Where the it from bit come from? by Luigi Foschini

Dear Luigi

I just read your nice and interesting essay. I just wanted to let you know that I share your view. Karl Popper reminded us that many times problems between man have their source on how we express our ideas. I do agree with you that the "it from bit" issue can be a problem of linguistics more than any other thing.

You: If physics is what we can say about the nature, as written by Bohr, then to wonder what happens by changing the parameters derived from experiments and observations is no more physics, but science fiction (or even pataphysics).

I agree with this too. By varying parameters to fit data we are not gaining knowledge of reality. In my work I make emphasis on these points. I'll be glad if you could take a look at it and leave some comments. There I give a nice example of how to get out of the present conundrum in physics, this has to do with the conception of space (or vacuum).

Best Regards

Israel

Dear Luigi,

I fully agree that the coupling between the mathematical symbol and physical quantities is precisely where scientific creativity is at work. The signs, and their correlations (one can have in mind Mermin's view of quantum mechanics) correspond to the language, and the latter is a property of the man. As Wigner told us, it is a bit miraculous that mathematics and physics fit (at least to some extend). I agree with you that "it from bit" has to do with creativity, and not only in the quantum world.

In my essay, I argue that the " it from qubit" is contextual.

Best wishes,

Michel

Luigi,

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

Hello Luigi,

An interesting read and very relevant. I thought the cat and dog comprehension was a great way to exemplify your point.

I too agree that multiverse isn't as good an explanation as chance by quantum fluctuation.

Please take a look at my essay if you have the time.

All the best for the contest,

Antony

Dear Luigi,

You have presented nice work, I am enjoyed with your judgments and large informativeness of your essay. I have however my approach to Wheeler's statement and to topic of theme. Particularly, I am thinking it is obviously incorrect to examine next questions before of solution previous ones. I mean the ,,quantum facts,, that not yet explained completely (despite we have its qualitatively description), and we hurry for talking about quantized bits already! (This remark not connected with your work, I am just offended by such approaches)

Please to open my work Essay in your good time and just see is it interesting for you and can we have common points? Let my say once more - your essay is very attractive (I need to read it more carefully)

Sincerely,

George

Dear Luigi -

You frame information in terms of evolution and language, taking a biological perspective which I find very interesting.

You also arrive at what I call a Species Cosmos: 'It is the human being that, by assigning a meaning and creating a tongue with the signs so obtained, creates the it from bit.'

I believe you draw a parallel between a multiverse and the processes of the human mind. In my essay, I take up the same line, but in a different way: I express the relationship as one of Correlation, and deduce the nature of the participatory Cosmos from that.

As I say, a most interesting perspective - and I would love to hear what you think of my view.

All the best,

John

Dear Luigi,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Luigi

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

(http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

Good luck and good cheers!

Than Tin

Hello Luigi,

A very good work and plenty of useful arguments. Although you don't agree that It can come from Bit, suppose "existence/non-existence" is one of the binary codes you are talking about in your essay and conforms to Shannon's description, will that change your mind?

Then, concerning "the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas", consider this although I don't know your views about space: Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?

NOTE THAT in no other frame can circular motion between the bodies be described in this circumstance except in the 'observing' sub-atomic particle.

Regards,

Akinbo

Dear Luigi,

You have written a beautiful essay, which I have read with great pleasure.

I like especially your statement: "...it is necessary and essential to study linguistics to understand certain fundamental knowledge." If this insight were common knowledge, a lot of meaningless discussions within this contest (and elsewhere) could have been avoided.

What we as physicists can learn from linguistics, is that meaningful information always consists of two things: The abstract carrier of information (e.g. a bit) and the semantic frame of reference, which gives the bit a physical meaning.

This seamlessly leads to the basics of elementary particle physics, if we only follow the good physical practice to choose a mathematical formulation that is covariant with respect to changes of the (semantic) frame of reference.

Best wishes,

Walter

Dear Luigi,

I have enjoyed your salient essay very much! I highly value your emphasis on the role of language in quantum theory and in this It/Bit discussion, in particular. Your distinction of "the material support" provided by language from the "meaning carried" by it, and your acknowledgement of the role played by conscious and unconscious structures in the human mind are both very insightful and useful aspects of your essay. I wonder, however, why you do not consider that a role may be played by nature itself in the storage and processing of information, given that humans are themselves a manifestation of nature? Is the ability to store and process information an exclusively human attribute or might aspects of it occur elsewhere in nature?

Sincerely,

Charles Card

Luigi,

A great essay on an important aspect, and well written. Perhaps as we both look from an astronomical view we have similar perspective. I commend you particularly for the following;

"statistical mechanics had shown that maybe we were neglecting too many things"... ..."if you minimize the symbols used (i.e. only 0/1, yes/no), it is possible to neglect anything that has nothing to do with the binary code."... ..."above all, the key question is how the interpretation is generated?"... ..."mathematics is therefore a tongue with a reduced semantic field,"... ..."a mathematical tongue similar in structure to the spoken tongue allows you to do also

works of fantasy.", and ."...it is now clear that the knowledge of the material aspect only is not sufficient to understand the problem of information."

I too discuss the limits of representative symbols, or your better "signifiers", and propose a radical view as part of an ontology I hope I show has much power.

My dense abstract puts some off, but I hope comments such as "It is groundbreaking", .."has very sophisticated argument and serious work of a lifetime", .."wonderful essay", may tempt you to read, score and comment on it.

Very well done for yours. Strap in for the the Saturn booster! Good luck.

Best wishes.

Peter