All Your Base Are Belong To Math by Kyle Miller

This is a very well written essay. I think mathematics fails because it does not follow its own preconceived logic as I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay, BITTERS. The binary code only allows for a 1 or 0 presentation. But there should be an allowance made for a -1 response as well. More importantly, each event in the real world is unique. Mathematics cannot be adapted to deal with the unique. Neither can sciences, neither can philosophy. All are disciplines of repeatable sameness.

Wonderfully written essay and I can very much appreciate the Yogi joke :) Could these "meta-programs" be colloquially referred to as a "system of thought" or "the way in which one thinks" e.g. when someone says "you must be thinking about it wrong?" I think it's interesting to think that notions such as emotion have no formal expression in mathematics or physics and yet we all know it exists as anyone, religionists or not, knows, such as books like The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animal...which could branch back into psychology and into motivation and into motivic cohomology...

Your article is interesting.

I am thinking, while I read it, some consideration.

If the law of conservation of the energy (and the conservation of the information) is true, how it is possible that the Universe exists?

We are in an universe of particle, of some energy (and it is not measured a great quantity of anti-matter), and we are in a metric expansion of space: there is a problem!

There is not a simple solution, but the problem exist.

Saluti

Domenico

Kyle,

Now that I finally wrote my entry(a short one), I've been trying to read through some of the others and yours is the first I find both clear and to the point enough to read all the way through.

It does seem that so much speculation builds on prior speculation, as though it was foundational, with increasingly fantastical results. Eventually there will be an speculative implosion and we will see what's left.

I do notice at the bottom of page 2, you make reference to an expanding universe and I have to say I find even this to be far more speculative than provable. One of the many reasons I find it falsifiable is that it assumes a stable speed of light, yet expanding space. Consider that if two galaxies x lightyears apart were to expand to 2x lightyears apart, that would not be expanding space, as measured in lightyears, but increased distance, in which case, the theory falls apart, as we would be at the center of the universe.

Not to start a debate, but just to say to be careful what you include in your models.

Kyle,

As originally proposed, it was just a basic expansion, but since all those sources appear to be moving directly away from us, proportional to distance, it would mean we are at the center of the universe, so it then became an expansion of space, rather than an expansion in space. Yet our most basic measure of intergalactic space is lightspeed and that remains stable, thus it is a stable metric of space. With doppler effect, when the train moves away, resulting in a lower pitch of the whistle, the space is not being stretched, as though the tracks were being stretched, but space in front is becoming space behind it.

Not to go into all the underlaying details, explanations and proposals, but Einstein originally proposed that gravity causes (the measure of) space to contract and would eventually cause the universe to collapse to a point. Well, gravity is still there and according to both theory and observation, overall space appears flat, as these opposing effects of contraction and expansion balance out. Using the bowling ball on a rubber sheet analogy, Einstein's proposal of a cosmological constant would suggest the deformation of the sheet by gravity has an inverse effect on the areas between these gravity wells. Such that space "expands" in those intergalactic areas. Now the light we see from distant sources obviously has to travel these "expanded areas," as what falls into the gravity wells doesn't reach us. So redshift amounts to an optical effect, just as gravitational lensing only affects the light in transit, not the source, or its position relative to us.

So what the expanding universe idea seems to overlook is that galaxies are not just inert points of reference, "raisins in the rising loaf," but "space wells" that balance that expansion.

That "most seem to accept it" will eventually be more of a subject for psychologists, than physicists.

Kyle,

I don't buy the whole "fabric of spacetime" thing either. As I see it, the problem arises from treating time as a vector from past to future, which physics only re-enforces by treating it as a measure of duration, but duration has no projection outside the present. It is the state of the present between the occurrence of events.

The underlaying physics is that the changing configuration of the extant collapses potential into actual, so it is future becoming past. For example, the earth doesn't travel that fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. That means time is a measure of action, not the dimensional basis for it. Which makes it more like temperature, than space. Time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude.

Spacetime as causal is about like epicycles being caused by giant cosmic gearwheels.

Kyle,

I agree with space as being absolute. Whether it be 1, 2, or 3 dimensions, when we measure space, we are measuring space. Lacking any physical attributes to be affected, it has two properties, in that it is both absolute and infinite. There is nothing to move, bend, bound, etc. so it isn't warping, growing, finitely bounded etc. One of the clearest examples is centrifugal force. It is due to an object spinning relative to inertia. Not any outside frame of reference. The space station in 2001; A Space Odyssey isn't creating that gravitational effect by spinning relative to some outside object, but relative to the inertia of space.

As for time, though, we always measure some physical action, so the question is whether it is an effect of that activity, or is it some underlaying manifestation? The point I make is that when we view the actions as the denominator, with the present as the numerator, we end up with this four dimensional geometry and the present is simply some quality of every particular event, thus the transition of time is an "illusion" and duration is an actual real vector along which these events exist, like marks on the road. But if we look at it the other way, with the present as the denominator, then the events are the transitory forms that come and go.

Is duration a real vector, or is it simply the state of the present between the occurrence of events and doesn't physically exist external to the present?

Logical thought is a function of the cause and effect, narrative vector of time, but then we still see the sun as moving across the sky from east to west. Would it be "lacking predictive value" to consider it might be the earth rotating west to east, that creates this effect?

It would simply mean there are no giant cosmic gearwheels to discover, or wormholes and expanding universes.

Is it a prediction, or is it an observation?

Kyle,

Time and information are entwined.

Notes?

"I once heard someone say that music is our best way to model time."

"Time and information are entwined."

I like that! Indeed the flow of music offers us the best *intuitive* insight into the nature of time. And its structural side offers us also a very good insight into the idea of "information".

Lev,

Then keep in mind the branching and converging you are modeling as structs. Consider how that relates to the relationship of temperature and volume as expansion and contraction. Time and temperature as frequency and amplitude.

Kyle,

Musical notes amount to bits of information in the sequence of time.

Lev,

Keeping in mind non-locality and time dilation are divergence/convergence issues.

Guys,

In my essay (which I submitted last Thursday) you should find some clarification of what I said.

Kyle, unfortunately (or fortunately ;-) ), digital rendering of music is very, very misleading, in so far as its true (informational) representation is concerned. It is an encoding rather than representation, if by the "representation" we understand the formative, or structural, form of representation. Despite the widespread misconception, most likely, Nature does not use digital "representations", and hence the bit is a mirage.

Kyle,

I agree, very much so. My entry clarifies my views on the topic.

It seems information theory argues that since the same code can be transferred to any medium, it is independent of the medium, yet what seems to be overlooked is that without some medium, there is no message. I think, further, that this goes to the abstract nature of math and the inherent problems with such conceptual reductionism. For example it is presumed that points, lines and planes can have the remaining dimensions as zero, but if we multiply anything by zero, the result is zero. So a point with zero dimension is as real as an apple with zero dimension. It just happens to be convenient to overlook this, than deal with the complexities of assigning some minimal dimension, yet it creates the illusion of pure abstraction as being somehow real, but that's not the case, even mathematically.

Lev,

Even digital signals are still very small waves, not dimensionless bits of information. It is just convenient to think of them as abstract signals to code the message, not just magnify an analog version of the sound.

"all of the fundamental forces can be viewed as manifestations of a single entity: the vacuum."

Good... but how do you support this dictum experimentally?

Could we also support that all of the fundamental particles can be viewed as manifestations of vacuum bound states (vacuum ~ aether)?

Kyle

Well done, but it is interesting that you regard Newtonian forces as the most important aspects of physics. While I would not agree with that (I think energy, particularly angular momentum) is more fundamental, there is something very 'right' about some of Newton's concepts that got ditched in modern physics. I think absolute space is one such concept. Einstein could have retained absolute space had he adopted Lorentz transformations as affecting clock motion (not time) and measuring stick length (not space). BTW It was Poincare who first explained that energy and mass are equivalent.

Anyway I enjoyed your essay, and agree with the last part which is very close to what I say in the last section of my own paper.

"The universe may, as a matter of fact, be a "quantum computer"; or, at the very least, analogous to one. But force would still be more fundamental than computation because the forces would be what's being computed--the its and bits would be the "hardware" and the laws of physics would be the "software.""

Best wishes,

Vladimir

Hello Kyle,

I like your "Horses and Forces" title for the introduction, also "Yogi". In the conclusion you describe bit as energy or pure information you think about how we count as being arbitrary which I think you prove well. Also division by zero leading to uncertainty is a given.

Nice essay and good luck!

All the best,

Antony (Please take a look at my essay)

No problem and thanks for looking at my essay Kyle. The 1/0 = infinity is always ill defined - so uncertain.

In my essay it wasn't really abstract, more a thought experiment derived from an observer falling into a Black Hole. Outside we can observe and be observed 3-dimensionally. At the event horizon an observer loses the ability to observe towards the black hole and loses the ability to be observed from outside. So there is a 2-dimensional layer where the observer can both observe and be observed.

Inside spaghettification leads to a 1-dimensional observation point and near the singularity a 1-dimensional point where only observing can occur. Then at the singularity we have 0-dimensionality. So it is quite physical - sorry that it came across as abstract.

Best Wishes for the contest,

Antony

Hi Kyle,

Great thoughts on this! I too feel that nature ought to have one singularity, but perhaps as time stops there, then all Black Hole singularities are equivalent to the pre-Big Bang singularity...

Although the possibility that there are no singularities works well too. Around the Fibonacci sequence - we can't decay backwards from 1 to 0 without replicating 1. Also 1 appears both "sides" (positive and negative) of the sequence, suggesting that 0-dimensionality might be skipped. This would lead on to Hawking radiation, where information emerges, albeit scrambled.

I do agree that my system would be hard to test. I guess it starts physical in the 3-D and 2-D and extrapolates back to an assumed 0-D (potential/theoretical) singularity, and is abstract in between.

I like that you highlighted the golden ratio relationship to galactic spirals. Perhaps this may be related to Fibonacci starting at the central Black Holes?

Thanks again for great discussion on one of the most foundational aspects of cosmology.

Best wishes,

Antony

Hi Kyle,

You have written another beautiful, enjoyable and informative essay.I read it a while ago. The first one, as I was sure it would be very good and not too difficult to follow. Glad to see others also clearly appreciating your entry in this thread.

Why should the forces be considered most fundamental in the hierarchy of fundamental concepts? (Perhaps you said and I didn't grasp it or have forgotten.) Best of luck, Georgina