Essay Abstract

Feynman's quantum mechanical equation for absorption of light leads to a sharp response as wavelength matching occurs. It appears that our sensory system utilizes this equation and a model of color vision is demonstrated that agrees well with the measured color sensitivity in humans. The manner in which color responses add together into meaningful perception supports the author's view that nature is based on specific information theory probabilities described in the author's FQXi essay [1]. It is speculated that life is an emergent property of chemicals that absorb energy and use information.

Author Bio

Mechanical Engineer, Atomic Energy Commission, Aerospace company engineer, R&D Scientist for 35 years and Scientific Research Council member Eastman Kodak, lifelong learner

Download Essay PDF File

Gene,

What is the point of your essay? You seem to have copied and pasted research information about some fabricated light experiments quite skillfully, but what has that to do with reality? As I have carefully explained in my essay BITTERS, the Universe is eternally occurring once. Stars have been emitting light eternally. The Universe has been filled with light eternally. Do you not suspect that you just might be exaggerating a little bit when you state that "The manner in which color responses add together into meaningful perception supports the author's view that nature is based on (your own) specific information theory probabilities" (sic) ?

Your emphasis on one eternal reality would seem presumptive to those who have pointed out that the only we access reality is through our senses. For example, what we call reality is not really colored at all, there might be wavelengths of light entering our eyes but our brain assigns color. The content of our mind is information about reality. Information theory and thermodynamics are sciences that help us understand. I explored the possibility that information and energy are intimately related and looked for an example where information theory was active and quantifiable. Color vision was interesting because it contained elements of quantum mechanics and information theory.

The value of an essay like mine might be to understand the brain's operation well enough to connect sensors to our brain and give unsighted persons sight.

    Gene,

    My reality is uniquely colorful. You of course have the right to call reality anything you like, but please do not take it for granted that everybody automatically shares your view. As I recall, the sensory deprivation experiments that were carried out on some individuals did not affect in any way whatsoever the color scheme apprehension of those individuals while they were actually undergoing deprivation or afterwards, when they were recovering. Their dreams became more intense as did their delusions, but their dreams and delusions did not turn into black and white fantasies.

    My brain operates quite well. Why are you trying to "understand" how an abstract brain operates?

    18 days later

    Gene,

    You are "almost there" in that your title "It from Information" would have been more precise should you have replaced "it" with the word "life." You then go on to discern how information from vision is physically characterized(vision being one degree of information freedom for life). As the CARINNE PIEKEMA • Feb 20, 2013 article reads, smell can also be physically characterized, and now, we have an acoustic path to information entering a taste/smell bud.

    Is it possible that all physical roads that lead to gaining information also lead back to the concious observer? This would seem inevidable ... and was concluded as such on my last two essays. Science has come full circle and now the arrow points back at us ... time to physically describe this arrow that fractures into the nature of our physical senses - the physical strings of information that feed life possibly being the same strings of information we stumbled upon in attempting to describe the smallest of the small ... from the electronic shell information to that information from within the nucleus .... life information... for it contains all we can ever hope to physically measure in our concious state of being!

    Regards,

    Tony

      A new paper entitled "Kinetic and potential energy during expansion" is being posted. The paper concludes that there is no dark energy but there is dark matter. The kinetic/potential energy analysis shows that there are as many dark particles of proton like mass as there are protons. Further information cautioning the use of 8/3 pi G rhoc is presented.

      For reference, the June 2012 FQXI post entitled "Application of proton mass model to cosmology" is also updated and posted.Attachment #1: Kinetic_and_potential_energy_during_expansion.pdfAttachment #2: 1_Application_of_proton_mass_model_to_cosmology.pdf

      Thanks Tony, I enjoyed your comments. We are definitely thinking along the same lines. As you noted, there are different interpretations of what "It" was in the essay challenge. Some contributors like you and I think "It" refers to life while others think "It" refers to the physical universe. I agree that the observer is fundamental and we must come full circle and identify how we participate in using information that everything consists of. I will read your reference and essay.

      If you are interested in Cosmology, read my new papers posted May 30.

      Tony, thanks for referring me to the Corrine Piekema article. I didn't know there were studies being carried out in quantum biology. It was interesting that a molecule can be read as a fragrance by reading the frequency of the bonds. As you inferred this is related to my proposal that the frequency of light is read by Feynman's Psi function. The key point to me is that the Psi function translates the frequency to an information code (a probability or N in my work) that the brain can act on. I had not appreciated the value of Psi being entangled (robin navigation example and leaf photosynthesis example). Although the brain is much more than a computer it may need a uniform code to create meanings from so many inputs.

      The following work was done in response to a question posted in the June 2012 FQXI contest and modified in response to your interest.Attachment #1: Post_for_Tony.pdf

      10 days later
      5 days later

      Dear Gene

      "It from information" is also my conclusion, though happy with many different methods, but we have the same result.

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

      17 days later

      Gene,

      If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

      Jim

      5 days later

      Dear Gene,

      I think you have approached this from a very good viewpoint, after all we are observers. Life emerging from chemicals and energy can't be refuted. I think too that information that we perceive is a culmination of multiple other sources, and colour highlights this perfectly.

      Great essay! If you get chance please read mine, though I appreciate there are many in the contest.

      All the best,

      Antony

      9 days later

      Dear Gene H Barbee,

      Thanks for your nice essay, well done

      I enjoy reading it and rate it accordingly

      and from a different point view, my essay may interest you

      Bit: from Breaking symmetry of it

      Hope you enjoy it

      Regards,

      Xiong

      "The average human being is a naive realist: i.e., like the animals, he accepts his sense impressions as direct information of reality and he is convinced that all human beings share this information. He is not aware that no way exist of establishing whether one individual impression (e.g. ,of a green tree) and that of another (of this tree) is the same and that even the word "same" has no meaning here."

      Max Born My life & my views p.53

      Hello Gene,

      I'm enjoying your essay so far. I agree that it is indeed relevant to know how it is that the brain sorts things out, in order to see how nature operates, because after all brains evolved to fit the specific perceptual demands of physical reality - and in a sense, it provides us with the other side of the same coin. At the 10th Frontiers of Fundamental Physics conference, there was a lecture by Helmut Kröger about 'Binocular rivalry.." in vision, and how the domains of left eye and right eye perception are formed and then change when one pattern is switched. I think I can locate and post the paper.

      So while I did wonder at the start of your paper how some of it relates back to the "It from Bit" question and Physics, I think I can see that it does indeed apply - and I'll comment further when I'm done reading. But it's 1 AM here and I think I need some sleep before I continue.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

        Seeing I was more than half done..

        I went ahead and finished reading, and then rated your essay highly. Perhaps you can read my essay when you get the chance.

        Have Fun!

        Jonathan

        Hi Jonathan,

        Thanks for your comments. I read your essay also and found it deep and thought provoking. My essay from last year "cracked the information code" and found that energy and information (N) were related by N=-ln P. N for various particles found in nature was identified and in this system a dimensionless energy ratio (E/e0) is just the inverse of probability P. In other words E=eo*exp(N). This years essay takes the thoughts one step further and attempts to understand how life develops in the information/energy structure. I agree with you that there is interplay between information and energy. I watched my grandchildren's intellect "come on line" and join the information side of the structure. The differentiator for me is this definition of intelligence. Intelligence is "seeing differences" and I think I see evidence of information differences being created in the code. This makes me think that the information side came first.

        By the way, thanks for your blog regarding SK Kauffmann's paper. I had a good dialog with him by email. He is classically trained but my arguments and his analysis resulted in a paper posted on vixra.org/cosrel 1307.0085 entitled "The case for a low energy gravitational scale". Last year's essay is updated and posted as 1307.0082.

        Gene Barbee

        Thanks for your reply.

        I'm happy you got to see your grandchildren 'come on line' intellectually. That is really cool to watch. Much less fun was to see my Mom's intellect unravel over time, due to the effects of Alzheimer's (an she passed away in May), but it was educational in a way to see how one of the first things to disappear was the capacity to gauge, time, size, and distance. Without this capacity; cognition has nothing to latch on to and no way to re-calibrate. Very sad...

        From what I know; it is mainly the left brain that is focused on seeing differences, while the right more sees commonalities. One paper of mine still unfinished talks about this in terms of the two hemispheres doing the same thing in opposite directions of time. While one likes to take things apart to see the pieces, the other likes to assemble them and sees how the parts relate. That is; putting a watch together and taking it apart are the same operation, but in reverse direction of process evolution.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

        7 days later

        Gene,

        Great to read an essay actually based on evidence and analysing real interactions. I was starting to think I was alone! QM has abandoned any such 'messy' dealings, and the other pair in the triumvirate; particle physics and quantum optics, leave a theoretical vacuum at the centre only work such as yours can let us address.

        I was also stunned to find; "it is thought that the brain operates on Bayesian probabilities" (Brockman) which incorporates two ("radical" I thought!) main spars in the ontological construction I build in my own essay. I also particularly agree the importance of;

        "The other hues are comprised of combinations of these colors without full spectrums and it clear that the brain is adept at creating meanings from these curves."..."Partially processed signals from the retina go into the brain where a great deal of processing takes place...the nerves convey ions and it is clear from the connections that signals are added and subtracted."

        Also; "the signals to be processed are probabilities.", ..."...ions leave the eye and are transported along the axion taking the value of the normalized wavelength (probability) and its intensity to the brain." ..."The brains task is to assign meanings to new data signals based on stored information... p(H) (the prior belief and expected signal value)..." etc.

        I suggest there is a critical relation the brain gets wrong! confusing time and speed in the approach medium with speed in the axion, including by not consistently using lambda instead of 'frequency'. My last years essay also addressed the point. I do hope you'll read and comment on this years.

        As for yours, thank you, and brilliantly well done. Top marks due and well earned.

        Best wishes

        Peter