Dear Prof. Tejinder Singh et al,

Your essay is beautiful, deep, and well written. You made justice to alternatives to QM like GRW, Bohmian mechanics, and trace dynamics, in which you have important contributions. In particular, despite Weinberg's arguments that it is impossible to make quantum evolution even slightly non-unitary, in the context of gravity, it might be difficult (although maybe not completely impossible) to maintain unitary evolution (because of the nonlinearity of general relativity). By your essay, you shown that one should not rush to give up the hope of a realistic description of the world, although to keep realism, I advocate a small change. Due to results like Bell's and Kochen-Specker's, and Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, I find difficult to preserve the picture of a pre-existing reality, if "reality" has the same meaning as in classical physics. I would rather say that reality, or the initial conditions, depends on the context, on what property will be measured, so reality has to be constrained by a global consistency principle. A deeper understanding of reality is needed, but giving it up altogether, as Wheeler's "it from bit" suggests, seems too radical to me, or at least too early. I consider that it is great that you explore and advocate ways to maintain it.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

    Thank you Cristi, for your kind and thought provoking remarks. I readily agree to the non-local nature of realism, and the possibly far-reaching implications this could have for causality. Our principle discomfiture is with the pre-given status of probabilities in quantum theory.

    I look forward to reading your essay.

    Hello. Could you kindly elaborate what you did not understand. We are really concluding that bit follows from it, not the other way round.

    Dear Professor Tejinder Singh et al,

    Although our essays don't reach the same conclusion, I very much enjoyed your work - especially the 'Threefold way'. I like anything that turns It from Bit on it's head - something which you have excelled at! We should never just assume.

    Best wishes & kind regards,

    Antony

      Dr. Singh & Colleagues:

      I enjoyed reading your essay, which provides a clear overview of various realism-based interpretations of quantum mechanics. I particularly noted your comment that "The greatest challenge to all the above four routes is that they are all non-relativistic." In that regard, you might be interested in looking at my essay ( "Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotations and Relative Time" ) in which I present a locally realistic quantum picture, whereby primary quantum particles such as photons, electrons, and quarks are soliton-like rotating relativistic vector fields with quantized spin, with rotation rate f=E/h (where E is the total relativistic energy). These constitute local clocks, which slow down when E is reduced in a gravitational field, thus deriving general relativity in a simple intuitive way. This picture also avoids non-locality, indeterminacy and entanglement. Yes, this is all highly heretical, but is more logically consistent than the orthodox approaches.

      Alan

        Thank you Anntony for your kind comments. I look forward to reading your essay - I am intrigued by the appearance of the Fibonacci sequence, and curious to learn more.

        Best,

        Tejinder

        Greetings Alan, and nice to meet you here again. And thank you for your kind comments. I whole-heartedly agree that making these routes relativistic will bring in new physics. I look forward to reading your essay in the next few days.

        Regards,

        Tejinder

        Dr. Singh & Colleagues,

        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

        Dear prof. Tejinder singh,

        Thanks for producing an excellent essay which is highly thought provoking and equally original in its content. I am beginning to wonder whether both GTD/CSL and the Copenhagen interpretation of QM are 'diametrically opposite' views; where GTD/CSL move from past to future as in classical physics and hence give priority to It in QM, whereas Copenhagen interpretation moves from future to past and give priority to Bit although both describe the same reality from opposite ends/ directions. The Copenhagen interpretation due to its stance is 'queer' in the sense that it thinks of controlling past from the future and thereby controlling the future itself which irritates any classical physicist, but GTD/CSL do not give credence to such views and in this sense preferable.

        Best of luck in the contest,

        Sreenath

        Resp Prof Tejinder sir,

        I replied your COMMENTS put on my essay yesterday. I hope you will see those and discuss...

        Best Regards

        =snp

        Dear Sreenath,

        Thank you for your kind remarks. I broadly agree with your viewpoint about Copenhagen versus CSL/GTD. It all comes down to whether we are willing to accept probabilities as fundamental in a system which does not have an underlying sample from which to select.

        Regards,

        Tejinder

        5 days later

        Many thanks for your reply and comments over at my essay Tejinder. I've replied. Still thinking about the threefold way while reading other essays. Certainly got me thinking!

        All the best for the contest & nice to "meet" you!

        Antony

        You argue against probabilities having a 'fundamental, irremovable status in quantum theory'.

        I think the layman's view of what your saying is that probabilities are not fundamental to the Cosmos, and there is therefore an absolute reality that we can know completely.

        But the It-Bit question does not only pertain to the measurement of quanta, or the probabilities thereof - even if this is what inspired Wheeler to make his statement.

        It is a much bigger question than that.

        Even if the emergence of random outcomes can be explained in a variety of ways, the nature of Bit remains unchanged: It is information, and ultimately - even in mathematics and physics - it defines the Observer's patch of reality at a given moment.

        Regardless of how we ultimately account for the phenomena of the quantum world, there will still be a greater reality beyond human cognition; the observer does not interact with the whole field of reality regardless of how probabilities emerge. Mathematics is the projection of the human mind on to the Cosmos - and it is only bits!

        Though it is doubtless critical to investigate quantum reality as thoroughly as you do, it is also necessary to define the relationship between the Observer and the field of observation. What we must ask is: 'Why do Bits 'match' Its so consistently at every instant of evolution?'

        There is indeed cause to doubt which quantum model should be adopted, a point you make very thoroughly - but even if we could describe the quantum world in perfect mathematical language, we would still have only described some small part of our Cosmos perfectly; and we would nonetheless still be involved in our distinctive human Cosmos ... one that displays a continuous correlation between Bit and It over the course of evolution.

        As you can probably tell, this is one of the strands of my essay.

        Believe me, I found your work highly informative and very interesting, and my objections only relate to the implicit parameters within which you are framing your conclusions - ie: that adopting one quantum model over another causes the concept of It-Bit duality to 'vanish into thin air'.

        I believe that a definition of Information underlies your thought as it does mine, and that it would be very positive if your parameters were expanded so that you might precisely define the Correlation of Bit to It, as I do.

        I am eager to hear your feedback, of course, and to know what you think of my essay.

        All the best!

        John

        Dear prof. Tejinder singh,

        It is disheartening to know that such a beautifully written essay as yours is rated so low so far in the essay contest and I have decided to give you a shot in the arm by giving you maximum honors.

        Best of luck in the essay contest.

        Sreenath

        Dear John,

        Thank you for your constructive criticism which I fully accept: we have dealt with the it-bit question only in the limited context of quantum theory, and undoubtedly the scope and context of the matter-information relation is much larger. Perhaps it could be said we stayed within these limits because our training and expertise lies here. We might be out of our depth trying to address the larger question.

        I shall definitely read your essay very soon, and leave a comment on your page. Till then, here are my layman views on the issue, when one steps out of the quantum theory domain. I want to divide the issue into two parts: (i) classical world, without making a reference to observer/mind/consciousness, (ii) same as (i) but with the observer included.

        (i) I feel one can give here a precise match here between the material world [spacetime-matter] and the mathematical description of the properties of the material world [which i would like to call knowledge/information]. Honestly, here information seems to me to be just a big blown up word about what physicists do all the time: develop physical laws to mathematically describe properties and evolution of the material world. Here it seems rather apparent to me that bit follows from it.

        In making the above physicist picture, we pretend that such a description exists without the observer playing a key role [objectivism], except that of someone who somehow grasps an understanding of the physical world and then presents it objectively as if the observer never existed.

        (ii) including the observer / mind / consciousness: But I agree that this is only a pretend, and the question as to how the mind processes information, and in so doing relates to the physical world, must be understood. I agree that here the it-bit relation is non-trivial and not understood. Personally I feel we are not ready to answer these questions: we do not really understand thinking, nor do we understand understanding! But yes I do very much welcome attempts to explore this domain - maybe it will intimately involve interconnections between physics and neurobiology, and will spell out the limits of human information processing. I think this sort of reasoning overlaps with what you say above.

        So those are my two cents :-) Thanks again for putting my essay in perspective - I was enlightened to learn from this contest that so many essays here address the larger picture you emphasize, including yours, which i will see soon.

        Best regards,

        Tejinder

          Dear Tejinder,

          Your essay is impeccable and well grounded. There are indeed many theoretical rats to smell as things currently stand. Your conclusion that Bit is from It also follows on one condition, which if correct will be a fatal oversight to that conclusion. Bit is short for any binary choice.

          Bizarre as it may initially appear, Is existence/non-existence then one of the binary choices available? If not, why not if the universe as a whole exhibits this choice? (if our cosmology is correct). Can this Bit be denied other Its, if the universe is not denied this choice? If yes, then non-existence is one bit that does not require any It to carry it. Again, what other Bit can lie below this Bit? Would it not occupy the "very, very deep bottom" as Wheeler says? If there is actually some primordial substance, can a fundamental discrete It come from another It? Would it rather not be derived from this Bit mentioned?

          So when you say, "...we believe that 'it from bit' is not a real option. 'Bit' always refers to a pre-existing 'it'", I can understand because obviously, the Binary choice I mention above does not come into your reckoning, or if it did, you don't want it included in the list of available Bits. As I claim in my essay however, it is likely that it is that Bit that will make "all problems evaporate" and not the contrary.

          *Mind you, a few in this community have come to agree that this Bit should not be excluded from our list of Bits, with Ian Durham introducing another view (trying to find an escape route) in that he says probability can again dog that Bit, i.e. an It can hover between existence and non-existence.

          I enjoy dialectic, so pardon my barrage of questions.

          Whatever, your essay is a collector's item on how to rectify deficiencies in Quantum theory.

          My essay is here as well, you may take a look.

          Cheerio,

          Akinbo

          Thank you Akinbo, for your kind appreciation, and also for your comments, which perhaps bear similarity with those by John Selye just above. I agree to the importance of the observer/existence aspect when the matter-information relationship is considered in its broadest perspective. My response would perhaps again be somewhat along the lines of the response to John's comments.

          I hope to see your essay soon.

          My best wishes,

          Tejinder

          Dear Angelo,

          You wrote an excellent essay to introduce your RMP paper and more.

          I don't really understand why your work contradicts the "it from bit" philosophy.

          As you write in the RMP paper, QM is a theory of measurements and seems to have "nothing to say about the world as it is". So, in the range of validity of QM, the "bit from it" makes no sense. On the other hand, QM says a lot about observer participancy and the existence of objects, and finally about the "it".

          Is it that you reject QM in the microrange? In that case, you would have to explain many exotic quantum properties, from non-locality to entanglement and contextuality, am I right?

          Best wishes,

          Michel