How Big a Bit of It are we? by Richard Kingsley Nixey

Dear Sir,

Congratulations for a beautiful essay with lot of food for thought. We have covered the dark energy and dark matter aspect in our essay published on May 31. Here we are giving extensions to your essay.

There are other anomalies brought out by ESA's 'Planck' findings as well. For example, expansion rate of the universe - the Hubble constant - has been revised to 67.15 kilometers per second per Mpc, is significantly lower than the values derived at through other astronomical observations. Since it is related to dark energy, it is estimated that dark energy has changed over the years in a given volume of space. The mass-energy of the universe that Dark Energy is said to represent has been reduced from 72.8% to 68.3%. At the same time Dark Matter increased from 22.7% to 26.8%. This means the percentage of ordinary matter has gone up from 4.5% to 4.9%.

The CMB shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities at very early times, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today. The variations don't appear to behave the same on large scales as they do on small scales, and there are some particularly large features, such as a hefty cold spot, that were not predicted by basic inflation models. One of the features of inflation is that there should be no preferred direction - everywhere in the universe should be more or less the same. But when one looks at the amplitudes, one can easily tell that one side of the universe looks different from the other side. The temperature variations in the CMB appear to be sized and spaced differently when Planck looks in one direction, than when it looks in the other. What do we make out of this? We have given some suggestions in our essay.

In many threads we have pointed out the fallacy of SR, which was primarily due to not giving a precise definition of time and space. We measure these by a clock and a rod. But what do we measure? Einstein has not defined that. Space and time arise out of our concept of sequence. The sequential arrangement of the intervals between ordered pairs of objects is space and that between events, i.e., changes in objects, is time. Infinity is like one - without similars, but whereas we can determine the dimensions of 1, we cannot determine the dimensions of infinity. Since there is nothing like space or time, they are like one, but since their dimensions are not fully perceptible, they are infinite. Infinities co-exist, but do not interact with anything. Thus, everything exists in space and time, but they do not interact with anything. We watch the objects and changes in them. If they are fairly repetitive and easily cognizable, we take one cycle or its subdivisions and treat it as the unit. Thus, while events are different, perception of time is the same.

The left hand side of an equation represents free will, because we are free to vary the parameters. The right hand side represents determinism, because otherwise there cannot be any theory. The equality sign represents the special conditions for the interaction to take place. For example, there is a temperature threshold for all chemical reactions. We cannot fly because we do not fulfill the special conditions for flying like the birds.

Uncertainty is not a law of Nature, but is the outcome of natural processes other than those chosen by us, which influence the outcome of any observation. When Mr. Heisenberg proposed his conjecture in 1927, Mr. Earle Kennard independently derived a different formulation, which was later generalized by Mr. Howard Robertson as:

σ(q)σ(p) ≥ h/4π.

This inequality says that one cannot suppress quantum fluctuations of both position σ(q) and momentum σ(p) lower than a certain limit simultaneously. The fluctuation exists regardless of whether it is measured or not implying the existence of a universal field. The inequality does not say anything about what happens when a measurement is performed. Mr. Kennard's formulation is therefore totally different from Mr. Heisenberg's. However, because of the similarities in format and terminology of the two inequalities, most physicists have assumed that both formulations describe virtually the same phenomenon. Modern physicists actually use Mr. Kennard's formulation in everyday research but mistakenly call it Mr. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. "Spontaneous" creation and annihilation of virtual particles in vacuum is possible only in Mr. Kennard's formulation and not in Mr. Heisenberg's formulation, as otherwise it would violate conservation laws. If it were violated experimentally, the whole of quantum mechanics would break down.

In 2003 Mr. Masanao Ozawa developed the following formulation of the error and disturbance as well as fluctuations by directly measuring errors and disturbances in the observation of spin components: ε(q)η(p) σ(q)η(p) σ(p)ε(q) ≥ h/4π.

Mr. Ozawa's inequality suggests that suppression of fluctuations is not the only way to reduce error, but it can be achieved by allowing a system to have larger fluctuations. Nature Physics (2012) (doi:10.1038/nphys2194) describes a neutron-optical experiment that records the error of a spin-component measurement as well as the disturbance caused on another spin-component. The results confirm that both error and disturbance obey the new relation but violate the old one in a wide range of experimental parameters. Even when either the source of error or disturbance is held to nearly zero, the other remains finite.

Our brain acts like a computer. But who programs it? Computers are GIGO - garbage in garbage out. On this subject you can see our views in our essay. If "we are part of an immense computer constructed by a greater intelligence than us", it should not be "looking to us for the answer."

The constant and regular requirement of food, rest, safety and reproduction, differentiate conscious beings from inert objects. They all respond to it in their own ways and become skilled in that trait. This includes fight and revenge for these. But planning for future in specific ways and executing such plan, is the sign of intelligence. All except human beings fail this taste. Regarding knowledge and knowing please see our essay.

Regards,

basudeba

Mr. Nixey,

I regret I do not have any words in my vocabulary to accurately describe your essay. Terrific and fantastic and superbly written are insultingly inadequate.

As a creaky old realist, May I humbly make one comment? Like Lee Smolin, I too think that one real Universe must be unique, once. In my essay BITTERS, I have listed the absolutes the Universe abides by. There is one absolute I omitted.

The absolute of real life is understanding. By that I mean that a real ant can only understand how to be a real ant. Unfortunately, it is impossible for a real man to understand how to be a real man. Man much prefers that his brain be filled with abstract intoxication to ever being real.

Richard,

It is a clear and well written essay. If I may be so presumptuous to offer some ideas to consider:

Why are we here? This implies intent and direction. Fact is the absolute is basis, not apex, so the source of our being is not some intentional ideal from which we descend, but the raw essence of beingness from which we rise. Reasonably its intention is equally basic, to project. The journey, not any particular destination. Meaning is simply what is left when we have distilled away all that is meaningless. Which, if isolated from context, is everything.

As a computer the biological binary code is attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. Otherwise known as good and bad. Unfortunately this limits political computational objectivity, since on is life and off is death. What is good for the fox is bad for the chicken and there is no clear line where the chicken ends and the fox begins.

Free will is an oxymoron. To will is to determine. We don't distinguish between good and bad in order to decide. The decision is implicit in the distinction. Which doesn't mean we are fated, as the circle of input is only complete at the occurrence of the event. We affect our context as it affects us. If there was no external influence, we would have no affect on any larger context.

Which leads to the most profound flaw in physics. Time is not the present moving along a dimension from past to future, but change causing future to become past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. The cat may be either dead or alive in the future, but the actual occurrence of events determines its fate. Different clocks run at different rates because they measure the particular action. One would think that if time is a vector from past to future, the faster clock would move into the future more rapidly, but the opposite is true, it ages more rapidly and thus moves into the past quicker. Physics treats it as a measure of duration, but duration doesn't transcend the present. It is the state of the present between events. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude.

It is not that information is uncertain, but that it is inherently subjective. In order to know anything, we have to isolate it from everything else. Consider photography; If we want to know the exact position of an object, we would use a fast shutter speed, but if we want to record its action, we would use a slower speed. Yet would lose detail in the blurring. So even though we capture less information with a faster speed, the details are much clearer, because the information is conveyed by energy and so cancels out, much as too much of any form of input results in white noise. We can take a top down generalized or abstract view, or examine the details, but there is no intermediate perspective which includes both. There is no "God's eye" view. Not to mention aperture, lens, lighting, direction, etcetc.

Now don't expect any physicists to take this seriously because if we remove time from its transcendent position and make it an effect of action, it eliminates the time from spacetime, leaving it correlation, not causation, so there are no wormholes, blocktime and most significantly, no expanding universe. Just infinite space. That then gets into a whole other chapter and I best not go there....

Dear Richard,

A really enjoyable and fascinating essay. So it seems it really doesn't matter whether we're an advanced computer or not, there's no necessary assumption of pre-determination of our lives in any case. It also of course resolves a lot of other unanswerable questions.

So we only have to ask do the technicians also know the answers to those questions? Do they go to church on Sundays?

You may with to read Manuel Morales essay. Who was it made the selection to create the computer? I also hope you'll read and comment on mine.

Of course I'm sure you wrote it rather tongue in cheek, and an excellent job too. For proper rigour somebody does have to properly check out the implications of all options.

Congratulations. I see your score so far is derisory and I'm pleased to aid it's rise to more appropriate number.

Best of luck

Peter

Dear

Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon.

So you can produce material from your thinking. . . .

I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.

I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.

Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .

Best

=snp

snp.gupta@gmail.com

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/

Pdf download:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf

Part of abstract:

- -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .

Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .

A

Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT

....... I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT

. . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .

B.

Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT

Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data......

C

Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT

"Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT

1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.

2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.

3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.

4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?

D

Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT

It from bit - where are bit come from?

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT

....And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?-- in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.

Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..

E

Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT

.....Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.

I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.

Richard,

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

Joe,

Thanks, I agree with your idea. But surely plenty of real men can be ants?

R

John,

Thanks. I'm not entirely sure I see the real central point of your idea, but I didn't object to anything I found.

R

Peter,

Thanks. I thought your own essay was exceptional. It was so rich plan to read it again and will comment on your blog then.

R

May I say to all I don't think 'mass posts' are appropriate and will not put those essays ay the top of my list to read.

R

Hi Richard,

Thanks for a very enjoyable read! You wrote:

1. "The chamber is filled with the finest incompressible ethereal medium called 'Darkenagy' at just below dew-point. Introducing one tiniest spinning particulate impurity then starts a chain reaction."

Take a look at Royce Haynes' essay for a nice take on this scenario.

2. "A beautiful series of tiny vortices start to appear, spinning ever faster then contracting almost to a point before flowing out of the sides; re-emerging on a perpendicular axis and starting to rotate yet again on the new axis. Examining these closely the process can be seen as a fractal."

This is also part of my picture, although I was not as poetic about it.

3.The only motivation available seems to be on the 'it from bit' side!

The question of motivation is a great question to use as a tie-breaker.

The conclusion in my essay Software Cosmos was "It from Bit and Bit from Us". You will find there a proposal for how to construct a simulation of the cosmos, and an experiment I have conducted to tell whether we are currently within such a simulation.

4. "Douglas Adams brilliantly found, when coming to the logical conclusion consistent with out own, that we then need to find the question."

Paraphrasing you: "If we are the answer, what was the question?"

Marvelous question! Wish I knew....

Hugh

Hugh,

I'll try to check out your and Royce's essays. The experiment sounds most interesting. The best questions i've found so far are in the McHarris and Jackson essays, both also pointing to important answers. it seems tough at the top this year!

Richard

Hello Richard,

Your conclusion It from Bit agrees with Wheeler. I agree as well. Probably there is a mix up in understanding what Bit is and how come an It can be derived therefrom. A good score to be expected. By the way, if you don't mind can you answer below questions. The way I posed these 4 questions seem to have offended a few so I rephrase

"If you wake up one morning and dip your hand in your pocket and 'detect' a million dollars, then on your way back from work, you dip your hand again and find that there is nothing there...

1) Have you 'elicited' an information in the latter case?

2) If you did not 'participate' by putting your 'detector' hand in your pocket, can you 'elicit' information?

3) If the information is provided by the presence of the crisp notes ('its') you found in your pocket, can the absence of the notes, being an 'immaterial source' convey information?

Finally, leaving for the moment what the terms mean and whether or not they can be discretely expressed in the way spin information is discretely expressed, e.g. by electrons

4) Can the existence/non-existence of an 'it' be a binary choice, representable by 0 and 1?"

Answers can be in binary form for brevity, i.e. YES = 1, NO = 0, e.g. 0-1-0-1.

Best regards,

Akinbo

Richard,

I found your essay thought provoking and very much in keeping with the findings of a 12 year experiment I have recently completed. Your statement, "Our answer is that all outcomes are possible but that no outcome is inevitable in any one case." is indeed the case. You made so many great analogies that I will need to reread your essay again.

Anyway, I would like to ask you some questions via email and would like to know your email address or if you wish you can send me your response to my email address at: msm@physicsofdestiny.com

Thanks,

Manuel

Akinbo,

Questions are fine. All my answers are yes. I much enjoyed your essay and gave it a high mark a while ago.

Richard

Manuel,

Thank you. I did read and award your essay some good points some time ago now. I see you haven't doe the same for mine despite your words. I saw your point, though not any great significance, and recall I thought it unfinished somehow. You infer some conclusion without seeming to want to state it. What is it?

Richard

Dear Richard,

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

Hi Richard,

Thanks for reading my essay and yes I read Peter Jackson's essay and yours. You are a good writer and it was fun. By the way, i believe the Planck scale is way too high. Read vixra:1307.0085.

Gene,

Glad you enjoyed it. I agree about the Planck scale. OK for 'matter' as we know it perhaps, but I think it's clear there's certainly more to life then that.

I also think your lens analysis etc. is far more important than most have recognised. That seems to to be shown by Peter Jackson's essay. I hope you keep pushing it.

Best wishes.

Richard