BITTERS by Joe Fisher

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

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

Your welcome... and now finally rate your essay a 10 as my way of saying thanks for being the first to rate my essay.

Best wishes,

Manuel

Jayakar,

I am glad you agree with me. Now if I can only convince the other 125 essay contributors, I am sure I will become a more pleasant person.

Joe

Thank you dear Joe

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

Hi Joe from Margriet O'Regan from DownUnder

Wow - I so love dissidents !!! folk who go against the mainstream!! A big thumbs up from me !! And yes the way in which 'information' is characterized these days is, I concur, pure 'codswallop' !!! But, hey, you don't win friends & influence people by calling them - or their work - names !!!

And very much to my own credit (false modesty has never been a virtue of mine !) instead of just wringing my hands & name-calling I knuckled down & figured out what is really - REALLY - going on in our universe. We not only communicate with one another with 'information' - written down (or even spoken) - in some kind of 'short-hand' symbolic form, but we actually think with some kind of shorthand units of information too.

This seemed quite self-evident to me, as well as how inadequate are the current 'models' of information in use today, so I just jolly well figured it out on my own - as related in my essay.

So yes. My own investigations have led me to conclude that 'information' is NOT digits - no kind nor amount of them (including any that can be extracted from quantum phenomena!), nor how algorithmically-well they may be massaged & shunted through any device that uses them.

Unequivocally they - digits - make for wonderful COUNTING & CALCULATING assistants, witness our own now many & various, most excellent, counting, calculating devices BUT according to my investigations real thinking is an entirely different phenomenon from mere counting, calculating & computing.

For which phenomenon - real thinking - real information is required.

My own investigations led me to discover what I have come to believe real information is & as it so transpires it turns out to be an especially innocuous - not to omit almost entirely overlooked & massively understudied - phenomenon, none other than the sum total of geometrical objects otherwise quite really & quite properly present here in our universe. Not digits.

One grade (the secondary one) of geometrical-cum-informational objects lavishly present here in our cosmos, is comprised of all the countless trillions & trillions of left-over bump-marks still remaining on all previously impacted solid objects here in our universe - that is to say, all of the left-over dents, scratches, scars, vibrations & residues (just the shapes of residues - not their content!) (really) existing here in the universe.

Examples of some real geometrical objects of this secondary class in their native state are all of the craters on the Moon. Note that these craters are - in & of themselves - just shapes - just geometrical objects. And the reason they are, also one & at the same time, informational objects too, can be seen by the fact that each 'tells a story' - each advertises (literally) some items of information on its back - each relates a tale of not only what created it but when, where & how fast & from what angle the impacting object descended onto the Moon's surface. Again, each literally carries some information on its back.

(Note : Not a digit in sight !!)

How we actually think - rather than just count, calculate & compute - with these strictly non-digital entities, specifically these geometrical-cum-informational objects, in precisely the way we do, please see my essay.

I did not make the distinction between computing with digits & real thinking with real information, sufficiently strongly in my essay.

This contest is such a wonderful 'sharing' - Wow - & open to amateurs like myself - Wow. How great is that !!! Thank you Foundational Questions Institute !!! What a great pleasure it has been to participate. What a joy to read, share & discuss with other entrants !!!

Margriet O'Regan

PS - If you like irreverent pokes at mainstream check out Bill Gaede on the net!!!

Joe,

I hadn't realised you'd had to deal with such a marathon after my June 3rd post. Sorry about that. But I have some good news to make you feel bitter. I've just checked and I hadn't rated your essay. As the only other one majoring on uniqueness how can I not love it? This is a once only ever rating that will prove the magical power of numbers by levitating you seamlessly up the batting order with no accelerative effect!

Very best wishes.

Peter