• [deleted]

  • Post #21

Thank you Karl,

I enjoyed reading your essay. It is just that in the transition to information, it appears that the theory borrows the attributes of a physical world while denying it. By the way, I do think that information is primary. It is what we use. Everything else we think exists or does results from our interpretation of information. However, so far as I understand it, empirical evidence consists of information about changes of distance and time. So, I accept distance and time as the two fundamental indefinable properties. Anyway, that is just what I think. I do have a question?

"The very reason why we can even have a concept such as "meaning" is that we are sitting atop a mountain of information and have this rich contextual history to draw from. The spirit of my essay is that it may be difficult or impossible to understand ultimate reality if one assumes that objects or physical laws (or meaning for that matter) necessarily appear in the world intact and absolute, irrespective of anything else."

What are we that we can assign meaning to information? Thats pretty much what I was getting at, by questioning where or when meaning comes into existence or use. Where does the intelligence reside?

James

I would say that meaning is evolutionary. A mouse or a flatworm do not contemplate meaning per se, but they are spectacular at processing information, and this is always done in the context of other information (which is laid out in detail in the Davies book I mentioned). For humans, a species that has fairly recently acquired language and high-level reasoning faculties, it may be tempting to think that what we call "meaning" has always existed in more or less the same form. I'd suggest that the ability to contemplate meaning -- and ultimately meaning itself! -- emerged as a very slow process. It's similar to something I call the comb-over effect: When we see someone with a bad comb-over, we wonder how he could go out thinking this makes him look like he has hair. But we forget that he's been parting his hair like that ever since it began to thin. It has been a long and gradual process but eventually leads to the person looking ridiculous.

The idea of "borrowing the attributes of a physical world while denying it" sounds a bit like the historical opponents to Copernican theory. That idea was considered absurd by many, because the Earth was, by its very definition, that which did not move. So it seemed as if Copernicus was invoking something that was both the Earth (clearly a non-moving object), and yet moves! Crazy talk, right? Only when you throw out the assumption that the Earth is stationary does the picture make any sense.

  • [deleted]

  • Post #23

Thank you Karl,

I feel that I have gained some understanding of your reasons for the ideas you present in your essay. Like I said, I enjoyed your essay. Thank you for your responses to my questions.

James

  • [deleted]

  • Post #24

Karl

Information is not physically existent. Some physically existent phenomena are only potentially 'information' in the context of sensory systems which have evolved to utilise them. So, if and when, any such given physical phenomenon interacts with (ie their lines of travel coalesce) the receiving organ of a sensory system which can process it, then it becomes information in respect of that functional role in that sensory system, and indeed ceases to exist. Its physically existent state is unaffected by the subsequent activity.

In other words, if light hits a brick wall, it is not utilised because brick walls are not the front end of a sensory system. However, if that light had hit an eye, then.....The physical existence is the same in both cases. What the mouse or the flatworm can then do is irrelevant. That is just a discussion about physiology, biology, sociology, etc. This all wraps in with my point about 'aliens' above.

Paul

6 days later

  • [deleted]

  • Post #25

Hi Karl,

I really enjoyed your essay. Its very clearly written and very interesting and thought provoking.

It seems to me there has to be a source of the information rather than it just existing. It makes sense, for me, for there to be a source, information/potential sensory data, and output. Having the objects as well does not prevent string like histories, or EM information in the environment being on spherical surfaces. Just data and output doesn't work for me. Which may be my inability to get my head around the alternative. Does the orphan information just exist in the way that we might think of an object just existing? If a blind cave shrimp feels its environment it is obtaining information from the objects,it seems to me. Were is the information in the environment if there is no object to feel?

Really liked your explanation of chipping away at many histories to make the reality that is known. It is an interesting idea though again one that I cannot say I think is correct. I think there is a lot more information in the environment than is selected and a fabricated reality is formed from that. So from the Multiverse of possibilities originating at the source events that occurred, not many (different)histories.

Also really liked what you were saying about Aliens having a very different perception of the universe because of their different sensory capabilities.They might also process information differently, being adapted to their environment and way of life.

Well done. Good luck in the competition.

    Hi Georgina, thank you for the kind words. I realize that the ideas in this essay are a bit out there, and I understand why people may not be getting their heads around it on first look.

    The orphan information exists in the same way we think of objects as existing -- the primary difference is its history. A fundamental object is generally assumed to have existed in that absolute state since shortly after the Big Bang. In the informational scenario, data is constantly being generated in relation to existing data, and it accumulates in this way as an ongoing evolutionary process. There is one and only one fundamental entity, the bit; the particles of the Standard Model emerge to us complex systems and our technology. Wheeler described this emergence process: we hear our detector make a click, and we say, "Aha! A particle did that." But perhaps it was just the appearance of a new bit in the world, and in the very rich context of the situation and everything we've learned about the laws of physics, we interpret the bit as a fundamental object speeding through space and hitting the detector.

    Think of the blind cave shrimp as a bundle of bits, like us, only simpler. However, we don't see bits when we interact with this bundle. A cave shrimp, an object, is what appears to us. It is like a projection that we are biologically equipped to create in our mind (which itself consists of numerous interacting bit-bundles), and these projections are what make up much of the human experience. This is a phenomenon that has evolved over billions of years. As for the cave shrimp itself, it's hard to imagine what experience is like for such an animal, but in some sense, objects emerge in its mind as well. Though more crude, the shrimp is similarly equipped to create these internal projections so as to enhance its fitness.

    The hardest part of this scenario, as you've noticed, is trying to envision the environment as information rather than objects. Space-with-objects seems "normal" to us, and standalone information seems very abstract. But, I claim we should be skeptical of a reality consisting of objects, because it might be unnecessarily extravagant. While it's true the universe may contain ~10^90 objects carrying their accompanying bits of information, perhaps we could have the same identical experience in a universe containing only ~10^60 bits and zero fundamental objects. If that's the case, I claim that Occam's razor points toward the latter. The universe might be much simpler and more elegant than we intuitively assume, and having just one type of fundamental entity, in a compact, self-driven system of mutually relational subsystems, may be all that's needed to account for what we see. To me, an unknowably vast landscape of spacetime with various bosons and fermions obeying seemingly disjointed physical laws of mysterious provenance -- let alone multiple universes out there! -- seems ugly in comparison, like the hilarious building in Vladimir Tamari's essay.

    I've been struggling with various approaches to explaining these ideas. Thank you for the opportunity, and for your time.

    • [deleted]

    • Post #27

    Hi Karl,

    thank you for explaining.

    I can't help thinking that the process of perception is being taken for the foundational physics in the "it from bit" view. Yes images or ideas of objects, that we name, are formed from received data, after learning has occurred.

    The learning component is important. I watched an interesting video, I think it was TED one, about people who were born blind learning to see.For most people this learning would occur in very early infancy. Interestingly it was the relative motion that allowed them to identify separate objects rather than just object outlines. The vital information for differentiation was not concerning the objects themselves but the relationships.

    Without motion overlapping portions of shapes could be misinterpreted as separate objects, and separate objects could be considered the same object.So it seems to me, the "it" comes from knowing it is a separate "it". ie.requires the pattern of neuron connections in the brain of the observer and the received "bits". You seem, to me, to be implying the same in your reply.

    That processing is all on the internal side of a reality interface by my way of thinking.It is producing the observer's Image reality. A fabrication of what exists externally. On the other side of the interface is the existence and change of material objects and sensory data; and ongoing production of data; the observer independent Object reality. To deny the source of the information seems to be doing away with a large part of reality.

    I do appreciate the challenge to think about things differently and the time you have taken explaining your viewpoint to me.

    Good luck.

    24 days later

    Karl

    As I understand you, 'If the world is informational...' then we don't have to focus so much on the physical theories, and may instead hope to find an information-first theory based on observation context.

    It is an intriguing thought. How does one approach a problem like that...are the existing informational methods up to it yet?

    Thank you

    Dirk

      Dirk: That's exactly right. The physical theories and their mathematical representations are excellent approximations, but their inadequacy to fully describe nature was revealed by quantum mechanics and its multitude of interpretations. By assuming that mysteriously created objects obey mysteriously created laws, QM and GR appear to be incompatible, for example. We need to develop a theory based on what actually is fundamental, which I argue is information and not objects/laws.

      Alas, our current informational theories are only skeletal at this point, but that's what intrigued me about Bob Coecke's graphical system. By graphing the flow of information, we can at least get an idea of how informational context can gradually evolve from simpler to more complex. KC

      4 days later

      Karl

      I really like the focus of this essay on informational mechanics as a ``generalization of quantum mechanics that embeds contextual data into descriptions of subsystem interactions''. This is completely in line with the idea of top-down causation associated with contextual effects. You suggest that "all a theory really needs to address is the beautiful world of automorphism-invariant information." That is rather similar to the emphasis Auletta, Jaeger, and I have put on how equivalence classes as characterising top-down action. I also applaud your sensible take on quantum measurement.

      George Ellis

        George, thank you for your comment. I'm seeing several threads common among many of the essays this time, for example arguments against reductionism and against particles-as-ontological-objects -- ideas that are clearly related.

        I checked out your paper with Auletta and Jaeger. I especially appreciated the sentence, "Mechanical devices, like a thermostat, are able to implement information control without any intervention of biological elements and in purely mechanical terms. This is however an erroneous point of view, since such devices have been built by humans to act in a certain way. Therefore, the functional element (and the goal) is already inbuilt." This rather obvious aspect of technology tends to be overlooked when discussing quantum measurement and measuring devices. Similarly, even the simplest living organism seems not to be just a bottom-up collection of matter particles doing complex things, but rather is an informational entity whose complex interactions derive out of a legacy of evolving context. No wonder it's so hard to create a living system by putting together a bunch of inorganic molecules.

        10 days later

        • [deleted]

        • Post #32

        Dear Karl

        You might find very interesting that there is an informational derivation of quantum theory . The assumption of a relational and informational reality seems very interesting and it would be nice to study all its consequences.

        I have also thought of ways of conceiving the world without the primitive notion of ''an object''. It is a natural extension of Machian thoughts on the foundations of dynamics, and I have developed this in my essay Absolute or Relative Motion...Or Something Else?, which you might find interesting.

        Good luck in the competition,

        Daniel

          Daniel -- I am interested in reading both the paper and your essay; thank you for the links. As my essay argues, I suspect that the world is only as complex as the system or systems (within) that measure its complexity; thus, complexity in the world becomes a relational function of biological and technological evolution. Superficially that may sound like a facile "philosophical" statement, one that escapes falsifiability. However, if the world is in fact fundamentally informational and relational, then there would be no other accurate way to describe complexity except in those purely relational, informational terms. And it should be possible to demonstrate this in experiments of sufficient sophistication.

          19 days later

          • [deleted]

          • Post #34

          Hi Karl,

          I really liked your essay a lot. Your writing covers a lot of ideas and possibilities in a way that is interesting to read.

          In particular, I like how your essay draws the distinction between data and information. That string of randomly-generated bits is taken to exist as a single datum, and without the existence of other such datum there is no chance for information to be had -- information is an entirely relational concept that involves multiple data. This is no ephemeral concept devoid of realism -- the vast majority of us rely on fully-implemented relational databases every day when we interact with banks, websites, etc.

          I do wonder though if the distinction between data and information is still tripping other people up. For instance, I see phrases like "information compression" in some of the literature. Of course, in actuality, it is the data that is compressed/decompressed, and the information content of the data is what governs the compression limit -- information-poor data is very compressible, information-rich data not so much. Again, this is no ephemeral concept -- it is the core principle used in relational databases and really any lossless dictionary-based compression algorithm (ZIP, RAR).

          From this perspective, if a blue photon always imparts X momentum upon absorption, and we repeat that observation over and over, we will never gain information. In fact, the law that we derive (constancy of momentum per photon frequency) springs directly from exactly how information-poor the data is. I take this to mean that even if such an observation leads to one type of information-rich chain of events (ie. saying "It's blue!" via sound waves and then giving each other a high five) versus another (ie. aliens making some equivalent statement via pheromones, etc), the root event is still the same no matter what. To me, it is the root data that really counts here, and that leaves little or no room for mysticism. I think this is what you are trying to say too?

          - Shawn

            • [deleted]

            • Post #35

            To be fair, not all is lawful, and perhaps this is precisely why quantum mechanics is information-based. I am considering the probability cloud that represents an electron's possible position. If one repeatedly performs an experiment in which they make a measurement to gain a datum about an electron's actual position, then one will come to find that over time the data are non-repetitious -- the angular components of the position are fully random, and the radial component partially random (still random, but the probability drops off based on radial distance). I suppose that one could call this the "law of lawlessness" (since it is a constant kind of random), but no one seems to explicitly say it and stick to it, which is why I think that we get varied opinions on what information really is (and isn't) -- none of this gives credence to the phrase "information compression", and I doubt that anything would.

            Shawn -- Thank you for reading my essay, and for the comment. I hadn't explicitly considered the distinction between data and information, but I think you've hit the nail on the head. Data is an absolute thing, but information is necessarily relational. This was the message I took away from the book "Information and the Nature of Reality," co-edited by Paul Davies. One chapter stuck out for me as problematic -- Seth Lloyd's -- perhaps because he did not make this distinction. He writes, "Quantum mechanics, via decoherence, is always injecting new bits into the world." Those would be bits of data, but are they information? If so, relative to what? The same can be asked regarding a string of random numbers, or highly compressible (low-information) data as you insightfully mentioned. I feel these questions are not only relevant, but perhaps even fundamental.

              Dear Karl,

              I read your essay with great interest. I share a lot of the same general philosophy toward fundamental physics. A few questions and remarks.

              1. Have you thought much about causal sets in this context? I don't completely agree with all the hypotheses of causal set theory, but I admire its viewpoint, and it seems very relevant to your viewpoint as well. You reference Fotini Markopoulou, who has written papers on this, and you also illustrate quantum picturalism and information trees, which are very close to the causal sets formalism. If you have not already read it, you might find Sorkin and Rideout's paper on sequential growth dynamics interesting.

              2. You reference Hermann Weyl's definition of objectivity in terms of group symmetry. Weyl, of course, is the father of group representation theory in physics. In particular, you mention that causal networks survive automorphism due to topological constraints. Since you are advocating a minimalist relationist viewpoint, I thought you might be interested in look at this from the other direction, in which one redefines covariance to mean preservation of causal structure. For instance, Lorentz transformations in ordinary SR change the order of spacelike-separated events (relativity of simultaneity), but preserve the causal order. If you define a "generalized frame of reference" to mean a refinement of the causal order, then you can redefine the covariance principle in these terms and completely do without the background geometry. I discuss this further in my essay here: On the Foundational Assumptions of Modern Physics.

              3. Have you thought much about quantum computing in this context? I ask this for a couple of reasons. First, it seems to me that a lot of the same formalism can be applied immediately to practical problems in quantum computing itself. Second, if the fundamental structure of spacetime is really informational, it might be possible that we could model fundamental-scale physics at much larger scales using quantum computers. I mention this briefly near the end of my essay.

              Thanks for the great read! Take care,

              Ben Dribus

                Ben, Thank you for the thoughtful comment. It got me very interested in learning more about causal sets (I confess ignorance on the topic). I think there are a number of equivalently valid formalisms to look at this problem, some easier to grasp than others. I remember checking out your essay when it was first posted and taking a few notes; I'll be sure to look over it thoroughly and post comments over there. And, you make a great point about quantum computing. It's a good argument for why developing new kinds of information theories should be taken seriously. In fact, it's probably the only way to maximize the potential of quantum computing, and the potential, as you point out, is enormous. Thanks again and best of luck in the competition.

                • [deleted]

                • Post #40

                Hi Karl,

                I believe that you're correct in that information is a kind of emergent property that arises only in the context of multiple data. From what I can gather, it's primarily the distinctness of the data that gives for high information content per datum. I'm not sure how deep you have gotten into the math of information theory, so please forgive me for going into further detail: there will be a point.

                Consider receiving a string of symbols (data) consisting of "0123". This string contains 4 distinct symbols that all occur with the same frequency (1/4th of the time), which ends up producing a Shannon entropy (average information content per symbol) of S = ln(4). Converting that to binary entropy, it's S_b = S / ln(2) = 2. The same entropy is produced by the semi-randomized string "0312", which still contains 4 distinct symbols that occur with the same frequency -- the order of the symbols doesn't affect the result, only the distinctness. What the binary entropy effectively means is that if we wish to represent 4 distinct symbols that occur with the same frequency, then we're going to need at least ln(4)/ln(2) = 2 bits per symbol. This notion becomes very clear if we're already familiar with integer data types on the computer, where we know that a 2-bit integer type can represent 2^2 = 4 distinct symbols (0 through 4). Likewise, a 3-bit integer can represent 2^3 = 8 symbols (0 through 7), etc, etc.

                A symbol by itself does not have information content -- the extremely short string "0" produces an entropy of S = ln(1) = 0. There is no distinctness to be had because there is nothing else in the string to compare our single symbol to.

                To consider randomization further, consider the string "1010010101010110101010101010110101100010100111010001001101011010", which is 64 symbols long. It's apparent that the string cannot be considered to be totally random just at the root level -- there are only two root symbols ("0" and "1"); any repetition of any symbol is a pattern; patterns are anathema to randomness. Secondly, we notice that there are patterns in the adjacency of the symbols as well; the composite symbols "00", "01", "10", "11" appear quite often. Since we clearly cannot avoid patterns, we must then look for balance (equal frequency) of the patterns at all possible levels in order to test for randomness.

                As for actual figures regarding the frequencies of our string, we get...

                For 0th level adjacency (singles), we go through the string one step at a time from the left to the right. This gives us the singles "1", "0", "1", "0", "0", etc:

                The root symbol "0" occurred 32/64th of the time, as did the root symbol "1".

                Balance in frequency occurred.

                As for 1st level adjaceny (pairs), we go through the string one step at a time from the left to the right. This gives us the pairs "10", "01", "10", "00", "01", etc:

                The composite symbol "00" occurred 7/63th of the time;

                The composite symbol "01" occurred 24/63th of the time.

                The composite symbol "10" occurred 25/63th of the time.

                The composite symbol "11" occurred 7/63th of the time.

                Imbalance in frequency occurred.

                As for 2nd level adjacency (triplets), we likewise go through the string one step at a time from the left to the right. This gives us the triplets "101", "010", "100",

                "001", "010", etc:

                The composite symbol "000" occurred 2/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "001" occurred 5/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "010" occurred 18/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "011" occurred 6/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "100" occurred 5/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "101" occurred 19/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "110" occurred 6/62th of the time.

                The composite symbol "111" occurred 1/62th of the time.

                Imbalance in frequency occurred.

                We will skip detailing the 3rd, 4th, etc level adjacency. The point is that at the n-th level of adjacency, there are 2^(n 1) distinct symbols (root symbols for the 0th level, composite symbols for 1st level and higher), and we can consider the whole string to be random only if there is perfect balance in the frequency of the symbols at *all* levels of adjacency. Since there are imbalances in the frequency at the 1st and 2nd level, the string cannot be considered to be random.

                Of course, if our string was indeed generated by a random process, then we would simply need to keep making the string longer and eventually a balance in the frequency at all levels of adjacency will naturally arise as time goes on. This is interesting to note because it means that we simply cannot know if a binary number generating process is truly random until we can analyze the symbols it puts out at an infinite level of adjacency, which requires that our string be infinite in length. It's literally impossible to tell with perfect certainty that a string of "0"s and "1"s is randomly-generated if the string is finite in length.

                In essence, when someone says "quantum physics is random" and they show some data as evidence, it's still only an assumption because we do not have an infinite number of measurements to verify that statement. We can become more and more confident as we make more and more measurements (and find that the frequency in the patterns are balanced at higher and higher levels of adjacency), but we can never ever be absolutely certain until we take an infinite number of measurements. Consequently, if we were to make billions and billions of measurement and we found out that there was an unexpectedly large imbalance in frequency at say, the 23324324th level of adjancency, and this imbalance simply does not go away when we make billions and billions of more measurements, then we could say with a high degree of confidence that something deterministic is likely going on there, deep at the heart of things.

                In other words, your essay indirectly puts a spotlight on one of our basic physical assumptions: "quantum physics is random" when you make mention of randomized strings. I think that's a pretty important observation, and some of your readers might pick up on it right away. This is another reason why I liked your essay a lot.