On the Role of Information in Physical Interpretation by Steven P Sax

Hello Steven,

I am fascinated by quantum entanglement, but having no time to study it I will offer no opinion. But I have two questions.

Entanglement is destroyed by measurement, but that tells us nothing about the means to non local interaction. In the double slit experiment single photons do not know where they are until they get there, and this indicates a non local interaction with their source. Interfering with this non local interaction before the single photon must choose which slit to go through, robs it of its ability to go through both, so too any subsequent interaction which robs it of its ability to be in a compromise position. Do you think that this non local interaction with its source, is a form of entanglement, of something else? The other question relates to entropy.

I wonder if you have considered the possibility that the missing element in the relationship between entropy, information and the conservation of energy, is gravity, and that this missing player frustrates our ability to see the Second Law of Thermodynamics within a context which can make sense of "order" and "information" and its relationship with energy. I believe it is possible to establish a context within which SLT can coexist with "order", "information" and "conservation of energy", without seeing everything go down the plug hole we call singularity where information survives as a boundary condition. Everything going down a plug hole and information surviving as a boundary condition is the very scenario which sees the universe as holographic, and everything therein as something projected from the outer boundary.

I have an alternative scenario, one where information can only be conserved in one way, and that way is the conservation of things created, that is, all things do not go down the plug hole, and that means there is no plug hole called singularity. My understanding of this all inclusive alternative scenario demands that I put the following to you, but I will be brief.

If we disassociate entropy from the question of "order" and "information", and in freeing it from that constraint, see entropy as the expression of a balance between domains, say domains A and B, and we see the net entropy of a system as the sum of the entropy in both domains, we open the door to defining gravity as the means to the expression of that balance; domains where the loss of energy in one domain is captured by the other. If you can imagine this, you may be able to imagine the following.

Having associated entropy with gravity, we can say that "order" and "information" are associated with the constriction gravity provides. We can see constriction as the means to the construction of "order" and "information" in a fashion consistent with SLT. That is, constriction brings about the energy needed to do the work which brings about "order" and "information", and all this consistent with SLT and the recirculation of energy within the system made possible by gravity. And in this we see gravity as the means to the recirculation of work, and any given state as an expression of the balance of entropy between domains A and B. Gravity, via constriction, is the means to the creation of "order" and "information", but not their conservation. Of course, this is impossible to imagine without redefining gravity as the means to the recirculation of work, and entropy as the expression of the balance between work in progress in domain A and work held in abeyance in domain B.

If you need more information concerning the nature of these domains, please see my essay, but I don't think you need to read my essay to comment on the scenario I just put.

What do you think?

Zoran.

Dear Steven Sax,

I found your essay the most careful and complete study of the nature of information [the topic of this contest] of the hundred I've read.

You mentioned "the merging of Shannon's information entropy and physical entropy...", But Jaynes, the first (in 1957) to show the utility of Shannon's theory for statistical mechanics, states that Shannon entropy is a probability (math) while physical entropy is based on energy (physics). You seem to keep this distinction well in mind: "entropy... derived from heat engines... unavailability of energy" while the second law is "statistical ... probability based cause" of entropy increase.

In my essay and elsewhere I note that 'information' as transferred is energy. Only when the energy crosses a threshold and transforms a structure ("in-forms" the structure) does the energy produce (stored) information. The bit is not a fundamental physical entity. It is the twofold nature of the threshold that is represented by the bit. The physical effects, if any, involve interpretation of the stored information, bringing consciousness or consciously designed systems into play.

For example, you note that Maxwell's demon "detects the molecule". It measures the energy and compares it to a threshold energy/temperature (via velocity measurement). This comparison yields the information used by the demon. Similarly the "coded information" in DNA is structural, being deposited when chemical thresholds link the next base to the chain. In general, you do an excellent job of not confusing energy and information.

I very much like your question "could emergent systems operate like components in a circuit, like local entities to create information [producing] greater entropic potential...?"

You also note Bekenstein's "entropy increase resulting from info" in the black hole and state: "This area (geometry) to information connection is fundamental." This is the conventional wisdom but I would suggest that exactly the same area relation arises from strictly energy considerations, where information never enters the picture. The info-to-area connection may or may not be fundamental. However your relating this to a statistics/area relation is fascinating, as is your mention of bridging statistics and geometry. I would be interested in your expanding on this theme. You present a more convincing argument for an info/area relation than most I've seen.

You then note that it is physical reality, not information per se, that directly affects things, with an example of "affect structure in an atom."

Finally you present entanglement questions about information that are too complex for me to comment on. But you do an excellent job analyzing these.

By far the best analysis of the reality of information I've seen. Congratulations and thanks.

I hope you find the time to read my essay and comment.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Steven,

Thank you very much for presenting a nice essay here. You have explained many experiments nicely. Is there any experiment that created matter from the thinking of the brain or from the information contained in some computer memory?

I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.

I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.

Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .

Best

=snp

snp.gupta@gmail.com

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.com/

Pdf download:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf

Part of abstract:

- -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .

Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .

A

Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT

....... I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT

. . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .

B.

Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT

Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data......

C

Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT

"Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT

1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.

2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.

3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.

4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?

D

Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT

It from bit - where are bit come from?

Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT

....And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?-- in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.

Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..

E

Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT

.....Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.

I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.

Steven,

If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

Jim

Hello, Steven Sax:

I liked that your essay explains real physics throughout, and connects philosophy with experimental results & physical explanation. You mentioned about entanglement between different reference frames (see 'Causality, Again') I assume you mean viewed between different reference frames? That sounds very fascinating, and was wondering if you could elaborate. You can also email me directly if you think this could be a bigger discussion. Thanks, it was overall a very comprehensive and enjoyable read!

Matthew

Hello Steve,

Thanks for the kind comments over on my page. I like your essay very much. It is clear and well illustrated with a fine balance of logic and experimentation. The exploration of Bit and It is very good. After all these are key to the contest.

Entanglement is always a nice direction to delve into. I think this was particularly well described. This is an area that my essay via simplexes might explain too.

Very pleasurable read - great work - congratulations!

Best wishes,

Antony

Hi Steve,

As promised in my Essay page, I have read your interesting Essay. I have found it very pleasant. In particular, I liked a lot your aphorism concerning "the positive change in entropy and, in turn, the negative change in information to be like a potential driving the universe like a battery" and the tale on "Maxwell's demon". Your explanation on the issue that SLT has been upheld theoretically even for black holes should be sent to some guy I know who yet stresses me by claiming that Bekenstein entropy violates SLT. Your discussion on the entanglement like a framework with many scenarios for exploring information is also intriguing. Congrats, I am going to give you an high score.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dear Steven,

There is not much to criticize in your remarkable essay. I have just two questions troubling me so your comments will be appreciated:

1) In your discussion you mention the second law of thermodynamics and exchange between hot and cold. I want to know what will be the entropy change, +Q/T, if T = 0, when energy is added? (note: I know absolute zero is difficult to achieve, but assume this was possible or at least some infinitesimal temperature value? Can entropy increasing to a value at infinity result therefrom? A kind of thermodynamic bomb.

2) Your analysis suggests the fundamental role of information in physical reality, would you consider existence/non-existence among the binary choices mentioned by Wheeler in his quote?

Best regards,

Akinbo

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your encouraging comments on my blog.

Regarding your answer 1), yes, the more precise formulation is (delta S) = (delta Q)/T, which I take to mean when you add energy, +Q, not -Q, the entropy S increases till it attains a new higher equilibrium value over a period of time (not instantaneously).

Assume for arguments sake, that in a "special" circumstance T can be zero, irrespective of what quantum physicists tell us about zero-point energy, by the third law S will also be zero.

If now, a change,+Q, no matter how infinitesimal is introduced (as you point out, how this can be done is open to many suggestions), the equilibrium entropy initially at zero should increase similarly over a period of time to the mathematically given equilibrium value which fortunately or unfortunately appears to be at infinity.

If "nothing" can be a state or system, certainly this will be a "special" circumstance where T = 0 can be attained. If this scenario is a possibility how will such an increasing entropy be manifest in a system of initial infinitesimal size?

Best regards,

Akinbo

*I will revisit here during the week to see your thoughts on this.

Professor Sax,

I found your essay to be quite an entertaining read. I was particularly impressed with the idea of "direct counterfactual communication," although I have to reluctantly admit that my admiration for it was somewhat colored by George Orwell's observations on governmental contradictory communication in his novel, 1984.

As I have explained in my essay BITTERS, only unique, once is real. The only question Wheeler ought to have asked was:

Is the real Universe simple? Yes.

Is direct counterfactual communication simple? No

Good luck in the contest,

Joe

Dear Steve,

Thanks for your kind words, I am very honoured by them. I completely agree with your ideas on the importance of entropic force and entanglement for a better knowledge and understanding of the nature of the universe. I strongly encourage you to further proceed in those studies.

Cheers,

Ch.

Dear Steven P Sax:

I am an old physician and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics, so is almost impossible for me to give an opinion in your essay I read it and it seems to me seriously done and I rated for it. In this contest are many theories, mine is not.

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".

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

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 Steven,

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.

Hello again Stephen,

As you can see from my comments above. - I liked your essay, so I'm going to rate it highly now in the hope it helps in your rankings and if you get chance to read and rate my essay that'd be great too.

Thanks,

Antony

Steven - nice job. I just rated your essay highly.

I would like to home in on a particular issue that you raised in your essay regarding "Dark" photons, which is proposed in the essay on subtime as exactly what is going in in the process of entanglement. Photons do land, but they are then "returned" to the source, creating a perpetual "hot potato". I would love to hear your thoughts on my description of the two slit experiment as contrasted to your paragraph below:

"But would information still normally require some sort of physical carrier? Elitzur et al in 1993 developed an idea for interaction‐free measurements. This involves using light to detect the presence of an object without actually bouncing any photons off it. The wave-particle duality of light would allow that an object obstructing one of two paths inside an interferometer can destroy the interference pattern in that device, even though no photons actually come into contact with it, and this was confirmed experimentally. This was used in 2012 to create a quantum‐mechanically encoded key for the encryption and decryption of secret messages."

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).

Kind regards, Paul