Hi Kevin -

This is a very fine essay, and I found a lot to agree with in your approach. I appreciate it that you make your assumptions so clear as you go through your argument, acknowledging that other routes might also be possible. And it's impressive how much you can derive from a very simple model of interaction.

I think your basic argument is important - that is, since everything that can be observed consists of "influences", we lose no empirical information if we describe only the structure of influences themselves, without assuming this structure is due to any definite underlying properties of things.

Of course it's vastly more efficient to describe what a thing is in itself, with all its properties, than to describe all the different ways it influences other things, in different contexts. But since at the quantum level, the "thing in itself" is so problematic, it's important that we can in principle do without that notion. But then we're faced with the difficulty of conceptualizing the structure of influences in some way.

Your approach to this is essentially the opposite of the one I take in my essay. You want to abstract from all the many kinds of influences that constitute the observable world, to see what kind of structure can be derived from basic postulates about "influence" in general. And while some of your assumptions seem questionable, I think you've demonstrated that a lot of basic physics is already implicit in a radically simplified structure of things observing other things.

My approach may be complementary to yours. You say, "we do not need to know how a particle influences others - just that it does - to obtain these relevant physical variables with their expected relations." But in fact, we know a vast amount about how different kinds of things affect each other. In fact, per your basic argument above, that's really all we know, in physics - this structure of influences. But for reasons I explain in my essay, we haven't yet learned how to describe this type of structure effectively. So by default, our theories are still cast in the language of things (particles, fields, spacetime) that posses intrinsic properties.

I argue that the reason it's been so hard to conceptualize the structure of observable information is because things "influence" each other in so many different ways, and because every way things interact only results in observable information in an appropriate context set up by other kinds of interactions. Rather than trying to reduce this complex contextual structure to something simple and abstract, I'm suggesting that its complexity can be explained as the result of an evolutionary process.

Taking a line of thought similar to your basic argument, I note that all observable information is definable in terms of other observable information, whether or not there's any underlying reality of things-in-themselves. But this implies that the structure of "influences" as a whole constitutes a very special kind of self-defining system, which I argue could be subject to a form of natural selection.

Since this idea suggests that our current physics may have evolved from much simpler structures of influence, the sort of construction you undertake in your essay seems quite relevant and interesting.

Thanks - Conrad

    Dear Cristi

    Thank you for your kind words.

    I very much wanted to talk more about how one derives those quantum mechanical amplitudes and some of the details about this relates to inference. But the essay had to be focused and I thought that focusing on how information leads to this concept of particle "properties" would be most interesting.

    Since the essay was finished, I have now come to appreciate that this approach provides some interesting insights into contextuality.

    I see that your essay has been posted as well.

    fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1627

    I look forward to reading it!

    Cheers

    Kevin

    Kevin,

    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

      Mr. Knuth,

      Boy I'm a huge fan of your work! I've pretty much read all of your papers scattered over the web, from the NASA archives to your homepage. I reference a couple of your papers in my own essay here and linked to your "Quantum theory and probability theory: their relationship and origin in symmetry" paper on Phil Gibb's section of the forum. That, in my opinion, is a very elegant piece of work! I haven't read this essay yet but look forward to it.

      With regards,

      Wes Hansen

        You know, I like your "Cox-Knuth Method" largely because it's very straight forward, elegant, revealing, and because it has such a broad utility; I believe its utility is constrained only by the breadth and depth of one's imagination. So naturally I enjoyed your paper but I was a bit let down; I was hoping to gain a little insight into your metaphysics! Your imagination is readily apparent in a number of your papers but your analysis is always conservative and careful, as it should be. I can't help but wonder if you even allow yourself the luxury of a metaphysics.

        To me, with this essay contest, the Foundational Questions Institute is asking, certainly an ontological question and perhaps a metaphysical question: does reality EMERGE from a more fundamental underlying information or is information DERIVED from a more fundamental underlying reality? In my opinion, you constrain yourself to the epistemological. You take the approach of analyzing the best perspective for building inferential models, which is to say, for conducting theoretical science and in that endeavor I feel you present a rather formidable argument. But just out of curiosity, what is your ontological view? Do embedded observers create physical laws with the order they IMPOSE on reality or do they investigate increasingly more accurate approximations of an order existent independent of their existence?

        And while I'm on the subject, in the first paragraph of your paper you state:

        "My entire sensorium is excited by all that surrounds me. These experiences are all I have ever known, and for this reason, they comprise my reality."

        What aspect of reality do you think is accessed during, say, a deep meditative state? For example, a state such as that obviously obtained by Bo Tat Thich Quang Duc (Thich Quang Duc self-immolated during the Vietnam War and as reported by David Halberstam of The New York Times, "As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."). Or what aspect of reality do you think is accessed when one is isolated in a sensory deprivation chamber. Do you think this aspect of reality transcends the embedded observer or is it constrained to the observer's cognitive apparatus? If you think this aspect of reality transcends the embedded observer, is it susceptible to scientific analysis or is it part of the "not completely knowable underlying reality?" And if you think it is constrained to the observer's cognitive apparatus where, exactly, are the boundaries? Considerable scientific studies have demonstrated that embedded observers are capable of responding to stimuli prior to the manifestation of said stimuli, it would seem, in the "light-cone," suggesting observers are somehow capable of responding to what you call "influences" sometimes seconds before they happen; is it possible that said observer's cognitive apparatus extends to include the entirety of the environment he/she is embedded in - thou art that, say? This is not to undermine your poset picture or the associated Susan Sontag quote but, rather, to suggest that perhaps there exists a relative perspective and an absolute perspective both of which are somehow accessible to the embedded observer; Buddhists refer to this as the theory of two truths. Your thoughts, if any?

        Best regards,

        Wes Hansen

        • Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis - abstract: This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity, the direction of pre-stimulus physiological activity reflects the direction of post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in an unexplained anticipatory effect. The reports we examined used one of two paradigms: (1) randomly ordered presentations of arousing vs. neutral stimuli, or (2) guessing tasks with feedback (correct vs. incorrect). Dependent variables included: electrodermal activity, heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation, electroencephalographic activity, and blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity. To avoid including data hand-picked from multiple different analyses, no post hoc experiments were considered. The results reveal a significant overall effect with a small effect size [fixed effect: overall ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15-0.27, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 Ã-- 10-12; random effects: overall (weighted) ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.13-0.29, z = 5.3, p < 5.7 Ã-- 10-8]. Higher quality experiments produced a quantitatively larger effect size and a greater level of significance than lower quality studies. The number of contrary unpublished reports that would be necessary to reduce the level of significance to chance (p > 0.05) was conservatively calculated to be 87 reports. We explore alternative explanations and examine the potential linkage between this unexplained anticipatory activity and other results demonstrating meaningful pre-stimulus activity preceding behaviorally relevant events. We conclude that to further examine this currently unexplained anticipatory activity, multiple replications arising from different laboratories using the same methods are necessary. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.

        • Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition, Part 2A: A System-Wide Process? - abstract: Objectives: This study aims to contribute to a scientific understanding of intuition, a process by which information normally outside the range of conscious awareness is perceived by the body's psychophysiological systems. The first objective, presented in two empirical reports (Part 1 and Part 2), was to replicate and extend the results of previous experiments demonstrating that the body can respond to an emotionally arousing stimulus seconds before it is actually experienced. The second objective, to be presented in a forthcoming publication (Part 3), is to develop a theory that explains how the body receives and processes information involved in intuitive perception. Design: The study used a counterbalanced crossover design, in which 30 calm and 15 emotionally arousing pictures were presented to 26 participants under two experimental conditions: a baseline condition of "normal" psychophysiologic function and a condition of physiological coherence. Primary measures included: skin conductance; the electroencephalogram (EEG), from which cortical event-related potentials (ERP) and heartbeatevoked potentials (HBEP) were derived; and the electrocardiogram (ECG), from which cardiac decelerations/ accelerations were derived. These measures were used to investigate where and when in the brain and body intuitive information is processed. Results: The main findings presented here are: (1) surprisingly, both the heart and brain appear to receive and respond to intuitive information; (2) even more surprisingly, there is compelling evidence that the heart appears to receive intuitive information before the brain; (3) there were significant differences in prestimulus ERPs for calm versus emotional stimuli; (4) the frontal cortex, temporal, occipital, and parietal areas appear to be involved in the processing of prestimulus information; (5) there were significant differences in prestimulus calm/emotional HBEPs, primarily in the coherent mode; (6) there were significant gender differences in the processing of prestimulus information. Especially noteworthy is the apparent interaction between the HBEPs and ERPs in the females, which suggests that the heart modulates the ERP and that females are more attuned to intuitive information from the heart. Conclusions: Overall, our data suggest that the heart and brain, together, are involved in receiving, processing, and decoding intuitive information. On the basis of these results and those of other research, it would thus appear that intuitive perception is a system-wide process in which both the heart and brain (and possibly other bodily systems) play a critical role. To account for the study's results, Part 3 will develop a theory based on holographic principles explaining how intuitive perception accesses a field of energy into which information about "future" events is spectrally enfolded.

          Dear Paul,

          Thank you for your comments.

          In your response you contend that we can know an electron.

          I am not actually sure what this means. We have been studying electrons since 1897 and we cannot even resolve the various pictures we have of it (eg. particle or wave). You do acknowledge that we would not be able to determine that an electron is pink if its pinkness did not affect how it influences our measurement apparatus. The immediate conclusion is that the only aspects of the electron that we can know about are those that affect or govern how it influences others. The practical result is to then describe an electron in terms of how it influences.

          What I have attempted in my work is to postulate a simple model of influence by focusing solely on the idea that things influence one another. The results I have obtained is that you do not actually need to know what electrons are to get the specific laws of physics and the particle properties that I describe in the essay.

          I find this quite surprising, yet comforting since I cannot see how we would ever know what an electron truly is. The best we can seem to muster are analogies, and these have limited utility. I can only come up with two truisms:

          - Electrons are electrons.

          - I can identify an electron because of what it does.

          The fact that the latter can give you the Dirac equation (even in 1+1 dimensions) is remarkable and insightful.

          Thanks!

          Kevin

          Thank you George for your comments.

          I imagine that I will get a better idea of your perspective by reading your essay.

          Perhaps I will be able to comment better then.

          Cheers

          Kevin

          Dear Satyavarapu

          Thank you for your comments.

          My impression is that you are taking a stance that material things cannot come from information. I could not agree more. I view information as that which constrains one's beliefs. And in this sense the laws of physics are no more than rules based on making optimal inferences.

          • [deleted]

          • Post #30

          Dear Anton

          Thank you for your comments.

          I am not so sure that your restatement

          'I would rather argue that you observe the universe because of it's influence it has.'

          of my opening sentence is so different. Though I do appreciate the fact that you move from one's knowing to observation. However, I would rather stay away from "observation" since it is a term loaded with a wide variety of preconceptions.

          With regard to your question on Equation 5 and special relativity. We were studying how one could consistently quantify causally ordered sets. We realized that there were no symmetries in a general poset (unlike in lattices, one which my other research was based). At one point I realized that one could imagine an observer as a chain of events, and I considered how such an observer could quantify the poset. I realized that scalar measures of intervals would be based on quantities like dpdq and it was a flash of inspiration that allowed me to realize that this could be decomposed by considering symmetric and antisymmetric components. Now had I never learned of relativity, I would have still obtained the Minkowski metric this way. But I doubt I would have realized how one could derive the Lorentz transformation, nor would I have understood its deeper significance.

          It all comes down to counting discrete events.

          You can read more in our paper:

          Knuth K.H., Bahreyni N. 2012. The Physics of Events: A Potential Foundation for Emergent Space-Time, arXiv:1209.0881 [math-ph]

          and I should mention that Prof. Mauro D'Ariano has had similar ideas that he presents in his essay on qubits. Here is a link to one of his papers:

          G. M. D'Ariano, On the "principle of the quantumness", the quantumness

          of relativity, and the computational grand-unification, Quantum Theory: Reconsideration of Foundations, 5 ed. (New York) (A. Y. Khrennikov, ed.),

          73 AIP Conference Proceedings, no. 1232, American Institute of Physics, 2010,

          arXiv:1001.1088 [quant-ph].

          Last, I look forward to seeing your essay on Michelson-Morley

          Cheers

          Kevin

          Thank you for your kind comments.

          I too think we can go further.

          In my model, when a particle is influenced its momentum and energy are affected. This is a basis for force.

          In the meantime, I look forward to reading your essay.

          Cheers

          Kevin

          Dear Conrad

          Thank you for your kind words and comments.

          You present a very interesting perspective and I look forward to reading your essay. I will hold off commenting until then.

          Cheers

          Kevin

          Dear Jim

          Thank you for letting me know about your essay.

          Your title was certainly eye-catching.

          I look forward to reading it.

          Cheers

          Kevin

          Dear Wes

          Thank you for your generous words.

          I was not aware that our paper was discussed on the forum. I am rather new here, so I will have to check it out.

          Thank you again!

          Kevin

          Dear Wes

          You wrote:

          I am sincerely sorry to disappoint you at this level.

          While I believe the work summarized in my essay to be well-founded, the technical details are spread over at least four papers, which results in a viewpoint that I thought to be sufficiently radical to risk being simply unbelievable. Adding a layer of metaphysical ponderings to that would risk tainting the practical message since the physics itself rests on just a few very simple foundational ideas. I find this way of thinking about influence to be compelling and if given a choice, I would choose this as my metaphysics---as simple as it is.

          However, the metaphysics that follows as corollary or inference from this foundation is perhaps more exciting.

          As I state in the essay, it is surprising that these physical laws can arise from the fact that particles influence one another rather than the way in which they do so. That something this simple can give you a concept of space, time, mass, energy, momentum, and even helicity, as well as the Feynman rules for computing amplitudes and probabilities in QM is simultaneously shocking and satisfying.

          This cannot be the end of the story. If these ideas have any merit, then both charge and spin must somehow come out of this picture. Spin is a three-dimensional analog of helicity, and charge is required by CPT invariance (when it holds). It could provide a picture explaining why E&M is inherently geometrical.

          While I did not have ample room to carefully discuss complementarity, one can see pretty quickly by looking at Dirac that particles cannot simultaneously be assigned a position and momentum. Confusion about this point is more readily had when focusing on Schrodinger, which is an approximation. This suggests that the conceptual difficulties that we have had with complementarity are due to this misconception that particles "possess" these attributes as part of what they are. In this picture we "assign" them properties as descriptions of what they happen to be doing.

          I did not discuss quantum contextuality in this essay. But again, contextuality can arise from the fact that a particle does not change what it is when we interact with it. Instead, the particle either changes what it does when we interact with it, or more interestingly our interactions with it may probe different aspects of its behavior. I have not even begun to flesh these thoughts out, but on the surface I think that this is perhaps a reasonable way to approach the topic of contextuality.

          And now for the more metaphysical ideas:

          It would be good to know which laws and to what degree such laws are contingent or derivable. Could it be that they are *all* derivable? That is, God had no choice in the construction of the universe? For example, it may be impossible for there to be other universes with different fine structure constants. The laws of physics would have *had* to have been these laws!

          Even more interesting is the fact that what I have shown here arises from particles that simply influence one another where the details of such influence do not matter. If one *could* derive *all the laws of physics* this way, then it would mean that particles could actually be almost anything that influences according to these simple rules. That is, the universe could be a simulation or a cellular automaton of sorts. It could be a high school student's science fair project where he or she has simulated 10^80 or so particles. If the laws were derivable this way, there would be no way for us to ever know if this was a simulation since there would be no experiment one could do to tell the difference. But even more interesting, it would not matter for it would be just as real. For what is an electron other than *something* that influences others?

          Cheers

          Kevin

          Hello Again Wes,

          I tried quoting you, but I used double \lt and \gt symbols, which then took my internal text as a comment.

          Here is what I meant to quote above:

          "So naturally I enjoyed your paper but I was a bit let down; I was hoping to gain a little insight into your metaphysics! Your imagination is readily apparent in a number of your papers but your analysis is always conservative and careful, as it should be. I can't help but wonder if you even allow yourself the luxury of a metaphysics."

          Thanks

          Kevin

          Kevin,

          Just read your essay. It clarified a number of aspects of your poset approach in my mind. You should definitely read the Coecke & Martin paper I showed you last week. I think there's possibly a relation here to Rovelli's relational approach (did we discuss this?). Anyway, I love your point about the fact that knowledge about any property that does not affect how a particle exerts its influence is inaccessible to us. This is essentially related to distinguishability, though I think there are some issues to be worked out regarding bosons as of yet (see van Fraassen's work on identical particles and exchange symmetry, for example).

          A couple of other quick notes: I have always suspected, despite the fact that the two signatures are mathematically equivalent, that the particle physics metric signature was more physically correct than the signature used in GR. Also, I have long suspected that there is more to spin than meets the eye, but I'll e-mail you about that separately.

          Cheers,

          Ian

            Kevin,

            Thank you kindly for taking the time to flesh out some of your ideas. I certainly appreciate it and look forward to your future work! As you say, "this cannot be the end of the story."

            Best regards,

            Wes Hansen

            Hi Kevin,

            Interesting stuff! But as promising as this looks for relativity, I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of where you've taken this on the quantum side of things. Of course, I've seen your related talk on that topic, and I know you were space-limited, but for me that's where the question of "what does a particle do?" is far more fascinating and problematic.

            Are you really breaking the Newton's-third-law-style symmetry between the "act of influence" and the "response to influence"? Sure, I see why you need a partial order, but is there any deep reason why you can't have such an order and still treat both sides of influence in the same way?

            Finally, I suppose I'll take you to task for being overly even-handed on the main question. Your essay clearly supports the "Bit from It" perspective, but then at the very end you turn around and claim that we can use our Bits to build another "It*" (starred here to distinguish It* from the original It.). But in what sense is It* reality at all? Isn't It* merely our best-guess reconstruction based on incomplete knowledge, which means It*'s not really reality? So why is it fair to call It* "it"? Is there any particular reason why you aren't you fully in the "Bit from It" camp?

            Cheers!

            Ken

              Hi Ken

              > I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of where you've taken this on the quantum side of things.

              There are so many things to talk about and so few essay contests! ;)

              > Are you really breaking the Newton's-third-law-style symmetry between the "act of influence" and the "response to influence"? Sure, I see why you need a partial order, but is there any deep reason why you can't have such an order and still treat both sides of influence in the same way?

              That is great question!

              Its not quite clear that the "influence" that I discuss constitutes a force.

              I think it does, since when a particle is influenced, this affects the particles rate at which it influences others. So its energy and momentum change. Up until now I have focused on a free particle that influences others, but is not itself influenced. We have only just begun investigating what affect influence has on the particle and the inferences one makes about particles. If this truly is a viable fundamental perspective, then Newton's Laws should emerge along with a great deal more of physics.

              > Finally, I suppose I'll take you to task for being overly even-handed on the main question. Your essay clearly supports the "Bit from It" perspective, but then at the very end you turn around and claim that we can use our Bits to build another "It*" (starred here to distinguish It* from the original It.). But in what sense is It* reality at all? Isn't It* merely our best-guess reconstruction based on incomplete knowledge, which means It*'s not really reality? So why is it fair to call It* "it"? Is there any particular reason why you aren't you fully in the "Bit from It" camp?

              Fair enough. This is my first essay, and I felt that the concepts I was introducing were probably sufficiently radical.

              I am right square in the "Bit from It" camp.

              However, the "It" in this picture is not the usual that you think of when you think of the foundations of physics. Here there is only influence---that's it. From information about such influences, we construct a picture of reality, which I called It*. This is the physics we are familiar with: space, time, mass, energy, momentum, etc. But the "It*" is not real. The reality is the "It", which is simply not completely knowable (as I point out since the observers cannot possibly reconstruct the particles behavior).

              I hope that this helps clear some things up.

              If not, please feel free to "take me to task" again!

              Cheers

              Kevin

              Dear Kevin,

              my congratulations for your excellent essay. Please have a look at http://vixra.org/abs/1306.0226 where, I think you will find the first steps in developing of a new conception of Nature that leads to your every conclusion following a different (but very similar) route.

              " Any existent appears in dual form: Real (IT) - What it is, and Virtual (BIT) - How it works.IT is caused by "past" and causes "future" while BIT is caused by "future" and causes "past" ("past" and "future" are in accordance to real world). Hence, future and past are included in existent' s present."

              Finally I think you are right that spacetime is only our way to conceive thinks, a kind of arbitrary dimensions we give in order to interpret and express interactions.

              My best wishes