Having read so many insightful essays, I am probably not the only one to find that my views have crystallized, and that I can now move forward with growing confidence. I cannot exactly say who in the course of the competition was most inspiring - probably it was the continuous back and forth between so many of us. In this case, we should all be grateful to each other.

If I may, I'd like to express some of my newer conclusions - by themselves, so to speak, and independently of the logic that justifies them; the logic is, of course, outlined in my essay.

I now see the Cosmos as founded upon positive-negative charges: It is a binary structure and process that acquires its most elemental dimensional definition with the appearance of Hydrogen - one proton, one electron.

There is no other interaction so fundamental and all-pervasive as this binary phenomenon: Its continuance produces our elements - which are the array of all possible inorganic variants.

Once there exists a great enough correlation between protons and electrons - that is, once there are a great many Hydrogen atoms, and a great many other types of atoms as well - the continuing Cosmic binary process arranges them all into a new platform: Life.

This phenomenon is quite simply inherent to a Cosmos that has reached a certain volume of particles; and like the Cosmos from which it evolves, life behaves as a binary process.

Life therefore evolves not only by the chance events of natural selection, but also by the chance interactions of its underlying binary elements.

This means that ultimately, DNA behaves as does the atom - each is a particle defined by, and interacting within, its distinct Vortex - or 'platform'.

However, as the cosmic system expands, simple sensory activity is transformed into a third platform, one that is correlated with the Organic and Inorganic phenomena already in existence: This is the Sensory-Cognitive platform.

Most significantly, the development of Sensory-Cognition into a distinct platform, or Vortex, is the event that is responsible for creating (on Earth) the Human Species - in whom the mind has acquired the dexterity to focus upon itself.

Humans affect, and are affected by, the binary field of Sensory-Cognition: We can ask specific questions and enunciate specific answers - and we can also step back and contextualize our conclusions: That is to say, we can move beyond the specific, and create what might be termed 'Unified Binary Fields' - in the same way that the forces acting upon the Cosmos, and holding the whole structure together, simultaneously act upon its individual particles, giving them their motion and structure.

The mind mimics the Cosmos - or more exactly, it is correlated with it.

Thus, it transpires that the role of chance decreases with evolution, because this dual activity (by which we 'particularize' binary elements, while also unifying them into fields) clearly increases our control over the foundational binary process itself.

This in turn signifies that we are evolving, as life in general has always done, towards a new interaction with the Cosmos.

Clearly, the Cosmos is participatory to a far greater degree than Wheeler imagined - with the evolution of the observer continuously re-defining the system.

You might recall the logic by which these conclusions were originally reached in my essay, and the more detailed structure that I also outline there. These elements still hold; the details stated here simply put the paradigm into a sharper focus, I believe.

With many thanks and best wishes,

John

jselye@gmail.com

Hi Hugh,

I found your essay to be deep, insightful, and very well-rounded. In particular, I was struck by your breadth of knowledge of physics combined with your reach outside the field. You are exceptionally articulate and well-rounded.

I also liked the quotes you interspersed throughout. Well done!

I believe you and John Wheeler are correct; we live in a participatory universe of which software is an integral part. For all of these reasons, I give you very high marks!

Best of luck to you!

Sincerely,

Ralph

    Hi Ralph,

    Thank you so much for your comment!

    As the essay is currently in 36th place in the community rankings, I am not sure it will get to be considered in the next stage, but I hope so.

    In any case, the contest has enabled me to learn about some very interesting ideas and has pushed forward my research in several directions. So it has been well worthwhile in any case.

    Hugh

    • [deleted]

    • Post #65

    Dear Hugh,

    I enjoyed reading your essay. I like how you used Bohm and Hiley's idea of implicate/explicate order. I consider that this idea should be explored in a more general ground that they originally did, and it should be viewed somehow independent. You seem to touch many recent results in building your viewpoint.

    Best regards,

    Cristi Stoica

      Dear Hugh,

      Your essay makes extensive "connections" and references but let me focus on your concluding statement:

      "The software cosmos picture answers the contest question in this way: "It from Bit and Bit from Us"....This picture hints that physics will find the ancients were right and that the cosmos is inherently virtual [THE IT?], holographic [THE BIT?], and fractal [THE US?]."

      In square brackets are my questions. They indicate how I can "picture" your elements TOGETHER. This is in so far as we MUST decide whether the "us" is in essence an "it" or "bit" or "both" or "neither".

      I take it that the "us" is by definition a SCALE (i.e. fractal) of your implicate/explicate. That being the case I think yours is altogether a mighty useful picture worth my humble high rating.

      Now you may try again and see how it fits with my own model, especially that part you quoted in my blog, then you will begin to see what I mean. I'll like you to leave a comment (and rating!)

      All the bests,

      Chidi

        Hi Cristi,

        > I enjoyed reading your essay.

        Thanks!

        > I like how you used Bohm and Hiley's idea of implicate/explicate order. I consider that this idea should be explored in a more general ground that they originally did, and it should be viewed somehow independent.

        I always liked their idea, but it seemed to be more of a philosophy than to be attached to a specific mathematical formulation. I was happy to find a use for it in the simulation paradigm. There may be other ways in which their general idea applies.

        > You seem to touch many recent results in building your viewpoint.

        Observational cosmology is something I like to follow through the arXiv, and I noticed several relevant papers even while I was writing the essay in May.

        Many of the theoretical papers and ideas are older. It may be that, in the end, we will find the important ideas have been around for a long time, just awaiting a fresh interpretation and contact with new observational data.

        Hugh

        Hi Chidi,

        You asked about what I had written:

        > "The software cosmos picture answers the contest question in this way: "It from Bit and Bit from Us"... This picture hints that physics will find the ancients were right and that the cosmos is inherently virtual [THE IT?], holographic [THE BIT?], and fractal [THE US?]."

        Here is how I think of these terms: The essay describes how the physical world [the "It"] might arise from information in a computational simulation [the "Bit"]. As part of this picture, which is analogous to a multi-user video game, we have the game players [the "Us"] each sitting at their screens, viewing and interacting with the simulated world (which they take to be real).

        The term "virtual" refers to the software cosmos being a simulated world, the term "holographic" to the projection mechanism involved when observing it, and the term "fractal" to the idea that the simulation is accomplished by a hierarchy of processes.

        > This is in so far as we MUST decide whether the "us" is in essence an "it" or "bit" or "both" or "neither".

        We can take the term "us" to denote our consciousness, or Mind in general. A very interesting question concerns how to understand our experience of being conscious. I think the model of a software cosmos can be helpful in that philosophical effort.

        This is because the software can be divided into layers with different operational rules. In particular, the rules of the physical world do not have to limit the rules of layers beneath the physical. I see the physical world as the upper layer of software, with lower layers the domain of life, mind, and spirit. Agents in each layer "animate" objects in the ones above it in the same way that video game players "animate" their avatars on screen. This closely corresponds to what we feel we are doing when we are consciously moving our physical bodies.

        > I take it that the "us" is by definition a SCALE (i.e. fractal) of your implicate/explicate.

        In the essay, I mentioned the fractals that we can observe in the physical world. I think that these self-similar structures arise from structures and processes in lower layers of the simulation (not just at the top physical layer). For example, Life has a great many fractal properties (in both space and time).

        Mind might also be thought of as a fractal, if we consider that groups of people can act as one. Our usual way of thinking, however, seems to be at a specific level: we identify with our individual consciousness and are aware of it animating our individual physical body.

        > That being the case I think yours is altogether a mighty useful picture worth my humble high rating.

        Thank you!

        > Now you may try again and see how it fits with my own model, especially that part you quoted in my blog, then you will begin to see what I mean. I'll like you to leave a comment (and rating!)

        OK I will check to see what you have over there.

        Hugh

        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.

          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.

                Hi Marina,

                You wrote:

                > I'm giving you a high rate it deserves.

                Thank you!

                > 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.

                Yes, I apologise to the topologists. I had to pick one convention or the other for the essay. Since Wikipedia calls it a 3-sphere I went with that.

                > 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).

                I will have a look at that after the contest.

                > 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?

                If the highpoints of the landscape are geometrically aligned (as I suggest the statistics show) then the question is: how is this possible if the points are moving great distances relative to each other, over geologic time?

                The simplest answer is that what we are seeing when we look at the familiar 3D world is a projection from a higher dimensional system, akin to Plato's shadows on the cave wall. This is because, when shifting such a geometric projection, cocircularity and coincidence are preserved while position of vertices is not.

                You can see an analogy by imagining a wire frame cube (3D) projected by a light source onto a plane (2D). As you rotate the cube, the corners will move around in the 2D image and the lengths of the line segments connecting them will grow and shrink. But the line segments will stay straight and the coincidence of lines at the corners will still be apparent in the 2D image. So if we see a system that behaves like such an image, we can guess that there is a higher dimensional structure behind it.

                > 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 model is my own. For many years I have been working on the observational side... getting better and better data related to highpoints, and coaxing the statistical analysis to suggest the underlying geometry. I began seriously thinking about the theoretical side in January this year, and writing the essay in May and June helped me to flesh out the simulation model with supporting papers. I have had a habit of collecting and organizing interesting papers for many years, so I could go to my collection for most of what I needed.

                > 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.

                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.

                > Thank you very much again for inviting me to read your very interesting essay.

                You are quite welcome. Thanks for asking about the Landscape test.

                > 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?

                To me, cosmology is more than what physicists study under the name of "physical cosmology". I felt it was important to remind the reader that the effort to understand our cosmos is very ancient and that traditional views are not, by necessity, wrong. Yet I think the way forward is careful mathematical analysis of observable data, and I hope I have suggested a methodology and a picture that can ultimately reconcile traditional and modern perspectives.

                Hugh

                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

                  Hi Chidi,

                  I will have to take another look after the contest... I still have many essays to rate before tomorrow, since I saved that task until I had read as many as I could.

                  Hugh

                  Hi Charles,

                  Thanks for doing this... it is great to have a summary post and a kind of index!

                  Hugh

                  Hi Helmut,

                  You wrote:

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

                  Over time, I hope to model several different possibilities for the transformation, within the general picture I described. I will take another look at your work on this.

                  > 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.

                  Thank you!

                  Hugh

                  Hi Torsten,

                  You wrote:

                  > 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 cut and paste- along a knot or link).

                  I wonder if we might be able to see dynamical processes in the 3-sphere induce such knots... and the knots will take us a long way: Lou Kauffman has described the basic connections between knots and physics in several papers and his book.

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

                  Thank you!

                  Hugh

                  Hi Jennifer,

                  Thanks... I made some comments on your blog back on July 22.

                  Hugh