Dear Michael,

Thank you very much for pointing me to Newton's distinction. I agree with your arguments with just one exception. I tend to identify the reality with what can be discovered mainly be observation, measurement, and reasoning while I see so called absolute reality, e.g. Newton's God, an abstraction. See Fig. 1 of my previous essay.

Best,

Eckard

    Hi,

    You mention the reality. Like there is one flavor, one recipe.

    There are problems with that.

    The chair I am sitting in is real.

    So is experiencing love,

    But they are real in different ways.

    4 days later

    Michael,

    Now that's my idea of a top essay, straight to the most important and most poorly understood point. Drive it home with a couple of precise hammer blows, job done! It's also earned my idea of a top score.

    I spend a chunk of the middle of my essay trying to explain the very same thing, and it's implications. We mix real nature with metaphysical entities and wonder why our physics is gobblygook!

    I hope I've shown the power of recognising, defining and separating the two distinct cases you identify. What I've identified in previous essays is that 'Proper Time' has an associated Proper(gation) Speed, and apparent or 'Co-ordinate Time' then has an APPARENT SPEED associated! i.e. apparent c+v is allowed, but the propagation speed limit remains c.

    I do hope you'll read comment on and score my essay too. From yours I particularly commend (and consistent with mine);

    "Relative time exists in a relative sense. Absolute time exists in an absolute sense. Relative and absolute don't exist the same way."

    "There is measuring tape in the real measurement and not in the model measurement."

    "The measurement exists in the complex relational data encoded in the brain."

    "Bits and its now exist differently in the model. They are two different sets of information. They are both real but in different ways. The computer program deals with the information it assigns to and accesses from variables."

    Excellent job. Well done, and very best of luck.

    Peter

      Dear Michael,

      Your computer based simulation of It and Bit is an innovative way of comprehending the relationship existing between them. It is good to see that you have distinguished between two types of realities; absolute and relative, and also that science deals with relative form of reality and it cannot know the absolute reality hiding behind it. Relative reality springs from the absolute one; relative reality is a small pot of soup, whereas absolute reality is a monolithic pot of soup. Similarly you have split information in to absolute and relative and want to rest quantum mechanics on absolute information of the algorithm and its data.

      I appreciate your ideas and it would be good if you put them in to practice.

      Wish you all the best in the contest and I would like to rate your essay with a very good score.

      Sreenath

        Clearly written with a friendly style. I appreciate that you have tackled the question very directly.I like your methodical approach.

        I'm not sure the output obtained from bits of information are really its though. The output, simulated 'its' are certainly different from the absolute unmeasured its making up the computer or a brain.(You have differentiated between absolute and relative matter) There is electrical and chemical activity and growth of the neural network in response to stimulation but not creation of atoms, though perception of objects (that are thought to be 'built' from atoms),via images of them. (Hope that makes sense.)There is perception with *brain activity* but storage in the pattern of neural connections.

        You are accounting for information and output but wanting to make the hardware or wetware required into further output by the simulation. Then you have bit to simulated it (structure) to simulated it (simulated sensory output).Making a computer analogue of perception, with simulated output its, from bits and simulated wetware its. Think I've got it, but I need to put in 'simulated' to keep track of whats what.

        Mike Helland wrote "The main way we will have to modify our understanding is that time and space will come in relative and absolute flavors, And so does matter." Well said. Good luck , Georgina

          As I noted in your essay thread, I did not clearly read where you added "while absolute reality". I agree with you, thanks for the comment.

          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