The Tao of It and Bit by Cristinel Stoica

I'll summarize here.

There are several points of strong agreement between your essay and my own (yet to be posted), which figure into my current line of research. To enumerate...

There is an interplay between 'it from bit' and 'bit from it' roles at work.

There is a realistic middle ground which global consistency assures.

The deep structure of Math is unavoidably influential on natural law in Physics.

Of course; the second point may be true largely because regularities in Math existing outside our spacetime conceptions rule when there is nobody looking, nor any form to influence. What seems not to be grasped is that rather than imposing a strait jacket which dictates a single outcome deterministically, the deep structure of Mathematics assures that there will be sufficient degrees of freedom for realistic outcomes to emerge.

Recent forays have examined projective geometry as the determiner of object/observer relations, and of course this ultimately leads to an explicit connection with the octonions. Does Math like that predate our discovery thereof? I think it's reasonable to assert that; in some way, all realistic possibilities arise from the deep inner structure of Math.

Regards,

Jonathan

Already something more..

Not feeling like I said enough, I'll mention that part of what disagrees with me - about the common conception of 'It from Bit' - is the sense that either/or choices are enough to determine anything. Wheeler was pretty crafty, with his variation on the 20 questions theme, and it's interesting to see how this introduces a kind of telescoping element that later gets reduced down, but allows a flexibility of interim definitions. This allows the process of determination to be playful. I really like that aspect of the story.

But this description allowing ranges rather than values is fundamentally different from what's normally employed, and is instead more constructivist, heuristic, or lateral thinking oriented. The idea of considering all possible trajectories from A to B requires a non-verbal approach and encourages one to suspend beliefs, in favor of ideas. Something to ponder.

Have Fun,

Jonathan

Dear Cristinel Stoica

You did a great job, I found your essay very enlightening and well structured. I agree in many points with you. What I could notice is that you open several topics and I'm afraid they cannot be addressed in a small essay. In particular, what drew my attention was your discussion of the mathematical universe due to Tegmark since I have also discussed a bit about it in my essay. I do agree that maths are logical relations and that finding the right mathematical structures that describe the observed data is relevant to quantify and model nature, however, what "worries" me is that from mathematical structures one cannot extract intuitive and tangible explanations of the phenomenology. This is the problem that we have, for instance, with quantum mechanics. The theory has been written in a mathematical language such that most people are uncertain about whether the theory is telling something about reality or it's just a prediction machine.

From my view, the formulation of physical theories in terms of pure math (without baggage as Tegmark put it) can only give mathematical (or logical) "explanations" of the world but not descriptions of physical phenomena in the intuitive language that we all humans understand. This is in part what I discuss in my essay. I hope you have the opportunity to read it and leave some comments, I'd appreciate it.

Best regards

Israel

Dear Cristinel

I'm also glad that we have some opinions in common. I'd like make some comments on your previous reply.

You: Having a deeper understand of QM (and GR for that matter) would be helpful in trying to unify them. But ignoring anything but outcomes, by applying "shut up and calculate", would not allow us to go beyond these problems. Those saying that we should "shut up and calculate", claim indeed that QM is complete, because mathematics works and makes the predictions.

Indeed, shut up and calculate implies that you know what you're calculating, but when there is no picture of what would be the calculation about, this approach looks to me as throwing rocks to nowhere expecting one day to hit the target.

You: I am not sure I understand why would be like this. For instance, 1/2 spin, which is elementary and simple, as compared to other things in physics, is well described mathematically, but how to explain it to the "lay man"?

I'm working on this part, we just have to reformulate the notion of particles, this will eradicate the wave-particle duality and the mysteries of QM will fade away. After the make up, QM will look like classical mechanics, highly intuitive.

You: On the other hand, I think that human brained is a tool for understanding mathematics. Maybe the need for survival made our ancestors search for patterns, make abstractions, make deductions.

Yeah, but according to some studies, there is one hemisphere dedicated to logical operations and another for intuitive ones. So, the whole brain doesn't work with pure logic, intuition, inference, analysis, irrationality, etc, are processes that play a fundamental role in the generation of knowledge.

You: I think that in learning math, one should keep anything that can help, but after that, get over it in our thinking.

I agree, sometimes it is necessary to renew our thinking and get rid of everything that is useless. I'll take a look at the paper you cite.

Thanks for your comments on my essay, they were very stimulating.

Best Regards

Israel

Dear Cristi,

I very much enjoyed reading your well-written and lucid essay, which provided me with food for thought. If I understand you right, you appeal to Wheeler's delayed choice experiment and observer participance to start with a case for it from bit, and law without law. Along the line though, you make a case for objective realism and a global consistency principle, and end by concluding for the necessity of an underlying it, so that the bits do not contradict. To quite some degree we are in agreement about the final conclusion.

However, I have always been puzzled by the significance and interpretation attached to the delayed choice experiment. Does it tell us something new about the conventional view of quantum theory, which we already did not know without this experiment? For instance, if we could strictly conclude observer participance from here, would it not rule out `observer independent' reformulations/modifications such as Bohmian mechanics and GRW? But we know that these latter two theories are still in the reckoning. [You might enjoy looking up the proceedings of the recent Bielefeld conference `Quantum theory without observers' available at http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/bielefeld/videos.html ]

In any case the above is a point for discussion. I admire the courage and passion with which you have written your essay and wish you all the best.

Tejinder

Christinel,

If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

Jim

Dear Christnel

Thanks for the essay. I think what you have written, "I argue that there is in fact an interplay between it and bit. The requirement of global consistency leads to apparently acausal and nonlocal behavior, explaining the weirdness of quantum phenomena" might have a solution in my posted essay but in some how differently.

The "world" or I say as "digital nature" i.e. "It" can be defined as is a product of two inverse sets of ultimately "bits". Therefore some new fundamental constants may emerge to explain that "world" or "digital nature" simply as an interplaying of "It" and "Bits" in cycles.

Thanking once again.

Regards

Dipak

Dear Cristinel

Indeed, we are in agreement. Thanks for the link to the articles the idea goes more less in that direction. But that idea is limited, I have a wider view that encompasses both the notion of particle and of wave.

Best Regards and good luck in the contest

Israel

Dear Cristi,

Your essay has captivated my attention.

You agree with me that such a "zero axiom" should exist. This is what I suggest in my essay. I called it the principle of duality, which handles the contraries. What do you think about ?

A question : what do you think if we rename « quantum mechanics » by « quantum and wave mechanics » ?

best regards

Hi Cristi,

Yesterday evening I returned from holidays. I have just finished to read your beautiful Essay which enjoyed me very much. Congrats. I appreciated that you emphasized the important contribution by Zel'dovich and Starobinski to black hole radiation. Although Hawking cited them in his original famous paper, they are often neglected by researchers who study black hole thermodynamics. Another fundamental contribution on quantum fluctuation is due to Parker, who preceded both Hawking and Zel'dovich's group on this important issue.

In any case, I am going to give you an high score.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dear Cristi,

It happens that your essay is a special one for me so please you will permit me to say some things in good detail.

Now, in response to your position that "... the complete picture is not it from bit, but rather it from bit & bit from it." and "that at any moment there is at least ONE [emphasis mine] possible reality, which ensure the consistency and the correlations?" and then also that "He [wheeler] viewed the law [without law] as being created, or perhaps chosen from an infinity of alternatives, by the VERY OBSERVATION PROCESS [emphasis mine].Let me illustrate graphically what appears to me a natural picture of Wheeler's "U" (the participatory universe).

Think of the universe as a standing wave and then think of any observer as the fundamental of this wave and then see his observables as the harmonics of this fundamental. You find that on the whole Wheeler's "U" (the participatory universe) is actually just the "virtual exchange" of standard model i.e. there is no NET movement.

Next I ask how then may one differentiate QUALITATIVELY a fundamental from a harmonic? My answer is that they are like in linear perspective (a) the point of view versus (b) the perspective itself i.e. the merely apparent "scale" that any point of view imposes on the size of everything else in the picture and which starting from the point of view terminates in the so-called vanishing point (you could also say a fundamental versus the harmonic is like the "ether" versus a "Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction" or like a musical key versus the octave). However, the issue now is that all the "transformations" are otherwise only virtual or "fictitious" like Einstein would say of Newton's gravitational force. Locality/observables are but the nodes and antinodes of a standing wave.

Now I make the case that as the de facto fundamental any given observer is the WELL BEHAVED-NESS or standing-ness i.e. self-same-ness of ANY system of waves--for it takes a selfsame wave to interfer. This means that any observer is pure and simply the infintessimal or virtual work i.e. Noether's "conserved current". That is, it is at once the "virtual exchange" of SM or "space-time" of GR or "superposition" of QM or generally speaking the "phase space".

My "observer" is your "zero axiom" plus [Godelian] "consistency" and it is essentially physically FICTICIOUS. It is in QM the SUPERPOSITION or "wavefunction" proper.

More over your "contradictions" are his OBSERVABLES (in the sense of Newton's force as always an action/reaction pair; the observer being then the third law itself). And by observables I mean space/time, mass/energy, wave/corpuscular nature, dualities ad infinitum. But I think of these dualities as Noether's continuous symmetry (or Peano's "natural numbers"). The observer is their divide or "virtual exchange" (superposition). Any observer is the "universe" proper or Markovian (perhaps same thermodynamics calls "isolated system") and Wheeler calls law without law.

And, Cristi, I assert that the de facto observer is the de facto uncertainty (and classical "conservation law"). Qualitatively i.e. observability wise the observer constitutes to itself the NOTHING (or "all things")--Godel's incompleteness.

Granted, this all is not nearly intuitive but I promise you this model of the observer is tantamount to a theory of quantum gravity. Of course I provide testable physical data in my essay What a Wavefunction is

I like that you have noted that Wheeler was not so protective of his reputation to the detriment of his inquiry. I have other proposals to make of you but please actually read through my essay and analyse the data presented. And then tell me what you think. As for me I think you nearly hit my mark and that we can get something revolutionary out of this.

All the best,

Chidi