Hello Lawrence

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 you have touched some corners of it.

Regards

Than Tin

    • [deleted]

    Than,

    Nature has an analogical quality to it, or what I see as recherché --- as with Bach's "Musical Offering." Certainly one example is how isospin symmetry is applied to the nuclear physics of protons and neutrons in the MeV range and the same symmetry appears in the theory of weak interactions. I base my argument for the need to toggle on or off physical axioms by appealing to a formal incompleteness of any causal model. Godel's theorem is a recursive aspect of mathematics where a predicate acts upon its own Godel number as the object.

    It is taking me a bit of time to get to many of the essays here. Other pressing concerns mount as well. I will try to get to your essay in the near future. I got an email that the contest deadline has been extended a week. That may allow for a bit more time to get to more of the essays.

    Cheers LC

    Dear Lawrence,

    I am almost sure that I rated your essay at an earlier time. For any reason my vote was not recorded or lost when the system was interrupted. So I reproduced the vote with a bonus due to the high level of your replies.

    Good luck,

    Michel

      Michel,

      Thanks. I have been in the process of moving, so my ability to engage FQXi has dropped seriously. I also lost my voting code for a while after the machine I had it on was virus attacked. I got the code back the other day.

      I think there are underlying relationships between F4 as the group for the KS theorem in 4-d and G2 as the automorphism of E8. F4 is a centralizer in E8, which means it is a "constant of the motion" with respect to G2. I have long thought that general relativity and quantum mechanics share some common basis along these lines.

      Cheers LC

      Dear Lawrence,

      One single principle leads the Universe.

      Every thing, every object, every phenomenon

      is under the influence of this principle.

      Nothing can exist if it is not born in the form of opposites.

      I simply invite you to discover this in a few words,

      but the main part is coming soon.

      Thank you, and good luck!

      I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

      Please visit My essay.

        Hi Lawrence,

        Congratulations on a fine essay! But I wonder whether the arguments you advance are against a straw man... pertinent to an abstract and continuous theory of reality, rather than what may actually be a discrete and non-continuous material cosmos. You wrote:

        > Physical systems in some funny sense have a premonition about how to evolve.... There is no information transfer in this process, but in a nonlocal manner a quantum particle "knows" how to evolve by sampling all possible paths

        To apply the Principle of Least Action you need to specify the end state as well as the starting state. It is therefore, more a view "looking back" than "looking forward". In fact, you can take the viewpoint of essayist Don Limuti, and say that particles do not have to have a continuous trajectory, and only have to appear intermittently. With this sort of interpretation, computation remains feasible.

        > Godel's second theorem indicates that any consistent theory is unable to prove its consistency.

        The precondition to Godel's theorem was that the theory be able to formulate *all* of arithmetic, not just finite models of arithmetic. Actual computers have finite word size and memory size, and might be better modeled by Primitive recursive arithmetic, which is provably consistent in Peano arithmetic. So the application of Godel's theorem is valid only for abstract models of computation, not actual discrete computational models of the cosmos.

        > Taylor's argument may be seen as follows...

        As you note, Taylor's argument depends on the Law of the Excluded Middle. Joseph Brenner (who is also an essayist here) has previously written a paper entitled "The philosophical logic of Stéphane Lupasco (1900-1988)" that describes Lupasco's alternate "Logic of the Included Middle" and argues that it better applies to reality. With a different logic I think you could reach a different conclusion about computability.

        > Quantum gravity is then a quaternion theory, or a system of quaternions in the octonions. There is then a hierarchy R -> C -> H -> O, where classical mechanics is real valued, quantum mechanics complex valued, and underneath are quaternion and octonion valued fields and vacuum structures.

        Nice idea. You might appreciate my advocacy of Geometric Algebra for the formulation of a computable cosmos in Software Cosmos, where I take up the simulation paradigm and construct a digital model.

        > The digital model of the universe or "It From Bit" is not decidable. A model of the physical universe encoded by algorithmic means will not compute reality.

        I am most curious whether you think this limitation applies to my picture of a discrete computational model for the cosmos.

        Hugh

          Hugh,

          Your comments are interesting and thought provoking. I don't think that nature is strictly continuous or discrete. I think there is some sort of dualism between the two descriptions of reality. I don't think either description is complete.

          I agree that Godel's theorem involves infinite systems. The use of the Cantor diagonalization implies an infinite set. The use of modal logic and the appeal to Godel's theorem is somewhat qualitative I will admit. I think to do a full formal analysis of this would be an exhausting piece of work. However, the use of "possibility," which at best can be interpreted as probabilities with a weak or no Bayesian priors (an unknown unknown) is potentially itself "infinite," or so large that from a physicist perspective we can consider it infinite. Any algorithmic description of the universe must appeal to primitive recursive functions. The analyst in this view is performing a sort of "cut off," where the "possibility" extends only to some range of estimated probabilities. This may not necessarily cover all of reality or all possible cases. David Hume made a bit of a point about this. Causality can't be reduced to logic. I make a point of a connection between Hume's observation and Godel.

          The argument concerning the extension of quantum fields from a quaternion basis to octonions is also qualitative. There is no procedure for finding undecidable propositions; the existence of such a putative procedure is itself undecidable. Godel did manage to derive his proof in reference to Diophantine equations, which amounts to deriving a "special case." Again trying to find how the extension from H to O is a matter of Godelian incompleteness would be a huge undertaking. So my approach is to appeal to a physical argument rather than formal mathematics. After all, while I have learned a fair amount of advanced mathematics I am still primarily a physicist .

          I will try to look at your essay today or in the next few days. From your description it does appear interesting. My time has been terribly constrained the last couple of months. I have to keep in mind that voting ends in about a week.

          Thanks for the over all positive assessment.

          Cheers LC

          Amazigh,

          One interesting duality principle is with Yangians. This is a duality with fields in a braid description that has connections to twistors.

          I will try to get to your paper in the near future. My time is pretty limited right now. I have not had much time to engage this contest very much.

          Cheers LC

          Dear Lawrence,

          I guess if you have a list of more than 300 essays to choose from it is inevitable you miss out on some of the best. Yours was indeed very well written and argued even though my position is opposite to yours but I was able to follow your thinking especially areas where not too much math is involved. Very nice.

          One of the unprovable/ undecidable proposition in mathematics and theoretical physics is whether the fundamental unit of geometry is a zero dimensional or extended object. When I say unprovable I mean using mathematical theorems. However from logic and reductio ad absurdum type arguments a sort of philosophical proof can be found. This is what I have attempted to do.

          Following additional insights gained from interacting with FQXi community members, I improved my essay and wrote a judgement in the case of Atomistic Enterprises Inc. vs. Plato & Ors delivered on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 11:39 GMT. You may enjoy it.

          All the best,

          Akinbo

            Dear Akinbo,

            I will try to read your essay this evening. I am in the process of moving right now, which is taxing me in a number of way --- in particular the growing ache in my back.

            Cheers LC

            Dear All

            Let me go one more round with Richard Feynman.

            In the Character of Physical Law, he talked about the two-slit experiment like this "I will summarize, then, by saying that electrons arrive in lumps, like particles, but the probability of arrival of these lumps is determined as the intensity of waves would be. It is this sense that the electron behaves sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave. It behaves in two different ways at the same time.

            Further on, he advises the readers "Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it. 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that."

            Did he says anything about Wheeler's "It from Bit" other than what he said above?

            Than Tin

              Lawrence - Thank you for your reply and pointers to David Foster Wallace and Asselmeyer-Maluga on these issues.

              I would be honored by your review of my paper. Please make sure your download the latest version (V1.1a) from the comments section.

              Thank you.

              Kind regards, Paul

              Paul,

              I am rather intrigued by your paper. I will confess that I think this perspective on time may apply to quantum gravity. I will have to read your paper again to firm up my understanding. The two competing ideas are string theory and loop quantum gravity. In LQG gravitation is background independent. However, this is based ultimately on a classical formalism of general relativity where time does not exist. String theory on the other hand has time, but it is not background independent. It also works best in a holographic perspective where one dimension is reduced near an event horizon. The string/M-theory approach is also best looked at in a dual gauge approach with Yangians, which has some overlap with braid constructions in LQG. So there may be some duality here that has some bearing on your idea about time and entanglement.

              Cheers LC

              Wilhelmus,

              I got my voting code back a week ago. I pulled up your essay this morning and started to read it. I will though have to score it later today. I am about to close down and get back to work.

              Cheers LC

              Hi Than,

              I guess I am not sure why you posted this. Feynman was right in what he said and was a critic of the hidden variable people who were trying to build up quantum physics from classical like structures. That is not something I am trying to advance.

              LC

              Hi LC,

              We have been in a few contests together. Most the time your entries give me a headache. Of course this is my fault. Your current essay also gives me a headache, But I like it. The conclusion is rational and to my liking. Also your comment to the effect that the informational standpoint may not be correct, but it could be very useful, I find very insightful.

              No need to visit my entry. It will just drive you crazy :)

              Your score needs a boost!

              Don L.

                I think the title of your essay pretty much sums up your much more rigorous argument. I'm certainly not a logic master but I think I get the gist of your arguments. The maths are a little esoteric and not totally accessible; however, I think your essay is important because is it one of the more original ones (that I have read). I agree with the conclusion and I think that the possibilities that it opens up are well worth looking into.

                Please see my essay: All Your Base Are Belong To Math.

                - Kyle Miller

                Dear Lawrence,

                We are at the end of this essay contest.

                In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.

                Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.

                eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.

                And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.

                Good luck to the winners,

                And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.

                Amazigh H.

                I rated your essay.

                Please visit My essay.

                Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I've Read

                I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented your essay in what follows.

                Of the nearly two hundred essays submitted to the competition, there seems to be a preponderance of sentiment for the 'Bit-from-It" standpoint, though many excellent essays argue against this stance or advocate for a wider perspective on the whole issue. Joseph Brenner provided an excellent analysis of the various positions that might be taken with the topic, which he subsumes under the categories of 'It-from-Bit', 'Bit-from-It', and 'It-and-Bit'.

                Brenner himself supports the 'Bit-from-It' position of Julian Barbour as stated in his 2011 essay that gave impetus to the present competition. Others such as James Beichler, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Agung Budiyono, and Olaf Dreyer have presented well-stated arguments that generally align with a 'Bit-from-It' position.

                Various renderings of the contrary position, 'It-from-Bit', have received well-reasoned support from Stephen Anastasi, Paul Borrill, Luigi Foschini, Akinbo Ojo, and Jochen Szangolies. An allied category that was not included in Brenner's analysis is 'It-from-Qubit', and valuable explorations of this general position were undertaken by Giacomo D'Ariano, Philip Gibbs, Michel Planat and Armin Shirazi.

                The category of 'It-and-Bit' displays a great diversity of approaches which can be seen in the works of Mikalai Birukou, Kevin Knuth, Willard Mittelman, Georgina Parry, and Cristinel Stoica,.

                It seems useful to discriminate among the various approaches to 'It-and-Bit' a subcategory that perhaps could be identified as 'meaning circuits', in a sense loosely associated with the phrase by J.A. Wheeler. Essays that reveal aspects of 'meaning circuits' are those of Howard Barnum, Hugh Matlock, Georgina Parry, Armin Shirazi, and in especially that of Alexei Grinbaum.

                Proceeding from a phenomenological stance as developed by Husserl, Grinbaum asserts that the choice to be made of either 'It from Bit' or 'Bit from It' can be supplemented by considering 'It from Bit' and 'Bit from It'. To do this, he presents an 'epistemic loop' by which physics and information are cyclically connected, essentially the same 'loop' as that which Wheeler represented with his 'meaning circuit'. Depending on where one 'cuts' the loop, antecedent and precedent conditions are obtained which support an 'It from Bit' interpretation, or a 'Bit from It' interpretation, or, though not mentioned by Grinbaum, even an 'It from Qubit' interpretation. I'll also point out that depending on where the cut is made, it can be seen as a 'Cartesian cut' between res extensa and res cogitans or as a 'Heisenberg cut' between the quantum system and the observer. The implications of this perspective are enormous for the present It/Bit debate! To quote Grinbaum: "The key to understanding the opposition between IT and BIT is in choosing a vantage point from which OR looks as good as AND. Then this opposition becomes unnecessary: the loop view simply dissolves it." Grinbaum then goes on to point out that this epistemologically circular structure "...is not a logical disaster, rather it is a well-documented property of all foundational studies."

                However, Grinbaum maintains that it is mandatory to cut the loop; he claims that it is "...a logical necessity: it is logically impossible to describe the loop as a whole within one theory." I will argue that in fact it is vital to preserve the loop as a whole and to revise our expectations of what we wish to accomplish by making the cut. In fact, the ongoing It/Bit debate has been sustained for decades by our inability to recognize the consequences that result from making such a cut. As a result, we have been unable to take up the task of studying the properties inherent in the circularity of the loop. Helpful in this regard would be an examination of the role of relations between various elements and aspects of the loop. To a certain extent the importance of the role of relations has already been well stated in the essays of Kevin Knuth, Carlo Rovelli, Cristinel Stoica, and Jochen Szangolies although without application to aspects that clearly arise from 'circularity'. Gary Miller's discussion of the role of patterns, drawn from various historical precedents in mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, provides the clearest hints of all competition submissions on how the holistic analysis of this essential circular structure might be able to proceed.

                In my paper, I outlined Susan Carey's assertion that a 'conceptual leap' is often required in the construction of a new scientific theory. Perhaps moving from a 'linearized' perspective of the structure of a scientific theory to one that is 'circularized' is just one further example of this kind of conceptual change.