Information, Numbers, Time, Life, Ethics by Lorraine Ford

Hello Lorraine - thanks for commenting; yes, I do believe you'll find many points of interest in my essay - and I very much look forward to your insights.

Best Regards,

John

Hi Lorraine,

Right now I'm at the start of your essay, I like very much how you start with definitions and historical perspective. An yes Shannon did not deliver the goods philosophically, but he sure did in an engineering sense. He developed the science of how to get information out of noise. Very important when you are trying to transmit information over real transmission lines. Shannon may have not delivered the goods in philosophy, but he sure did in engineering and science.

I have just finished the essay and can say: Honestly, this is the best essay in the entire contest. I have done my best to raise your score.

You ended with: what physicists' say about information and the nature of reality will affect the attitudes of very many people: is the future "already written" or "does what we choose to do really matter?"

This category of question also contains Wheeler's (and anyone that thinks) "Why Existence?", This category of question is the category of question that is not legitimate to ask because the answers is at the level of being and not at the level of knowing.

Your fellow countryman (educated guess ?) Zoltan (who is also underrated) went into the philosophy of Emanuel Kant who said: The thing in itself (IT) is unknown and unknowable by the categories of the mind (BIT).

Visit my blog I think you will like it.

Sincerely,

Don Limuti

Hi Lorraine,

Lorraine has the best essay in the contest. This is either true or it isn't. Is there an excluded middle?

I rated you essay a 10 because I like how you expressed:

1. Information is representative.

2. Information is subjective depending upon context of individuals and the categories that they use.

3. That information has a moral ethical-dimension and subjects are not objects (my phrasing).

Yes, I really liked it. Does this help?

Don L.

Hello Lorraine,

Nice essay, well written and very interesting. I like that you've explored the "bit in the middle" with regard to our choices and whether we even have them. You have asked the right questions and it is nice to see ideas which challenge physicists.

Your bio caught my eye as an animal lover and particularly me being a big fan of cats! Same on Schrödinger ;)

I like the term "knowledge communicated" as my essay explores this. In fact the other old meaning you mention was knowledge gained. I prefer the former since my essay looks at information exchange, as I would consider Bit to be a two way process.

I think your essay is very well presented and you deserve to do well. Hopefully my rating helps. Please take a look at my essay if you get the chance.

Best wishes & congratulations,

Antony

Hi Lorraine,

Thank you very much for your comment, and a high rating!

Great song performed by Nikolay Noskov! Thank you very much!

I was lucky enough to meet the author of this song composer Alexandra Pahmutova in 1995. She wrote the song "LEP - 500." The song is about how to build a 500-kilovolt power transmission line in Siberia, where we lived. It was built by my father and mother ... I told her about it. She was very happy....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-4aOQ5tAD4

With best wishes and regards,

Vladimir

Lorraine,

Beautiful essay, thank you. It warmed me to read it. I particularly commend you for; "...to label this discontinuity a foundational "bit" is to give up on the search for the origin of the discontinuity which really does seem to represent something foundational about reality."

I hope my essay shows that you may be correct, by exploring that "bit in the middle" denied by mathematics and QM's assumption of 'point' and identical particles.

A really nice read, well organized and argued. Well earned top marks on the way. Perhaps you can comment on my similar proposition that (after also better defining 'observation') a 'computation' is required for the artifacts of emitted EM fluctuations to be turned into meaningful information and interpreted (and not always interpreted infallably!).

I hope you'll ignore my (too dense) abstract and go by some of the blog descriptions; "valuable", "wonderful", "thought provoking", "clearly significant", "deeply impressed", "philosophically deep", "groundbreaking", "nonsense" (OK I'm joking with that one)! I'm sure you'll like it heaps, (and it does need about that many points). Sorry about the promo but Georgina and others did not the abstract seemed a put-off at first.

Very well done and congratulations for yours.

Best of luck in the final stretch.

Peter

Dear Lorraine,

You have asked very important question: "is the future "already written" or "does what we choose to do really matter?" and you have shown that you are familiar with some Lee Smolin's publications.

My own view seems to support the view of Smolin in the meaning that the universe is a dissipative coupled system that exhibits self-organized criticality. The structured criticality is a property of complex systems where small events may trigger larger events. This is a kind of chaos where the general behavior of the system can be modeled on one scale while smaller- and larger-scale behaviors remain unpredictable. The simple example of that phenomenon is a pile of sand.

When QM and GR are computable (during Lyapunov time ) and deterministic, the universe evolution (naturally evolving self-organized critical system) is non-computable and non-deterministic.

Now, not being so technical, I would say that the future is not already written, because Lyapunow time is only a while in comparison to our life.

Best regards and successful pelargoniums' growing!

Lorraine,

Thanks. Don't be put off by the dense abstract. Georgina was, but then found it very readable. I hope the flattering blog comments give a better idea, including; "groundbreaking", "clearly significant", "astonishing", "fantastic job", "wonderful", "remarkable!", "deeply impressed", etc.

I've just checked you score stuck, and confirmed it did. I and others seemed to shoot down! I wonder if 'the origin of the discontinuity really does ...represent something foundational about reality'.!!

Very best wishes

Peter

Lorraine,

I found your approach to the topic at hand intuitive and would like to rate your essay highly. However, before I do may I run some questions by you via email? Please let me know at: msm@physicsofdestiny.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Manuel

Hi Lorraine - I replied here but the system bug has removed my comment - just so you know I didn't ignore you!

Hopefully it will return!

best wishes,

Antony

Hi Loraine,

your missing posts plight nudged me to read your essay. I'm glad I did. It is very readable and I can see a number of places where I agree wholeheartedly with what you have written.I tried to 'pin down' the subjective nature of meaning gleaned from information near the beginning of my essay but was relating it my earlier work and explanatory framework so the language might seem a little unusual to people unfamiliar with it.I think your explanation is much clearer.

In the end I'm not sure that you answered "it from bit or bit from it?", it was an enjoyable overview of the subject of information nonetheless. The question of morality is good and a profound question to end on.

By the way, I also think bearded irises are very beautiful especially the big flag irises. Regards Georgina.

Ha - he should have thought about himself in the box - at least I imagine falling into a Black Hole in my essay.

Best wishes,

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

Hello Lorraine,

Thank-you for your kind appraisal - I am glad that you see some parallels between our work.

On your objection to DNA evolving from micro-organisms: Though there is simple DNA in microorganic life, these creatures nonetheless live in an environment that is dimensionally different from our own - ie: they are closer to the omni-dimensional fabric of the Cosmos than are the more complex organisms. The DNA of the latter - of creatures 'fully in space-time' - is what represents the Composite Particle in the Organic Vortex. Thus, complex DNA evolves from its simpler counterpart.

It was not possible to explain this in detail in the essay, because so much else needed to be said in the space allotted. But the subject is treated at length in my book - 'The Nature of Particles in the Unified Field' (Amazon). If you get a chance ....

Thanks again for getting back to me. I can't tell if you rated my essay, but if so - thank-you!

John