Relative information at the foundation of physics by Carlo Rovelli

Carlo,

In a recent article you have, in effect, pronounced that the future of our world is already fixed and set in stone. Game over. In the face of the likelihood of catastrophic climate change, your's is an uninspiring position.

The article, on the edge website, argues for determinism and complexity, and against free will. Of course no one would disagree that complexity means that physical outcomes in real life can rarely be fully predicted or modelled. But the article failed to mention the logical consequence of ideas that nature is in effect 100% deterministic: all future physical outcomes including every person's future physical outcomes are set in stone already.

This essay contest is about the nature of information and its wider ramifications in physical reality. According to the way my essay envisions the nature of information, what you are saying in the edge article is that the information we acquire about reality cannot be the basis of choices that inject new information, i.e. new outcomes as opposed to deterministic outcomes, into reality. The logical result of your deterministic position is that our environmental fate is already sealed, because at each step of the way what anyone says or does is already fully determined way on into the future for evermore. (My view of information is a different interpretation of what you say in your FQXi essay: "In quantum theory, we can always add new information to the...system...the old information becomes irrelevant.")

Many or most physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians focus on theoretical mystical Platonic mathematical entities, and have seemingly assumed that a vast layer of computing infrastructure underlies normal reality, deterministically producing every physical outcome (using law of nature mathematical equations). But where is the evidence for this crucially important computation layer? If there is absolutely no underlying computation layer, and there is absolutely no mystical magical Platonic realm, then your argument collapses. Lacking a mechanism, there can be no basis for your argument for a deterministic reality.

My essay explains why subjective experience is the essence of information, so I don't agree with the assertion in your FQXi essay that "There is no subjective element in it". However I definitely agree with your repeated assertions that information exists in relationship e.g.: "information...is always the relative information between two systems", "physical systems interact with one another and affect one another" and "The universe...is also the net of information that all systems have about one another".

Cheers,

Lorraine

Dear Carlo

I enjoyed your lucid essay. You make it clear that particles somehow exchange information, but you provide no 'mechanism' by which such information is transmitted - what would be the equivelant of Shannon's information channels, say at the Planck scale?

My Beautiful Universe Theory also found here suggests precisely how the presumed dielectric nodes making up a lattice of the Universe transmit angular momentum (one can call it information about angular momentum!):locally, causally and linearly, and without the need for any sort of observer.

With best wishes,

Vladimir

Dear Professor Rovelli

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 you have touched some corners of it.

With great regards,

Than Tin

Dear Carlo,

Sorry to trouble you. I am not a professional physicist but I have a question I will like to be enlightened about. I am taking advantage of this forum to ask an expert so I can be clear although this may not be the subject of your essay. 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?

You can reply me here or on my blog. And please pardon my naive view of physics.

Accept my best regards,

Akinbo

Hey C. Rovelli,

Neat short essay! I Like here that entropy and information is dealt with as a tool.

Dear Prof. Rovelli,

A good and thought provoking essay. If I understand correctly the idea is first the primacy/importance of the macro variables in determining entropy (that the entropy is a function primarily/only of these marco variables like volume, temperature, pressure) and second the importance of the interaction of two systems and the degrees of freedoms that come into play in these interactions. For example, certainly ignoring interactions or back reaction in black hole evaporation is a bad idea at the end stages where a BH evaporates. But as well this is a difficult problem.

I did have one open ended question -- many times for quantum systems one discusses "entanglement entropy"/von Neumann entropy/fine grained entropy which is defined as -Tr (p log p) with p being the density matrix of the system (I'm am just looking in detail at this so do not have very good intuition which is why I use formulas instead of words). This entanglement entropy has some odd feature in certain situation -- for example unlike usual thermal entropy it is not additive. So my question is "What can one say about entanglement entropy in the context of your arguments?" A quantum entangled system is "interacting" (sort of) but I'm not sure in the sense you mean interaction. In any case I am just beginning to look into this type of entropy and it has some (to me) odd features and it seems your arguments may have something to say in this regards.

Best,

Doug

Dear Carlo,

« Relative information at the foundation of physics »

This title is revealing that information is the basis of our reality.

If reality is made both wave and particle.

Why not « Quantum and Wave Mechanics » ?

And where is the binary « 0 » and « 1 », in nature.

Accordingly to eDuality, see my essay which is less scholarly.

I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

Respectfully, and good luck.

Please visit My essay.

Carlo,

please help me to understand: does ANYTHING change future outcomes? What DOES change future outcomes?

(Obviously I'm not referring to the issue of complexity, which means that future outcomes in real life usually cant be predicted)

Lorraine

Thanks so much Carlo for replying. Your reply suggests then that what determines whether two constantly related bodies will experience centrifugal force is in their local environment? If so, since it cannot be the bodies themselves it must be in space even if you may want to call this a field.

Following additional insights I have gained from interacting with FQXi community members, including your respected self (on Jun 26 and other days), perhaps you will like to view the judgement in the case of Atomistic Enterprises Inc. vs. Plato & Ors delivered on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 11:39 GMT. Thanks

I wish I had full access to the Wheeler article I mentioned before. I understand he compared his elementary quantum phenomenon to monads.

All the best, sir

Akinbo

Dear Carlo,

I thank you for your excellent analysis making a fascinating essay. But I find an apparent contradiction I wish to resolve.

The finiteness at the Planck length I can agree as wavelength gamma, then you seem to assume this is equivalent to the binary 0,1 of Shannon. But then you also find, (agreeably) that; "it is always possible to acquire new information about a system." Leaving the apparent dichotomy. As the signals we use as far from gamma, might it be that all that new information is coded in the 'noise' limiting the channel capacity?

I very much liked your comment; "The interactions between spacetime regions are exchanges of informations across spacial regions. These are quantized and discrete. The quantum discreetness, united to the fact that the geometry of spacetime is dynamical, and therefore quantized, leads immediately to the discretization of space," Which I've considered in a more realist and mechanistic way for the last two years

I hope you may be able to advise me on the veracity of my related proposal this year, of an underlying mechanism giving the the 'missing element' you identify, by decoding that 'noise as distributions 'between' cardinals, so 'curved' not linear, (and 3D+t not 2D+t waves). Still finite but filling a massive gap with that 'new information' which I suggest how we may "acquire".

I love the Democritus quote, but suggest more. Do you know of any observable physical entities entirely identical? I propose A=A is fine for maths but that the = sign is metaphysical, so in reality we can't have Aristotle=Aristotle as there is only one real Aristotle. Are even stem cells really identical? And do particles really have zero complex structure as QM assumes?

I hope you may also comment on my finding explaining of the anomalies in Alain Aspects data, offering an EPR resolution without FTL. fqxi; The Intelligent Bit.

Very best wishes.

Peter

Dear Carlo,

You have written an entertaining essay but I think that things could be greatly simplified if theoretical physicists would be a bit more adventurous with subversive ideas.

For example, Hawking and Bekenstein showed that the entropy of a black hole is proportional to the area of its event horizon. t'Hooft and Susskind then came up with the Holographic principal but can't find a proper working scenario for it. The "divided by 4" in the BH entropy formula is giving us a clue.

I believe that a black hole is in fact a plain circle and its entropy is proportional to the area of the circle (there goes the "divided by 4").

Why don't you try to use your LQG in the context of successive 2D frames ?

(each 2D frame representing the "present" information for an internal observer in the frame, each frame being a scaled up version of the previous one and the "present" information is moving through the frames at the speed of light).

I have done this in my simple theory and I got some great results. I am only an amateur physicist, so I am sure that you would discover a lot more if you tried that approach.

For example, I have discovered (and I can show) that the proton's diameter is just a scaled up version of the Planck Length and that the proton's mass is just a scaled down version of the Planck mass.

By using this simple "holographic" principle and a simple scaling rule, I concluded that Dirac was correct when he came up with his Large Numbers Hypothesis, unfortunately not many current physicists want to even consider that he was right.

I know that you like to question the fundamentals (that's why I am one of your fans), so, please be even more adventurous and at least consider some of my ideas even if I am a nobody.

Best regards,

Patrick

Yes,

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Annual Reviews is cooperating with http://www.jstor.org

Eckard