With Varying Frequency – Amateur Radio Ponderings

Garrett Lisi, PhD, recently has received widespread media and internet coverage for his article “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” published on “arXiv” in the General Systems Theory community.  (”arXiv” is an electronic archive of scientific papers.)

Wikipedia has a decent article on the theory.

I’ve had a several month long discussion with Manchester Business School Professor Emeritus Dr Norman Powell looking at the E8 “Theory of Everything” both from a topological & geometrical vantage and somewhat from the mathamatical angle.

In the end of our review E8 is found wanting.

Lisi’s treatment of labeling is of course arbitrary, we know that. 

His twisting and skewing of the 2D presenation of the 3D matrix is mush – it is like shaping your hands to make shadow puppets – nice as the shapes are, your hands never share any real characteristic of the the creature who’s shadow they shape.

To then extend this parlor game into a “theory of everything” is the crowning charade.

I’m wondering if it is all either a parlor pastime that gained a life of its own, or a grand send-up by Lisi? Specially have my “antennas twigged” as he is almost non-published outside of this blockbuster claim.

My guess is peer review will finish the E8 as a Theory of Everything. (arXiv is not a journal, nor has a peer review process. It is simply an on-line archive of recommended submissions.)

E8 is more fun than reading tea leaves or looking for spots in a broken egg’s yoke, but no more meaningful.

73

Steve
K9ZW