Hello Marina,

I wish you luck in the finals. Your placement is well-deserved. Since there were so many clamoring for attention, I am only now getting to read your excellent essay, which certainly deserves kudos, and makes several points that resonate with me. I will want to read for detail before I comment further, but now there is no time limit - because you are already in the finals (as am I). The fractal time wave idea is especially compelling, though, and deserves immediate mention. I am a great fan of fractals myself.

After seeing your comments on his page, I wanted to mention that Craig Hogan already did write an article about his experiment for Scientific American, which prompted me to correspond with him a few years ago. When I wrote more recently to inquire about answering some of the questions on his forum, or expounding about progress to date, he replied he was 'expounded out for now' but offered "The experiment is coming together well, it is fair to say that it's in the commissioning phase and we are crossing our fingers that we'll get to its design Planck sensitivity goal."

I hope this helps. And again, best of luck.

Regards,

Jonathan

    Thank you Jonathan!

    I just returned to Prof. Hogan's blog and left another post there. I'm sorry I missed that SA article. Now I will try to find it online. His is a fascinating line of research. I guess this is as close to the matters of space as one can get, no?

    Thank you for your kind comments on my essay. Fractal time -- someone told me recently that this was Terence McKenna's idea but so far can find no reference. Did you think it was original?

    Congratulations on making the finals. I'm thinking of relinquishing my place to a more interesting entry.

    -Marina

    Dear Marina,

    Sorry I didn't get back to you right away. Before I comment on your essay, I just want to say thanks for your support in the debate I had with Ken. I was flattered when I saw you mention that in your discussion with Israel above, and even moreso by your response to me here. It means a lot that you read through all of that, and even more that you agreed with me. I'm not sure even Ken read through all of it, so I'm glad to know that someone did :)

    With that said, did you see the discussion further down on Ken's page, in the thread that was started by Ian Durham? I kind of took over that one, eventually getting Ian's stamp of approval that after a brief skim of the comments he thought I had nailed his concerns with Ken's idea of reality. The reason I bring this up, is that I want to lead into my comments on your essay by first stating what was most clarified for me through the course of this contest, a lot of which I worked through in writing my essay, but which has become even clearer since then, through discussions like the one I had with Ken.

    What's become clear for me is how central the distinction between "to exist" and "to happen" is to this essay topic. To me, the question of whether "it from bit or bit from it?", seems largely to come down to a question of what is more fundamental, existence or happenings. Commonly, we think everything exists, and at every instant of that existence, everywhere, events happen to take place. In contrast, I think Wheeler's 'it from bit' proposal is that things happen, and existence emerges through those happenings. The descriptors are supposed to be taken as fundamental, rather than the things they describe. To me, the idea is incoherent, because I can't see how anything can happen--that information can be produced and transmitted throughout space, to be received and assimilated at a later event somewhere else, etc.--if there is not existence a priori. The idea that events occur, hence things can be said to "exist", seems to be just a backwards attempt to describe reality, which I think can only be seen as plausible by someone so used to describing events, that they've gotten all caught up in their work and lost sight of what those events were supposed to represent in the first place--that the sequence of those events is really the description of everything that happens in reality, and that they happen as things exist in reality.

    I'll come back to the discussion I had with Ken, and how that factors into what I want to say about your essay, at the end. I first want to connect this last point with what I liked the most about your essay.

    What I liked best in your essay is the way you so nicely presented this most natural and obvious viewpoint, e.g. in the four starred points at the top of page four--and how in doing so, you were able to clearly highlight this very significant issue in the way specialised research often tends to be done: i.e., people get caught up in special projects and tend to lose sight of the bigger picture, which leads them to pursue totally unrealistic proposals which, from a very narrow point of view, seem less unreasonable than they actually are. The discussion at the top of page seven I think spoke wonderfully to this, ending with "Not so in sciences - and not just physics - where expanding on the idea, in a learned manner, may earn you a Ph.D. instead.

    "Members of the lay public huddling outside the temple of science willingly suspend their disbelief, some shaking heads, some muttering gee."

    One criticism I've got of your essay, though, is that for most of it you seem to have Wheeler's idea of a participatory universe, as I understand it, all wrong. You finally mention his idea of reality emerging retroactively through observer participation in the paragraph I've just quoted from, which you rightly present as one of those crazy ideas that might land someone a PhD if they expand on it in a learned manner.

    That one point--that very crazy notion--is really the point of debate in this essay contest. It's the notion that happenings cause existence, rather than happenings taking place as things exist, which is the more natural picture that you present. Put another way, the world consists of "beables" (i.e., "be-ables") that send and receive information; that information is received in a process known as "perception"--i.e., it is "observed"--and the information that's assimilated through "observation" is thought to correspond to some "observable" event. Whether the "observable" corresponds accurately to the "beable" in the way it is perceived--i.e., whether the perception is misleading or not--is another story. A very good example is our daily observation that the Sun "rises" in the east and "sets" in the west. The Sun--rather, an image of the Sun that's travelled 8 minutes through space--is observed to "move" across the sky, whereas the beables are the Sun and the Earth, and the observed motion of the Sun really results from the daily rotation of the Earth.

    Anyway, this leads back nicely to your point that there's way more information in the Universe than is ever observed. As you put it, "Now is a good time to be reminded that It is the unknown delivered to our senses, and sensors, via bits; and that whatever information we are getting is always only a subset of what is to be [had] out there." I agree. But Wheeler doesn't. Or at least the idea behind his participatory universe was that maybe there isn't any real information until it's been observed--by a person or a rock or whatever,--and that objectively well-defined reality emerges retroactively through this process of observation.

    (I wanted to make sure I had Wheeler's idea right before stating this criticism of your essay, so I ended up reading this article, which I think confirms what I've stated here about Wheeler's idea of a participatory universe, as opposed to the natural view that I think you've described).

    Now, what did I want to say about Ken's view? I suppose it was that my criticism with Ken's view is really very similar to my criticism of Wheeler's. Both are so used to working with events, that they've come to think of them as the fundamental elements of reality, rather than the accidental aspects that they obviously are, to anyone who takes a step back from the physics and comes to think of what our physical descriptions are supposed to be about. In Ken's view, the entire space-time continuum 'is' real. He's okay with the fact that he has to re-define the verb 'to be', to mean non-existential 'being' (whatever the heck that is?), and actually thinks it's unfair of us "friends of passage" to think we have a monopoly on verbs--that it's unfair for us to say that "exist" has to have existential meaning. He thinks he should be able to define 'exist', along with all other verbs, to have non-existential meaning, so he can say things like all of eternity--the 4D block universe--'exists'.

    Rather than admitting the existence of something that isn't explicit in physical theory, he wants to redefine the word exist so that it fits with the explicit elements of the theory, which he wants to be fundamental things. Much the same, Wheeler's participatory vision stands opposed to Bell's vision of a world full of beables interacting at events that eventually happen to be observed.

    Anyway, I should probably end with that for now. I hope I haven't misrepresented any point you were trying to make in your essay, or assumed you'd agree with something that you don't. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on all of this, particularly if there is something you disagree with. As I said, I've been learning through all of this--and I'm always ready to correct my misunderstandings.

    Best, Daryl

    Dear Darryl,

    thanks for your thoughts. Re Wheeler, my appreciation of his legacy changed as a result of this essay competition. Before the contest, I had not been much of is fan and absolutely, always, abhorred the anthropic principle. When I hear people talk about his participatory AP in all seriousness (and in a learned manner lol) I suffer the most profound cognitive dissonance. Frankly, I go into a semblance of a mental shock.

    I read about 90 essays this year. Of them only one took Wheeler's PAP seriously (a UK undergrad in physics/anthropology). In my essay I played with his participatory idea but changed it according to my views. I did not know yet that most people here would also found his PAP crazy -- it is profoundly un-intuitive, don't you think?

    Now that I learned a lot about his legacy, I can't believe Wheeler himself took his PAP seriously. Perhaps he meant it sarcastically, as in Copenhagen interpretation brought to absurdity -? So I took the participatory part and showed that everything participates and that info is something that exists regardless of anyone 'looking'. The universe is not created when we look. That idea is so nutsy to me that, as I say, it makes me very uncomfortable to even discuss it.

    I have the same uncomfortable feelings now in regard to the double slit experiments and their interpretations (I did not have such hard feelings to this topic before the contest -- so that too changed). Now, all these paradoxes based on the Copenhagen interpretation, exalted to absurdity in Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, only say plainly to me that we do not understand the phenomenon of light. I brought it up in Cristinel's blog (don't know if you read his essay -- he gives a very positive review of Wheeler's legacy).

    In his essay Cristinel makes the analogy to the dual nature of light by comparing it to either flies or dragonflies that quantum spiders catch, depending on what type of web they set up. I objected to his analogy. I said they were not either flies or dragonflies but a weird hybrid that appeared as either a fly or a dragonfly, depending on how you catch it -- but it was the same insect! I hope you notice that in this interpretation, there is no paradox, neither in a plain double-slit nor a delayed choice experiment.

    In the article about Wheller's delayed choice that you linked they also speak of light as either photons or waves. Reading that others interpret light as 'either or' makes me very uncomfortable now. As in experiencing cognitive dissonance (of a severe form).

    .

    I will get to your discussion with Ken in the next post. Now I only wanted to say that what you wrote in his blog was lucid and written very engaging -- in comparison, your essay seems somewhat labored (I noticed that many people express themselves better in their posts than in their essays). I thought that in your posts to Ken on his blog, you were right and that Ken got away on technicality, which however was very important to him. I hear, some dispute Bell's theorem, at least in different context, but I am not in the position to take sides on these issues. I only seek to understand both views and then try to reconcile them.

    Again, thanks for your thoughts,

    Later,

    -Marina

    PS Oh! I wanted to say that I am very embarrassed to be among the finalists. My entry does not belong there. It got there, because the 'thumbs' were bombing their competition and in doing so pushed most of the best essays below the cutoff point, while my innocuous entry remained under the radar. On the day the cutoff point become known I asked the organizers for permission to substitute my place with a more worthy entry. I'm still waiting for their answer.

    Just so that you and everyone knows.

    Dear Darryl,

    thanks for your thoughts. Re Wheeler, my appreciation of his legacy changed as a result of this essay competition. Before the contest, I had not been much of his fan and absolutely, always, abhorred the anthropic principle. When I hear people talk about his participatory AP in all seriousness (and in a learned manner lol) I suffer the most profound cognitive dissonance. Frankly, I go into a semblance of a mental shock.

    I read about 90 essays this year. Of them only one took Wheeler's PAP seriously (a UK undergrad in physics/anthropology). Writing the essay I did not want to sound too critical of Wheeler's legacy and so I adopted his participatory idea but changed it completely according to my views. I am glad to know that almost all people here also find his PAP crazy -- it is profoundly un-intuitive, don't you think?

    Now that I learned a lot about his legacy, I can't believe Wheeler himself took his PAP seriously. Perhaps he meant it sarcastically, as in Copenhagen interpretation brought to absurdity -? I took the participatory part to only show that everything participates and that info is generated and exists regardless of anyone 'looking' or not. The universe is not created when we look. That idea is so nutsy to me that, as I say, it makes me very uncomfortable to even discuss it.

    I have the same uncomfortable feelings now in regard to the double slit experiments and their interpretations (I did not have such hard feelings to this topic before the contest -- so that too changed). Now, all these paradoxes based on the Copenhagen interpretation, exalted to absurdity in Wheeler's delayed choice experiment, say plainly to me that we do not understand the phenomenon of light. I brought it up in Cristinel's blog (don't know if you read his essay -- he gives a very positive review of Wheeler's legacy).

    In his essay Cristinel makes the analogy to the dual nature of light by comparing it to either flies or dragonflies that quantum spiders catch, depending on what type of web they set up. I objected to his analogy. I said they were not either flies or dragonflies but a weird hybrid that appeared as either a fly or a dragonfly, depending on how you catch it -- but it was the same insect! I hope you notice that in this interpretation, there is no paradox, neither in a plain double-slit nor a delayed choice experiment.

    In the article about Wheller's delayed choice that you linked they also speak of light as either photons or waves. Reading that others interpret light as 'either or' makes me very uncomfortable now. As in experiencing cognitive dissonance (of a severe form).

    .

    I will get to your discussion with Ken in the next post. Now I only wanted to say that what you wrote in his blog was lucid and written very engaging -- in comparison, your essay seems somewhat labored (I noticed that many people express themselves better in their posts than in their essays). I thought that in your posts to Ken on his blog, you were right and that Ken got away on technicality, which however was very important to him. I hear, some dispute Bell's theorem, at least in different context, but I am not in the position to take sides on these issues. I only seek to understand both views and then try to reconcile them.

    Again, thanks for your thoughts,

    Later,

    -Marina

    PS Oh! I wanted to say that I am very embarrassed to be among the finalists. My entry does not belong there. It got there, because the 'thumbs' were bombing their competition and in doing so pushed most of the best essays below the cutoff point, while my innocuous entry remained under their radar. On the day the cutoff point become known I asked the organizers for permission to substitute my place with a more worthy entry. I'm still waiting for their answer.

    Just so that you and everyone knows.

    oops! This morning I finished reading the article in Discover and see what you meant:

    "Linde believes that Wheeler's intuition of the participatory nature of reality is probably right. But he differs with Wheeler on one crucial point. Linde believes that conscious observers are an essential component of the universe and cannot be replaced by inanimate objects.'

    So Wheeler believed that observers could be replaced with inanimate objects, just like I thought. See, that's another reason why my take on Wheeler's legacy changed after the contest. Apparently I misunderstood him. Funny no one else pointed this out. But then this goes in contrast to his PAP -? Maybe those were just ideas which changed depending on his mood. It happens to me sometimes :)

    Dear Marina,

    I don't think you should be so critical of your essay. It's true that very deserving essays didn't make it through because of the unfortunate '1-bombing' that occurs on the last day--wouldn't it be nice if we found a way to keep that from happening?--but I liked your essay, and would have given it a good rating if I had read it in time. As I said, the only real complaint I had was that the participatory scheme you presented was not Wheeler's idea of a participatory universe, the key ingredient of which was the retrocausal bit in the collapse of potentially billion-year-old wavefunctions, and it sounded like you meant to support him when you were actually supporting something else; i.e., my only complaint is that you didn't clearly acknowledge this difference in your essay.

    I see now that your point was to go for something less anthropocentric than what you thought Wheeler's idea was, and simply ignore the bit about observation finally fixing the past; but to me the real crux of the PAP has little at all to do with the 'A' anyway, and mostly has to do with how the detector's participation causes objective reality to come about. In addition to the paragraph you quoted, I think the following really speaks to what he had in mind:

    "And by peering back into time, even all the way back to the Big Bang, our present observations select one out of many possible quantum histories for the universe.

    "Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real. Ordinary matter and radiation play the dominant roles. Wheeler likes to use the example of a high-energy particle released by a radioactive element like radium in Earth's crust. The particle, as with the photons in the two-slit experiment, exists in many possible states at once, traveling in every possible direction, not quite real and solid until it interacts with something, say a piece of mica in Earth's crust. When that happens, one of those many different probable outcomes becomes real. In this case the mica, not a conscious being, is the object that transforms what might happen into what does happen. The trail of disrupted atoms left in the mica by the high-energy particle becomes part of the real world.

    "At every moment, in Wheeler's view, the entire universe is filled with such events, where the possible outcomes of countless interactions become real, where the infinite variety inherent in quantum mechanics manifests as a physical cosmos. And we see only a tiny portion of that cosmos. Wheeler suspects that most of the universe consists of huge clouds of uncertainty that have not yet interacted either with a conscious observer or even with some lump of inanimate matter. He sees the universe as a vast arena containing realms where the past is not yet fixed.

    Wheeler is the first to admit that this is a mind-stretching idea."

    I think you'll agree that "mind-stretching" hardly speaks to just how objectionable--how "profoundly un-intuitive"--the idea really is.

    And I agree with you about superposition. I think statements like "When that happens, one of those many different probable outcomes becomes real" are just plain wrong--that an electron could be spin-up or spin-down, depending on how you look at it, and that there's no such thing as a "spin-up electron". As Rob McEachern wrote on Jennifer Nielsen's page,

    "Imagine two "entangled" coins, quarters let's say, floating motionless relative to each other in outer space, either ten feet or ten light-years apart, such that the "tails" side of one coin faces the "heads" side of the other. They are thus anti-parallel.

    "But what is the state of each individual coin, heads or tails?"

    This same idea was discussed by Mark Feeley in his essay, which I think was probably the best one of the contest, so I'm glad it made it through to the finals.

    ...

    And thanks for the feedback on my essay. In defence, I'll say it's a tricky business trying to connect time and existence since relativity's supposed to be at-odds with an objective distinction between space and time; and it's even trickier to say anything because, even if such an objective distinction were granted, as I think it should be, there's still the matter that it's contentious to speak of space as something that exists, and I didn't want to get into the substantivalist-relationalist debate in addition to opposing the operationalist definition of simultaneity, which is already the bedrock of relativity theory.

    So, given my idea of simultaneity, I would like to say something that remains neutral on the "existence of space", such as "everything always stands in relation to everything else in three spatial dimensions; and those things all exist as time passes, with space-time forming as a graduating map while all the things in space endure."

    Personally, I don't think the substantivalist-relationalist debate even matters all that much, so long as the Universe--the three-dimensional association of everything, or three-dimensional space full of everything--has a well-defined background metric; but the debate does add another layer of complication that certainly makes talking about "space" more laboured. Add to this, the fact that relativistic space-time has been so completely misconstrued by people who think of it as just a different sort of (relational or substantival) space that exists--that continually warps and changes as massive bodies move through it, gets holes punched through it at points that didn't before, but now "exist", etc.--and therefore having to deal with the fact that that now amounts to a five-dimensional theory (which for some reason people have a difficult time seeing, even though it should be completely obvious)--and yes, it becomes a very laboured topic to write about.

    Maybe I would have done better to put the thought-experiment at the start, so that I could at least move on by assuming an objective distinction between space and time, according to my idea of simultaneity, and how I think that should work relativistically. What do you think? I guess that's how the debate with Ken went, so I think I know your answer, but I do appreciate any feedback I get, and will definitely keep it in mind in the future.

    I don't want my essays to be a laboured bore to read through, and I probably have been too cautious in writing them. I certainly wasn't cautious with Ken, so I guess that means I should probably let loose some more next time.

    Cheers,

    Daryl

    Dear Darryl,

    thank you for your very interesting comments. Regarding writing an essay and how to make it more engaging, the key is, I think, in the mood with which an author writes it. If the author struggles with the topic (as often happens when one rewrite follows another while the deadline is approaching) this is reflected in somewhat labored flow of thoughts; which is then sensed by the reader. The reader's mind is entrained by the mind of the writer. So, when the writer is clear and relaxed, this relaxed state is picked up by the reader's mind; and this allows him/her to follow what the writer has to say clearly. So, when you wrote your comments to Ken, you did it in one breath, lucidly and fluently, and -- and this is most important-- you expressed your feelings about the topic and not just ideas. This is what imho makes an engaging read.

    In this regard, I remember, last year, being completely inexperienced in this contest, not knowing any better, I went through a period of reading the worst of the worst essays lol and then, having waded through their authors' poor logic and convoluted ways of thinking, my brain got entrained, making me patently stupid for several days afterward. And the thing is, you can't see it 'from the inside'. You gotta snap out of it to realized that you were stupid, cause your brain got damaged trying to understand what those people wrote lol.

    Knowing this now, when I find myself struggling, I take a break and read someone's very lucid and clear work. This sets my mind in a right grove. Listening to Vivaldi or Bach also helps. Or simply going for a walk in the woods. Everyone has their own tricks. Whatever works to set the mood right for writing. Or check your face expression and make sure you're not frowning and it's better if you're smiling.

    .

    Re Wheeler and this year theme, your comments opened up my eyes on things I misunderstood and overlooked. Thank you! I did not mean to present my participatory scheme as if it was Wheeler's. I came up with it to show that consciousness was not necessary to 'participate', all because I wrongly thought that he meant it exclusively in his PAP context.

    I gotta run now and will continue later.

    Thank you very much again for your input,

    -Marina

    Dear Dr. Perez,

    please forgive me for taking so long to reply to your most interesting post. I am still chewing on it while trying to engage also other people into discussing the same topic, one with Dr. Janzen below and one in Cristinel Stoica blog (don't know if he replied yet). I'm getting my thought together and will definitely reply soon. I hope you will still be here to answer.

    Thank you very much for your elucidating comments, I value them a lot,

    -Marina

    4 days later

    Dear Marina,

    Sorry for the slow response. I wanted to say thanks, and that I agree with you completely about needing to be in the right mood when writing. Thank you for clearly voicing something that I've noticed for myself before, but which I will certainly make more of a conscious effort to practice in the future.

    I thought you might find it interesting that when I wrote most of my dissertation I read David Copperfield at night, partly to disengage my mind so I could sleep, and partly because I love Dickens' language and found that reading him helped make me a better writer.

    All the best,

    Daryl

    Hi Marina

    No problem, I can see that you are busy in another discussions. Take your time. I've discussed with Daryl about the notion of space. He has an Einsteinian view of space; the metric field is the object that gives meaning to space. But that space is not a medium in the sense I discuss and therefore is at variance with my vision. There is a book called "the forth dimension", the author is Hinton C.H., you should read it. Relativity deals with a geometrical space, I talked about a material space. The former is permeable to light and particles, the latter not. This is a huge difference, and most people don't accept this kind of space, they associate it with the aether and the word "aether" in physics causes phobia.

    Ok, I'll be looking forward to hearing any comments you may have.

    Cheers

    Israel

    Dear Dr. Perez,

    so nice to hear from you! I have just downloaded Hinton's 4th D and am already reading it. Couple of year ago I read Geometry of Four Dimensions (1914) by Henry Parker Manning and spent some time learning to visualize 4D. When I became more proficient at it, I noticed something peculiar, which i had not heard anywhere before, but I wonder if you have. And it is that 4D can be deconstructed into 3D -- that is, a 4-volume consists of 3-volumes (arranged in 4D). It is easy to see on a tesseract, whose surface consists of 8 cubes. The same 8 cubes can be stacked 4 on top of 4 in 3D with the result that the edge of this cube is twice as long as the edge of the tesseract. Which implies a crazy thing: in terms of cubically shaped 3-volumes, x4 = (2x)3 where x is the length of the edge. In other words, I can take a tesseract of edge x and 'deconstruct' it into a cube with edge 2x. People assume that this must be wrong somehow, but if you see 4D, you can see this clearly.

    People assume that the 8 cubes that make up the surface of a tesseract bound a 4-volume within, but if you look carefully, the cubes all are aligned edge to edge, vertex to vertex. There is no 4-space hiding in between them. The 8 cubes with edge x are arranged in 4D in such a way that they make up a 4-cube with the same edge length. I can prove informally that there is no 4-space hiding in between them. Are you game? :)

    -Marina

    Hi Marina

    I haven't seen that case, so I'm afraid I can't help with that. But I'm aware that higher dimensions can be somehow deconstructed. A sphere can be seen as a set of circles, a cube as a set of squares and so on. I don't consider myself "qualify" to develop a rigorous proof of this, I'd have to study the formalism and this would require a lot of time. If you are interested you should consult a geometer and work in collaboration with him. Perhaps the demonstration already exists. I think that geometers have already explored that problem.

    I'm curious why you are interested in that particular problem and what would be the implications or relation with our discussion.

    I was thinking that perhaps it would be better to continue our discussions beyond this forum, because I don't know when you are replying one of my posts. If you'd like to continue discussing about these topics you could send me an email.

    Cheers

    Israel

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