Dear Sir,
Why write Wheeler's name as JAW, It To Bit and Bit To It as ITB:BTI and MM experiment as MMX etc., which is normally not used even in the scientific community? This cult of incomprehensibility might have been an adorable style to express one's greatness before others, but it is harming science by distancing it from common people. Simpler presentation is not despicable, but is a virtue.
If universe is a giant computer, who has created the hardware, who has developed the software and who operates it? These questions are important because it is the Foundational Questions forum and these are foundational questions. Wheeler's bit is "immaterial" - incorporeal and metaphysical, without substance or form - because he meant it as a "concept" about some material object - it. You have also admitted it when you say later that information "always resides in objects which implement information as intelligence, expressed symbolically".
The binary unit, or bit, is a message representing one of two choices: 1 or 0 - on or off - yes or no. The 'on's are coded (written in programming language) with 1 and the 'off's with 0. By themselves 1 or 0 does not mean anything. Related to a context, 1 signals some concept representing information about materials objects exists in that context and 0 means it does not exist. Thus, except signaling the availability or non- availability of something predefined, binary has no other use. You also admit it when you talk about meta code.
There are two types of physical effect that is termed reality: the first due to time evolution caused by perpetual motion (cause and effect) and the second due to application of force by a conscious agent. Information is relevant for the first type of effect except providing data for use by a conscious agent. The laws of physics, such as whether the seasons will change or not, are not determined by information. We may use that information for other purposes. In the second case, if the local equilibrium has been disturbed inducing the conscious agent to restore it, then information determines his reaction. Thus what Wheeler imagined is related to the reactions of conscious agents, whose brain functions like a super-computer. To extend this concept to natural phenomena - hence reality, except reporting it as data, is unreasonable.
According to the Church-Turing principle, every piece of physical reality can be perfectly simulated by a quantum computer. But there is difference between Reality and its simulation. Formulating a Theory of the observed (or potentially observable) events means building up a network of input-output connections between them. In a causal theory, these connections are causal links. In computer-programming language, the events are the subroutines and the causal links are the registers where information is written and read. In physical terms, the links are the systems and the events are the transformations. The computer does not function naturally, but we design and write the algorithm for the computer to function. Hence it will be a creature of our ideas and limitations - GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. Thus, the ephemeris generator has to be regularly updated like the clocks are periodically updated.
It is not correct to say that "representation of life-forms, xx cannot be modeled in physics, for no one can explain with physical laws the difference between the immaterial operations of the mind and the biochemical-neurological operations of the brain." In perception, data are the response of our sense organs to individual external stimuli. Text is the excitation of the neural network in specific regions of the brain. Spreadsheets are the memories of earlier perception. Pictures are the inertia of motion generated in memory (thought) after a fresh impulse, linking related past experiences. Voice is the disturbance created due to the disharmony between the present thought and the stored image (this or that, yes or no). Video is the net thought that emerges out of such interaction. Software is the memory. Hardware includes the neural network. Bytes and bits are the changing interactions of the sense organs (string) with their respective fields generated by the objects evolving in time.
You can read our essay for more details.
Regards,
basudeba
