These from Bits by Yutaka Shikano

Dear Yutaka,

Yours is a fascinating essay. I missed Brillouin's work in 1956/62. I first became aware of info theory with Amnon Katz's "Statistical Mechanics: An Information Theory Approach" in 1966. I've been enamored of this perspective ever since. Nevertheless, you've provided another new perspective. I had not thought of information theory as formalizing operational thinking nor of equilibrium thermodynamics itself as being operational because of the adiabatic process. In this sense it is most interesting that you propose to provide such operational formulation of statistical mechanics based on the cost to write (erase) information in the operational apparatus, i.e., in the demon. Your development is too abbreviated for me to make the jump between each step of your argument, but it seemed to hold together.

In short you set a goal of providing operational formalism for any physical theory, found one lacking such, and proceeded to supply such. Congratulations!

I question whether "These from Bits" has the same meaning, however, as Wheeler's (Landauer's?) saying. The general argument seems to be that information, in the current interpretation, gives rise to physical matter. You seem to show that information gives rise to physical theories of material processes. I agree with you, while rejecting the idea that matter actually arises from 'bits' of pure information.

I have set a different goal in my essay, and invite you to read and comment upon it.

Thanks for a very stimulating essay. I will also read your arXiv paper, which probably has more detailed info.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Yutaka Shikano:

I am an old physician and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics,

But maybe you would be interested in my essay over a subject which after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more than any other, the so called "time".

I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay "The deep nature of reality".

I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don't understand it, and is not just because of my bad English).

Hawking in "A brief history of time" where he said , "Which is the nature of time?" yes he don't know what time is, and also continue saying............Some day this answer could seem to us "obvious", as much than that the earth rotate around the sun....." In fact the answer is "obvious", but how he could say that, if he didn't know what's time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be "obvious", I think that with this adjective, he is implying: simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn't explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure "time" since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure "time" from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental "time" meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls "time" and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the "time" experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the "time" creators and users didn't. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" pg. 354 "Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought" he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about "time" he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect "time", he does not use the word "time" instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or "motion", instead of saying that slows "time". FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that "time" was a man creation, but he didn't know what man is measuring with the clock.

I insist, that for "measuring motion" we should always and only use a unique: "constant" or "uniform" "motion" to measure "no constant motions" "which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of "motion" whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to "motion fractions", which I call "motion units" as hours, minutes and seconds. "Motion" which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using "motion"?, time just has been used to measure the "duration" of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand "motion" is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.

With my best whishes

Héctor

Dear Yutaka,

I've lost a lot of comments and replies on my thread and many other threads I have commented on over the last few days. This has been a lot of work and I feel like it has been a waste of time and energy. Seems to have happened to others too - if not all.

I WILL ATTEMPT to revisit all threads to check and re-post something. Your thread was one affected by this.

I can't remember the full extent of what I said, but I have notes so know that I rated it very highly.

Hopefully the posts will be able to be retrieved by FQXi.

Best wishes,

Antony

Dear Yutaka Shikano:

I am an old physician and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics,

But maybe you would be interested in my essay over a subject which after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more than any other, the so called "time".

I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay "The deep nature of reality".

I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don't understand it, and is not just because of my bad English).

Hawking in "A brief history of time" where he said , "Which is the nature of time?" yes he don't know what time is, and also continue saying............Some day this answer could seem to us "obvious", as much than that the earth rotate around the sun....." In fact the answer is "obvious", but how he could say that, if he didn't know what's time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be "obvious", I think that with this adjective, he is implying: simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn't explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure "time" since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure "time" from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental "time" meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls "time" and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the "time" experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the "time" creators and users didn't. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" pg. 354 "Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought" he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about "time" he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect "time", he does not use the word "time" instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or "motion", instead of saying that slows "time". FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that "time" was a man creation, but he didn't know what man is measuring with the clock.

I insist, that for "measuring motion" we should always and only use a unique: "constant" or "uniform" "motion" to measure "no constant motions" "which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of "motion" whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to "motion fractions", which I call "motion units" as hours, minutes and seconds. "Motion" which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using "motion"?, time just has been used to measure the "duration" of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand "motion" is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.

With my best whishes

Héctor

Dear Yutaka,

Very nice essay with a good logical base to it. In fact you've helped me think more about my essay with regard to the number of samples. The uncertainty principle allows only position or momentum to be know precisely. I examine how information is received and revealed, and until I read your essay hadn't considered whether this mattered to my theory. Please take a look if you get chance.

I am going to rate your essay highly, not only for assisting in furthering my work, but also being great in its own right!

Well done!

Antony

Dear Yutaka:

I very much like your operational point of view. It seems to me that it is key to a better understanding of information. I think I am not clear what you mean when you say

Operational thinking has been formalized as information theory.

Can you explain what you mean here?

Cheers

Olaf

Yutaka,

Excellent. Much needed. Thank you, and do please stay in touch on it.

Peter

Dear Yutaka,

Excellent essay and a good strategy to "seize" (understand) the nature of the information and its "place" physical picture of the world. You need to be much higher total rating.

I fully agree with your search strategy: «As my personal project, I will try to construct theory of information with small number of samples.» Totally agree with you that «the operational viewpoint» well as the "ontological" leads to "grasp" of nature information. In this regard, only one question.

Constructive ways to the truth may be different. One of them said Alexander Zenkin in the article "Science counterrevolution in mathematics":

«The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence».

http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.htm

In the russian version of the paper that thought shorter: "the truth should be drawn and presented to" an unlimited number »of viewers".

Do you agree with Alexander Zenkin?

Please read my essay with "the ontological viewpoint»."

Best regards,

Vladimir

Dear Yukata,

Indeed. My essay is Quantum Gravity, where the large scale Universe meets the infinitesimally small. I hope my high rating helped your ranking!

Best wishes,

Antony

Hi Yutaka,

Thanks for the comment over on my page, glad to see you moving up the rankings, I'm glad my score helped. I'm going the other way.

Oh well.

All the best,

Antony

Dear Yutaka,

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.

Dr. Shikano,

Quoting from the text:

"The famous parallel between thermodynamics and information theory is the para- dox of Maxwell's demon [4], explained as follows. Consider a molecular gas inside a box. The box contains a partition that divides it into two regions, and the partition has a window that can be either open or shut. The demon operates this window. When the demon sees molecules moving at higher speeds, he guides them to the left side of the box via the window. Similarly, the demon guides molecules moving at lower speeds to the right side of the box. The demon repeats this process repeatedly. Eventually, the tempera- ture in the left of the box increases, and vice versa. This seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics, and was taken as the paradoxical issue."

The definitions of thermodynamic properties are precise and ideal. Clausius' definition of thermodynamic entropy is precise and ideal. The ideal for temperature is that there are no faster molecules. The ideal for thermodynamic properties in general is that large numbers of molecules are involved. It seems to me that Maxwell violated the second law causing his demon to follow suit.

I have rated your essay just now. Your forthright opinion is invited. Thank you.

James Putnam

Dear Yutaka,

Very interesting essay. I liked your discussion of "physics imperialism" vs the operational approach, and the relation with the "it" and "bit" question. And the provisional conclusion "these from bits", and the need to extend information theory to small-number samples of non-typical sequences. Good luck!

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica