On Constrained Perception by Harlan Swyers

Great essay! Perhaps those who have rated low have not properly read it.

I felt that your essay was very interesting, straightforward, well-organized, and well-written. In accordance, I have given you a very high rating.

In general, I also agree with many (if not most) of your salient points. Further, your assessments (especially the first sections of your essay) seem firmly rooted in logic and I estimate such could be difficult to dispute in a general context.

Though I have not checked everything here in detail, it seems initially proper. While I think your conclusions may need some refinement due to reasons of definition and more careful inspection, overall your treatment appears similar to my own.

In my essay I opted for linguistic over symbolic logic on the basic premise (given the nature of the contest and the topic), but you've made an admirable attempt in identifying a formal argument which can help validate the premise; I think many components of your presentation here meld well with my own.

Chris

I think you have a sense of your hobby. I have, in many ways, the opposite of your views. In addition, your article is interesting for me, well reasoned, genuine. I believe that you are able to deepen the ideas presented in my work if you read them carefully.

In accordance, I have given you a very high rating.

Regards,

Branko

Dear Harlan,

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

Harlan

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

(http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

Good luck and good cheers!

Than Tin

Dear Harlan,

Contests FQXi - is primarily a new radical ideas. "The trouble with physics" push ... You have a new idea. Excellent analytical essay with a very important conclusions:

«It has been argued here it's the averages that determine perceived reality, the classical realm is an approximation, classical states are not stable, there is a limit to our knowledge of the past, and the cosmological constant is perfectly natural. The result is our perceived shared reality is merely the product of averaging over knowledge gained through observations. This means that the "bit" is an average bit, thereby denying it a definite existence. »

I only have one question. Constructive ways to the truth may be different. One of them said Alexander Zenkin in the article "Science counterrevolution in mathematics": «The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence. "

http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.htm

In the Russian version of a short article: «The truth should be drawn and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators.»

Do you agree with Alexander Zenkin?

I have made you a rating of "nine" and waiting for you on my forum.

With best wishes and regards,

Vladimir

Dear Harlan,

I am sorry in the delay in replying you. I did not check the replies. FQXI also did not gave me notification that you answered.

The more energy you put the more particles you will find. Sun's centre will have all the particles.

It was my proposition, it was not an inference to your essay. What I mean is that we should be more close experimental results for our propositions.

I think we form a picture of anything in our mind, and keep them in our memories. We communicate about that picture to others, which we call information. When we die we loose all these pictures and memories.

Now in this context, can we create material from information...?

You can discuss with me later after this contest closes also.

Best

=snp

snp.gupta@gmail.com

Dear Harlan Swyers

I am an old physician and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics,

But maybe you would be interested in my essay over a subject which after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more than any other, the so called "time". No one that I know ever said what I say over it and I am convince that I prove that with our clocks we measure "motion" and no "time.

:

I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay "The deep nature of reality".

I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don't understand it, and is not just because of my bad English).

Hawking in "A brief history of time" where he said , "Which is the nature of time?" yes he don't know what time is, and also continue saying............Some day this answer could seem to us "obvious", as much than that the earth rotate around the sun....." In fact the answer is "obvious", but how he could say that, if he didn't know what's time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be "obvious", I think that with this adjective, he is implying: simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn't explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure "time" since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure "time" from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental "time" meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls "time" and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the "time" experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the "time" creators and users didn't. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" pg. 354 "Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought" he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about "time" he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect "time", he does not use the word "time" instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or "motion", instead of saying that slows "time". FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that "time" was a man creation, but he didn't know what man is measuring with the clock.

I insist, that for "measuring motion" we should always and only use a unique: "constant" or "uniform" "motion" to measure "no constant motions" "which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of "motion" whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to "motion fractions", which I call "motion units" as hours, minutes and seconds. "Motion" which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using "motion"?, time just has been used to measure the "duration" of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand "motion" is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.

With my best whishes

Héctor

Dear Harlan,

I've lost a lot of comments and replies on my thread and many other threads I have commented on over the last few days. This has been a lot of work and I feel like it has been a waste of time and energy. Seems to have happened to others too - if not all.

I WILL ATTEMPT to revisit all threads to check and re-post something. Your thread was one affected by this.

I can't remember the full extent of what I said, but I have notes so know that I rated it very highly.

Hopefully the posts will be able to be retrieved by FQXi.

Best wishes,

Antony

Hello Harlan,

Nice flowing essay. I like it a lot. High rating from me. I think your point about Bit being ill defined is dead right! I share your views that observation needs to be averaged if we are to grasp what reality actually is. Also the cosmological constant intuitively feels like it ought to arise completely naturally.

You mention set theory, perhaps, if you get time, you might like my essay which is about observation of / information exchange and shows the Fibonacci sequence to appear.

Best wishes for the contest,

Antony

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

Dear Harlan - a very interesting and worthy essay for the competition.

A nice reminder to us all: "An observers's internal model is developed based on knowledge gained through observations".

I am concerned, however, by your use of the notion of apriori and apostori. This implies an irreversible ordering of events--perhaps consistent with the 2nd law, but manifestly inconsistent with the time reversal symmetry built into our fundamental equations of physics.

Also, maybe there is another explanation, beyond the anthropic principle: one which we might call Self-Organized-Criticality (SOC) where a system evolves to the edge we find ourselves sitting at.

Your figure 1 was most illuminating. Thank you for that, and good luck in the contest.

Kind regards, Paul

Hal,

Somehow I missed your essay until now. I apologise ans wish I'd read it earlier. Your intellectual powers are impressive and I think much needed in physics. A very well written and argued thesis, and I pick out two pieces in particular that I think excel. Well I would of course as they're entirely consistent with my own. They are;

"...it can be argued the fundamental error is not loosely rooted in the axioms of quantum theory, but strongly rooted in set theory as well. This would imply that our universe, and the information in it, is a fundamental consequence of the limits of knowledge in general, and will continue to evolve indefinitely, eventually passing through an infinite number of classically orthogonal ground states."

But most importantly you have beautifully expressed a point I've been trying to formulate;

"Quantum correlations serve to place constraints on possible relationships between data, not the state of the data".

I hope my points put you in contention for the final group. I also hope you'll manage to read mine by the deadline if you haven't yet. Please ignore the dense abstract, I hope the flattering blog comments may tempt you to look including; "groundbreaking", "significant", "astonishing", "fantastic", "wonderful", "remarkable!", "superb", etc. Now showing for one last day! I'm certain you'll like it and look forward to your comments. Quick link; The Intelligent Bit.

But I think yours, though quite different, may also be described in such terms and is of great value, particularly from a 'non-professional' like me. Very well done.

Peter

Hi, votes are vanishing again.