Software Cosmos by Hugh Matlock

Hugh

thank you for your very interesting, stimulating essay. You show an amazing breadth of knowledge in the area. I even saved your essay on my machine for the future reference. I also looked at your site and read all the posts on this blog -- very interesting! I'm giving you a high rate it deserves.

I answered the 2 questions you asked in my blog and here wanted to discuss an aspect you bring up in your essay. It has to do with the S3 hypersphere. I know that topologists call it a 4-sphere, emphasizing the 4-dimensionality of the object as a whole, while mathematicians and physicists call it a 3-sphere, being mainly interested in its 3-dimensional surface. Thus you wrote, "Reimann, Gauss, and Clifford believed the shape of the cosmos was a 3-sphere" (and give an interesting reference [12]). It so happens that I too believe that the universe is a 4-sphere ..lol.. I insist on the topological definition of the same object, and for good reasons! Here is why:

...well, I know that the contest comes to the close and maybe you won't have the time to discuss it now.. and so to keep it short:

1. we live in 4 spatial dimensions, while being aware of only 3. I discussed how this can be explained in my last year essay (did not do too good of a job, I'm afraid).

2. we --well, the nuclei of the atoms that comprise us-- are 4-dimensional objects. (I know a big surprise here, which however is explained in the same model). I found excellent references in your essay for all this, but why call a 4D proton a 'black hole'? (this is a rhetorical question pending my looking up the reference you provided).

Of course, my model is not original (I did not know this at first, but already knew it by the time I wrote the last year essay). The novelty I tried to bring was in explaining these... facts of life? in simple terms and vivid analogies so that anyone can get to see it and so agree with the undoubtedly shocking at the first glance statements 1. and 2.

The top-down model of the universe I tried to convey in my last year essay comes down to a 4-sphere (in topological definition) the 3D surface of which is the 'visible universe', i.e. this 3D surface is what EMR is confined to. This makes this surface akin to a 3D screen from which we get all the info. Just like in the Plato's cave, the real 4D objects (ex. protons) exist in.. 'a large extra dimension' speaking in modern terms.. and only cast 'a shadow' or projection on the 3D screen.

For example, this model explains why a nucleus looks so small -- because it 'sits' in an extra dimension and only touches the 3D surface. There are many other implications of this model, explaining some very intriguing cosmological observations.

I wonder, would it be possible, using your Landscape Test, to *prove* that matter is actually 4-dimensional and that we live in a 4D universe, crawling on its 3D surface?

Also, with your amazing knowledge and expertise in this area, where did you see such an explicit description of such a 4D universe model?

The other *proof* I was looking for is that 4-space is unique among all N-spaces (N>2) in the sense that it has the highest degree of all conceivable symmetries. Because this would serve as yet another rationale why our universe is 4D.

Thank you very much again for inviting me to read your very interesting essay. I understand how difficult it was for you to cut it down to 9 pages, after the first 30-page draft -- and yet to took a risk with the last section. Why?

-Marina

Dear Hugh,

We are at the end of this essay contest.

In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.

Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.

eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.

And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.

Good luck to the winners,

And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.

Amazigh H.

I rated your essay.

Please visit My essay.

Dear Hugh,

I Will love to have your gracious input. It is valuable to me.

Best,

Chidi

Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I've Read

I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented your essay in what follows.

Of the nearly two hundred essays submitted to the competition, there seems to be a preponderance of sentiment for the 'Bit-from-It" standpoint, though many excellent essays argue against this stance or advocate for a wider perspective on the whole issue. Joseph Brenner provided an excellent analysis of the various positions that might be taken with the topic, which he subsumes under the categories of 'It-from-Bit', 'Bit-from-It', and 'It-and-Bit'.

Brenner himself supports the 'Bit-from-It' position of Julian Barbour as stated in his 2011 essay that gave impetus to the present competition. Others such as James Beichler, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Agung Budiyono, and Olaf Dreyer have presented well-stated arguments that generally align with a 'Bit-from-It' position.

Various renderings of the contrary position, 'It-from-Bit', have received well-reasoned support from Stephen Anastasi, Paul Borrill, Luigi Foschini, Akinbo Ojo, and Jochen Szangolies. An allied category that was not included in Brenner's analysis is 'It-from-Qubit', and valuable explorations of this general position were undertaken by Giacomo D'Ariano, Philip Gibbs, Michel Planat and Armin Shirazi.

The category of 'It-and-Bit' displays a great diversity of approaches which can be seen in the works of Mikalai Birukou, Kevin Knuth, Willard Mittelman, Georgina Parry, and Cristinel Stoica,.

It seems useful to discriminate among the various approaches to 'It-and-Bit' a subcategory that perhaps could be identified as 'meaning circuits', in a sense loosely associated with the phrase by J.A. Wheeler. Essays that reveal aspects of 'meaning circuits' are those of Howard Barnum, Hugh Matlock, Georgina Parry, Armin Shirazi, and in especially that of Alexei Grinbaum.

Proceeding from a phenomenological stance as developed by Husserl, Grinbaum asserts that the choice to be made of either 'It from Bit' or 'Bit from It' can be supplemented by considering 'It from Bit' and 'Bit from It'. To do this, he presents an 'epistemic loop' by which physics and information are cyclically connected, essentially the same 'loop' as that which Wheeler represented with his 'meaning circuit'. Depending on where one 'cuts' the loop, antecedent and precedent conditions are obtained which support an 'It from Bit' interpretation, or a 'Bit from It' interpretation, or, though not mentioned by Grinbaum, even an 'It from Qubit' interpretation. I'll also point out that depending on where the cut is made, it can be seen as a 'Cartesian cut' between res extensa and res cogitans or as a 'Heisenberg cut' between the quantum system and the observer. The implications of this perspective are enormous for the present It/Bit debate! To quote Grinbaum: "The key to understanding the opposition between IT and BIT is in choosing a vantage point from which OR looks as good as AND. Then this opposition becomes unnecessary: the loop view simply dissolves it." Grinbaum then goes on to point out that this epistemologically circular structure "...is not a logical disaster, rather it is a well-documented property of all foundational studies."

However, Grinbaum maintains that it is mandatory to cut the loop; he claims that it is "...a logical necessity: it is logically impossible to describe the loop as a whole within one theory." I will argue that in fact it is vital to preserve the loop as a whole and to revise our expectations of what we wish to accomplish by making the cut. In fact, the ongoing It/Bit debate has been sustained for decades by our inability to recognize the consequences that result from making such a cut. As a result, we have been unable to take up the task of studying the properties inherent in the circularity of the loop. Helpful in this regard would be an examination of the role of relations between various elements and aspects of the loop. To a certain extent the importance of the role of relations has already been well stated in the essays of Kevin Knuth, Carlo Rovelli, Cristinel Stoica, and Jochen Szangolies although without application to aspects that clearly arise from 'circularity'. Gary Miller's discussion of the role of patterns, drawn from various historical precedents in mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, provides the clearest hints of all competition submissions on how the holistic analysis of this essential circular structure might be able to proceed.

In my paper, I outlined Susan Carey's assertion that a 'conceptual leap' is often required in the construction of a new scientific theory. Perhaps moving from a 'linearized' perspective of the structure of a scientific theory to one that is 'circularized' is just one further example of this kind of conceptual change.

Dear Hugh,

thank you for visiting my FQXI-page and leaving a comment. I appreciate much the clear and transparent way of reasoning, but I do not agree with the explicit (resp. explicate) physical conditions, in particular with those mentioned in your section TRANSFORMATION.

To give an example: I am convinced the Minkowski diagram implies only an incomplete description of spacetime. The complete spacetime is given by an entangled structure of a sphere and a square - a structure that looks very much like a MANDALA.

It is clear, that a different transformation between explicate space and implicate information occurs if spacetime is seen differently. And I do that...

Despite these objections, I think it is a meaningful and important concern to have a conscious look at these transformative processes. So, I scored your paper very high.

Kind Regards

Helmut

Dear Hugh,

a really interesting essay. Now I had a chance to have a more complete look in it. I agree with about the importance of the 3-sphere. Also from the topological point of view, the 3-sphere is the root of all compact 3-manifolds (one can obtain every compact 3-manifold by surgery -or cuta nd paste- along a knot or link). I also tried to uncover the role of the 3-sphere.

In my opinion, it is the topological origin of the dark matter but it is not fully worked out.

Best wishes

Torsten

PS: So, you got a high vote more than one week ago.

I also appreciate the importance of the 3-sphere while I come at things in an entirely different way [basically I take the opposite stance] :)

I'd appreciate your thoughts on my essay.

Cheers and best of luck,

Jennifer

Hugh,

I like your idea of a digital simulation model in which you view the implicate cosmos as "a dynamical fluid on the surface of a hypersphere". Good food for thought!

You wrote that the "the explicate world of 'It' arises from the implicate world of 'Bit'. For Bohm, knowledge of the implicate order is acquired by insight. What we perceive is implicate order unfolded as explicate order. If so, it is explicate order, as the contents of our consciousness, that is epistemic (composed of "bits") and the underlying implicate order that is ontic ("it").

Also see my response to your comments to my essay "A Complex Conjugate Bit and It".

Best wishes,

Richard

Hi Hugh,

I found this to be an interesting essay. I'm not really sold on the more mystical overtones at the end, but the idea of a search for systematic effects that might arise from the source code of the Universe is a good one. Maybe such a search is a low-likelihood, high-payoff undertaking, like SETI. Rather than looking for evidence that highpoints on Earth are in some way correlated, it seems more reasonable to me to search for correlations at galactic or super-galactic scales. If the idea that most computational power is given to the places close to observers, then I would expect the CMBR to be quite "crude", and the detail in the planet I live on to be very high.

Cheers,

Sundance

Hi Hugh

thank you for taking time to answer my questions. I really appreciate it!

In regard to this:

> The other *proof* I was looking for is that 4-space is unique among all N-spaces (N>2) in the sense that it has the highest degree of all conceivable symmetries.

you wrote:

"I think the hypersphere plays an important organizing role, but there are other structures involved. For example, even though any system of great circles is symmetric (the structure at antipodes are mirror images), the Earth itself is not. In fact highpoints do not ever occur at antipodal points. And the cosmos as a whole does not appear to have a mirror symmetry. So there is another geometric factor that breaks such symmetries."

I'm afraid I meant it in a different context. Here I meant it precisely just as a Euclidean flat 4-space. 4D houses the highest number of regular polytopes (6), while all higher spaces have only 3. Based on this fact and perhaps some others --I'm looking for them-- I want to find a proof that 4D corresponds to the lowest energy state for a... N-dimensional vibrating structure that seeks to conserve its energy. Here dimensionality is one of the properties of this structure -- i.e. it can dynamically be 'compressed' into higher dimensional state or 'relax' by expanding into a lower-dimensional structure/state.

I visualize it as a dynamic vibrating wire frame of N-dimensions, N>4. I believe that if one takes such a N-dimensional structure, undisturbed, it will naturally settle by expanding into a 4D configuration, precisely because, topologically, it offers the highest degree of symmetries.

I wonder if you know where I could find the answer to this :)

Thanks a lot for all your feedback,

-Marina

Hi, votes are vanishing again.