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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

FQXi essay contest

I submitted an essay to the FQXi essay contest. As mentioned below, it is supposed to answer the question, What assumption is wrong? Thanks to readers who encouraged me to make a submission. My essay was one of the first submitted, but there are now about 15 others.

I am trying to resist the temptation to badmouth my competition.

The first phase of the contest is to collect ratings at the above FQXi site. Some essays will get low ratings because the readers think that the author is wrong. But the whole idea of the essay contest is to produce essays that say everyone else is wrong about something. So if someone gets a very high rating, I will be suspicious that he did not write a sufficiently provocative essay. Of course I want a high rating anyway, as the higher-rated essay will get read more and taken more seriously. Maybe the ideal essay to leave the reader thinking, "Sounds convincing, but it cannot be right or someone would have said that before." Or maybe, "At first I thought the proposal was absurd, but now I think that it is obvious."

You can also download the essay here on my site, where the references are clickable links. You can also comment on it at the FQXi site.

2 comments:

  1. Great essay and I hope you win.

    I'm neither a physicist nor a mathematician, but I'm sure your view is essential to untangling some of the conceptual difficulties that seem to take physics in such unproductive directions.

    I'll link to it on my blog. Although it's a small blog, every little helps.

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  2. Well-written and entertaining. [applause]

    ReplyDelete