Section 2
Section 2: My History of Illogic
My mother sent me a delicately graphic book “The Introduction of Astrophysics” in Chinese as a gift when I was a little boy. When I took it, I was so attracted by the beautiful pictures that my eyes could not leave.
During that time, sitting on my grandparents’ narrow windowsill and reading the book were the most exciting things for me. However, my relatives around me thought I was a strange boy as others at the same age were playing outside.
When I read the book, some childish questions always came to my mind:
Why is our world so ‘empty’?
Why do we have a lot of space that we can walk or run but is not full of stone or earth?
It was a pity that I couldn’t answer it at once. Although I had many trials afterwards, I still could not find any possible reason. So, I changed my way of thinking and assumed if the world was filled with stone and earth, what should happen and where these stones came from?
These questions bothered me for a very long time. I tried to ask my parents for help. Unfortunately, they stared me as a strange boy and could not give an answer. I felt a little bit disappointed as no one could understand me. After that, I seldom mentioned them but thought alone.
Nowadays, when I thought back, I was grateful to my parents and relatives for the prejudice. Their prejudice made me keep silence and protected me away from even larger scope of prejudice.
When I grew up, the schools were far from my home, which took about half an hour to commute by bike. Therefore, I had enough time to reconsider these questions and try to find clues behind them.
To be actually, I got increasing answers to the old questions. The questions and answers would never end if I keep on asking why. If this is the only way, I can never get the final answer.
I thought I could find the final answer or at least some clues from my courses, but I failed in all the trials. I didn’t realize all the subjects I could reach had the same character.
Until one day, on my way home, I suddenly realized the logic, the manner of thinking, should be the source of this feature.
I started my long journey to pursue a way of thinking beyond the scope of logic.
In the beginning, all my attempts were in vain and I didn’t see any progress. I still kept on thinking because I believe there is something I could catch. But I failed again and again.
In my first year of college study, I read the book ‘A Brief History of Time’ written by Steven Hawking. From the book, I got to know the theory of everything which made me reconsider my old question:
“If the world is filled with stone and earth, what will happen and where do they come from?”
I asked myself in another way:
“If it is possible to make a new world, what do I need to achieve that?”
For this question, the answer was simple and direct. I need materials and enough knowledge.
We could get enough knowledge from theory of everything. But it was difficult to find abundant materials or adequate energy as the energy is conserved.
I was sad and could not go any further until I learned quantum mechanics where I understood the energy conservation doesn’t work for arbitrary situation but with conditions. That is, the translational invariance of time leads to energy conservation, which is a special case of Noether’s theorem.
In other words, if we can find a way to break the translational invariance of time, the energy conservation is not necessary. Then we can get enough energy to make a new world.
Although it may be impossible to break, I was still so surprised that it showed a possibility I haven’t seen before. The material or energy to make a new world is not a strict limitation but the knowledge is.
I tried to find a way beyond the scope of logic as well as working hard on physics. Inspired by Hawking’s book, I also speculated if there was someone already exploring a possible way beyond the scope of logic.
Therefore, I read lots of Chinese history books during college and tried to find a person who had similar thought. I only found Hui Shi, a famous philosopher in the Warring States Period of China, might come to the proper direction.
But unfortunately, his book was not handed down, which made me disappointed.
Meanwhile, I began to think about the possibility to go beyond the scope of logic and started to find something in that area. I realized one sad thing was that I could not show it to someone else even I achieved it, because I need to use logical word to explain illogic.
At that time, I planned to reach the final theory or part of the final theory with this illogic. And I could use the final theory to find out a list of new physical facts. I explained these facts to other people which they did not know. Then I showed weak evidence that I have achieved the illogic.
In other people’s eyes, I only stated the result without reason, like prophecies.
I planned to make a prophecy per day for one year and I could use these prophecies to write a paper titled ‘One prophecy everyday’. Then I would send the paper to an academic journal and publish it.
However, later on, the characteristics of illogic made me depressed as I noticed I could not predict anything available in our physical world.
It is because the theory of everything is too good – it is even good enough to cover all the possibilities and impossibilities in our physical world, which means I could gain lots of predictions from this theory, but could not distinguish whether they are right or wrong in the physical world.
Even the concept of right and wrong does not have an exact meaning in the theory.
I felt desperate when I firstly realized it. I thought my illogic journey would come to an end. But before giving up, I wanted to write something so that others had a chance to understand what I had done.
Initially, I had a plan to write a fiction that was an example of network including thousands of chains. But when I estimated the time, it would take about 20 to 30 years to write.
From the readers’ view, if they would like to comprehend everything in the book, the time would be double. In that case, to be more effective, I finally decided to transfer my planned paper to an A4 page with 5 chains as a sample. Hopefully, someone in the future can recognize my way of thinking and what I want to express.
I made this page in May 2015 and took it every day in my bag during rest of my Ph.D. It is a simplified network example as shown in the paper ‘Illogic: a feasible method of understanding theory of everything’. When you read the page, please print it on both sides of A4 paper without any margin.
Several weeks later after this page was made, I surprisingly realized that I had reached illogic although I didn’t know the exact time. Because when I arrived for the first time, I couldn’t distinguish illogic and other semi-logic.
When I came to the same ‘area’ again, I remembered it was different from what I saw last time, which indicated that I found something. This is a strange point where other things can never be the same.
I was so excited and checked within the same day. To celebrate it, I wrote a novella in Chinese (about 10000 characters) and slept very late. Unfortunately, after that I got a dizzy problem which lasted for 3 days.
In the beginning, I did not have strong confidence about results as the recheck was done with the same network. Therefore, I started to verify it by building another separate network. Until the end of 2016, I confirmed my previous results.
In 2017, I started to think about what I need and what I could offer. And I also thought about what other people could help and what I could pay for their help. I found building world models with you was the best way to help make the new worlds. Before that, I need to start with a paper, a website and an online shop.
In the end of 2017, the first draft of my paper was finished.
In 2018, I started to write the website and checked how to make an ebay shop.
Before my PhD defense, the content of webpage was ready.
To show briefly an evidence of this history and my confidence in the theory, I put the network example in my PhD thesis.
That’s all until now.
Kind regards
Yang Chen