Hello John,

Probably because you were one of the earliest entrants I am just getting to read your worthwhile essay.

In your list of binary relationships would you consider including existence/non-existence. It appears more fundamental because something exist before you start asking whether it is black or white or what do you think?

But I agree that no essence of one of the pair without the other.

All the best,

Akinbo

*You may want to read and rate my essay, and the judgement that followed in the case of Atomistic Enterprises Inc. vs. Plato & Ors delivered on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 11:39 GMT.

    Akinbo,

    You raise quite a number of deep questions in your essay and that is the main reason I chose not to tackle it, time being a significant constraint for me. I will though go through some issues on your thread.

    As for being/non-being, it is likely the most primal dichotomy and far more complex than all the others. A bottomless void of interrelating issues.

    Notice that sentence doesn't even make sense, using void, not pit, but that is the degree of the problem.

    John,

    I found your approach to the topic at hand succinct, logical, and intuitive and would like to rate your essay highly. However, before I do may I run some questions by you via email? Please let me know at: msm@physicsofdestiny.com

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    Regards,

    Manuel

    It would appear the last several days of posts have vanished. This is a test.

    Dear John

    It seems that our conversation was erased. Do you have any idea what happened?

    With respect to the conversation, I remember you mention that you chose energy because it is conserved. There are some other quantities that are conserved such as momentum, but momentum although a physicial quantity is not a substance. Are you having in mind that energy is some sort of substance? This is one of the reasons, I prefer to select matter (in the sense of Aristotle) and not energy.

    Regards

    Israel

      Israel,

      That was weird. It seems all posts of the last two days have vanished, but they managed to replace the missing scores. Just my luck, as I went from a 4.2 to a 3.9. Oh well.

      I pick energy because it really has no features, other than dynamic and conserved. This makes it a perfect dichotomy for information, which is the very nature of definition, is necessarily inherently static and according to all experience, if not various physics theories, is mostly not conserved. In fact, the creation and transmission of information requires erasing prior information, as in, "You can't have your cake and eat it too." As in you can't have something, without using all necessary input. Since it is conserved, the energy cannot manifest both prior and succeeding forms, thus no "blocktime." This creates the asymmetric "arrow of time," as the energy is not going to turn on itself.

      So in order to have information, you need energy to manifest it and if you have energy, it must have some form, ie. information. So it's not as though I see energy as something substantial, but as the yang to the yin of information. Can't have one, without the other.

      Matter, on the other hand, is a conceptually a composite of energy and form.

      Regards,

      John

      Dear John,

      Your one approach to this whole debate is interesting because it is very easy to presume meanings. What is "it" and what is "bit"? If we can agree on a definition a major part of this debate would have been resolved.

      In What a Wavefunction is I try to define too. I have download of your essay. See if you can read through mine and let have your reaction. I'll be back here to rate.

      And just in case you find it dense at first. Then please read through my exchange with Marcoen. I think it is a good starter with regard to my definitions.

      Regards,

      Chidi

      John,

      I can be fully agree with you but there are some ,,trifles,,. The ,,new bubbles,, really is not necessary. Moreover, I am calling clean the physics from a lot of bubbles, which are introduced from air.

      And I am calling to return to a normal-natural way of thinking - without new creations and new things, and this approach give us the RESULTS. However, you do not care all of this and just have attributed to me things when I am saying just the opposite!

      I am very disappointed from such level of discussion. I give you ,,high,, score!! It will be more better if you will not send to me such comment and your thanks.

      George

        George,

        There will always be bubbles. People sketch their castles out in the air, before they try building them of stone. There will always be more dream castles than stone castles though. We are in the business of popping some of those dream castles. What would you be doing otherwise, if those silly fools were not out talking up multiverses? There wouldn't be as much to make fun of. I did rate you highly as well, but I'm just trying to understand the much larger context and that includes many other people, with many other views on the subject.

        Dear John

        I just read your short and nice essay. I wish you have discussed a little bit more about why you consider energy fundamental. There are some other contestants that also adhere to this view.

        I support your view that change precedes time and not the opposite as some think. But whereas for you the energy is the main ingredient, I consider that the main ingredient is matter (matter as understood by Aristotle). The reason is that in physics energy is a derived quantity whilst matter is not. The other reason is because mathematically speaking, one of the properties of matter is mass and E=mc^2. If we agree on this, what really changes is matter. My essay from two years ago discusses that there must be a fundamental substance which I assume is matter but I'm also open to accept energy as the main essence of the universe. I think this is just a matter of convention.

        Finally, I'd like to invite you to read my essay and leave some comments. There I discuss about Wheeler's dream and propose a potential way to get out of the present crisis, assuming that space is a material field. I'll be looking forward to hearing any comments you may have.

        Regards

        Israel

          Israel,

          There is a very basic reason I use the term energy. While lacking any other particularly exacting attributes, it is primarily described as being conserved. Even entropy only applies to useful energy in a closed set. Energy is not lost, unless it is actually radiated away from that container, rather any energy gradients within the container are lost, as it reaches a thermal medium. This also means temperature is not simply an average of molecular/atomic/etc. activity, but a local entropic end state, since these component entities are actually trading energy around to reach that median.

          Now the concept of information is not something that can really be described as being conserved, even though it is inherently static and structured, except in some blocktime formulation. So if we are to use these concepts as the two halves of a dichotomy, they reflect each other quite well, with information as the defining form of energy and energy as the manifestation of information. So in order for new information to be created, as the energy, being dynamic, changes form, old information is erased. This is the solution to the "arrow of time." The sense of some eternal present, but a constantly changing and irreversible process, as the energy does not turn on itself.

          I have to admit, I haven't been engaging m/any of the regulars. Given limited time resources and even more limited capacity to think through some very dense exposition, I've been mostly "exploring." Both new ideas and different interactions are not an opportunity to be passed on.

          I'm sure I'll be by.

          Regards,

          John

          Dear John,

          Your essay to me has plenty substance although the shortness may hide this.

          I take as your conclusion the statement that:

          "So we exist as manifestations of this dichotomy of energy and information, as medium and message."

          It rings a bell because as a Mass Communication student I studied Mashall Mcluhan's thesis: "The Medium is the Message". Now you aptly bring it to physics.

          I can only say this statement is so brutally simple BUT even more brutally true.

          What more? It could become the science!

          My essay What a Wavefunction is actually elaborates on your thesis. Please do read my essay and let me have your honest comment (and rating). I will be back here to rate yours according as I have found high value.

          Bests,

          Chidi

            Typo!! The name is Marshall Mcluhan please. Just for your ref.

            Chidi

            Chidi,

            I did get into your essay and I will try it again. The problem I was having is that you use various ideas that are fraught with a lot of loaded meanings that might not be conveying what you mean them to say, to other people. I am probably like you, but a bit older and I found what I was looking for was just some very basic concepts to explain reality, without all the academic baggage.

            I think that eventually we will discover there is no such thing as a big bang cosmology and it is basically a convection cycle of radiation expanding out and falling/precipitating back down/into gravitational vortices as mass, then radiating out, or shot out the poles as cosmic rays and the cycle starts over again, eternally. That gravity is simply the vacuum effect created by this contraction of energy, much as when energy is released from mass, it creates pressure. Think atomic explosion. Radiant heat, etc. So there are a lot of concepts out there that have been created to fill the many gaps and when you try using them as stepping stones to further enlightenment, you have to be very careful they are not leading you off into the wilderness instead.

            Here is a blog post at FQXI, listing many of the recent observational problems for cosmology.

            Here is my entry in last year's, Questioning the Foundations contest, which further develops my point about time being an effect of action, thus eliminating "spacetime" as a causal property and that is the basis for an expanding universe. Suffice to say, this is a very controversial position, but then my income isn't dependent on the study of physics.

            Regards,

            John

            Dear John,

            Thank you for the two links you provided above. I will refer.

            With regard to my definition of terms you might find my exchange with Marcoen useful. Provided it does not unduly preempt your judgement.

            Regards,

            Chidi

            HI John

            Thanks for your reply. That's a good reason. In the current view mass is associated to material particles because it is assumed that space is not material. In such case, it is said that although mass is not conserved energy and momentum are. But if we assume that space is a continuous material substance we are then force to conclude that matter, and thus mass, is also conserved.

            With respect to information, to the best of my knowledge, the conservation of information is still a debate, that's the so called black hole information paradox. One can assume that information is not conserved and, as you say, it may solve the problem of the arrow of time, but that would imply that the laws of QM are wrong. This is the dilemma. I think we need to give a careful thought to this problem.

            Regards

            Israel

            Dear Merryman,

            You are right, physic was misguided by the late 80's.

            What you said about speed of light and time I calculate with same aproach.

            I wrote somewhere in my viXra article that I have no anything to say becouse a

            lot of people said it befor me. I only calculate.

            I also keep in minde the sentence of my Prof. Marian Cadezs, PhD

            In science, always talk affirmatively.

            Never say: /It is not rainy, rather, it is sunny/.

            So the theories that you mentioned in negative conotation, are the problem

            of their suporters not us.

            I also think that you are right about photon

            Sorry for poor translation

            Regards,

            Branko

              Brancho,

              I am horrible at calculation, so I mostly analyze. The problem with just calculation is that it is only bottom up and not top down. Epicycles are a product of only calculation and they were consequently quite accurate, but created confusion for the analysis. I think the same problem exists with spacetime. It is very accurate, but by treating time as only a measure to be calculated, but not considering how it is created, has caused much confusion.

              As thermodynamic processes create temperature and temperature is a measure of thermodynamic processes, change creates time and time is a measure of change.

              You are right that it will be their problem and it seems to be starting to occur to them, but they are not going to climb down willingly, only put more weight on the top until it all falls down.

              I'm fortunate to be born in an English speaking country, otherwise I'd never learn it as a second language, so don't worry about the translation on my part.

              Regards, John

              Hi John,

              I've read your essay, and I've given your essay a rating to stimulate further thinking. Here are some comments.

              1. On page 1, you wrote: "It is received wisdom to say the physical world is not intuitively accessible to a mind evolved for basic survival." Do you mean that intuition is not generally acknowledged as a source of knowledge? At least one philosopher, Spinoza, was a proponent of the idea that there is such a thing as intuitive knowledge. Maybe you should look into his work, he has written some interesting stuff!

              2. On page 1, you wrote: "combining multitudes of such bits of information cancels out detail, like colors running together." You make this statement in the context of knowledge. So do you mean that knowledge can be canceled out (erased)? Or do you mean something in the line of the following quote of Von Neumann: "man generally percieves the sum of many billions of elementary processes simultaneously, so that the levelling law of large numbers completely obscures the real nature of the individual processes"?

              Best regards,

              Marcoen

                Marcoen,

                I mean it in terms of the assumption within physics that physics is non-intuitive. I then go on to argue that intuition is not just some basic set of assumptions we are born with, but the cumulative knowledge from which we instinctively draw. This necessarily will be somewhat different for everyone, as we all have different knowledge bases, so in fact physicists draw from intuition, just they use their own set of assumptions.

                I meant that in the Von Neumann sense, but then elsewhere I also argue the first, in terms of the fact that in order to record information, the information the transcribing medium did contain is erased. This due to the energy being conserved, which means that not only is it saved, but more cannot be produced, so it has to be reused as a medium. This is what creates the asymmetric arrow of time, since the energy will not turn on itself.

                Both these points serve to show the different ways that information and knowledge are highly contextual and subjective. There is this essentially theological assumption that there must be some larger, objective state of information and knowledge, but I'm trying to show that objective knowledge is an oxymoron.

                Information is definition and to define is to limit. Unless you isolate, clarify, focus, distill, filter, etc. the input, you just get fuzziness, blurriness and white noise. All the colors, sounds, information, etc. just run together and in the Von Newmann sense, the information that is there, is not received.

                The point also is that those "individual processes" are no more, or less real, than the larger picture being viewed. It is simply a matter of selecting the particular focus one desires to extract information and definition from. Like a camera, you can take a wide angle shot of the larger view, or focus on a particular detail. What Von Newmann overlooks, is that you can focus on A individual process, but not all of them at once, which means you can really only focus on one, since the others will change, by the time you switch to looking at each one of those particular processes.

                Regards,

                John

                Thanks for the vote!

                Regards,

                John