THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING & THE ITSY QUBITSY UNIVERSE by Vladimir F. Tamari

John

No. You cannot physically affect what is happening, because it has happened. What your action does is cause a different happening in the sequence from what would have otherwise occurred. But that is the same for any cause. Whatever prevails (happens) becomes a cause of what happens next, having been itself the outcome of a previous such circumstance. The point is it is not what could have prevailed, but what did, ie there is no future to affect, it is not pre-existent. The only "inherently subjective perspective" is the fact that there is a possibility of an alternative existence to the one we can know of. But since we cannot know of it, then that is irrelevant in science. And we must restrict ourselves to what is knowable, that being a function of an identifiable physical process and not some philosophical ramblings.

Paul

Vladimir

Indeed. If you start off with incorrect presumptions about the nature of physical existence then you are going to reverse up a blind alley!

Paul

Quite right too Vladimir.

Joe, light is just a physical entity, but with the evolution of sight we see with it. It does not have any other particular significance in physical existence. It may not be the fastest travelling entity in existence. It certainly does not travel at the same speed in all circumstances, though its starting speed is always the same because it is the result of an interaction, not a collision, ie the speed of that which it interacts with, which then results in a light representation thereof, is irrelevant. And like anything else its speed would remain constant in vacuo, but we do not live in vacuo.

Paul

Hi Vladimir,

Very interesting essay with beautiful and smart drawings - especially 'the five blind men and the elephant'. Congratulations!

It seems to me we have a lot in common and only sometimes we use different names. E.g. your 'Cloud of Unknowing' is what I call H. Sapiens' perception. Nature (IT) I call a Platonic entity because we do not have direct access to it but only through our perception (Cloud of Unknowing) etc.

Referring to a cave dweller: since she was not able to explain the nature, she has been inferring the existence of some invisible forces being in charge. The most likely that way religions have been born. At the present time, Newton's law of gravity (with GR corrections) has been well-established on spatial scales from the order of millimeters out to solar system scale. However at much larger distances all tests have been found to fail. Where Einstein's equations failed, researchers (trying to save them!) have been looking for dark forces (dark energy and matter) to explain the lack of 95.5% (almost all) of the content of universe. Could we therefore consider that belief in dark forces to be a kind of modern religion? Something that cannot be proved or falsified, but the vast majority are believers?

In my opinion looking for the foundations, we should abandon the temple of dark forces and return to the laboratory and the department of mathematics. I would bet the crucial task is to find an appropriate metric, being not only spatial but temporal scale invariant too. Why a metric? I propose the strongest equivalence principle claiming that any interaction is entirely geometrical by nature (that is, the metric alone determines the effect of the interaction). The metric should be foundational in one and the same system from the order of quanta out to the universe itself, for the entire observable time scale and ... falsifiable. Obviously assuming that such a metric exists it would change GR and QM.

You claim that Nature and information can be regarded as one and the same thing. I think it depends on definitions of Nature and information. For me both are manifestations of the spacetime geometry so in that sense I would agree. However the lattice of nodes arrayed as in the cluster does not convince me. Maybe this is a good thing that not everyone agree in everything.

And finally I have to refer to Einstein's SR. It indicates that our reference frame is not the one and not the most important one but only a one out of infinity of other reference frames. So I guess Einstein was not so wrong.

Dear Vladimir,

I very much enjoyed reading your wonderful, clarifying and funny essay! You definitely make the cloud of unnowing become more transparent. But I cannot agree about the universe being a quantum computer - not even a kind of. As little as it is a kind of hammer. This opinion is a "Baconian Idol" of mine. Perhaps, as such, it adds dust to my personal cloud of unknowing. But I take the risk.

Best regards!

Inger Stjernqvist

Vladimir,

Your gracious comments are much appreciated. The main point I wished to make about light was that it must be the absolute of speed only because light is actually the only stationary substance in the Universe. You will note that I did not list an absolute of inertia.

Dear Vladimir!

Sorry - careless me - for mixing up sort of with kind of. For my "Baconian Idol" (perhaps it has bad cholesterol) see Francis Bacon's Novum Organum Scientium (1640) about how our prejudices (Bacon calls them Idols) stand in the way for our capacity to know; adding to our cloud of unknowing.

Thank you for asking, but no, I'm not going to write any contest essay this year. I'm still busy reading and re-reading essays and conversations from last year, trying to put together a meta-essay about what I learn from it.

My very best wishes to you in this contest!

Inger

Vladimir: how is your essay's basic point, the "cloud of unknowing", any different from Immanuel Kant's famous distinction in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) between the phenomenal (things as they appear to us) and the noumenal (things in themselves)? As far as I can tell, you're just giving the same argument: that, due to the nature of measurement, we can only know things as they appear to us never how they are in themselves. Am I missing something? If so, what?

1. Why the bad rep. on S.R.? The theory tries to conserve the laws of nature from one frame to another, not make them subjective. This is the root of that limited theory of constant uniform motion. The Principle of Relativity is not doubted by anyone reasonable. Everything feels like it has a price to it. It's a price I'll pay, even with death.

2. What's so bad about being not absolute? It could be that reality really is not absolute, without this being from derived error (i.e. a triangle not observed doesn't necessarily have 3 straight lines with angles adding up to 180 degrees).

3. About nature dealing only with itself, just because something is self contained, I don't see that as being a reason for saying that's the whole story. That which is unseen is still real.

4. The platform you're building your computer on seems right, about the circular momentum, but the rigidity seems to dodge the real question with strictness.

Vladimir/Marcus

The point here is, irrespective of whether Vladimir is saying that, this distinction is spurious.

We only know of existence as it appears to us. That is, for us, physical existence. We cannot know of it in any other form. Whether there is another form or not. We are trapped in an existentially closed system. And science must concentrate on that, which is manifest to us by a simple physical process, ie the receipt of physical input. So does the brick wall next to you, but that has not been enabled by evolution, to be aware of it, ie subsequently process that. The physical circumstance is the same.

This distinction arises from a confusion as to what constitutes physical existence. It is what is potentially knowable to us. There may be alternatives, because, if A there is always the logical possibility of not-A. But we cannot know what we cannot know. Science is about the knowable, religion, and in many cases philosophy, involve belief.

Paul

Vladimir F. Tamari,

"Information is an artifact of human thought imposed on Nature to describe some of its aspects."

After reading your essay, I think that you say more than this sentence reflects. However, each time I read it, I question why you said it in your introduction. It reads like a conclusion. Yet, it suggests to me that you are not speaking about nature's information but, rather, about interpretation.

"Information about Reality, including BITs, is an artificial concept obtained by sentient observers who sample Reality (IT) using various very limited aspects of it through the senses or scientific instruments. This imperfect input is processed through various neurological, logical and mathematical means to form a concept, idea or image of the original. Fundamental Reality is diluted, distorted or lost. The process is exemplified by an optical imaging situation where the object (Reality) emits or reflects light (Information) to create an Image. In the case of an ideal lens the image is almost identical to the object, but most other situations involve imperfect instruments and fallible human perception and understanding. The image is often imperfect, and its interpretation heavily biased by the cultural, philosophical or even religious beliefs and preconceptions of the time."

Could you please give your opinion of this statement of mine: I think that this may be viewed in a different manner giving the opposite conclusion. The information we receive arrives in a storm of wildly mixed photons from innumerable sources and directions. The lenses and other interrupting devices do not, I think, pass on images. They pass on an alterred arrangement of that mix of photons. It is the processing that our minds do to it that draws a possible image out of the mix and forms it into a picture. I see that picture as being most usually an improvement of the information that was received. Our minds choose what to make of the information and proceed to make it.

You mentioned intuition in another part of your essay. What is 'intuition' in your view?

"Nature and information can then be regarded as one and the same thing. The state of the nodes on the surface of a volume of such nodes is the result of interference-like effects of all the nodes within, affirming the Holographic Principle. Another way of putting it is that the Universe is a sort of quantum computer. In this paradigm the Question can be readily answered: In the Universe it is neither IT from BIT nor BIT from IT, but rather IT=QUBIT."

The first part "Nature and information can then be regarded as one and the same thing. ..." seems to me to be questionable. Particles generate information and that information is delivered to us. The particles are not the information. I think you mean something other than what I read into your words. I know your paragraph is explaining your view, but, I don't see how it fits with nature. Nature no doubt computes but it cannot be a computer. Nature has the property of 'understanding'.

I have expressed opinions of mine, but, it is your opinion I am interested in reading. Whatever you think about what I have said would be appreciated to learn.

James Putnam

Thank you Sir Vladimir for the replies to my confused probing. After reading your paper that you linked in your reply, I think it's now evident at least that my statement on momentum meant more to you (mathematically and with working familiarity) than I knew at the time. That is the great risk in talking to a mind, one never knows exactly how much lies in there unknown or unexpressed.

With a little fuzz still left after the read.