Dear Charles,

I am impressed by the breadth of the historical context that you laid out surrounding the contest theme. Several others had mentioned and compared von Weizsaecker's contributions to the debate, but yours is the most extensive I have read. Given that evidently many different physicists worked on it and its development spanned several decades, I wonder why it was never developed beyond essentially being the blueprint for a theory. There may be lessons for us to draw from knowing the reasons.

I also found the comparison of the missing 'additional ingredient' in Spekkens' toy theory with quinian bootstrap surprising, though I must admit that I am skeptical that they are the same. The former seems like a leap in a territory that is much more abstract than that which characterizes the context of the leap in the latter.

I was originally attracted to reading your essay because the title sounded to like a contradition, and I wanted to find out how you would "pull off" considering information as a substance. Your pointing out the most basic etymological meaning of substance, however, has clarified things for me.

My own view is that a fundamental message of the Born rule is that our current concept of "substance" (in the usual sense) is not sufficiently differentiated and if we could realize this, we would come to regard it vs. bit a false dichotomy.

In any event, I found your essay and its elucidation of the historical context of this debate very interesting.

All the best,

Armin

    Hi Charles,

    I love the delightful weaving of geometry, algebra, psychology and history you have created with your essay! Congratulations for an excellent presentation.

    You conclude:

    "When Descartes partitioned human understanding of reality into separate domains, he did so with good reason and with good effect...However, his simplifying assumption must now be seen to be a first-order approximation whose limitations have been reached, and a new understanding entailing greater complexity must follow in its place."

    In my own research, I have found that geometric algebra and quaternion representations are useful, and the 3-sphere central, to a workable cosmological picture. Now you have me wondering if they might serve as well for mental representation as for physical representation.

    While I did not have the space in my Software Cosmos essay to dwell on the possibilities for mental representation, I think that my model affords (with its unobserved "implicate" space) a venue for such. In any case, I conclude with "It from Bit and Bit from Us", meaning that the source of things is information but the source of that information is Mind.

    Information about the physical world is arranged hierarchically into objects of increasing size. Are minds arranged the same way? Does an individual mind partake of a species-mind (responsible for instinctual knowledge) and does a species-mind partake of a greater mind (capable of, say cellular functioning)? If so, then the underlying invisible fractal mechanisms used to structure the physical realm that I describe might also be serving the mental realm. At least, that would be my guess.

    Hugh

      Hi Charles,

      What a wonderful paper!

      What a surprising correspondence between Wheeler's idea of It from Bit and von Weizsacker's idea of Ur!

      And what a new connection you have discovered between these and Pauli's concept of ``psycho-physical neutral" !

      This is a very very well written paper. I must give it a high score.

      Sincerely,

      Gary Glenn Miller

        Hello Charles,

        Very, very nicely written essay which taught me a lot of historical development in this field, so it was extremely relevant and interesting!

        I like the way you set the stage for the humanity's ongoing quest and it felt like a challenge to motivate the reader into physics - which is great.

        Reminded me a little of Brief History of Time with an It from Bit slant.

        Well done and all the best for the contest!

        Take a look at my essay if you get chance. Information in the context of Black Holes, geometry, entropy & Fibonacci!

        Kind regards,

        Antony

          Hi Yuri,

          You can find a discussion of Pauli's statement in which you are interested in Suzanne Gieser's "The Innermost Kernel", page 330. I hope this helps.

          Thanks for your interest in my essay.

          Charles

          Hi Armin,

          Thank you for your thoughtful response to my essay! I understand your skepticism with regard to the possibility that Spekken's 'additional conceptual ingredient' and Carey's 'conceptual leap' are the same, or perhaps are pointing to some factor or aspect held in common. In my essay I've reframed and refocused the discussion of it, bit, and information and have arrived at this conjecture rather than at a 'solution' which I do not believe is at hand. It would be wonderful if this competition proves me wrong! In any event, there is more that can be obtained as background to my conjecture by exploring the associated reference, the last one listed in the paper. After reading your paper, I've come to understand why you wanted to explore my usage of the term 'substance' and why it may have caused some initial confusion, as it would for most people who commonly associate 'substance' with 'physical stuff'. 'Substance' as I have used it harks back to Aristotle's work.

          I must say, I really enjoyed your paper, as well! Your discussion of 'patterns of distinction' and of 'actualizable objects' are particularly insightful for me. One question that I think it would be nice for you to engage is, "Why does the background of a binary distinction require a complex state space such as the Block sphere associated with the qubit?"

          Thanks again, Charles

          Hi Hugh,

          First of all, let me say how much I enjoyed your essay. I found that it was a well thought-out, creative response to the competition topic. You have a very interesting compilation of relevant references to your stated intention of constructing software for a digital universe. As well, I really value your appeal to geometric algebra in a number of instances for the theoretical underpinning of your approach. I do believe that there are some general/generalizable aspects of GA that may prove relevant to discussions of mental structures and representations, but I think that it would be premature to try to make too much of these possibilities at this point. If you care to pursue where my thoughts have largely been concentrated, you might wish to check out the last reference cited in my paper.

          Thanks again for your interest,

          Charles

          Hi Gary,

          Thanks again for all of your support and encouragement for my work. I trust you will have seen some of the influences of our many years of conversations in what I have written. I look forward to the continuing conversation!

          I truly enjoyed your paper, too. You tabled many wonderful topics, and I hope that you will take the opportunity to expand upon them outside of the confines of this essay competition. I know that you have much to say that will require a monograph (or two)to encompass it.

          Cheers,

          Charles

          Hi Antony,

          Thanks for your interest in my paper. I'm glad that it was useful to you. I have a warm spot in my heart for logarithmic spirals and golden numbers, and I look forward to reading your paper.

          Thanks again, Charles

          We know that, historically, conceptual discontinuities do provoke strong, sometimes even violent reactions from individuals whose views of reality are threatened simply by the contemplation of the possibilities of the discontinuities. Consider as examples in mathematics, the discovery of the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of a square by the Pythagoreans (irrational numbers), the possibility and potency of negative square roots (imaginary numbers),and in physics, the departures from Newtonian common sense and outright paradoxes brought forth by special and general relativity and quantum physics. In each case, a beautiful vision of the world is destroyed, but we have reason to hope, again as we have learned from historical examples, that if we persist, an even more beautiful view of the world will eventually arise in its place.

          Hi Mr. Gupta,

          Thank you for your interest in my essay. In fact, my essay is based on a large body of well-established experimental results. Consult the literature, for example, to see the variety of delayed-choice experiments carried out since 1980. On the other hand, consult Carey's work (one of many available sources) for a multitude of references to rigorously structured experiments carried out in the cognitive sciences. Enjoy!

          Cheers, Charles

          Dear Charles,

          I have read with allowances for your analytical essay written lively language. World contests FQXi - it contests new fundamental ideas, new deep meanings and new concepts. In your essay deep analysis in the basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt, given new ideas and conclusions.

          You cite fiducial thoughts of great researchers to «grasp» the nature of the information:

          "Information may not be just what we learn about the world. It may be what makes the world. "( John Wheeler) . And Weizsacker, who regards information as "a quantitative measure of form," and «Experiment and theory, as we know them today, no longer provide any reason to postulate matter and mind (res extensa and res cogitans) as

          independent "realities," ie, as substances in the classical meaning of the

          word. Form is not an additional third, but their common basis.»

          You give great ideas to overcome the broken world of Descartes through the method Descartes: «When Descartes partitioned human understanding of reality into separate domains, he did so with good reason and with good effect. The conceptual simplification achieved by his cut became the means by which the inquiry that we call modern science was able to progress, and revolution upon revolution followed, repeatedly transforming the lives and understanding of humanity. However, his simplifying assumption must now be seen to be a first-order approximation whose limitations have been reached, and a new understanding entailing greater complexity must follow in its place.» Totally agree with you. I'll put a rating of "happy nine" ... Please read my essay. I think we are the same in the spirit of our research.

          Best regards,

          Vladimir

            Hi Charles,

            Thank you for reference Suzanne book.

            Yuri

            Dear Charles,

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

            Regards and good luck in the contest,

            Sreenath BN.

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

              Dear Charles,

              One of the most relevant essays from philosophy I have seen in this FQXi contest. Spekkens is great. Do you consider Grothendieck's 'dessins d'enfants' as

              a conceptual leap?

              http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

              All the best,

              Michel

                Dear Charles

                Information is neutral notion, but tautological....

                "The average human being is a naive realist: i.e., like the animals, he accepts his sense impressions as direct information of reality and he is convinced that all human beings share this information. He is not aware that no way exist of establishing whether one individual impression (e.g. ,of a green tree) and that of another (of this tree) is the same and that even the word "same" has no meaning here."

                Max Born My life & my views p.53

                Every question like "What is the same information?" is tautology

                Warren Mcculoch call it greatest riidle of the World.

                Hello Charles

                Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

                said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

                I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

                The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

                Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

                Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

                I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

                Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And you have touched some corners of it.

                Good Luck,

                Than Tin

                Hi Michel,

                Your discussion of Grothendieck's 'dessins d'enfants' puts me into very deep waters mathematically, but I certainly am intrigued by the fact that your argument addresses quantum non-locality and contextuality, which certainly are relevant to my essay and a search for a greater understanding of the 'conceptual leap' that occurs with regard to them. Your reference 11 has caught my eye, and I will look into it. I wonder, what are the (quantum) physical implications of three-qubit contextuality being on a qualitatively different footing when compared with the two-qubit case?

                Thanks for your interest in my essay and drawing my attention to yours! I suspect that it will be one of the most important papers for my purposes to emerge from the competition.

                Cheers,

                Charles

                Hi Vladimir,

                I have enjoyably and profitably read your paper, which contains many points of interest that we share. I am particularly intrigued by your notion of 'ontological memory'and your references to Ilyin's work. Thank you!

                Best,

                Charles

                Hi, B.N.,

                I've read your paper and value its very helpful overview of the concept of information in classical physics, quantum physics, biology and mathematics. I find it a bit surprising that you have arrived at the conclusion that the human has no limit to his understanding of physical reality or of the external world, that there are no restrictions imposed by the homo sapien brain. No such claim would likely be made for any other creature on Earth, so I wonder why it might be that the human has this particular distinction.

                Thanks again for your interest in my essay and for our interesting paper!

                Cheers,

                Charles