Essay Abstract

Disagreements about the relationship between information and reality are inevitable because physics lumps together concepts of information and of physical reality. Model Theory is ideally suited to disentangle the concepts, thus leading to a clearer resolution of the problem. The text is written for the lay person; there are references for those who wish to delve deeper.

Author Bio

David Reid synthesizes the bit and the it: his Master's in Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) was a stop in a nomadic existence, spread out through all the world's habitable continents.

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Dear David

Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon. So you can produce material from your thinking. . . .Or only Gods can do that?

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.

    Mr. Reid,

    I rated your essay a ten. It is the most unnerving essay I have ever read. I know that one real unique Universe is eternally occurring, once.

    You made it crystal clear in your essay that not one philosopher, or physicist, or mathematician who has ever lived or who is presently alive, has ever known, or knows, what the words unique and once actually mean.

    Only Kurt Gödel even mentioned unique, and he misinterpreted its meaning when he stated: "There are enough numbers so that every sentences can correspond to a unique number code; that is, so that the quantity and the code have the same interpretation...," Unique is not same.

    If we Wheeler it, we get: Is unique real? Yes (once)

    Is information real? No (always)

    Please reassure me that I am not the only person who knows what the words unique and once mean.

      Dear David,

      Nicely written essay - I think it would make a great video too! It was a pleasant read and a great idea to keep it clear with references if the reader wanted to delve deeper - flowed better than some essays. Reminded me a little of a previous winner's approach - which is always a good thing.

      My essay might not be along the lines of yours, but if you get the chance, I'd appreciate your views.

      Best wishes,

      Antony

        Hello, Mr. Fisher,

        Thank you for your kind approach to my essay. It was an interesting interpretation to my essay, which left some leeway in its possibilities for interpretation.

        The relationships between "uniqueness" and "sameness" provide Model Theory with a lot to work with, as equivalence classes help build Ultrafilters which are used as models, or where one investigates the conditions under which a series in a theory can be indistinguishable from another under a given model, and many other topics. Although I noticed at the end of your essay (which I will have to re-read more carefully before I can post a comment)that you said that you are not interested in logic, the meanings of "unique" and "once" have gradations which are indeed being intensively researched by logicians. I hope that is some reassurance.

        Best, David

        Hi, Satyavarapu,

        Thank you for looking at the abstract. The abstract was a bit short, so I could see how you could have jumped to conclusions about the text. I hope you will have a chance to read the full text of my essay and see that the only mention of divinity is in a playful literary device, and no implication of divine forces are included. Also, you will see that there are numerous references to empirical results in that essay, which was one of your justified concerns.

        I have read your essay and posted my comments in the thread below it.

        Best wishes, David

        David,

        I have the sense you are exploring how physics is getting sucked down the same rabbit hole as philosophy. May I offer an answer to the question of reality?

        Reality is the extant. Nothing more, nothing less.

        Well, then how do we decide what is extant and what is not?

        A bit like carving a statue of Zeus. Chip away all that is not and leave all that is.

        Yes, but what is real and what is not? Are the past and future real?

        No.

        Then how do you describe and explain what is real, if you don't have past and future?

        You didn't ask how to explain reality, only what is reality. Big difference.

        I thought relativity shows past and future are just different parts of the time vector?

        What is time? The problem is that individuals experience it as a sequence of events and treat it as a vector from past to future, but that is just an effect, much like the sun moving across the sky and we remember how much confusion that caused. The reality is much simpler. Change causes future to become past. The earth is not traveling some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.

        But what about spacetime?

        We could use ideal gas laws and correlate temperature to volume and call it temperaturespace, but thermodynamics is not the basis of cause and effect logic and narrative, like time, so people have more perspective of it.

        But what about the expanding universe? Isn't causal spacetime the basis for the cosmology?

        One of the problems with complex arguments is that you loose sight of the big picture in all the details and look silly. According to Einstein, space is what you measure with a ruler. Since all those other galaxies are redshifted proportional to distance(which would be explainable as an optical effect), so the theory argues it's an expansion OF space, not IN space and so every point appears to be at the center. The problem is it still assumes a constant speed of light; That all those galaxies are moving away and the light will take longer to reach us, thus implying a stable speed of light. Now if you were to hand this in as homework; 1)That space is what you measure with a ruler. 2)That intergalactic space expands. 3) We know this because our ruler, the distance light travels in a year, remains constant and it requires more of them to cover the distance between galaxies. You would get a big fat F, but since the logical trail is so long and convoluted, no one looks at all of it and cosmology gets a pass. Keep in mind Einstein also argues gravity collapses space and these galaxies populating the universe are not just inert points of reference, but gravity wells, so it would make mathematical sense to say the space expanding between galaxies is also falling into them.

        Now Einstein makes this argument because the ruler, mass points, are contracting. Yet radiation is expanding away from them. The argument for recession causing redshift is that photons travel as point particles, yet what is the proof of that? They have no internal structure to hold them together, exhibit wavelike properties in transit and the point characteristic seems largely a function of being absorbed by atoms. So if light expands out when released and the absorbed photon is only a sample of the wave front, why wouldn't it show redshift across quadrillions of miles, since the absorbed photon is likely multispectrum? Otherwise we assume point particles will follow in a line across these distances, exhibiting the clarity we measure of other galaxies?

        So, mass contracts and radiation expands in a cosmic convection cycle and space has no physical features to bend, bound, stretch, etc. Therefore it is both infinite and absolute, ie. inert. We can measure this inertia as the centrifugal force of a spinning object, since assuming it is due to an outside reference would be problematic. Call it an unbound field, if you prefer

        Time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude.

        Information defines energy and energy manifests information. Since the energy is conserved, creating new information requires erasing old. Which goes a long way to explaining death, disease, wars, earthquakes and all the other falls off the edge of reality into the abyss that people are really curious about.

          John,

          Thanks for your observations. One section of my essay explicitly warned against philosophy that was not backed up by physics or mathematics, yes. The main thrust of the essay was to indicate that, since 'meaning' is an unspoken element in even physical and mathematical treatments of the link between reality and information, it would be a good idea to turn to Model Theory, since it formalizes the concept of 'meaning' in strict mathematical form in such a way as to be consistent with the current physical theories. I introduce no new physical theory; I mention a little slice of quantum theory, since this is the part that gives the most headaches when attempting to describe reality. Your observations are more towards the macro realm, where there are fewer problems in formulating physical theory in terms of information.

          Dear Hoang coa Hai, Thank you for reading my essay. The conclusion is that information and reality are interdependent and overlapping, but not identical. (Much of the essay is to show how Model Theory can differentiate between the two.) It is a little like an isomorphism between two structures which share some of the same symbols, thereby confusing anyone who is a little sloppy with notation. An isomorphism can often be shown by what is called a 'back-and-forth' method, which is essentially what happens (ontologically, not temporally) between information and physical reality. Alternatively, you can make an analogy with the paraphrase of Wheeler "Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter where to go." Spacetime and matter are not identical, yet they are intertwined. So too, information (analogous to spacetime geometry) and physical reality (analogous to matter).

          I hope this clears it up a little.

          Best, David

          David,

          What is meaning, other than the desired outcome or consequence and how do we arrive at it, other than distilling away all that is meaningless? It seems to me meaning is another static reductionism of a dynamically wholistic reality. Is this desire for knowledge really that different than the desire for food or sex? The unspoken need is continuation of the self and genes.

          My issue with the quantum realm is its insistence on point particles as the be all, end all. This seems more the result of reductionist tendencies, than overwhelming evidence. We can measure them better.

          We can measure duration, but is it really a vector that transcends the present, or is simply the state of the present between events? You would think that if time is a vector from past to future, the faster clock would move into the future faster, but the opposite it true. It ages quicker and so moves into the past quicker.

          Epicycles are mathematically effective, but it was the physical theories to explain them that was the problem. Are all these patches and propositions from inflation to blocktime, to dark energy, to multiworlds and multiverses the modern example of giant cosmic gear wheels? When the solutions create as many problems as they solve, it is not good.

          Hi, John,

          To your question "What is meaning...", many philosophers have written volumes, but it was only with the development of Model Theory in the mid-twentieth century that a concise mathematical method was developed in order to deal with it. The debate of holism versus reductionism is handled in model theory, giving a synthesis which philosophers had not come up with.

          The quantum realm does not insist on point particles as the be-all, end-all: in fact, it is precisely quantum theory that synthesizes the concepts of points and waves.

          Time is no longer seen as an independent entity in general relativity, so statements such as its being a vector etc. need to be adjusted; in quantum mechanics, since time is not an operator, and there is no satisfactory coupling with an arrow of time, the issue of time remains an open question.

          Ciao, David

          David, This was spritely written. This is a great heuristic run through philosophers, mathematicians, and physicists. Thank god for the myths. It certainly makes me want to investigate model theory. Using the generic sense of the word model, it seems possible to me the public could someday imagine a model that could explain what we can perceive within reality as long as it also explained why we cannot (and will never) perceive other aspects of reality.

          David,

          I do not quite know how to explain this, but unique cannot be researched. Unique happens once and it is complete unto itself. We see similarity all the time. We have no way of assessing unique. It is totally elusive because it completes, once. This makes prediction impossible. Scientists acknowledge the uniqueness of each snowflake or strand of DNA assuming that the difference in structure is small. I maintain that each snowflake or strand of DNA (or anything) is unique as to every part of it. Each of a snowflake's parts must be unique, once. Each bit of everything must be unique, once. Although we may pretend to be able to measure stuff, unique, once cannot be measured.

          Joe

          David,

          QM gives lip service to waves, but often just as probabilities. If light expanded out as an actual wave and only gave up a quantum on reception, would we need recession to explain redshift?

          What if QM simply ignores time and lets it emerge, like temperature? Then you have the events occurring, such as those which decide the fate of the cat, resulting in the probability of its potential demise collapsing, such that what was future probability becoming past actuality.

          Otherwise that external timeline from a determined past into a probabilistic future seems to cause trouble.

          Regards,

          JM