Does Nature Have a Definite Information Content? by Dan J. Bruiger

Dear Dan,

You ask John for thoughts on 'time' in the universe before cyclical processes occurred. I address this in my last FQXi essay, along with the concept of a self-evolving universe as opposed to one "obeying laws".

The basic equation implied by such a universe, beginning with ONE field and evolving, is described on page one and the analysis follows on page two: In 1953 Eugenio Calabi essentially asked if our Master equation was valid: "Could there be gravity ... even if space is a vacuum totally devoid of matter?" He reasoned: "...being non-linear, gravity can interact with itself and in the process create mass", and he conjectured, "curvature makes gravity without matter possible". The Calabi-Yau manifold confirms our Master equation--based only on gravity--but his conjecture was based on special geometry in which "time is frozen". Meaning what? Newton's equation is time independent, but ... our Master field equation is seen to be scale invariant and Nottale has shown that the laws of scale can actually take the place of the laws of motion: that is, scale invariance implies motion invariance.

If scale invariant is motion invariant, time has no obvious meaning. But action orthogonal to a radial field vector can produce a vortex or cyclical phenomenon in a region of space, introducing duration or cycle time. So time appears when the G-field symmetry breaks and local oscillations, i.e. natural clocks, occur."

This cyclical field is of course the same C-field that my current essay analyzes as the basis of the physical wave function. There is of course more, and I draw conclusions based on the above, but I just wanted to say that I believe your question is a valid one, and share my take on it with you.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

A great theoretical biologist, Howard Pattee (still with us) asks the question: "How do molecules become messages in cells?" Because DNA-RNA clearly carries information while at the same time being observable only as a process of physical chemistry. So what makes life, or any autopoietic process, different from an advanced inorganic process like, say, crystal growth? Until you answer that question, and do so in convincing detail, you can rule out no possibility, even including panpsychism.

To say that something is not "a property of physical reality per se, but of our metaphors and models" is, however true, unhelpful if your goal is to do science. I say that as a sincere Bohrian. Here's a paper by a couple of neo-Copenhagenites, one of whom is on record as not liking to call the moon "the moon" because it ascribes properties to the whatever-it-is-up-there which are doubtless inaccurate and misleading; it's epistemologically and ontologically as well as scientifically sophisticated stuff:

Quantum Physics as a Science of Information

Dan, forgive me for jumping into your thread, but you keep generating interesting questions.

nmann asks: "How do molecules become messages in cells?" Because DNA-RNA clearly carries information while at the same time being observable only as a process of physical chemistry."

In my opinion, all information is contextual, and is not even information *unless* there is a codebook. In the case of RNA/DNA clearly the cell is the codebook and there is no meaning at all to RNA/DNA structure without the cell (or without conscious beings based on cells). The best way to understand information (again, in my opinion) is as process or event or processed structure that literally "IN-FORMs" or induces 'In'-'form'ation in some other structure, typically the brain, but, as noted, also in cells.

"Until you answer that question, and do so in convincing detail, you can rule out no possibility, even including panpsychism." Who's ruling out panpychism? Or an analogous interpretation of awareness.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

EEK,

Yes. I made the point back on the Ellis thread that no one should be conned into believing they're eavesdropping on the internal communications of DNA-RNA simply because we've identified some of the process and coded it in our own code.

It's like watching some fist fight in the Ukrainian parliament without sound or subtitles or even commentary. You can identify the big blond guy who's pounding on the big dark-haired guy whom you also recognize and you call them X and Y but really have no idea what the beef's about.

Dan,

The problem with the question is that unless we accept the "fabric of spacetime" as a causal agent and not just using the speed of light to correlate distance and duration, there is no theoretical foundation for the current cosmological model. Rather than go into my usual rant on this, here is an article by someone with firsthand knowledge of the situation.

That said, if we have a universe composed entirely of unbound electrons, the concept of temperature would be a more effective description of it. The concept of time really only comes into effective being when there is some degree of irregularity and complexity in those regular actions, otherwise there really is no sense of linear progression. The regular cycles are basically a method of fixing a ruler to this process of change. There would be no concept of past and future, only of spin. As you say, it's that background to the fixed cycle of a defined system, which gives the sense of the progression of time.

I think we under appreciate the concept of temperature, because as a statistical measure of non-linear processes, it is the noise out of which we try to detect the signal of the linear narrative of time(and thought). We overemphasize the nature of time, because it defines our reductionist understanding of life. We constantly try to distill everything into one descriptive narrative, then further reduce that to a bottom line result, but in trying to find that elusive quality, we loose contact with everything else and end up with nothing. Knowledge is inherently subjective, as I discussed in the essay. We are programed to focus in order to survive, not find nuggets of eternal meaning. The absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell.

Sorry to get philosophical in a physics discussion, but the quest is for understanding and I follow where it leads.

Dear Dan Bruiger,

I think the definite information content of a quantum that is its entropy, is relative.

With best wishes

Jayakar

Another point to keep in mind about information is that the dynamic creation and destruction of information is also information. The current blocktime notion that information is somehow permanently stored in the four dimensional geometry of spacetime results in a static determinism that is a big part of the problem of explaining probabilities.

Thanks, nmann, for the references (Pattee and Zeilinger) which I will check out. And thanks to you Edwin for "jumping in". We three seem to agree that information is contextual. Further to that, here is a quote from something else I have been working on: "However biologists may objectify the genetic "code"--even to the extent of transmitting it by email--the organism's internal communications cannot be so objectified without losing the sense in which they form the basis of the agent's own point of view.

A message between human beings may appear to exist objectively. It can appear as text, with an indisputable number of characters, a definite information content. This appearance depends crucially on human intersubjectivity. It may not be taken for granted when dealng with other creatures. Even the objectivity of the 'information' in DNA is not independent of somatic and environmental factors. The extent to which it can be manipulated reliably by human beings depends on fortuitous constancy and control of such factors, even when we don't know what they are. Above all, it is information for the organism, which has been appropriated by the genetic scientist."

I can't agree that it is unhelpful to point to the subjective side of information. While information, like isomorphism (or structure in general), must be considered a feature of the real world, both must also be asserted by agents. It is always "information according to so-and-so", and similarly with isomorphism, which is the identification of a pattern or relationship. The agent is the aspect missing from treatment in physics so far. I hesitate to call it 'intentionality' because that term has so much baggage in philosophy. Same with the term 'panpsychism'. The concept of intentionality or agency must be broadened to include agency within organisms and nervous systems, not just the agency responsible for the molar behavior of the creature. Similarly, it must include agency within what is presently considered inert matter. I suspect this is key to further advances in cosmology, and perhaps to the resolution of conundrums such as the apparent and highly improbable fine-tuning of the universe to life.

cheers, Dan

Dan,

Too true. Observation is change.

One of the sources of some of my insights come from complexity theory and its dichotomy of order and chaos, with complexity as the mediation. I have adapted it somewhat though. To me it is more order and energy. It is just that energy tends to interact with order/structure at its weak points. The crack where the water and grass come through. The splits in the bark where the tree expands. The Tunisian fruitseller setting himself on fire. The places most studied and observed are also the most rigid and formalized. It the places where there is less organization and rigid structure which are most open to change and the energies initiating it. Once a system becomes so completely formalized that it cannot accept change and the energy manifesting it, that it therefore cannot continue to grow, that it becomes a closed set and can only lose energy.

The past is inherently ordered, while the future is inherently chaotic, yet the energy moves onto future events, as the structure of the past fades away. The present is that complex intermediation of energy and order. Energy moves to the future, as information moves to the past.

As a tribute to Benoit B. Mandlebrot one could ask: Is it "The Fractal Geometry Of Nature" or "The Fractal Nature Of Geometry"?

All thoughts of analysis are based on leverage due to evolution with the stick. Plato's very own postulate of 'knowing the lever..' is a truism of many worthy attributes, but now with added irony.

Major propositions in physics connected with notion"the same"

for example:

1.Einstein's relativity of simultaneity. The same time doesn't exist...

2 Heisenberg's uncertainty. The same time can't to measure....

3.Pauli's exclusion principle. The same energetic level only one fermion....

It seems to me very interesting.

Somebody thought of that?

James Gleick's quote, that "The universe computes its own destiny." is true. A more interesting observation is that it appears to take just as long to perform this "prediction" as it does for the events to unfold. This has a direct bearing on the question of determinism and free will. Absolute determinism states that free-will cannot exist, since, in principle, all events can be predicted before they happen. But that conclusion is based on a false assumption. In order to make such a prediction, one needs to possess more than just the equations of physics, one also needs to know all the initial conditions. But the information content, and hence the storage requirement for the latter is astronomically larger than the former. Nothing in the universe, including the universe itself, has a large enough memory capacity to store this amount of information "symbolically". But the universe can do it "non-symbolically", by merely being itself. In other words, it is an analog computer, not a digital one. And it is its own analog. It "predicts" all its future activity by simply doing it. Thus, the prediction and the event are one and the same thing. Consequently, the prediction can never occur before the event, whenever the event in question actually requires all the information content of the universe in order to make the prediction; and only the universe itself has the capacity to do even that.