Essay Abstract

This essay considers a simple model of observers that are influenced by the world around them. Consistent quantification of information about such influences results in a great deal of familiar physics. The end result is a new perspective on relativistic quantum mechanics, which includes both a way of conceiving of spacetime as well as particle "properties" that may be amenable to a unification of quantum mechanics and gravity. Rather than thinking about the universe as a computer, perhaps it is more accurate to think about it as a network of influences where the laws of physics derive from both consistent descriptions and optimal information-based inferences made by embedded observers.

Author Bio

Kevin Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Physics and Informatics at the University at Albany. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Entropy, and is the co-founder and President of a robotics company, Autonomous Exploration Inc. He has more than 15 years of experience in applying Bayesian and maximum entropy methods to the design of machine learning algorithms for data analysis applied to the physical sciences. His current research interests include the foundations of physics, autonomous robotics, and searching for extrasolar planets.

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Hello Kevin,

I like your abstract and only had time to scan over and read the conclusion. I'll look more thoroughly later in the week. However, I like very much what I see based on embedded observers and that you seem to decide It from Bit and bit from It.

I look forward to reading in full and would be honoured if you had a chance to read my essay.

Kind regards,

Antony

    Kevin

    "Knowledge about any property that does not affect how an electron exerts influence is inaccessible to us"

    This focuses on the issue of what constitutes physical existence, although it is not affected by the subsequent processing (eg observation). Put the other way round, the physical circumstance exists whether or not it is sensed, sensing just invokes a perception of it.

    So, in respect of any aspect of existence, the differentiation between existent and not-existent, for us, is knowability, which is the function of a physical process. That is, we (and all sentient organisms) receive physical input and are thereby enabled to be aware of it. Thus what constitutes physical existence for us is limited by what we could be aware of. Which may or may not encompass 'everything', but we can never know that, so that is irrelevant. That is, physical existence is all that which is potentially knowable (ie available to be sensed). The extent to which we can capture any of this, and then process it comprehensively and accurately, is another issue. The key point is potentiality. Now, this does not have to be substantiated by confirmed (ie not individualistic) direct experience. Operating within the rules of sensing and on the basis of validated direct experience, it is possible to hypothesise. In effect then, hypothesis is virtual sensing, ie it is not belief creation. It discerns what could have been sensed had certain identifiable issues not prevented that.

    So, if an electron is pink, or more generally, if a physical characteristic 'actually' exists, but it is not manifest, ie has no physical effect AND is not detectable of itself, then that characteristic is non-existent. Although an unlikely circumstance, one has to include the possibility that whilst a physical characteristic might not exert any influence it may react in a way which enables its manifestation. Which is an influence, but not in the context of the existential sequence (ie where it is inert), but in the physical interactions which enable the creation of a physically existent representation of it. A statement of the blindingly obvious, ie we can see it bit it doesn't do anything!

    "Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does".

    This is also an important differentiation, ie between physical substance and the physically existent state thereof. Any reality is the physically existent state of whatever comprises it at any given time. In other words, a reality is the function of the state, which is caused to alter. So focussing on what is happening, rather than 'things' as such, is the correct approach.

    Paul

      Kevin,

      Your focus on behavior properties are indeed fundamental, as such, serve to embed a network of influences. You closing statement, "The conceptual difficulties with quantum complementarity are eliminated when we consider these quantities to be descriptions of what a particle does rather than properties possessed by the particle." I find to be in harmony with my findings. Although my approach is vastly different than yours, I have found that quantum complementarity to be primarily an issue of perspective.

      I invite you to review my findings and 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

        Thank you Paul for your summary and insights.

        If one considers the two hypotheses:

        A = "An entity has a proposed property, which exists but are undetectable"

        and

        B = "An entity does not possess the proposed property"

        Then since there is no experiment we could perform to tell these apart, Leibniz's principle of Identity of Indiscernables suggests that for all practical purposes, the statements are the same.

        A much stronger statement could be made by noting that since A is an untestable hypothesis, it has no place in science, which deals with only testable situations.

        The result is the conclusion:

        "Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does".

        In this essay I illustrate some of the published work I have done demonstrating that a simple model of influence leads to a great deal of accepted physics. What we think of as particle properties, such as position, speed, mass, energy, momentum, and helicity can all by simply described in terms of how the particle influences others.

        Surprisingly, from this simple idea (which is very similar to direct particle-particle interaction, which Wheeler and Feynman explored before Feynman gave up and went on to QED) one can derive all the important features of 1+1 dimensional relativistic quantum mechanics for the single Fermion.

        Questions like, "Why can't we know the particle's position and momentum at the same time?" become obviously resolved since the two quantities constitute different descriptions of the particle's behavior. You can go further than I did in this essay and show precisely how they are related. They are related by the discrete Fourier transform since position describes a single (or pair) of acts of influence (called an interval here), and momentum describes a rate averaged over many acts of influence. Demanding that an observer's inferences about intervals must agree with the inferences about rates, one must relate the probabilities with complex numbers. The only invariant scalar is the spectral magnitude (by Parcival's theorem), which must then be the probability. This is the Born rule.

        Thank you for your kind words Manuel. I will be certain to have a look at your essay. I made some additional statements about complementarity in my response to Paul above if you are interested.

        Thank you Antony! I look forward to reading your essay as well.

        Thank you Hoang for your comment.

        I am not sure I understand your statement about the equations and formulas. But I can address your question about bits and information.

        In this model, two observers make inferences about a particle that influences them. The particle actually does something. That is, there is a physical reality that occurred. This reality is the first fundamental IT. The observers record the labels corresponding to the instances that the particle influenced them. These acts of influence comprise the information that they received about the particle, and the labels are a code summarizing this information. These are the BITs. The goal now is for the observers to reconstruct what the particle did (the fundamental IT), which is a sequence of influences (a BIT sequence). I show how this is impossible by illustrating that there are many possible reconstructions, each corresponding to a separate BIT sequence path, each of which can be interpreted as a distinct path in an emergent spacetime. The observers must take all these BIT sequences (spacetime paths) into account to make inferences about a new set of relevant variables. This is the new, higher level *IT*. This is their picture of a reality that is simply unknowable.

        In conclusion, we have IT -> BIT -> *IT*

        where events provide information from which inferences are made about a model of those events.

        Respectfully Professor Knuth,

        Please excuse me, I am a decrepit old self-taut (thinking makes me tense) realist. I do not intend this observation to be taken critically, but like all of the physicists who have submitted essays to this site, you have also omitted a vital piece of information one should know about.

        You wrote, "We imagine an observer to possess a precise instrument, which has access to and can count the events along a given particle's chain²"

        As I have soberly explained in my essay BITTERS, the real Universe is unique, once. Everything in the real Universe must be unique, once. Any instrument no matter how precise it is cannot measure Unique. Unique cannot be counted for unique only happens once. Some real observer using unique eyes can observe Unique once.

        Kevin

        "...Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does".

        Ah now that is a different way of putting it, and is not correct. We can know what something is, if that something is within the ambit of our physical existence, ie is potentially detectable (knowable). So, going back to your example, we can know an electron, but will not know that it is pink, if that characteristic is no in way manifest in a way that is detectable by us. This is despite the fact that it may 'actually' be pink. But the point is we can only consider what is potentially knowable (testable was your phrase). If one calls that A, then there is always the possibility of not-A, which cannot be known, and may include 'really' existent properties or 'made up' ones (beliefs).

        The significance of what an electron, or indeed anything, does, is that that concentrates on what is manifest, ie within our physical existence. In other words, you arrive at the right starting point. Now, any given reality is a physically existent state of whatever comprises it. So I cannot agree with postulate 2, and as written, 3 & 4. Because A is an influence which results in B. It does not influence B, because at the time of existence of A, B does not exist. Neither does A 'influence' C, B was the 'influence'.

        The point about sequence is that only one state exists at a time, the predecessor must cease to exist for the successor to exist. So the two 'events', which are really any two consecutive states in the sequence, are not 'experienced by a particle'. [I would not use the word particle anyway, because that is somewhat narrow in its meaning]. Because the 'particle', or more precisely the physically existent state of whatever is not existent in the subsequent state. A difference is a difference.

        That exposes two common, and understandable flaws in the fundamental way we view reality. First the importance of sequence is that there is only one of whatever constitutes it. Second, and interrelated to the first, physically, 'things' do not exist (until obviously one differentiates down to singular physically existent states which must comprise of something). That is, there is a tendency to invoke a thing, and then conceive of it as changing. But this is a contradiction. If it has changed, then it is not what it was, it is different. Your 'particle' would have to be an inert something in order to 'experience (ie be existent in) more than one state. This is why I speak of physically existent states.

        The reason that QM and relativity are wrong as models of physical existence (Questions like, "Why can't we know the particle's position and momentum...) is because physical existence (ie a reality) is a discrete, definitive physically existent state of whatever comprises it. It must be. Existence, as far as we are concerned, and the start point was this is science not religion (potentially detectecyable/testable & not so) involves physical presence, and that can only occur in a definitive and discrete form. QM and relativity, whether or not it was the authors intentions, effectively asserts some form of indefiniteness in physical existence. Which is incorrect. Which is why there then has to be a plethora of flawed rationalisations to keep the theories 'on track'. One being the supposed influence of observation on the physical circumstance, which is nonsense, as it cannot happen.

        I will stop there otherwise this will get too long.

        Paul

        Dear Kevin,

        Yours is a commendable striving to discern fundamental particle behavior. However, since you talk of 'influence others', 'network' I presume you imply interactions in space. Can the true nature of such be well described without first deciphering the nature of space?

        I commend the following for your contemplation,

        The Pythagoreans say: Space is a composite of monads and geometry is the study and science of space.

        Leibniz says: monads are the true atoms of Nature - the elements out of which everything is made. He also says I think there is no empty space--the extended world is entirely full, a plenum.

        Newton opines:...And my account throws a satisfactory light on the difference between between a body and a region of space. The raw materials of each are the same in their properties and nature, and differ only in how God created them. (By this he meant that the only difference is that while body was created by God, the other, space was eternal and not created).

        Wheeler asks: What else is there out of which to build a particle except geometry itself?

        Then going further,

        Leibniz says: Within a monad there's nothing to re-arrange, and there is no conceivable internal motion in it that could be started, steered, sped up, or slowed down, as can happen in a composite thing that has parts that can change in relation to one another.

        So we can say that the only way for monads to begin or end--to come into existence or go out of existence - is instantaneously, being created or annihilated all at once. Composite things, in contrast with that, can begin or end gradually, through the assembling or scattering of their parts.

        So from the foregoing, coming to the two alternate states available to the monad, the fundamental 'it', what states that can be designated 0 and 1... which will be the binary states (the bit)?

        Paul Reed in his first post above talks of existent/non-existent although I am not sure he buys the ideas I put forward in my essay.

        Best regards and good luck,

        Akinbo

          Hi dear Kevin,

          I enjoyed read your attractive essay being on the certainly opposite position!

          Whatever you are doing it maybe really useful and right from applied point of view. However, you can be agree with me that such approach can not be productively for the cognitively investigation of events. It is the main lack of formal methodology at all, which however looks now as the inevitable reality.

          You say ,,Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does,, Excuse me! - you can not, but maybe somebody will able to say you what itself is presented the electron and how it shows its known attributes/properties? I mean why we must declare something as impossible since we cannot do it? I want simply say you it really is possible, that however demand totally change our imagination about how to need to build the science!

          I will put on your essay (8) point because it really written by master!

          Hope you can have the patience to check my work (mainly the references) and appreciate it. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1804

          ESSAY

          Best wishes to you,

          George

            Dear Akinbo,

            Thank you for your kind words and comments.

            > However, since you talk of 'influence others', 'network' I presume you imply

            > interactions in space. Can the true nature of such be well described without

            > first deciphering the nature of space?

            Actually, one need not assume that entities influence one another in space. In the essay, I show how the concept of space, and the mathematics of spacetime, arise naturally from such influences.

            The result is a relational concept of space as being defined by the interacting entities, much in the spirit of Leibniz (whom you quoted). Space describes the relationships among the interacting entities. Space reflects the fact that not everything happens to you.

            Dear George,

            Thank you for your kind words and comments---especially given that you have a "certainly opposite position".

            It may help if I clarify my statement on what one can know about an electron. There are four logical steps:

            1. We can only know about something if it influences us (directly or indirectly).

            2. Therefore, if an entity has properties that do not affect how it influences others, there is no way for anyone to obtain information about those properties.

            3. Since one can only obtain information about properties that affect how an entity influences others, those properties should be completely describable in terms of how it influences others. (since this is how you know about them)

            4. Therefore any particle properties you can know about should be describable in terms of how a particle influences.

            This means that position, speed, mass, energy, momentum, spin (helicity), charge, magnetic moment all should be able to be expressed in terms of how a particle influences.

            With this in mind, the essay then illustrates how a simple model of a particle influencing others can indeed result in the physics relating position, time, speed, mass, energy, momentum and helicity. I do not, and have not shown, how one can get spin, charge and magnetic moments. This requires 3+1 dimensions. So there is still something missing here. But I think it is compelling that so much physics can come from something so simple.

            Moreover, I think that thinking about them as properties possessed by the particle has led us into some logical conundrums. For example, how can a particle not simultaneously have a precisely defined position and momentum. If position and momentum are *properties*, then this is confusing. However, if they are instead descriptions of what the particle is doing, then this is no longer mysterious. Surprisingly, as I illustrate in my essay, the latter gives you the right physics from scratch!

            I hope this answers some questions.

            In the meantime, I look forward to reading your essay. I am on a plane tomorrow, so it will be a perfect time.

            And thank you again for your high score and kind words!

            Cheers

            Kevin

            Dear Kevin,

            You say:

            1. We can only know about something if it influences us (directly or indirectly).

            2. Therefore, if an entity has properties that do not affect how it influences others, there is no way for anyone to obtain information about those properties etc.

            You have put such points as finitely. Mostly you are right but there is another way that the science does not recognize now as a method! It however works in life more often and successfully! A talk is about of guesswork.

            We may to predict at the beginning that we will face with impossibility to make new experiments/measurements when we will reach to base elements of substance. (We will just annihilate it or deeply damage it if we try to influence with that! Here I think no need big explanatory). That we have faced actually!

            So what we can do in this situation? We know there exist something actually (for example photon or electron) that we cannot touch or seen, because restriction of influence with those?

            I suggest to build the imaginary model of primarily objects, on the base of known natural laws, by condition of correspondence of our model with the all known properties/attributes of real objects. (I mean on the base of model and basic laws must be possible the derivation of its all known properties!)

            You can immodestly ask - how we can be convinced that our model is right?

            The answer is - no direct way as before, but we just must believe to our model up on the mentioned same criterions, i.e. - 1) it is constructed on the base of well-tested laws and 2) It corresponds to all properties of investigated object without exception. Third and next confirmations of our model will came from successes of its future development ...

            Please find time (after of FQXi battle!) and check on my works (references in essay) I very hope that a lot of questions will be solved for you (because you are scientist who are inclined to analytical judgement) If there will be big questions I am ready to discuss and will thankfull for your remarks.

            Thank you for good score of my essay!

            Best wishes,

            George

              Dear Kevin,

              Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon. Can we produce material just by thinking about it?

              I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.

              I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.

              Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .

              Best

              =snp

              snp.gupta@gmail.com

              http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/

              Pdf download:

              http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf

              Part of abstract:

              - -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .

              Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .

              A

              Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT

              ....... I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.

              Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT

              . . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .

              B.

              Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT

              Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data......

              C

              Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT

              "Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.

              Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT

              1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.

              2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.

              3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.

              4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?

              D

              Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT

              It from bit - where are bit come from?

              Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT

              ....And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?-- in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.

              Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..

              E

              Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT

              .....Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.

              I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.

                Hi Kevin,

                I like many others before me pick up with your opening sentence ' I know about the universe because it influences me ' I would rather argue that you observe the universe because of it's influence it has. Knowing and understanding is an abstract process of human thought resulting from the observation. This abstractness allows one to build new models and postulate new method, as you have done in your essay, but is it closer to reality? We will never know for certain.

                You relate your Equation-5 to formulations of special relativity. May I ask a simple question assuming you did not know about special relativity would you have come up with the formulations and ideas preceding Equation-5? or was it rather knowing the result and finding an alternate way to it.

                We also know about the Michelson-Morley experiment, but do we really understand it? I would argue no. Please read my very short essay I really seek an answer to the paradox.

                  Kevin, I read your essay and liked your discipline of staying within an observation based model. It is interesting that so much familiar physics comes from observed influences alone. The new perspective you mention is the information (bit) that can be inferred about observed physical reality (it) if I understand your essay correctly.

                  I believe we can and must go further. I share your interest in the foundations of physics and entered the last contest with an essay entitled "A top down approach to fundamental forces". It shows the informational basis (code or bit) for what an electron is (along with all the other particles) and the informational basis for the influences that are observed. Results of the model give us the cosmology we observe (papers are posted under this years essay "It from Information"). Someday, sometime, someone needs to take the time to interact with me about this work.

                    Dear Kevin,

                    I was pleased to read your essay. I am happy to see your networks of influence approach applied here to relativity and quantum mechanics, and how you discuss the "it from bit" question. I particularly liked the conclusion "Rather than thinking about the universe as a computer, perhaps it is more accurate to think about it as a network of influences where the laws of physics derive from both consistent descriptions and optimal information-based inferences made by embedded observers."

                    Best regards,

                    Cristi Stoica

                      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

                                    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.