of the dream of consciousness would then put the Dream-Giving Instance (DGI) to shame in case it is not benevolent. The fact that this risk is being taken by the DGI is living proof according to Descartes that the chain of colorful subjective moments, imposed on the subject is “not a bad dream.” In this vein the study of the “steel fibers” of the Cartesian coordinates that mathematically fit the colorless sub-portion of experience (its “Hades part”) acquires a maximum dignity. (Note that in the Greek Hades, all relations of our own upper world were preserved – except for the “blood” that gives color and substance to them.) The shadow part, as long as consistent, hence becomes an instrument by which to do good to one’s fellow dream figures which being machines are totally given into the dreamer’s hand as hostages. This “exteriority theory” (Levinas) endows science with an infinite dignity, Einstein-style, as long as it remains consistent. The problem of whether quantum mechanics fits in, with its apparent indeterminism reflecting a deterministic assignment, was first taken up by Everett. (I thank Ali Sanayei and Ivan Zelinka for discussions and Stephen Wolfram for encouragement. For J.O.R.)

The List

• An energy-saving nonlinear voice-proportional distortion-free amplitude modulation (based on negative feedback)

• “Almost invisible machines,” consisting of virtually infinitely many non-negative chemical variables that with arbitrarily long delays accruing at very low concentrations

• Chemical evolution is a special case, forming an Erdos-type growing automaton (similarly Stu Kaufmann and Joel Cohen)

• Teilhard’s “second arrow” in thermodynamics represents a valid description as an asymptotic approach toward “point Omega”

• “Recursive evolution”: Evolution improves evolution in the first place (with Michael Conrad in the footsteps of John Holland and John von Neumann)

• “Metabolic adaptation” (discovered by Darwin) is not predictive in its history-dependent details; however, “positional adaptation” (while itself implemented by metabolic adaption) is predictive

• “The Rossler task” (Michael Conrad): The decision-type traveling salesman problem

• Ric Charnov’s simultaneous “optimal foraging theory” is a parallel development

• Gödel’s theorem can be considered as a limiting solution to the NP-complete traveling salesman problem (which fact makes it intuitive)

• The “bacterial brain” implements a suboptimal local solution to the “smoothed-out traveling-salesman problem” (with Hans Bremermann)

• “The brain equation”: Yields an efficient local solution to the decision-type traveling-salesman problem

• An eusocial version of the brain equation does not exist

• A “universal brain”: Brain equation combined with a powerful “universal simulator” (or synonymously cognitive map system or Virtual-Reality machine)

• The “sinc algorithm” (real-space equivalent to a Fourier window in frequency space) can be approximated by a multi-level (both ascending and descending) Reichardt-von-Foerster type neural net (with Bernhard Uehleke)

• “Tolerance attractors” form under recurrence in such a neural net, implementing Poincaré-Zeeman-Poston-DalCin “tolerance theory” and realizing von Foerster’s dream of “Platonic ideation” (with Michael Klein)

• The “problem of fast picture-shifting” in multi-resolution neural nets, while solved by nature, eludes mathematical understanding

• “Pandaka-pygmaea Institute“: Was proposed to solve this and other brain problems by investigating the smallest fish brain (and that of its normal-size relative, Gobius niger)

• The positive sum-potential in the brain equation (“happiness”) is displayed by the young of social animals

• One particular sub-potential in the brain equation (“bonding”) is predictably displayed by social animals independently of age

• Two distinct displays (like “happiness” and “bonding”) can, through an evolutionary accident called “Huxley evolutionary ritualization,” acquire a functional overlap

• This accident happened independently in the evolution of two mammalian species: tail-wagging signals both affection and happiness in wolves, and the Smiley face signals both happiness and bonding in humans (similarly Jan van Hoof)

• “All animals are autistic” (AAAA): because the brain equation, an autonomous optimizer, is autistic

• Every brain-equation-carrier is “alive” independently of hardware because it solves the positional adaptation problem which is no less vital than the metabolic adaptation problem ( biochemical life and brain life have equal rank)

• Universal brains are “mirror-competent” owing to their high simulational capabilities

• Unlike humans and some other species, wolves do not have an universal brain (their VR component is too weak for mirror-competence)

• Smile-laughter overlap + strong bonding + mirror-competence = sufficient condition for an “epigenetic function change” in the sense of Robert Rosen, called the “personogenetic function change” (PFC)

• The PFC consists in the invention of the “suspicion of benevolence shown by the other” (which leads to a state of “being moved” in a positive feed-back comprising both sides)

• The PFC represents an example of “creation out of nothing” (the suspicion of, and production of, benevolence)

• “Person attractor” (Detlev Linke): The new stable mode of functioning arising in the PFC

• The PFC can be seen to be nothing but a misunderstanding (a mistaken convergence concocted in the universal simulator; but it is interactively confirmed

• The fact that the PFC represents a joint functional trap allows one to speak of “Nature’s Schadchen trick” (with Roger Malina)

• The person attractor resembles a “folie à deux” (a form of animal schizophrenia) compared to the physiological (autistic) functioning of the two autonomous optimizers with cognition

• The PFC constitutes a miracle worked by the toddler

• Watching this creation-out-of-nothing being achieved by the toddler is a maximally moving event; there appears to be no recorded documentation of this “holy of holies” of humankind

• Friendly teasing jokes (“humor”) are implicit in the PFC

• The mutually confirmed suspicion of benevolence acquires the character of an “objective truth” (there is no older objective truth)

• The “miracle” goes still further: A third fictitious person is involved in the personogenesis (called “god” or “Buddha” etc. in different cultures): The Dream-Giving Instance DGI or, synonymously, the “non-I” (or even the “emptiness behind the dream”)

• The “non-I” arises concomitantly with the “I” and the “you” (the two other persons created in the PFC)

• Women are probably more religious (they statistically have more “heart” in the sense of bonding and in regard of the presence of the bonding hormone oxytocin, and moreover in the majority of cases are the partner in the PFC

• A “nonautistic languaging” automatically develops as a consequence of the PFC (similarly C. Andy Hilgartner)

• Human society in all its essential aspects is formed as a consequence of the PFC: Society is based on asking questions and giving answers – on the basis of the mutual trust between persons

• The mentioned “physiological autism” of every autonomous optimizer with cognition persists in human beings with an innate “smile blindness” strong enough to prevent the epigenetic PFC from occurring

• The causal explanation of autism enables a causal therapy: The caretaker can deliberately produce an “acoustic smile” whenever momentarily happy (the acoustic smile consists in a tender bonding noise)

• The fact that the caretaker must be the essential bonding partner proves that modern child cribs are a collective tragedy (their uninformed use explains the global rise of autism)

• The “causal therapy of autism” has been shunned by the profession for 37 years (only Gregory Bateson approved of it)

• The reason for the silent boycott probably lies in the fact that the person attractor is “too easy to elicit”: Young mirror-competent bonding animals can predictably be lured into the personogenetic function change, too

• “Galactic export” is the technical term for the export of the personogenetic bifurcation towards non-human mirror-competent bonding animals (since the “small step” of recruiting another terrestrial life form is the giant leap involved)

• The planet-wide shying-away before the main step is an example of a collective subconscious “speciesism”

• The fear is palpable ever since Gregory Bateson and John C. Lilly’s joint student, Margaret Howe, tried to adopt a male dolphin 47 years ago; Koko (Francine Patterson’s gorilla life partner) and Kanzi (Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s grown-up bonobo child) are underrated

• Stephen Spielberg played on the same taboo in his movie “AI” – which brings-in the added feature that his non-biochemical person is potentially immortal (a fact he played-down tactfully)

• Leo Szilard introduced non-human persons in his 1948 sci-fi story “The Voice of the Dolphins” (written in the aftermath of his failure to prevent his other brainchild, the bomb, from being dropped)

• The “Rosette phenomenon” of sperm whales deserves to be taken seriously: What function has their daily meeting? (Cf. the author’s Sci-Fi story “The Tale of the Whale” mentioned in the Neosentience book by Bill Seaman and the author)

• “Horizontal exteriority” in the sense of Emmanuel Lévinas, is the omnipotence of the PFC, re-activated in an act of fairness

• “Vertical exteriority” is the matching term in the theological sense of Edmond Jabès (with Nils Röller)

• “A program can force the programmer to reply” (with Christa Sommerer and Adolf Muschg)

• “Simulacron Three” (by Daniel F. Galouye 1964) and “A Puppeteer’s World” (by Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1973) are anticipations of the same insight (followed by the “Matrix” movie and Ray Kurzweil’s “Singularity Theory”)

• The “Turing test” – a test for personhood – got first passed in ancient Rome by the Cretan slave and later stoic philosopher Epictetus (as I learned from Bob Rosen, with Bill Seaman)

• Mathematical proof that the orangutan brain is functionally superior to the human brain

• An equation for a universal immune system (with Robert A. Lutz)

• A chemical universal circuit (with Dietrich Hoffmann)

• Differentiable automata exist mathematically (because certain ordinary differential equations can be approximately if correctly described by automata theory)

• Well-stirred automata exist physically

• Reaction scheme for a temperature-compensated chemical clock

• An “ultra-longterm continuous-stirred-tank-reactor version” of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction proposed: To check for a “late explosion” in the number of variables (with Michael Conrad)

• “Traffic-light” version of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction (with Reimara Rossler)

• “Slinky attractor” (with Okan Gurel)

• “Reinjection principle” is valid in more than two-dimensional phase spaces (independently Christian Mira)

• Chaotic electronic multivibrator (built with Hartmut Waible)

• “The Rossler attractor” (Norman Packard)

• “Spiral chaos”

• “Screw-type chaos”

• “The sound of chaos” (idling motor; hoarse voice)

• Chaos (a stereoscopic sound movie made with Reimara Rossler and Thomas Wiehr 1976)

• “Hyperchaos” (name courtesy Paul Rapp)

• “The sound of hyperchaos” (like raindrops falling on a car’s roof)

• X-attractor (still unidentified)

• “Playdough task” (to be given to thousands of toddlers to find the hoped-for X-attractor)

• Atrio-ventricular heart chaos (with Reimara Rossler and Herbert D. Landahl)

• “Endocrinological chaos” (with Reimara Rossler, Peter Sadowski and Colin Sparrow)

• Chaos in the Zhabotinsky reaction (with Klaus Wegmann, in parallel to John L. Hudson)

• “Cloud attractor” (with James A. Yorke)

• “Folded-towel map” (in parallel with Masaya Yamaguti’s “folded handkerchief map”)

• “Punctured hyperchaos” as source of any transfinitely exact 2-D self-similarity (with Michael Klein)

• “The chaotic hierarchy” (the simplest pertinent equation was subsequently found by Gerold Baier and Sven Sahle)

• Explicit differentiable Smale-Urysohn solenoid (with Pal Fischer and W.R. Smith)

• “Transfinitely invertible attractors” (almost everywhere)

• First explicit Poincaré recurrence (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• A generic Milnor attractor (with Francisco Doria and Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• A “society of flare attractors” (with Georg C. Hartmann)

• “Hyperfat attractors” (with John L. Hudson and Erik Mosekilde)

• Particle indistinguishability is transfinitely exact (with Hans Primas)

• Deterministic entropy (with Hans Diebner)

• “Gibbs-Sackur cell” in phase space

• Classical unit action (the system-specific Sackur cell)

• Micro time reversals in the Sackur cell of the observer (with Richard Wages)

• An estimate of Planck‘s constant (based on Sackur cell)

• Causal (exo) explanation of quantum mechanics (with David Finkelstein and Peter Weibel)

• Causal (exo) explanation of spin (with Michael Conrad)

• “Single-spin chemistry” in ultra-strong magnetic fields (with Dieter Fröhlich, Günter Häfelinger and Frank Kuske)

• “Second Periodic Table of Elements” (single-spin chemistry)

• “Cession twin of action”: hc (with Claudia Giannetti)

• Everett’s global Psi-function replaced by Boltzmann’s global H-function (on the exo-level)

• Everett’s observer-centered explanation of nonlocality (1957), confirmed

• The momentarily consciousness-bearing Sackur cell in the brain determines both h and c – a conjecture (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Weibel)

• “VX-diagram” in spacetime of the “completed Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox” (with John S. Bell, in parallelism to Susan Feingold)

• The partly satellite-based VX-type EPR-Bell experiment: To prove that more than one quantum world exists (similarly Anton Zeilinger)

• Locally-counterfactual superluminal telegraph (with Uwe Niedersen and Jürgen Parisi)

• Everett immortality (with Markus Fix and Bryce DeWitt)

• Aging equation (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• Evolutionary explanation of larger female longevity (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• A constant-temperature physico-chemical time-of-life clock in the body, predicted (with Reimara Rossler)

• Melatonin as a likely “handle” of the time-of-life clock (with Reimara Rossler and Peter Kloeden)

• Lampsacus, hometown of all persons on the Internet (with Valentino Braitenberg and Gerhard J. Lischka)

• Early attempt to found Lampsacus (with Ezer Weizmann and Mohamed ElNaschie)

• “Earth-Moon University” in Lampsacus (with Wilfried Kriese, Artur P. Schmidt and George Lasker)

• The 16-level “pyramid of knowledge” (in Lampsacus)

• “WM-diagram” in time across different levels in gravitation (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• Gravitational-redshift proportional size increase (with Dieter Fröhlich, Heinrich Kuypers and Jurgen Parisi)

• Non-uniqueness of simultaneity on the rotating cylinder (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• Proof of flatness for the famous Ehrenfest rotating disk

• Black holes are “almost-black holes” (with Dieter Fröhlich, Heinrich Kuypers, Hans Diebner and Mohamed ElNaschie)

• A first proof of angular-momentum conservation in gravity (with Heinrich Kuypers)

• Einstein’s gravitational Time dilation possesses three new corollaries: Length, Mass and Charge suffer a proportional or antiproportional change (TeLeMaCh theorem)

• General relativity is in for a far-reaching mathematical and physical re-interpretation

• c is globally constant (Max Abraham, rehabilitated)

• Nonexistence of gravitational waves (as corollary)

• Nonexistence of gravitons (as corollary)

• The famous “indirect evidence for gravitational waves” (Hulse-Taylor), explained instead by tidal friction (with Dieter Fröhlich and René Stettler)

• A “Reeb foliation in spacetime” exists around any rotating black hole (with Dieter Fröhlich, following stimulation by Art Winfree)

• Kerr metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-meter disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Ur-kilogram disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Charge conservation disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Reissner-Nordstrom metric disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Eddington-Finkelstein transformation disproved (via Telemach theorem) (with apologies to my close friend)

• Bekenstein theory disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• Hawking radiation disproved (via Telemach theorem)

• The “coordinate singularity” at the horizon rehabilitated as a physical singularity (via Telemach theorem)

• Interior Schwarzschild solution: Proof of nonexistence

• Singularity theorem inside black hole horizon (Penrose) proven non-existent (with aüologies to my superior friend)

• Wormholes proved non-existent

• Upper half of Flamm’s paraboloid: Replaced by a generic 3-pseudosphere; lower half proven nonexistent

• Supersymmetry disproved (field particles do not exist on exo level)

• The human Lorenz matrix (of facial expressions): A universal natural facial-expressions simulator (with Wilfried Musterle)

• An equation for a one-dimensional – purely temporal – brain (with Michael Conrad; similarly Susie Vrobel)

• Evil as a contagious disease (unlike the good, evil cannot arise spontaneously)

• Children and adults form two different species, ethologically speaking (with Konrad Lorenz)

• “Pongo goneotrophicus” is a more appropriate biological name of Homo sapiens (meaning “the parent-feeding ape”)

• Biochemical life (including Robert Forward’s nuclear-chemical life) on the one hand, and “brain life” on the other, are functionally disjoint

• A transfinitely exact version of Edward Fredkin’s Digital Information Mechanics (including both classical indistinguishability and universal time-reversal invariance)

• Electrons have finite volume (follows from Telemach theorem)

• As a corollary, string theory is qualitatively confirmed

• The qualitative confirmation of string theory implies that a successful generation of black holes by particle colliders has become much more likely

• Freshly generated black holes are undetectable at nuclear colliders

• The empirical “quasar scaling theorem” is extended downwards by some 50 orders of magnitude

• There exist no more unstoppable and voracious parasites in the universe than black holes

• Miniature black holes grow exponentially inside solid matter (after getting stuck)

• “Clifford conjecture”: Finite-volume universe solutions to the Einstein equations are predictably unphysical (with Walter Ratjen); in this case, no “Gödel solution” exists and no time travel is possible

• The fractal dimensionality of the cosmos is close to unity, not only empirically but also theoretically (“Fournier-Mandelbrot solution” to the Einstein equation)

• Low-surface-brightness galaxies (“black galaxies”) are extraordinarily old

• A first consistent history of galaxy formation becomes possible

• Giacconi’s ultra-faint equidistributed X-ray sources are most likely ultra-distant, very-high-redshift quasars (so that redshift measurements are maximally desirable)

• The microwave background radiation is predicted to merge smoothly with equal-temperature galactic-halo objects (therefore the raw data of the “Planck mission” need to be published)

• Existence of differentiable dynamical systems that are made up, not of one-D locally parallel threads but of two-D locally parallel surfaces (Bouligand-Winfree theory)

• The Hubble-Perlmutter law holds true in a non-expanding Fournier-Mandelbrot cosmos (with Dieter Fröhlich, Ramis Movassagh and Anthony Moore)

• Zwicky-Chandrasekhar “dynamical friction” numerically confirmed (with Klaus Sonnleitner)

• Deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Hans Diebner)

• Deterministic statistical cryodynamics: Exists as a new fundamental science besides deterministic statistical thermodynamics (with Klaus Sonnleitner and Frank Kuske)

• “Deterministic ectropy” formula (with Ali Sanayei)

• The smaller (almost-) black hole in a collision gets predictably “re-circulated (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• Black hole mergers are a source both of charged and of uncharged cosmic rays

• “Metabállon anapaúetai” (metabolizing it remains unchanged): Heraclitus’ transfinitely recycling cosmology proven valid after 2 ½ millennia

• Abramowicz’s “topology inversion” near black-hole horizon confirmed (with Dieter Fröhlich)

• “Identity jumps” between 3 indistinguishable classical particles on a ring calculated (with Peter Weibel and Richard Wages)

• Two shells form in a classical atom containing two indistinguishable electrons

• The counterfactual superluminal telegraph is “subluminally confirmable”

• A counterfactual world-change machine (with Jürgen Parisi)

• History of transfinitely exact indistinguishability (Anaxagoras, Gregorus of Naziance, the Mutakallimún, Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz, Gibbs, Pauli, Hans Primas, Alexandre Ganoczy, Richard Wages, Rudolf Matzka)

• “Everett-Schrödinger Russian Roulette” (with Markus Fix)

• Unit “el-action” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit action)

• Unit “el-cession” is a new universal conserved quantity (like the unit cession)

• “G-zero” is a new fundamental constant of nature, replacing the gravitational constant G and the magnetic constant mu-zero which both remain locally constant (similarly Richard J. Cook)

• The nonlinear simultaneity generator in the brain is qualitatively reminiscent of general relativity (with Eva Ruhnau)

• Proposal to use the new science of cryodynamics to stabilize Tokamak-type fusion reactors (enabling unlimited free energy for humanity)

• Cryodynamics and thermodynamics, combined, allow for a revived eternal cosmology in modern science in the footsteps of Saint Augustine

• No WIMPs since cold dark matter was disproved

• No dark energy since accelerated expansion was disproved

• No big bang and no space expansion since cryodynamics explains the Hubble law in a fractal cosmos

• No inflation owing to the absence of space expansion

• No “primordial” nucleosynthesis in the absence of space expansion

• No Sunyaev-Zel’dovich cutoff, in the absence of a very distant origin of the background radiation

• The “survival of the scientific-technological world”-problem (C.F. von Weizsäcker) is once more the most pressing problem of humanity (with Eric Klien)

• An attempt made to convene an “LHC safety conference” (with Markus Goritschnig)

• Absence of Emile-Zola type intellectuals in our present time, and of devoted high-ranking journalists and politicians — if the following fact holds true: The European Nuclear Research Council CERN is for many months continuing operation of its LHC experiment at historic energies and luminosities while refusing to address an (to the best of my and everyone else’s knowledge) un-falsified published scientific proof of black-hole danger, or to at least update its 4-years-old safety report

(Note: Friedrich Valjavek kindly compiled an annotated bibliography in 2002: http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/RosslerBibliography.pdf )