Hi Joe,

I enjoyed your essay greatly, but I had to laugh as I think you convincingly undid yourself. Except you did it in reverse. You see; when you talked about the utter uniqueness of the snowflakes in their individual journey to their once and only once existence; I thought it was the most elegant argument possible that each snowflake stores all of the information about its unique journey. The neat thing is that scientists can actually unravel part of that story, after the fact.

So thank you for your wonderful metaphor and insight. Although it contradicts what you said on the following page about the non-existence of information, that gem was definitely worth the effort to read your fine essay, and it stands alone as a great principle to remember. I look forward to reading your reply.

Regards,

Jonathan

    I wanted to add this..

    If some of your ideas were phrased in academic terms, they might be more appealing to academics. For example; you seem to have an objection to the idea that numbers just sit there, so they are repeatedly the same, and don't evolve with time. But that's just the Reals; if you consider quaternion and octonion numbers they DO display a sort of dynamism or time evolution. So in Math terms; one of your statements becomes "We can't assume that all quantities are like the so-called real numbers, as real quantities are sometimes non-commutative or non-associative, and they change over time."

    Similarly; you seem to be making a strong case for the Heuristic method, and the idea that perhaps all knowledge is really heuristic in method. That is; it only applies for the unique conditions under study, and may not be applicable beyond a narrow spectrum of conditions. That again becomes a way to phrase things that makes your point more eloquently. By and large; I enjoyed your essay, but I think you went off the deep end a few times Joe. I still wish you luck in the contest.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

    Hi Joe,

    To tell you the truth I came up with this theory only by chance(luck), so I don't know about "perspicacious". However my many years of solving tough problems in engineering, computer and business does help to sharpen ones problem solving ability.

    In some sense my theory does say that reality is only once, because it is a mathematical structure. It is not useful to enumerate all triangles(their leg lengths). It suffice to say there is such a thing as a triangle.

    Also, If you are implying there is no multi-verse, my theory tends to support your position. However, it is too early to be sure.

    I gave you good grade for your spirit of discovery.

    Adel

      Hi Joe!

      Thank you for pointing out on Maria's blog that I missed Carolyn Devereux -- her essay turned out my favorite by far (out of just under 60 entries that I have read).

      Finally I got to see your essay too and I love its title -- it shows you have a good sense of humor. I also saw your somewhat boorish comments on some blogs lol. You got your point: everything in nature is unique and occurs just once. I believe you will find this thought adequately reflected in my essay where I suggest that reality is continuously generated anew. Hope you will like it -- and even if not, I'm looking for your sincere comment on it in my blog.

      -Marina

      Joe,

      You're such an iconoclast but you speak words of truth. What is real for me is the unique moment now as I type this. You reading this comment is your unique moment. We cannot hold on to these moments except as memory traces because events, ourselves and the universe move on.

      Ultimately, all we each really have is our ongoing experience of the world (which is as real as it gets) and our explantations of our experience (which is "codswallop"). I know you are not interested in logic but there is a contraction here: "He who says does not know, and he who knows does not say". (This would include your essay, my essay and this aphorism.)

      Best wishes,

      Richard

        Hi Joe,

        I know you will have some unique answers to my question which I appreciate:

        Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?

        You can reply me here. And please pardon my naive view of physics.

        Accept my best regards,

        Akinbo

          Dear Akinbo,

          I am afraid I cannot answer your question for I am not a physicist; I am a decrepit old realist.

          I have been relentlessly told that about three fifths of the planet earth consists of water. I have also been relentlessly taught that each human body contains about 60%-65% of water. Although there are reputed to be about 7 billion humans presently living on earth, there are many more insects, blades of grass and drops of water. Each human, each insect, each blade of grass and each droplet of water is unique, once.

          Thankfully, there are only a few thousand theoretical physicists pretending that they know how the universe started and how superior intellectually they are. How on earth could a theoretical physicist "know" any more about reality than a blade of grass or a drop of water could when "the law of averages" clearly indicates that the theoretical physicists must "know" considerably less for there are so few of them?

          Joe

          Hi Joe,

          I was expecting something different, having read your previous essays, and was not disappointed. I was amused by your Google searches culminating in the realization that real unique toes are only sock removal away.

          You seem very hard on poor old information.It has its uses, one of which was how to build a unique human being (now named Joe Fisher).

          Have you come across the game rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock? (As played on 'The big bang theory' ) Lizard is the hand made into a simple lizard head shape with the fingers as the top jaw and the thumb the bottom jaw and Spock is the live long and prosper salute. With that, even more obscure analogy, it would be possible to have matter, information, 'visualization', space and energy. I've noticed that a few of the other essays mention the important role of energy and/or forces.

          You have succeeded in getting across your point about the uniqueness of material things in a very enjoyable way. Thanks for sharing it with us. Good luck, Georgina

            Hello Joe

            Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

            (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

            said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

            I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

            The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

            Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

            Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

            I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

            Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

            Good luck and good cheers!

            Than Tin

            Georgina,

            Thank you for taking the time to read and understand my essay. I have never watched The big bang theory.

            Nature automatically provides the right amount of energy for the real Universe to operate as it does. Nature provides each form of life enough reality to sustain it. Man is the only animal that crazily believes in transmitting energy and transmitting information about reality is superior to natural circumstance.

            In all seriousness, if a man does not know about any matter that is not present, how on earth could such a man invent and perfect a device that could know what the man cannot know?

            Joe

            Dear Joe,

            Information of unique object is observational as information continuum that indicates the plausibility of string-matter continuum nature of matters, in that information is the transfer of matter with energy. Uniqueness of an object is expressional as discrete, in that I agree '1' is absolute for every unique object, while '1' is real in discrete but not as continuum that is non-zero.

            With best wishes,

            Jayakar

            Dear All

            A standard-issue big city all-glass high-rise stands across the street from my usual bus stop. When I look up the high-rise facade, I can see the reflections of the near-by buildings and the white clouds from the sky above. Even when everything else looks pretty much the same, the reflections of the clouds are different, hour to hour and day to day.

            After I boarded the bus, I rushed to get a single seat facing four others on a slightly elevated platform. From my vantage point, I can't help noticing the shoes of the four passengers across from my seat are not the same, by either the make , the design, or the style, and that is true even when the four passengers happen to be members of the same family.

            I could change the objects of my fascination from shoes to something else, to buttons on the dresses for example, but I do not think the result would have been any different. Diversity or Uniqueness would still rule the day! (There is a delightful essay on the subject of uniqueness by Joe Fisher in this contest.)

            I am pretty sure people are fascinated by the diversity and the uniqueness in the world, when the other side of it is the inevitable boredom of sameness every time.

            However, we have a need to know where all this beautiful and enchanting diversity comes from. Borrowing Wheelerian phraseology of "How come the quantum?", I ask "How come the diversity?" A standard physics answer is "Entropy always increases." (I am not a physicist, and I don't know if that is the final answer.)

            Whenever I'm out of my depth, I go back to my theory of everything (TOE), which is a mental brew of common sense, intuition, gut, analogy, judgement, etc. etc. , buttressed when I can with a little thought-experiment.

            The thought-experiment is simple. Imagine cutting a circle into two precisely, identical, and equal parts. Practically, there is no way we can get the desired result, because one part will be bigger or smaller in some way.

            Physics - especially quantum physics - says it don't matter, do the superposition!

            But superposition is fictive, an invention like the Macarena dance, and it has given us a cat, alive and dead at the same time.

            I have heard that angels can dance on the tip of the needle, and now I'm finding out some of us can too!

            Cheers and Good Luck to All,

            Than Tin