Vladimir

1. coincidence of opposites

The Software Cosmos, being finite, probably corresponds to the Cusan concept of "contracted maximum". At first glance no finite system could correspond to his "absolute Maximum". However, software can simulate something similar to the infinite, using a recursive process that opens up more detail below or a larger enclosing space above whenever required. Thus, the fractal structure of implicate space might enable one to imagine an infinite "chain of being" that extends above and below the physical realms that we can observe. In this sense, we might be able to comprehend the infinite while only being able to observe some finite portion of it, in the spirit of a Cusan "coincidence of opposites".

2. three elephants and three pillars

On reflection, I am not sure that the elephants/pillars are the same as the turtles/snakes in the way they support the world. There are usually four turtles to support the world, one each in the four cardinal directions.

With both the turtle shell and cobra's hood we have the image, not just of curvature, but of a hemisphere. This has an abstract relationship to the grid model. A grid model composed of nodes linked by great circle arcs has a dual representation (nodes along arcs are dual to arcs crossing at nodes).

The set of arcs is indexed by a hemisphere and so the turtle may represent the grid. The geometric alignments of the grid are preserved over geologic time, so I think it is entirely possible that they can persist after the end of the phenomenal world, as it is said of the world serpent.

3. rating

I have not rated your essay yet, as I want to read it again first, but I can assure you that you will get a good rating from me. Few people attempt to bring such a wide philosophical and historical outlook to cosmological questions and I agree that it is important.

Yesterday I took the time to read all 183 abstracts and select 20% for further study. My plan is to read a few more and then start rating them.

Hugh

Hugh, this essay presents a gerat combination of ideas.

The concept of the universe as a computer has always intrigued me although I see it as an emergent process rather than an ontological principle. I like that you tackle so many unsolved cosmological problems as well as leaning on the work of Bohm, Finkelstein etc.

Thanks, I am delighted that you liked it.

It has been a surprise to me how few essays treat the issues in observational cosmology. I have found only about a dozen possibilities among the 183 essay abstracts.

Hello Hugh,

Thanks for your comments on my blog. I will certainly take a look at your essay and the links in the next few days and engage you in some dialectic. I will be rating all essays with a digital inclination high including yours as I feel thats the way to go. Before I come back here, can you take a look at the below 4 simple questions, which I will be asking a few others:

"If you wake up one morning and dip your hand in your pocket and 'detect' a million dollars, then on your way back from work, you dip your hand again and find that there is nothing there...

1) Have you 'elicited' an information in the latter case?

2) If you did not 'participate' by putting your 'detector' hand in your pocket, can you 'elicit' information?

3) If the information is provided by the presence of the crisp notes ('its') you found in your pocket, can the absence of the notes, being an 'immaterial source' convey information?

Finally, leaving for the moment what the terms mean and whether or not they can be discretely expressed in the way spin information is discretely expressed, e.g. by electrons

4) Can the existence/non-existence of an 'it' be a binary choice, representable by 0 and 1?"

Answers can be in binary form for brevity, i.e. YES = 1, NO = 0, e.g. 0-1-0-1.

Best regards,

Akinbo

    Hugh,

    You talk about Dark Matter, as if we know what it is. Check MOND. First observation of spiral galaxies let to suggestion of MOND (slight change on gravity equations). Recently guys reported that observations of elliptical galaxies are in line with MOND.

    From a practical point, when doing simulation, it would be computationally cheeper to use MOND corrections, then adding new type of matter (like luminiferous aether). Unfortunately, MOND corrections are at scalar, or Newtonian gravity level, and there is no good tensor MOND, in the spirit of Einstein's equivalence principle.

    Do you think you have enough fingers to count all suggested candidates for dark matter that were supposed to show up at LHC, and DIDN'T show?

    By the way, Dark Energy is an addition of one constant in Einstein's equation. It is called cosmological constant. And its presence, like MOND, might be a sign that GR must be tweaked a tiny bit for he long-range (galaxies, universe).

    Cheers,

    Mikalai

      Hi Mikalai,

      You wrote:

      > You talk about Dark Matter, as if we know what it is.

      I apologise, I did not mean to. I know some people "search" for dark matter, expecting to find some kind of new particle or something larger that can explain the observations. They assume that GR must be correct and so the observations must be mistaken. To me, "Dark Matter" is just a way of referring to the observational evidence that GR is not a good theory at the galactic scale.

      > Check MOND.

      I am familiar with MOND, and very much appreciate how well it works at the galactic level. As you suggest, from a practical point of view it is the better theory. The difficulty I have with MOND is how to fit the formula into a larger theoretical narrative. In the essay, I was taking a top-down view and mentioning mainly ideas that seemed they could fit into my picture.

      > By the way, Dark Energy is an addition of one constant in Einstein's equation.

      Lisa Dyson, Matthew Kleban and Leonard Susskind wrote a nice paper some years ago called Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant that goes into the reasons that it does not work.

      Of course, we had only nine pages for the essay and so sections that deserved better had to be summarized in a sentence. But I assure you that I am not wedded to the "consensus cosmology" that these terms mean something real. My list of puzzles Lambda CDM has not explained has over 150 entries and my list of alternative theories of gravity has 95 entries.

      Hugh

      Hi Hugh,

      A great essay! The only thing is that you tried to cover too many phenomena. I would have wanted you to concentrate on one or two. A lot of beautiful ideas you have.

      I would have for example wanted you to discuss more on dynamics. For example, as you may know the current model for motion is based on the assumption that space is infinitely divisible. That is the premise used to resolve Zeno's Dichotomy argument and other paradoxes. Suppose that premise is false, for example if there is a Planck limit, what next? Do you have a program for digital motion?

      Some have taken offence to my 4 questions above. No harm is meant by it.

      Expect a good rating!

      Akinbo

      Dear Hugh -

      Your exposition of a computer simulation of the Cosmos is highly interesting, and brings into focus our relationship, and the relation of mathematics, to the Cosmos.

      The implicate and explicate orders you deal with can be considered from different perspectives, of course. I think ultimately we are dealing with a cosmos composed of different but correlated dimensional zones. I was interested by how you deal with this, especially when considering quasars, dark matter, and dark energy.

      One way or another, all these phenomena describe the boundaries of our space-time based parameters, and push us into expanding them.

      I myself describe a cosmic paradigm of correlated energy vortices that include the evolving observer while describing a quantum/classical world correlation. The evolving observer, I show, is the missing link in many of our quests. I think it is this that impels Physics' expansion into Bio- and Neuro-Physics.

      We are continually realizing that the Cosmos does indeed 'appear "fine-tuned" to develop life,' as you say. Unlike you, however, my focus is not on the mathematics of the Cosmos, but rather on the evolutionary correlation of both observer and Cosmos, and the deducible effects of this continuous correlation.

      I submit that it is in this area that our key assumptions must be reconsidered: And is not the historical expansion of mathematics into the field of reality a phenomenon that must also precisely describe the evolution of the human mind within that field?

      I very much liked your phrasing - "It from Bit and Bit from Us" - and can only add that the 'us' is evolving: I show that incorporating evolution into physics expands the definitions of It and Bit far beyond those signified by Wheeler; indeed, the interaction of It and Bit is one of continuous and simultaneous shifts - or more precisely, of correlation.

      We will always be playing with the borders; they will never be fixed and permanent.

      We will indeed find the ancients were right - in fact, a Vortex System of energy fields as I describe it shows that evolution is recursive, and that even facts vanish and re-appear over long periods of time.

      Your essay certainly made me focus on what we might achieve with computer simulations in the near future, something that is often unfairly derided. I rated your essay accordingly, and hope you'll soon visit my page and share your insights.

      All the best,

      John

        Hi Hugh,

        Thank you for the link. Interesting to see how other people are trying to redefine dimensions. I go a bit further than Peter in the sense that I reduce everything to Time or Length.

        Thank you also for the geometric series but I preferred to leave my formulae in that form to show the 8Pi-1. Already, in that form, a majority of mainstream physicists will call it numerology, so if I start putting 8Pi-2, that would be even worse.

        Cheers,

        Patrick

        The starting point for my picture of gravity is Gauge Theory Gravity. David Hestenes has described GTG as "mathematically equivalent" to General Relativity in his article Gauge Theory Gravity with Geometric Calculus but he shows many ways in which it is easier to use than GR.

        Its usefulness to me is that it is formulated in a flat space (and proper time) and the equation of motion of a particle due to another can be written as the sum of a Newtonian force and the deviation due to GR. (See section VI.A and equation 215 of the article).

        The Newtonian portion of the effect is a central force and so the combined effects of all particles can be super-posed into a conserved field. This allows an efficient parallel calculation of its dynamics.

        The GR deviation, or second term in equation (215), is the contribution from angular momentum, and I consider the effect of this separately. My interpretation (and here is where I differ from GTG and GR) is that this term (considered as a combined effect from all other particles) can be computed from the global properties of an implicate 3-sphere structure.

        This contribution can be responsible for the gravitational influence known as "Dark Matter" since it does not depend solely on the "contents" of the implicate space, but on its size (i.e.curvature) and spin. In a way, this can be considered a "modified Newtonian" theory. Whether it is better or worse than Milgromian MOND remains to be seen, but at least it is part of my larger narrative.

        Hi Akinbo,

        I was not offended by your questions, but I had some difficulty with them, as I was not quite sure what your unstated assumptions were. For example, were we to assume that we had not taken the million dollars out during the day? Was this to be taken as an analogue for a quantum experiment or just a philosophical question about the macroscopic world? Anyway, I thought I might answer with some humor to help make clear the context in which I take the questions.

        > "If you wake up one morning and dip your hand in your pocket and 'detect' a million dollars, then on your way back from work, you dip your hand again and find that there is nothing there...

        1) Have you 'elicited' an information in the latter case?

        Yes, assuming I forgot to take it to the bank once again.

        > 2) If you did not 'participate' by putting your 'detector' hand in your pocket, can you 'elicit' information?

        No, to elicit information about the cosmos, I need some form of participation. But this could be indirect. In the example, I might draw the same conclusion by looking in the mirror or recalling that pricey lunch.

        > 3) If the information is provided by the presence of the crisp notes ('its') you found in your pocket, can the absence of the notes, being an 'immaterial source' convey information?

        Yes, especially to my creditors

        > 4) Can the existence/non-existence of an 'it' be a binary choice, representable by 0 and 1?"

        Yes for some kinds of "its" at some levels of description, but not for others. Consider the difficulty a snowball might have in determining the facts of its own existence: At what point does a melting snowball cease to exist and the puddle it forms come into being? When did it come into existence in the first place?

        So I end with a question for you:

        5) Do we exist because surely we are thinking, or are we all snowballs that just think we are thinking?

        Hugh

        Hi Akinbo,

        You wrote:

        > A great essay! The only thing is that you tried to cover too many phenomena.

        I know, my first draft was 30 pages and a lot had to go to get it down to 9 pages. But one of the things I wanted to do with the essay is describe a kind of top-down picture. Many people work from the bottom up, extending their favorite theory, and the question I always have in the back of my mind is "suppose they are right... does it really help?" So I wanted to describe a picture that may or may not be right but at least has a chance because it actually addresses the major observational issues.

        Most of my work has been on the observational side. I only started putting together the theoretical picture this year. So I see the first part mainly as providing a motivation for why anyone would seriously ask whether the Earth's topography had a geometric structure. I think it does because I have spent a lot of time calculating statistics on non-public data. But even with publicly available sources you can derive suggestive statistics, as I describe. So it is a falsifiable idea.

        With this article, I wanted to start developing a compatible context (virtual worlds and so on). The problem is that a grid structure for topography undermines a lot of geoscience, even as it confirms ancient views. I suspect it will make specialists unhappy, and I wanted to have a wider context available to enhance understanding and acceptance.

        > I would have for example wanted you to discuss more on dynamics...

        My view is that a computational universe has to be discrete. As I described in the question from Mikalai Birukou (below), I divide gravity into two effects. The Newtonian gravity component can be combined with electromagnetism to have a field that can be used computationally to give classical results.

        I found in Ken Wharton's essay a useful idea (his 4D links) for conducting computations that provide quantum effects. I plan to make a posting over there to discuss my ideas with him.

        > Do you have a program for digital motion?

        I have started working on a simulator for the theory. I do not really believe my own theories until I have simulated them. :)

        > Expect a good rating!

        Thanks so much!

        Hugh

        Hi John,

        You wrote:

        > I myself describe a cosmic paradigm of correlated energy vortices that include the evolving observer while describing a quantum/classical world correlation.

        The S3 structure that I kept finding does look like a vortex in perspective.

        > The evolving observer, I show, is the missing link in many of our quests. I think it is this that impels Physics' expansion into Bio- and Neuro-Physics.

        I think that our inner world is a kind of reflection of the outer world. As the one evolves, so does the other.

        > We will indeed find the ancients were right - in fact, a Vortex System of energy fields as I describe it shows that evolution is recursive, and that even facts vanish and re-appear over long periods of time.

        The classical view is that the state of the system at any point in time can determine the system at other points in time. I do not think that is a good model for the world we live in, which seems to me to be one of continual forgetting and continual learning. Take the example of history and archaeology. Every year we loose information about the past, as stories and records are lost by death or disintegration. Yet every year we make archaeological discoveries, learning more and more about past cultures.

        > Your essay certainly made me focus on what we might achieve with computer simulations in the near future, something that is often unfairly derided. I rated your essay accordingly, and hope you'll soon visit my page and share your insights.

        Thanks... I will take a look.

        Hugh

        Dear Hugh,

        Congratulations for writing this engaging essay about how to go about simulating the Universe. It took me some time to read your essay : you discussed many mathematical tools such as Geometric Algebra and permutations of known theories in physics that I was not familiar with. I kept going to Wikipedia and other articles to get a sense of what you were saying!

        The role of the observer is stressed in Special Relativity and in the Copenhagen interpretation, and in Bohm's "explicate orders" if I understood that correctly. You take this role for granted and search for a software to represent it. When there is a will there is a way, and mathematics is so accommodating and can eventually describe any physical theory thrown at it. The question is - is'nt there a simpler way - one i which the Universe 'works' whether there is an observer or not?

        I believe there is and have started to explore it in my Beautiful Universe Theory also found here. I lack your skill as mathematician and programmer, but will try to explore this new starting point for physics (also explored in my last year's "Fix Physics!"I will now attempt to answer the more specific issues you raised in your interesting note on my my essay The Cloud of Unknowing .

        I wish you all the best.

        Vladimir

          Great - I am indeed very curious to see what you think once you've read my essay. I very much look forward to hearing from you.

          John

          Dear Hugh,

          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

          Hugh,

          WOW, I must say I truly appreciated your objective and analytical approach to the topic at hand! The fact that you are a software developer I also find intriguing since I, and several physicists interested in the findings of my work, are looking into developing new algorithms to apply this new paradigm.

          When you get the chance, I would appreciate if you could review my essay and let me know if you would be interested in further discussions. My email address is on the essay:

          http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1809

          Regards,

          Manuel

            Hello Hugh,

            I very much enjoyed your essay. Very engaging and interesting. I liked that you explored various aspects of the cosmos and objectively displayed historical takes on it. I think that it is important that you touched on so many aspects of physics rather than shy away as other essays have done. If we are every to have a theory of everything, we need to look at the entire picture.

            I work around geometry, which is why I liked the fractal approach. I've partly unified the four forces of nature using a geometric approach (not in my essay), which also resolves the three paradoxes of cosmogony. Interesting that you point out the mass of the Proton from modelling it as a geometric Black Hole. My model geometrically links the masses of the proton, neutron and electron to 99.999988% of prediction. Further, as the data for these masses has been refined over the last few years, the result has improved constantly.

            In my essay you might like the Fibonacci approach. You mentioned Software and Hardware - maybe the Fibonacci sequence is the firmware.....?

            Anyway, well done for producing what I consider to be one of the best essays in the contest. Top marks from me!

            Best wishes for the contest!

            Antony

            Hello Hugh,

            I very much enjoyed your essay. Very engaging and interesting. I liked that you explored various aspects of the cosmos and objectively displayed historical takes on it. I think that it is important that you touched on so many aspects of physics rather than shy away as other essays have done. If we are every to have a theory of everything, we need to look at the entire picture.

            I work around geometry, which is why I liked the fractal approach. I've partly unified the four forces of nature using a geometric approach (not in my essay), which also resolves the three paradoxes of cosmogony. Interesting that you point out the mass of the Proton from modelling it as a geometric Black Hole. My model geometrically links the masses of the proton, neutron and electron to 99.999988% of prediction. Further, as the data for these masses has been refined over the last few years, the result has improved constantly.

            In my essay you might like the Fibonacci approach. You mentioned Software and Hardware - maybe the Fibonacci sequence is the firmware.....?

            Anyway, well done for producing what I consider to be one of the best essays in the contest. Top marks from me!

            Best wishes for the contest!

            Antony

              Hugh,

              I am pleased that my high rating of your essay (10) has helped move your well deserved essay up in the community standings. I was wondering if you had the time to review my essay, and if so, return my rating of your essay in kind if you see fit to do so.

              Best wishes,

              Manuel