My rejected Application to FQXi on Quantum 2016

 

Tegmark FQXi BBC Quantum Fractal 

I still haven't heard anyone ask any questions about my paper that I published in the International Journal of Quantum Foundations. I still think it's remarkable that someone like me got accepted to publish, not peer reviewed, not one paper, but two. Two complementary papers, the first on the quantum and the fractal, and a second on the fractal, the large-scale structure of the universe, and I'm not even a physicist. And I haven't heard a word. 

I wrote a comment on a YouTube clip recently that 'I feel unmeasured'. I understand that I could be seen as a crank, but the journal editor didn't think so. There's no way he would've let it go in if he thought that. He wrote to me that he thought my work was 'interesting'. Maybe they just needed my money. Joking.

I'd like to share with you a little backstory of how I applied for a grant from the FQXI foundation on the topic of the observer. It was back in 2016, and I had all my ideas on the fractal all laid down on this blog, and I really wanted to put it down on paper and work with it with my then-supervisor. When I saw that there was a grant and that I was out of work by 50% at the time, I thought I could get a little help and maybe some extra supervision to get down what I discovered. So I applied for the grant.

I'm going to leave you my grant application and also the rejection letter that I received. What annoyed me is that it seemed that the bulk of the grants, several millions of US dollars, went to the big universities and the big names that we all hear of in the field of quantum. If I recall I saw Sean Carroll, was on that list. I felt a little dejected at the time, but I knew that I would carry on anyway. And I did.

The following inspired me to keep an eye out for the FQXI: it is an interview with Max Tegmark on the BBC show Stargazing (I believe). Dara O Briain interviewed him. 

This is a transcript that I have taken from my television hard drive.

O Briain:

From the enigmatically titled Foundational Questions Institute at MIT, Professor Max Tegmark: What qualifies as a foundational question? 

Tegmark:

 "They are the big questions that are the foundations of what we know. We want to support people who go after these questions, even if it's likely to not work. For instance, if some guy had written a grant proposal today to a government saying my name is Albert Einstein, you know, I'm working at a patent office.. cause I couldn't get a job in physics, and I'd you to give me some money to think about time. ( Tegmark shows a thumbs down and makes the sound of a negative peep!!! ) Said the review panel. 

There would have been no way to predict that that research would lead to an understanding that energy and matter are the same thing, and that you can get nuclear power from this and that might be keeping these lights on.  I think it's very important for humanity to invest in things are probably gonna fail, but we have enormous transformative effects if they work. "

No, I'm not saying I'm a Einstein, no but I am saying that my work is unique and pertains to topics that Einstein published on. I cited Albert Einstein's work several times in my paper including entanglement and light speed. Not to mention my second paper on cosmology.

The following is my application for the 2016 grant on the topic of: the physics of the observer.

I knew I was going to write about the measurement problem so I use that as a tool to get in. At least I hoped.

My application

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION

      Name: Blair Macdonald

      Address:-
               Sweden

      Email: fractalnomics

      Phone: 

      Institution: My school at the time

     

   ADDITIONAL INVESTIGATOR INFORMATION

      no co-investigators

   PROPOSAL INFORMATION

      Project Title: Observation: Augmenting Quantum Mechanics with Fractal Geometry

      Project Summary: I am an economics teacher, working totally independently. I have been examining fractals, particularly isolated fractals, trying to decipher them, and in doing so, I have had to address the observer problem firsthand. My findings have direct relevance to – at least – quantum mechanics and cosmology, but also ‘reality’, and if what I have found is found valid, it will have an impact such as to help codify the great problems of modern physics. I was drawn to QM by necessity, ‘from left field’, because QM seemed to be the only area of knowledge that made sense of what I saw. I am not looking at the images or using my emotions, but rather studying them objectively, with mathematics. 
In my teaching, I noticed that the properties of the fractal were revealing themselves in economic theory, so I started to question and test whether these were a coincidence and what they meant. I have since conducted experiments on the simplest/cleanest of fractals, the Koch Snowflake, and with the support of my maths and physics colleagues, began describing what I was seeing/thinking. I would imagine things like: where am I in an ‘infinite’ fractal – if ‘I’m’ in one?  What is it doing when I am not looking at it or in it? What is its size, when I ‘observe’ it? What about time and speed of propagation?  And what is happening to the space and points in space between (to an observer) as it iterates?
I wrote a (unpublished) paper (see ref) on ‘observation’ from within a fractal: I found the fractal demonstrate many of the problems (and conjectures) associated with cosmology and astronomy: offering a geometric explanation to (lambda), inflation expansion, Hubble’s Law (and more) and being scale invariant, insights into the size and ‘empty’ structure of the atom. I am in discussion with an astrophysicist on this.
This was exhausting, but I now need to write up the background premises of the above paper: the ‘quantum’ like behaviour of the isolated fractal. The ‘isolated’ fractal surprisingly demonstrates key features of described by QMs, including wave and particle duality, superposition, and the measurement (observation) problem; (wave) propagation speed (the speed of light?), and it can possibly deal with the issue of decoherence. Are the fractal and QM equivalent? Is the EMS is one aspect of the fractal?  The above paper does not function without this premise.
I have much more to write that relates the fractal to epistemological issues, but my life is busy, and I just can’t find the space and time to write. It is a heavy and unexpected burden I have brought upon myself: I would like to talk to the right people to discuss my discoveries. I am convinced fractal geometry is to the universe what elliptical geometry is to orbiting bodies – it is the geometry. With this geometry, things fit.  My work should complement previous work, and start a new branch of thought.


      Budget: $24,248

      Budget Description:  I would like to spend a year on my project, 50% of my work. I am currently a secondary school teacher on at 34,000 SEK monthly salary. At an exchange rate of 0.12 SEK  to US dollar (DEC 2016)  this equates to $24,248. If successful, I would also like to have mentorship, discussion, and help with editing publishing. I have no idea of the expense at this stage. 

My rejection letter:

Dear Blair,

Thank you for your submission to FQXi's Physics of the Observer grant program. Our initial review panel has now concluded. We're sorry to let you know that our review panel did not select your proposal as one of our finalists.

Due to our limited budget and a strong pool of entries, competition was tough. We had to decline many promising entries. This two-stage review process avoids inflicting the community with a very small acceptance rate for long proposals that take great effort to prepare.

We can't provide individual feedback on the entries, but in general, the panel looked closely at a proposal's relevance to the FQXi mission and the program topic, and to the estimated scientific impact-per-dollar.

Thank you again for the work and time spent on preparing your proposal. Please look out for more FQXi programs in the future, including further Grant competitions.

Sincerely,

Brendan Foster
Scientific Programs Coordinator
Foundational Questions Institute

Like I said, I carried on anyway, eventually. I was writing about the atmosphere and quantum mechanics at the time, so I was busy anyway. It wasn't until the COVID times that I decided, along with my supervisor, to finally put together my quantum paper without any help or any financing from anybody. Ultimately, I did it without my supervisor and entirely on my own. I did not have AI to help me with my writing. I have trouble, unlike others, with my writing, which I call dyslexia.

I don't want any of this to be seen as a fallacy of pity. I have since moved on with my life, and I am proud of what I've done. However, I am concerned that I may forget what I've done, and I am going to be a researcher into what I wrote.

From time to time, when I hear people talking about quantum mechanics and the quantum problem, I give myself a little smile and say, "Hey, I've written on that." Since then, I've only been satisfied that I actually have written an interpretation of quantum mechanics, and not one piece of feedback.

Incidentally, the names on the FQXI foundation committee are much the same as the ones in the international Journal of quantum foundations.

I say to many; I am not pretending to be somebody I am not. It's just that the fractal does these very strange things and it just so happens that the only other thing that is just a strange is what is described as the quantum.