The Intelligent Bit by Peter Jackson

Wesley Hansen

Peter,

I found your essay somewhat unsettling (it actually induced a brief moment of manageable cognitive dissonance). I understand the basis of your argument and, for the most part, agree wholeheartedly; however, I lack a sufficient understanding to make an in-depth critique. What your essay has done is make me interested enough to peruse the link to your additional papers. My cognitive dissonance was generated by your dismissal of the EPR results but I understand and share your distaste for the ambiguities contained therein. So my question is this:

To my understanding, Bell's Inequalities established an either locality OR counterfactual definiteness but not locality AND counterfactual definiteness situation. Aspect's experiments, with their inherent but scientifically accepted ambiguity, tested locality and came down on the side of nonlocality; you question the veracity of this. But what about the 1994 experimental work detailed in the paper by Paul Kwiat, Harald Weinfurter, Thomas Herzog, Anton Zeilinger, and Mark Kaasevich which specifically tested and supported counterfactual definiteness? This experiment was much more amenable to statistical analysis and these results TOGETHER with the Aspect results would suggest to me that nonlocality is very much a fact of existence.

Here's where my lack of knowledge comes into play. I'm interested in your Axioms, especially number one which suggests a novel model for elementary particles (Dirk Pons and his crew have developed an intersting model for elementary particles involving an axis which you may find interesting; they call it the cordus conjecture. They've also authored a paper Circumventing Bell's Theorem? Design of a Non-Local Hidden-Variable Model with Physical Substructures which you may find interesting). So I really need to do a little more reading . . .

With regards,

Wes Hansen

pjackson

Wes,

Thanks, and for the Pons link. That's interesting as it takes the same approach, though simply 'postulates' a complex particle structure ('cordus conjecture') rather than derives one logically from experimental evidence and a coherent ontology. Most of my paper is about building that ontological construction. None the less I agreed Pon's logical analysis specific to Bell's theorem is excellent.

What I do is bring that together with all the Born Rule, Godel, von Neumann, Fuzzy Logic, 'chaos theory' aspects, including apparently Quantum Gauge Theory as I've just learned from Hugh Matlock and need to catch up with! For me it was only a falsification test of the greater 'discrete field model' (DFM) of previous essays and other papers. It kind of ran out of other things to resolve!

Let me know the best way you think there is to overcome the shock of cognitive dissonance as most of the world may have to face it soon! Could this be the start of the new era beyond the "shut up...".? I've dubbed it; "stop and think".

Do stay in touch on it.

Peter

Wesley Hansen

Peter,

Yes, the Pons Group admits they employ a "design approach" to come up with their cordus conjecture but their conjecture is fully constrained by the relevant empirical evidence; I thought you might find that it "nested" nicely within your own work. And being an inventor working almost entirely in the mechatronics field I can attest to the effectiveness of structured design techniques . . . but I'm interested, do you have your own model for elementary particles? I read your other FQXi essays and I do believe we are on a "similar" trajectory (your 2011 essay was very informative and an enjoyable read) and I certainly appreciate your basis in empirical observation or data.

Anyway, cognitive dissonance AND resonance is a valuable subject for scientific research which I feel deserves more attention (working in the environmental field I'm certain you are well aware of this). There's a sweet spot one needs to find between thick boundaried and thin boundaried: too thick and one is unable to adapt and suffers constantly from cognitive dissonance; too thin and one is susceptible to mental disorders such as schizophrenia, delusions, etc. The counter-culture psychologist, Robert Anton Wilson, wrote a book complete with exercises at the end of each chapter which was designed to help a person rewrite their software, i.e. alter the thickness of their boundaries. The book was titled Prometheus Rising, which is very suggestive, and was based on the eight-circuit consciousness model of Timothy Leary et. al. which was based on their work with experimental LSD therapy. Interestingly enough, Leary et. al. wrote a quidebook for their LSD therapy sessions called The Psychedelic Experience which was basically an abridgement of the Tibetan Bardo Thodol.

The Bardo Thodol is a guidebook designed to help monks, nuns, and laypersons navigate the Bardo state. When one is navigating the Bardo state they are subjected to a myriad of illusions or realistic hallucinations; some of these are designed to inspire revulsion or fear, hence, cognitive dissonance, and others desire, hence, cognitive resonance. The key to successfully navigating the Bardo state is to sit unmoved by both cognitive dissonance and cognitive resonance. The degree to which a monk or nun is able to do this determines the degree of their enlightenment; the degree to which a layperson is able to do this determines the nature of their re-incarnation; of course these are related.

Now I've experimented with just about every psycho-active substance out there, from LSD and other plant/fungus based hallucinogens to the Shulgin's little psychedelic creations; I've been practicing meditation, hatha yoga, mantra yoga, and pranayama for a good long time; I've maintained a somewhat strict diet, been celibate, substance free, and practiced flesh suspension and cutting since 1999; I don't have many difficulties with cognitive dissonance, I simply use it as a descriptive term, Ha, Ha, Ha . . . But the point I would make is that Western scientists could learn a thing or two about cognitive dissonance and cognitive resonance from the Himalayan masters. The psychedelic experience has similarities to but is also inferior to the meditative experience - just my opinion! The psychedelic experience can so often be neurotic and the missing key ingredient is spiritual discipline, which is to say, mental fortitude. It's no accident that the psychedelic experience occasionally leads to mental disorder as well . . . The problem, of course, is that people, westerners in particular, are so damn lazy when it comes to the spiritual. That's why contemporary religion is so popular, it's fast, convenient, and easy to digest, unfortunately it has very little nutritional value. But I ramble . . .

I feel your essay deserves a high rating and I hope that it places at least amongst the top four . . .

With regards,

Wes Hansen

Michel Planat

Dear Peter,

Thank you for helping me to float. Apart from several unfair votes this game is quite democratic at the level of exchanging deep thoughts and knowledge.

I still don't know what can ultimely be reached with this Grothendieck's dessins d'enfants. I try to extract them from the treasure trove of mathematics in the context of quantum paradoxes but I also had interesting feedbacks with a few philosophically oriented FQXi competitors, and you can find the tracks of these discussion above. The secret is in the understanding of the so-called Belyi theorem. I would have to tell more on this and display many examples to convey the beauty of the concept that has fascinated Grothendieck in his

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esquisse_d'un_Programme

Peter, I wish you not be overlooked this time.

Michel

ps: I realize that we are both born in 1951.

Jonathan Dickau

A quick comment before detailed remarks about the essay..

I've over the years given a fair amount of thought to ideas related to your 'intelligent bit' and even discussed the subject with Gerard 't Hooft at FFP10. It occurs to me that what you may be envisioning is actually what I would call an octonionic bit, which by its very nature would allow the development of procedurally evolutive forms. Just a thought. I can elaborate later.

If you haven't already; you might want to check out the essay of Michael Goodband, or compare notes with him. I asked him a related question of Michael, as I'd discussed with 't Hooft, and the end of his reply was "In a pure geometric theory with only the structure of the fabric of space, a question like, "what does the computing (over the numbers of particles)?" can only have the fundamental answer, the fabric of space - which is synonymous with the laws of physics."

Since my questions to Michael were directed at answering some of the issues raised in your essay, in terms of how his work deals with them (and it relates to the possibility raised above), it might be worth a look or a second look.

Regards,

Jonathan

Jonathan Dickau

Oh I almost forgot:

A link to

Michael Goodband's essay.

Enjoy,

Jonathan

Yuri Danoyan

Dear Peter

Reminding interesting quote

The average human being is a naive realist: i.e., like the animals, he accepts his sense impressions as direct information of reality and he is convinced that all human beings share this information. He is not aware that no way exist of establishing whether one individual impression (e.g. ,of a green tree) and that of another (of this tree) is the same and that even the word same has no meaning here.

Max Born My life & my views p.53

Every question like "What is the same information?" is tautology

Warren Mcculoch call it greatest riidle of the World.

Georgina Woodward

Hi Peter,

here to let you know I have read your essay. It was not such a hard task as I had imagined from reading your abstract. I think much more accessible than your previous two.

Interesting stuff about the excluded middle. Even with a coin toss the outcome could be seen as more than the outcome of a binary choice. There is for example the direction (N,S,W,E) in which the queen's (or other's) head points or orientation of the image on the tails side ,i.e. where (N,S,W,E) the lion faces for a UK 10p coin. There is also where in space the coin lands. Also the possibility that the coin lands on its edge suspended between heads and tails, such as if it falls into a small crack. I have seen something similar with a die which came to rest balanced on one edge. Whether it is practical to extract the additional information and make use of it is another question. Though I don't see why not in principle.I have recently read about greatly enhanced information storage in crystals, going beyond binary digital information by using different polarizations -and- the 3 dimensions of space ( if I remember correctly).

Also an interesting point about the important differences between every real macroscopic object not shared by identical mathematical entities that represent them. Joe Fisher makes the same point in his essay BITTERS talking of the uniqueness of every real thing unlike information.

Wishing you Good luck again this year, Georgina

Yuri Danoyan

Some time need remember Quotation by Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

pjackson

Yuri,

My favourite alongside Popper.

I agree; There's far too much noise in physics!

Israel Perez

Dear Peter

I'm sorry I couldn't read your essay before, I have a lot of work here with my research and it's difficult to keep up with the reading of the essays. I'm trying to do my best.

With respect to your essay I find it very interesting but I must confess that I still don't get why you use the adjective "intelligent". In what sense do you mean the qubit is intelligent? I would be glad if you could comment on this.

I also realized that you went on to discuss the problem of entanglement and the EPR paradox. I think this is a thorny topic that requires a deep understanding of the foundations of QM and I admire your braveness for addressing it straightforwardly. I think that you did a great analysis and I congratulate you. Unfortunately, I don't consider myself a specialist on this topic although I understand the main ideas. I also support locality and I believe that this kind of experiments have a more mundane explanation. I have to tell you that I dislike the spooky action at a distance but some people have found it quite natural and useful, not only in QM but in other fields.

I haven't hear before about the toroidal wavefunctions could you recommend a reference where I can see their mathematical definition.

I would recommend that you take a look at the essay of Alan Kadin who has been working for many years in the foundations of QM. He is developing a more intuitive approach to deal with entanglement. You can find some other experts in this forum too, such as George Ellis and Mauro D'Ariano. I think it'd be worth asking for their opinions.

I can see you have a great score and a great audience, thanks for drawing my attention to your essay, I can see why this is so. Good luck in the contest!

Best Regards

Israel

pjackson

Israel,

The word 'intelligent' is merely a comparison between the information capacity of a simple 'wave' with one binary degree of freedom; (0,1, or up/down), with the almost infinite degrees of freedom or a helix, representative of a Bloch sphere.

We can only ask the Bit one question and get a 'yes/no' answer. But the IQbit has almost infinite answers by comparison. This is why the helix is now considered so important for ultra broad(/3D)-band information channelling and quantum computing.

More importantly it is however analogous all the information we don't yet know about nature, which needs to be decoded from the higher order 'spaces' we currently see only as 'noise'. The Godel n-value distribution of 'infinite sub-sets'.

There is no formulation for 'toroidal wavefunctions' (that I know of) just the physical form of the helix geometrically time, but the toroid is ubiquitous. i.e. Toroidal Structures in Nuclii.

It's also just a 'stage' between a rotating dipole moving on it's axis and the (DNA!) double helix described.

Yes, I've discussed with Alan and Mauro, and others who understand the subtleties of the Bell inequalities. I've been shocked how few do! The clincher wasn't just resolving it without spookyness and FTL, but finding the orbital asymmetry predicted 'hidden'in Aspects data, discarded as it couldn't be explained!

Unfortunately the Bell inequality is now so deeply entrenched in doctrine it's achieved religious status and few can accept any apparent challenge! I hope it may be noticed by the judges this year (unlike the previous two 7th place finishes). Thanks for your support. I note I also hadn't rated yours which I think worth the maximum and a higher place.

Finally, I've provisionally identified at least 10 higher order spaces down to wavelength gamma, where I derive (elsewhere) the LT phyically. Can you see any possible 'hidden likenesses' with Theoroe Kaluza's conceptions?

Peter

Israel Perez

HI Peter

You: The word 'intelligent' ... .... a Bloch sphere. Ok, I got it. Thanks for the reference, I'll take a look at it.

You: Yes, I've discussed with Alan and Mauro..., ... how few do!

Yeah, not an easy topic for everyone.

You: Unfortunately the Bell inequality is now so deeply entrenched in doctrine it's achieved religious status and few can accept any apparent challenge! I hope it may be noticed by the judges this year...

Unfortunately, you're right, it's sort of a dogma. But with strong arguments and a new formulation things may change. We should persevere.

With respect to your last question, the answer is no. I don't see the direct connection, sorry I can't help with this.

Finally, I can see that you are already in the precious list, hopefully you could make to the end. Good luck!

Regards

Israel

David Reid

Overall, the main idea of your essay is good. There are a few minor mathematical points which could be cleaned up a little for a purist, but the necessary changes would not alter the points you were trying to get across, so I hope you don't mind my pointing four of them out.

[1] You state that A=A is false when interpreting = as identity because, you state, no two things are identical. But in mathematics, the first and second A are not two different things. To envision this, imagine a circular arrow where the beginning and end of the arrow are the same point A.

What you want to attack, perhaps, is the statement that it is possible that A=B where A and B are not identical.

[2] You mention phi squared as probability. Strictly, you mean the square of the absolute value of phi.

[3] You state that "In an infinite universe all probabilities are non-zero." Probabilities deal with statements, and the probability of a contradiction remains zero. What you want to say, I believe, is that the probabilities of all statements which are consistent with the rest of your system are non-zero. Or, to cite one of your references, "Everything That Can Happen Does Happen". Not everything can happen.

[4] You state that "Russel's [sic] Predicate Logic and calculus tried to derive mathematics direct from logic but ended with paradox. No logical or mathematical system claims to have overcome paradox." From the context I deduce that your use of "paradox" here refers to logical paradox (e.g., Russell's paradox). Many systems are free of paradox. The easiest ones to show are complete finite systems, but there exist also infinite ones. Not all systems meet the requirements of Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem. In a stricter statement, you would want to refer to specific systems.

A good companion piece to your essay, sharing some of the same essential points, is David Deutsch's "It from Qubit" (pp 90-102 of "Science and Ultimate Reality", ed. Barrow, Davies, & Harper, 2004)

pjackson

David,

Don't mind at all, very pleased for the suggestions. I understand and agree with them all, except, to cite Godel..(!)...;

[1] Thank you for A=B, which needs adding, but I don't claim A=A is false for mathematics. I'm thinking more of assumed commutivity, so saying that A=A mathematically is not the same as saying A=A in nature, which is false (a vector is a derivative not a physical entity) I think that's a very important hidden point. Do you agree it's valid?

[2] Yes. I'm referring to both the additional dimension per se and it's probable connection to Born's Rule.

[3] Agreed. But the 'probabilities' I'm really referring to are the 'ocurrance' quantifications in the Bayesian distribution. I discuss truth function and quantum dynamic logic in last years paper, finding the overall hierarchical structure of my underlying physical 'discrete field' model (DFM) emerges. I wonder haw we decide what 'can' and 'cannot' happen?!

[4] I refer to the well known statement "All logical systems are ultimately beset by paradox", so I think the fundamental 'systems' I refer are not in the ('subset'?) systems you refer to, correctly, as logical finite 'systems' within themselves. i.e. a common semantic matter of underspecification.

Thanks for the Deutsch link, I'll check it out. I've now read your excellent and fun essay, also helpful, and will also catch up with model theory.

Peter

David Reid

Hi, Peter,

Thanks for your responses; I enjoy a good discussion, and have responded to your comments to my essay in the corresponding place.

Could you explain which citation you mean? Gödel was a prolific writer.

Of course, these are, as I said, only small points that would only occur to a purist.

[1] First, I wholly agree with your general idea about equality, which I would break up into two parts: (a) that people use "equal" extremely loosely when they mean "equivalent to", and (b) people sloppily use "equal to" between syntactical statements and their semantic fulfilments. However, since the language of physics is mathematics, perhaps a different formulation would better satisfy those who are sticklers in matters of formalism. . (I also understand what you want to say with your example of "a vector is a derivative", as they can both be used to represent change, but you will have to explain to mathematicians in your readership that you are taking a bit of poetic liberty.)

[3] It sounds as if a formalization of your ideas would be handled in modal logic, possibly with Kripke frames.

[4] I'm afraid I don't know this quote. Although it sounds nice, you might want to make explicit the exclusion which you wrote were implicit. Basically, you are referring to systems which contain enough arithmetic that can be used as a coding mechanism to be able to produce undecidable sentences. However, first-order theories of: Boolean algebras, and of hyperbolic or Euclidean geometries, among others, are decidable, and are obviously useful in describing nature. I guess "many systems are plagued by paradox" doesn't pack the same literary punch, whence the quote you cited.

I am sure that your readers are not bothered by such small formal points, but will concentrate on the main ideas, and enjoy.

David

pjackson

Conversation continued on David's blog, finishing with these comments;

Aug 2nd;

Hi, again, Peter, I had a bit more time than anticipated today, and so was able to read your two papers that you sent me the links to. Superb! Too bad I cannot time-travel back to those years to give you tens.

My surmise (made before reading the papers) that your differentiation in speeds followed the same basis as the different between t and tau, turned out to be correct, it seems. One confusion is that there is no corresponding notation to make this differentiation for light speed. Of course, every secondary school physics curriculum in the world contains Snell's Law, so there is some idea about the difference in the speed of light in a vacuum as opposed to the speed of light in a physical medium. However, the key lies in the article "a" rather than "the" in front of the word "vacuum", and although there are many vacuums, we use the same symbol c for all of them. As you point out, epsilon_0 (the value of electric permittivity) and mu_0 (the value of magnetic permittivity) of vacuum could indeed vary in different places (which can be seen in considering false vacuums). Despite this, c is considered a global property despite the lack of a global measuring tool, as all measuring tools are perforce local.

My exposition is a bit clumsy in such a short space. Of course I do not pretend to express this as well as your articles do; I just wished to say that your papers put forward your arguments very well. Thank you for sharing them with me.

David

Aug 5th;

David,

Many thanks. It's very gratifying that there really are people out there who can understand and retain what I'm saying and what the discrete field model (DFM) is! A credit to your intellect I should say!

I've found the implications fundamental and massive. Certainly time for a new paradigm, except I think we've missed the boat as they're out of production. Do you think we could cobble one together by sprinkling a bit more mathematics on top of the papers to make them look more appetising?

I hope we can stay in touch on this.

Best wishes

Peter

Michel Planat

Dear Peter,

I copy a comment to Hughes Matlock. Have a look if it fits some of your findings. Thanks.

Michel

********************

I am quite sensitive to your (software) picture of the cosmos for the following reasons

1) First but not least, I understand it. I already met (not physically except for Carlos Castro and Laurent Noittale) most of authors you refer to.

2) Your model is relevant, interesting, of wide range and influencial.

3) The S3 sphere has several clothes (i) the conformally compactified Minkowski space, as you mention,

(ii) the single qubit (Peter Jackson call it the intelligent qubit!)

as described in quant-ph/0310053, R. Mosseri, "Two and Three Qubits Geometry and Hopf Fibrations"

with the Hopf fibration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopf_fibration

(iv) Dirac Monopole

, just to cite a few.

The Hopf fibration of S3 by great circles S1 and base space S2 is that interests me here.

This is because, in my essay, one important object is S2 (that can be seen as the Bloch sphere, the

Riemann sphere or complex projective line CP1, you can see http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1005.1997).

Many Dessins d'enfants (those of genus 0) arise from S2 (say) with three singular points 0,1 and infty.

The idea would be to lift them to S3, through the inverse Hopf map, endowed with three rigidified circles corresponding

to aforementioned singular points. I wonder is such a picture was ever imagined.

This would be an instance of your implicate to explicate projection, I suspect.

*******************

pjackson

Michel,

Thank you. Yes, I've read and commented on Hugh's essay as we have great commonality. I've picked up his links to Recursive Quantum Gauge Theory. unfortunately he seems not to be responding, so his essay will certainly end up far lower down than it should, which is a shame.

I don't know if he's read mine. How do we check with so many posts? (I see I have 100 more than you!) We need a local search facility.

Peter

KoGuan Leo

Dear Peter,

I like you idea of IQbit that is similar to KQID Ancestor FAPAMA Qbit as Planck's matrix of all matter and Maxwell's infinite being with unlimited storage capacity so that this being does not need to erase any information and we as human being as information is therefore immortal. I explained more in my thread. I am not so sure what comment to make except that your essay has very sophisticated argument and serious work of a lifetime. I admire your dedication to science and truth. I will rate it accordingly.

Congratulation for your high rated essay by your peers and admirers.

Best wishes,

Leo KoGuan

pjackson

Leo,

Thank you. I'm greatly honoured by your views. But my essay is but a glimpse of an improved foundation to build from. I hope it helps your and others work.

In my essay two years ago I estimated it would take 10 years, so 2020 for science to gain the vision as we're now so swamped by information and dogma, but I've seen more green shoots this year. Who can know?

Bless you.

Peter

[deleted]

Hello Peter

Having read quite a few of people's posts on this page, I am starting to see why you left such a positive review on my own page. We do seem to have a similar perspective of the world in many areas. That said, I haven't read your essay yet, and will do so.

I noticed the robust discussion regarding no two physical objects being identical. My GPE has been accused of being the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles in disguise, so I spent some time considering this. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) has a great page on this. Forrest finds that the PII is 'unproblematic for medium-sized objects' because they can always be distinguished by physical difference, if ever so slight. But, he comments, fundamental principles are widely held to be necessarily true: uncontingent.

The matter is complicated by quantum mechanics (French 2000 - SEP), in that we find 'fundamental particles of physics cannot be regarded as individual objects.' I think that the GPE clears this up from a rationalist standpoint, by globalizing the argument, and wonder if you agree.

The bother is, as you mentioned earlier, people are so convinced that the way they see the world is a proper rendition of the underlying reality. Kant wrote a book about it, and both he and Popper used it to show that we are all limited in our world models by it. And it ain't so, at least not for the endpoint rationalist.

pjackson

Hi Stephen,

(At least I think it's Stephen as there's no name!)

I think Basudeba understood my popint in the end (on his blog) but agree I need to explore the PII a bit more along with Lebniz Law. There's more precedent than I thought for my proposal.

I also agree the GPE certainly seems to offer good rationalisation for the anti QM view. There are also others, Walter Smilga discussing the 'rich structure', though I'm concerned at the apparent meaning of his conclusions that there's nothing beyond binary systems!

I look forward to your comments (and points) when you've actually read my essay.

Peter

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