Essay Abstract

The difficulty of accounting for ubiquitous, coherent order in a Universe considered by many to be ruled by random, entropic decay cannot be understated. Can the evident complexity found throughout our finely tuned Cosmos simply be the byproduct of aimless, uninformed interactions between inert substances leftover from the Big Bang? Likewise can the complex emergence/evolution of biological life on Earth be explained by similar dynamics if augmented by genetic mutation and natural selection? I will argue that this overly positivist/reductionist ontology does not hold for an orderly Universe underwritten by linear, irreversible time (as defined by Prigogine). If the Universe is no older than 15 billion years, without Information-guided process the natural order as we know it could not and would not exist; only non-discernible chaos and endless episodes of error catastrophe would persist. Information therefore plays an essential role in underwriting the emergence of coherence and self-organizing process. The genesis of looping, autocatalytic feedback networks that give rise to order can be traced back to the accumulation of a 'Universal Systemic Memory'. It is postulated that systemic memory/information can be stored dynamically within A) The vibratory spectrum of substances themselves, and B) The highly ordered wave-structure of the quantum vacuum. Universal, Information-driven process/evolution appears to be the rule and not the exception.

Author Bio

John was born and raised in Upstate New York. A self-proclaimed Natural Philosopher and autodidact, he attained his undergraduate degree in History Education in 2007. Believing truth and authenticity are the only things worth pursuing, most of his days revolve around such aims.

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Lev,

Thank you for drawing my attention to the congruities in our submissions. I read your essay and really enjoyed it. While they certainly branch off in different directions, our core message is quite similar (though you certainly approach it from what I'd consider a more sophisticated perspective).

If you get the opportunity to read mine through do let me know what you think and pose any question(s) you deem relevant. Take care!

Hi John,

We have got a lot in common (esp. in the area of self-organized critical systems that naturally evolve without fine tuning to critical states) but I would like to get some clarification of your concept and to propose some modifications.

"I assert here that while a critical density of diversity is certainly a key-component in the spontaneous emergence of self-organization, a critical density of Information is also required." Could you explain what is the difference between diversity and Information?

"As we now know even at absolute-zero Kelvin all known particles (as well as the bonds between them) within a quantum lattice continue to vibrate/oscillate and exchange Information about their states." The problem is that we cannot know because we are not able to reach absolute-zero Kelvin. We are close to but we cannot get it.

"the wave-signals going between TF (A) and TF (B) are propagating through the medium of space, interfering with one another, and therefore embedding their Information into the 'quantum foam' of the vacuum." What are the waves made of and what is the vacuum? My proposal is that the vacuum is the conformally flat spacetime having elastic properties and the waves are deformations of the spacetime. Than Information can be stored within the spacetime. Then the quantum foam is just a wave-interference. If the quantum vacuum is the same as the conformally flat spacetime than it is absolutely highly ordered.

Your Bohm's citation's emphasis: "the effect of the quantum field depends only on the form and not the intensity" For me it means that the geometry (form) is the key. Information and substance are the same thing i.e. spacetime deformations (wavepackests) evolving in time and interacting as self-organized critical system. I have just applied the theory of Darwinism beyond its original sphere of organic evolution on Earth. More details in my essay and references.

Best regards

    1)"Critical Diversity vs. Critical Information": Fair question. Within the context of my essay it goes without saying that Diversity would not exist without Information; so in a sense Diversity is comprised of Information (which would make my claim seem circular/redundant at first glance). However, when a diversity of physical substances comes together there is also an Information exchange between them. This is what I mean by a critical density of Information accumulation during the self-organizing process. I postulate that through vibratory Information-exchange (similar to carbon and beryllium entering into resonant communication during the formation of stars) substances 'learn' to 'cooperate' with each other. Without Information (acting as a sort of 'medium of exchange') the substances would remain inert and inactive. This is a form of Information exchange that happens purely on the explicit level, whereas the emergence of Diversity within a singular object/substance in the first place is a different type of Information-exchange that takes place between the singular explicit substance and the implicit Information Field exclusively.

    2)"The problem is that we cannot know because we are not able to reach absolute-zero Kelvin. We are close to but we cannot get it."

    I could be wrong, but I'm not entirely convinced of that:

    "All quantum mechanical systems undergo fluctuations even in their ground state and have an associated zero-point energy...This results in motion even at absolute zero. For example, liquid helium does not freeze under atmospheric pressure at any temperature because of its zero-point energy..."

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

    "...nothing can be colder than absolute zero on the Kelvin scale. [However] Physicists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have now created an atomic gas in the laboratory that nonetheless has negative Kelvin values. These negative absolute temperatures have several apparently absurd consequences..."

    Source: http://www.mpg.de/6776082/negative_absolute_temperature

    3)"What are the waves made of and what is the vacuum?"

    While of course my description encompasses all known EM-Waves (and theoretical Gravity-Waves), as to what they are at root level is difficult to speculate on. What I can say is that their geometric properties are a byproduct of some sort of 'mind-like' Information Field that allows them to develop their form/geometry (and therefore acquire meaning) in the first place.

    I agree with your intuition that the 'quantum foam' is an epiphenomenon of sort originating from a deeper underlying vacuum-structure. Whether the vacuum structure is defined purely by charge-density, a neutral manifold/lattice structure (however you want to qualify that), or some combination of both is hard to say, but if I had to guess it is likely some mixture of the two. I can however certainly appreciate your characterization of this sub-structure as a purely 'neutral' elastic manifold that gives rise to the fundamentals of Nature (i.e. similar to what Mendel Sachs would have likely derived from his Quaternion GR Theory).

    I suppose at its heart I conceive of the sub-structure more as an underlying fractal/holographic 'Potential Field' (formalized mathematically as the Quantum Potential and demonstrated experimentally by the Ahranov-Bohm Effect). You can sort of envision this substructure as an ordered, Brusselator-like gradient system (reaction-diffusion, oscillating, kinetic) that is the seat/embodiment of primordial Information that then distributes it throughout the known Universe instantaneously (which then gives rise to coherence via self-organization).

    4)"For me it means that the geometry (form) is the key. Information and substance are the same thing"

    While they certainly require one another, let me again quote from my introduction, "As a general rule Substance does the work of Information". So in other words I give the slight edge to Information, as did Bohm when he said, "I'm saying it's both; but information contributes fundamentally to the qualities of substance."

    Thank you so much for your pointed questions/remarks and I hope these qualify as satisfactory replies. All the best.

    Joe,

    Thanks for posting/contributing. I appreciate your willingness to initiate conversations in a lot of essay threads and I respect your 'emperor wears no clothes' critique of our fragile/fallible human perception to fully grasp what all 'This' 'Is'.

    Regards and Take Care.

    Dear John,

    The points 1), 3) and 4) are controversial and we probably will not agree but 2) is not controversial and needs an urgent clarification.

    You have cited a piece of the abstract (out of context) that possibly guides to a misconception.

    Inside the paper you have cited http://www.mpg.de/6776082/negative_absolute_temperature

    the physicist explains: "The inverted Boltzmann distribution is the hallmark of negative absolute temperature; and this is what we have achieved," says Ulrich Schneider. "Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter"

    In the wikipedia article in turn that you have cited you can find also some later explanation:

    "As a scientific concept, the existence of zero-point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is. Over the years, there have been numerous claims of devices capable of extracting usable zero-point energy. None of the claims have ever been confirmed by the scientific community at large, and most of these claims are dismissed either by default, after third party inspection of such a device or based on disbelief in the viability of a technical design and theoretical corroboration. Current claims to zero-point-energy-based power generation systems are considered pseudoscience by the scientific community at large."

    Best regards

    Hello, dear John!

    Wonderful essay and profound ideas! Our views are very close, especially with regard to mainstreaming the category "memory" in the Universe: Your idea of «Recurrent Systemic Memory (RSM)» and my «Ontological Memory (structural)". Great idea - 'Information-Potential' to all levels of reality. Of course, the competition FQXi - is primarily a competition for new ideas! Good luck in the contest! Regards, Vladimir

      Jacek,

      I'm not proposing anything about 'tapping' 'zero-point energy'; my claims about matter's interaction w/ the zero-point ground state of the quantum vacuum is not in the slightest bit controversial within the scientific community. Not sure what your posting about 'free energy' devices was meant to insinuate/accomplish. The Casmir Effect and Lamb Shift are both widely considered to be byproducts of ZPGS interaction. Also Heisenberg Uncertainty demands jitter-motion even at a hypothetical absolute zero; so whether we've 'really gotten there' experimentally is somewhat beside, unless you want to argue that Heisenberg Uncertainty is fallacious.

      http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/56170/absolute-zero-and-heisenberg-uncertainty-principle

      Thank you again for engaging me on these topics, I really appreciate the discussion. Do not hesitate to keep posting.

      Best,

      John

      Vlad,

      Thank you so much for that glowing endorsement. I read your essay as well and really like your overall presentation and term 'OntoMemory'; definitely similar to RSM (unfortunately not my invention). I noticed something interesting in your paper:

      "As a result it was determined that the structure of language as a "house of Being" is "linear-wave-vortex"."

      Now let me quote you something from a paper by acoustical engineer Richard Merrick:

      "While analyzing large libraries of electronic documents in a search engine I was working on (ironically named DARWIN for DAta Retrieval With INtelligence), my engineering team found that the frequency of word occurrences would always

      sort into a Poisson distribution. We found this to be true regardless

      of language or subject matter - even computer languages fit into

      the curve. It was just after this that it finally dawned on me that

      anything I or anyone else ever said or thought would always fall

      into this universal harmonic pattern after a minute or two, as long

      as it was semantically coherent."

      http://interferencetheory.com/HarmonicTheory/HarmonicEvolution/page8.html

      All the best,

      John

      John,

      I'd just like to congratulate you on a very interesting approach to your essay. I could almost imagine it being narrated on television. It already looks like an article fit to be published. There was a nice balance of illustration, quotes and left the reader unable to stop. Thanks again for commenting on my essay.

      Well done!

      Antony

        John,

        A definition of information practically requires a theory of everything--from what exists, to how it evolves to produce humans and their minds. Information and meaning are terms that refer specifically to aspects of our mental functioning, of our linguistic representational system. They are not inherent in lower levels of Cosmic organization--but something analogous to them is.

        You're right, one can't explain Cosmic evolution with just a bunch of similar particles flying around in space. Since atomism hasn't explained anything, people continue to resort to mysticism. We can do better.

        When I tried to figure out how all this complexity arose in the Cosmos, I started with Einstein's mass-energy and space-time (MEST). Having studied some philosophy, I quickly realized that relativity was subjectivistic and MEST was only measurements, made by the observer, with his rods and clocks, in his frame. MEST is certainly not the primordial "stuff" of the Cosmos. I exchanged MEST for physical space and its evolution. I realized that because we have no theory of physics, we cannot form any theory of what exists and how it evolves. Also, we cannot use any of the ideas spawned by observer-physics in our quest to understand the world. We must the data, but toss out Bell's inequality, photons, entanglement, space-time, singularities, infinities, etc.

        The rough outline I made up when I first tried to describe Cosmic evolution can be found here:

        http://henrylindner.net/Writings/Hierarchical.html

        It shows that the evolution of life described by Darwin is just one of many similar events of emergent evolution in the history of the Cosmos. The recurrent theme is that entities at one level of complexity, in the right circumstances, can interact in a new way that produces a whole new level of complexity, of being. Consider the 3 subatomic particles, and how they contain the structure necessary to form 98 atoms, and these contain the necessary structure to arrange themselves into thousands, indeed millions of different natural molecules. I would not say that "information" makes this possible, I would say that it is the inherent complexity of the substrate of all of this--space itself--that makes this hierarchical evolution possible. It does not have to contain all the structure, just enough to allow this hierarchical evolutionary process to occur and to continue.

        Henry

          Henry,

          I agree with you on almost everything. While I emphasized Bit over It in my essay, you'll notice that at the end I made sure to bring up Bohm's quote about how a complete view of reality cannot be grasped without gaining a balance between the two. Balance, harmony, that is what our world and our modalities of thinking are missing. When we get too esoteric, or too concrete, we shut ourselves off from important/defining components of reality that give us an inaccurate assessment.

          Again to revive Dirac, we can't really know anything until a true understanding of the "vacuum" is complete, and the current Standard Model conception of the mathematically convenient gauge-fields, bosons, etc, will not get us to where we need to be.

          All the best,

          John

          John,

          A quite brilliant essay, thank you. I certainly agreed 7 months not seconds in advance with each point, though much was new and important to me. You'll see why if you read my essay. You describe my 'IQbit' far better than I could! I then test what's also your theorem, and suggest a solution to the EPR paradox from the vast information store in the (3D) wave structure not parametrised by John Bell. You will need to bear with me on the quite dense construction of the full underlying physical ontology. Gordon Watson has just also posted what I think is a consistent 'mathematical' proof.

          I particularly pick out; "truth and authenticity are the only things worth pursuing," " linear, irreversible time," your postulate A) B) dynamic 'stores', "Information as the pattern, form, or structure of a system that has the capability to convey meaning." "Substance (Matter/Energy) does the work of Information." and then also;

          "...a form of chaotic determinism ruled by attractors underwrites..." (order).

          "Pretending that something doesn't exist if it's hard to quantify leads to faulty models"

          "Information is stored in Nature... sympathetic resonant feedback occurring between two or more oscillating systems. (and) wavefront interference..."

          "...all known particles (as well as the bonds between them) within a quantum lattice continue to vibrate/oscillate and exchange Information about their states. Dynamic phonon exchange within these lattices helps to facilitate this process."

          Dirac'; "..if you can't correctly describe the vacuum, how is it possible to expect a correct description of something more complex?"

          And I thank you for the Funaro and Meyl links which I'd missed, agreeing; "charge-density replaces the antiquated notion of 'mass-density' within dielectric free-space. As a result, EM-waves are able to form as vortex structures, especially in the near-field of antennae/receivers." which I've derived as a solution to the non-linear TZ field transition problem elsewhere, including a quantum mechanical physical derivation of the LT, giving a 'discrete field' model (DFM).

          Lastly Meyl's; "the ambient air around us is filled with white-noise EM-vortices... ...able to store an abundant amount of Information."

          I also commend you bravery for implying an equivalent to an ether frame. I discussed this in my last 2 essays, both community score 7th but no placing! I think you'll do better, and will certainly get the top score from me. I hope you may also glance at those if you find time. The last one was probably too dense, and I think I've done the same this year. I'd greatly appreciate your comments.

          You may not immediately see that the 'Quantum foam' is just as essential for my thesis as there's little option for WHAT is 'waving' or spinning.

          Very well done and thank you again.

          Best of luck

          Peter

            Peter,

            I'm glad the essay resonated with you; your graciousness fills me with a tremendous amount of pride. I'm excited someone w/ a rich technical background such as yourself sees the value in a not so technical paper such as mine.

            "I also commend you bravery for implying an equivalent to an ether frame."

            You were right to pick up on that even though I wasn't trying to emphasize it in fear of detracting from the main thesis. I think revolutionary progress lies in reemphasizing what dielectric free space is truly composed of at base level and what its dynamics are that give character to the world around us. Similar to what Henry Lindner has proposed in his essay on 'Flow Space'. While Funaro does not abandon SR/GR in any way (including frames of reference from what I can tell from his writings), he reconciles it with the EM Quantum-Vacuum beautifully (i.e. to allow for EM vortex-particles, etc.), and I think the charge continuum model he puts forth is extremely interesting and worth exploring as our knowledge/curiosity evolves.

            I will most assuredly get around to reading your paper today; I will do my best to pose an intelligible question or two. All the best and take care.

            John

            Hello John.

            Thank you again for reading my essay, I hope the following helps you.

            Every unresolved argument in physics points to something missing, and every unresolved argument in philosophy bring us to the same thing, but in philosophy we see that thing as two things. René Descartes put it best when he said that anything that can be imagined accurately and perfectly must not only exist in his head, but in actuality, and he came to that at the very end of his musings. Others ignored his conclusions because they wanted to. Emmanuelle Kant took a cleaver to cognition, actually I do him an injustice because in cognitive mechanics he was a skilled surgeon, anyway, he dissected cognition and laid it out for all to see. But, even though we can see transcendental space and time laid out with accuracy, precision and without contradiction, there is nothing to compare it with in actuality. And in all this we see the relationship between the virtual world and the actual world; and the two faces of argument, one based on the accuracy of imagination and its corresponding actuality, and the other based on the lack of contradiction which demands actuality. But, however much the lack of contradiction in an argument demands actuality, that is, the actuality of things accurately imagined, it falls in a hole when we can not observe that actuality. We still see this conundrum at play in our scientific arguments today, the argument between discrete and continuous, the argument of which came first and which came second, the argument about whether space is room for things or not. Albert Einstein would have us believe that space is continuous, and that when we remove everything from space, it becomes featureless, and by featureless I mean no room for things because all places are one and the same place. In other words there is nothing to distinguish one place from another. But space which is nothing is a problem, so we invent a virtual coordinate system made up of an infinite number of points, each without extension, and that helps, but it also means these points have energy, and the question then is whether we are accurate in this imagination or not, not whether it's a contradiction or not. Those who argue that all things which exist must have extension, and this includes energy, must show that their imagination is accurate. My imagination says that space is composed of places which constitute a fluid coordinate system, and at every place we find a local-sign, something with extension, something which has energy and something which points to and influences others of its own kind in one way or another. Call it a bit if you want, but I call it a pointy bit, i.e. (pbit). This imagery, conjured up with the help of Descartes, Kant and Uexküll, sees the world within as a virtual reflection of actuality, and if I believe in what I know of the world within, it tells me that a centrifugal domain exists at the centre of a local centripetality. It helps me trump mathematics with common sense, and I like that. Everything tells me that accurate imagination, and reason without contradiction, and the need to observe it in actuality, is science.

            And, again, I can't believe how quickly you got to the gist of my essay.

            Regards

            Zoran.

              Thanks Zoran. I'm glad this contest allows for an open dialogue about the philosophical/ideological underpinnings of science; as it is too often disassociated w/ its own sociology and therefore both scientists and the general public lose much insight into how/why new ideas/methodologies come into vogue, etc.

              Good insights overall as usual.

              Regards,

              John