Voyage from Discovery to Invention; Information & Reality in Physics, Biology & Mathematics. by Sreenath B N

Paul,

In the quantum world, it is 'only' after a measurement is performed you will come to know of the form of reality and not otherwise. So measurement has to occur before the corresponding reality is determined. The fact that similar kinds of measurements give different kinds of readings suggests that the quantum reality, or what you call physical existence, definitely has some form of indefiniteness because it is probabilistic in nature. This is what QM asserts repeatedly. It is true that quantum reality, or what you call physical existence, exists in a discrete form in the quantum world but this doesn't mean that it is independent of quantum measurement nor is it having a definitive form before the measurement is performed. What you say applies to classical reality in the classical world but not to quantum reality in the quantum world. So, please, don't confuse between the two worlds.

Sreenath.

Sreenath B N

Actually, nobody knows the age of the real Milky-Way Galaxy. Depending on which website's one visits, the estimates run from 800 million up to over 13 billion. There is no rational way you could determine what did or did not exist before anything else existed.

Sreenath,

Excellent and most insightful essay! You have made numerous noteworthy comments but my favorite is this:

"So if a mathematical theory devised to explain the Reality of Nature, succeeds in comprehending it from all aspects then it becomes the successful scientific theory. Like an artist who is having a blurred vision of Reality when he starts drawing his sketches and envisions it fully when he completes his drawings, a mathematician too will have a blurred vision of Reality and frames axioms to deduce mathematically from them the Reality which he is after and realizes it completely when his mission is accomplished."

I believe you will find the graphs I have created to explain how this art we call mathematics can be used to help unify gravity with the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces as one super-deterministc force. I invite you to rate my essay when you get the chance: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1809

Good luck with your entry of which I have rated highly.

Regards,

Manuel

Dear Sri Sreenath

I enjoyed your sane and clear-headed survey of physics, biology and mathematics from the points of view of Information and Reality. If I disagree with some things it is your overly trusting faith that GR, SR and QM correctly describe Reality. Yes they make corrrect predictions that have been tested experimentally. But is that Reality? It will take too long to explain here why I think these theories reach the correct results through wrong premises - please read my last year's "Fix Physics" fqxi contest paper.

I was surprised by your statement "the idea that the Information of the whole universe can be stored in an area smaller than the size of an atom shows us what power the quantum computer technology has got". It is poetically true, like William Blake's "...universe in a grain of sand, eternity in an hour" but quite wrong as informatics! For one thing the atom itself is part of the Universe so it will have to hold all of its own information in itself - and so on ad absurdium - a logical paradox! I think such a paradox was discussed by Godel in the last century about an all-knowing computer.

I liked your triangular conclusions that Mind understands Reality through Information.

Well done.

Vladimkir

Dear Sreenath

In my essay I described how all our knowledge and theories are separated from Reality by a cloud of unknowing. I stressed that precisely because of the overwhelming attitude of physicists these days of accepting elements of Einstein's Relativity (flexible spacetime, fixed speed of light ) and of QM (probability) and elevating these concepts to actual unquestionable and complete physical truths about Nature. They are nothing of the sort. Yes they work in their own ways, but in other ways they not contradict each other. QM needs a vacuum structure (the Higgs field?) but Special Relativity cancelled the aether. SR assumes a fixed speed of light, but (as Einstein himself admitted) GR requires a variable speed of light. QM is full of strange, weird, magical explanations that totally contradict experience. I suggest a more realistic explanation (see below). The photon is supposed to be a point particle, but Eric Reiter showed it is not. The list can go on.

Relativity can be expressed through Lorentz transformations where clocks slow down (not time as a dimension) and measuring sticks (not space as a dimension) contracts . GM can be expressed without SR as a density gradient in space. In QM Born's probability interpretation is just that - a mathematical convenience that is not derived from actual physical observation. One can go on saying "but every QM measurement is probabilistic". True but there is another interpretation of QM where probability emerges from an exquisite crystal-like order of the Universe. I have such a theory: Beautiful Universe suggesting such an approach.

Now I understand what you meant about the Big Bang 'atom' and the information of the Universe. I thought you were talking about one single atom in AD 2013! Forgive the misunderstanding.

With best wishes,

Vladimir

Dear Speenath,

I check your essay. You have concluded ,,Bit comes from It, but mind can know of It only through Bit,, This is excellent, my Dear! This words saying everything.

Open please the reference in my article ,,Rethinking the Formal methodology ...,, and email my from there. I think we need talk seriously!

Sincerely,

George K. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1804

Dear Vladimir,

By chance, I noticed you writing "Special Relativity cancelled the aether".

Wasn't a light-carrying medium already disproved in Potsdam, 1881?

You mention "Lorentz transformations where clocks slow down (not time as a dimension) and measuring sticks (not space as a dimension) contracts".

Wasn't Lorentz trying to rescue the aether with a transformation that was called Lorentz transformation by Poincaré? I agree, time dilution and length contraction are merely fictions that can be ascribed like the simple Doppler effect to questionably referencing one physical object to an other one, e.g. to an observer. The measuring stick itself does not contract, cf. my endnotes.

Best,

Eckard

Dear Vladimir,

Thanks for your inciteful essay. According to you, the object (reality or Nature) is absolute in nature and exists in itself, and it cannot be known by the subject (mind) completely as there exists 'a cloud of unknowing' between the subject and the object. I want to know, how far a subject can know about an object by squeezing this 'cloud of unknowing?' so that we can have a much better knowledge of reality. I, sincerely, hope that you know answer and I want to know it.

In the end of your essay, you are idetifying Nature with Information. Are these two views compatible? If, yes, I want to know how?

Besides yourself being a physicist and a philosopher, you are also a 'gifted artist'. Your art work is very impressive and helps in conveying your thoughts to any one with ease.

I will give you maximum score that you can expect from me.

Best of luck in the contest.

Sreenath.