Hugh

thank you for reading and commenting on my essay! I am reading yours and will comment in your blog shortly.

You ask in the context of Wheeler comparing the workings of the universe with a computer (which struck me as limiting and impractical): "But is it possible?"

Short answer: yes, but! Longer answer: I do see the universe as a computer, but I did not like Wheeler's idea of implementation in terms of binary yes-no questions, even though, having read many essays, now I think that perhaps he did not quite mean it that way. In your essay you offer a far more sophisticated version of such implementation. The problem I have with both is that either way implies a pre-existing extensive knowledge about the universe, which you then... well, implement. However, I believe the idea is invaluable in testing out our predictions and probing proposed models.

I rather liked Wheeler's idea, which you quote, that a very simple principle lies at the heart of reality, waiting to be discovered. And so I envision the computer modeling of the universe based on cellular automata- like 'pixels', which, despite their inherent simplicity, can give rise to great complexity. This is the sort of computer I envision for the universe. In this regard, have you read the beautiful essay by Prof. D'Ariano? What is your opinion on it?

.

You ask: "These threads of causality (could you call them observers?)"

No, they are not the 'observers' but the chains of events as seen from various 'observers' points of view (here the 'observers' are the later events). Say, *now* you have 2 events/processes about to interact with each other. Each is the output of a set of previous events/processes = a set of preceding events in a particular order. These 2 ordered sets are 'the threads of causality' for each of the 2 events in question.

Now you can do a union of both sets and discover that the 2 processes in question share some of the past events. The 2 subsets that result from the Union operator may be ordered differently in each of the 2 'causality sets'.

In a graphical representation, one can imagine a set of events like beads on a plane. In the above example of only 2 'threads of causality', imagine a wavy thread connecting some of the beads. Now, if the 2 events in question have the same thread of causality, say, red and green, then the two threads simply follow the same beads. But, if they differ, the 2 threads interweave in some localities -- it happens where the order is different. If you imagine lots of such threads of causality connecting beads/events, you get an intricate tapestry. That's a good analogy/graphical representation of spacetime on quantum level. no? :)

I very much liked your essay and even saved a copy on my machine. The breaths of your knowledge in this area is astounding. Definitely, yours is a very interesting, stimulating and deserving a high rank essay.

Off to your blog,

-Marina

Dear Vasilyeva,

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.

Very refreshing essay I must say. You are obviously very smart and open minded individual. I hope you find some time in a future and read my paper behind my essay ([link:toebi.com/documents/ToEbi.pdf]ToEbi[\link]).

I'm more than sure you'll find it the most interesting. Feel free to contact and tell me what do think about it.

    Yes, Marina - I'm - we're - so late !!!!! Partly because being new to this whole 'thing' I just couldn't believe that we could discuss our entries with one another - I was literally in a state of denial. Well better late than never !!

    You queried my position on the geometry of space - well, my short answer is no - I do not believe that space possesses any properties including geometrical curving or warping in response to gravity. I have come to believe that light gets curved or lensed around large bodies for the same reason it bends in water. Einstein did not know of 'heliopauses' or 'magnetospheres' but which phenomena are more than capable of bending any light transitting them.

    So 'my' geometric objects exist only on solid bodies.

    Among several points I liked about your essay was where you discussed 'mediums' & I haven't noticed anyone else doing so. Mediums play a very pivotal role in my schema.

    I found it useful to recognise several different grades or levels of information (as the full set of geometrical objects present in our universe). Medium bourn information being of the second grade or 'order' as I call them. We ourselves as you noted have access to the world of information exclusively via some one or another medium, which means that all our information is 'second hand' - & of course as we all know much of the information has been transferred from medium, to medium to medium many, many times.

    But, according to my view, there are things that have access to information directly, literally face-to-face, specifically all of the inanimate objects here in our universe. I call these 'first order' information-users, and one of the things it is worth noting about these face-to-face informivores is that they read with near infinite accuracy as the information they encounter is 'first hand' - is raw, original, complete & pristine.

    Ours in some high contrast has been copied & recopied so often it is a wonder it has any informational value left within it. Which is why 'we see through a glass darkly'.

    Never mind, nature has made up for this inadequacy as it has provided most if not quite all of its 'higher order' informivores with an ever increasing number & variety of senses of differing sensory modes - & there are many more than just the classic five !!

    So while the rocks & stones beneath our feet & the atoms & molecules in the air get their information first hand - right from off of the surfaces of their fellow interactees - & once having got it, read it with near infinite accuracy they are only able to deal with one unit of information at any one sitting.

    There are other levels of information in 'my' scheme &, guess what ! they tend to parallel your own 8 step break down of the 'participation' process. But a particularly important distinction (of not a few !!) between our two viewpoints is that I am convinced that our brains are 'thinking machines' & not just computers, & that like all good thinking machines they operate analogue-ly not digitally.

    So yes ! My own investigations have led me to conclude that 'information' is NOT digits - no kind nor amount of them (including any that can be extracted from quantum phenomena!), nor how algorithmically-well they may be massaged & shunted through any device that uses them.

    Unequivocally they - digits - make for wonderful COUNTING & CALCULATING assistants, witness our own now many & various, most excellent, counting, calculating devices BUT according to my investigations real thinking is an entirely different phenomenon from mere counting, calculating & computing.

    For which phenomenon - real thinking - real information is required.

    My own investigations led me to discover what I have come to believe real information is & as it so transpires it turns out to be an especially innocuous - not to omit almost entirely overlooked & massively understudied - phenomenon, none other than the sum total of geometrical objects otherwise quite really & quite properly present here in our universe. Not digits.

    One grade (the secondary one) of geometrical-cum-informational objects lavishly present here in our cosmos, is comprised of all the countless trillions & trillions of left-over bump-marks still remaining on all previously impacted solid objects here in our universe - that is to say, all of the left-over dents, scratches, scars, vibrations & residues (just the shapes of residues - not their content!) (really) existing here in the universe.

    Examples of some real geometrical objects of this secondary class in their native state are all of the craters on the Moon. Note that these craters are - in & of themselves - just shapes - just geometrical objects. And the reason they are, also one & at the same time, informational objects too, can be seen by the fact that each 'tells a story' - each advertises (literally) some items of information on its back - each relates a tale of not only what created it but when, where & how fast & from what angle the impacting object descended onto the Moon's surface. Again, each literally carries some information on its back.

    (Note : Not a digit in sight !!)

    How we actually think - rather than just count, calculate & compute - with these strictly non-digital entities, specifically these geometrical-cum-informational objects, in precisely the way we do, please see my essay.

    I did not make the distinction between computing with digits & real thinking with real information, sufficiently strongly in my essay.

    This contest is such a wonderful 'sharing' - Wow - & open to amateurs like myself - Wow. How great is that !!! Thank you Foundational Questions Institute!!! What a great pleasure it has been to participate. What a joy to read, share & discuss with other entrants !!!

    Margriet O'Regan

      Uvazhaemaya Marina! Esly Vy eche ne ozenili moe esse, napishite mne- pochta v moem esse. S uvazheniem, Vladimir

      Wow Margriet :)

      you packed in one post what you should have been discussing during the past 5 weeks! I am intrigued by your view.

      You say: " I do not believe that space possesses any properties including geometrical curving or warping in response to gravity. I have come to believe that light gets curved or lensed around large bodies for the same reason it bends in water. "

      But what is water? It's 'matter', right? Composed of atoms, which are, ultimately, as we know today, mostly space. Right? So why could not we imagine space possessing properties of.. well, stuff akin to water (it's an old idea actually). And speaking of a 'medium', water does not only refract light but also is the medium for waves. And any medium, including the definition of a 'medium' for transmission or storage of information, which you apparently imply -- all of them are material.

      In this regard, you may be interested in reading the essay by Carolyn Devereux topic 1893 where she discusses just how 'matter' may emerge from the harmonic oscillations in primordial substrate, which she defines in one of the posts in her blog as 'space-time-energy continuum'.

      The other essay you may like is very short, also by a woman (I counted only 7 of us here) is by Maria Carrillo-Ruiz topic 1892, where in the context of ontological monism she brings up the idea that everything, ultimately, is made of 'space stuff'.

      I wonder if these 2 essays could lead you to adjust your position on this matter of space :) afterward?

      Glad to see you here,

      -Marina

      Hi Marina,

      I can confirm that there are quite a few guys around playing a game that you don't approve (and nor do I).

      There is even one guy that told me that if I gave his essay a 10 then him and two of his friends would give me a 10 ! very nice ...

      Cheers,

      Patrick

      Marina,

      I really wish I had read your essay sooner. As a non-physicist (I'm an attorney, but deeply interested in the subjects of physics, information, and reality), I found my head 'spinning' with some of the more technical essays that were beyond my comprehension. However, I was struck by the clarity of logic and your exceptionally smooth writing style. I was also very impressed with you open-minded thinking and willingness to stretch the boundaries of 'traditional' thought in the field of physics (which, I believe is the foundation upon which FQXI is built, and one of the stated purposes of the contest!)

      I was very impressed with your essay and have rated it accordingly. Marina, even if you don't get an opportunity to read and evaluate my essay in the next couple of days, I would ask that you do so later on. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to correspond with some of the more open-minded individuals who have a background in physics in the future.

      Best to you in the future, and if you are so inclined, let's keep in touch.

      Sincerely,

      Ralph

        Patrick

        Brendan Foster asked today in his blog to report such incidents to him directly, via his email: foster at fqxi dot org.

        Brednan's blog : http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1589

        Ralph

        Thank you so much for your kind comments, especially about my writing style. English is not my native language; and my long-standing ambition was to learn to effectively communicate in it. So your compliments in this regard are very dear to me :)

        I'm looking forward to reading your essay now. Yes, I would love to stay in touch and my understanding is that this forum will be opened until the final announcements, which is in the end of the year.

        -Marina

        Hi Marina,

        > In this regard, have you read the beautiful essay by Prof. D'Ariano? What is your opinion on it?

        I liked it a lot, and I see several parallels with my picture. I need to study it more, but I hope I might be able to combine his low level approach with my more high-level one.

        > That's a good analogy/graphical representation of spacetime on quantum level. no? :)

        I like the tapestry image. Have you read Kevin Knuth's essay? He has what seems a similar idea.

        > Definitely, yours is a very interesting, stimulating and deserving a high rank essay.

        Thank you so much!

        Hugh

        Dear Marina

        Before I answered your questions on my essay, I wanted to read yours before the deadline...

        And what a beautiful essay it is!

        Acknowledging that plants smell the air and hear sounds! Few people know this.

        And I LOVE the statement:

        "Why, even a jagged rock rising from the surface of a lifeless planet absorbs sun's energy during the day, stores it, and then radiates as heat into its environment at night. How is this not a participation in the universe?"

        I see this as a subtle jab at the measurement problem, which I see as a huge problem because the process of a photon being absorbed by a rhodopsin molecule in my eye cannot possibly be different than if I had dribbled some rhodopsin on the rock and the photon was absorbed there! Yet in QM, one case we have a measurement and in the other case an interaction.

        You are right! The rock participates just as I do!

        Now your view of information is different than mine. I do not see the rock as processing information about the photon. I agree that it participates, but not that it processes information. I have come to appreciate a definition of information that I heard from Ariel Caticha: "Information is that which changes one's beliefs". I have beliefs because I model the world, and my sensory input changes this model. The robots in my lab have beliefs and they process information. I don't know about rocks. I would suspect that they don't do this.

        I really like the beautiful picture you paint:

        "The recursive loop of the `participatory scheme' above implies that reality is a local phenomenon, perpetually generated anew, emerging as the result of exchange of information between all participants."

        Your "democratic universe" is much more appealing!

        And I appreciate that you move away from the universe as a computer. As you know, I think about it more like a network. But your idea of a cellular automata is not so different. I think the main difference is that a CA usually exists embedded within some pre-existing framework: the bits in computer memory, squares on a screen, or points in spacetime. I believe that the network generates spacetime. There is no need for a substrate.

        I also loved this statement:

        "In real life, openly professing the belief that you can make things happen by mere looking at them is enough to land you in a psychiatric ward. Not so in sciences - and not just physics - where expanding on the idea, in a learned manner, may earn you a Ph.D. instead."

        And what are the laypeople to think on hearing this? Who precisely has lost their mind? Does the rock on your barren planet look at the sunlight? What about the rhodopsin molecule that actually does the work of absorbing the photon? Something is very wrong here --- perhaps someone should notify psychiatry.

        And you continue with:

        " It's more like being charged with the task of observing flies while blindfolded and with a swatter for the sensor."

        This is a wonderful analogy for a QM experiment!

        I have never heard this (very funny):

        "As the popular Russian expression goes, `let us try and keep flies separate from hamburgers'."

        You could just swat them with your QMical fly swatter! But then you would be left with both a physical mess *and* a conceptual mess!

        What a wonderful essay!

        I commend you for staying on task and discussing the role of information, and doing so both elegantly and with a unique perspective.

        You mentioned in your comments on my essay that you were perhaps inspired by what you had read in mine. However, I do not quite see it. Whatever information you received from me, you have processed it and made it your very own. As my friend Carlos Rodriguez says "We do not live in a vacuum". In a very real sense, there are dense recursive interactions to the point where at times it becomes difficult to say "my ideas". I love your democratic universe where we all participate! Thank you again for a wonderful essay!

          Marina,

          I was just a little disappointed to have no reply to my above post, or comment on my blog. Georgina and others did point out the abstract was dense and offputting, but that the essay was very readable. Embarrasingly flattering blog comments include such as; groundbreaking", "significant", "astonishing", "fantastic", "wonderful", "remarkable!", "superb", etc.

          I hope they may temp you to bypass the abstract as I'd be interested in your opinions. I recall that your 'recursive loops' sounded like a beautiful description of my own very similar derivation, which I hope shows hope.

          I do find comments after the scoring deadline equally valuable to those before so please don't feel under any pressure at all for now.

          I do hope your essay survives the final 'shuffle torture'.

          Very best wishes

          Peter

            Dear Marina,

            I enjoyed reading your essay. You made a profound analysis of information, a compelling case for why "it" is more fundamental than "bit". A beautiful journey through Wheeler's "it from bit", participatory universe and "whence the quantum", pointed by original and interesting ideas.

            Best regards,

            Cristi Stoica

              Dear Marina,

              After reading some of your comments on the main FQXI blog just now, I feel it is necessary to add a few comments to yesterday's post I made regarding your essay.

              First, I want you to know that I stand by everything I wrote yesterday. I do wish I had read your essay sooner, I was and still am very impressed with your essay, and I did rate it accordingly, and I am very happy that I did so.

              However, today I read your comments to Lev, "All the unethical behavior here comes exclusively from the minority of the non-professional participants. I noticed Philip Gibbs flatly refusing discussing posts even mentioning ratings. That's a good policy to adopt."

              I was unaware that we had access to the behavior of the participants. However, because I am a non-professional participant and because I posted to you that I was very impressed with your essay and 'rated it accordingly,' I am now concerned that you may think I was being inappropriate in my comments. I am also quite frustrated with the obvious 'stealth bombing' of unidentified entrants and the thinly veiled 'blind date' requests. I also find it disheartening to observe the various alliances and warring factions that sometimes barely simmer below the surface, leading to both inflated and unreasonably low scores on both sides. Some non-professional entries such as mine end up being used for target practice by both sides or as collateral damage, because they have no allegiance to a particular camp.

              Personally, I think (quite strongly) that every vote cast by every participant should be completely open for all to see. I also think that each vote cast should be coupled with the voter's comment on why they voted the way they did. The rules of how the contest was to be judged were very specific and quite clear; requiring the entrants to explain their vote in light of the rules would create a much more level field surrounded by the boundaries of accountability.

              It was for this reason I stated to you what I did. I wanted you to know that I rated your essay based upon my honest and genuine evaluation of it. I have steadfastly avoided rating essays I didn't comprehend, although I could have rationalized a low score based on the parameters in the rules that essays were supposed to be written towards an audience aiming in the range of the educated general public who read Scientific American, etc. I also avoided rating essays containing conclusions I disagreed with, because I didn't want the fact that I was prejudiced against their conclusion to negatively influence my vote. But I felt (and still do) that it was appropriate to let an entrant know when I thought highly of their essay, what it was about their essay that I thought was good, and that I had rated it according to my evaluation. It was in this spirit that I posted to you what I did. It was also for this reason that I stated that I did not care whether you read or rated my essay in the next couple of days, but hoped that you would eventually read it.

              I also read your comment to Manuel, ". . . I saw people leaving comments in the blogs a month or even two after the final announcements. So, why would you want to discuss it elsewhere? Let others benefit from your insightful comments and maybe join the discussion with their input. This is the place to do it." Because I mentioned that, if you were so inclined, that we might keep in touch in the future, I want you to know that I am more than happy to limit any correspondence between us on the FQXI forum.

              I wish to make clear that I respect your views and in fact, find myself in agreement of much of what you have posted. I simply wanted to clarify my position to you.

              Again, I wish you the very best.

              Sincerely,

              Ralph

              Wow..

              Dear Professor Knuth,

              I can't relate how much I appreciate your positive feedback! Humbled, now I wish I began writing it much earlier and did a better job. Your encouragement set me up to aim for higher standards. Next time!

              It's true, not many people know about plants, how they 'perceive' the world around them. I did not have time to include the reference to 'What a Plant Knows' by the renown biologist Daniel Chamovitz. But I think many people here may be familiar with it, since it has been promoted by Scientific American. A wonderful book.

              And you are right, a rock does not process information but only contributes to its pool by generating it by the virtue of its participation. What is information is much clearer to me now, having read so many essays in the last weeks.

              You have robots in your lab? What did you program them to feel and want out of their robotic life? lol

              I'm relieved that you did not mind me poking fun at the Copenhagen interpretation and quantum measurement problem and actually found it funny. I was worried that people in academia may be put off by the very unacademic style with which my intended criticism was presented. Phew! It's good to know that physics professors have a good sense of humor :)

              Thank you again for your review (I will cherish it!) and for answering my question about the difference between your research and CA. I wish you good luck in your science career. You have very interesting ideas and unusual take on things.

              -Marina

              Dear Marina,

              I have now finished reviewing all 180 essays for the contest and appreciate your contribution to this competition.

              I have been thoroughly impressed at the breadth, depth and quality of the ideas represented in this contest. In true academic spirit, if you have not yet reviewed my essay, I invite you to do so and leave your comments.

              You can find the latest version of my essay here:

              http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-V1.1a.pdf

              (sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven't figured out a way to not make it do that).

              May the best essays win!

              Kind regards,

              Paul Borrill

              paul at borrill dot com

              Thank you Cristi for your positive review! I also enjoyed your essya and have replied in your bog :)