Georgiana,

Your stated:

"The bit of knowledge is what the observer selects to know, not what the object is."

Not quite. The central issue is not concerned with what the observer wants to know. It is concerned with what the observer is able to know. You might want to know how to decode a secret message. But you might not be able to do it. You might want to "look inside" some physical object, like an atom, but you might not be able to do it.

In Information Theory, a "bit of information" means something very specific, and something rather different than what it means in common parlance. And it has some very, very, very counterintuitive consequences. It is concerned with the information content of "messages".

Think about this message, that I am trying to communicate to you. Think about it as if it arrived in the mail, written on a piece of paper. The attributes of the paper are irrelevant to the attributes of the message. The alphabetic symbols I am using in an attempt to communicate my message are quite independent of the paper's location and momentum etc. The latter are irrelevant to the message content.

The basic question that Information Theory seeks to answer is:

How can the sender of a message encode the message, employing the least number of bits, and still ensure that the message can be received, by the intended recipient, free from all errors?

This may seem to be only remotely related to making observations of naturally occurring objects. But in fact, the exact opposite has been discovered to be true. Why?

Because it can be shown that one's ability to extract information from observations is highly dependent upon what the two entities (sender and receiver) know about each other. This is why, in my essay, I kept stressing the importance of the information content of the "initial conditions" over the information content of the equations. It is not just the case that the former's content is often much larger than the latter's, but that it also play's a much greater role in ones's ability to recover any information from the observation at all. Knowing Maxwell's Equations is not going to get you very far when it comes to trying to "observe" messages being received by a modern smartphone, or from the DNA in your genes.

  • [deleted]

  • Post #34

OK Thanks for your explanation. I've talked a bit about initial conditions, in my own way, as I see it, in my essay. The observer decides where, when and what selection of data to make but nature decides what that selection will"look like". You are talking about something different though. Sorry I thought the central issue was just uncertainty, because of your question, not how information theory works.

Now you are starting to see. The central issue can never be just uncertainty. The issue is, exactly WHAT is uncertain? What exactly is SIGNIFICANT to the sender of a message? What is significant to the intended receiver of the message? What is significant to an unintended observer of a message?

What is significant about the fact that I capitalized some of the words above? Does "What" signify the same meaning as "WHAT" or "what" or "wHaT"? Are you sure I am using the same alphabet that you are, or that you think I am? Perhaps, to me "W" and "w" are entirely different letters of a very large alphabet. Perhaps what you perceive to be as merely a different font, is really an entirely different letter.

Here is where it starts to get interesting. Suppose you make an observation (think of trying to read a letter written by someone with "bad handwriting") of something that appears to be familiar, but appears noisy or distorted (think about why your new HDTV image is so much cleaner than your old TV image). Is the difference between the familiar, and the distorted copy significant? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on what the entities know about each other. An entity that knows that the sender is always using a very limited alphabet might be able to assume that an observed "badly written" character is in fact just a noisy, distorted version of a member of the known alphabet. He may then replace it with a "clean" copy. When your new digital TV started doing things like this, then like magic, the image on your new HDTV screen suddenly became noise-free.

You stated that: nature decides what that selection will "look like"

But in the HDTV case just described, it is no longer just nature doing the "deciding"

Nature decided to add noise and distortion (uncertainty) to the received TV symbols.

Then the TV receiver decided that the received symbols were noisy and distorted.

Then the TV receiver decided to replace the noisy and distorted symbols with clean ones.

Then, like magic, you see a noise-free image. Then uncertainty has been eliminated.

Where does the uncertainty lie? In the decision as to which "clean symbol" should be used to replace the "noisy and distorted symbol".

And then, in the next steps in the process, things start to get really interesting. But that is another story.

I hope you can see how these types of behaviors can have a major impact on "observing" "attributes of objects" and "attributes of the relationship between an object and an observer".

If you do, then you are seeing something that the physicists have heretofore missed. And it is something not to be missed.

Dr. McEachern,

Hi. I think your essay was very good. While I can't say I understood it all, the main points I got out of it are that physicists seem to confuse the mathematical description of a thing with the thing itself and that the relationship between the observer and an observed thing can affect one's view of the observed thing (from above discussion). About these two things, I totally agree. In a previous FQXi essay and at my website, I make similar points about:

1. An observer's view of an infinite set as discrete or continuous depends on the reference frame of the observer relative to the set.

2. In regards to the question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", I've tried to point out that the thinker's conception of a thing (non-existence in this case) is different than the thing itself. I think this leads to real problems not only in math and physics but in philosophy.

One more observation is that several essays in this contest seem to point out that physicists seem to confuse mathematical descriptions of the world with the world itself. Perhaps, this point should be considered by academic physicists? I doubt that it will be, though, since the use of unfounded and unexplained assumptions (ie, poor reasoning) by physicists seems to be rampant.

My entry in this year's contest is about what I believe to be a misapplication of a mathematical situation (comparing the size of an infinite set to the size of an infinite subset derived from it) to the corresponding real world situation.

Anyways, great essay!

Roger

(sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite)

    With regards to your comment that "physicists seem to confuse the mathematical description of a thing with the thing itself", I'd have to say that is not correct. Rather, they are confusing the attributes (properties) of the mathematical description of a thing with the attributes (properties) of the thing itself.

    The distinction is important. Since you mention having an interest in Philosophy, allow me to remind you that Plato frequently depicts Socrates reminding people to bear in mind this distinction between a thing and its attributes. Socrates then proceeds to get them to contradict themselves, by inducing them to ignore this distinction. Unfortunately for the physicists, they have managed to confuse themselves, without requiring any help from Socrates.

    Color is an example of such a phenomenon, that has been debated for centuries. Is it an attribute of a thing? No. It is an attribute of the relationship between a thing and an observer. For example, red and green light together, like the pixels on your computer screen, will be perceived as yellow, since a pair of cone cells in the retina of your eye produce the same amplitude ratio, on the output of a pair of filters, as described in my essay. (See attached figure. I hope this works, this is the first time I have tried to attach a file to one these this posts.)

    In your essay, you mention thought experiments. The most famous thought experiment in Quantum Mechanics is Schrodinger's Cat. As with all thought experiments, it lacks the virtue of being tested experimentally - if it were to be tested, it would no longer be a thought experiment. But it has other even less virtuous attributes. Physicists have simply assumed that the wavefunction in question, that describes the relationship between the cat and the observer, can be determined, at least in principle. But it cannot.

    The reason is, the wavefunction is based on Fourier Transforms. Computing a transform that is a function of time requires an integration over all time. This can only be accomplished when the function being integrated is known at all times.

    Since the past can be known, at least in principle, integrating over the past is not a problem. But what about integrating over the future? The future of the dead cat is known. It will remain in the constant state of being dead forever, unless you believe in the resurrection of cats. But the same is not the case for the observer, since he or she is not yet dead.

    If the future of the human observer could be predicted perfectly, then you could integrate over the predicted future. But that cannot be done, for the reasons I discussed in the blog for Dan Bruiger's essay.

    So no knowable wavefunction can exist for any living observer. It is important to note that this argument does not apply to things, like elementary particles, that QM was designed to describe. This is true, because, as described in my essay, they are all characterized by the attribute of being nearly devoid of information. As a direct result, their future, unlike a human observer, can be predicted; an undisturbed particle will remain in its constant state. And the future of a constant is easily predictable. That, by the way, is the sole significance of all the conservations laws in physics.Attachment #1: Gaussian_Filters.jpg

    4 days later

    • [deleted]

    • Post #38

    Roger,

    "Nature decided to add noise and distortion (uncertainty) to the received TV symbols.

    Then the TV receiver decided that the received symbols were noisy and distorted.

    Then the TV receiver decided to replace the noisy and distorted symbols with clean ones."

    "Rather, they are confusing the attributes (properties) of the mathematical description of a thing with the attributes (properties) of the thing itself."

    So you are saying they confuse an inductive process, with a deductive process?

    In my entry, I make the argument that by treating time as a measure from one event to the next in a sequence, it re-enforces the perception of time as a narrative series of events and not a physical dynamic, which is creating and replacing configurations. That it is not the present moving from past to future, but change turning future into past. Not the earth traveling the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates. This makes time an effect of action, like temperature, not the foundational basis for action. So when we create narrative out of the thermodynamic activity, we are selecting routes through this environment. Because our previous series has been determined by the confluence of input, it seems logical to assume future narrative is also determined, but in fact the lightcone of any event doesn't exist prior to its occurrence. So while we assume the decisions and directions are deduced from circumstance, they are actually induced from input. In other words, the decisions seem fated because our choices are often yes/no, left/right, up/down, but that is simply our need to distill lots of information into simple binary options?

      In regard to Robert's statement, in the last paragraph, that elementary particles are "characterized by the attribute of being nearly devoid of information", my question is whether that is an attribute of the particles themselves or only of the QM description?

        John,

        You asked:

        "So you are saying they confuse an inductive process, with a deductive process?"

        No. They are making a type of category mistake. As an analogy, it is as though they are confusing some property of a mathematical description, like the length of an equation describing an object, for the length of the object itself.

        They also frequently "misattribute" a property (attribute) to the wrong entity. As an analogy, attributing the sound of your voice, as coming from the shirt you are wearing, rather than from your mouth. For example, in the double-slit experiment, where does most of the information content within the "interference pattern" come from? The particles or waves striking the slits? Or the slits? They assumed it came from the particles or waves. But it comes from the slits. The situation is analogous to a radio signal. There is a "carrier", that contains little information, and a "modulator", that modulates information onto the carrier. The particles and/or waves striking the slits, merely act as a carrier. The slits are spatial modulators. Think of sunlight as a carrier, and the objects in your visual field, that reflect the sunlight to your eyes, as the modulators. Your visual system largely ignores the attributes of the sunlight, while extracting large amounts of information about the objects modulating the sunlight. The properties of the sunlight matter so little, that you can replace the sunlight with light from a light-bulb, which has a very different spectrum than sunlight, yet it makes like difference to your ability to perceive the objects reflecting the light.

        Hi Robert:

        I thoroughly enjoyed your interesting and deeply philosophical essay. The main conclusion of your essay states that mathematical descriptions provided by QM do not represent physical reality but rather "Made-up" or "Slapped-on" fiction. These include many well-known quantum paradoxes - uncertainty principle, measurement paradox, multi-verses, multi-dimensions, entanglement, superposition, and so on.

        Then you state the reason for this this that the equations contain very little information; most of the information is contained in the initial conditions. Further, the equations of QM were designed to model the behavior of memoryless particles.

        Not only the above conclusions are vindicated in my paper - -" From Absurd to Elegant Universe", it is shown that the QM is incomplete, inconsistent and paralyzed by several paradoxes due to the missing fundamental physics. Hence, the QM paradoxes are not only artifacts of equations containing little information, but they suffer from missing physics that describes the memory or history of particle dynamics from their birth to propagation and then measurement by an observer. My paper proposes a new equation for this missing physics that explains the inner workings of QM and demystifies the quantum observations resolving many of its paradoxes and inconsistencies with relativity theory. As you point out, this has never been done, and hence, the QM mysteries and misinterpretations continue to prevail.

        My paper provides a new fundamental understanding of the QM particle, classical, and the observed universe behavior. The current paradoxes and inconsistencies are shown to be artifacts of the missing (hidden) physics of the well-known phenomenon of spontaneous decay. A new Gravity Nullification Model for Universe Expansion (GNMUE) is proposed that integrates the missing physics of the spontaneous mass-energy conversion into a simplified form of general relativity. The model predicts the observed expansion of the universe and galaxies and other data. The model provides answers to key fundamental questions and resolves paradoxes among general relativity, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. It also bridges the gap between quantum mechanics and relativity theories via revealing relativistic understanding of the inner workings of quantum mechanics. The impact of the new understanding on widely-accepted fundamental assumptions is discussed and a new wholesome perspective on reality is provided.

        I would greatly appreciate your comments on my paper.

        Best Regards

        Avtar Singh

          It is an attribute of the particles themselves. For example, the "handedness" of a glove, can only be one of two possible "states", "right-handed" or left-handed", which can be represented by a single bit of information, in the "states" "1" or "0".

          This lack of information is the reason why observations become "quantized" in the first place.

          Avter,

          You stated:

          "The main conclusion of your essay states that mathematical descriptions provided by QM do not represent physical reality but rather "Made-up" or "Slapped-on" fiction"

          Not quite. The mathematical descriptions do a good job of describing the observations. My point is that they do little else. Thus, they provide few hints as to whether or not the "meaning" that has been slapped onto these descriptions, is even remotely correct.

          For example, I noted in an earlier post, that the uncertainty principle amounts to little more than a peculiar way of stating that "The number of bits of information that can be extracted from an observation, must be greater than or equal to one."

          Stated in that fashion, it seems rather odd to suppose that this self-evident statement would ever allow one to deduce things such as "The uncertainty principle enables quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, etc."

          Typo Alert.

          In the last sentence of my previous post, in this thread, "yet it makes like difference" should read

          "yet it makes little difference"

          • [deleted]

          • Post #45

          Robert,

          I agree the wave effect is a consequence of the slits, as the quanta are a function of the energy absorption properties of the atomic structure of the "particle" detector. These are effects of the interaction of light with the material structures we use to judge it, much as the color of a shirt is an effect of how the material interacts with the light. I suspect light might best be thought of as an expanding field of energy and it is only interaction with mass that condenses out as particular qualities, the information of which are more a function of the mass, while the light is more of an energetic medium, so we seem to be speaking the same language there.

          My point is that we are using the built up principles of historical experience, "the mind of the observer," to deduce information from present actions, when the original process of acquiring those principles was inductive. We are bringing the past to bear on the present, but our interpretation tends to be linear and quantifiable, while the present reality is fuzzy and not linear. It is foundationally energy, with information as the fractured surface.

          We tend to think in terms of cause and effect as a series of events, but that is an illusion. Did yesterday cause today? No. The rotation of the earth, relative to the sun, creates a series of events we refer to as days. Does my punching these keys cause letters to appear on the screen in front of me? Yes, because there is a causal transfer of energy, even if very tiny amounts, through the various circuits of this machine, from keyboard, to screen. The distinction is that cause and effect is a consequence of the flow of energy, not a sequence of events. Information, of which our collection of principles are an example, are truisms, which emerge from energy flows.

          My point here is that I'm not an expert in information theory, so I'm trying to translate your views into my understandings. As I see it, what is present is energy, so it is information which is "the passage of time," as it is created and dissolved.

          • [deleted]

          • Post #46

          John,

          My point about the interference pattern of the double slits is this.

          You can represent the geometry of the double slits by a one-dimentional, mathematical function, with a value of zero, wherever the slits are opaque, and a value of one, where they are transparent. If you then compute the magnitude of the Fourier Transform of that function, you obtain another function, that looks just like an interference pattern.

          This is purely a mathematical relationship. It has nothing to do with particles or waves striking the slits. It has nothing to do with physics. It is pure math.

          The geometry of the "boundary conditions", that is, the geometry of the slits, contains almost all the information content of the observed "interference pattern", the waves or particles striking the slits merely act like waves or particles striking a bell; they induce a "response" from the bell, that in turn is detected as a sound wave. But this sound wave contains little information above either the waves/particles striking the bell, or the air that the sound wave propagates through. The vast majority of the information observed within the sound wave, is about the "normal modes of vibration" of the bell, the structure of the bell. Similarly, the "interference pattern" is mostly about the structure of the slits. By misattributing it to the waves/particles striking the slits, physicists have misinterpreted what is happening.

          Your concern with energy is instructive. What exactly is energy?

          I first became really interested in that question, forty years ago, when I was a graduate student in Physics. I had a teaching fellowship, which required me to teach an introductory physics lab class, designed for life-sciences majors, not physics majors. It was a required class, so the students had to take it, even though few had any real interest. One day, a student, who was a bit of a "slacker", came into my office, during "office hours" for the class. He wanted to know what energy was.

          The more I tried to answer his question, the more I realized that I did not really know. Sure, I could do all the math, but what, exactly, did it really mean? Why is the fact that it is conserved (constant) significant? It finally dawned on me, many years later, that being constant, is its significance. It is its only significance. It is nothing more than a set of variables, whose combination was deliberately constructed, such that it would be a constant. There is not a physicist in the world who would care about it if it were not constant. Great "significance" has been slapped upon constants, in physics, simply because their future value is so easy to predict. But a single, constant value, contains very little information. Hence, in Physics, "significance" is directly tied to low information content phenomenon. It is a manifestation of the old line about "Knowing more and more, about less and less, until you know everything about nothing."

          For an "observer", it is not so much the flow of "energy" that matters, but the flow of "symbols". Consider the old story about a butterfly flapping its wings, on the other side of the world, and thereby causing some highly unpredictable event to occur, thousands of miles away. Which do you suppose to be a more probable "cause" for such an occurrence?

          1) The physical interaction of the air molecules, disturbed by the flapping wings, are transmitted (flow of energy) across the world.

          2) A young girl makes a video of the butterfly, uploads it to You-Tube (flow of symbols), it goes viral, and thereby causes millions of people to stop whatever they are doing, and watch the video.

          Any entity, from a hydrogen atom on up, that can change its internal structure, and thus form a "memory", can use that memory to respond to other entities "symbolically", rather than "physically". And the more memory they have, the more complicated (high information content) these responses (behaviors) may become. Physicists behave this way. The entities they prefer to study do not. Consequently, the theories they devise to explain the behaviors of the latter, are woefully inadequate at explaining the behaviors of the former. By assuming the contrary, they have misinterpreted reality.

          The last Anonymous post was from me.

          Once again, the system logged me out, before it was posted.

          • [deleted]

          • Post #48

          Robert,

          I agree fully with what you say, but that makes the energy the medium, while the information is the message. Yes, the information is far more interesting, but without the energy, information doesn't exist. There is no platonic realm of information. It arises as descriptions of states and actions of energy.

          In life science/biology, the body contains to primary systems; The function of the central nervous system, of the brain and sensory organs, is to process information, while the function of the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems is to process energy. As they say, some people eat to live and some live to eat.

          Energy is constant, thus it is what is always present, while information is constantly changing. There is no blocktime of all events existing in some fourth dimension. It is the fact that the event of the butterfly flapping its wings which transmitted the energy onto other situations which makes it part of the dynamic, but the event of the particular flapping ceased to exist when the energy was transmitted. That particular event recedes ever further into the past, as the energy continues on its progression to the weather event it affected.

          My point about inductive versus deductive is that inductive is experience, the cat sitting on the hot stove, while deductive is our interpretation of that experience, the cat never sitting on the stove again, hot or cold. The first is energies coalescing into an event. The future becoming past. The second is our linear, cause and effect interpretation of that event. Prior events leading to subsequent ones. Past to future. Events are inductive. Physicists are deductive.

          I know this isn't necessarily the focus of your argument, but I'm just trying to place it in a network of context, in order to create a larger argument of where physics has gone off course. I think the possibility exists to put together an alternative description of reality, combining lots of views, to present a cohesive view, rather than lot of different views, which can be individually ignored.

          Late for work....

          John,

          Of course, abstract symbols must exploit some aspect of physical reality, like energy, to ever become symbolized. But consider how different digestive tracts respond to the same toxin. Why is the toxin poisonous to some, but not others? The energy, the symbolization, is the same for all. It is the same substance. It is not simply the case that all entities respond merely to their energy inputs. Differing a priori information content, embodied within them, enable them to respond very differently, to identical inputs. This may be true for symbolic inputs, like equations, as well as physical ones.

          I would describe reasoning processes somewhat differently than you have. As examples:

          Deduction:

          All swans are white. Ben is a swan. Therefore, Ben must be white. This is a Certainty. Because any other conclusion results in a contradiction.

          Induction:

          Ben is a swan and is white. Bill is a swan and is white. Tom is a swan and is white... Therefore, all swans are white. This is not a Certainty. It is merely Probable.

          Abduction:

          All swans are white. Ben is white. Therefore, Ben is a swan. This is neither Certain, nor even Probable. It is merely Possible.

          The problem in Physics, in Science, and Logic, in general is as follows:

          Assumptions, the subject matter of all these essays, cannot be deduced, so they cannot be certain. They can only be supported by the weaker forms of logic, Induction and Abduction.

          • [deleted]

          • Post #50

          Robert,

          The problem with deduction is that is is an assumption, based on experience, that all swans are white.

          With induction, only white swans are encountered, so the assumption arises that all swans must be white. It is only when we forget deduction arises from experience, that we start to think there must be some fundamental law which requires swans to be white.

          I agree all we have to work with is assumptions. The question is which assumptions best explain the evidence, ie, Ockham's razor. That is a bit of a trial and error process. Even our gut, using immune responses evolved over generations of interaction with the environment, makes assumptions as to what is safe and what is not. So while some may react to a toxin, others may not.

          John,

          Assuming no gross errors in logic have been made, then:

          For deduction: If the premises are certainly true, then the conclusion is certainly true.

          For Induction: If the premises are certainly true, then the conclusion is probably true.

          For Abduction: If the premises are certainly true, then the conclusion is possibly true.

          It is not quite correct to say that deduction is based on an assumption. The issue of whether or not the initial premises, assumptions etc. are true, is quite independent of the fact that the reliability of the conclusions, generated by the three methods, are not equal.

          Consequently, in any well reasoned argument, based on deduction, if the conclusion is wrong, it must be because an initial premise was wrong. The same cannot be said of Induction and Abduction.

          In other words: Initial premises and assumptions are generated, via reasoning based on induction and abduction only, deduction plays no role. Then and only then, deduction may be applied to these premises to generate some conclusions.

          • [deleted]

          • Post #52

          Robert,

          "Consequently, in any well reasoned argument, based on deduction, if the conclusion is wrong, it must be because an initial premise was wrong."

          Garbage in, garbage out.

          The question is as to what assumptions and premises are open to question. What is today's version of the geocentric premise?

          I've argued it's that treating time as a measure emphasizes the effect of sequence, rather than the cause of action, but there are lots of other aspects of physics, which upon closer examination, seem to crumble to dust, or sprout wings and fly off in the most unexpected directions, as expressed in these many essays. I would say, though, that the future is not where the information points, but where the energy flows. Too often, I find, information points to itself, when visionaries give way to craftsmen, who are more concerned with the craft, than the bigger picture. Philosophy, religion, politics, economics, etc. Why would physics be any different? The "It from bit" syndrome has to go, as you so well argue.