The secret love affair between It and Bit by David M Reid

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.

It seems physics has achieved consensus more on measurability than logic. Maybe they do need to question their philosophy.

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

Dear David,

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 David,

Thanks for going through my essay in detail and with care. There is no exaggeration in what I have said in my essay. I would like to answer all your questions point by point.

String Theory, Loop QG and the like are not physical theories; they are just mathematical ploys which intimidate physics by posing themselves as unified physical theories. I reject them because in spite of their formulation since at least two decades ago they have not been able to make a testable prediction which would either verify their veracity or over throw them. Whenever you formulate a unified theory, you not only just combine two theories in your mathematical scheme but also must be able to make some new predictions because you are viewing the 'reality' from quite a different point of view. Have they been able to make such predictions testable, at least, in the near future? They say that they are testable at an energy range of the order of 10^18 GeV or at a scale of the order of 10^-33 cm (Planck length). The energy range that we have attained now is of the order of 10^4 GeV and the corresponding microscopic range we have reached is of the order of 10^-19 cm; now just tell me when are we going to reach this scale so that we can test their veracity? Do you say let it take thousand years to reach that scale when they will surely be verified? Let them make, at least one immediate testable prediction which is the hall mark of any physical theory then I will agree with them. So far testable predictions made by LQG, super symmetries, etc. have been falsified and string theory is sterile because it is unable to make any testable prediction and on the contrary it claims that there are 10^500 universes and no man who is having 'common sense' is ready to believe this outlandish stuff.

Regarding the definition of information, you are saying that it makes the position of physics awkward; the 'data' that we perceive from the world around us i.e., from physical objects are about their energy, position, motion, force, etc. and I don't know how it makes it awkward.

Regarding the existence and evolution of Life on earth; it is generally believed that the age of the earth is about 4.5 billion years and about a billion years after its formation in the solar system, the evolution of the 'biological network' (biosphere) started to take place by living materials, especially DNA and this I have explained clearly in the essay. It is this process which led to the existence of Life in its simplest form and this process continued to become the evolution of Life and it is continuing even today. So the evolutionary process started about 3.5 billion years ago to form the biosphere and after about a billion years later, that is, about 2.5 billion years ago simplest Life forms originated and later more and more complex forms evolved. Now tell me where is the mistake regarding the age of the existence and evolution of Life?

Regarding inexplicability of biology on the basis of physics; I want to give just one example which makes it quite clear to you why. Suppose I wave my hand towards a crowd and as a physicist you can explain the motion of my hand quite clearly but can you explain on the basis of your physics 'the intension or purpose behind the waving of my hand?' You know that it is absolutely impossible and it needs no explanation. It is because of this 'qualitative' difference between biology and physics, biology cannot be reduced to physics. It is this 'purpose' which is at the basis of the existence and evolution of Life. But this purpose is 'not divine'; it is as a result of the 'tendency' exhibited by 'living materials'.

Regarding 'man at the pinnacle of the evolution of Life'; evolution of Life is not to be viewed as simply production of more and more complex organisms but it is to viewed as 'analogous to the evolution of the knowledge of mind'. In this sense man is at the pinnacle of the evolution of Life but not in the sense of adoptability to the environment.

Regarding comprehension power of the human mind, you cannot restrict it and if you succeed in it like religious authorities in the past, remember that you would not have seen the sort of transformations in all fields of human activity that you are seeing now. But sometimes you got to ask right or useful questions to enhance the comprehension power of the human mind but not to mitigate it.

Regarding your last question on mathematics, I didn't know that Kant held similar views. Of course, Kant had no clue of the existence of non-Euclidian geometries and I don't understand what this has got anything to do with my view on mathematics. In my view, axioms are basic to mathematical theories and the veracity of the conclusions drawn from the axioms depends on the veracity of the axioms themselves but not on the type of mathematics used or applied. If you use in your axioms elements of non-Euclidian geometry, say, Lobachevsky, Bolyai and Reimann, the kind of mathematics you have to apply is what is already applied by them.

So, please, go through my essay once again regarding this and if you still find anything confusing, have discussions with me.

I will shortly post my comments on your essay.

Best regards,

Sreenath

Dear David,

You have well-structured your essay with both mythological and historical back grounds. In the end you have concluded that both It and Bit are intertwined and both dictate each other, although It is having its own independent existence. I have also similar sort of conclusion but mind as third party playing the basic role to unite them.

Best wishes in the contest,

Sreenath

David,

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

Hi David,

Thanks for your comments over on my page. Hope you're enjoying reading so many great essays - I am!

Best wishes for the contest,

Antony