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  • Post #12

As probably the most uninformed observer likely to read your essay could I please point out to you that a light is a light is a light. Light does not consist of invisible photons, klingons, croutons or carryons that can or cannot behave in positive or negative unpredictable ways. Man made particles have nothing to do with reality. Only unique real snowflakes occur. All fabricated particles have to be unique. Why cannot you understand that if nature only produces unique states, men could only produce unique states? There is only one of anything, once. There is no such thing as real scientific information. There is no such thing as real layman information. All information is abstract and has nothing to do with reality because only unique real events take place that cannot be deciphered by any abstract code.

    Joe

    Because the physical input you receive is light, and that is not the reality, it is a physically existent representation thereof. It was created as a result of an interaction with it, and light has features which make it good at representing. Hence the evolution of sight. If light was just random, or bizarre, then sight would not have rendered the possessor an advantage, ie he would not have seen the big monster coming and been eaten anyway!

    Precisely how good light is as an accurate and comprehensive representation of what occurred is a question concerning the physical properties of light, how it intereacts and how it conveys, and what influences it i susceptible to whilst travelling.

    Paul

    Neil

    It is not a matter of how important observation is, in order to discern what occurred, but that that process cannot affect the physical circumstance.

    Paul

    Neil

    This is difficult to follow in this format.

    Very early on there is a false statement, ie any two events with the same properties are identical. If they are two then they cannot be identical!! The properties, whatever that relates to, are the same. But I doubt very much anyway if an exact same set of circumstances could re-occur. This smacks of similarities being drawn at a level of conception that is higher than what actually exists. So as a methodology for categorisation, then ok, but not as a depiction/explanation of physical existence.

    And physical existence is not a series of events, it is a sequence of physically existent states. And within any given stateh there can be no form of change, otherwise it cannot exist. This is the only route out of the conundrum that existence involves existing but also difference. It therefore has to be a sequence of discrete states. That is why he then confuses time and timing. Time is not a succession of moments, that is the timing system. Time is the rate at which alteration occurs in realities.

    Paul

    Paul, Joe: I can't blame you for wanting to apply philosophical intuitions and deduction thereof to what you think the universe is like, but our intuitions are often wrong. Science is above all about "finding out" through often deep and difficult experiments, rather than working out what reality must be like through basic practical observations and reflection. We live in an unexpected universe. I still appreciate your interest.

      Neil

      There is nothing philosophical about what I am saying, or indeed what Joe has just said. They are generic statements, ie facts devoid of the detailed form. See the wood for the trees is the expression.

      And hasn't it ever struck you that the substantiation of some science as being counter intuitive rings an alarm bell?

      Science is not about "finding out", if the start premise is wrong, ie does not correspond with how physical existence must occur. Like for instance, asserting that the activity of observation has an affect on the physical circumstance, asserting that existence occurs relatively, asserting that there is time in a physical reality, not differentiating the existential sequence from the existential representation thereof (eg light), not understanding that physical existence can only occur in one definitive physically existent state at a time, etc, etc.

      Paul

      Joe

      Your essential point is correct. Physical existence comprises a sequence of discrete, definitive, physically existent states. We know there is existence, and that that involves difference. And the only way out of that conundrum is sequence. Of course one can invoke all sorts of beliefs, but this is supposed to be science. And we can only have knowledge of what occurred (this is another answer to your question above about opening our eyes.

      But, because we are in an existentially closed system (we only know because of a physical process), what we do know can be validated, albeit within that confine and then ultimately we can deem that knowledge to be the equivalent of the physical existence knowable to us. In simple language, we know all there is to know.

      Paul

      Neil, I just finished reading your very interesting and well thought out essay. You argue that "it from bit" is impossible because we cannot know all information about a state. Is "it from qubit" or "quit from qubit" possible?

      And light creates all real odors, sounds, tastes and tactile impressions. Who knew?

      Philip, thanks. True, I think that "it" is in some sense "greater" than "bit" because we can't know everything about the universe - in particular, quantum states. There is also an asymmetry between observers of different degrees of "in the know." For example, Alice the PO can create a qubit of a certain polarization aR beta L. It is known to her and anyone she wants to tell, which can be demonstrated by certainty of match testing. To that extent, an undisturbed qubit is fully actualized by the information characterizing it. [Note: I gave up on symbols etc. in these comment boxes, it doesn't correspond to the simple rules I expected.] But Bob, a UO who doesn't know what this state is, must guess by applying simple binary tests which destroy the information.

      Note however that once the qubit escapes and begins being buffeted and distorted by the environment, Alice can lose control of her inside information and even she is not able to know for sure the nature of the qubit. (Note: I don't think this process in any way explains collapse of the wave function or definite outcomes, see my first FQXi essay.) My own techniques might allow Bob to find more about that one photon, or distinguish mixtures previously considered equivalent, but the fullness of the universe's events is still going to be beyond the reach of either Alice or Bob. Hence the universe is indeed to some extent "acataleptic" in a general sense. It is more than *anyone's* information. I am only helping to democratize between relative levels of privilege.

      I agree with the asterisked part of this Smolin quote from the reference above:

      "The most radical suggestion arising from this direction of thought is the insistence on the reality of the present moment and, beyond that, the principle that all that is real is so in the present moment. To the extent that this is a fruitful idea, *physics can no longer be understood as the search for a precisely identical mathematical double of the universe. That dream must be seen now as a metaphysical fantasy that may have inspired generations of theorists but is now blocking the path to further progress.* Mathematics will continue to be a handmaiden to science, but she can no longer be the Queen."

      PS - Not sure re "quit" - typo or neologism?

        interesting point about the mathematical double. Smolin confuses the issue by talking about things like evolution that cannot be well explained in mathematical terms. There are indeed many parts of science that are not served well by mathematics and there may be more of that in physics than people expect. E.g. I think people have had too high an expectation that low energy physics of standard model can be derived from a fundamental theory. On that much I agree with Smolin.

        However I dont yet see a reason to abandon the idea that the underlying laws of physics are described by some yet to be discovered mathematical formalism, even if some things depend on the solution of the equations rather than the equations themselves. The effectiveness of maths in physics points in that direction and it seems to me that the only alternative is to allow an element of the supernatural in which case science is really doomed. I would be interested if anyone can see it another way.

        In his book Smolin talks about "metalaws" and a principle of universality that may explain them. This is so similar to my ideas that I wonder if he got that from me. It is not clear if he accepts that at this level of metalaws the mathematical principle holds.

        Hmmm. Well, I wouldn't say the trans-mathematical nature has to be imagined as "supernatural", just "non-realist" - not the sort of realism we expect. We already have the oddity of random muon decay (supposedly identical "structureless particles" with differing lifetimes, which is an absurdity in deterministic terms. Quantum randomness in general can be described en masse but the individual events cannot be predicted in principle. I don't accept MWI or the guise of "continued Schroedinger evolution," so that is genuine randomness. MAth functions cannot create literal randomness since their results are bound by logical necessity. We must use seeds in pseudorandom generators etc.

        Philip, Neil - in relation to Smolin, determinism, math and computability:

        According to Lee Smolin (and his Loop Quantum Gravity) self-organized critical systems are statistical systems that naturally evolve without fine tuning to critical states in which correlation functions are scale invariant (Ansari H.M., Smolin L. Self-organized criticality in quantum gravity. arXiv:hep-th/0412307v5).

        I would support the view of Smolin in the meaning that the universe is a dissipative coupled system that exhibits self-organized criticality. This structured criticality is a property of complex systems where small events may trigger larger events. This is a kind of chaos where the general behavior of the system can be modeled on one scale while smaller- and larger-scale behaviors remain unpredictable. The simple and well known example of that phenomenon is a pile of sand.

        When QM and GR are computable and deterministic, the Universe evolution (as naturally evolving self-organized critical system) is non-computable and non-deterministic. It does not mean that computability and determinism are related. Roger Penrose proves that computability and determinism are different things (Penrose R. The Large, the Small and the Human Mind. Cambridge University Press, 1997. p.120).

        To summarize my view: the actual Universe is computable (however only in Lyapunov time) but its evolution is non-computable.

        Neil,

        It was not philosophical conjecture that allows me to know for certain that: One (1) real Universe can only be eternally occurring in one real here and now while perpetually traveling at one real "speed" of light through one real infinite dimension once. One is the absolute of everything. (1) is the absolute of number. Real is the absolute of being. Eternal is the absolute of duration. Occurring is the absolute of action. Here and now are absolutes of location and time. Perpetual is the absolute of ever. Traveling is the absolute of conveyance method. Light is the absolute of speed. Infinite dimension is the absolute of distance and once is the absolute of history. It was common sense. Do you honestly think that any scientist could only have a scientific brain, or any philosopher only have a philosophical brain?

        Neil

        Yes we can know everything about the 'universe'. Whether we can achieve that is a practical point. This is because the 'universe' is what we can potentially know. Whether that is the same as what 'really' exists we cannot know, because we cannot externalise ourselves from our existence. We can of course believe in anything we want, but that is commonly known as religion, not science.

        In other words, we can only have knowledge of whatever existence is, and that is itself conditioned by the physical process that underpins it. Not some philosophical waffle. We compile that knowledge by comparison and the identification of difference, getting an ever better approximation, assuming of course no false presumptions or a lack of due process. Eventually, when no new knowledge becomes available then we can deem that to be the equivalent of 'it'. That is as good as it gets, but then if one is trapped in an existentially closed system, all one can know is that system, from within.

        Paul

        a month later

        I finally got back to reading essays. Your essay is curious. I think your proposed experiment is related to using a birefringent crystal to split a photon into am entangled pair of photons through their L and R polarization states.

        LC

        Neil,

        Very nice essay, and our theses have much resonance. In fact I've explored some of your propositions further. In particular;

        "tangible angular momentum is clearly not incidental to what we can know about

        quantum objects." Absolutely central I agree, and I propose both than 'non-available' information has fooled us and that AngularM is massively powerful.

        "we should at least re-examine the presumption that statistical coincidences

        that simulate runs of circular photons, will produce all the same results as real such runs" Yes! Spot on. I hope you'll comment on my dissection of the error there.

        "We still won't really understand wavefunction collapse, despite various controversial attempts to explain it."

        Very true, but I hope you may also then give your views on some insight I think AngularM may offer in that area. I also propose a very practical, in theory, experimental test involving single photon emissions which will falsify a proposed resolution of the EPR paradox.

        One question; You say above to Paul that; "interaction-free measurements' are now appreciated and used." I found not so, as so called weak measurement techniques all still involve interactions, then reverting to 'statistics' which I falsify as a valid method of extracting the information required.

        Anyway, good writing and very pertinent view, well presented. Worth a much better score. I look forward to your thoughts on mine.

        Best of luck

        Peter

        15 days later

        Dear Neil Bates

        It is true that "your background is too complex to coherently summarize.". if put into practice would probably be much more complicated. Have you something of measure for it to be more simpler?

        http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

          7 days later

          Dear Neil,

          Nice approach to the question. I really like the UO and found it topical and relevant with regard to weak multiple measurements. Also I like your openness to explore the possibility that information might not necessarily be more fundamental than reality. Nice use of physics across the whole essay.

          If time permits I'd be delighted if you could take a look at my essay.

          Well done!

          Antony.

            Dear Neil Bates,

            I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

            Regards and good luck in the contest.

            Sreenath BN.

            http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827