Thanks for your comments and also your essay.

It is a strange feeling participating in this event, as I am not accustomed to ideas like ours being received kindly.

Thanks again!

Thank you!

I would like to comment on the soup again.

If absolute is a large bowl and relative a small bowl, then it should be pointed out that you can not pour from one bowl to the other.

Take the variables in a program, say x and y.

You can make what ever statements you want with these, x - y, xy, sqr(x - y), sect.

Now remember the observers measurement, 13 feet. Recall that he measurement is not stored in a variable but encoded in the simulated neural net.

Because of this you can not write a compilable statement that uses x, y, and the measurement 13 feet.

They are two fundamentally different.

Likewise the ingredients for the big bowl soup and the ingredients for the small bowl are on different planesof eexistence.

Thank you so much.

You have broken its into simulated wetware and simulated measurements. I think hats a reasonable version, but for merely for the sake of discussion let me tell you why I've the approach I have.

Lets say we are dissecting a mammal. In our textbooks there is dashed line separating the brain from the brain stem. Is that dashed line on the specimen?

We create the difference between brains and brain stems in biology, and hence we create brans and brain stems in biology.

So the simulated wetware is not an it. The simulated wetware are just compounds of bits.

It is when these compounds of bits make measurements that their neural activity creates relative space, relative time, and relative matter icluding electrons, photons, atoms, molecules, tape measures, planets, people, and brains.

The neural activity mentioned previously does not belong to a brain (because it creates the bran) but a brain-like compounds of bits.

Hi Michael,

Thank you for helping me understand your explanation. Good question springs to mind, is a brain built from atoms or built from information?In your scenario it is an accumulation of bits. Which makes sense to me for a simulation. Though in external reality (outside of human or computer simulation) I think the answer would have to be both. The gross structure is from presumably genetic and biochemical controlled developmental processes but the fine structure from the flow of information within the brain. So is it a macro it or a macro output of bits? Both I think.So in the simulated brain would it be an accumulation of bits that encode the gross structure but also the macro output of other bits that flow through the structure and direct the development of the fine structure?

The relative things ( which I think are manifestations observed) are very different from absolute things because they are collections of characteristics that are stored in diffuse locations rather than as one thing in one isolated location in the brain. Thought that worth mentioning in my essay. I think that's an interesting difference between objects and the images fabricated from information received and important consideration for a simulation.

Brains and atoms are its.

They are physical matter, in relative space operating along physical clocks depicting relative time.

All its exist as measurements defined in the neural network of a mind, and a mind is a compound of bits that makes measurements of other bits.

What I have essentially done is place all physical phenomena in Popper's World Three and replaced World 1 with the algorithm, ie: information.

That's it from bit.

Hi Michael,

thanks again. Think I get it now, minds make its in your proposed computer model and the (simulated) neural activity is not part of a brain but a collection of information.Yes I agree it is important to differentiate between brain and mind, as you have done.

The mind does create the differentiation between objects simulated from received data.I have found it fascinating that people born blind who gain sight later in life have to learn to separate the information received into different objects, achieved by watching shapes move in relation to each other.I imagine its probably how babies learn too.

You *have* achieved it from bit. Though the its are qualitatively different from fundamental its. You do talk about the difference between absolute and relative so I think you have that covered. An interesting, well written approach to the essay question.

Hello Michael

I just read your post on James Lee Hoover's 'It's good to be king.' I agree with your comments, and wonder if you would be so kind as to look at and rate my essay.

Stephen Anastasi

Hi Michael,

I used to go with the alias QSA and I was first to complement you. Now I have my essay which explains my theory a bit better than my website which you have seen. However I have added some programs in my website, and I will add more soon. Please tell me if you understand my system or not. I will rate you very good.

Please if you have the time run The programs which are at my website

http://www.qsa.netne.net

please make sure you unzip the file properly, the code is in JavaScript, the programs are very simple. also see the posts in my thread for some more info.

you can find my essay at this link

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1877

see the amazing formulas in section 6, like this one

alpha/FSC =.007297352568, charge ^2=3, 27=3^3, m_e, m_p are electron and proton mass

M_p/m_e= (27/2)*(1/(alpha) -1) -1/3 = 1836.152654

Adel

Hi Michael,

I think you are right to distinguish the information used to construct a simulation of a virtual world from the information available via measurements taken within the world. (For example, beings within a virtual world may not be able to tell how long each virtual timestep takes to compute, as to them all timesteps would seem uniform.) David Deutsch has made the argument that, because of the universality of computation, we cannot know anything for sure about the "hardware" that our universe runs on, if it is a simulation.

Do you have an idea of how to model observers within such a virtual world? Do they each have their own private information/memories related to their perspective and history within the world? Is this a different kind of information from the other two types or is it stored in one or the other types of memory?

My essay Software Cosmos also describes a virtual world model: I describe a possible software architecture and carry out a test to see if we live in such a simulation.

Hugh

    6 days later

    Michael,

    What a clever and insightful interpretation of QM, I found you statement, "Reality isn't soup. There is a 'hierarchy of the real' [3], where most of what we deal with is of a relative reality, of a relative truth, sprouting from an absolute reality that is fundamental to it." to be in keeping with the findings of a recently concluded 12 year experiment.

    I would like to run some questions by you via email if I may and would like to know your email address? Or if you like you can send me an email to msm@physicsofdestiny.com

    Regards,

    Manuel

    10 days later

    Thanks for your comments!

    You ask : Do you have an idea of how to model observers within such a virtual world?

    Sure. Start with bits as explained by the essay. These bits may be similar in some ways to electrons, photons, quarks, etc but it is important o keep in mind they are not electrons, ect because those show up later.

    They differ from electrons, photons, quarks sect in that they are immaterial and don't necessarily follow the laws of physics such as the uncertainty principle, that too comes later.

    Use those bits to make compounds which are atom-like (again not atoms proper yet) and use those compounds to build more compounds that are molecule-like.

    With those make something human like in that it has something like a brain and eyeballs.

    Once the enormous compound of bits begins making measurements of its world, the bits don't stop being bits, but deep inside, encoded in the neural pathways of the brain-like compound, is something entirely new.

    Those are the its, the material objects that are the focus of science and most of our daily lives, which include houses, cars, people, planets, molecules, electrons photons and quarks, whose behavior is generalized as the laws of physics.

    Michael,

    I agree. Let's make the most of it, it's back to doctrine next week!

    Have you read Einstein's 1952 (english 54) paper? He discussed the conceptions of "Infinitely many spaces within spaces" as Minkowski in 1908, and then considers 'small space s in motion within and with respect to larger space S'.

    We know than light and EM (radio) signals pass through the solar system (Barycentric frame) at c wrt the sun. We also know EM waves are scattered to c by particle mediums however diffuse, so our ionosphere/atmosphere would of course then represent the smaller space s in motion within the larger space, the heliosphere, which is then itself in motion wrt the galaxy, etc, etc, exactly as he specified. So inertial systems are then REAL! always scattering light to local c. Even a lens or single particle will do so. Think hard!

    My previous 2 essays present the case. I hope you get to read (and importantly score!) this years. Ignore the Abstract and read the glowing blog reviews (apart from basudeba who disagrees!).

    Best of luck in the run in.

    Peter

    PS; The 'quark-gluon soup' of particle physics must be different for every proton. Perhaps so much for the assumption of QM!

    Dear Michael,

    We all struggle with the concept reality just because reality is always flying away from us, like you are mentioning measurements, the problem is always the reference, and if a reference is material it is like reality flying away. The reference of reference is in my opinion "consciousness".

    So when the soup is too hot it cannot be eaten, because the present is already past.

    I liked your approach, and valued it with an 8, perhaps you may also like mine

    "THE QUEST FOR THE PRIMAL SEQUENCE" link

    hope for your comment.

    Wilhelmus

    Hi Michael,

    As I mentioned previously, I found your essay to be clever and insightful interpretation of QM and in keeping with the findings of a recently concluded 12 year experiment. I was wondering if you have considered fuzzy logic algorithms? I thought that perhaps you were going in that direction.

    In any case, I hope your original approach will make it to the finals.

    Best wishes,

    Manuel

    Dear Michael,

    The ideas of John Wheeler, "trouble with physics" and the contest itself FQXi make every researcher to "dig" deep into philosophy. John Wheeler left a good covenant: "Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers".

    I read with interest your analytical essay made in the strategy of Descartes's method of doubt. You have made a very interesting sweeping conclusions:

    «Reality isn't soup. There is a "hierarchy of the real", where most of what we deal with is of a relative reality, of a relative truth, sprouting from an absolute reality that is fundamental to it. Likewise, our future theories and models of quantum mechanics will be layered sets of information: the absolute information of the algorithm and its data, and the relative information emerging from internal measurements. That latter information, the measurements the internal observer made of its world, are the model's predictions that we should compare with the measurements we make of our world. »

    Totally agree with you. I only have two questions.

    Constructive ways to the truth may be different. One of them said Alexander Zenkin in the article "Science counterrevolution in mathematics":

    «The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence».

    http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.htm

    In the russian version of the paper that thought shorter: "the truth should be drawn and presented to" an unlimited number »of viewers".

    Do you agree with Alexander Zenkin?

    And the second question: Why the picture of the world of physicists poorer meanings than the picture of the world lyricists?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ho31QhjsY

    Please read my essay. I think we are the same in the spirit of our research.

    Best regards,

    Vladimir

      Hi Michael,

      Your essay is enjoyable to read and your critics is transparent. Main thing

      for my that you have understand what is what! I am saying: no need to mix independent physical realities with human's abstract creations!

      I have high rated your essay.

      George

      Dear Michael,

      We are at the end of this essay contest.

      In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.

      Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.

      eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.

      And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.

      Good luck to the winners,

      And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.

      Amazigh H.

      I rated your essay.

      Please visit My essay.

      Michael - Interesting essay; short but very thought provoking. Being someone who stands with one foot in computer science and the other in physics, I really enjoyed your combining the two in something other than a pot of soup.

      I also started out trying to solve a thorny problem in computer science, but then found I had to delve into the physics for an answer. You can find the latest version of my essay here:

      http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf

      (sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).

      I would be honored to hear your opinion of it. Should I not quit my day job ;-) ?

      Kind regards, Paul

      Hi, Michael,

      Your essay is excellent: straightforward, getting the point across in a very effective, readable and at times humorous fashion. Top rating.

      And thanks for your kindness vis-à-vis my essay.

      In my time zone it is night, so I have no more time to comment, but must go to bed. (So yours is the last essay I read before the deadline.)

      All the best, David