Information, Misinformation and High Philosophy by Don Limuti

Dear Don,

I enjoyed reading your essay. You mentioned Wheeler's assuption of continuity. My opinion is that he used continuity when he couldn't find clearer ways to explain ideas. But his "it from bit", as described in "Information, Physics, Quantum The Search for Links" (1989) and in other articles, is fundamentally discrete, and it seems to me to be more close to your view of photon hoops. The difference seems to me to be that at Wheeler the observations (which are means to obtain the bits) are the "stops" of the photon, and not some points separated by the wavelength. Considering that the photons do the lambda-hopping, where are the "stops"? Are they the points of maximum? Are they points where the phase is 0? This works for real waves, but since photons are complex waves, it seems to me difficult to find a gauge invariant choice of the stops, but maybe you have such a choice, or maybe you adhere to a different description of photons than in QM.

Your proposal can, as you observed, be easily distingushed from QM by experiments. While QM was confirmed so far every time, it is not impossible that someday a new experiment invalidates it. One possible experiment to confirm your lambda-hopping proposal, for instance, is to send coherent light through a wall. It seems to me that it should pass through the wall, if the stops of the photon are not inside the wall.

You use at the beginning of the essay some philosophical ideas, mainly from Vedanta. The duality Nirguna Brahma / Saguna Brahma parallels that of unmanifested Tao / manifested Tao (a theme in my essay). Of course, nondualism is the answer to this koan.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

Dear Don,

Thank you for explaining the lambda-hopping and the experimental predictions. You ask "Do you think FQXi would entertain either of these tests?". Hmmm, that is an interesting question indeed. I have no idea, depends whether they consider it to be interesting enough. Your laser experiment doesn't seem too difficult, I suppose it could be performed easily at a quantum lab, if you find someone with access and interested in helping you. How you do any of these, I don't know.

Best regards,

Cristi

Dear All

A standard-issue big city all-glass high-rise stands across the street from my usual bus stop. When I look up the high-rise facade, I can see the reflections of the near-by buildings and the white clouds from the sky above. Even when everything else looks pretty much the same, the reflections of the clouds are different, hour to hour and day to day.

After I boarded the bus, I rushed to get a single seat facing four others on a slightly elevated platorm. From my vantage point, I can't help noticing the shoes of the four passengers across from my seat are not the same, by either the make , the design, or the style, and that is true even when the four passengers happen to be members of the same family.

I could change the objects of my fascination from shoes to something else, to buttons on the dresses for example, but I do not think the result would have been any different. Diversity or Uniqueness would still rule the day! (There is a delightful essay on the subject of uniqueness by Joe Fisher in this contest.)

I am pretty sure people are fascinated by the diversity and the uniqueness in the world, when the other side of it is the inevitable boredom of sameness every time.

However, we have a need to know where all this beautiful and enchanting diversity comes from. Borrowing Wheelerian phraseology of "How come the quantum?", I ask "How come the diversity?" A standard physics answer is "Entropy always increases." (I am not a physicist, and I don't know if that is the final answer.)

Whenever I'm out of my depth, I go back to my theory of everything (TOE), which is a mental brew of common sense, intuition, gut, analogy, judgement, etc. etc. , buttressed when I can with a little thought-experiment.

The thought-experiment is simple. Imagine cutting a circle into two precisely, identical, and equal parts. Practically, there is no way we can get the desired result, because one part will be bigger or smaller in some way.

Physics - especially quantum physics - says it don't matter, do the superposition!

But superposition is fictive, an invention like the Macarena dance, and it has given us a cat, alive and dead at the same time.

I have heard that angels can dance on the tip of the needle, and now I'm finding out some of us can too!

Cheers and Good Luck to All,

Than Tin

Dear Don,

Interesting read. Its got that tang of an original perspective.

You say of your "lambda-hopping": "This kind of motion also provides an alternative to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle."

would it be right to say then that to move is to change and vice versa i.e. TIME is simply the evolution of matter and vice versa for SPACE such that given any apparent space and time then the excluded middle [of Peter Jacksons's essay] i.e. the "virtual exchange" of SM or "space-time" of GR indeed the "QUANTUM" or "lambda-hopping defines the term "observer"("unit" of/or any measurement)?

Let me say that this assumption actually BESTRIDES (or "blends") your Nirguna Brahman/Saguna Brahman positions. I tend to agree with Cristi's observation above that "Of course, nondualism is the answer to this koan."

"

This is the position I take to your λ-hopping as summed in my 4 axioms. I hope you can find time to read and comment on What a Wavefunction is. And I will be back here to rate. For me your essay is very much on the high side.

Just allow my essay a little of your time.

Regards,

Chidi

Dear Don,

Here, a cup of coffee to Siri and a most worthy rating to your essay. No asprin to you! Its good to know that the intuitive is not entirely to be discredited.

Now what do you have to say about some general direction of arguments that is developing in this contest? It seems to me FQXi should do a study/book on that annually.

All the best,

Chidi

Hi Don,

Dear Don! I can say definitely that you are filling the reality as it is. The proofs, logic and formulas become sometime not enough arguments for change some of harmful/powerful institutions. The humor and sarcasm become very necessary in such situations. That is why I really like your not ordinary approach to present critical situation in physics. I hope some of hard brains maybe will come a little bit ,,soft,, when they understand that their ,,high,, occupation is just funny/empty! Thank you and best wishes.

George

Dear Don,

I made some observations above but just in case you miss it let me repeat this part:

What do you have to say about some general direction of arguments that is developing in this contest? It seems to me FQXi should do a study/book on that annually.

Bests,

Chidi

Hello Don,

Speculative idea but with a hint of truth. Your picture can form the basis for signalling across space.

I will check more on your webpage. The idea is that if space that has the ability to discriminate linear from circular then the *constantly related* bodies can experience centrifugal force. The implication is that space is a something that can participate in motion instead of being a nothing but a relational concept only.

I will be following your battle with the 'uncertainty principle'. In the judgement on my blog (on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 11:39 GMT) I mentioned that yourself (uncertainty principle), Gordon Watson (Bell's proposals) and Armin Shirazi (background) should be looked up to for solutions to difficulties with Quantum theory which I am not expert in. You may also view this article I came across. Wish you success.

Hi Chidi,

Very good question. It struck me that this contest brought out a trend I did not expect. That trend is the advance of physics into the turf that was formally philosophy/religion. I put the entries into these classes:

1. Information is physically real and it causes everything else.

2. Information is not physically real and is the cause of what we call reality.

3. Information is not physically real and is not the cause of reality.

3. The reality out there, is the cause of information.

4. It and Bit are always intertwined, both are always found together, but neither causes the other

5. It from Bit, or Bit from It, is an unanswerable question, a question that fundamentally cannot be asked.

It would be interesting is someone (FQXi) did keep track of these trends.

How we see the world is changing, lets keep track of it with bit :)

What do you think? Did I leave anything out?

Thanks,

Don L.

Hi Don,

I found your essay to be interesting, engaging and well written (and amusing). I think you could be onto something with lambda-hopping . I hope the experiment you describe on page 7 can be performed.

As you know, there are some similarities in the way your essay describes a particle that "never moves, but disappears and reappears" and the way my essay describes 1) laws of nature representing static information category relationships and a seemingly static system, because there is no evidence for an actual calculation infrastructure and 2) new information being injected via quantum decoherence and information category relationship.

Seemingly you'd say that a particle itself lambda-hops(with information causing the hop), and that this doesn't occur in classical objects; whereas the way I'd put it is that the information relating to a particle "jumps", and in classical objects the information jumps are effective but maybe can't easily be detected. That is, we seem to come to similar conclusions from different directions or mechanisms.

Best of luck in the essay contest, I will give your essay a good rating.

Lorraine

Hi Lorraine,

Thank you, It is nice to get votes, after all it is a contest. But it is much nicer to be understood. You can see why I liked your essay immediately. Since you mentioned decoherence I will add the following:

A few posts back, Cristi asked me how does the electron stop? I would translate that question as how does the electron appear? The answer is that if no energy (or object) is near the electron it just keeps hopping along with the same wavelength. This is similar to Newton's law that says a object in motion tends to stay in motion. An electron changes its motion by absorbing or emitting a photon. There is no physical thing added to or eliminated from the electron. The electron simply changes its wavelength and thus its speed when it absorbs or emits a photon.

So lets say you have an electron hopping along and you get it to absorb a photon. This electron will appear just a little bit sooner than normal and have a new shorter hopping wavelength. This is essentially "decoherence".

Classical objects (anything above the Planck mass) are collections of particles. The object itself can have zero velocity and a constant presence (no hopping) but its particle substratum is still hopping (appearing and disappearing).

It is a wish of mine to have a FQXi member perform an experiment to see if this concept of Lambda-hopping has any merit. Maybe they could even get a grant?

I appreciate your visit very much,

Don Limuti

Dear Don,

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.

Dear Don,

Your essay was an interesting read and I have rated it accordingly.

One doesn't see the dialogue style that often, but it gives your essay a nice pace. The only recent physics paper that I know of in that style is "a dialogue on quantum gravity" by Rovelli. Was that paper your inspiration to use this style?

Your lambda-hopping bears some resemblance with the concept of stepwise motion that I have developed in my own work; if you are interested, see my papers in Annalen der Physik (2010 and 2011). The central point is that rest-mass-having constituents (electrons, protons, etc.) alternate between a particlelike state of rest and a wavelike state of motion.

I agree with you that the concept of motion is one of the most important features of a fundamental physics theory. And like you, I do not believe that quantum theory is the final answer regarding the workings of the universe.

Best regards,

Marcoen

Hello Don,

You have stimulated my interest in the Uncertainty principle, which I wish you luck in its modification or overthrow. I am not really keen in joining that desirable task but I may chip in my thoughts. The following are excerpts on the subject from Wikipedia:

"the uncertainty principle actually states a FUNDAMENTAL property of quantum systems, and is not a statement about the OBSERVATIONAL success of current technology. It must be emphasized that measurement does not mean only a process in which a physicist-observer takes part, but rather any interaction between classical and quantum objects regardless of any observer"

"A nonzero function and its Fourier transform cannot both be SHARPLY LOCALIZED"

"For any two conjugate variables like position and momentum--the more precisely one is known, the less precisely the other can be known"

Heisenberg wrote: It can be expressed in its simplest form as follows: One can never know with perfect accuracy BOTH of those two important factors which determine the movement of one of the smallest particles--its position and its velocity. It is impossible to determine accurately BOTH the position and the direction and speed of a particle at the same instant. Heisenberg imagines an experimenter trying to measure the position and momentum of an electron by shooting a photon at it. If the photon has a short wavelength, and therefore, a large momentum, the position can be measured accurately.

MY QUESTION: How accurately can ONE, not both ever be measured? In particular, how *sharply localized* can position be determined? Can position be accurately measured beyond the Planck dimension, 10^-35m which has no further part? If position cannot be localized beyond this, does the uncertainty relation not then imply that the imprecision or uncertainty is actually limited by this Planck limit and not necessarily because of any relationship between conjugate variables? Note the Planck value as well in the uncertainty equation seems to indicate this limit.

Take note that I am not expert in these matters

Pls. I am copying Gordon Watson whose turf is on Bell's inequalities proposition and whose judgement one can possibly trust. A proposition which I now see arose from attempts to resolve difficulties brought about by what to make of the Uncertainty relation and the initial EPR Paradox attempts to modify it.

Regards,

Akinbo

Dear Don,

Extremely interesting and profound philosophical essay with original identity and current answers to the main questions of the contest. I am happy to read it! Beautiful deep dialectic! Dialogue provides an answer-which way to go. The main concept - "state". Excellent rating.

Thank you very much again! You made me very happy. Look also to my philosophical ideas.

Good luck in the contest,

Best regards,

Vladimir