Hello John,

I like that you say energy and information are two sides of the same coin. Also that we need a medium such as energy to convey information. I too reach the conclusion that Bit and It are just as fundamental. Great essay - clear and concise. Pleasure to read.

If you find the time, please read mine. I'm still trying to get through them all, but enjoying the process.

Best wishes,

Antony

    john,

    I did read your entry earlier and while it makes some interesting points, I didn't find the particular hook that would make me respond. One of the points I make here is how knowledge is inherently confined to a frame and I appreciate the extreme variety of perspectives possible, so given my own lack of time, I do need a compelling reason to get involved with starting a conversation. I will try to get back to it though.

    Jonathan,

    Besides my own time and inclination reasons for writing a short essay, I considered the actual entry as more the price of admission to the conversation than a complete piece. I find in debates, it is best to make a basic argument and then let people respond. Those who don't like my views have fewer pieces to pull at, if they don't like the central theme but don't want to attack it directly and those who do see some value will hopefully feel compelled to ask more questions.

    I could have potentially taken the concluding point, that our physical makeup reflects this dichotomy of information and energy, to break down how the two sides of the brain also reflect a scalar(right) and vector(left), that are reflective of the effects of time and temperature, ie. sequence and thermodynamics, but at the time I wrote it, I thought that would divert from the central point of how information must be manifested and doesn't exist in some platonic realm, devoid of medium.

    Ah so,

    This time around; I wrote what came out, rather than making an outline and trying to fit my points in. But I wanted to be sure I said enough to actually make my point, and to have something that could be published when I was done. I didn't do the usual 'tell them what you are going to tell them, then deliver your message, then tell them what you just told them,' but I was careful enough to get my whole message out.

    As luck would have it; that left me on the other side of the fence from you, if your main point is the non-existence of a platonic real for information. I really tried to sit myself squarely on the fence this time, but championing the platonic view is where I ended up when I had stopped writing. Too bad Plato can't be around to join the debate. I'm sure he would take both of us to task, for something obvious we have overlooked, if he was part of this forum.

    All the Best,

    Jonathan

    Jonathan,

    Sometimes both sides of an argument do have their points.

    Though to me, I see order as an absolute, which is what I would take platonism to be, to be something like the inside of a black hole; Endless theoretical possibilities, because all order and structure is sucked into it, but the actual result, in case anyone has noticed, is jets of all the constituent energy being shot out the poles.

    How much of the current version of platonism is based on the assumption of blocktime, by those who think spacetime is a "physically real model," that can have wormholes, expanding universes, multiverses, etc?

    My point is that by requiring a medium, information is distinctly structurally bound by what can be manifest by energy. That means no blocktime, because the energy is conserved, therefore in order to record new information, old information has to be erased.

    That also means that measurements of action are not more fundamental than the action being measured, whether it is the rate of change, or the level of activity, ie. time or temperature.

    So I suppose we will continue to agree to disagree on this one.

    Hello John,

    what a nice, concise, sensible essay. However, I found it somewhat dry. And I wish it was longer. That is because I very much enjoy reading your posts in various threads and also in Brendan's blog. I noticed that most people express themselves better in the posts -- their thoughts are more engaging and flow easily. But I guess when faced with that empty sheet -- or blank monitor screen nowadays -- many tend to tense up and start speaking in grave pronouncements.

    You wrote:

    "Bias is fundamental to the construct of knowledge, so it needs to be factored into the model. Whether it is a particular perspective, or a generic model or pattern inductively distilled from circumstance, knowledge is a focused distillation of a larger context."

    I could not agree more. I also speak in my essay about how our perception of the world is limited by what sort of info our senses and sensors are able to get. In our discussions of the nature of reality, we often forget how biased we are by our familiar, habitual vision of the world. We also assume that we know everything there is worth knowing. I allude in my essay that there are other types of info out there, waiting to be discovered with either improved or entirely new technology.

    I also noted in Brendan's blog your interest in the neuroanatomy. For this reason I am curious to know your opinion about the end part of my essay. You will notice the style is very different there (very non-academic, to say the least, lol). You may notice that the flow has a rhythm and even some rhymes, there is a strong emotion, and the analogies are very graphic. The language is very simple and action-oriented.

    The reason for this is that I wanted to engage the right hemisphere into the discussion that is traditionally dominated by the left. Hence very simple terms (right hemisphere does not understand abstractions). The right hemisphere is good at seeing a picture as a whole, as if seeing it from high above. It is able to grasp in one glance the relationships between various components of the whole, how they all fit together -- something the left hemisphere, due to its inherent linearity, has a hard time doing. I am not saying that the right is better than the left, only that the 2 working together in tandem are better than either one alone.

    Anyway, I did not quite do it on purpose. It happens naturally with me when the right hemisphere "wants to participate" I can see it in the style of writing. I did not change it, as i normally do, but submitted the essay as is, partly because it was already due and partly as an experiment. I'm afraid most people are shocked by it lol. But I am curious to hear you opinion on this.

    Anyway, regarding your essay: very good but I wish it was longer and in not academic but your usual, casual style, reading which I so much enjoy.

    -Marina

      Marina,

      Thank you. It is short and to the point, but I find in these discussions, it's best to start with one clear point and go from there. I'm not expecting to win anything, so it really was intended as just a conversation starter.

      The right hemisphere just doesn't show its work. More of what the cumulative knowledge pushes to the surface and even trained physicists use it much more than they think.

      John,

      I like the concise approach you've taken here and enjoyed reading your thoughtful essay; I also think you've touched on some of the aspects, at least at a high level, that will need to be addressed as physics moves forward. That said, it's generally risky to put forth a topical solution based on incomplete definitions, especially given something so abstract. But, I gather you are of the persuasion that suggests (and reasonably so) that the 'concept' of energy represents information; energy (as currently defined) has a firm basis based in conservation aspects, not to mention GR consequences, irrespective of its own inherent tangibility - yet in conjunction, there is always something physically manifest from where the energy is determined.

      I am not settled on if your biological examples were meant literally or metaphorically, but while such seems perhaps like an unconnected or out-of-place contrivance that may stop certain readers from recognizing some of the overarching concepts, it seems surprisingly difficult (at least in an cursory fashion and within a physics context) to find a robust counterexample whereby something (whether biological or not) does not 'act' on 'information' (at least in some manner) and 'process' energy (again, at least in some manner) based on our current definitions and when given a broad interpretation of such definitions.

      Although I do have reservations regarding some of your conclusions, in my estimation, you probably think deeper than many will appreciate; especially if those you are trying to reach consist of a niche audience accustomed to a particular 'language' that you may not share (or perhaps may not opt to use). While it's challenge enough for us in interdisciplinary or even directly related fields to have abstract concepts enthusiastically accepted by heavily specialized audiences when using expected context, a presentation with an outside style faces a seriously Herculean hurdle, especially when given the disadvantageous virtual constraint of immense dogma rampant across the scientific community.

      Chris

        Chris,

        Thank you for your consideration and it is a bit of a surprise how narrow the focus can be in this field. Personally I come at physics from a more cultural/historical basis, in which it becomes obvious, all the emotion and drama, it is physics which determines the course of events. Then getting into studying physics, how much politics and herd behavior guides the field.

        While this may not be what you expect, it does build a broad argument for the information/energy dichotomy.

        On a further note, here is my entry in last years Questioning the Foundations contest. For someone willing to look at the situation from a different perspective, it may be of interest.

        John,

        I briefly read the essays you've provided in the links, and found them very interesting. I will need to go back and analyze them in proper detail when I have a bit more bandwidth. But, I will say that in my own estimation, I find 'time' an abstract contrivance of information (that is, a measurement) that is simply based upon an observed state in accordance with an equally abstract definition.

        To clarify, we've defined time as the passing of motion according to some arbitrary reference; thus, it should be of no surprise, and perhaps expected, that motion of that reference itself may create a different time measurement. Of course, experiments suggest this is true (i.e.., SR). But, to attribute more character to time than this measurement by which it is defined is to abstractly extend its meaning into areas of which are not defined and which there is no evidence and perhaps no meaning at all.

        Without getting into extensive detail in this post, based on the above there is no reason to think, given current evidence, that a future or past exists as a physical reality other than our own fiction in creating it from imagination. If we can show via experiment that a time measurement somehow confers an existence of its own future and past (that is, not speculate or imagine such, for instance as sometimes done with certain double-slit explanations) then we would have evidence, but that's simply not the case - all time measurements provide us instantaneous information from which we then abstractly draw conclusions.

        I think you touched on this somewhat with the spatial representation argument. Clearly, distance measurements are merely mathematical representations; we could choose alternative systems which would provide a different method of representing the same system - the current representation is one way of quantifying aspects of the world so that we can analyze it in a method we understand. I have found that even otherwise insightful physicists can sometimes get confused between abstract or mathematical representations of nature and nature itself.

        Regarding your other paper, it's also interesting but quite beyond the scope of what I can discuss in any reasonable forum post. Part of the danger here is falling into the mental trap that disparate information inherently becomes disadvantageously integrated thus resulting in only information loss when in fact such is not a necessary condition (I'm not certain you are implying this at all, but it seems you may be of that persuasion given the essence of the essay). Another issue is not recognizing/including certain critical sociocultural-economic feedback loops. One large part of this involves human conditions in what one individually finds to be most advantageous and desirable; the subsystem you proposed cannot accomplish (or otherwise allow) global maximization of this parameter (and other parameters), but there are other systems which seemingly can.

        Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury to engage in more detail at the moment, but perhaps we can discus it sometime. Also, I sincerely hope I have not misrepresented or misinterpreted your position here. Certainly, I'll need to go through your papers more thoroughly at some point to have a more complete conversation about them.

        Chris

        Hello again John,

        I've had another look at your essay after reading your comments on my page, I see your point about how historically physics has honed in on a certain perception and I like your description of time.

        I approached observation from a very simple position, which happens to then match up to what we have learned from physics. That's what is nice about the Fibonacci sequence, it isn't individual perception, we know that addition works and we see it all across nature. This is biological and chemical as well as physical.

        Good points that you raised!

        Best wishes,

        Antony

        Chris,

        Thank you for taking the time to read those papers.

        Time does seems ontologically simple, but it is foundational to our epistemic knowledge of reality, so trying to view it from the perspective of logical perception, various factors have to be taken into account.

        Sometimes information loss is part of the puzzle, otherwise known as editing. I tend to view it as variations on the cycle of expansion and consolidation. Spring and fall.

        I realize the economic ideas I offered in that paper wouldn't immediately support our current globalized economy, but this global system seems based on blowing ever larger bubbles and the historic record on that is not positive. So the question will be when it breaks into those gravitationally bound national and regional entities, what lessons are there to learn that would provide a more stable model. It is a seed, not a tree. After a few generations, I think what I'm proposing would provide a system that will eventually prove durable and sound enough for a broad and complex economy that would be well integrated into the earth's ecosystems. The problem with maximizing parameters is there is no way to institute stops within the system, so it cycles between excess and breakdown. Making the monetary system explicitly contractual makes the limits of the system conceptually obvious. Treating notional wealth as explicit wealth is humanity's greatest delusion. Nothing wrong with bubbles. Life is a bubble, but they do pop and it is only by truly knowing the limits, can we ever really push them.

        Thanks for the feedback.

        Dear John,

        I'm really sorry, but I somehow missed your last post in our discussion on my page. I came across it this morning and responded, and thought I'd come here to let you know that. When I did, I opened your essay for the first time, which I've been meaning to get to; and like so many others here, I agree that it really is excellent. I couldn't say it better than Vladimir did in the first and third paragraph of his initial post above, so please just recall his words and, if I might be so bold, think of me saying them, because that's what I would have liked to have said if I were as good with words as he is. It's a really great work. Well done!

        I look forward to more discussion when you have time.

        Daryl

          Daryl,

          Thank you. As a topic, defining information is somewhat recursive and it that's how I constructed it, to fold back on the process of thought, because I find the question of it from bit to be more dense than deep.

          I'd probably be less grumpy if I was scoring better.

          Dear John,

          World contests FQXi - it contests new fundamental ideas, new deep meanings and new concepts. In your essay deep original analysis in the basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt, given new ideas and conclusions. I bet you a high rating.

          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

          I have only one 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

          I wish you success,

          Vladimir