Almost plausible scary conspiracy theories.

He is one of the world’s leading experts in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), with decades of expertise in applying AI to practical problems like natural language processing, data mining, video gaming, robotics, national security and bioinformatics.

He was part of the Hanson team which developed the AI software for the humanoid Sophia robot, which can communicate with humans and display more than 50 facial expressions.Today he also serve as Chairman of the AGI Society, the Decentralized AI Alliance and the futurist nonprofit organisation Humanity+.

Stephen Debacco
6 months ago
Joe,

Quantized inertia might be a thing, but it's most definitely not a viable explanation for the collection of phenomena that lead astrophysicists to the conclusion of dark matter. McCulloch's claim on this point is an example of doing science backwards: Start with a pet theory, interpret an observation through a lens that assumes the correctness of the theory, then explain away or entirely ignore observations that are inconsistent with the theory. His ideas (at the very least in relation to dark matter) are largely ignored by mainstream scientists not because they are too controversial or because astrophysicists can't let go of dark matter as he would have people believe, but because they are wholly without merit and easily disproven.

If galactic rotation rates were the only evidence for dark matter, QI would still be in the running as a possible explanation. There is, however, overwhelming and varied evidence against all modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) species of explanations (of which QI is one) for the galactic rotation anomaly. Scientists DID at one time consider MOND theories to be viable and did not discard them simply out of a bias in favor of dark matter.

If QI or another MOND theory were the true explanation, one would expect to see the same amount of dark matter (or the same amount of QI or MOND masquerading as dark matter, if you will) wherever we look in the universe. This is not at all the case. Most notably, there are recent discoveries of a few diffuse galaxies behaving as if they contain almost no dark matter. These could not exist if QI were the reason most galaxies don't fly apart. All galaxies would obey the same laws. But if matter and dark matter are two different, separable things, it's easy to imagine how their proportions might not be the same everywhere. Speaking of which....

The Bullet Cluster and others like it also rule out non-dark matter explanations. These are galaxy clusters that we observe in the aftermath of a "passthrough" collision. The galaxies pass through without touching each other, but the intergalactic gas collides, heats up, and is currently concentrated between the galaxy clusters. When you measure, using gravitational lensing effects, both the total mass of the entire complex, as well as the masses of the lobes (galaxies) and of the central gas, you find that most of the mass is concentrated in the galaxies. However, when taking inventory of the visible light matter, most of it lies in the central gas. This is exactly as dark matter regimes would predict (the dark matter halos stay with their galaxies, since dark matter doesn't interact with normal matter except gravitationally) and requires an alternative (and almost necessarily convoluted) explanation if you're using something like quantised inertia to explain the galactic rotation anomaly.

Gravitation lensing can also be used to map the mass of non-colliding galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Again, the maps show massive halos surround and engulfing the visible matter in galaxies in a manner that is inconsistent with Dr. McCulloch's ideas and would therefore require an alternative (and almost necessarily convoluted) explanation if you're using something like quantised inertia to explain the galactic rotation anomaly.

Large scale simulations done by supercomputers fed only the known laws of physics and the observed proportions of dark matter, regular matter, and dark energy yield results that are substantially similar to the observed universe, from the time of the CMB all the way up to the present day. They also simulate back to the Plank era (I think), but of course we don't have direct ovservations to match up with that. If dark matter doesn't exist one would expect these simulations to yield results that look nothing like the observed universe.

Similarly, galaxy collisions can be modeled by supercomputers using the known laws of physics, dark matter, and ordinary matter (dark energy is not relevant on this scale). Again, the simulations match very well with observations. If dark matter did not exist, the simulations should not match observations.

I am not a physicist and confess I lack the expertise to evaluate Dr. McCulloch's many other claims. As a scientifically literate layperson, I can, however, say that his body of work contains many fantastic claims made without the same equivocation or caution you would expect to hear from virtually any reputable person in any field, especially science, when discussing potentially game-changing ideas. The fact that the one claim he has made that falls within my realm of knowledge and understanding can be easily dismissed tells me the rest is most likely junk science and can be safely ignored until and unless the mainstream scientific community decides it has merit.