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

6 days later

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

6 days later

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

      5 days later

      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

        9 days later

        Akinbo,

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

        Richard

        6 days later

        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.

        14 days later

        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

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