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

      Hi, Kevin,

      Ever since I saw Sorkin's presentation with his take of how partially ordered sets may lead to emergent spacetime, ever since 2002, it haunted me what should those point events be, so that we get the quantum side of physics. I guess, this is what Ken Wharton asked you about.

      Last year Giovanni Amelino-Camelia wrote essay, in which he stated an obvious fact that we have never (highlight never) detected an empty point of space(time). All we have ever detected are particle events, which are collected in experiments like LHC into statistics.

      If we take this seriously, then particle events (now vertices in Feynman diagrams) are elements of the set. Partial temporal order is dictated by particle creation happening before its annihilation. Spacial order, specifically its 3D nature, might be related to spin relations (SU2 connection with O3 groups), and/or there may be something which you mentioned in Q&A part of your talk at Perimeter. Types of vertices, places where incoming particles are annihilated and outgoing ones are created, as well as types of fundamental particles are given by Standard Model. So, there are already lots of known-to-work on experiment elements here, i.e. the is a starting ground to recreate a spacetime, which should approximate to Minkowski thing. Let's not forget that with higgs all fundamental particles are simpler, i.e. none has mass.

      When there is an event (in QFT), involving an electron, one cannot say for certain in how many self-energy loops were in its past. This incompletness of information at a fundamental level (QFTs) nicely implies relational nature of information at QM level, expressed in Rovelli's current essay.

      I put the physical part of above arrangement in http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1597 with clear mention of where poset-like math should be applied. By the way, when we say (as is done in QFT class) that electrons are effective particles, and are maid up of many events involving fundamental particles of Standard Model, then, composition of effective particles makes them indistinguishable. This is shorter, than Philip Goyal's arguments in his recent piece.

      Please, let me know, what you think about this.

      Cheers,

      Mikalai.

        Dear Kevin

        I read your essay with interest. You start with the electron as you might well do since in our computers it is the most familiar example of a particle mediating Its and Bits. Beyond that the discussion gets rather too technical to assimilate completely in one reading, but I think I understood your intention to describe causality in a network. This is excellent, as it shows you have an image of the workings of the Universe at fundamental scale that are linear, local and causal.

        Here and there your vision wavers, threatened by the complexities and uncertainties of space-time and of probability. Have no fear, the Universe may well be just a simple network of influences of an ordered lattice of energy, and both spacetime and probability are emergent physicist-invented mathematial concepts with no real physical connection to what is happening at the smallest scales.

        This is what I have tried to present in my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory also found here and defended in my last year's fqxi essay "Fix Physics!". Regretfully my work is qualitative and incomplete and lacks the professional touch with which you have presented your vision of reality.

        With best wishes for your success

        Vladimir

          4 days later

          Hi Kevin,

          The main reason for joining this contest was not to win, but to see if I can get any professional physicist with interest in foundational issues, to evaluate my idea. I appreciate any criticism no matter how harsh, although I do prefer constructive ones. I have rated you fairly high ( I follow up on your work regularly in FQXI), but as I said I don't care for rating mine, but that is your prerogative. I will also ask you some basic questions about your theory a bit later.

          Many thanks

          Adel

            Dear Kevin,

            I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

            Regards and good luck in the contest,

            Sreenath BN.

            http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

              Hello Kevin,

              Just a few encouraging words. Your essay is good but appeared a bit technical for me to follow. Nevertheless, someone referred me to Feynman checkerboard model and I feel yours is very similar and a bit clearer. I don't know whether to call mine a checkerboard model, it appears a bit too simple or what do you think?

              Then, if I may ask since Δx appears in your essay, do you envisage a minimum possible value? Or the value has no lower limit?

              Lastly, since your essay is information-based and you are a specialist in this area, would you consider existence/non-existence as a binary choice, i.e. information?

              Regards,

              Akinbo

                Hello again Kevin,

                Sorry it has taken this long to comment.

                Excellent essay! I like the way you utilise networks of influence. The whole idea feels logical and right. I especially like that you have It from Bit AND Bit from It, as I think the examples you cite are very good. Also, I think that each are as fundamental. Moreover one cannot exist fully, as we know them, without the other.

                Best wishes for the contest,

                Antony

                Dear Ioannis

                Thank you for your kind comments.

                I will be sure to take a look at your website and paper.

                Cheers

                Kevin

                Dear Mikalai

                Thank you for your comments and questions.

                When I began this work, I simply considered a casually ordered set of events. It wasn't clear to me what an event was either---in Sorkin's approach or even Einstein's for that matter. This is one thing I have tried to clear up.

                The way I think about it at present is that entities can influence one another. The act of influencing and the act of being influenced are two events that can be ordered by virtue of the fact that there is a difference between influencing and being influenced. What is this influence? I don't know, and I am not sure one could know. Its like asking what an electron is.

                What I do think is that different patterns of influence is what gives rise to forces (perhaps all the different forces?). Here is why I think this. As I explain in the essay, the energy and momentum of a particle reflect the rates at which the particle influences others. Now if during this process, the particle is itself influenced by another, this necessarily changes the rates, which changes its energy and momentum. Hence this influence has the effect of a force. Its a very different model that has the aim of actually elucidating the nature of these fundamental properties that we have become so familiar with that we feel we understand them.

                I had not read Giovanni Amelino-Camelia's essay. But he is right, no empty point in space has ever been observed. This idea of space as reflecting relationships among entities is an old idea that goes back to the muslim theory of Kalam and later Al-Ghazali. This was actually the idea that was held by scientists, like Leibniz, on the continent during the time of Newton. The problem is that no one really knew how to do anything with a theory of space that is defined by the entities themselves. This is similar in spirit to the idea proposed by Wheeler and Feynman when they considered direct particle-particle interactions. Since the particles set up the fields, why do you really need the fields. Their program was abandoned because they needed interactions that went backward in time.

                I have not given particle creation and annihilation much thought in this context. I have some ideas on how to arrive at something like field theory, but these are half-baked at present. As for self-energy loops, I am not sure what these would look like in this context either, or even if they are necessary.

                I will check out your forum entry.

                Thanks again!

                Kevin

                Hi Ian

                Thanks for your comments!

                Thank you also for showing me the paper by Coecke & Martin. I need to get myself a copy.

                I too like that the particle physics signature comes out as being the correct one. The mass-energy relationship is closely related to the Minkowski metric. But one thing that confuses me is why does the mass-energy relationship assumed to hold in curved spacetime when the Minkowski metric has to be modified? There is something funny going on here.

                Last, spin and space go hand-in-hand.

                I would like to understand this better myself, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

                Cheers

                Kevin

                Dear Vladimir

                Thank you for your kind words and comments.

                The essay really isn't just about electrons. The influence concept gives rise to Fermions in general, which are the particles that make up all of matter.

                I would like to know where you think my essay wavers. There are many missing details that one can fill in by looking at the referenced papers, or by going here:

                http://knuthlab.rit.albany.edu/index.php/Program/Foundations

                But it is not a lattice of energy. I attempt to show in the essay that energy is merely one of several descriptions of what a particle is doing. I do believe that spacetime is an emergent description of relationships among entities. Probability is simply a means by which one consistently ranks logical statements.

                BTW I enjoyed your essay.

                Thank you again!

                Kevin

                Dear Adel

                I will try to get a chance to read your essay.

                Thanks

                Kevin

                Dear Sreenath

                I will try to get to your essay soon...

                Good luck to you as well!

                Cheers

                Kevin

                Dear Akinbo

                Thank you for your kind words, I hope to get to your essay soon...

                The dx that appears is discrete and has a minimum value.

                Regarding existence/non-existence, there are two mutually exclusive exhaustive choices, so binary would be a good classification. As for "i.e. information", I am not sure what you are asking. I view information as that which constrains my beliefs.

                Cheers

                Kevin

                Kevin - do you have a reference for the Feynman / Wheeler program which "was abandoned because they needed interactions that went backward in time"?

                Are you talking about this paper:

                John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Phillips Feynman, "Interaction with the absorber as the mechanism of radi- ation", Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 17, no. 2-3, pp. 157-181, Apr. 1945

                or some other paper? I'm very interested in this reference.

                Kind regards, Paul

                Kevin - excellent paper. I'm delighted to see someone develop the concept of an embedded observer.

                I'm not sure how to think about the poset model. The Hasse diagram seems to have the same problem as Feynman diagrams (time is up). Makes it difficult to represent reversible quantum flow (unless you fold the paper ;-)

                This is related to the point you make in the Mass, Energy and Momentum section - "This makes time an excellent parameter for indexing observations" - It seems to me that this is true only for irreversible, monotonically increasing time.

                Although I am intrigued by your reference to Feynman's factor of i during helicity traversals. [I don't have a copy of Feynman & Hibbs]

                Kind regards, Paul

                  Dr. Knuth

                  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 regards,

                  Than Tin

                    Dear Paul

                    Thank you for your kind words and comments.

                    The poset model is very nice in the sense that posets have a duality where one can simply flip the ordering relation (it is arbitrary after all), and this is what results in time-reversal symmetry. Literally just flip the paper upside down!

                    Time is simply an index. You can count backwards if you wish and you will get the same laws of physics.

                    Feynman and Hibbs doesn't have much to say as its literally left as a homework exercise. There have been a host of papers on the Feynman checkerboard model showing how one can derive the Dirac equation. However, in those papers one starts by assuming the factor of i in amplitude during the helicity reversals. In my paper on Fermions, (http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2332) I show how you can derive it, which is quite satisfying.

                    Thank you again for your comments!

                    Kevin