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.

Vladimir,

Thanks. I did rate yours positively. It has been an interesting contest and an informed cross section of entries.

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

      Vladimir,

      Thank you very much!

      Consider that physics explicitly rejects intuition. Ask yourself, what would music be, if it did that.

      I'll have to check out your entry. I haven't been able to keep up with this contest.

      Dear John,

      I saw your comment at Alan Kadin thread and made a comment below on your comment.

      I have similar observation. KQID satisfies this simple factual logic that A, anti-entropic bits-waves function of time-future exchanges bits with S, entropic bits-waves of time-past that creates and distributes E, energetic bits-waves function of time-present that maximizing the flow of A, minimizing the flow of S and optimizing the flow of E. You wrote above: "My answer to the time problem is that we experience it as sequence from past to future and physics validates this by treating it as a measure of interval, but the actual process is dynamic change which turns future into past. We are not traveling some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. tomorrow becomes yesterday. There is only what is physically real and that is what we experience as present. So every action is its own clock." Really excellent statement. I will look at your essay "What is Information" and I shall comment rate it accordingly.

      I read your essay yesterday but my mind was not at rest in the late afternoon. I could not penetrate the deep meaning in what you said. So that, I tried again this morning when my mind is more calm and focus. I definitely see the light from the dense cloud. I definitely agree with everything you wrote especially below. So obvious that so many people ignore it. However in their defense, they are under pressure to do things brilliantly under the current paradigm. Jobs, fame and fortune are at stake, in most part to those brilliant mind like great physicists like Frank Wilczek and John Wheeler who actually incorporated what you espoused here and they are able to shine despite of everything.

      You wrote brilliantly: "Intuition is not just subconscious impulse and cultural conditioning, but is every individual's accumulated knowledge, as accessed as a non-linear/scalar response mechanism. Intuition for a physicist would be different from others with different experiences, as well as equally constrained by the strictures of the systemic construct. If conceptual errors become incorporated into the framework, they become part of the lens through which further information is viewed and the resulting distortions become natural, ie. intuitive to that mindset." If I may relate it with KQID, KQID sees learned intuition as the voice of our Ancestor FAPAMA Qbit who is speaking through us who want to understand the deeper meaning of Existence rather than just living in subconscious world and enjoy life like eating mindlessly a crunchy raw salad to their fullest in their own ways in their own times. Bless them! They are also the Qbit in action. The Qbit is infinite being who is doing infinite things from zero to infinity. However, for us, in order to understand we limit things and we become reductionist who created and distributes scientific knowledge and technological products. In the far end of the spectrum are those who see things as whole. This way we can understand things far beyond reductionists could do but at the expense of science and technological products. We do need both to live well and prosper. As you correctly explain below: "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. Much as a telescope would give us much deeper depth of vision, but also limit the field of view. Thus the very process of definition imposes limitations and introduces further layers of context." Simply brilliant! Then you deduced profoundly: "So we have the classic reality that somehow seems separate from the quantum foundations on which it rests. Obviously the connection must exist, yet there seems to be a missing link. This separation goes more to the nature of knowledge, then of reality."

      More below: "Both top down and bottom up are effective ways to consider the nature of the physical,

      but there is no middle ground view that effectively encompasses both. Those "bits" are what we know of "it." This is the crux of the question of this contest of ideas. KQID says similarly but bluntly stated that bit = it. Consequently Wheeler's it from bit and bit from it are true and of course under our nose kind of reality, we just don't notice it. It is just too obvious.

      Then you concluded with a statement: "As living organisms, we are the result of billions of years of evolution." KQID agrees and more if KQID is correct we are the product of trillions trillions years of evolution from the beginning of Existence until now our Ancestor Qbit, the Planck's matrix of all matter and the Maxwell infinite being with unlimited storage capacity, so that no qbit is ever deleted, thus ΔS = 0 without violating the seond law of thermodynamics has evolved and this Qbit is us in our own finite form but who are able to go back in time from the very beggining and move forward in time to infinity future in just split second in our thought. We can contemplate and feel the power of infinity and the finite. We are so great because we are that Qbit in our finite form. To paraphrase our beloved Carl Sagan's beautifull thought that we are a way for the Qbit to feel, think, talk and make love.

      I rated highly this succinct essay.

      If you have the time please comment and rate my essay Child of Qbit in time.

      Best wishes,

      Leo KoGuan

        Leo,

        You show a very good grasp of my argument, but reading through yours, I think there is one important issue you are missing. That is that nature does erase information. It is just that in this quantized physics, energy is treated as information; the quantum.

        What this means to me is that in expressing an idea, being able to edit it as much as possible is necessary. You, on the other hand, have a very interesting and expressive essay, but in some parts, the energy goes more to heat than light, if you know what I mean. There was a time when I was much better at focusing on such works, but at my age, mid fifties, the mind tends to wander very quickly and that is what you have to take into account with your audience.

        There were directions I could have taken my own essay, such as that I see the two sides of the brain, the scalar and the linear, as reflective of temperature and time, but that would distract from the basic central point of information as one side of a dichotomy with energy.

        There is an old saying, that we miss more in a fraction of a second than we will ever see in our entire lives. Nature is a fierce editor. Always remember that. She will let us go on for a very long time, but when the time is up.....

        Hi, John,

        I enjoyed your essay, although I really enjoyed your last year's essay more. It shows an amazing amount of common-sensical insight. My only suggestion would be don't push the conclusions quite so much. The physical examples are fine, but it gets a little touchy when you extend them to the brain and respiratory system. Still, it's a fine essay. And I think your concluding sentence (last year) should go down in history: "Neither academic nor religious authority can turn an ideal into an absolute." If only many so-called forefront theorists would take this to heart!

        Cheers,

        Bill

          Bill,

          Thank you very much.

          From your work and experience, I can understand why you are cautious about pushing conclusions beyond applicability, but I would have to defend it as a risk that has to be taken. As the old saying goes, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." It is a trial and error process of discovering similar patterns in varied context and trying to figure out how much it is due to similar content, vs. similar context, vs. shear coincidence, vs. one's own extrapolations.

          As for the example of biology as a billion year experiment reflective of the relationship between information and energy, it is a comparison I've tried developing more extensively in other contexts, such as that essay I linked in my response in your thread.

          This also goes to how this contest relates to my argument in the previous. "Energy manifests information. Information defines energy. Since energy is conserved, in order to create new information, old information is erased. This is the "arrow of time," as events come into being and fade.

          I have to say, the extent to which physics has dismissed the concept of energy in favor of the concept of information seems quite bizarre to me.

          Regards,

          John

          Dear John

          Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

          (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

          said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

          I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

          The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

          Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

          Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

          I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

          Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

          Good luck and good cheers!

          Than Tin

          Dear John,

          I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

          Regards and good luck in the contest,

          Sreenath BN.

          http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

          Dear John Merryman,

          You have written a very brief article but the points to be understood from it have deep depth and make one to ponder over them. The essence of your argument can be understood if you go through the biology section of my essay, where I have discussed how living organisms came in to existence and evolved and I have discussed the notions of information, knowledge, intuition, mind (brain), environment, consciousness and other related concepts. So, please, go through my essay (http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827) and try to visualize how the theme of your essay follows from it. The distinction between the classical world and the quantum one is clearly stated when you say "there is no middle ground view that effectively encompasses both. Those Bits are what we know of It." There by establishing the relationship between It and Bit. You have rightly pointed out the distinction existing between both worlds when you say "this separation goes more to the nature of knowledge, than of reality"; thus showing of our ignorance of a unified theory. The origin of the concept of Time and its relation to energy is notable. Regarding the origin of the concepts of knowledge, brain, reality etc. is to be understood, I feel, from my essay and then to be compared to what you have said on them in your essay. Feel free to post your comments on my essay in my thread. Since the theme of your essay is based on mine I have rated your essay with maximum honors. Thanks for producing a thought provoking brief article.

          Best wishes,

          Sreenath

            Sreenath,

            I have finally found the time to read your essay. It is in many ways, a full course meal of an examination of the topic. Unfortunately I'm one of those people who do more intellectual snacking than really have the time and concentration required to develop and absorb such a multifacted treatise.

            This was a problem I have with the topic to begin with; It really did require a broad analysis of the entire subject of information, knowledge and how they relate to reality, to fully respond to the issue.

            You have done an admirable job, though a bit too broad for my tendencies.

            Dear John,

            As I am remembering we already have discussed the time problem.

            On this I just want one more time emphasize my understanding of it.

            - The concept of ,,time,, are used in physics arbitrary (I mean a priori, without connection of it with the physical objects of study) It means we have accepted the existence some of absolute klock, independ from anything, that giving us the equal/invariance intervals of events. In practice however we are forced to use some local material objects, which have property to give regularly - repeatedly events. The intervals between them we accept as INVARIANT (but we have no any proof for it!) Thus, we must not excluded that these can be not equal i.e. the ,,time,, may be VARIABLE. At last, the analyze of question shows that ,,time,, is directly depend from density of mass/energy. I want mark - this concept becomes justified as per as it WORKS!

            I am really appreciate your efforts on this very important cognitive problem and with pleasure I have rated your work on ,,high,, core.

            Best wishes,

            George

            Hello John,

            I agree. But obviously not enough «intuitio» and «ratio» to get to the deepest meanings. Constant cutting of the whole into parts direct ratio to the other side of the truth to construct an image of the world as a whole. This is necessary both physicists and lyricists. The ideas of John Wheeler pushes our ratio and intuitio to see the world as a whole in a single symbol, which includes all of the fundamental meanings of the Universe. I'm waiting for you on my forum.

            Best regards,

            Vladimir

            Hi John,

            You wrote on my thread - "Given all the major patches to keep it working, from inflation to dark energy, not to mention everything from time traveling wormholes to multiverses springing out of it, it is all bizarre beyond belief".

            It being current cosmology. I agree with you wholeheartedly that there are too many patches, and I don't think inflation, dark energy multiverse nor wormholes make any sense.

            In fact my model only partly explained with regard to information around black holes,bodes explain things more simply. It partly unifies the four forces of nature and resolves the three paradoxes of cosmogony.

            My essay doesn't hint at agreeing with any of these classical phenomenon, but does agree with current empirical data.

            Best wishes,

            Antony