The Universe Is Not a Computer by Ken Wharton

Ken Wharton,

Congratulations, your excellent essay is in the top 35 essays of this contest.

In spite of the excellent write up in your essay, its title remains highly misleading. When you say, 'Universe is not a computer', it implies as if some physicists actually believe that Universe is a computer, or a machine or an engine etc. etc.

However, most physicists know that the state of the Universe undergoes causal evolution through dynamic interactions among its constituent particles and fields. We humans, in our quest for grasping the physical phenomena, have developed various mathematical models to represent this causal evolution of physical phenomena. The computations which you are attributing to the Universe are essentially the operative parts of our mathematical models and not of the Universe. When you say that Universe is not a computer, you are actually implying that your current mathematical models, representing physical reality, are incapable of computing causal evolution of ALL types of physical phenomena. This inability refers to the weakness of your current mathematical models and not to the Universe itself.

In the light of above clarifications, you are requested to kindly summarize in a few sentences, which of our 'Basic Physical Assumptions' are wrong in your opinion?

Anonymous

Dear Ken Wharton,

"Price adds, "Should we assume that particles in physics know about the past but not the future?..."

Of course not, because particles do not know anything. The style of question is as clever as in case of "is the universe a computer?"

Is it a foundational question? Time will tell future generations whether or not back-causation is more than a silly hope to explain possibly not correctly designed or misinterpreted experiments. I see back-causation not a new idea but related to old futile belief. Ritz and Einstein agreed to disagree. If my interpretation of my Fig. 5 is correct then both were possibly misled.

I cannot expect any mercy, not from those who simply trust in the correctness of current mainstream mathematics and physics and also not from those like you who are putting even the direction of causality in question in order to remedy some problems that seem to have no solution as long as some tenets are taboo.

Huw Price reiterated what I consider imprecise and misleading: "Classical physics is symmetrical." I agree with George Ellis: Differential equations are not the primary models of reality.

You are right; we may agree on a lot. However I do not expect you having a serious argument against 1364.

Congratulation to you personally without my approval of back-causation

Eckard

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

Ken,

Your essay, and your clear framing of the NSU and LSU was the intellectual equivalent of getting hit with a Taser. Coming from having spent years building a Schrodinger-based conceptual framework, I went into a kind of mental paralysis after reading your essay.

I've long intuited that least-action must be one of the most fundamental aspects of Nature, with *something* akin to a Wheeler-Feynman absorber mechanism, but there seemed to be little room for this in the Schrodinger frameworks. I did quick reads of every arxiv paper of yours and am still absorbing the contents.

As this is the end-game for this contest, I'm not expecting a reply, but felt it worth tossing out the few things to consider:

1) If you are in need of arguments in support of LSU, the fact that many EPR experiments utilize transparent materials, which from Feynman's QED explanations seem very likely be similar to the laser-cavities you bring up. It has often bugged me that fragile entanglements are not destroyed by all the quantum jumping up and down in a lens or a beam splitter, and yet EPR papers also state that 'any interaction with the environment' destroys entanglement. (My essay is a bit of a disaster, but I was quite clear that passing through a beamsplitter is fundamentally different than a measurement ... LSU might help understand why!)

3) If you haven't already, it might be interesting to see how LSU applies to such beasts as Cooper Pairs in superconductors. When proposing new viewpoints, or testing new theories, my motto is Think Crazy, Prove Yourself Wrong. The faster you can break your own model, the faster you learn how to fix it. Since discovering that Cooper Pairs have spatial separation, but correlation, I have found them a good place to test concepts. This will either strengthen the LSU, or cause head scratching!

I'm not completely sold on the LSU, but that could well be because it has been almost a month since I've read your paper, and I'm still feeling the effects of being tasered by the mathematical gymnastics required to internalize the impact.

I look forward to following your research and think your concepts, at the bare minimum, provide a *much* needed new perspective for fostering debate.

Dean

Dear Ken

It is easy to follows derivations, where we use energy, Hamiltonians and so on, because we can imagine energy, momentum etc. But when I try to follow derivation with Lagrangian, I do not know what to imagine - it is some type of energy, but what type. Feynman's book "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" gives some imagination about for optimization of Lagrangian. You also gave same useful examples. I hope for someone who will clarify Lagrangians as much as possible.

What I think as imagination of derivations in physics, you can see in my article.

In my essay I speculate about importance of principle of uncertainty. I claim that the simplest derivation of it shows, that this principle is more fundamental than wave functions. I claim that wave functions in quantum gravity are not important. Do you have any idea with Lagrangian, how to more simply derive uncertainty principle and how to use it further? Do you know Cramer's interpretation of quantum mechanics? It also shows that "future" influences on past. (A photon do a handshaking and then flies, it is a comparision of all path.) Such approach is also used by Mark Hadley's theory about gravitational explanation of quantum mechanics. Namely, they do not need simple "input-output schema" from past to future.

Best regards Janko Kokosar

Dear Ken,

The Lagrangian schema has some advantages over the Newtonian schema, or in general over the dynamical system schema. Your essay pointed out this very well, with important insights in the problems of quantum mechanics. I can see how well this relates to your previous essays. My own view on quantum mechanics is again, in my opinion, close to yours (as in the essays on the nature of time). But instead of Newtonian vs. Lagrangian, I identify the problem as local vs. global (please see these slides of a talk I will give in few days, "Global and local aspects of causality").

The importance of the Lagrangian view is related also with the problem of singularities in general relativity, which is in fact the subject of my essay. As you know, the action principle is given by the Lagrangian density

[math]R\sqrt{-\det g}[/math]

There are singularities for which this Lagrangian density remains smooth or even analytic. It is customary to consider only R, and view the square root of the metric as auxiliary. In fact, from geometric viewpoint, the natural quantity should contain it too, since we don't integrate scalars, but densities or 4-forms. For such singularities R may be divergent, but metric's determinant vanishes and compensates this. This allows the writing of a densitized version of Einstein's equation, whose terms remain smooth at singularities. I explain this in my essay, "Did God Divide by Zero?", and references therein. So we can see that the Lagrangian view is superior in GR too, at least in the case of singularities.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

MAX PLANK:

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.

Last comment. Janko Kolkata mentioned, Feynman's book "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter". If you haven't read this particular version of Feynman's work, I recommend it. There is something about him taking the arguments for the vernacular that adds a slightly different, non-standard perspective on that is missed in some summaries of his work.

Sergey G Fedosin is bombing entrants' boards with the same "why your rating has dropped" message. They are all dated Oct. 4... same message.

WTH? I've seen one fine essay drop 89 (eighty-nine) positions, in "Community Rating" in the past 24 hours, and "Sergey's note" came BEFORE it plummeted. Hmm.

The vote/scaling of this contest is quite nebulous.

"Hackers Rule!", I suppose!

Well??? What else is one to think? The General Public is... Watching...

Ken,

I enjoyed your essay but have one question. You stated:

"But it also wasn't easy to fight other anthropocentric tendencies, and

yet the Earth isn't the center of the universe, our sun is just one of many, there is no preferred frame of reference."

When you make a measure of anything at all, "you" DO pick a preferred frame of reference - "you" have to! Therefore, your act of measure imposes BOTH the current boundaries and those that "you" will set in the future. YOU pick the boundaries... and so does every form of life that measures. I see no way out of this apparent fact that a Lagrangian approach would "not" appear to resolve? This fact is why my essay builds a physical model surrounding the physical information that life accumulates (and has past accumulated and sorted out) to makes the current measure ... a measure by a living creature provides the information, and, since we all have our own views regarding the actual measure we must admit that we all possess a different view on what was actually measured. It is only by correlating all of our measures (of the 4D universe that provides all the physical measures) that we can find our common information threads....

Regards,

Tony DiCarlo

Hello Thinkers,

Friedemann Freund seems a very intresting person in all case. I have seen his profil on the net.He works at Nasa ames research center it seems to me, he has chance :) If I had several tools, I could imrpove my theoretical models and furthermore I could test also my inventions. I have found an intresting add of systems for a kind of perpetual motion. I have add several energetical concepts. I work in fact with the photosynthesis more the potential and kinetic energy more several properties of liquids for example. The concept is ok but can be optimized. I have also optimized a natural motor.I have add the vegetal multiplication with hormons more the acceleration of the thermophyl phasis....it is relevant, we can utilize the methan CH4,the heat , the pression....the problem was the lack of biomass in a small volume,it is not a probelm when the "totipotence" is inserted.

Regards

Still me. I didn't know the ames nasa center, the net platfrom is very intresting.The kepple mission is very relevant.It is fascinating the discovery of these planets orbiting around stars. It is frustrating also our limitations due to space between cosmological spheres and the limited velocities of spaceships.

Our systems of propulsion are weak and young in fact. I have a real relevance about the limitations due to c. We can affirm that we cannot pass above c, it is logic, if not we cannot perceice the mass. Now we can affirm also that this law is for bosons and their linear informations. But the fermions, them, are the mass and this mass is stabilized in space. So the relevance is when we consider that m turns in opposite sense than hv. This implies that the fermions, them, are perhaps not under the law of c , the special relativity. So in this line of reasoning, all mass can pass above c. The tachyons cannot be bosons. only the fermions can pass above c. It permits to travel more easily inside our Universal Sphere. The acceleration must be made by acceptable steps. The constant velocity is not a probelm even at 1000 c for example. The space between cosmological spheres so are not a probelm.We can so travel inside our milky way and even between galaxies. Of course our technologies are young, but the concept is possible. The engeniering that said is very complex !

We are travellers from Stars, we are Jedis of the SPHERE.:)fascinating and frustrating.

Dear Ken Wharton,

Nature of time in performing finite sets of arithmetic or logical operations with a device differs from the nature of time in that time emerges with the dynamics of the matters of infinite universe.

Though the Tetrahedral-brane scenario and the holarchy of universe described in Coherently-cyclic cluster-matter paradigm of universe, quantizes the universe at its present state; the infinite eigen-rotational cycles of universe describes it in infinity that is not representational as quantum computer, in that string-matter continuum is descriptive for the eternity of the universe.

In this paradigm, as the Lagrangian of a tetrahedral-brane in a holon is relativistic with the other tetrahedral-branes of that holon, computability of its constructs is limited within the holarchy of a holon. Thus for an observer, only the observable universe may be expressional as a computer of the present and not for the future or past, as the nature of time described in this paradigm differs. Thus the present universe does not compute for future and the future is spontaneous, in that variability of chemical potentials in localities has vital role in determining the future states of the universe.

With best wishes

Jayakar

Hi Ken,

Thank you for watching my slides. I'm back now. You asked:

"have you tried extending your quantum ideas to multi-particle problems?"

I did not use the hypothesis that there is only one particle. The sheaf approach works with multi-particle problems too. And the entanglement examples are about two particles.

"I'm still concerned that the fields themselves diverge, even if the Lagrangian density doesn't. I'll have to study your essay and papers and see exactly how it works"

I was concerned about this too. By using appropriate fields, you can rewrite the equations. The resulting equations are equivalent to the usual ones, but in addition remain smooth at singularities, but I'll let you see for yourself.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Ken,

Please see the absolute truth of zero = i = infinity . Current limitation of our computers is the unhandled exception of divide by zero, which in fact is the normalcy in the universe. So to your point universe is not like our conventional computers as of date, may be when humans have mastered quantum computing by unleashing the power of divide by zero will the human race fully understand the true nature of the universe.

Love,

Sridattadev.

Ken,

The contest did not solve the problem. I don't refer to FQXi4, also not to the friends of the "as if" in 1925 but to the question put in 1784 by by Lagrange who was the successor of Euler at the Academia in Berlin: (my truncating translation): Mathematics is using infinitely large and infinitely small quantities which are considered self-contradictory by some experts. The Academia asks for an explanation how so many correct Saetze can be derived from a contradictory assumption. It desires a principle that can substitute infinity in a clear and concise mathematical manner.

It is well known that Lagrange did not accept Fourier's harmonic analysis. Can we suspect that the line of reasoning by Lagrange, Hamilton, Hilbert, ..., Feynman, and you suffers from a missing insight? I largely agree with Robert McEachern: "Do not confuse mathematics for physics".

We are doomed to see the world an open system that evades complete mathematical description.

Eckard