It from Bit and Bit from It by Alexei Grinbaum

Dear Alexei,

I have read your essay and appreciate it as one serious attempt

to bring in consensus the modern physics and philosophy.

Unfortunately, nowadays physicists have recognized two things only;

the experiments and calculus, and main analytical tool - i.e. the logic, they inclined to see as some empty/anachronic occupation for people who are very far from actual questions of ,,high,, science. I have deeply opposite view on this issue that are narrated in my work.

I find a lot of common points in your work, that is why I am inclined to rate it on high score. I am very hope my work may deserve to your interest, despite it written in different style and the stated

task also on some different direction. Es

I hope get your valuable comment in my forum.

Sincerely,

George

Alexei,

nicely done. This is a good clarification and a good step in making precise the problem. I myself tend to have a more easily naturalistic position, but I appreciate your perspective, and it may be unavoidable. ciao, carlo

Hello Alexei

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

Dear Alexei,

An excellent philosophical submission. In my opinion philosophy takes precedence over physics theory, even though both are related. Recall that old name for physics was 'natural philosophy'.

My essay too has some philosophical content you may view. Then, a question for you: is existence/non-existence an information and binary choice?

Regards,

Akinbo

Hello Alexei,

I read with interest your analytical essay made in the strategy of Descartes's method of doubt. There is a little essay, which provides underlying philosophy. I respect your position and the way «epistemological modesty». I have yet another look at the problem of ontology and philosophical foundations of physics and mathematics, axioms, and the axiomatic method. But I respect your position and your way of research.

Constructive ways to the truth may be different. One of them said Alexander Zenkin in the article "Science counter-revolution in mathematics":

«The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence».

http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.htm

Do you agree with Alexander Zenkin?

You gave a very good quote the conclusion of Husserl. My favorite quote that helps me to "dig" to the most remote ontological meanings:

"Only to the extent, to which in case of idealization, the general content of spatio-temporal sphere is apodictically taken into account, which is invariant in all imaginable variations, ideal formation may arise, that will be clear in any future for all generations and in such form will be transferable by the tradition and reproducible in identical intersubjective sense".(Э.Гуссерль «Начало геометрии»)

Please read my essay. I think we are the same in the spirit of our research.

Best regards,

Vladimir

Dear Alexei,

Thank you for your beautiful essay! Your phenomenological approach brings much clarity to the "It from Bit"/"Bit from It" conundrum. I wonder if you would consider your loop to be, in fact, an hermeneutic circle? Also, why not resist the temptation/compulsion to cut it; rather consider it as a whole and inquire after its characteristics?

Sincerely,

Charles Card

Dear Alexei,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments. I am glad to know that ours areas of research are same.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

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

Alexie,

Yours is one of the few essays mining down to the deepest fundamentals to expose hidden assumptions and analyse observation. This seems to be in the 'lost triangle' between particle physics, optics and QM.

Reconstruction is a very original and interesting concept, but I spot a flaw. Does not Mathematics also; "rely on certain principles", such as commutativity and the "excluded middle", both of which may be much in question.

Does not the simple case of Pi itself demonstrate a limit to ultimate precision? Of course perhaps recursive sets may largely overcome such issues, and your point on processor preconceptions is good. I have to say this as I make it myself in defining each element including your 'cut' itself.

Thank you for a very interesting read, well set out and with clear well argued points, deserving of a high mark and better placing. I hope you may read mine before the deadline and give your thoughts and advice. Do ignore the dense Abstract and go by the blog comment; "groundbreaking", "wonderful" "remarkable!" etc. But do give me your own views.

Very well done for yours and thank you.

Peter

Dear Alexei,

As mentioned above I like your essay - please read mine if you get chance. As you seem to be one of a few or perhaps the only person who has really looked at the FROM part of the question I give you top marks, which I hope helps in your rankings.

Wishing you all the best for the contest,

Antony

Dear Alexei,

It is good to know that you have given equal priority to both It and Bit and this priority is just relative from the 'loop point of view'. From one side it appears as if It is more basic than Bit and from the other side it appears as if Bit is more fundamental than It. So you have concluded that "both It from Bit and Bit from It are acceptable--but not simultaneously". You have come to this conclusion from 'your epistemological considerations'. For this you have developed your own theory of epistemology based on your scheme of "reconstruction". It is defined as "reconstruction consists of three stages: first give a set of physical principles, then formulate their mathematical representation, and finally rigorously derive the formalism of the theory". According to you if this method is followed in science, especially quantum mechanics (QM), "it gives supplementary persuasive power: established as valid results, theorems and equations of the theory become unquestionable and free of suspicion".

I appreciate your effort to solve the problem of measurement in QM from your own point of view for which you have given substantial logical proof but it needs to be still more elaborate. Your argument is original, elegant and convincing, and for this I am going to rate this essay with highest score.

Please go through my essay also (http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827) and express your comments on it in my thread.

Best wishes,

Sreenath

Dear Alexei,

We are at the end of this essay contest.

In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.

Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.

eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.

And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.

Good luck to the winners,

And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.

Amazigh H.

I rated your essay.

Please visit My essay.

Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I've Read

I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented your essay in what follows.

Of the nearly two hundred essays submitted to the competition, there seems to be a preponderance of sentiment for the 'Bit-from-It" standpoint, though many excellent essays argue against this stance or advocate for a wider perspective on the whole issue. Joseph Brenner provided an excellent analysis of the various positions that might be taken with the topic, which he subsumes under the categories of 'It-from-Bit', 'Bit-from-It', and 'It-and-Bit'.

Brenner himself supports the 'Bit-from-It' position of Julian Barbour as stated in his 2011 essay that gave impetus to the present competition. Others such as James Beichler, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Agung Budiyono, and Olaf Dreyer have presented well-stated arguments that generally align with a 'Bit-from-It' position.

Various renderings of the contrary position, 'It-from-Bit', have received well-reasoned support from Stephen Anastasi, Paul Borrill, Luigi Foschini, Akinbo Ojo, and Jochen Szangolies. An allied category that was not included in Brenner's analysis is 'It-from-Qubit', and valuable explorations of this general position were undertaken by Giacomo D'Ariano, Philip Gibbs, Michel Planat and Armin Shirazi.

The category of 'It-and-Bit' displays a great diversity of approaches which can be seen in the works of Mikalai Birukou, Kevin Knuth, Willard Mittelman, Georgina Parry, and Cristinel Stoica,.

It seems useful to discriminate among the various approaches to 'It-and-Bit' a subcategory that perhaps could be identified as 'meaning circuits', in a sense loosely associated with the phrase by J.A. Wheeler. Essays that reveal aspects of 'meaning circuits' are those of Howard Barnum, Hugh Matlock, Georgina Parry, Armin Shirazi, and in especially that of Alexei Grinbaum.

Proceeding from a phenomenological stance as developed by Husserl, Grinbaum asserts that the choice to be made of either 'It from Bit' or 'Bit from It' can be supplemented by considering 'It from Bit' and 'Bit from It'. To do this, he presents an 'epistemic loop' by which physics and information are cyclically connected, essentially the same 'loop' as that which Wheeler represented with his 'meaning circuit'. Depending on where one 'cuts' the loop, antecedent and precedent conditions are obtained which support an 'It from Bit' interpretation, or a 'Bit from It' interpretation, or, though not mentioned by Grinbaum, even an 'It from Qubit' interpretation. I'll also point out that depending on where the cut is made, it can be seen as a 'Cartesian cut' between res extensa and res cogitans or as a 'Heisenberg cut' between the quantum system and the observer. The implications of this perspective are enormous for the present It/Bit debate! To quote Grinbaum: "The key to understanding the opposition between IT and BIT is in choosing a vantage point from which OR looks as good as AND. Then this opposition becomes unnecessary: the loop view simply dissolves it." Grinbaum then goes on to point out that this epistemologically circular structure "...is not a logical disaster, rather it is a well-documented property of all foundational studies."

However, Grinbaum maintains that it is mandatory to cut the loop; he claims that it is "...a logical necessity: it is logically impossible to describe the loop as a whole within one theory." I will argue that in fact it is vital to preserve the loop as a whole and to revise our expectations of what we wish to accomplish by making the cut. In fact, the ongoing It/Bit debate has been sustained for decades by our inability to recognize the consequences that result from making such a cut. As a result, we have been unable to take up the task of studying the properties inherent in the circularity of the loop. Helpful in this regard would be an examination of the role of relations between various elements and aspects of the loop. To a certain extent the importance of the role of relations has already been well stated in the essays of Kevin Knuth, Carlo Rovelli, Cristinel Stoica, and Jochen Szangolies although without application to aspects that clearly arise from 'circularity'. Gary Miller's discussion of the role of patterns, drawn from various historical precedents in mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, provides the clearest hints of all competition submissions on how the holistic analysis of this essential circular structure might be able to proceed.

In my paper, I outlined Susan Carey's assertion that a 'conceptual leap' is often required in the construction of a new scientific theory. Perhaps moving from a 'linearized' perspective of the structure of a scientific theory to one that is 'circularized' is just one further example of this kind of conceptual change.

Alexei

congratulations on writing a winning essay -- well, definitely one of the winners. I read it back in June and forgot about it with all this brouhaha going around -- until being reminded by one of the posts I saw just recently. A pleasure to read such a work.

You name suggests you may be originally from Russia? (you don't have to reply, if you don't want to; just curious)

well done! :)

-Marina

Dear Alexei,

again a very interesting essay with avery clear view.

I agree completely that the measurement problem of QM is a central point in physics. The central concept is the observer. You gave a definition with which I can agree. I also try to tackle this problem. Maybe you have interest to read my essay ?

If you see the measurement as a sequence of results then you can obtain an indeterministic sequence: there are non-algorithmically constructed sequences.

Best wishes for the contest

Torsten

Dear Alexei,

According to my friend Amazigh M. HANNOU you did an excellent anaysis of the it-bit problem. Myself I should spend more time in understanding your very professional essay, I promise to try after the context.

Meanwhile I am promoting your excellent ideas.

Hopefully you will be convinced by my approach as well.

All the best,

Michel

Dear Alexei,

I have now finished reviewing all 180 essays for the contest and appreciate your contribution to this competition.

I have been thoroughly impressed at the breadth, depth and quality of the ideas represented in this contest. In true academic spirit, if you have not yet reviewed my essay, I invite you to do so and leave your comments.

You can find the latest version of my essay here:

http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf

(sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).

May the best essays win!

Kind regards,

Paul Borrill

paul at borrill dot com

Dear Alexei,

Very beautifull, well written, well documented and well thought essay. You see the problem of it from bit vs bit from it in its full complexity. I particularly like the epistemic loops and the two ways to cut them.

Best wishes,

Cristi Stoica

Hi Alexei---

Nice essay, quite clearly written. It still doesn't make me feel quite comfortable with the arbitrariness of where the cut is put. I do feel there is something about the quandaries of quantum theory, for instance this arbitrary cut, that is "epistemologically natural", but I don't think we yet have enough of a prinicipled understanding of it. I have some hope that "reconstruction", not necessarily in the usual operational framwork, but thinking also more deeply about how measurements are actually carried out using physical resources, and in space and time, might get us a better understanding, not just of the structure of the theory, but about what aspects of reality, and our epistemological immersion in it, are manifested in the structure of quantum theory. I quite agree that that does not mean we should expect an account in terms of standard notions of causality or the nature of external objects, some of which concepts may be "wired" in our brains and misleading with respect to our now far-flung physical investigations and activities. I tend to think that your general view that "it from bit AND bit from it" are both important in understanding the nature of quantum theory, is correct... but we may also have to transcend (as I mentioned in my essay, and as Marcus Appleby discusses at greater length in http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.7381 , which I recommend highly) the notions of "it" and "bit" (both of which Appleby would perhaps describe as Cartesian).

So, you give a compelling picture of "the current situation in quantum theory" and epistemology... but I still feel that the situation you describe is puzzling and augurs further physical and philosophical discoveries, which indeed may turn out to be one and the same discovery...

I enjoyed your thought-provoking essay... excellent job.

Howard

Looks like I jinxed you. Sorry about that. I really thought yours was one of the best essays on the topic.

Alexei

I am very disappointed not to see your name among the finalists and, because of this, I am embarrassed to be there myself. I sincerely thought that your essay was one of the very best if not the best in this contest. I saw your post above and you are right, the atmosphere here was not conducive for advancement of refined and sensitive people like yourself. But hopefully it will change one day.

-Marina

Hi Alexei,

Since now we ended up next to each other, and I read about your disappointment, I thought I should mention the following. This is my third FQXi contest (2nd, 3rd,5th) and it was getting worse and worse every time, until it *completely* deteriorated this time. And the reason is quite simple: complete neglect of the organization.

The two fellows that started the FQXi shop (especially the "Scientific Director") wanted to have the contests for the sole PR purpose, and they have completely neglected their organization, which eventually led to the results you see. Their main interests are getting money (mainly from the Templeton Foundation) for the grants and fancy conferences free for the members.

After the first two contests I participated in, I was so upset that I said to myself no more. But after an almost two-year break and seeing a topic I really liked, unfortunately, I decided to 'forget' about my previous experience.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of the summer.

Cheers,

--Lev