Hi again basudeba,

This may be the result of a mutual misunderstanding but real numbers are not discrete. Due to my lazy nature I borrowed this from wikipedia: "a real number is a value that represents a quantity along a continuous line." And to me the rest of the text in your comment seems like you have thrown in all the names of mathematical concepts you know of to make an argument without any content. It is entirely my fault that I was not able to write my essay in a way that communicated my ideas to you, but you are ranting away with things that are at best loosely connected to what I actually wrote. For example in your first comment you trail of with division by zero which was not mentioned in the essay. And Mahavira's handling of the division by zero problem isn't actually very successful. But it very interesting from a historical point of view. What I tried to do in my essay, was to argue why the foundations of the universe is discrete and finite and how it can be possible to use this knowledge to

explore the universe from the bottom and up.

Regards

Kjetil

Hi Akinbo,

I really like the monad idea and I think your essay was elegantly written (I've only had time to skim through it now but will read it closer later today). I think the idea of finding the simplest way to describe a phenomena is very central. Thanks for pointing me to the Leibniz text

Regards

Kjetil

Dear Sir,

You must be really lazy. For in the Wikipedia, you missed "These descriptions of the real numbers are not sufficiently rigorous by the modern standards of pure mathematics" in the beginning of the next para. With this ostrich like behavior, we wonder, how far you can go. Please stop insulting others for your lack of understanding. We terminate this correspondence here.

Regards,

basudeba

Hi Koorosh,

With a discrete universe I mean that there is a smallest unit which cannot be divided. These smallest bits are connected though relations between them. How these bits are related define space, matter and forces. The idea is that if its possible to prove that a simple structure can express everything we observe, them this has to be the universes fundamental building block. (I think that is possible but I certainly haven't proven that yet)

5 days later

Dear Kjetil

I agree with your notions of building blocks. I think serious physicists have to explore such a way. As such theories develop however, they have to explain many things... its a big job! I too start with a building block proposed here: Beautiful Universe Theory . Also Franklin Hu in this contest and I agree with him that the time dimension is derivative from a universal 'tick'. Others in the past have chosen a tetrahedral building block. I feel a binary building block may be too simplistic because it needs to explain Planck's (h) which is in units of angular momentum. Did Wheeler deal with (h) in his suggestion?

Whatever the case the devil, they say, is in the details...the Universe took 13 billion years to use its supposed building block...and we have to do it in one lifetime!

Best wishes

Vladimir

Dear Vladimir,

it is so good to hear others thinking about these issues. (And thanks for pointing out Franklins essay) I haven't had time to read the whole of the Beautiful Universe Theory yet - it was a lot - but I like the way the idea goes. Even though we may have somewhat different views. I believe that the bottom up approach can and will be very useful, but it may very well turn out to be too complicated to actually get any useful results.

And it may turn out that the binary building block is to simplistic but I think that as a logical smallest unit it may be even smaller than planck units describing structures with the right properties and functionality to match our experimentally verified view of physics. The smallest bit could for example make up strings in string theory and the interactions between them could be the strings oscillations. Angular momentum is in itself an interesting construct. Somehow it has to be a kind of loop of interactions i think. I'm not aware of how Wheeler dealt with this, though I'm sure he must have given it a lot of thought.

I think that to really advance with this bottom up approach we need much more mathematics than I can offer. But it may be possible to start with proving that a smallest bit construct can represent everything we can throw on it. It may be fruitful to start with things we think should be impossible to represent - in order to have as few cycles of trying out versions of the smallest bits. For example I don't think one relation from each bit will work, as it will be kind of single threaded, but right now I don't know so it has to be proven that it wont work. And then we there are about 20 orders of magnitude from the size of the proton to planck length, so it should be enough elbow room to conjure up considerable complexity. It may not be possible to do this in one life time but cooperating the efforts will certainly help.

PS. Your 3DD stuff is very, very cool.

Best regards

Kjetil

6 days later

Dear Kjetil

Thank you for your nice response, for confirming some things either you or I mentioned. Physics has become so 'obese' with top-heavy and too-imaginary ideas that a new approach in tiny realistic 'fundamental' steps should be tried.

I am happy you liked the 3DD - it is of course a wholly non-digital approach 0- but its been some 3 decades since I practically stopped the 3DD development because I thought digital versions would be immediaely adopted. Instead we now have 3D graphics but it is very different from what I imagined.

By the way I found out that J.C. Maxwell the physicist made stereoscopic drawings of xyz functions!

Best wishes,

Vladimir

Hi Kjetil,

I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with you on your statement in your last paragraph which says; "The ideas presented does not actually overthrow any other theories nor make any spectacular predictions,..." You make an amazing prediction in this statement "For a temporal finite universe with a start and end, the amount of information contained in the universe must be able to change." For me that statement suggest a 'conservation of information' in the same vein as 'conservation of energy'. Energy can not be created nor destroyed only transformed. You are saying information can not be created nor destroyed only transformed. When I think I have acquired new information, it never occurred to me that information where it came from was changed in some way. Just because I can't perceive it doesn't mean it didn't happen. That is deep, deep, deep. I love it. Thanks for the enlightenment.

Jim Akerlund

    Dear Kjetil

    A very specific idea and the reality, but is probably need to develop as a methods to more detailed conclusions.

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

    Hi Jim,

    I'm delighted to hear that you enjoyed my essay. Thanks for your kind words.

    Kjetil

    Dear Hoang,

    I agree that I need to develop ideas much further. (To reach your absolute if at all possible) It is a work in progress, and I probably need to delve deep into maths to reach concise conclusions. Probably much more than I can hope to learn in my lifetime I'm afraid.

    Best regards

    Kjetil

    10 days later

    Hi Kjetil,

    Nice essay. I also agree that the universe is just made of bits (in my case it is existence/non-existence bits). I have also worked in the IT industry although I was not a programmer.

    I have developped a theory that you might like, the start of it is in my essay, the complete theory is here: 3D Universe Theory. If you read it, it would be great to have your comments.

    Cheers,

    Patrick

    4 days later

    Kjetil,

    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

    12 days later

    Dear Kjetil,

    I have re - reading our comments (in my forum) and your essay also. I am thinking that now we can mutually resumed our opinions and formulated those. Please find time and tell your opinion on this matter. You can email me (from my essay) I hope on your response.

    Sincerely,

    George

    Dear Kjetil. Hello, and 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 my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes.

    Vladimir

    Hi Kjetil,

    I appreciate your willingness to think through these fundamental questions. You wrote:

    1. "The first thing that strikes me is that the information density in a continous universe is infinite."

    If you limit how tightly "curved" the universe can be then the information density can also stay finite.

    2. "Every attempt to discuss how our universe works runs into serious trouble when trying to work out how it started with very low entropy."

    Essayist Royce Haynes has a nice description of an initial scenario starting with zero entropy.

    My own essay Software Cosmos considers what we can determine about the universe if we assume it is a kind of virtual reality. In fact, I am able to construct (and carry out) an observational test to determine if we currently live in such a simulated world.

    Hugh

    Dear Kjetil,

    I like thought experiments and agree we ought to think about what the universe's smallest element must be and how it might be possible to build the universe from it.

    Also as you argue that the Universe is spatial finite and probably temporal finite, I think you tie both points together well.

    Pre-Big Bang the Universe was certainly finite spatially and temporally. This point in existence ought to then give us clues about the nature of the most basic building block.

    Please take a look at my essay, as our subjects may loosely overlap.

    Well done and best wishes for the contest,

    Antony

    14 days later

    Hello Kjetil,

    We corresponded before on this blog. You must have read my essay. Following additional insights gained from interacting with FQXi community members, including your respected self, perhaps you will like to view the judgement in the case of Atomistic Enterprises Inc. vs. Plato & OrsAtomistic Enterprises Inc. vs. Plato & Ors delivered on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 11:39 GMT. Thanks.

    Akinbo

    Kjetil,

    Nice fundamental approach, nicely organised and argued, but not seeming to penetrate any new ground. However, I think it does so subtly. You refer to;

    "elegant algorithms that explain everything with infinite resolution." and it does indeed seem to be the infinite resolution of the 'noise' between the 'wave peak' bits we use now that will provide the answers we need.

    Also you say; "Every value that means anything for the universe is something rather than nothing." When applied to Godel's n-valued logic, this gives a Bayesian 'probability' distribution of values, that must mean something, not the nothing QM currently assumes.

    I think you may enjoy reading my essay, and hope you do (I need the points)!). It constructs a realist ontology, is jargon-free (well ..'largely'!) and does have some rave reviews I could quote (ignore the off-putting Abstract).

    Hope you get the chance.

    Q; Is a spinning dipole 'donut' (torus), moving along its's axis (so describing a helix over time, corresponding to a 2D wave), a particle? or a wave?

    Well done for yours. Best wishes

    Peter