The Tao of It and Bit by Cristinel Stoica

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

Dear Cristi,

You have written a very intriguing essay. Yours is the second (beside Philip Gibbs') essay that I have read which emphasized the role of consistency in arriving at more . It seems to me that if you consider the action for the Universe as a whole from the big bang to the present in a path integral context it already implies the global consistency principle (could there be any inconsistent, as opposed to incompatible, paths contributing to the action?).

I have to wrap my mind around the proposition that the universe might at the most fundamental level be based on a contradiction. Years ago, I had considered it as mechanism for creating time: Say, you find the statement to have a truth value of T. Then immediately, it is F, thus, the next instant is created because the determination of the new truth value occurred in sequence, and of course it doesn't stop there but goes on.

I did not develop this idea further because I was not sure that it was the right track, but perhaps there is something to it. One concern that comes to my mind is that the zero axiom undermines the global consistency condition. Why should the universe be globally self-consistent if it is at its very roots based on a contradiction?

Anyway, I thought this was a thought-provoking essay. I wish you all the best especially because I recall that last year it does not appear you were treated fairly.

Armin

Dear Cristi, Excellent work. We have similar concepts with big caveats: First, yours is Axiom Zero and mine is the Original zero(00,1,-1), our Ancestor FAPAMA Qbit as Planck's matrix of all matter and as the Maxwell infinite being with unlimited storage to store all accumulated qbits, so that no qbi/bit will ever be deleted and our Multiverse thus does not generate even a single bit of entropy or ΔS = 0. This Qbit is Pythagorean in steriod: All things are one Qbit. This Qbit is the one and only singularity Qbit Multiverse that projects its computations in the form of Einstein complex coordinates onto our event horizon Multiverse which is Minkowski Null geometrics in the zero dimension of Lm. Second, your Axiom Zero lives outside of our universe whereas the Qbit is our Multiverse/Existence as the empty set that contains itself. You wrote: "The two are mutually compatible, because axiom zero indeed introduces contradiction, but never within the same universe. The logical consistency principle forbids a proposition and its negation to be true within the same universe, they can only be true in distinct universes. As I wrote in the essay, "Axiom Zero gives birth to each possible universe (because of the principle of explosion [...]), but it is not part of any of these universes, because this would contradict logical consistency." Third, we agree that our Existence must be onsistent. Mine derived from the fact that Existence must obey Gelmann's principle of conservation laws. Fourth, KQID has another secret mechanism under our nose but it is too obvious to be noticed that the Qbit is synchronized, refreshed, renewed every absolute digital time T ≤ 10^-1000seconds. Every T-moment, the Qbit is reborn, reemerged as new perfect baby without bugs. That is why our Multiverse has never crashed like normal computers do. This explains why all existence from a bit to an atom to our universe and Multiverse are quantum entangled from the very beginning as Hooft's precondition. Fifth, I agree with the delayed choice exoeriment with one caveat that it happens in the NOW. you wrote quoting Wheeler: "Since we make our decision whether to measure the interference from the two paths or to determine which path was followed a billion or so years after the photon started its journey, we must conclude that our very act of measurement not only revealed the nature of the photon's history on its way to us, but in some sense determined that history. The past history of the universe has no more validity than is assigned by the measurements we make-now!" KQID prescribes that yes within our block Multiverse happens all-at-once per T-moment, the Qbit is free to move backward and forward and collapse the time-past-present-future into the NOW T-moment. Yes, we observed the light from billions light years ago in the NOW and this effect the time-billion years past in the NOW upon observation. It collapses the event in the NOW to make the whole Existence CONSISTENT in the NOW, not billion of years ago event. The collapse of any bits- wave function is always in the T-NOW moment ≤ 10^-1000s. If you are interested we can continue our dialogue. Finally, you cited the Tao and I cited Fu Xi who is the founder of the Tao/Dao as the founder of our digital world concept. Again, I rated your essay superb. Please give me your comment and rate my essay accordingly. Best wishes, Leo KoGuan

Dear Cristi, thanks for commenting on my essay I understand that due to space limitation my essay is hard to digest. However, harder still is to escape from our own preconceived reality as is is IS for our own frame of mind. Having said that it is good that we do have many different opinions to create an harmonious symphony in diversity. If I may explain below that KQID is not only about an operating system of Existence but also about predictions, verifications and falsifications. The KQID Ouroboros Equation of Existence: Ξ00☷ = ψτ(iLx,y,z, Lm) = KbΘln2 = hf = pc mc^2 = p^2/2m U(iLx,y,z) = 4πGρ- Kqid(ΑΘ-ΘS)gμν = (8πG/c^4)Tμν - Kqid(ΑΘ-ΘS)gμν = Τμν = E = A S ⊆ T that contains QM, KQID relativity, Landauer's bound, Planck, Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Poisson, Einstein GR with KQID dark energy equation and KQID Third Law of Multiverse as the equation of everything from physics to chemistry, law, monetary and full employment. In physics as shown in my essay, this equation explains the Bit Bang, not Big Bang, plus its partner the Bit Crush and we can estimate the temperature about 7.8 x10^126K in the first burst at 1.43478x10^-147 seconds with the wavelength λ = 4.3x10^-139 meter, moreover when A = S our universe will inevitably start its contraction and acceleration to a Bit Crush sometime hundreds of trillions years later thatI also calculated in two different ways. As you can see I made specific predictions with specific numbers that can easily be falsified later by experiments. We are the seekers of the truth and paraphrasing the great Carl Sagan, we are the Qbit's way to know itself and to evolve as a renewed Qbit every absolute digital time T≤10^-1000seconds. We are brothers and sisters literally in our human senses but actually we are one in our Ancestor Qbit reality. I really enjoyed reading your superb essay and we must continue our discussions and I do have several KoGuan Institutes at Tsing Hua, Peking University as well as KoGuan Law School at Shanghai Jiaotong University that I can invite you as a post PhD fellow. Best regards, Leo KoGuan

Dear Cristi

I apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not yet read or rated my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes,

Vladimir

Dear Cristinel,

Thanks for writing a very well knit essay in which you have nicely elucidated the relationship between It and Bit.

Best regards,

Sreenath

Dear Cristi,

I read with interest your very profound essay. The idea is very original. It is good that you use pictures. As Alexander said Zenkin in his article "The scientific counter-revolution in mathematics»: «the truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence ». But for some reason many mathematicians do not agree with this conclusion A.Zenkin. I think you and I are close in spirit to the study.

Best regards,

Vladimir

Hi Cristi,

Great essay! A lot of excellent hard work clearly went into it. I should have followed your lead and actually explained Wheeler's motivation and position on these questions; you did a superb job on that front, and I especially liked that you played up the retrocausal implications that Wheeler tried to resist.

And most of the rest was great as well. As you noted over on my thread, we're both coming from almost the exact same direction on these problems. In fact, with the exception of page 5 (which I'll nitpick on below) and the Zero Axiom (which I simply don't get), I'm in near-agreement with everything here.

I'll point out that your "global consistency condition", along with your whole point of having many "laws" to choose from, all smack strongly of the spirit behind the sum-over-all-histories/path-integral approach. Something to consider as you pursue this.

Okay, page 5. I think the main issue here is that you're conflating the standard quantum story with the story of a (potentially classical) underlying reality. If there *is* an underlying reality of which we have partial knowledge, and the Schrodinger equation is merely evolving that state of knowledge, then there may be many possible *underlying* realities, but there is still only one solution to the Schrodinger equation itself. (It's just that this solution doesn't correspond to reality; merely our state of limited knowledge.) So your phrase "possible solutions of the Schrodinger equation" is assigning a path-integral like uncertainty to standard QM that simply isn't correct. The Schrodinger equation is just as pre-deterministic as Newtonian physics, the uncertainty principle notwithstanding.

Of course, as you probably saw from my essay, I'm perfectly happy with a system of underconstrained dynamics for which there *are* many allowed solutions, but this necessarily has to be at a deeper, underlying level than standard QM, not at the level of the wavefunction itself.

And this is exactly where the rest of your essay might best inform your quantum story: it all is pointing to a scenario where the laws themselves (at the underlying level, not the epistemic quantum level) are different for different choices of measurement. (Or at least that's how I'm reading it, maybe because I also advocate such a scenario... :-) To make it all work (given Bell's thm, etc.) one will need retrocausality in a block universe, but you seem mostly on board with at least the latter.

Again , great job!

Best,

Ken

Dear Cristi,

Source and Observation, is the Cause and Effect; that is in analogue with Tao. Source of information is the action in space-time continuum, in that information is the transfer of energy in particle scenario where as it is the transfer of matter with Hamiltonian in string-matter continuum scenario. Thus in particle scenario the nature information at the source is continuum whereas it is discrete at the observer as the observation is probabilistic rather than realistic. To resolve this paradox on information continuum, we ascribe a generic wave mechanics with string-matter segments in that the Delayed choice experiment is also elucidatory and thereby the string-segment nature of matter may be validated.

With best wishes

Jayakar