Hi Marina,

Based on your comment, I want to mention something right now (regarding the relations with CS) that might help you to see the ETS proposal in a more appropriate light.

As far as CS is concerned, I would suggest to view the proposed structure ("struct") not as motivated by the conventional CS considerations but rather the other way around: they could and should be viewed as the *universal* data structure and the development of a universal programming language should rely on it, since it is expected that all data should be represented in this form (numbers are just a very special case).

As you can read in the essay, the real expectation is that the Nature herself relies on such informational representations to store and process the "information". Moreover, another major hypothesis is that such representations serve as the blueprints for the familiar to us spatial instantiations (of those blueprints). In other words, this is consistent with the informational version of the Plato's and Aristotle's views.

Well, I thought you may not take my allusion to C++ kindly. Sorry. But why hide from the fact that the origins of your proposal lies in it? I understand that you are concerned about how traditional physicist may receive your idea and do not want it to be trivialized as 'programming'. In your place, rather than trying to veil this fact or taking an apologetic stance for infringing with CS into the physics' territory, I would simply adopt the straightforward stance based on the fact that the future of physics lies with CS.

I tried to find that quote from Prof. D'Ariano but now think that I must have read it elsewhere. That day I also read his 2011 essay, where he says, "Recovering the whole Physics as emergent from the quantum information processing is a large program: we need to build up a complete dictionary that translates all physical notions into information-theoretic words." Isn't this where you come in?

The idea that algorithm is mightier than equation is certainly not new. D'Ariano speaks openly about the value in translating traditionally 'physical' terms into a computer-programming language. Your shyness in this regard only weakens your position.

The other weakness is that you propose that "structure of ETS events allows a uniform treatment of all events in Nature, including physical, chemical, biological, and mental events" -- and then fail to demonstrate it on one simple, well-understood, familiar example and go with poorly understood duality and entanglement instead -?

Then you pose several intriguing questions but then leave a reader disappointed:

"This brings up the key questions: How can we plan an experimental verification of the ETS formalism? And in particular, how do we approach the verification of the structure of (instantiated) events for photons, electrons, etc.?"

oops! it appears that I used an 'illegal' character and the sys truncated the end. So:

".... electrons, etc.?" -- indeed, how?

"Finally, some of the other big questions are: How are the structs stored and retrieved in Nature, and what is the physical nature of instantiated events?" -- and?

"If this structure will be experimentally corroborated, the scenario captured in the title of the essay is not that outlandish." -- anything concrete yet?

I also could not help noticing your post to Akinbo above: "I intentionally avoided the issue of the nature of space, since if the latter is __secondary__ to the informational representation" (emphasis is mine). Space secondary to informational representation? I'm not talking about space here in simplistic terms of distances. I talk about spacetime as emergent as a result of processes underlying what we call reality.

In view of the above, I cannot give your very interesting and pertinent to this year contest idea the high rating it otherwise deserves. In my notes back in June I tentatively rated your essay as 8, thought to up it higher this morning, but now will stay with my first impression.

(I invite you to retaliate in my thread ;))

kstati, pochemu vy mne dali tol'ko chetverku?

Dear Marina,

Thank you for your feedback!

However, I'm afraid, you missperceived the proposed formalism; it has very little to do with CS as we understand it now.

By the way, the questions at the end of the essay are for theoretical and applied physicists, since they concern the very foundational concepts in physics.

I will also comment on your essay in the forum space for it.

    Lev,

    your just reminded me that I forgot to address the main weakness in your essay. You wrote:

    "By the way, the questions at the end of the essay are for theoretical and applied physicists, since they concern the very foundational concepts in physics."

    Indeed. And how exactly, in practical terms, you propose to use the new language which is supposed to describe the processes which are not yet fully understood? -- Unless it has some dynamics of the type cellular automata built-in that would permit __ETS to emerge by itself__ (rather than being programmed based on an a priori knowledge). In other words, the presumed value in your idea, as I see it, is in this 'backward' approach with emerging ETS showing thus far unnoticed hidden structure governing seemingly simple or even disjoint events.

    It seems it is precisely the implementation where your major problem lies. Does it?

    It is as if you put a cart before the horse, like in your amazon review of an AI book where you lament that Mind is excluded, as if there is a working definition --or even a common opinion-- of what Mind is. How would a new language make the unknown better understood?

    Gotta run. I wish you spectacular fireworks today :)

    Marina,

    "It seems it is precisely the implementation where your major problem lies. Does it?"

    What do you mean by this? ETS proposes a radically new form of data representation and its consistency with the (physical) reality has to be verified experimentally.

    You probably mean "applications" rather than "implementations".

    My area of expertise is related to CS "applications" and some of the reference paper try to address them. By the way, we are in the initial stages in the development of a fundamentally new kind of search engine.

    Also, you cannot compare ETS to cellular automata, which do not at all propose a new way of collecting and processing data. So far we have hardly had such proposals as ETS.

    Again, Marina, I'm suggesting that you are still missing (wrt ETS) something very basic.

    However, thanks again for your feedback. ;-)

    You wrote: "ETS consistency with the (physical) reality has to be verified experimentally."

    Why wouldn't you give an example of applying ETS to a something well understood?

    And what do you mean by verified experimentally? Does ETS give specific predictions? What such an experiment would entail?

    1. "Why wouldn't you give an example of applying ETS to a something well understood?"

    By "applying" you probably mean in physics.

    I tried to very briefly sketch it in Section 5 of the essay.

    2. "And what do you mean by verified experimentally? Does ETS give specific predictions? What such an experiment would entail?"

    As I mentioned in the essay, take, for example, any fundamental particle, e.g. photon, electron, etc. How do we think about, or interpret, them. So far, we have a very confusing, 'dual' (wave-particle) image of them. On the other and, ETS suggest that each one could be thought of as instantiation of a particular struct, i.e as a sequence of 'structured' pulsations, or pulsational events.

    The novel--because we are dealing now with the *structure* of events and not with numbers--experimental setup should try to verify this by capturing the structure of the corresponding constituting events.

    Dear Lev,

    A nice challenge to conventional informational thinking. Great approach re-structs/ETS. Ubiquitous discreteness was even mentioned, which doesn't shy away from conventional claims, yet you challenge established thinking, which I believe is what the contest asks.

    Please take a look at my essay if time permits.

    Well done & all the best,

    Antony

    Hello, Lev,

    There is a potentially important relation between your ETS system and my Logic in Reality which sees processes as evolving through concatenations of actual and potential states. It is also a challenge to orthodox physics, but does not require going outside its laws. If you will look at my article, you will see there my critique of "geometry".

    Best regards,

    Joseph Brenner

      Hi Joseph,

      Thanks for visiting my essay forum!

      Please note that I did leave several days earlier a post on your essay forum.

      The fundamental difference between our positions is that you rely, more or less, on some conventional considerations to conclude "that energy-matter is ontologically prior to, that is, more fundamental than information as digital bits.".

      As I suggested in my post on your essay forum, for me, both "information" and "energy" are too ambiguous to rely on them.

      In my work, I have relied not on the considerations coming from physics but rather on the considerations coming from the reality of classes (of similar objects) in Nature--and hence the need to understand the informational mechanism that allows for their maintenance. I also relied on the centrality of pattern recognition processes which, in turn, must rely on the structure of the classes. So I believe that it is the pattern recognition processes and the structure of the ubiquitous classes that hold the clue to understanding the nature of information.

      Lev,

      RE: "I tried to very briefly sketch it in Section 5 of the essay." -- 'try' seems the keyword here. As I said before, for ETS to be even considered, it has to be not only applied to concrete problems but also shown to obtain otherwise unobtainable results.

      RE: "The novel .. experimental setup should try to verify this by capturing the structure of the corresponding constituting events." -- What sort of setup could capture _the structure_ of the constituting events? Would you mind giving us some idea?

      You seem far removed from reality. But I sense your strong conviction in validity of your idea. Good luck :)

      PS

      and by the way, when I spoke about CA above, it did not mean that I took your ETS in any way even resembling it. It was a practical idea on my part of combining the two together in such a way that ETS would emerge from CA. Because the main problem I see in ETS is that it presupposes a good understanding _of a structure_ of a given phenomenon. But what if the supposed hypothesis is wrong? Would ETS be able to show this, like, say math can. But.. I realize now that this is a superfluous question at this stage. I thought you were much further ahead than you are.

      Dear Lev,

      I have read your essay one mor time

      and I have rated it as one of best in the forum!

      With best wishes,

      George Kirakosyan

      (see my early post above)

        Hi Lev,

        You just keep getting better and better. Your essay deserves a 10 just for the abstract and the conclusion alone. I will ask a question: How do you avoid "mind" when it comes to assigning a class. I though classes were context dependent?

        I took a chance with my essay, which will drive most physicists crazy if they have no familiarity with the Bhagavad Gita. So, be forewarned if you do chose to look at it.

        You are truly fearless, Best of luck!

        Don Limuti

          Thanks, Don! I do appreciate it very much.

          As to the "fearless", I hope that, besides, I'm also sober enough. God knows how much I try: my main energy is drained by the continuous and incessant questioning of my basic assumptions.

          I'll get back to you in your essay forum.

          Cheers,

          --Lev

          Dear Lev, 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

          7 days later

          Hello Lev -

          I agree that the mind is not 'outside' anything, and that the ambiguity of information needs to be resolved. Your terminology is helpful - physics is engaged in 'formative processes' in modern times, and we need to revisit our assumptions across the board (and boldly!) if we want to define information usefully, and answer physics' persistent mysteries.

          Your development of non-numerical terminology is probably a very important step in this direction.

          I take a more descriptive and structural approach to developing a uniform treatment of the natural events of nature: I describe a cosmic paradigm of correlated energy vortices that include the evolving observer and naturally create a quantum/classical correlation. The evolving observer, I show, is the missing link in many of our quests. I think it is this that impels Physics' expansion into Bio- and Neuro-Physics - and that we must accept that we exist in a Species' Cosmos, and develop the necessary systems to interpret this fact usefully.

          You might find in this a way of further unifying the formative and spatial realms you describe. Of course - like you - I expand the definitions of It and Bit far beyond those signified by Wheeler.

          I found the text challenging, but engrossing; I have rated the essay, of course, and hope you'll soon have time to look at mine.

          All the best in the competition,

          John.

          Dr. Goldfarb

          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