1) The psychophysical problem can be described via experiment.
Slightly burn one’s thumb with short CO2 laser exposure and
you’ll get what is known as Evoke Potential followed by sharp
pain for few seconds. The pulse from the thumb to the brain
can be measured and so all the resulting spike trains in the
neuron’s axons - if not now then in the future. The entire process
can be monitored as a temporal dependent graph flow of pulses.
The entire physical process is publicly owned by all observers
including the subject. The pain, however, is felt by the subject
alone. Trying to fool the experiment one can connect the brain of
the subject to the brain of an observer such that the observer
will feel the pain, alas, the observer’s experience runs through
the observer’s brain and thus we get a process which is equivalent
to exposing the observer to the stimulus and there is no way to
compare the experience of the observer and the experience of the original subject except for the publicly owned observation.
What can be said is that there is a correlation between the pulses per second and pain. Are correlation and causation the same ?
The answer is no. The linguistic terms “publicly owned” and “privately owned” reflect the crux of the pschophysical duality.
The subject experience is “parallel” to the physical world or “reported” by the physical world but need not be physical.
How does this agree with the principle of parsimony ? Why to assume
an existence beyond physics if it is not needed ? Well, it is needed because of the encapsulation of privately owned experience within the subject’s world. Instead of dismissing the existence of the psych
in favor of physics, we can regard physics as a Shared Interpretation of Shared Experience - Observation. In that interpretation, the physical world itself, which is “publicly owned” is merely shared experience by all subjects.

Understanding of our origin may not be within the realm of physics.

2) Physics depends on geometry, no matter how complex. The basic objects of space - time are the events or collisions (with particles, waves etc.). These events are multiple. The goal of
physics is to perceive reality as unity which does not align with
the plurality of events unless all events are a deterministic result
of some recursive algorithm. Therefore the perception of space - time
as one, contradicts the use of geometry which results in a dead end.
One source to the physical phenomenology means that such a source is
beyond geometry. In other words, such a source is metaphysical.
As a friend of mine who is a philosopher (Sharon Vaknin) says,
“Philosophy is the watchdog of physics”. I totally concur with him.
Hopefully Sabine also.
Scientists should also be philosophers.

“As every other part of our lives, theoretical physics has been specialized into many areas, and it requires education to contribute to the front of research”.
My personal preference is to deconstruct space - time into an ensemble of unsynchronizable 3D manifolds on which time appears as
an emergent function and results in a new locally orthogonal dimension without violating the covariance principle.
Orthogonality is achieved on the expense of synchronizability and
thus the 4D coordinates are totally local. The problem of such
a theory is to construct global coordinates. This is where
I lack knowledge. The theory is not any conventional theory but
bears some resemblance to quantum gravity. It appears as a candidate to make peace between string theory and loop quantum gravity but
is quite stuck in very early stages and involves C++ simulations.

Material and spiritual redemption to you all,
wishing Eytan.

See, if you want to move into a cave, you don’t need to worry about many details.

Have you tried it? I bet I’d need to worry about lots of details. It gets awfully chilly in the winter without some bear skins to hang over the front entrance… but bear skins, well, for them you need flint spearheads and a well-trained team of hunters… and then there’s the problem of gathering nuts and berries, and cooking…

So, cave dwellers may have been more aware than people today of how much technical knowledge and skill are needed to run a culture — because now we’re so specialized, and so much gets done ‘behind the scenes’, that we can’t even imagine life without it all.

that it was a standard German doctorate tradition

Most such tradition ended at least after those events 1968, as far as I am aware. But in recent years things are beginning to change again.

it seems to me there might be a reason why Heidelberg, second to Munich, is again and again rated top among German Universities in the world ranking. Unfortunately, I can completely confirm what Chris writes above. The power at German Universities lies in the hands of the senior people, and many of them use it to their own advantages, which is very short sighted. The fact that a Professorship is still a life-time position (in case someone doesn’t know, this really means they CAN NOT be fired and have their job until they literally drop dead) makes things worse. Once you’re employed you can roughly speaking do what you want, or nothing at all (of course this has consequences for your grant). In addition to this, it means that the positions are extremely rare and hard to get. A reasonable middle range of well-paid but not overpaid, long but not eternal positions, is missing. They try to get rid of the Habilitation, but obviously there is some resistance to this.

I guess its kind of natural to assume that it is the same everywhere, I also didn’t know much about how the system works overseas until I went to some conferences. However, in my case the situation was a bit complicated because I worked on a topic that wasn’t content of the Institute’s research plan, and it was tough to get travel grants. I had to pay a considerable part by myself, which was almost impossible with a salary that didn’t even pay the rent… blahblah, you get the point. Today I’d say I should have left Germany earlier and made my PhD in the US, things would have been far easier.

Do you have any pictures of your PhD hat?

We had no hats. We didn’t even have a party. Oh yes, there was a party, but I was told I’d have to pay for it, so the invited guests could have their dinner for free. I didn’t go but had my own party.

Best,

B.

My criticism of the academic research system in general is that all the decision making is done by people my age (I am 47) and older. On the other hand almost all the important work - and certainly all the innovative stuff - is done by the under-30’s. Someone in their 20s can come up with a great idea and then get nowhere because one of the old timers feels threatened by them. Germany seems to be an extreme case of this. The faculty seem to have more protection and be able to obstruct creative young minds more than elsewhere. Habilitation, for example - what is the point of that other than just to protect the old timers from dangerous, sceptical, original young minds?

Do you have any pictures of your PhD hat? I received mine two years before yours, in Heidelberg. My thesis advisor arranged my oral defense during a time when our group was hosting a conference in my subject. I was terrified that I was going to fail, and everyone important in my career would know instantly. My parents came from the U.S and my uncle came from Latvia for that event too. I passed, but I’ll never forget my terror on that day. BTW, I earned my PhD at age 40, but that story is better left to another post.

If you believe in the dubious science of psychometrics, and the even more dubious research in that field by Richard Lynn, then there is no need to feel guilty about draining Germany of brains; Germany has a surplus of them. See the following:

http://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2006/03/european-iqs.html

Do take the stuff at the URL tongue-in-cheek. Not though, Richard Lynn. He is poison. He is the kind of guy who thinks, when it suits him, that given a set of numbers { x } and a non-linear function f, f[average[x]] == average[f[x]].

-Arun

That was well done, and on account of your interest in the writings of Douglas Adams, I can, in my capacity as Emperor of the Vl’hurgs, grant you clemency when our Empire takes over this puny galaxy.

Suggestion … why not ask Uncle Al to provide a similar biographical post. I think a lot of people would interested. I would, anyway.

Thanks so much for the nice words. Esp. Amara, it makes me very happy to hear I was able to remind you how wonderful and interesting the world is through the eyes of a physicist. Sometimes I forget myself, and I’m always glad to have somebody around to remind me.

Hi Arun,

I guess the “drained brain” refers to the fact of having migrated, thereby contributing to a brain drain out of Germany.

Yeah, that was what I meant to say. It’s not big news that Germany is loosing top researchers to North America, see e.g.

Brain Drain Hurting Germany

(coincidentally, I just noticed the photo was taken in a lecture hall I sat in myself some years ago). Since I’ve declined a pretty decent offer from the Germans last year, I have kind of a bad conscience, esp. since I’ve financed part of my stay in the US with governmental support.

In addition to this, the Germans are permanently worried about their falling birth rate, see e.g.

German birth rate falls to lowest in Europe

A fact that has repeatedly been connected to, guess what, young women going into academics instead of properly reproducing. If you ask me, there are too many Germans anyhow, but those who are there are definitely world leaders in complaining and worrying. I guess, at least in this sense, I’m a good German

Best,

B.

Anyway, I hope you become rich (in the things you count as valuable) in your pursuit of physics.

You’re welcome.

Cheers,

-cvj

thank you for publishing this post, and the enthusiastical introduction!
Man, I am proud

All the best, stefan