Talk:Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe/Archive 2

Notes on re-creation (demerging?) of this article 1

I did a pretty thorough review of the WP:RS on the CTMU (Google Scholar, Google Books, Microsoft Academic, even a blogosphere search), and I believe there is enough for it to pass the WP:GNG now. For those that are curious, all of the sources I found but deemed not RSy enough for this article are in User_talk:Scarpy/Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. I suspect this article will be contentious, so let me point out a few things I was careful to do in the re-creation of this article.

1. Langan is not used as a source for any of the information in this version. I did this for several reasons (a) his material is published variously in Noesis, PCID (Progress in Complexity, Information and Design), Cosmos and History (of these three only Cosmos and History has a CiteScore and it's 0.3) in some self-published books, and in one chapter in a book edited by William A. Dembski (b) I didn't want to run afoul of WP:SOAP WP:MISSION WP:PROMO or WP:PEACOCK (c) it's worth noting that the CTMU has a life outside of Langan's material.
2. As I've said elsewhere, Ben Goertzel and Mark Chu-Carroll are RS as WP:REPUTABLE states, 'source' has multiple meanings. In the citations here, while the blogs themselves are not reliable sources, the authors are confirmed and are reliable sources.
3. I debated how to include more of the criticisms of the CTMU that Mark Chu-Carroll made, but was at a loss for how to integrate it without breaking WP:NOCRIT and making a criticism section. If you're a better writer than me, feel free to have a go at it.
4. I realize Klee Irwin is a controversial figure, but the other two authors (Marcelo M. Amaral and David Chester) on the paper from Quantum Gravity Research are legit. Entropy has a CiteScore or 3.7 and is the 87 percentile (8th of 62) in Mathematical Physics journals.
5. I don't believe either of the PhD theses cited run afoul of WP:SCHOLARSHIP in the context that they're used.
6. Armein Z.R. Langi is a PhD in Indonesia and a guru besar (professor)

- Scarpy (talk) 02:46, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I almost forgot - I paid a translator on Fiverr to translate the bit in German in to English. You can see it here. - Scarpy (talk) 03:10, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

The sourcing is incredibly thin. I do not believe that GNG is anywhere near satisfied here, and there certainly isn't enough to substantiate a whole article separate from Christopher Langan. Dembski is a creationist, not a reliable source about anything scientific. Entropy is a journal with ... issues [1][2][3] and shouldn't be relied upon for anything even approaching the fringe. The "International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Smart Society" is not going to have high standards for writing about metaphysics, and even there, Langan gets barely a passing mention. The thesis by Schofield mentions the CTMU exactly once, giving it half a sentence in a footnote (and misspelling Langan's name). The thesis by Fusco is about theology and shows no indication that it was even proofread by a scientist — and since the CTMU is being sold as a scientific revolution, that matters. XOR'easter (talk) 20:51, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

You will need to gain a much larger consensus than this. Please start a WP:RfC rather than acting unilaterally. jps (talk) 20:52, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

ජපස the "consensus" you're talking about in this edit summary was 14 years ago before any of the sources that were cited in this version of the article were published. It doesn't apply, replacing the redirect with out consensus on the new article in this talk page strikes me as ANI worthy. I'll add I spent 40+ hours and my own money researching and writing the new version of article. An WP:RfC makes absolutely no sense here as there's no expectation that the editors from 2006 when the decision was made are currently active and the content they were disputing in 2006 is entirely different. I'm going to restore the article. If you revert again will take this to ANI. - Scarpy (talk) 03:38, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter I only see one issue raised with Entropy in the links you sent. If there's a problem with it the place to raise it would be in the WP:RSN. The rest of your objections I believe I addressed in my first post, save for the bit about "selling" the CTMU, which is a straw man here. Perhaps some CTMU-related sources claim it's a "scientific revolution," but none of them are used as sources this version of the article and none of the text in the new version describe is as anything like that. I believe if you'll honestly compare the sources to the information that accompanies them in the article you'll see this. - Scarpy (talk) 03:38, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry you spent a lot of time and money(!) to write a poor article that doesn't even mention the person who authored the proposal in its lede, but there you go. Get consensus that this is worth spinning off. Maybe start by adding to the article on Christopher Langan and do the proper WP:CFORK. I don't think you've got a leg to stand on here. jps (talk) 03:53, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

ජපස I addressed mentioning Langan as little as possible in this version of the CTMU in the first comment in this thread. It's not a content fork, so WP:CFORK does not apply - Scarpy (talk) 03:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

It's not a content fork because you did not follow the procedure and add content you thought was relevant to the appropriate article. The idea is Langan's. It is not anyone else's. jps (talk) 04:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

ANI Notice - Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#User_Redirecting_Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_of_the_Universe_to_Christopher_Langan_without_consensus_on_talk_page. - Scarpy (talk) 04:32, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The links regarding Entropy demonstrate that they've published garbage repeatedly. I've seen the occasional paper by respected scientists there, but their peer-review process seems to be about nil, and anything there should be regarded as something like an arXiv post, i.e., basically self-published. The fact that the sources have to be scraped from the bottom of the publishing barrel is a solid indicator that the CTMU is not a notable proposal. Nothing has been published in a reputable scientific journal about it since the previous consensus was established, so there is no reason to take that consensus to no longer be in effect. XOR'easter (talk) 04:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Moreover, the blog posts by Chu-Carroll are scathing. Merely saying that they claim he material published on the CTMU uses terminology and neologisms in a way that makes it difficult to understand seriously misrepresents their contents and, by not summarizing them accurately, violates NPOV. Chu-Carroll says things like, What does he conclude from this pointless exercise? That playing word-games doesn’t tell you anything about the universe? No, that makes too much sense. That naive set theory perhaps isn’t a great model for the physical universe? No, still too much sense. No, he concludes that this problem of word-games means that set theory is wrong, and must be expanded to include the contradiction of the largest thing being both smaller than its powerset and larger than its powerset. Yes, the solution is to take an unsound mathematical theory, and make it doubly unsound. This isn't just a complaint about neologisms. XOR'easter (talk) 04:19, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

You are completely correct about Mark Chu-Carroll and this was the third point I mentioned in my first comment I debated how to include more of the criticisms of the CTMU that Mark Chu-Carroll made, but was at a loss for how to integrate it without breaking WP:NOCRIT and making a criticism section. If you're a better writer than me, feel free to have a go at it. it's also worth contrasting Mark's response with Ben's response.

I believe you are less correct about Entropy. The links you've provided show that they may have made a mistake publishing one article about glyphosate but not that they regularly publish poor articles. Their CiteScore [4] speaks otherwise on this point. - Scarpy (talk) 04:39, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The links regarding Entropy are not just about the glyphosate incident. The third recalls the glyphosate business and also argues quite thoroughly that the very paper cited as evidence of the CTMU's notability is bunkum. I could point to other examples of their failure as a peer-reviewed publication [5][6][7]. As for the CiteScore metric, it's just a metric: it doesn't indicate respectability. Garbage papers in marginal journals can elevate it, for example. (It's also rigged in favor of Elsevier, but that's a matter for another day.) XOR'easter (talk) 04:57, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that a Google Scholar search for "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" finds only 57 results, many of them by Langan himself, and the others either preprints (random PDFs on the web that GS happened to scrape) or "published" in fake journals like NeuroQuantology. Contrast this situation with an actual physics theory, a minority view but one taken seriously, like Relational quantum mechanics. There you get over 800 results, by a variety of authors, the majority of them peer-reviewed. There's just no notability case to be made for the CTMU. XOR'easter (talk) 05:10, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter You may have a point about Entropy and usefulness of CiteScore. But if you look at Wikipedia guidelines, e.g. WP:SJ it specifically mentions in the section "Searching for good sources" For scientific journals, you can find good journals at https://www.scopus.com/sources This free service allows you to put in the subject area of research (e.g., genetics) and see a list of ranked journals. You can also check the CiteScore percentiles and SCImago Journal Rank ("prestige") of any already-cited journals by switching the search to title or ISSN and searching for the journal you want to review. (For these metrics, bigger numbers are better, so a journal with a CiteScore percentile of 60% is cited more often than 60% of journals in that subject area.) ... so, look, you may be right about CiteScore, but you would also be contradicting WP:SJ. What you're saying here and whether or not Entropy should be considered a reliable source seems outside of the scope of this discussion.

I tend to use things like CiteScore because you can't quantify a journal's reputation from articles in scienceblogs, retractionwatch, etc. The idea behind something like CiteScore is that no journal is perfect, but that some are better than others and it's nice to have metrics to rank them in terms of reliability. I have no doubt that Entropy's reputation isn't perfect, but the question is relative to other journals how bad is it and how can you quantify this? - Scarpy (talk) 05:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I went through every single one of those Google Scholar results (and then some) see User_talk:Scarpy/Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe. I read much of each of those Google Scholar results too and I didn't include the nonsense from journals like NeuroQuantology. But you're talking about something different than Wikipedia guidelines. WP:N doesn't say "if something is talking about metaphysics it should be at least as popular relational quantum mechanics and can't have been brought up in a journal like NeuroQuantology." What WP:N is talking about is coverage reliable secondary sources. What's in the new version is coverage in secondary sources that normally pass WP:RS. Perhaps Entropy is debatable, but it's te kind of journal you would use following the aforementioned logic in WP:SJ. The other way to look at something like this is that it's slowly been gaining notability over the last 10 years (as most of the citations are from 2010 or later) and it has met this threshold. Notability isn't saying that something is scientifically valid (or we wouldn't have articles on irreducible complexity) and nothing in the new version of the article is claiming that it is. - 05:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The comparison to Relational quantum mechanics is relevant because it shows what coverage in reliable sources looks like for ideas on the outer frontiers of physics. It's not what the coverage of the CTMU looks like.

I have no doubt that Entropy's reputation isn't perfect, but the question is relative to other journals how bad is it — It's published by MDPI, so the answer starts at "not great" and can only go downhill from there. The other sources are worse. If all that has accumulated over an entire decade is a smattering of mentions in gray literature by people who are not subject-matter experts in the subjects necessary to evaluate an idea, it's not a notable idea. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be the new irreducible complexity or the new EmDrive, but not yet.

Notes on re-creation (demerging?) of this article 2

The proposed article begins, The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) is a metaphysical theory of reality — and this is already a POV statement, since it is far from universally agreed upon that the CTMU is even coherent enough to be called a "theory". The seminal paper published on the CTMU is likewise highly charged. Intentionally or not, all of the content is written as though intelligent design were a legitimate scientific theory and the CTMU a helpful elaboration upon it. This is trying to spin moldy straw into gold. XOR'easter (talk) 05:44, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter there's no reason all coverage on things that are in "the outer frontiers of physics" should look the same. I also wouldn't place this in the outer frontiers of physics. It's more philosophy/theology.

It's published by MDPI, so the answer starts at "not great" and can only go downhill from there. Again, this may be correct but there's nothing in WP:SJ about "avoid things published by MDPI." The guidance there is to look at things like the CiteScore. Maybe that guidance sucks, but it's what Wikipedia's guidelines currently are.

The bit about the seminal paper on the CTMU is my attempt at paraphrasing the German (translated as) "In several writings, mainly in a 56-page paper, Langan presents the CTMU." It goes on to discuss that it's placed in "an essay in a Christian American creationist anthology." I'm open to changing that, but it's faithful to the original source. This is the translated bit of the section I paid for but I'm open to rewording it.

and this is already a POV statement, since it is far from universally agreed upon that the CTMU is even coherent enough to be called a "theory" two points here (1) that's the language the the sources use and (2) you're talking about a Scientific theory, and no one is claiming the CTMU is a scientific theory. Ben made this pretty clear, and it could be mentioned in the article. "As Langan himself affirms, what he’s putting forth is a philosophy, not a scientific theory."[8]

Intentionally or not, all of the content is written as though intelligent design were a legitimate scientific theory and the CTMU a helpful elaboration upon it. That's bizarre to me because (a) that's not at all what I intended or how I read the proposed version of the article and (b) if you've listened to how I quote Christopher Hitchens among friends, I doubt I ever sound like a proponent of intelligent design.

But if that's at all how it came across then I believe would benefit from your input on that point so it's not misleading to others. - Scarpy (talk) 06:13, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:SJ is an essay, not a guideline (and certainly not a policy). It is in no way binding. (I don't think I've even heard it invoked before.) It does have some good advice to offer; for example, Even the best physics journal is an unreliable source for statements about politics, and top-quality political journals are poor sources for statements about physics. So if the CTMU is "philosophy" instead of a scientific theory, then we shouldn't be looking in journals that purport to be about mathematical physics, should we? Likewise, it advises, There is no "magic" or "good" number for impact factors. And, Even the most prestigious and highly reputable journals have published embarrassingly bad papers, and many disreputable journals have published good quality papers by reputable researchers. Finding journals with good reputations is only part of the work in deciding what sources to use when you are building articles.

I picked Relational quantum mechanics as a comparison point because, as an interpretation of quantum mechanics, it spills over into philosophy and/or metaphysics. It's in the same range of things that the CTMU is trying to enter, unlike theories that lie within physics more narrowly construed, like massive gravity or the Georgi–Glashow model (to pick a couple examples that sprang to mind).

As for the rest, well, what can I say? It read like it took Intelligent Design as a scientific theory, and that the CTMU was too (a "theory of everything" means a scientific one). If that's not the impression you wanted to convey, then another round of revision would have been required. XOR'easter (talk) 06:26, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter That's a fair point WP:SJ is an essay, not a guideline, and it's true that a math and physics journal would not be a best source for a philosophy article (but it also doesn't mean that it would be irrelevant).

If that's not the impression you wanted to convey, then another round of revision would have been required. yes I think that's clear now.

Maybe I can frame this another way. When people Google CTMU, who do you want to explain it to them? Of course, if the CTMU is non-notable, then not Wikipedia. But I think even removing some of the sources this still passes the WP:GNG. Maybe we can agree on a few points as a way forward.

(1) The CTMU is not a scientific theory and shouldn't be framed in the article like one.

(2) It shouldn't leave the reader with an impression that it's advocating intelligent design.

(3) We remove the material referenced by the Entropy article, Dembski and Schofield and re-write.

(4) We include more material from Mark Chu-Carroll.

How does that sound? - Scarpy (talk) 07:09, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Nevermind. I give up. I've sank to much time and money in to this article. Sunk cost fallacy and all. This is all going off my watch lists. - Scarpy (talk) 09:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I may come back to this someday. - Scarpy (talk) 20:16, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Notes on re-creation (demerging?) of this article 3

In my opinion, we have reached the point where the same points are being made over and over, and those who continue to disagree should drop the WP:STICK. --20:57, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Reality Check

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Pardon me, but we may have a few misconceptions here. Perhaps I can help clear them up.

The first involves the meaning of "Theory of Everything". While some people imagine that its meaning is a matter of semantic preference, it's actually more cut and dried. First, it refers to no existing theory of physics. In particular, it does not refer to a unified field theory, the usual meaning of "TOE" in physics. To justify such a label, the UFT in question would have to establish that nothing, living or nonliving, exists in any measure beyond the unified field, which is something that a UFT simply doesn't do. Nor does the Standard Model qualify - it peters out beyond the first 10^-43 seconds of cosmic evolution, prior to which the quantum nature of gravity and/or spacetime itself must be considered. Although just a tiny fraction of a second is omitted, it is too important to leave out.

Rather, a "theory of everything" is a theory of reality in its entirety on all scales, living and nonliving alike. Such a theory is called an ontology. The reasoning is very simple: where the attribute describing everything in reality is reality, existence, or being, a "theory of everything" is a theory supporting attributions of reality, existence, or being, i.e., an ontology. Where ontology, epistemology, and (sometimes) cosmology are classified together as "metaphysics", it is also true that a theory of everything is metaphysical. Equipped with a proper theory of metaphysics, we can then ask how the Standard Model and various other physical theories might be interpreted therein. That's what the CTMU is - it's a powerful metaphysical framework in which physical theories can be interpreted, thus explaining how physical reality is modeled in metaphysical reality (or if one likes, metaphysically "simulated" according to the CTMU Reality Self-Simulation Principle).

As for mention in mainstream sources, consider "Teleology and Modernity", a philosophical anthology published by Routledge in 2019. It devotes three pages to the CTMU.

https://www.routledge.com/Teleology-and-Modernity/Gibson-OBrien-Turda/p/book/9780815351030

Here's a sample (from Chapter 10):

"A possible way forward for intelligent design is to adopt the cognitive theoretic model of the universe (CTMU), a highly teleological attempt at a unified theory of physical reality. The CTMU is the brainchild of Christopher Michael Langan, an independent scholar who, like Darwin, has no academic affiliation. ... Neo-Darwinism is the current orthodoxy among biologists, whereas intelligent design is not highly regarded. However, the CTMU gives intelligent design a possible way out of its difficulty. The CTMU postulates that Creation occurs gradually through the universe self-replicating features of itself within itself. Thus, the "irreducible complexity" occurs not from the bottom up with simple features becoming complex, but instead top down with with a holographic image of the universe being inculcated into organisms which are in a sense new, rather than modified versions of previous life. Natural selection still takes place in the sense that the universe chooses which which of its features to replicate in the new design. Intelligence appears in animals and humans, but it must already have existed in the universe before life capable of cognition appeared. If laws are used to explain conditions, then the laws themselves must be explained. This links well to the argument for design because the physical laws of the universe must have appeared from somewhere before they began to be used in shaping the universe." [The CTMU is then compared to the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.]

Now, this description is neither perfect nor complete - the CTMU is a profoundly new and original theory, it is vastly better-structured and better-integrated than any other theory of its kind, and such a theory isn't so easy to understand. But the above sample does, after all, touch on several key features of the CTMU. In other words, it is simply not the case that the CTMU is merely being "mentioned". Distinctive features of the theory are given, and its potential importance is clearly stated.

I've been repeatedly informed that Wikipedia is not a forum for arguing content, and that the issue is notability and mention in one or more "reliable sources". Whether the CTMU is mainstream or just a "fringe theory" / intellectual curiosity, Oxford Brookes University and Routledge would seem to be reliable sources. It is not the degree of mainstream acceptance of the CTMU that is important; all that matters is that mainstream academics have noticed and discussed it, and even if they're a little underexposed to it and/or muddled about some aspects of it or even totally unimpressed with it, that should make no difference at all. The important thing is that the CTMU is deemed worthy of discussion, and by Wikipedia standards, that should be that.

As usual, I can't rule out the possibility that there's something I'm not seeing. Perhaps I've somehow gotten lost in the fog once again and failed to grok some esoteric rationale that allows, nay forces Wikipedia to slam the door in the face of the CTMU and all who appreciate it yet again. In which case, all I can do is ask what I've missed. Chris Langan (talk) 04:26, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

"And all who appreciate it" is a very, very short list. Routledge is publisher, not a reliable source. Oxford Brookes is a polytechnic, and last time I checked does not endorse this so-called CTMU, or any other version of creationism. The claim that Charles Darwin had "no academic affiliation" is clear red flag of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. Darwin was an alumnus of two ancient universities and was affiliated with the Geological Society of London (of which he was Secretary and a Fellow and from which he received the Wollaston Medal), the Zoological Society of London, was a Fellow of the Royal Society (receiving its Royal Medal and its Copley Medal), a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society, and a member of, among others, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Academy of Belgium, the American Philosophical Society, the Lincean Academy, and the Athenaeum Club. The whole thing reeks of the "they laughed at Galileo too" canard that fringe theorists love to trot out when referring to themselves or their pet ideas or those of others. The important thing is that we already have an article dealing with this subject, and that is Chris Langan. GPinkerton (talk) 06:54, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

"It is not enough to wear the mantle of Galileo: that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment. You must also be right." -Robert L. Park --tronvillain (talk) 14:18, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Chris Langan I made two mistakes when I wrote the recent version of this article. One was because I didn't know better, the other I feel super dumb about because I should have known better. I'm hoping if I explain the latter one it will give you some helpful context here.

I believe there's a good argument that the CTMU passes the WP:GNG, what I failed to sufficiently account for was WP:FRINGE. To the GNG point, let me give you an example, in 2017 I was watching Narcos and was surprised to see Javier Peña didn't have an article. I did the samething I did here -- searched Google Scholar, Google Books and other places you would find WP:RS as was also surprised at how little there was written about him at the time, but there were four reliable, secondary, independent sources and I wrote the article using those. From a notability perspective, it's thin but passes WP:GNG. No one has cared enough to challenge it, probably because the Javier Peña article is not a WP:FRINGE (or in other categories where people would be more stringent).

I should have know better regarding WP:FRINGE because I had a few exchanges about it less than a year ago. See Talk:Craniosacral_therapy/Archive_2#Some_constructive_criticism_on_the_quality_of_collaboration_here, User_talk:Someguy1221#CST_and_the_like and the third section here (that section has since been removed I believe was not archived). All three of these are worth a read, especially the bits from Carl Sagan in the last link.

There's a group of people on Wikipedia who are valuable and do good work monitoring WP:FRINGEy articles, but can be too strident and sometimes "come down hard like a ton of bricks on someone as soon as they make a mistake" while coordinating others to come and do the same. There's very little application of the principle of charity, and that's some of what we're seeing here.

At any rate, for an article on the CTMU to "pass WP:FRINGE" among other things it would need to be written something like the article on craniosacral therapy (CST) where the bulk of the article is explaining why you shouldn't take CST seriously (which to be clear on the point of CST I completely agree with and entirely makes sense based on the RS). There would also need to be enough sources critical of the CTMU to make this abundantly possible.... or the CTMU would have to become mainstream enough to not be WP:FRINGE.

The path to each of these outcomes is a long one. One option might be to do what was done for the Clarice Phelps Wikipedia article and put it in Draft space where as new sources become available they can be vetted by those interested. Another would be to expand the section in the Chris Langan article until it justifies a content fork. But all of these depend on more being written in WP:RS about the CTMU outside of Wikipedia.

The CTMU seems interesting to me. I do make mistakes from time to time, but I'm not a dummy. Ben Goertzel is way smarter than me, I don't think he would have been so engaged about the CTMU if there wasn't something interesting to be engaged about. But until some things change I just don't see it having a Wikipedia article in the near future. I'm going to work on some non-WP:FRINGE things for awhile, but would circle back to this in 12-24 months and see if anything's changed. I know that seems like a long time, and to be fair it is, but it's about the pace that these things move at. - Scarpy (talk) 20:11, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I really do think that the existing material could be expanded into a titled "CTMU" section on Langan's page). --tronvillain (talk) 21:16, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

While I have the impression that some of the above may be exaggerated, I agree with most of it and thank you for the collegial attitude despite some potentially lost work, Scarpy. Noone will contest that it's a particularly difficult area to edit. —PaleoNeonate – 00:25, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Tronvillain, there was one last time I looked. And anything more than that is WP:UNDUE. Googling "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" quoted yields fewer than 100 hits, not even two pages of unique results. We have articles on notable bollocks, but this doesn't seem to be notable. Guy (help!) 21:37, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

On the contrary, googling "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" quoted yields "About 21,000 results". I'm guessing you tried to get to the end, and the results cut off. That also happens for other topics. For example, if I google "theory of relativity" quoted and go to the last page, there are only 162 results. By this standard, the CTMU is over 50% as notable as the theory of relativity. Tim Smith (talk) 03:57, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Google hit counts are not going to be informative here (and are seldom very informative anywhere). Google Scholar, which is at least slightly selective, finds 150,000 results for "theory of relativity", 109,000 for the narrower term "special relativity", and 48 for the CTMU. All of those have already been discussed on this page; none rise to the level of being in-depth, independent, reliably published sources about the CTMU instead of Langan's life story. (Michael Behe's irreducible complexity, which was at least taken seriously enough to be debunked, has a GS hit count over 3,000, which gives some sense of the detectable difference between notable and non-notable fringe ideas. Fussing over exact numbers is likely to be counterproductive, but looking at the orders of magnitude is revealing.) XOR'easter (talk) 07:03, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Just a reminder that scholarly sources are only one source of notability for the CTMU. It is also notable for its coverage in the popular media, including newspapers, magazines, and TV shows. Tim Smith (talk) 04:59, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Tim, are you being deliberately disingenuous here? It does not help when you ignore of the "About 7,100,000 results" displayed by Google for the quoted phrase and skip over 16 pages to find what is clearly a bug in Google to bolster your position. As XOR'easter says, the actual figures are not of real significance, but it is up to you to acknowledge your "mistake" if you hope that what you say is to retain any credibility. —Quondum 12:09, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Not at all. Guy claimed that 'Googling "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" quoted yields fewer than 100 hits', concluding that "this doesn't seem to be notable". I pointed out that it actually yields "About 21,000 results", and guessed that he arrived at "fewer than 100" by trying to page to the end. If you do that with "theory of relativity", you get 162 results (compared to 92 for the CTMU). The figure for the CTMU is 57% as high as the one for the theory of relativity. Obviously, this calls into question the use of this figure as an indicator of notability or lack thereof ("this doesn't seem to be notable"), unless you think that the CTMU is actually 57% as notable as the theory of relativity. Please assume good faith. Tim Smith (talk) 04:59, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree that first expanding the biography would be the natural way, especially that any CTMU notability is currently inherited and the BLP article is unlikely to get deleted. What is WP:DUE to include there is of course another matter. —PaleoNeonate – 00:19, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

It's been tweaked a little since I last looked at it, and it does seem that the redirect should go to that section rather than simply the page itself. --tronvillain (talk) 22:54, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Tronvillain here (redirect to section instead of page). - Scarpy (talk) 00:24, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't see why not, —PaleoNeonate – 00:27, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Pinging Guy Macon who did the last edit for his impression, —PaleoNeonate – 00:30, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:54, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

No objection here. XOR'easter (talk) 07:02, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Tronvillain, I agree with that. Guy (help!) 13:36, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

This solution is woefully inadequate. Not only does your redirect point to an insignificant mention of what has become an increasingly important theory, but the section is conflated with violations of WP:BPL - using remarks allegedly made by Langan on social media to denigrate him and the CTMU. This discussion is by no means over. The extensive mention by this Oxford publication (as cited by Langan above), in addition to other mentions in RS (both popular and academic) is more than enough to justify a separate entry for the CTMU. DrL (talk) 18:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@DrL: quick note to point out the Oxford Brookes University has nothing at all to do with the University of Oxford, despite its being in the same city. GPinkerton (talk) 00:31, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

@DrL: Can you provide specifics around these other mentions in reliable sourcing? I agree with the editors above that the mention in Teleology and Modernity is not sufficient to justify a standalone article, and we'll need more than just handwaving about other sources to evaluate the existence of significant coverage. GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:32, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for this good suggestion. I will have a look and add some material to the talk page as I have time. Just figured I'd weigh in. DrL (talk) 00:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare and DrL I created a draft space version of the article as it will be helpful for editors to have a list of sources used without needing to check edit summaries and for editors to demonstrate proposed changes to wording and content concretely rather than abstractly. See Draft:Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_Universe#References. For a non-WP:FRINGE article, sources of these kinds would not have been so controversial. For people that are curious I whittled these 11 away from dozens of them that I left in a scratchpad here.

If there’s enough reasonable editors I think some of this material could be couched in a more WP:FRINGE-sympathetic way and we could approach a consensus that way, or the same tact could be taken for expanding the section in Langan’s article. - Scarpy (talk) 18:43, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Scarpy, right now, there is one minor credible academic source that gives more than a passing mention of CTMU. We have lots of articles on notable bollocks (e.g. homeopathy) but this topic attracts the interest of exactly zero actively publishing researchers. There is nothing in the peer-reviewed literature, the critiques are equally in popular science and skepticism pages not journals. There is no "there" there. Your own article shows it: the first proposition is in a creationist fake journal, the major discussions are self-published. Guy (help!) 19:04, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't know that we can be sure that "there's no there there", Guy. It's very easy to find things like this out there:

https://www.beekmanschool.org/articles/we-are-universe-experiencing-itself

Quote: Panpsychism, from Wikipedia, is the view that consciousness, mind or soul (psyche) is a universal and primordial feature of all things. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism). Another article for Medium is about Chris Langan’s Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe.(https://medium.com/@variantofone/explaining-the-ctmu-cognitive-theoretic-model-of-the-universe-163a89fc5841).

In this article the author attempts to explain a theory that states that reality is a “self aware, self conscious construct, aka it is intelligent.” Through a discussion starting with the birth of reality from quantum foam deciding its own set of laws all the way to the neurons in our brains and their constituent atoms, the author states that atoms are information processors since the brain is an information processor. And as such, atoms have a real (although extremely low level) form of intelligence. And since all atoms are within the bounds of reality and receive radiation from each other, “this [means that reality is] everywhere, at all times, perceiving itself in an act of contemplation or self modeling (which is what minds do).” He goes on to state, “Reality is everywhere self similar and self processing, a symmetry.”

Once again, this goes into the distinctive content of the CTMU, so it's not just a passing mention coupled to my name.

Yes, the Beekman School has a page here on Wikipedia, so it's "notable", and having been educating NYC students for nearly a century, it's not unreliable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beekman_School

How much of this kind of thing are we willing to dismiss? Or to put it another way, how many nontrivial references from notable / reliable sources will be necessary to get the CTMU - which is far from "bollocks", by the way - the dedicated article it deserves? 216.139.113.98 (talk) 21:48, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

A website that recycles a Medium blog post, which is not a reliable source, is not a reliable source. Real scientific theories do not need "support" by scraping together mentions on random web pages, particularly those that take Deepak Chopra seriously. XOR'easter (talk) 22:57, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, let's see how it's received when it's published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, shall we? Guy (help!) 23:07, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Gary made a legitimate point: if morphic fields are not independently notable apart from Rupert Sheldrake, then the CTMU is not independently notable apart from Langan. The same IP has repeatedly tried to suppress this comparison. Presumably we have multiple editors from the same location, leading to a somewhat entertaining spectacle. XOR'easter (talk) 23:13, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

A comment with regard to "Teleology and Modernity". By looking at Wikipedia's standards in the section What counts as a reliable source, there can be very little doubt that we are dealing with a reliable source here. I think it's quite clear. Routledge is a global publishing house founded in 1836, which has published, among others, works of Einstein, Russell, Popper, or Wittgenstein. I'd call it a reliable publisher. As to the Oxford Brookes University, it's in the Top 50 UK Universities (2021): University League Tables 2021.--Mich.Szczesny (talk) 18:07, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I doubt its reliability. Academic publishers put out a fantastic quantity of marginalia: conference proceedings are a prime example of books that are printed because libraries will buy them, and Teleology and Modernity appears to fall into that category (The foundation for this volume originates in two workshops ... devoted to the exploration of the relationship between science, history, religion and philosophy, etc.). Without an evaluation of this book specifically, I would not trust it as a source on a fringe/controversial topic. Published only last year, it appears too recent to have attracted documentable scrutiny (e.g., scholarly book reviews available on JSTOR). Moreover, the chapter itself says, The CTMU is described in brief here only as a curiosity; even if we took the collection as a reliable source, by its own admission, it brings nothing significant to the table. XOR'easter (talk) 18:33, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Mich.Szczesny, it might be reliable for trivia about CTMU but it does not establish notability, because, in the end, this is a purportedly scientific theory that has never been published (or indeed discussed) in a reputable scientific journal. Guy (help!) 23:15, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

A small point with repeating here no one is purporting that the CTMU is a scientific theory.

While I'm here -- to the IPs and single purpose accounts (e.g. Moripheles, Siagos, DrL, Johnnyyiu) -- you're not helping your cause here. My advice would be to spend some more time on Wikipedia outside of this area and while you do that to familiarize yourselves with the processes involved in editing. Meaning, for example, anytime you see a link prefixed with 'WP:', if you're not already intimately familiar with it, read it carefully three times. Edit some other articles and participate in some other discussions. When you've collected several months (really maybe a year or so) of experience maybe come back to things like this. For the most part, the kind of things you're saying on this talk page are the kind of arguments more experienced editors would know to specifically avoid. It's like the Wikipedia equivalent of "the dog ate my homework." It's important to have a frame of reference. :) - Scarpy (talk) 20:57, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Scarpy, Langan is. But what I don't really understand is why he and DrL have re-emerged fomr under their respective rocks to start this farcical argument again. Nothing has actually changed since the original deletion. CTMU is a fringe theory with exactly one proponent, that is very occasionally mentioned in passing in some sources on the fringes of academic discourse. The "sources" you marshalled for your draft were mainly blogs. As your draft shows, we can't cover CTMU in a standalone article because there is a complete absence of reality-based commentary on it in reliable sources. Guy (help!) 11:36, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

JzG I believe you are incorrect. As Langan himself affirms, what he’s putting forth is a philosophy, not a scientific theory. It’s not really a new kind of “theory of everything”, it’s a mathematically semi-formalized metaphysics[9] As far as I can tell Ben's summary is accurate here. I've read quite a bit about the CTMU at this point and have never seen Langan describe it as a scientific theory. If I missed it, please correct me.

Sure, 3 of the 11 sources were an AI researcher and a mathematician blogging about the CTMU, but as we seemed to agree under non-BLP non-FRINGE circumstances those would be RS. It's the same reasoning people use to cite Science-Based Medicine (which I believe I've seen cited in WP:FRINGEish articles before).

In the meantime it was covered in two scholarly books, and was a significant part of a Ph.D. thesis. While both yourself and XOR'easter make some excellent points about MDPI journals that I was unaware of, it is worth mentioning even on the new version of Beall's list, MDPI is "Excluded – decide after reading"... but okay, fine, we're in WP:FRINGE territory, so we want to be hard-nosed here. No MDPI, no Ph.D. thesis.

So if we're just talking about the Menzler and Redvaldsen sources... If Nothing = 0, 2 != 0 and 2 > 1. So, things have changed since 2006. We can argue about how much, but it is covered in more than one WP:RS even by WP:FRINGE standards. Something is not nothing. - Scarpy (talk) 20:42, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

@Scarpy: Just so I'm sure we're on the same page, can you clarify which source you're referring to when you mention the non-MDPI scholarly source? The Teleology and Modernity book? GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:58, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare Menzler, Nils (25 July 2019). "Chapter 2: Theoretische Vorarbeiten § 2.2 »Paraphysik«, »Parawissenschaft« und »Pseudowissenschaft«". Techno-Esoterik in der säkularisierten Moderne: Überzeugungsstrategien, Apparate und die Formung des modernen Subjekts (in German). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 41–43. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-27303-3. ISBN 978-3-658-27302-6. and David Redvaldsen (31 July 2019). "Chapter 5: Charles Darwin and the argument for design". In William Gibson; Dan O'Brien; Marius Turda (eds.). Teleology and Modernity. Taylor & Francis. pp. 197–202. ISBN 978-1-351-14186-4.. I paid someone Fiverr to have Menzler's text translated (which did come out a bit better than Google's) text is here. - Scarpy (talk) 21:21, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Scarpy, this is thin gruel, my friend. What we want is substantial coverage of the topic in mainstream sources, that discuss its validity, rather than merely citing it as an interesting curiosity. Guy (help!) 22:28, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

JzG Yes, it's thin. A thin person is still a person. If we had articles showing it's validity it wouldn't be WP:FRINGE and we wouldn't be having this conversation. A notable curiosity is notable. A point that I started making to XOR'easter earlier -- if you Google CTMU now and Google shows you similar things to my results, 9 of the first 10 hits are all things from CTMU-proponents and the other one of the is a link to this talk page. Would it not be better to have somewhere that puts the CTMU in an encyclopedia context that implies "okay, here's a summary of what's in the reputable scholarly literature and it's, ____ you'll note that there's note much of it" rather than lending to the perception/magnitude of it's Streisand effect? Put another way, people are going to Google this topic, who would you prefer to have explain it to them? - Scarpy (talk) 23:03, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Scarpy, we have sufficient sources for a section in the article on Langan. We do not have sufficient sources for a standalone article, as your draft pretty much proves. We can cover bollocks on Wikipedia as long as it's notable bollocks, a qualifier for which is reality-based critique in mainstream sources discussing its status. All we have here is a few mentions, mostly in passing.

Google returns 82 unique hits (less than for "morphic resonance", which is an obvious benchmark here). Most results are blogs and forums (as per your draft). There is simply no evidence that this is notable beyond Langan. Guy (help!) 07:33, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

JzG I'm sorry for the point-by-point here, but there's a lot to unpack in this comment.

You're stating an opinion as a fact here, e.g. We do not have sufficient sources for a standalone article. Let's bring it back to WP:GNG: If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. There's not a specific number of necessary sources listed there, it just implies more than one since it's written in plural.

I would say the same here. All we have here is a few mentions, mostly in passing. What is "in passing?" 100 words? 500 words?

You're welcome to personally quantify these guidelines however you'd like, but there's not a number given in them.

Google returns 82 unique hits I know Google returns different results for different users, so I think WP:GNUM is highly suspect as Google search results become more and more personalized. But I can only say that when I Google in quotes for "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe" I get 7,680 results. I'm not sure if Bing is as guilty of reality distortion for attention and engagement as Google, but there I get 13,000 results for the same search string.

"morphic resonance", which is an obvious benchmark here - what's obvious about it? What's the similarly between a horse ranching autodidact and biochemist with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge? This is a guy in the middle of nowhere Missouri who believes he has something interesting to say about metaphysics with no pedigree or credentials (other than his IQ test results). The bar for anything he says to be taken seriously is much higher than someone with an established academic reputation, and the resources at Langan's disposal are much lower. As I scroll through the list of autodidacts I'm not seeing obvious comparisons, especially not in recent history (people alive in the last ~100 years or so). Maybe You could say Chris Langan is to the CTMU as Moshé Feldenkrais is to the Feldenkrais Method? I think that would be fair in many ways, but the Feldenkrais Method has a 53 year head start. Ben Goertzel said he was a bit like Eliezer Yudkowsky, but mentioned that Yudkowsku was more friendly to academia. I don't mean this to sound like I'm blowing smoke, but there is a sense in which the CTMU is sui generis.

Most results are blogs and forums (as per your draft). Perhaps you didn't mean to imply it, but just to be clear, there were absolutely no forums cited in Draft:Cognitive-Theoretic_Model_Universe (for those that are interested please check the edit history) in any iteration of it. The blogs that were cited were by Ben Goertzel and Mark Chu-Carroll (a PhD computer scientist and professional software engineer) and on June 18th of this year from my reading you seemed to agree that under non-BLP non-FRINGE circumstances these would be acceptable sources. - Scarpy (talk) 05:33, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I agree with JzG and others that those two new sources do not tip the scales towards warranting a separate article. As for the argument that we ought to have an article on it because sourcing outside of Wikipedia is poor or slanted, I'm surprised that's not listed in WP:ATA–the existence of slanted sourcing elsewhere does not change Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. Furthermore, at least for me, when I Google "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe", the first result in a big box is a link to the Christopher Langan article. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:39, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I just Googled the phrase in an incognito browser window, and I got the same big box. (Also in the first 10 results is this Quora answer.) XOR'easter (talk) 23:48, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter, right, and until we have a RS that says something similar we can't have an article on CTMU because it would give undue weight to a fringe idea. Guy (help!) 07:41, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

XOR'easter This is largely besides the point, but Google can still link you to your identity while you're in incognito mode and I'm pretty sure using that it still shapes the results using that information.

GorillaWarfare I'm surprised that's not listed in WP:ATA–the existence of slanted sourcing elsewhere does not change Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. Since you created this section, I don't think either of us are arguing about inclusion criteria, we're just arguing about where to include it.

I'm not sure what path you took to this discussion, but let me quickly explain how I arrived here. Sometime around 2017 I Googled to see who had the highest IQ, and found Chris Langan that way. I tried to read his papers on the CTMU and personally found them unapproachable.

What would have been really useful to me at that time would have been an encyclopedic summary of the independent reputable scholarly sources discussing the CTMU to help me judge how seriously to take it and whether or not it's worth my time.

I will agree with you that this can be accomplished in a section in the article on Christopher Langan article, and in hindsight it likely would have been better tact to make that section rather than to change the redirect. But the 11 references I had here felt pretty solid and large enough for a standalone article at the time. But overall I think it's good that we had a discussion about it and that people weighed in on Entropy and other bits. I've learned quite a bit about the cultural norms of people who edit a lot in WP:FRINGE topics.

So, as long as you don't have any objections to incorporating duly weighted material from the Menzler and Redvaldsen sources in that section, I'm happy with the outcome. - Scarpy (talk) 06:04, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I mean, the amount of weight that the Redvaldsen source itself is suggesting to put on the topic is almost none. XOR'easter (talk) 06:52, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Duly weighted here would be representing the viewpoint of the source and in Redvaldsen's case including the viewpoint that it's a "curiosity" make sense. It's a curiosity he published 800+ words on. - Scarpy (talk) 07:04, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Scarpy, That's a great argument for including in the section on the Langan biography. It's entirely unpersuasive for a stand-alone article, because in order to cover a fringe theory we need reality-based sources that establish its status, and we have none. We have a small number of sources that describe it (as a curiosity, in context), but nothing substantive in the way of consideration of tis merits.

This talk page discussion is already longer than 800 words. In fact I think your input is more than 800 words. Guy (help!) 08:35, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I disagree with parts of what you've said here, but it sounds like overall we agree on the section on the Langan article. So I don't think it's worth hashing out further. - Scarpy (talk) 09:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

800 words is a pitifully small amount for a Theory of Everything. According to my computer, I have written over 1,900 words on this Talk page, not counting those that were archived because they were in a section started by a sockpuppet of Langan himself, and I achieved that just by procrastinating on everything important that people are expecting from me. As for the Menzler source, I can only hope that it was better in the original language. For example, the translation says, It also seems revealing that such a current paraphysical theory is based on the relatively new concept of unfolded information; "unfolded information" is not a technical term used in the information-theory literature with any established meaning. He calls the geometrodynamics of John Archibald Wheeler paraphysics or esotericism; it was neither. The Reviews of Modern Physics don't publish esotericism [10]. I could say more, but given the word count already mentioned, I probably shouldn't. XOR'easter (talk) 07:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

You say pitifully small, I say exceptionally parsimonious. :)

In the discussion so far, we've painfully established the CTMU is not best/accurately described as a theory of everything.

I posted an English to German sentence-by-sentence comparison from the translation I received of the section from Menzler. The bit about unfolded information that I think you're referring to is translated to/from It also seems revealing that such a current paraphysical theory is based on the relatively new concept of unfolded information./Auch erscheint es aufschlussreich, dass eine so aktuelle paraphysikalische Theorie sich am relativ jungen Informations-Begriff entfaltet. I tried to suss out if there's a more specific German meaning of "Informations-Begriff entfaltet." Informationsbegriff seems to be something like "concept of information" and "entfaltet" is unfolded. But the term paraphysikalische (translated to paraphysical) is wikilinked from Friedbert Karger and goes to paranormologie so hopefully that's a close approximation of the meaning and Google translates that as "paranormology" which looks a lot like parapsychology. Whatever "Informations-Begriff entfaltet" means in the context that it's used, it makes sense that you wouldn't find it in information theory literature, because it seems that it's something like a parapsychology concept.

When I copied from the German PDF, the inline numeric footnotes didn't copy over. But the bit here: "CTMU Holistic reinterpretations of relativity, quantum and other modern scientific theories are found in paraphysics and esotericism. These include the »geometrodynamics« of John Wheeler. / CTMU Holistische Umdeutungen von Relativitäts-, Quanten- und anderen modernen naturwissenschaftlichen Theorien finden sich in Paraphysik und Esoterik. Zu nennen sind unter anderem die »Geometrodynamik« von John Wheeler." is followed by footnote 160 that's to Vgl. Lucadou: Paraphysik, S. 120.//160 Cf. Lucadou: Paraphysics, p. 120. That's a reference to: Lucadou, Walter von: Paraphysik. In: Kleines Lexikon der Parawissenschaften, S. 117–123. Which I believe is this book (Google translates as Small encyclopedia of the Parasciences). It's been cited a few times. Parawissenschaft looks like it's translated as Parascience generally in English. I believe what these two sentences are trying to say is that "often in paraphysics and esotericism (meaning something like parapsychology) you often find reinterpretations of the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and even geometrodynamics" and Menzler supports this with a citation to pages in that book. Seems like exactly what Leonard was saying here (I think that might be this Leonard: Leonard Mlodinow). - Scarpy (talk) 08:53, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Scarpy, this all belongs at the Langan talk page. Guy (help!) 09:11, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, will move further discussion there. - Scarpy (talk) 09:16, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.