It from Bit or Bit from It? Maybe, It Doesn't Matter by Roger Granet

Dear Roger,

Very interesting ideas you bring up and certainly worth studying. I had looked at the sphere possibility but discarded it in the past. I may reconsider this given the way you put the idea.

But... there are still some conceptual problems. You talk of "exert pressure", "prevented from...", etc. According to Newton's third law, only something that has mass can exert pressure or prevent another thing from changing its shape.

Then overnight I considered your grouping of spherical building blocks, in day to day thinking there will be space between them. If those spaces are non-existent how can their spherical shape be attributed to them? The spherical shape is CONTINGENT on the EXISTENCE of something between them.

Your analogy of books is very good and easy to understand with familiar things. Even then SPACE an existent separates the covers of the two books. If nothing existent lies between the covers, the two covers will be one cover.So books can be separated, but when it now comes to space, THE SEPARATOR itself, what will SEPARATE it, when it has a discrete representation? Who can we look up to to do the separation for us? What does not exist cannot separate it. Although for the universe as a whole I agree with you that the non-existent can be its boundary. These difficulties have tantalized philosophers for a long time, (i.e. One or Many). You can enjoy a writing on Parmenides/Zeno [link:classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.1b.txt]

Best regards,

Akinbo

Dear Sir,

We were highly impressed by your reply - at least you have taken our post in the right spirit and have not turned abusive for questioning some of your views. Perhaps it is because you are from a different discipline, where physical experimentation leads theory - not fantasy and fiction. We recommend you to kindly read our essay. May be you will get more ideas.

Regards,

basudeba.

Just a few lines before going out for a beer...

I wont swear at the present time that monads have no mass but I will want to believe that mass may be a derived attribute.

In the ordinary meaning, anytime the word 'separate' is used I cant see how space can be removed from that word no matter how little the space is. And 'not separate' means together as one unit fundamental block. It is this difficulty that made Parmenides and Zeno insist that there is only ONE and not MANY (see

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.1b.txt, http://www.iep.utm.edu/zeno-par/, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno, Wikipedia

Then something occurred to me, a fundamental thing should have no parts?

If so, part of the spheres touch another sphere while another part doesnt touch any. This would negate the notion that there should be no geometric parts to the fundamental building block, i.e. here is a part touching a sphere and here is another not touching any.

I am doing more dialectic and 'reductio ad absurdum' type discussion on your blog because your sphere idea looks very natural...

Bye for now.

Hello Roger.

This is my first contribution to this forum, in fact, any forum, and I chose your essay because it strikes a chord with some of my own thinking. I intend to enter my own essay next week; just crossing t's and dotting i's at present. What I'm struggling with in your essay, though, is how to interpret "existent state", does it mean primordial form with substance, or just primordial form? I ask this question because "Philosophical Engineering", whatever that may mean, would have you determine which came first, the form or the substance. In philosophy the term à priori refers to that which precedes, and the grand master of its use, Emmanuel Kant, associates pure à priori with form, but even he can not do away with substance. I would also like to ask you, since you mentioned faith, and indeed anyone else who may whish to answer this question, whether it is realistic to believe we can answer the essay question without treading on the toes of theology? Is it that the site does not sanction essays with implications for theology?

ZM

Dear Sir,

Our essay has been published on May 31. You are welcome to review it.

Regards,

basudeba

Roger,

What a wonderful dose of realism, right out of the top drawer. I liked your 'philosophical engineering', though I'd anticipate a few here won't! I used philosophical realism last year (and real 3D properties of state this year in fact) but reality is seen as anti mathematics so has a mixed reception. I agree entirely a real 3D existent state.

What I disagree with is a simple sphere, and I cite a lot of real modern optics to logically propose another continuously curved form, the torus, though emissions are spherical (infinitely many interacting expanding 'spherelets' in fact!) However, when toroids combine to form massive particles there would also be a spherical 'surface'. But the important think is I apply it physically to solve a bit paradox, so I hope that excites you to read it and give me your views. (I also 'split off' and shed metaphysics!).

Well done for yours, nice and easy to read. I don't care if it was a bit short, in fact I probably tried to cram too much into mine building the case so it may be more work to read! Your's deserves not to be languishing and I'll be helping when I score it. Long live physical reality!

Best of luck

Peter

Roger,

Thanks for your reply. I had a feeling that you were speaking of substance, and now that I know, I like your essay even more. I agree that the word "abstract" as it is used by mathematics and metaphysics has had its day. With the advent of the standard model in physics, and advanced imaging of neurons and their functionality, there is little left to play with in the metaphysics toy box. And the flights of fancy of mathematicians is all to obvious, even for the rock star variety. I look forward to rating you essay when I figure out a structured way to do so, and for that need to look at a few more first.

Many Thanks

Zoran

Hi, Roger!

Your line of thinking, I fully support. Quite timely to raise the question: «What is the fundamental building block of existence?»

I agree with your conclusion: «Based on this, I suggest that more and faster progress towards a deeper understanding of the nature of existence could be made if we argued less about whether or not to call the fundamental building block of existence an" it "or a "bit" and worked more on figuring out what the properties of a generic existent state might be and how these properties could be used to build a model of the universe. »

I would add only the dialectic - the dialectic of absolute forms of existence of matter. I invite you to see my essay. I wish you every success, Vladimir

Roger,

Nice concise and to the point. In many ways I agree; and while I emphasized the importance of Bit in my essay (i.e. how does form 'know' how to form?), I concluded my own writing w/ a similar conclusion that says both It and Bit are necessary/fundamental. I think the arguing over which is more important is somewhat pointless; because as you seem to be driving at each one sort of loses its identity/usefulness if not seen in the context of the other.

All the best,

John

Dear Roger

Yes - It from Bit or Bit from It? Maybe, It Doesn't Matter - it is important that true nature of them.

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

Hi Roger,

Nice essay. I can see that we have a similar way of thinking, keep it simple and start with a bottom-up approach.

I also started my theory with the simplest thing I could find (for me, it was a bit of two states: existence/non-existence). But if you consider this bit as a sphere and just add simple spheres around the first sphere, your world looses coherence if you suppose that all the spheres are the simplest thing (you can't apply the 4PiR2 formula anymore because your R is now 2). I have found a solution to that problem in my theory.

I think that you will understand what I mean if you read my essay. If you like my ideas then you might want to read my 3D Universe Theory.

Cheers,

Patrick