Stefan,

I am sorry, I didn't deal with the matter. My intention was to hopefully clarify whether Wheelers mysterious claims can be explained at all without the rather disappointing result that they are based on mistakes or at best on beliefs.

I was tempted to blame Wheeler for phantasmagoria unless he was not well known for his earlier contributions to nuclear fission and atomic bombs. Of course, the strange theories he got then famous for go back to earlier speculative work e.g. by Parmenides, Einstein, Schwarzschild, Bohr, Rosen, and others.

Eckard

6 days later

Hello Cristinel,

Enjoyable essay. I have two questions for you.

1. Using this weekend to catch up on backlog of essays I have marked to read. Yours shows a keen interest in the topic and more importantly sticks to the scope of the subject under discourse. I also visited your blog on same topic.

If as you say, "...the universe comes in yes/no answers to

our interrogations", what question would you like to ask the universe if you are given just a single question to ask? That is just ONE question occupying the 'ontological basement' or the 'very deep bottom' according to Wheeler, whose answer will be 1 if YES and 0 if NO.

Aside the universe, in a hierarchy of many potential questions, what question will you ask Schrodinger's cat that will similarly occupy the 'very bottom' in an algorithm, that question must come first from the bottom before any other subsequent possible questions. Will such a question be: are you white or black? or are you dead or alive?

I have my own idea as expressed in my contribution (On the road not taken), but what question will YOU ask?

2. You are obviously a fan of Wheeler and he says, "what else is there out of which to build a particle except geometry itself?", that is IT is from GEOMETRY. Again, he says "IT from BIT". Following from Wheeler's statements, if you remain a disciple of his, what then is the relationship between BIT and GEOMETRY?.

Regards,

Akinbo.

    Hi Akinbo,

    Thanks for reading and commenting.

    1. "what question would you like to ask the universe if you are given just a single question to ask?"

    Nice question, but you realize that if one would really be in that position, one would better spend very long time to choose the question. And life is too short to spend it preparing a question which we may never be in position to answer. At this time I don't think I know which question is optimal to ask. Some may think that it worth wasting the single shot with a question like "Is there God?". But I don't think this will have much impact, because people can very easily adjust the new data to their prior beliefs. And, let's face it, a single bit, no matter what question would you ask, would not suffice, since additional information may turn the situation unexpectedly. Especially since our concepts may differ from the fundamental concepts of the universe. Think for example of a question whether light is 'classical wave' or 'point particle'.

    "2. You are obviously a fan of Wheeler ..."

    Why do you think I would agree with all Wheeler said? Why such strong words like "fan" and "disciple"? You are right that Wheeler initially, in geometrodynamics, wanted to explain everything from geometry and topology, and later from bit. I will try to explain what I think he thought about this, but this doesn't mean that I think the same.

    In "John Wheeler - Information, Physics, Quantum The Search for Links (1989)", he mentioned "four no's", and the third was "no continuum", which apparently is at odds with his original geometrodynamics views. But he also mentioned "five clues", and the first one was "the boundary of a boundary is zero" (which he used for example in "charge without charge"). So, he believed that the world is not a continuum, but it obeys a principle originated from topology. There is no big contradiction between these, given that the "no boundary proposal" appears in simplicial homology, which is discrete. Of course, it appears also in homology, cohomology, Stokes' theorem, etc., but maybe all these can be reduced somehow to simplicial homology (you may know even of a research program of simplicial quantum gravity).

    About the "fan" thing, let me tell you a secret. During my attempts to understand the universe, I had several ideas, and I found that some of them are very closed to Wheeler's. One was the idea to find some conditions the curvature has to satisfy, to be able to obtain from it the electromagnetic tensor, and hopefully other fields which compose the "wood" part of Einstein's equations. After many months of researching the subject, I found that this was first done by Rainich, and later rediscovered by Misner and Wheeler. For this, see Geometry of gravitation and electromagnetism, by L. Witten, and chapter 9 from Gravitation: An Introduction to Current Research, ed. L. Witten, and section 5.3 from Spinors and Space-time: Spinor and twistor methods in space-time geometry, R Penrose, W Rindler - 1986. Another one was a way to understand QM, which consists in the fact that initial conditions are selected at measurement, but apply to the past, and I found that this was very close to Wheeler's delayed choice experiment. Maybe the difference is that he sticks to the "bit", empty of the need of an "it", while I stick with the "it" too, and this is how I think the relation between geometry and "bit" is, as opposed to Wheeler's, which I described earlier. So, if I studied Wheeler, was because I found many relations between his views and mine. But there are important differences in our views, and I hoped my essay showed this. Being conscious of this, I believe that anyone who apparently has similar views to another person of whom I've heard, may in fact have unique and very distinct views from that person. On the other hand, it seems to be very common to judge other people by yes/no questions (like the one you asked me if I would ask Schrodinger's cat), or to use dichotomous classifications. So, to both of your questions, the answer is that what you can learn from a bit, is just a bit.

    Best,

    Cristi Stoica

    Hello Christi,

    Thanks for reply. No offence meant by 'fan' or 'disciple'...

    Yes, life is short but a question that must be answered Yes/No and must come before , "does God exist?" is "does the universe exist?". It is when this is answered Yes, that you then follow up with whether God exists.

    Similarly, with Schrodinger's cat, before asking whether it is dead/alive, the question as Wheeler says that will be at the "very bottom" before asking this is, "Does Schrodinger's cat exist?", then if answered Yes (1), you can then ask whether it is dead (0) or alive (1).

    To Leibniz, he attributed 1 to God and 0 to 'nothing', but essentially as Barbour says in his FQXi essay, bits 1 and 0 MUST stand for something very concrete and fundamental.

    I am grateful for those references. I will surely look them up.

    Happy to be your acquaintance (or is it your disciple) online... :)

    Best regards,

    Akinbo

    Christi,

    Beautifully written essay. You take the counter case to my own, which is refreshing, and argue it very well, I certainly hope and expect you'll be in the top few this year.

    I hope you'll read mine and comment on the counter arguments about mathematics, and also the delayed choice statistical findings. I propose the experimental evidence, found in two different ways, of the quantum eraser case can de explained without delayed choice by using a different starting assumption to Wheeler.

    I won't repeat it here, but I propose that using and correlating 'individual' entangled particles with time separation in the EPR case will give access to the additional information that exists to prove Von Neumann's thesis for a more consistent QM. i hope we can discuss this if you manage to read the essay.

    Very well done for yours. I wish my arguments was as clearly presented.

    Best of luck

    Peter

      Hi Peter,

      Thank you for your kind comments. It seems we look at the same phenomena, and try to make sense of them by opposite approaches, which is good. I look forward to reading your essay.

      Best regards,

      Cristi

      Hi Christi,

      It was refreshing to read your very well written essay. And I think the construct with Axiom Zero was very elegant, but we still need to find the logically consistent subset that matches our observations don't we? Which luckily further narrows down the subset.

      Could I ask you the favor to read and question the logic in my essay, where I try to explore possible subsets? I wrote it to get constructive feedback but many comments seems to trail of with themes that are not really a part of it. (And I already apologize for it to be substantially lesser well written than yours - and for advertising it here.)

      Thanks and best regards

      Kjetil

        Hi Cristinel,

        I like the illustration of the spiderweb for catching particles and spiderweb for catching waves. Rings very true. Also the use of the delayed choice experiment is always welcome. I was going to go down that route myself (no pun intended)!

        Well done!

        Antony

          Hi Kjetil,

          Thank you for the comments. You say "but we still need to find the logically consistent subset that matches our observations don't we?". Of course, this is true. I look forward to read your essay.

          Best regards,

          Cristi

          Hi Antony,

          Yes, I hoped that the spiderweb metaphor captures the measurement problem in very simple terms. I am glad you liked it, and thank you for the comment.

          Best regards,

          Cristi

          Dear Cristi,

          a very good essay with a great overview about Wheeler's ideas. I agree completely. Your global consistency principle reminds me on my topological condistions. So, our approaches should be related, see my essay.

          Your whole ideas have a strong touch of mathematical logic, like topos theory. In particular Axiom Zero looks like the usual contradictions used in the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

          More later after rereading your essay.

          Torsten

            Dear Torsten,

            Thank you reading and commenting. I just finished your excellent essay, on your program of obtaining physics from the exotic smooth structures and topology, which I find very much in the spirit of "it from bit". Congratulations!

            Cristi Stoica

            6 days later

            Dear Gordon,

            Thank you for sharing with me your writing about your axiom, and for the kind comments.

            Best wishes,

            Cristi Stoica

            Dear Cristi,

            This is a very well written essay and I had to go back to Wheeler 'law without law' writings to fully appreciate it. I also found 'We have clues, clues most of all in the writings of Bohr, but no answer'. At least I am confident in this view and I think that quantum contextuality is a concept close to Wheeler's view but may be not as radical as the 'law without law' dogma.

            What is your opinion? You may be interested in my own essay on this topic

            http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

            Michel

              Dear Michel,

              Sorry for the delay in answering, I am on vacation and I am able to check the messages and answer very rarely. I look forward to reading your essay, and I will return with a more detailed answer.

              Best regards,

              Cristi

              Dear Cristi

              Unfortunately, your essay is too large for self-service capabilities of my computer, but I agree with "axiom Zero ".

              http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

                Hi,

                Thank you for letting me know about the size of my file. Next week, when I'll be back home, I will try to upload a smaller file for you.

                Best regards,

                Cristi