It From Bit is Undecidable by Lawrence B Crowell

Hi Lawrence,

I agree that ""It From Bit" is not decidable", or rather, that it is a question which belongs to what to me is an outdated paradigm.

I have yet to read an essay which treats the question where all information comes from, how information becomes information. What I mean is this: If there would be only a single charged particle among uncharged particles in the universe, then it wouldn't be able to express its charge in interactions. As it in that case it cannot be charged itself, charge, or any property, for that matter, must be something which is shared by particles, something which only exists, is expressed and preserved within their interactions. If particles, particle properties (its) are both cause and effect of their interactions, of the exchange of bits, if particles only exist to each other if, to the extent and for as long as they interact, exchange information, then you cannot have one without the other nor can one be more fundamental than the other.

If the information as embodied in particle properties and the associated rules of behavior a.k.a. laws of physics must be the product of a trial-and-error evolution, then information only can survive, become actual information when tested in practice, in interactions between its carriers, between actual, physical, material particles, whatever we may mean with 'material'.

What strikes me in all the essays I've read (also of previous contests) is that everybody, without exception, thinks about the universe as an object which has particular properties as a whole and evolves in time, as something we may imagine to look at from the outside and can make statements about, as if it is a mechanism which, once winded up at the bang, after the bang only can unwind in a preordained fashion, as if there is a collection of platonic truths which exist outside the universe, as if there is an absolute, objectively observable reality at the origin of our observations we cannot perceive due to imperfect instruments and to the uncertainty principle.

My point is that if a particle cannot exist, have properties if there's nothing outside of it to interact with, then the same must hold for the universe. The fallacy of Big Bang Cosmology (BBC) is that we can only speak about the properties and state of the universe if there's something outside of it, something it can interact with, and, like the charged particle its charge, something it owes its properties to: if it has been created by some outside intervention. For this reason BBC is an even worse 'theory' than creationism which at least honestly states that, yes, there is Someone outside of it Who created the universe. If a universe which creates itself out of nothing, without any outside intervention has to obey the conservation law which says that what comes out of nothing must add to nothing, then everything inside of it, including space and time somehow must cancel, add to nil, meaning that it has no physical reality as a whole, as 'seen' from the outside, but only exists as seen from within. If in that case it doesn't make sense to speak about the properties it has or the state it is in as a whole, then it also makes no sense to make such statements from within. In other words, we need a completely different approach, an entirely different paradigm if we ever are to comprehend the universe rationally, as opposed to causally, something I'm trying to do in blog, a study which, I'm afraid, is a bit of a mess.

As I argued in a previous essay, this means that we can no longer conceive of the speed of light as the (finite) velocity light moves at, but that c just refers to a property of spacetime, which is something else entirely. (Though you agreed with my statement that we ought to "replace causality with reason ...to understand our world", I hope that you realize, accept that if causality goes out the window, then so does the interpretation of c as the (finite) velocity of light.) In regarding the universe as an object we can imagine to look at from without, a Big Bang Universe (BBU) lives in a time realm not of its own making: as it is the same cosmic time everywhere, here it takes a photon time to travel so here c does refer to the velocity light moves at. In contrast, a Self-Creating Universe (SCU) does not live in a time realm not of its own making: as it contains and produces all time within, here clocks are observed to run slower as they are more distant even if they are at rest relative to the observer. As in a SCU it is not the same time everywhere, here a space distance is a time distance so in this universe a photon bridges any spacetime distance in no time at all, in contrast to a BBU where the photon covers a space distance in (a finite) time. The difference is as subtle as it is crucial to comprehend our universe. Evidently, in a universe where the communication between particles over any spacetime distance is instantaneous, things like the double-slit experiment, the EPR paradox become obvious. The problem is that nobody seems to be able to escape the essentially religious narrative of BBC and start to try to understand the universe from within. Frankly, I'm appalled that everybody takes the word of the heroes of physics as a God's word instead of trying to see whether a different interpretation of observations might solve some of the most glaring contradictions of physics.

Regards, Anton

Dear Darrell

how can you assess the "undecidability" of any theory, if we cannot doit for just arithmetics?

Cheers

Mauro

Sorry, my post was supposed to be addressed to Lawrence.

Apologies

Mauro

Hi Lawrence,

I think your essay achieves these goals very well. Also it is nice how across history people have always remained interested in this area of study.

Cheers,

Antony

Anton,

I am sorry I can't respond in the length you write. The day is getting a bit on already and I need to attend to other things. There are a couple of points I can make.

If the universe had one charged particle something funny would happen. If we consider the spatial surface of the universe, say on the Hubble frame, as a 3-sphere the lines of electric force from this particle would wind around this sphere endlessly. Indeed these lines of force would densely fill the space. They would also interact with themselves or in effect the charged particle. The charged particle would be "driven" into a divergent condition to rapidly increasing energy. The system would in effect "explode." It is comparable to an undamped oscillator that is driven by a resonant frequency.

The recent developments with inflationary cosmology now involve bubble nucleations or O-regions that result from a vacuum transition to a small value. This is an aspect of the multiverse. There is some prospect that our O-region, bubble or sometimes called pocket universe interacted with another one in its early phase. This may have left an imprint on the CMB. The de Sitter spacetime where this inflationary expansion occurs may in turn be a vacuum-field configuration on a D-brane, where in this higher dimensional space of 10 or 11 dimensions there is a foliation of such branes. This then leaves the bulk 10/11 dimensional spacetme, which might in turn exist in a 26 dimensional spacetime and so forth. This sort of gets into the proverbial idea, "its turtles all the way down."

Cheers LC

Dear Crowell,

Now let us call the most natural automaton simply "heredity" (or indeed any cycle, Carnot or whatever). Then the idea of entropy or 2nd law of thermodynamics is that each stage of evolution within an automaton path does in fact depreciate possibility of return to the initial state; so there must be a halt or "fatalism"

My question is: doesn't your undecidableness amount to what we already know as uncertainty? Such that above a cut-off (Heisenberg Cut?) there is higher probability of return to initial state (what we know as determinism) but below the cut (being what we know as the quantum scale) there is no probability of return to initial state i.e. the system is not well-behaved.

Now I put it to you that once you assume that a well-behavedness (or conversely "uncertainty") is simply put an automaton then it qualifies as the ALGORITHM or computer proper. This computer/algorithm is what I call simply THE OBSERVER (perhaps Wheeler's anticipation).

It is a response to your position that: "...a quantum field is propagating on spacetime,but where spacetime is the quantum field. This heuristically appears self-referential, and the physical ansatz is this nonlocality is an undecidable proposition of the above modal theory of causality."

By quantum theory, this state is rather at once a Godel "incompleteness" (the uncertainty) and yet a Peano (or Planck) "constant" (i.e. the conservation law).

My "observer" is in other words then the SUPERPOSITION proper.See What a Wavefunction is

So Wheeler's proposition does work! Pls see my essay and prove me wrong on this particular approach.

Lawrence,

There are two kinds of scientists, the kind which can perfectly build further on the theories one learned at school, and the kind which tries to find alternative interpretation of observations. However invaluable an education is, its disadvantage is that, since you've learned many theories describing phenomena, it is very hard to dream up a different approach which perhaps might solve some of the many fundamental contradictions and enigmas of present physics. Though it is very understandable that man came up with the big bang idea, I'm afraid that it actually is even a worse 'theory' than creationism which at least honestly, boldly states that the universe has been created by some outside intervention. As far as I am aware of, the universe either has been created by some outside interference (which is the position of both creationism and big bang cosmology), a possibility I reject or it creates itself. If so, then fundamental particles must be as much the cause, the source of forces as their effect, the product of their interactions, meaning that a force cannot be either attractive or repulsive, always, which is the mistaken belief string theory is based upon. String theory, like big bang cosmology don't solve anything but are part of the problem.

Cheers AB

Dear Lawrence

Your quote from comment to Platan essay:

"What do you think of algebraic curves over [0, 1, ∞] and the Langlands program?"

By coincidence i used long time ago similar trick with pseudoscalar mesons.See my essay. I signify as 1 mass of proton and then observed what position would take place other pseudoscalar mesons.That i got phenomenon 18 degrees.

Do you see some explanation?

Yuri

It is not common with a Cabibbo angle or Weinberg angle

Just put the values of mass on y=tanx plot, then exploring angles.

Dear Laurence,

(I copy the reply to your post on my page)

Your post is very stimulating. I need time to look at this possibility of relating black-hole physics and entanglement, and non-associativity. On the other hand, I don't consider that entanglement is a primary category in non-local/contextual questions. It may be that conformal arguments adapted to Grothendieck's approach may approach the subject you are talking about. I should say that I am not familiar enough with black-hole physics to have a motivated opinion I intend to read and understand this Maldacena-Susskind paper before discussing more with you on this topic. Meanwhile, may be you can have a look at recent papers by Frédéric Holweck and co-authors (we are now working together) about entanglement and algebraic geometry.

Thanks and best wishes,

Michel

Dear Lawrence, apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and

rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not read, or did not

rate "link:fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1756] my essay The

Cloud of Unknowing[/link] please consider doing so. With best wishes.

Vladimir

Sorry - here is the link: my essay The Cloud of Unknowing

The program of finding physics with [0, 1, ∞] can be found with the SL(2,C) group and the linear fractional transformation (LFT)

f(z) = (az b)/(cz d),

which has a correspondence with matrices of SL(2,C). The Mobius transformation or LFT is an automorphism group on the Argand plane, and this is equivalent to PSL(2,C). This projective linear group is then the automorphism group of C. If we let the constants a, b, c, d be points in C then the LFT

f(z) = [(z - z_1)/(z - z_2)][z_3 - z_2)/(z_3 - z_1)]

is for the identity f(z) = z a case where z_1 = 0, z_3 = 1, and z_2 = ∞. A matrix representation may be found by dividing through by z_i and taking the limit z_i --- > ∞.

From this comparatively simple example we may move up to SL(2,H) and SL(2,O). In the case of SL(2,O) ~ SO(9,1), there is an embedding of SO(9) ~ B_4. This in turn is defined with the short exact sequence

F_4: 1 --- > B_4 ---> F_{52/36} ---> OP^2 --- > 1

where the strange symbol in the middle means that the 52 dimensions of F_4 - the 36 dimensions of B_4 ~ SO(9) defines the OP^2 projective Fano plane or OP^2 ~ F_4/B_4.

The B_4 group is the SUSY group that Susskind employs with the holographic principle.

The group F_4 is a centralizer in the E_8, which means it commutes with the automorphism of E_8, which is G_2. We then have a somewhat Rococo form of the same construction. A projective form of SL(2,O), PSL(2,O), defines matrices ~ aut(O) ~ G_2 which map three points to [0, 1, ∞] with the action of the 7 elements in the Moufang plane. I think I can find this matrix in the near future.

Unfortunately I am moving shortly, so that is complicating plans to do much analysis. If I do this in the immediate future it will have to be in the next week.

Cheers LC

Lawrence

Could you please explain where is your theory connected with Golden ratio?

See part Symmetries... PSL(2,Z)etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

Yuri

Lawrence,

I loved your explanation of modal logic in causality. Very succinct! You brought back pleasant memories of doing symbolic logic in university.

The notion that "causality is necessary incomplete" can also be appreciated from a quantum information point of view using a complex valued system. When an EPR state is prepared, all entropies are conditional on the observer, who is a subsystem in an "EPR-triplet". However, in making a measurement, the observer throws away her entanglement information so that the subsystem of the EPR pair is no longer conditional. (See my essay "A Complex Conjugate Bit and It".)

A quantum correlated system thus becomes a classically correlated system. Using Venn diagrams, it becomes apparent that this process can be interpreted as a change in associativity.

Best wishes,

Richard