It from Qubit by Giacomo Mauro D\'Ariano

Dear Professor Giacomo

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.

Best regards

Than Tin

Dear Giacomo,

We corresponded before and I appreciate your frankness and your difficult to shake relational views of space. As I am not a professional physicist and just to be clear and learn from professionals: Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?

You can reply me here or on my blogmy blog. And please pardon my naive view of physics.

Accept my best regards,

Akinbo

Dear Professor D'Ariano,

I am happy that so excellent essay as yours is top rated among some others that are also close to my ideas. I dare to express your "It is not easy to abandon the idea of a universe made of matter and embrace the vision of a reality made of pure information" in a paraphrase: It is not easy to abandon the idea of a universe made of matter and embrace the vision of a reality made of a pure (conformally flat, isotropic, elastic, homeomorphic and self-organized) spacetime.

I would like to fill your beautiful ontology with details that are able to reconcile, in a sense, Einstein with Bell. The details are powerful because they generate clear predictions. I will also add a real experiment to get ability to falsify that details.

"failures in explaining relevant phenomena-e.g. gravity or dark matter and other astrophysical observations-phenomena that even a reasonable revision of the particle notion seems unable to explain. An ontology that works perfectly well in accounting for a large class of phenomena may later prove having not the same power in explaining other phenomena, e.g. those occurring at scales that are much larger or much smaller than those where the ontology is successful"

That revision of the particle notion is a kind of geometrization of matter. I have tried to apply the geometrization concept not only to the "matter" but also to all "force fields" i.e. electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear. The gravity would then be emergent as a superposition. The job is not easy so I have proposed an experiment to be sure this is not a huge waste of time. As you know Einstein GR failed outside the Solar System distance scale ( so some physicists try to save GR by means of dark things) and Wheeler-deWitt geometrodynamics has the well-known flaws: the problem of time, the problem of Hilbert space and others. QM's Standard Model in turn does not offer any metric. The other theories using canonical approaches (connection dynamics, loop dynamics etc.) or covariant approaches (perturbation theory, path integrals etc.) and string theories also have not acceptable flaws or generate no predictions.

I also do not use any lattice as it seems to be too limiting. Instead I use deformations of spacetime (wavepackets). Any spacetime deformation is unlimited (to some extent, it deforms the entire spacetime in Gaussian distribution mode, due to its elastic and homeomorphism properties). Than Quantum nonlocality becomes GR type locality by the emergence out of Gaussian distribution.

I am looking for that one, universal, distance scale invariant metric (eventually reducing to Einstein GR metric within Solar System distance scale) and having ability to generate predictions. The first prediction of that geometrization concept is the spin experiment outcome. Depending on the outcome we shall look for a proper metric or give up.

===========

"we should trust observations, even against our intuition, and ground our knowledge on the logic of the experiment, focusing theoretical predictions on what we actually observe."

Einstein has asked: could we not reject the concept of matter and build a pure field physics? Paraphrasing him let us assume that what impresses our senses as matter is really a strong deformation of spacetime.

Let us start out with our simple thought experiment: we emit a wave to observe that small region in spacetime (the size of an elementary particle radius). That region is deformed to the grade that the wave actually detected (observed) comes back to us along a geodesic ("straight line" in differential geometry). In fact we observe only a strongly deformed spacetime region and redirecting our wave but apparently... we perceive a particle. "We perceive" means that our measuring instruments and our language out of the force of habit say so. The fact that deformation of spacetime exist is generally recognized as a part of general relativity theory (e.g. gravitational lensing). In contrast to GR's distance scale the metric under consideration refers to the quantum scale [3].

Before we proceed (in future, depending on the outcome of our real experiment) to calculate the proper scale invariant metric we need to take some assumptions regarding the spacetime properties to decide what could possibly emerge out of our reasoning:

a) the spacetime is continuous, i.e. not perforated, not torn and has a homeomorphism property

b) the spacetime has elastic properties (possible to calculate)

c) the elastic properties of spacetime are isotropic

d) any spacetime deformation is unlimited (to some extent, it deforms the entire spacetime in Gaussian distribution mode, due to its elastic and homeomorphism properties). Quantum nonlocality becomes GR type locality by the emergence out of Gaussian distribution

e) the spacetime is a dissipative coupled system that exhibits self-organized criticality. That assumption is necessary to use the general law of survival of the stable for the evolution of spacetime deformations)[3]

The spacetime here is not the infamous ether which was rightly rejected because it was to be a frame of reference and a background for all events. The spacetime is not the background, but the material (fabric) of matter and energy itself and then it is quite natural that energy and matter can be transmitted as waves/wavepackets.

The real experiment

A source emits a right-handed photon, the photon impinges almost perpendicularly a mirror being reflected to a detector set up to measure the spin of particle. The photon shall be a low-energy photon to avoid a photoelectric effect, Compton scattering or pair production.

According to Standard Model of QM the reflected photon's spin is the opposite to that of the photon emitted at the source.

According to our thought experiment carried out above the "reflected" photon's spin is the same as that of the photon emitted.

According to Standard Model the photon does not go "around" along a geodesic but it is simply reflected and as a cause of that reflection the spin is changed.

We try to prove that the photon is not a point particle (like in Standard Model) that is reflected from another point particle (one of the many creating our mirror) but instead it travels around a "particle" being a part of the mirror and comes back along a geodesic. The way it goes is a geodesic because the mirror's "particle" is the spacetime deformation only. If our photon goes along the geodesic (straight line) it does not change its spin.

So it is a realization of the thought experiment.

=========

My next proposal is to exchange the emergence of spacetime from Qubits into the emergence of Qubits from the conformally flat, isotropic, homeomorphic, self-organized and elastic spacetime.

My answer to "What is then the teleported human?": He/she is a wavepacket.

My proposal for your holism is to narrow it down to emergentism that is the direct consequence of any evolutionary approach.

Finally my comment for the Quantum Cellular Automata issue. To me the universe is a dissipative coupled system that exhibits self-organized criticality. The structured criticality is a property of complex systems where small events may trigger larger events. This is a kind of chaos where the general behavior of the system can be modeled on one scale while smaller- and larger-scale behaviors remain unpredictable. The simple example of that phenomenon is a pile of sand. When QM and GR are computable and deterministic, the universe evolution (naturally evolving self-organized critical system) is non-computable and non-deterministic.

I am sorry for that long comment.

Anyway your essay deserves the highest rating.

I do believe you will win the contest!

Giacomo

"Real object" is tautology.

"Ideal object" is contradiction.

As Ludvig Wittgestein told

"Tautoloy and contradiction havn't sense"

Are you agree?

Yuri

Caro professore D'Ariano,

mille grazie per aver condiviso la sua bella mente con noi. (I'm afraid my written Italian stops here -- but I can talk :)

I would like to bring your attention to the beautiful and short, almost like a theorem, essay by Maria Carrillo-Ruiz, who also shows how cellular automata can be linked to the concept of emergence. In the context of ontological monism she says, "Reality is ultimately composed of one basic stuff. Yet the concepts of physics are not sufficient to explain all the forms that this stuff takes and all the ways it comes to be structured, individuated, and causally efficacious." I thought you may like to read it and please share with us your impressions.

The other essay to which I wanted to bring your attention is by Dr. Carolyn Devereux, who, also in the context of ontological monism, introduces a novel idea of how 'matter' may emerge from harmonic oscillations within the vibrating primordial substrate, thus offering an alternative to CA mechanism of emergence. I am especially partial to this view, because it resonates with my vision of how the universe emerged (which I tried to convey, within my layman limitations, in the last year contest).

The central idea of both essays fits very well with my understanding, that, in layman terms, everything in the universe, including space itself, is made of the same 'space stuff'. Or, alternatively, that reality emerges in the dynamic structure of space. In this view, energy = dynamics and information = structure or organization that emerges out of primitive processes governed by just a few simple principles. Thus, in my understanding, if ToE is ever to be found, such a theory would naturally have to be not only background independent but the organization of what we define as background would emerge from it -- and everything else would emerge from this background. Or, in layman terms again, every 'thing', including space-time itself, is ultimately 'made of' the underlying quantum processes. I hope that this also in line with your view --at least this is how I understand it-- please correct me if I'm wrong.

Please read these two essays and tell us what you think :)

Maria Carrillo-Ruiz & Dr Carolyn Devereux

Mille grazie:)

-Marina

Dear Mauro:

I just got around to reading your essay and enjoyed it very much. It is funny that we ended up advocating two seemingly opposing points of view since I know that our opinions are not that far apart.

Let me then try to put the finger on the key differences. Using the example of the river that is never the same and the ship that is completely reconstructed you argue that objects are states. You then point out that states are nothing but a list of properties and hence information precedes matter. Or in the language of the contest: It from bit.

The first thing that I want to point out is that just because something is a state does not imply that it looses its "itness". When X.-G. Wen writes down a solid state model that has QED as a low energy limit then he uses a large number of two-dimensional quantum systems to do this. He calls them spins; you call them qbits. The name doesn't change the fact that they are It. Their interactions determine the emergent low energy behavior.

The second point is more central to my own essay. When you talk about the "catalog of all its properties", you have to assume an external dictionary that makes sense of the catalog. Think of the list of positions of the atoms and molecules that make up the river (or ship). What does this list of numbers mean? To give meaning to these numbers you have to give a procedure of how to position the atoms. This requires material objects (like the standard meter that used to be in Paris). This is why I think that information comes after matter because without matter information is literally meaningless.

All the best.

Olaf

P.S.: You might enjoy my last paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6169. An attempt to do away with Inflation.

Dear Giacomo,

One single principle leads the Universe.

Every thing, every object, every phenomenon

is under the influence of this principle.

Nothing can exist if it is not born in the form of opposites.

I simply invite you to discover this in a few words,

but the main part is coming soon.

Thank you, and good luck!

I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

Please visit My essay.

Dear Giacomo

I found your essay very interesting and well structured. However, I have a view in opposition to yours. Just as Olaf and Maria Carrillo argue, I support the view that information has no meaning without objects (it). I'd like to express some critics on your work and I'd be glad if could make some comments.

As far as I could see you support the view that information (bit) is more fundamental than the substance (bit). To state your position you invoke pragmatism and operationalism whose bases, according to you, rest on what we "observe" and not on what we believe is out there. My first point is that I don't have clear what you mean by "what we believe is out there" if what is out there is supposed to be what we "observe" with our senses and instruments. Could you please clarify.

You also mention that what matters is making correct predictions and that we only need to describe logically and efficiently what we "see". I concur with you that theories should account for physical phenomena and I assume that by the words "observe" and "see" you mean "data collected by measuring instruments". It appears that many colleagues have forgotten that since the advent of QM and GR intuition and common sense (or ontologies as you say) were relegated to a second plane in physics and replaced by mathematical formulations. In my opinion operationalism is synonymous of the famous "shut up and calculate" approach. Operationalism has been practiced for many decades since the first quarter of the XX century, and without doubt is the cause that has brought us to the present state in physics. The fact that our understanding of the world has been restricted to ever increasing abstract theories is, in my view and the view of many other renown physicists, the real cause of not making progress in the last 30 or more years in theoretical physics. This is the reason why nowadays we found many different roads to "reality" or ontologies such as string theory, causal sets, LQG, including the one we are discussing in this contest. Therefore, the ontology of object has not precluded the progress of physics. Moreover if we consider that ontologies are tools to depict mechanisms of "what we believe is out there" (observations) in our mind, then we can assert that information and math can be considered in a certain sense as some kind of "ontologies", after all math is also a mental tool composed of pure logical structures and abstract objects that we humans have develop to help ourselves in understanding the world out there. We cannot deny that there are some colleagues who argue that the universe has mathematical structures, some even go beyond this asseveration and claim that the universe is pure math. If we acknowledge this, then the problem likely reduces to a mere problem of interpretation, language or thus of semantics. Whereas in the current view we assume that the main ingredients that make up the universe are matter, energy, space, time, and fields; the "it from bit" ideology suggests that the main ingredient is information in the form of states or bits. But what is a bit or information? And what physical meaning do they have without hardware? If they are states, they should be states of something tangible... the fact that they are states doesn't imply that they stop being objects.

Thus, I took your question: Why we should bother changing our way of looking at reality? And your answer is: Because the old matter-realistic way of thinking in terms of particles moving around and interacting on the stage of space-time is literally blocking the progress of theoretical physics.

The ontology that matter is a essential substance of the universe is neither deficient nor precluding the progress of physics but what is deficient is the conception of particle. The solution that you offer is to throw out the baby with the bath water. I wouldn't replace the "it" for the "bit", instead I would replace first the ontologies of particle and wave for only one ontology that encompasses both and to do so I have to reconceptualize the ontologies of space and field. This is what I discuss in my current and previous essays.

You say: The lesson spelled loud and clear by the Bell theorem is that we should trust observations, even against our intuition.

Again, "observations" means "data" and data can be interpreted by more sophisticated ontologies that go along with intuition and common sense and that keep the "it" as the fundamental ingredient. Some colleagues are working on showing that entanglement (and thus non-locality) can have an intuitive explanation (which is actually very simple if we change our notion of particle).

Later you talked about a field, but what is a field made of? You say: It is a collection of infinitely many quantum systems. But the "quantum system" is an abstract notion: it is an immaterial support...

That the field is a mathematical abstraction is due to Einstein since then most physicists believe so, but this doesn't forbid us to recover the notion of field as conceived by Maxwell. So a field can be considered a state of the quantum vacuum and we can postulate, without fear of falling into inconsistencies, that the vacuum is a material continuum. Therefore, we are left again with matter and hardware as the fundamental essence of the universe.

Finally, I'd like to invite you to read my essay, I'd be grateful if could leave me your comments.

Best Regards

Israel

Dear Mauro,

I think that you have stopped reading my essay when you saw that I started with only two states (existence and non-existence).

Please read it further, at least read the "evolution of a 3D world" paragraph, and you will see that the "bit" seen by an internal observer is determined by the state of two successive layers of bits, this, in a certain way, will give you the 3rd state you are looking for.

I really hope you will take the time to look at my complete theory. You said that you like theories based on very simple principles, that is exactly what I have done here and I came up with very interesting results, just from these very simple principles.

For example, I show that the proton's diameter is a scaled up version of the Planck length and that the proton's mass is a scaled down version of the Planck mass.

If you take the Planck length and multiply it by 1020 (the scale factor) and divide it by 1-1/8Pi, you get the exact value of the proton's diameter measured with a muon. If you divide that SAME value again by the SAME 1-1/8Pi, you get the exact value of the proton's diameter measured with an electron (solving the proton radius measurement problem ). This 1-1/8Pi is explained in my theory (it is (8Pi-1)/8Pi).

If you take the Planck mass and multiply it by 10-20(the scale down factor) and multiply it by 8-1/Pi, you get the exact value of the proton's mass. Again, 8-1/Pi is explained in my theory (it is (8Pi-1)/Pi).

The 8Pi-1 also appears in the proton/electron mass ratio formula that I present in my essay but also in a lot more formulae that I won't describe here but that you can find here.

I would love to have your expert opinion on my findings, I hope that you will take the time to read my theory and give me some feedback.

Best regards,

Patrick

PS: if you read my theory, you will understand why I said that your essay was "first class"

Dear Mauro,

Sorry, I am not very good at explaining things, especially I am lacking the proper scientific language.

When you have the time, it would be great if you could let me know what you don't understand in my logic, I will try to answer your queries. I can assure you that it will all make sense in the end, my theory was built up from very simple principles and everything is just plain logic.

I look forward to your comments when you come back from travelling.

Best regards,

Patrick