Kevin,

This is a very fascinating approach that looks at what we know, rather than what we think. If I may, I would like to offer up the premise of my last year's entry and suggest ways it might bring together various of the points you raise; The dynamic reality we all inhabit, the vectors of influences it is usefully reduced to and the issue of the reality of time and space.

We experience reality from the perspective of a theoretical point and so we model time as a sequence of events and space as a three dimensional coordinate system.

Given the temporal sequence is foundational to humanity, as the basis of narrative and linear logic, it is natural to assume it is foundational and physics incorporates this as measures of duration. The reality though is that it is the changing configuration of what is, that turns future potential into past circumstance. For example, the earth is not traveling some vector from yesterday to tomorrow, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.

This makes time an effect of action, similar to temperature. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. The faster clock doesn't travel into the future quicker, but it (thermodynamically) ages/burns quicker, so it recedes into the past more rapidly.

Spacetime is correlating measures of duration and distance, but duration doesn't transcend the present. It is simply what is happening between events, such as the wave cycling between peaks, or the earth rotating between sunrises. So there is no "fabric of spacetime," any more then there are giant cosmic gear wheels.

This leaves space without any physical properties to allow it to be bend/warped, or limited/bound, etc. Which does give it two attributes; Absolute and infinite. Absolute because it is inert, which we can measure as the cause of centrifugal force. Infinite because you can't limit nothing.

Now consider those two foundational human features arising from time; narrative and linear logic. Naturally we would consider them one and the same, so that temporal sequence is cause and effect, but that is not so. Yesterday doesn't cause today, anymore than one rung on a ladder causes the next. Exchange of energy is cause. As you develop in your theory of influences.

Now, as you well know, this is not a particularly linear process. While the laws of physics might determine the outcome of any situation, the cone of input is fundamentally incomplete prior to the occurrence of any event. Even if information could travel faster then light, then so would input and the problem persists. At best, time is a tapestry of interlocking threads, not any singular history and that gets to your description of there being no universal "it."

In fact, as I develop in this years entry, information defines energy and energy manifests information, so since energy is conserved, old information has to be erased, in order to create new information, thus giving rise to the "arrow of time." Therefore eventually the past becomes as unknowable as the future, so we cannot reconstruct any real history, thus making the concept of determinism even more problematic. Considering past and future do not physically/ontologically exist, even the concept of determinism(set past and future) is effectively epistemic.

I think this inherent subjectively of reality is where your essay is going, at least reading it from my particular set of references/influences!

Regards,

John Merryman

    Dear Physician,

    Mass ratio of neutron/proton is fundamental in physics.

    Maybe you do not have time to read essay of unknown authors. I encourage you, therefore, allow you to comment on the very essence of following formula:

    [math]\gamma= 2^{(cy+p+3t)/(2+2a^{2}m)}=1.0013784192[/math]

    Where mathematical constant are:

    [math]2\pi=6.2831853, t=log(2\pi,2)=2.6514961295, cy=e^{2\pi}= 535.4916555248 [/math]

    Physical constants:

    [math]a=1/\alpha=137.035999074, \mu=1836.15267245,m=log(\mu,2)=10.8424703056[/math]

    [math]p=cy/2-(\mu/a+1)/(\mu/a+2)-1=265.8107668189[/math]

    An important physicist said it was a coincidence, or perhaps just a curiosity. Perhaps you feel the same. My opinion is opposite. I think that in terms of, such a significant relationship physicist should have an attitude.

    I find your article really interesting, and I rated you fairly.

    Greetings Branko

      Kevin,

      Quite brilliant essay. What a refreshing change to read about the very important matter of real entities and interactions! I commend your postulates and derivations.

      I agree entirely; "mass is responsible for emergent spacetime", which I've analysed in further detail in a joint Hadronic Jnl paper on conceptual quantum optics with Jon Minkowski explaining how moving mirrors reflect light at c in the vacuum not mirror frame, so explaining many astronomical anomalies. Of course it appears too outlying for most to be comfortable with at first.

      I suspect you may be able to apply the correct algorithms to the heuristic descriptions I use in developing the ontological construction in terms of relative motion in my essay, also apparently resolving other paradoxes, and seemingly entirely consistent with your approach.

      But this is rather outside the box and doctrine thinking. Frankly I was just about to sign in to the local institution to sort my wayward thinking out until I read your essay. I own you big time for that! Thank you, and top marks. I'd like id possible for you to look over may last two essays here which are precursers to this years, describing the fundamental inter-particle, or even just inter wave/particle mechanism than seems to have that Midas touch. Of course if you think a big score appropriate this year I won't complain I've been passed over from 7th place twice running now! But far more important are the truths to be revealed.

      Very well done and thank you. I hope to see a comment on my blog (there are many nice superlatives there already, but complete understanding by more would be better.

      Very best wishes.

      Peter

        Dear Kevin,

        "I know about the universe because it influences me." Marvelous!

        I have not heard a better or more compact description of an objective physical world since Einstein's definition of physically real spacetime: " ... independent in its properties, having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions."

        You get my 10 vote, without reservation. More important, I will be studying your essay for some time to come.

        If you read my essay I hope you see that we are saying the same thing in different ways. And not really so different, at that. More to say, in due course. I hope we can have a continuing dialogue.

        Thank you for a great essay -- all best in your research and in the contest!

        Tom

          Having read so many insightful essays, I am probably not the only one to find that my views have crystallized, and that I can now move forward with growing confidence. I cannot exactly say who in the course of the competition was most inspiring - probably it was the continuous back and forth between so many of us. In this case, we should all be grateful to each other.

          If I may, I'd like to express some of my newer conclusions - by themselves, so to speak, and independently of the logic that justifies them; the logic is, of course, outlined in my essay.

          I now see the Cosmos as founded upon positive-negative charges: It is a binary structure and process that acquires its most elemental dimensional definition with the appearance of Hydrogen - one proton, one electron.

          There is no other interaction so fundamental and all-pervasive as this binary phenomenon: Its continuance produces our elements - which are the array of all possible inorganic variants.

          Once there exists a great enough correlation between protons and electrons - that is, once there are a great many Hydrogen atoms, and a great many other types of atoms as well - the continuing Cosmic binary process arranges them all into a new platform: Life.

          This phenomenon is quite simply inherent to a Cosmos that has reached a certain volume of particles; and like the Cosmos from which it evolves, life behaves as a binary process.

          Life therefore evolves not only by the chance events of natural selection, but also by the chance interactions of its underlying binary elements.

          This means that ultimately, DNA behaves as does the atom - each is a particle defined by, and interacting within, its distinct Vortex - or 'platform'.

          However, as the cosmic system expands, simple sensory activity is transformed into a third platform, one that is correlated with the Organic and Inorganic phenomena already in existence: This is the Sensory-Cognitive platform.

          Most significantly, the development of Sensory-Cognition into a distinct platform, or Vortex, is the event that is responsible for creating (on Earth) the Human Species - in whom the mind has acquired the dexterity to focus upon itself.

          Humans affect, and are affected by, the binary field of Sensory-Cognition: We can ask specific questions and enunciate specific answers - and we can also step back and contextualize our conclusions: That is to say, we can move beyond the specific, and create what might be termed 'Unified Binary Fields' - in the same way that the forces acting upon the Cosmos, and holding the whole structure together, simultaneously act upon its individual particles, giving them their motion and structure.

          The mind mimics the Cosmos - or more exactly, it is correlated with it.

          Thus, it transpires that the role of chance decreases with evolution, because this dual activity (by which we 'particularize' binary elements, while also unifying them into fields) clearly increases our control over the foundational binary process itself.

          This in turn signifies that we are evolving, as life in general has always done, towards a new interaction with the Cosmos.

          Clearly, the Cosmos is participatory to a far greater degree than Wheeler imagined - with the evolution of the observer continuously re-defining the system.

          You might recall the logic by which these conclusions were originally reached in my essay, and the more detailed structure that I also outline there. These elements still hold; the details stated here simply put the paradigm into a sharper focus, I believe.

          With many thanks and best wishes,

          John

          jselye@gmail.com

          Dear Kevin,

          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.

            Thank you for your comments.

            I like to keep in mind the following quote:

            "Familiarity breeds the illusion of understanding"

            You write:

            "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."

            I find that such conclusions are extremely difficult to arrive at since in reality no one knows what matter is, no one knows what energy is, and there is some debate as to what information is. This is basically why I am working to understand these important concepts at a more fundamental level.

            Thank you for your comments James!

            While I would be very interested in seeing what another independently-developed physics might look like, I don't think that such comparisons are necessary to highlight our paucity of knowledge of physics.

            I am glad that you appreciate that I focus on what we know.

            I think that this is a significant strength of this approach.

            Cheers

            Kevin

            Thank you so much for your kind words and interesting post.

            I am keen to read your essays and will do so.

            The elimination of spacetime as a physical structure, while difficult conceptually, removes a good number of difficulties.

            Nikolai Tesla wrote:

            "I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties."

            The moment space itself has properties, one can ask why those properties and not others? along with a host of other questions.

            The idea of space as representing relationships between objects is quite old, and was held as the main belief on the continent during Leibniz's time. The problem is: what does one do with that? Newton's absolute space was greatly simplifying, which is what was needed at the time.

            And there is another problem with space-time.

            If space reflects the ability to distinguish, and time represents change, then when one considers space-time where time and space are related to one another, one must ask "what is changing that allows one to distinguish?" As far as I am aware, this has not been explained, and I see it as a big conceptual problem.

            I could go on, but it would be better for me to read your essay first.

            Cheers

            Kevin

            Dear Branko

            Thank you for your kind words about my essay and for leaving a post.

            It is always interesting when a formula is found that makes predictions. However, I think that physicists have become too enamored of mathematics. The great paradigm shifts in physics have been the result of new ideas, concepts or perspectives. Mathematics is the necessary language, and as such, mathematics can inspire ideas. Here, I would be more interested in seeing what ideas your equations inspire.

            Thanks again

            Kevin

            Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I've Read

            I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented your essay in what follows.

            Of the nearly two hundred essays submitted to the competition, there seems to be a preponderance of sentiment for the 'Bit-from-It" standpoint, though many excellent essays argue against this stance or advocate for a wider perspective on the whole issue. Joseph Brenner provided an excellent analysis of the various positions that might be taken with the topic, which he subsumes under the categories of 'It-from-Bit', 'Bit-from-It', and 'It-and-Bit'.

            Brenner himself supports the 'Bit-from-It' position of Julian Barbour as stated in his 2011 essay that gave impetus to the present competition. Others such as James Beichler, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Agung Budiyono, and Olaf Dreyer have presented well-stated arguments that generally align with a 'Bit-from-It' position.

            Various renderings of the contrary position, 'It-from-Bit', have received well-reasoned support from Stephen Anastasi, Paul Borrill, Luigi Foschini, Akinbo Ojo, and Jochen Szangolies. An allied category that was not included in Brenner's analysis is 'It-from-Qubit', and valuable explorations of this general position were undertaken by Giacomo D'Ariano, Philip Gibbs, Michel Planat and Armin Shirazi.

            The category of 'It-and-Bit' displays a great diversity of approaches which can be seen in the works of Mikalai Birukou, Kevin Knuth, Willard Mittelman, Georgina Parry, and Cristinel Stoica,.

            It seems useful to discriminate among the various approaches to 'It-and-Bit' a subcategory that perhaps could be identified as 'meaning circuits', in a sense loosely associated with the phrase by J.A. Wheeler. Essays that reveal aspects of 'meaning circuits' are those of Howard Barnum, Hugh Matlock, Georgina Parry, Armin Shirazi, and in especially that of Alexei Grinbaum.

            Proceeding from a phenomenological stance as developed by Husserl, Grinbaum asserts that the choice to be made of either 'It from Bit' or 'Bit from It' can be supplemented by considering 'It from Bit' and 'Bit from It'. To do this, he presents an 'epistemic loop' by which physics and information are cyclically connected, essentially the same 'loop' as that which Wheeler represented with his 'meaning circuit'. Depending on where one 'cuts' the loop, antecedent and precedent conditions are obtained which support an 'It from Bit' interpretation, or a 'Bit from It' interpretation, or, though not mentioned by Grinbaum, even an 'It from Qubit' interpretation. I'll also point out that depending on where the cut is made, it can be seen as a 'Cartesian cut' between res extensa and res cogitans or as a 'Heisenberg cut' between the quantum system and the observer. The implications of this perspective are enormous for the present It/Bit debate! To quote Grinbaum: "The key to understanding the opposition between IT and BIT is in choosing a vantage point from which OR looks as good as AND. Then this opposition becomes unnecessary: the loop view simply dissolves it." Grinbaum then goes on to point out that this epistemologically circular structure "...is not a logical disaster, rather it is a well-documented property of all foundational studies."

            However, Grinbaum maintains that it is mandatory to cut the loop; he claims that it is "...a logical necessity: it is logically impossible to describe the loop as a whole within one theory." I will argue that in fact it is vital to preserve the loop as a whole and to revise our expectations of what we wish to accomplish by making the cut. In fact, the ongoing It/Bit debate has been sustained for decades by our inability to recognize the consequences that result from making such a cut. As a result, we have been unable to take up the task of studying the properties inherent in the circularity of the loop. Helpful in this regard would be an examination of the role of relations between various elements and aspects of the loop. To a certain extent the importance of the role of relations has already been well stated in the essays of Kevin Knuth, Carlo Rovelli, Cristinel Stoica, and Jochen Szangolies although without application to aspects that clearly arise from 'circularity'. Gary Miller's discussion of the role of patterns, drawn from various historical precedents in mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, provides the clearest hints of all competition submissions on how the holistic analysis of this essential circular structure might be able to proceed.

            In my paper, I outlined Susan Carey's assertion that a 'conceptual leap' is often required in the construction of a new scientific theory. Perhaps moving from a 'linearized' perspective of the structure of a scientific theory to one that is 'circularized' is just one further example of this kind of conceptual change.

            Dear Peter

            Thank you so much for your generous comments. I am glad that you appreciate the postulates and derivations. It has been a great deal of effort to get the postulates to the point where I feel that they are sensible. The detailed derivations can be found in my papers. After over three years of work to polish them, I have come to realize that the spacetime business amounts to counting events. It is surprising to me that it is so simple at the foundation.

            I look forward to reading your essays, as well as the JNL paper you note above that deals with light reflecting off of mirrors.

            I like your comment about "signing into the local institution" to sort out your "wayward thinking". I am glad that my wayward thinking has compelled you to stay on your present course! I am struck by the fact that much foundations research focuses on concepts such as mass, energy, location, etc. often with little apparent regard or concern that these concepts are not really understood. In several other posts, I have written my favorite quote. I will do it again here:

            "Familiarity breeds the illusion of understanding."

            It is easy for us to talk about mass and energy, and while we understand their interrelationships, we do not really know what they are. That is something I implicitly tried to get across in my essay by constructing a model that has the potential to explain these *familiar* particle "properties". It is not clear to what degree such a model might explain a sizeable subset of physics, but at present it seems promising to me.

            Thank you again for your kind words!

            Cheers

            Kevin

            Esteemed Prof. Knuth,

            I found your essay fascinating. I also read the comments in your blog, especially your discussions with Mikalai Birukou. I find it strange that I wrote about a similar sort of events/processes and their interweaving threads of causality in the end of my own essay. But that part was not premeditated at all. Now I suspect that I was influenced by your essay -? I probably read it late at night while writing my last-moment entry.

            I learned a lot reading your replies to Mikalai Birukou and am amazed at your depth of knowledge and originality of your view on things. Because of this, I would value very much your opinion of another essay that speaks of emergence, in an entirely different context: it is by Carolyn Devereux, PhD IT from BIT considering fluctuations in a quantised space Unfortunately she is not around to answer the questions, but I found her essay very interesting and would like your opinion on it. Please.

            And could you please also elucidate how your idea of emergence differs from cellular automata (CA) proposed by Prof. D'Ariano (and also Maria Carrillo-Ruiz, whose is a very short essay).

            Thank you very much for all your feedback and your great ideas,

            -Marina

            Dear Prof. Knuth,

            What a lovely essay -- both beautifully written and to the point. It's great to see a new, straightforward perspective used to obtain relativistic symmetries. It demonstrates that the underlying symmetries in nature are ubiquitous and quite often unexpected. (It reminds me of why spectroscopists can get into trouble when they try to use sums and differences to assemble energy levels -- those are not random numbers, and intricate, unanticipated relationships can easily crop up.)

            I was wondering about your example of an electron having two attributes, one that it displays and one that we can't see. Could anything be done along this line with the Uncertainty Principle? (I realize that you deal with the Uncertainty Principle later on in your essay.) Maybe get time involved in a sequential uncovering of the properties?

            I have downloaded your arXiv papers and will study them thoroughly, so perhaps we can continue a worthwhile discussion later on. I also made a few additional comment when answering you under the thread for my essay.

            Congratulations and keep up the great (and from your bio, varied) work.

            Bill McHarris

            Kevin - I just noticed, I hadn't rated your essay yet. This is a gem, and I rated it highly.

            The issue with being unable to tell different (pink?) electrons are exhibiting a different behavior from its repertoire is at the heart of physics. Boltzmann indistinguishability and Liebniz's indiscernability have given us great insights. I loved the way you have developed your theory of coordinated chains as Hasse diagrams.

            I anticipate some resonance here and would appreciate your comments on my essay, particularly regarding the way I have extended Boltzman's indistinguishability of particles in phase space from the indistinguishability of states in an evolution of an entangled system. If I am correct, the principle of retroactive indiscernability brings a fresh perspective to the subject.

            My conclusion: the photon is the carrier of time and the universe is a network automaton.

            I have tried using both Feynman diagrams and Hasse diagrams (Lattices) but without success, because I need a way to describe a dynamic reordering of the nodes on the graph.

            What I enjoyed most about your essay was the notion of an embedded observer. Clearly, there is a relationship here with decoherence theory and the measurement problem.

            You can find the latest version of my essay here:

            http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf

            (sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).

            Lets connect when the contest is over.

            Kind regards, Paul

            paul at borrill dot com

            Dear Kevin,

            As per particle scenario, information is the transfer of energy with photons or ions. Electron as a matter has mass, but as described as point like zero-dimensional particle, it unlikely evolves three-dimensional structures.

            Thus by string-matter continuum scenario, we ascribe all particles that have mass as coupled tetrahedral-branes of eigen-rotational string-matter segments as building blocks. Thus lattice of simplexes of eigen-rotational string-segments have collective gravitational influence in that gravity emerges as a tensor product on eigen-rotations of string-matter segments.

            With best wishes,

            JayakarAttachment #1: 2_Spin_simplex.pdfAttachment #2: Collective_gravity.pdf