Essay Abstract

John Wheeler advocated the principle that information is the foundation of physics and asked us to reformulate physics in terms of bits. The goal is to consider what we know already and work out a new mathematical theory in which space, time and matter are secondary. An application of the converse of Noether's second theorem to the holographic principle implies that physics must have an underlying hidden symmetry with degrees of symmetry that match physical degrees of freedom in order to account for the huge redundancy of information in the interior of a black-hole. I have been working on a theory that builds infinite dimensional symmetries using layers of quantisation from information as suggested by Wheeler's contemporary Carl von Weizsäcker. Necklace Lie algebras are the mathematical objects and iterated integration can be used to show how a continuum background can emerge from their structure. The logic suggests the conclusion that wheeler was right when he proclaimed "It from Bit"

Author Bio

Philip Gibbs has a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Glasgow. He has published papers in physics and mathematics as an independent scientist for over 20 years and is the founder of the viXra.org e-print archive.

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There are "no absolute proofs in science" because the real absolute states of the real Universe that I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay, BITTERS are self evident.

    Hi Joe, That is roughly what acataleptic means, so we have some common ground.

    a·cat·a·lep·sy [ey-kat-l-ep-see]

    noun Philosophy. An ancient Skeptical view that no more than probable knowledge is available to human beings.

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    • Post #4

    Philip

    Your heading is a contradiction. There might be alternatives, but the only "universe" (or physical existence) which we can investigate in science is that which we can potentially know. And there is a physical process underpinning this.

    Reality is not information (leaving aside the point that light, etc, which is physically existent, is also information). Reality exists. And it can only do so in a sequence of discrete, definitive, physically existent states. By definition, a reality cannot involve any form of alteration (difference) or indefiniteness, otherwise existence is impossible. Nothing "emerges", it is a sequence. Nothing is "uncertain", we just do not conceive of the level of differentiation involved most of the time, and would definitely have difficulty identifying it.

    The point is that we can only have information of reality, and compile knowledge which ultimately we can deem to be the equivalent of it. 'It' being existence as potentially knowable to us. We are trapped in an existentially closed system.

    Paul

      Paul, I would concede that the title is a paradox, but not a contradiction. Quantum mechanics makes the world inherently uncertain, but that does not mean the universe is unknowable. Some people mis-define acataleptic to mean incomprehensible but that is not an accurate description of the philosophical position held by the Greek acataleptics (as far as we know)

      If you take the position that quantum mechanics is wrong and this uncertainty is not fundamental then you are in the company of Einstein, Bohm, 't Hooft and many others. I cannot persuade you otherwise, but I do not accept that such certainty is a logical necessity and nobody has provided any such argument that I am aware of.

      I will read your essay to see what more you have to say about it.

      A very nice and insightful essay. I'm particularly pleased that apparently, there are still people out there considering Weizsäcker's work worthy of further investigation; I've always thought that this is one of those 'great but forgotten' ideas that might merit revisiting (especially given the current state of high energy physics). I also enjoyed your nicely conceptual introduction to the holographic principle. (However, you seem to be saying that it applies to any spatial volume. I'm not sure that's right in general; you'll probably have to appeal to Busso's construction---his 'covariant entropy bound'. But you probably just wanted to not unnecessarily bog down the discussion with technicalities.)

      As for your view on the necessity of some new, 'huge' symmetry---well, to me, symmetry in fact is just some kind of redundancy (I can't quite tell whether you agree or disagree here). But this redundancy is a very deep concept! It's what enables a lawlike description of the world: whatever lacks redundancy is effectively random, and has no significantly shorter description (see e.g. Kolmogorov complexity). So a universe which is highly symmetric, highly redundant, is one that has a simple, short, lawlike description---meaning one we'd have at least a fighting chance to understand using our tiny monkey brains. So in this sense, I hope you're right about the existence of such a huge amount of symmetry!

      However, I think I didn't get the point about multiple quantization leading to additional symmetry. I may be misremembering, but in general, if you quantize, you may loose symmetry due to anomalyies; but I'm not sure how to gain additional symmetry. I'd be grateful if you could maybe elaborate on this point...

        Jochen, thanks for your comments. I am glad you also appreciate Weizsäcker's work. He is much less cited than Wheeler yet he went much further in trying to formulate how "It from Bit" could actually work. After he won the Templeton prize he was able to supervise students who furthered his work.

        For the moment I am working on the principle that the holographic principle applies for any surface bounding a volume. I know this would have cosmological implication. A spatially closed cosmology would be ruled out because a surface encloses both the inside and outside which does not make sense if the surface is small. A flat homogeneous universe is also problematical, but hyperbolic universes and in-homogeneous universes are fine. Perhaps a more complete version of my ideas would imply only the covariant entropy bound but as it presently stands I think I need to believe in the more general rule.

        I agree that symmetry can be seen as "some kind of redundancy" but I don't agree that this should be preceeded by the word "just". Consider a toy model where the content of the universe is described by a single NxN hermitian matrix and the dynamics have a U(N) symmetry. There are N^2 degrees of freedom and the symmetry Lie algebra is also of dimension N^2, yet the system is not quite all redundancy. There are N real invariants modulo the permutation group S_N. When we talk about symmetry being a redundancy we need to think about what is left when it is integrated out. With gauge fields there may also be topological invariants as well as conserved charged. I think this is consistent with what you are saying about its comprehensibility.

        As to how quantisation builds symmetry, in Weizsäcker's work he starts with a bit which has Z_2 symmetry. The first quantisation is a qubit with SU(2) symmetry. The next quantisation is a larger object that includes larger symmetries and so on. The right definition of quantisation is still lacking but the version that came up in my work builds bigger necklace lie algebras from smaller ones. (I connected this to Weizsäcker's work later after a communication with David Finklestein) I did not have space to describe the details here. I think the anomalies will not kill the important gauge symmetry in the real theory otherwise you can lose unitarity and become inconsistent.

        Thanks for you comments which have made me think. I have already noted that your essay is another technical one so I will read it carefully next.

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        • Post #8

        Philip

        "then you are in the company of Einstein", oh heck, but then one must presume from all his output some of it was correct!!

        "but I do not accept that such certainty is a logical necessity and nobody has provided any such argument that I am aware of"

        Here goes then. Referring to a para over in my response to you on my blog. The form of existence knowable to us can only occur as sequence, ie one physically existent state at a time. There cannot be any form of non-definitiveness or alteration within that state, otherwise it cannot exist. There cannot be 'vague' existence. Perhaps it was here or msaybe over there, maybe it was this shape or perhaps that! It is us who cannot differentiate it adequately. But instead of accepting that, there has been this wierd notion that there is something 'wrong' with reality, it is counter intuitive, relative, subject to influence when we sense it, etc, etc.

        Paul

        Paul, that is not a bad try. I think many physicists who seek a deterministic theory use the same kind of ideas as you have expressed here.

        Hi Philip!

        You did a great job with your essay. I work in ICT sector and I love to use my "golden hammer" everywhere, KIS(s), you know... keep it simple. I don't like that last s (=stupid). Do you honestly think that a common people understand your theory? I mean this in a good way.

        And how space, time and matter can be secondary? After all, space and matter are the fundamental building blocks of universe.

          Kimmo, it is good to see you over here.

          Yes, the key to getting high scores would be the right balance of interesting text that is easy to understand plus a few equations and nice pictures. I have probably gone too far to the technical side this time, but I prefer to say what I want to say and risk some low marks. I would really like to make the final this time though, and perhaps you underestimate common people too much :-)

          And yes, space time and matter can really be secondary. They don't have to be the most fundamental building blocks. Already there are many physical theories with dualities where these things change characteristic depending on how you look. I have found that an algebra with no obvious connection to continuous space or time can be mapped exactly to states of material objects in a continuous space. The explanation is somewhat mathematical and it needs more space to elaborate than the one page I gave it in the essay, but it really is a neat and non-trivial trick that physicists need to be aware of.

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          • Post #12

          Philip,

          I'd play a devil's advocate here :)

          Continuing on your "What we need is a consistent theory built on mathematical logic that accounts for all known observations.", how do you look at current apparent lack of any hint of SUSY in LHC data? Especially, since without SUSY, there may not be strings either. May your mathematical arguments be applied somewhere, in case of no strings?

          A. Wheeler talked about super-strings, because in absence of experiment, this was hoped as the best theory. I wonder, what he would've said this, if he were alive.

            Phil,

            A superb essay. Your brief but coherent history of the key ideas evidences superior understanding of how this view fits together. I don't subscribe to the view, but I gained insights from your presentation. For example you say, "If there is redundancy, there must also be gauge theory." I've been focused on Yang-Mills for many months and have not seen it this way. Very thought provoking.

            I completely agree with you that the arguments are not watertight, and, if not correct, "some other deeply held assumption must break down." I've tried to understand the key to the radical difference in our views, and I think it may be your belief that "a consistent theory built on mathematical logic that accounts for all known observations" is a useful concept, except for a very closed set of observations. Perhaps, if one excludes observations of awareness and experience, but when one hopes to replace physical matter by logical chains of which one has become aware, I do not see how one can ignore this awareness, and if one does not, then I contend such mathematical schemes are hopeless.

            With the topic, "It from Bit" or vice-versa, it was clear that essays would come down on both sides. You have certainly presented a strong case for one side. I doubt that anyone will do a much better job. I hope that when I submit my essay you will find it as enjoyable.

            I'd hoped to comment on your many ideas, but you simply cover too much, so I'll make a few remarks. First, at a Stanford symposium last month Joe Polchinski and Leonard Susskind agreed that physicists are very confused by the 'firewall' and the question of information conservation, things that seemed resolved for the last decade or so. I think the current structure is coming unglued.

            Your conclusion based on the second derivative formulation of Noether's theorem that "energy is a relative quantity that cannot be separated from this field" is fascinating. I believe it's relevant to work I've been doing; I need to digest it.

            I won't try to summarize any of my arguments here, but in my essay. Nevertheless, while I believe strings, holography, infinite towers of spin, super-symmetry, multi-dimensions, and multi-verses are supefluous, I do want to understand their proponent's arguments, and you do a simply remarkable job compressing these into a short essay. Congratulations, and thanks.

            Best,

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            I really love this setup here. Different paradigms shouting out in a market place. Kind of Monty Python movie scene comes to my mind. Again, in a good way :)

            Interesting to see which one prevails in this contest.

            Miklai, thanks for these questions which are very important to answer fully.

            Two years ago the case for SUSY at the TeV scale looked pretty good. This was partly due to electroweak fits which suggested a light Higgs (115-120 GeV) supported by hints seen at LEP. Suxh a light Higgs would have required something very like SUSY to keep the cavuum stable. This turned out to be an illusion and the correct Higgs mass is 125 GeV. At that mass we dont really need SUSY to stabilise the vacuum so the case is weakened. There were other reasons to believe in SUSY. It provides solutions for dark matter, proton stability etc, but none of these things say that SUSY is necessary. It looks like nature fooled the theorists this time and it is the first time they were caught out like that. Of course SUSY could be waiting at the next energy range to be searched at the LHC in 2015 or it could be at a higher energy anywhere up to the GUT scale which is a big range of energies, but the higher it is the more the standard model looks fine-tuned. It is a strange mystery but those are the cards we have been dealt and we have to play them.

            String theory is really another matter. If we see SUSY it will support string theory but not seeing SUSY only weakly affects the case for strings. String theory is a theory of quantum gravity that tells us about physics at the Planck scale. Expecting it to have observable consequences at the TeV scale is like expecting the top quark to be relevant to biology. They are worlds apart. The main motivation for string theory is that it provides the only perturbative framework for a consistent theory of quantum gravity. This is a non-trivial observation, but it is not a 100% watertight argument that string theory must be right. If it isn't then theorists have been caught out in an even bigger way than with SUSY, but maybe that is the new trend.

            I am open minded but I think string theory plays some role and we have to at least understand how it works before we make progress. I am all for looking at alternative ideas either in their own right or as new ways to look at strings. My own work is quite radical and is not the way conventional string theorists see things.

            Much of what I have said in this essay is fairly generic and could play a role even if string theory is irrelevant. It does seem to point more naturally in the direction of strings but the black hole information puzzle is a problem for any theory of quantum gravity to explain and the possible implications for symmetry that I have outlines are equally generic.

            Edwin, It is good to see you around and I look forward to seeing your essay enter into the debate.

            I think that "a consistent theory built on mathematical logic that accounts for all known observations" is a reasonable requirement. If such a thing does not exist I don't know what replaces it. I didn't go to school at Hogwarts :-) Of course I look forward to your solution and I am sure that your view will get some sympathy.

            I do agree that understanding awareness is important. Jochen Szangolies already had some interesting things to say about consciousness in his essay. I do think about such things even if I have not written about them. The role of information in this issue must be important and I hope that I may learn something about it from these essays, so I look forward to that. I do think that mathematical analysis will have some bearing on it but there is also a meta-physical side that can/must be discussed without the maths.

            The firewall issue is something else that is very interesting and it an essay could be 50 pages long I would have tried to deal with it, but perhaps it is better that we are forced to concentrate on fewer points. I don't think for one minute that a firewall is the correct description of a black-hole horizon but the arguments that lead to it have to be addressed. They rely on the assumption that entanglement is an essential part of black-hole complementary. If I am right that information is described by charges from a huge symmetry then those arguments may be circumvented, but I think that is too premature a claim for me to make. Entanglement entropy is a useful idea for small black-holes in string theory and the distinction between classical and quantum is blurred when you introduce iterated quantisation so the solution may be more subtle. If anyone brings up the subject of firewalls in their essay we may get an interesting argument going about it.

            I look forward to your essay.

              Philip

              Understanding awareness/consciousness is only important in that it enables the unravelling of the process which converts physical input to perception of that physical input. It is not a physical process, because it does not involve an alteration in physical form, and the process has no impact on the physical circumstance. Both because of the latter point, and because of the simple fact that physical existence occurs before perception. Physical input has to be received first, in order to enable a perception of it to be created, and a necessary condition of physical influence is sequence order.

              Paul

              Philip,

              I read your essay with interest, even though I was not familiar with the term "acataleptic". The online dictionary I used defined this as "incomprehensible", although I now understand that you are referring to fundamental uncertainty. And indeed, quantum uncertainty is universally believed to be a fundamental aspect of nature. On the other hand, I argue in my essay ("Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotation and Relative Time") that one can obtain a consistent description of microscopic reality based on real-space relativistic quantum waves, without uncertainty - there are no point particles.

              Further, I show that one can obtain the effects of general relativity directly from these microscopic quantum waves. But a self-consistent application of this picture eliminates divergences, so there are neither event horizons nor black holes. Yes, this is heretical, but I argue that the observation of compact high-mass objects does not prove the existence of black holes per se.

              Finally, thank you for your creation of viXra.org, which enables one to evade the tyranny of anonymous gatekeepers.

              Alan

                I agree that awareness/consciousness is not a physical process. It could be viewed as just a psychological process of no importance to physics, but I think it is a little more than that because it is linked to entropy and information. It is an important aspect of understanding the interpretation of physics. It may tell us something about why we see the universe the way we do. If the laws of physics are holographic why do we not experience life as if we are living on a 2D boundary rather than the extended 3D world that you get by adding in lots of redundancy?

                It may also become a practical consideration in the future if it becomes possible to accurately simulate our brains on a computer. A simulated brain would claim to have awareness because it is simulating a real brain and that is what a real brain would claim. Should we accept that? Would you transfer your brain patterns to a computer as a form of immortality? If yes, then what happens if the function of the simulated brain is modified or duplicated etc.? What if someone simulates out brain without telling us? What if we are simulated in another universe? Doesn't that happen somewhere because the universe/multiverse is so large?

                I think that making sense of such questions must tell us something about how the world works, but I don't think the answers require any kind of physical process like a soul to explain consciousness. Do you agree?

                Thanks for the explanation, Philip; I also had a brief look at Lyre's article on multiple quantization. I think the concept is a little different from the intro-to-QM 'promote observables to Hermitian operators' quantization, but then, the intent is different, as well: one doesn't really want to start with a classical system to find the quantum analogue, but build up physics from the ground from 'abstract quantum theory' (a point of view I'm very sympathetic to). I guess we both appreciate Weizsäcker's work from different angles: I was initially drawn to it as an explanation for the three dimensionality of space (which I see reflected in Finkelstein's space-time code and Penrose's original spin networks; indeed, the whole concept has recently be revived in a modern setting by Müller and Masanes, who considered the abstract case of two agents attempting to establish a common reference frame by exchanging quantum information, but this only parenthetically), you emphasize the multiple quantization.

                The straightforwardly ur-theoretic perspective might be somewhat difficult to align with your work anyway, since at least naively, it would seem to suggest a closed (S^3) universe, which would conflict with your views on holography (but I was never entirely convinced by these cosmological arguments anyway). This is actually one thing I've been wanting to investigate for some time: the relationship between ur theory and the holographic principle. I seem to recall some partial successes by either Görnitz or Lyre, who computed the amount of information lost to the universe by removing a particle from it, and found it to be consistent with holographic expectations (maybe it was in Görnitz' 'Abstract Quantum Theory and Space-Time'-series?). But I also seem to recall some tension...

                Anyway, I'll have to check out some of the work you reference---I hadn't previously heard about 'necklace Lie algebras' (though the way you describe and use them reminds me faintly of the concept of 'string bits' that was floating around some years ago, but that might be a false association), and while I had previously dipped into your work on event symmetry (you might have noticed that I reference Greg Egan's 'Permutation City' in my essay), I can't really claim to have the necessary background to understand it all. Sometimes, there's just too much interesting stuff to read...