Dear Vladimir,

Thank you very much for your comments! I'm so glad that you read and appreciated my essay. It's great that you see the relevance of the topic to this particular contest, and I'm glad you've agreed with the argument as well, as you say it's true that time is the denominator of existence.

I haven't managed to read many of the essays here yet, but I thought I'd mention that a point I've tried to make, that there should be some sort of existence to begin with, so that events can occur and information can come to be, is, I think, similarly made in some other essays as well, which you might be interested to read if you haven't yet. For instance, Lawrence Crowell commented on his own essay, that "The core issue is that It From Bit is undecidable, for any schema of that nature is based on an incomplete axiomatic system". Also, Cristi Stoica discusses Wheeler's "law without law" in his essay.

And the first point I discussed in the essay, that space-time shouldn't be thought to exist anyway---which is just a wrong way of thinking about it---is noted as well in the introduction to Edwin Eugene Klingman's excellent essay.

Your essay too sounds very interesting to me, and I very much look forward to reading it!

Thanks again, and best of luck!

Daryl

Daryl,

I was unaware that Wheeler identified time as most resistant to reformulation as information, but it makes sense. I agree that "the concept of time in physics is a mess." That is why I found your last essay so enlightening. Your last essay was far more complex than this one, which, I believe, is written at just the right level for the contest. (Your current score is ridiculous, and I will do what I can to remedy it.)

Your statement that "It from Bit" represents a universe in which "everything we may think of as a fundamental aspect of reality could... be because of the correlation of randomly occurring bits" clearly shows the problem time presents to his view. And your following analysis shows that 'block time' is erroneous and a 3-D universe existing 'now' is the reality. The key to reality is energy (often instantiated as local mass). When local mass structures are "informed" by packets of energy crossing a threshold, the received packets create stored information, which remains available as a 'memory' of the threshold crossing.

I like Stein's argument that asserting the reality of any single event in the 'elsewhere' beyond one's own here and now brings the whole ball of wax into existence. No thanks!

As you note, Einstein's analysis of relative velocities in such a framework "comes with the fantastic notion that 'what exists for me' is different from 'what exists for you' because I'm now out for a walk and you're sitting somewhere reading this."

Capek: "if time has no genuine reality, why does it appear so real?" As I noted in my essay, I'm aware of time passing. And it makes no sense to me to interpret this consciousness as based on random bits of information.

You explain well that Wheeler's conjectures are based on the 4D space-time which you have recently debunked. This "gross misunderstanding of the meaning of relativity" apparently still holds sway. Your treatment of "space that exists in time" is superb, and much easier to understand than last year's more technical essay. I'm glad to see you moving beyond dissertation-level explanations to more popular exposition. Even so I had to read your essay twice to gain its full import.

I hope you find time to read my essay enough to make sense. I think it's very compatible with your view.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Daryl,

    Great essay, again. Important subject, and well handled. I think it should add a lot to understanding, if it were ever published!

    However, the ending, where I'd hoped to find the logical tying up of all the unravelled nonsense of past theory, seemed to fall just short. I've read it now 5 times, and think I know what you are saying, but find it incomplete. Not rigorously identifying the apparent last quote, and the Einstein/Newton/New cases didn't help, particularly as the Newtonian description is not quite as I understand it. i.e. I don't think he proposed that light travels at infinite speed from distant events.

    There seems some slight underparametrization which leaves matters a little open. This also emerges in the description that Einstein; "retains the assumption that simultaneous events are synchronous in the frame of every observer," Did he really 'say' that? which is quite different to the postulate. Am I so long thinking in an apparently more consistent way that I'm forgetting what happened in the Wonderland of relativistic interpretation?

    First I of course agree absolute reality, but not a single absolute 'ether' background. I also agree local propagation speed c (or c/n) and in fact the postulates themselves, if not as interpreted. but let me ask you a question;

    In your proposed schema, Let's take THREE clocks C1, C2 and C3 all at the front of the train, C1 inside the train, C2 outside but hanging on a bracket beside the car, and C3 also outside but on a fixed post in the track frame. All three (co-ordinated with his own clock when at rest) send a flash at the same instant.

    Will he see the flashes at different times, and if so which first/last? and why.

    And will wavelengths be the same?

    To aid (or confuse!?) you I have a derivation which suggests there will be differences.

    Peter

      Dear Daryl Janzen,

      Your essay might be the one of this contest that has the most already agreeing arguments but simultaneously the most still disagreeing ones as compared with mine. I see this a challenge to check on what we can agree.

      Yours sincerely,

      Eckard

        Dear Eckard,

        That sounds like an excellent challenge, which I very much look forward to following up on. Let us get to the bottom of this!

        Best regards,

        Daryl

        Hello Edwin,

        Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments on my essay. I have read yours as well, which I was exceptionally well done, and I agree that our views are very compatible. Actually, at a couple of points, and particularly the paragraph on p. 6 above "How does information use structure", I felt like you may have had some of our previous exchanges in mind when you wrote it. I found the whole thing drew me in, as much by the excellent writing as by the very interesting content. I have a number of comments and questions that I'll save for a post on your site, but perhaps you could clarify a minor detail.

        I hadn't noticed when I read through your essay at first, but when I went to refer to it in my reply to Vladimir Rogozhin above, to say that I thought you've said something like my point that "space-time doesn't exist" in your introduction, it seemed that your "Map from territory, or territory from map?" may be stated backwards in relation to "It from bit or bit from it?". Have I got that right? I think you want to say that space-time is the map of all the events that happen in the Universe, and therefore connect it with the territory and the map with the bits. It's a totally minor detail, but should your alternative title for the contest have been

        "Territory from map, or map from territory?"

        Regarding your comment on the improved readability of this essay compared with the last one, I have a couple of comments. First of all, I partly have you to thank for that, as you'd pointed out to me before that it would be good to aim at a slightly less technical level of discourse, to improve the overall accessibility of the discussion. And secondly, I just can't say it enough (I've said it at least twice already in these comments) that Time is an extremely difficult concept to parse. I was recently visiting some friends in Phoenix, and spent a fair bit of our vacation going on about these things. On the last day we were there, after I made some statement about events not existing at all, but happening as things exist (with the map of all those events forming space-time), one of them summed it all up perfectly, I think, with that statement.

        I think it's exactly what Augustine had realised already more than 1600 years ago, when he wrote "What, then, is time? If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not." Time really is just a very difficult concept to parse, and it's why I think philosophers have spent so much time trying to nail down the right language. There's no doubt in my mind that you and I have the right idea, but nailing down a clear description that's generally understandable and deals with all the intricacies is a real challenge.

        Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to read and comment here. I really appreciate it!

        All the best,

        Daryl

        Daryl,

        You are of course correct that I should have re-ordered the map and territory to reflect the order of bit and it. I saw that after I had submitted it. Sorry for the confusion.

        I look forward to other questions on my essay when you find time.

        With the schedule you have, I'm amazed you find time even to enter the contest. So many of us are old codgers with time on our hands, and even then the time seems to fly. There are a few places where you present incorrect views of time, and, if one reads too quickly, these can be taken for your view. So as you hone this presentation, be sure you present a clear distinction. For example, the last paragraph on page 2 requires careful reading. This is overshadowed by your fine writing, but people are so confused, you must help at every step to clarify. For example double negatives: "aren't relevant to non-existence" and, later "not inconsistent", etc. When people are confused (as most are about time) these can throw them, if read too quickly. Seems silly, but it's true.

        I'm glad to see that Eckard finds agreement and disagreement (below). I hope that leads to further clarification. Eckhard often refers to a dictionary for translation purposes. In dealing with international distributors of our products, my wife found out early that, if an English sentence can be interpreted in two different ways, it will usually be interpreted in the wrong way! Eckhard is a careful thinker, so it will be interesting to see what comes of this.

        As I've noted elsewhere, I think your example with Albert and Henri deserves a '3D' diagram or drawing (or two?), if you can manage a good one. In addition to your Fig 2. This seems like the kind of thing that is published in Scientific American.

        And as for the paragraph on page 6 you mention above. I was thinking this before I came across your essay. But you made it scientifically respectable from the General Relativistic viewpoint. Thank you again for that! It really is a challenge to nail it down, whether in General Relativity, Special Relativity, or just prose English. But it's even harder when you don't understand it. Since you do understand it, it's simply a matter of fine tuning your explanations. The beauty of FQXi is that people point to what needs fine tuning, so you have all these helpers working for you for free!

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Newton wrote that for time to be understood, it should be considered as two different flavors: the relative time depicted by our clocks and other moving/changing systems, and absolute time which is external.

        Its not that "true reality is timeless", but that relative time is meaningless in absolute reality (and vice versa).

        My essay attempts to use an algorithm operating on is own time to produce an observer from the complexity of the algorithms computations, wherein the observer makes measurements of a clock and relative time emerges from the measurements.

          Peter,

          Thanks very much for spending so much time with my essay, and for your questions and comments. I'm glad you agree with the relevance of the topic, and I appreciate the nice things you had to say about the essay.

          The first point I'll address is where you said "particularly as the Newtonian description is not quite as I understand it. i.e. I don't think he proposed that light travels at infinite speed from distant events."

          That's a good point, and I see I should really clarify what I wrote, which was "in assuming that truly simultaneous events, occurring at the same absolute time, should be described as synchronous in the proper coordinate frames of all inertial observers, Newton's theory is inconsistent with a constant finite speed of light."

          This is true enough, but obviously misleading. The difference between the Galilean transformations of Newtonian mechanics and the Lorentz transformations of special relativity is that the factor v/c is zero in the former, which is why Newtonian mechanics is valid at low velocities. Newtonian mechanics would be consistent with the light postulate (constant finite speed of light in all inertial frames) if the speed of light were infinite. That's why I added the word finite in that sentence.

          BUT the speed of light isn't infinite, and Newton knew that. His theory describes light as moving at a finite speed that varies between inertial frames of reference.

          So, what I said was that Newton's theory is inconsistent with the light postulate--i.e., that there's a constant finite speed of light--because he assumed that truly simultaneous events (in absolute time) should be described as synchronous in inertial frames.

          This brings me to that distinction between Newton, Einstein, and what I'm proposing, that you asked for clarification on: Newton assumed absolute simultaneity, motion, etc., and that simultaneous events are described as synchronous in all inertial frames, but allowed the speed of light to vary between reference frames; Einstein rejected absolute simultaneity, motion, etc., retained the assumption that simultaneous events are synchronous (and therefore relative depending on inertial frame), and proposed the light postulate; I'm proposing a rejection of the deep-seated assumption that synchronous events in all reference frames are simultaneous, a resurrection of an ultimate cosmic reference frame (absolute time, space, motion, etc.), away from which any relatively moving system can be described in isolation. This allows for an objective flow of time, as opposed to no flow at all, and contrary to the Machian argument that a Universal frame of rest can never be observed, it actually has!

          You then asked whether Einstein ever said "simultaneous events are synchronous in the frame of every [inertial] observer." The relativity of simultaneity is really a hallmark of Einstein's theory. Even if he hadn't said so explicitly, the definition is commonly made that events that occur at the same time in a given reference frame occur simultaneously. But yes, in the first relativity paper, Kinematical Part, section 1 is on the Definition of Simultaneity. There, he writes, e.g., "We have to take into account that all our judgements in which time plays a part are always judgements of *simultaneous events*. If, for instance, I say, "That train arrives here at 7 o'clock," I mean something like this: "The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events."

          I'm saying this definition of simultaneity needs to be rejected in favour of a Universal definition of simultaneity because that's what cosmological observations indicate, and because that's the only way relativity can actually make sense--and not send us down a rabbit hole where every abstraction is welcome and nothing is/can even be consistent.

          Finally, in conclusion, you pointed out that my conclusion fizzles out. I don't disagree. The main point was that without the added structure of an absolute time in relativity, time can't pass; and in fact, whenever it's been denied it's just found a way of sneaking back into the way we think about our theories. The "it from bit" hypothesis is fundamentally inconsistent with this bit of structure--quantum interactions can't occur if there is no prior existence for them to occur in--and that's why I've argued for "bit from it".

          I hope that addresses your comments, and helps you to understand the parts a little better that weren't clear to begin with. Please feel free to keep pressing me if anything remains unclear.

          By the way, I've only looked at your essay briefly so far, but I really look forward to it. Thanks again, so much, for giving such attention to mine.

          Best regards, and best wishes in the contest,

          Daryl

          Peter,

          I forgot about the thought experiment. I'm not sure I understand it. Are the two clocks moving with the train and the other attached to a post at rest with respect to the outside? Do they need to be clocks, or are we just thinking of a signal that flashes once from each of them and is observed by someone at the other end of the train? Do the flashes occur, although side-by-side in, say, the y-coordinate, at the same value of x and t, so that in the x-t frame they look like the same event?

          It might help if you send me your derivation. I'm very interested to see what you've got.

          Thanks,

          Daryl

          Dear Michael,

          Thanks for your post. Although I think anything that could ever cause anything else to exist first has to exist itself (and your algorithm does operate on its own time), I find your comment and your essay's abstract intriguing and will try to get to it.

          Daryl

          Dear sir,

          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.

            Dear Daryl,

            Augustine's utterance was also quoted by v. Weizsaecker who did also not yet understand what Michael Helland reminded us of:

            "Newton wrote that for time to be understood, it should be considered as two different flavors: the relative time depicted by our clocks and other moving/changing systems, and absolute time which is external."

            I wonder why I was forced to rediscover Newton's clarifying insight and why my attempt to derive consequences has been facing fierce rejection.

            Best regards,

            Eckard

            • [deleted]

            • Post #32

            Daryl,

            Thanks. That's a bit clearer (if 'clarity' is really possible in this 100yr fog!)

            Your description of my scenario is correct. And let's say two 1ms flashes, giving a 'space-time event'. But they're not observed as either the same time, wavelength or period. I think the solution I propose adds that pinch of magic dust to yours to finally clear the mist;

            Flash C1 is IN the train. The train and air are an inertial system through which light propagates at c, (discrete field, = DFM), it's also at rest with the observer so the event remains 1ms, and with no Doppler wavelength change (0 delta lambda).

            Flash C2 is outside the train but in the same inertial FRAME (at rest with the observer). Again no delta lambda on observer interaction ("detection"). However, it arrives BEFORE C1! This is because is DID change speed to propagate at c in the frame of the air outside the train, but then changed back on re-entering the original (emitter/detector) frame. That surprisingly is as found and as SR.

            Flash C3 (fixed post) ALSO arrives before C1, so with C2, as it also propagates at c in the outside air frame. It then also shifts on meeting the observer frame, but this time there had been no INITIAL shift, so it is found to be blue shifted; i.e. both wavelength lambda AND the 'space-time period' have undergone 'length contraction'. (A flash from behind would be dilated or red shifted).

            That rationalisation does take a little thought to assimilate as it will at first be quite unfamiliar (in a near vacuum the 'extinction distance' is greater so we need a far longer train to get rid of the birefringent mix). Careful thinking through should cause the fog to start lifting.

            Let me know how you get on.

            Peter

            Dear Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta,

            Thanks for your post. Your essay sounds interesting to me, as I think we'll see eye to eye on some fundamental issues. I hope you do enjoy my essay when you read it!

            There was one particular statement you made that raised a red flag for me though. You wrote "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", and really I couldn't disagree with that more. Out of all the areas of physics, I think cosmology is the one that's done the best to maintain a grasp on reality. I believe this is why, despite being more inclined towards philosophy, as my main interest lies in searching for a clearer and more realistic understanding of nature, I persevered through the "shut up and calculate!/purely hypothetical mathematical derivations leading to descriptions of observable events are all that matter/etc." attitude in modern physics, to a PhD in cosmology.

            Don't get me wrong: I do think the model is fundamentally flawed, and people are reading too much into the measured parameters; but modellers in every science are prone to doing that, and I think with cosmology the heart's in the right place. Cosmology aims to describe the large-scale structure of our Universe; to realistically account for the redshifts, etc., of distant galaxies that we believe really exist, despite the fact that we're only observing images of them that were shone into space millions of years ago---i.e., so we can't really verify that they're actually there "now", in the cosmological sense of "now".

            I think the dividing line in this contest is between people who strive for a sensible, realistic, and self-consistent description of nature that would agree with all observations we can make, and those who care more to push the limits of nonsense, to derive a theory of reality that's not inconsistent--i.e. is technically compatible--with observation, despite possibly being nothing like experience. Personally, I'm in the former camp, and while I can appreciate to some extent the sense of scepticism that motivates the latter, I think it's been more damaging than anything, and really defeats the purpose of science and philosophy.

            The best example I know of is the Macheo-Leibnizian stance that a Universal frame of rest isn't observable, and is therefore to be rejected from the point of view of relativity. This supports the Einsteinian stance on the relativity of simultaneity, and consequently the description of reality as a block universe in which time doesn't really flow. According to the sceptical stance, this isn't strictly inconsistent with experience, and we have no way of proving that all of eternity isn't real as what we think of in our minds as now, right now, each and every second.

            As I argued in this essay, however, this has often led to a very inconsistent way of thinking, in which all of eternity is actually thought of as existing--i.e. another temporal dimension is snuck into the mix--and the whole thing becomes a muddled mess with even more structure, which is even further from being scientifically defendable than the one bit of structure--the ultimate cosmic rest-frame--that they wanted to deny at the outset. In short, those who argue in this way can't even get their story straight, but that's generally okay by them because it's all a bunch of abstract unobservable gibberish, which they think is a good thing because they anyhow take quantum physics to support the idea that reality really is a bunch of nonsense. In short, its stances like the one that there is no cosmic rest-frame, that lead physicists into rabbit holes where they're happy to play around with math and make a complete mess of things and deny the notion that reality could even possibly make sense.

            But then, as I argued in my previous essay, the Macheo-Leibnizian stance is actually DEAD WRONG! For the past 80 years we've reasoned from the cosmological data that there is actually a cosmic frame of rest--an absolute rest-frame--and the CMBR provides unprecedented scientific evidence that this is so. The observation of a cosmic rest-frame more than motivates the idea that only the three-dimensional Universe exists, and therefore time actually passes, etc., and the events that occur in the Universe as it exists make up the space-time map of all observables, which we describe with four-dimensional physics.

            Sorry if this sounds like I've gotten my back up. I really don't agree with a lot of what cosmology is supposed to have established. But I do think cosmologists have done a better job of *striving* for a realistic and sensible theory than physicists in other areas. Mis-attributing the meaning of measured parameters isn't the same as pushing abstract magic as something better than a sensible description. I still think cosmology is, at its heart, a realist's theory.

            Daryl

            Dear Eckard,

            I really couldn't agree more with this sentiment. I also agree with Ed's optimism that the disagreements we may have are very likely the result of simple misunderstandings, because I think we do have the same idea about things. Also, I want to say sorry that my actions or inactions have ever offended you---that's never been my intent.

            I've felt just as you have about having to discover the clarity of Newton's insights on my own, after having been told over and again, that Newton was a fool to his senses, and brilliant Einstein showed him for what he was. The formalism of Newtonian mechanics is wrong, but so is the common thinking that 'absolute space and time were stupid and naïve ideas that are inconsistent with relativity'. Newton's definitions of absolute time, space, and motion are formally nothing other than what standard cosmology describes as cosmic time, the spatial sections of its associated comoving rest-frame, and peculiar motion such as we take to be indicated by the CMB dipole anisotropy. Relativistic cosmology implements Newton's definitions, and by extension so should all of relativity theory, since solutions of Einstein's equations should be nothing more than local descriptions of space-time in whatever coordinate system one uses; i.e., the relative and absolute aspects of time, space, motion, etc., that are described by modern physics should be acknowledged as fully consistent with Newton's definitions, even though he didn't implement them correctly in his theory because he didn't--and how could he possibly have justified it anyway?--assume the speed of light should be constant from one frame to the next.

            One thing I hope to get out of an exchange with you is why you keep saying you think I haven't considered the consequences of a presentist interpretation of relativity. But maybe it's best if we begin with a standard thought experiment, to see if we're on the same page regarding our stance that "There is only one common time", as you've put it in your endnotes, along with what that should mean for all its consequences. I'll start a new thread for this below.

            Best regards,

            Daryl

            Dear Eckard,

            Following up on my first response to your comment on Jun. 28, 2013 @ 04:41 GMT

            I thought you might be interested to discuss the following: consider a situation in which two gunslingers about to duel with laser pistols stand at either end of a train and there's some gunpowder at the middle that gets lit by a referee. Someone else watches the whole thing from a field outside, and from his perspective the train is moving to the right.

            Do the gunslingers see the signal at the same time, or not? According to which perspective? If no, is it still a fair fight (assuming each stands his ground)? How do you reconcile this with there being one common time?

            Cheers,

            Daryl