Dear George,

thank you very much for rating my essay so highly. Even though we disagree about reality being deterministic, we can agree about other things.

I have very much enjoyed our discussion and exchange of views, and I intend to read your vixra papers/preprints when I get more time.

Best wishes,

Lorraine

Hi Lev,

I HAVE noticed the similarity. I have previously briefly looked at your essay, and I hope to find the time to study it more carefully and comment on it.

Cheers,

Lorraine

Hi Héctor,

I have read your essay, and I will comment on it soon.

Cheers,

Lorraine

Thank you Dear Lorraine,

Now you have better position by rating.

I can only congratulate you and wish you wealthy,

with your lovely ducks and puppy.

My best wishes again,

George

Hi Héctor,

In your essay, you say that time is a useful concept that early humans created, with the "day" being an example of a time concept created by humans.

You say time can't be sensed or described like gravity and inertia can be sensed and described, because time doesn't really exist. You say that a lot of confusion would be avoided if we realised that time is actually motion. You discuss factors like temperature that affect motion.

You say that there is a psychological present separate from the physical present, and say that the psychological present is approximately one second behind the physical present or "now" .

But I think that time (properly understood) DOES exist. In my essay I contend that "laws of nature" represent static information category relationships: they do not represent nature actively performing mathematical calculations, so laws of nature do not represent change in numerical information. I argue that time and change of number is injected via quantum decoherence. In other words "time...unfolds...[and] the unique actual physical outcome...unfolds in an unpredictable way as time progresses" (physicist George Ellis).

I am sorry that I cannot agree with you. Best wishes,

Lorraine

(I will also post the above comment your essay forum)

Ms. Ford,

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your very fine essay. I hope you will forgive me, I am a decrepit old realist and the realism I deal with comes neat; it does not have any abstract foundations.

You wrote: "There are still the questions of what, absolutely, is a number? And is a number really what is found when nature is measured?

As I truthfully pointed out in my essay BITTERS, the absolute of number is 1, once. All of the philosophers and physicists and computer programmers who have ever lived have failed to notice that one real Universe can only produce one real thing once, therefore, only 1, once could ever have been accurate.

Ma'am, reality is not difficult. All you have to do is Wheeler it.

Is the real Universe simple? Yes

Is the abstract universe simple? No.

Is unique, once simple? Yes.

Is 0 and 1 simple? No.

I wish you luck in the contest; the quality of your writing certainly deserves a prize.

Joe.

    Dear Lorraine,

    I have rushed through your essay. It may not agree with mine but it does not have to. Meanwhile...

    As the contest in Wheeler's honor draws to a close, leaving for the moment considerations of rating and prize money, and knowing we cannot all agree on whether 'it' comes from 'bit' or otherwise or even what 'it' and 'bit' mean, and as we may not be able to read all essays, though we should try, I pose the following 4 simple questions and will rate you accordingly before July 31 when I will be revisiting your blog.

    "If you wake up one morning and dip your hand in your pocket and 'detect' a million dollars, then on your way back from work, you dip your hand again and find that there is nothing there...

    1) Have you 'elicited' an information in the latter case?

    2) If you did not 'participate' by putting your 'detector' hand in your pocket, can you 'elicit' information?

    3) If the information is provided by the presence of the crisp notes ('its') you found in your pocket, can the absence of the notes, being an 'immaterial source' convey information?

    Finally, leaving for the moment what the terms mean and whether or not they can be discretely expressed in the way spin information is discretely expressed, e.g. by electrons

    4) Can the existence/non-existence of an 'it' be a binary choice, representable by 0 and 1?"

    Answers can be in binary form for brevity, i.e. YES = 1, NO = 0, e.g. 0-1-0-1.

    Best regards,

    Akinbo

      Hello Joe,

      Thanks for reading my essay, and for your compliments about it.

      I think very few people would dispute your claim that there seems to be something unique about every physical outcome in the universe, even if you just say that the time and place are different for a particle outcome that otherwise looks the same as another particle outcome.

      But I would claim that we can only understand, compare and discuss reality when we break reality up into similar categories of information e.g. there are cats and ducks - unique individuals, but we can't really say much about them until we have categories of information to describe them: fur, feathers, beak etc.

      So although every physical outcome is unique, we cannot discuss or utilize physical reality until we put information about reality into categories e.g. this substance is "food" this substance is "not food".

      In my essay, I contend that information at the foundations of reality should be understood as subjective experience, and that the content of this information should also be seen as categories of information (e.g. mass, charge, momentum), and that the numbers that are found when reality is measured should be considered to be hidden category self-relationships.

      Wishing you good luck in the contest too,

      Lorraine

      Dear Akinbo,

      I'm sorry, but I don't like your attitude. You threaten to "rate [me] accordingly" if I don't answer your quiz correctly!!

      Lorraine

      Dear Lorraine,

      No harm meant at all. You dont have to answer correctly! But I would wish that you at least answer.

      Best reggards,

      Akinbo

      Dear Lorraine,

      I have read your essay. Apart from the lay out which was nice, your thoughts were also well presented. Contrary to what you felt I will be rating you an 8!

      With your experience in computer programming, perhaps you can take a look at an amateur program for digital motion in my essay. I again apologize for my 4 questions above. Didn't mean it as a threat the way you saw it.

      Best regards,

      Akinbo

      Joe,

      I don't know what led to your making the above rant about black holes, children and physicists.

      Getting back to the subject of our essays: I like your essay - it's funny too. I think what you say in your essay about your real toe is a much needed antidote to the picture of reality put forward in some other essays. The "official view" seems to be that the underlying reality is like a computer, or a horrific mathematical wasteland. Anyone whose essay disagrees is likely to have his head chopped off.

      It worries me what is written in some essays. What amazes me is the impaired thinking that fails to see any connection between theories about the underlying reality and what is happening in everyday reality. This includes the thinking that sees living things as automatons whose future fate is already fixed and sealed, and can never be changed. Let these people stand in front of a class of school children and tell the children what they really think about the nature of reality.

      Cheers,

      Lorraine

      Hi Lorraine,

      "Do we live in a universe ... where from the point of view of a subject there is only one physical outcome possible for each next moment in time thereby rendering choice impossible? Or alternatively, do we live in a world where ... more than one physical outcome is possible for each next moment in time ... ?"

      The way you have stated your two cases, there is no *significant* distinction between them. If I am the cause of the outcome, then there is only one possible outcome - the one I caused. There may have been many choices, but in the end, there is only one possible (significant) outcome - the one I caused to happen. My point is, that at any one instant of time, no one really cares if my left hand picks up a pen, or if my right hand picked it up. The choice of left vs. right is of no significance. The significance resides in whether or not I am the cause of the choice.

      Determinism is not really about choices, random or otherwise, but about causation. The existence of choices is merely evidence for causation. More specifically, the ability to *determine* (predict) another's actions, long before that person performs the actions, is taken as evidence that the person cannot be the cause of the action. But if actions cannot be predicted (not just as a matter of practice, but not even in principle), then there is no evidence that the person is not the cause of the action. There is no empirical evidence that such predictions are possible. Laplace and others have hypothesized that *if* all the initial conditions etc. could be known, *then* complete laws of physics would enable such predictions. The real problem is not in knowing the laws, but in knowing the initial conditions; if they were to be truly random, then it is highly probable that the entire cosmos does not contain enough stuff, to build a memory large enough to encode them into memory. So Laplace's argument fails at its initial premise.

      Rob McEachern

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        • Post #36

        Hello again Rob,

        I'm sorry, but as is not unusual when discussing issues with you, I don't agree with anything you say.

        My answer to you would be similar to my post to physicist Carlo Rovelli (21 July 2013 @ 03:00 GMT), so here is part of what I posted to him:

        "Many or most physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians focus on theoretical mystical Platonic mathematical entities, and have seemingly assumed that a vast layer of computing infrastructure underlies normal reality, deterministically producing every physical outcome (using law of nature mathematical equations). But where is the evidence for this crucially important computation layer? If there is absolutely no underlying computation layer, and there is absolutely no mystical magical Platonic realm, then your argument collapses. Lacking a mechanism, there can be no basis for your argument for a deterministic reality."

        Lorraine

        Lorraine,

        I'm not sure how "there can be no basis for your argument for a deterministic reality" relates to anything I said. My argument is against a deterministic reality, even if deterministic laws exist (not counting determination, after the fact, i.e. non-predictive). Furthermore, rather than assuming "that a vast layer of computing infrastructure underlies normal reality", my statement was that, however vast that assumed computing infrastructure, may be, it cannot be vast enough to symbolically represent all the required initial conditions, that would be required to carry-out Laplace's computation.

        Rob McEachern

        Rob,

        I'm sorry that I was intemperate and over hasty with my inappropriate judgements about what you said.

        Of course reality is necessarily partly or even mostly deterministic but not 100% deterministic. Without stable structure (e.g. the categories of information and the relationships between categories of information that constitute laws of nature) we wouldn't know where we were. But if reality is 100% determined, e.g. by a law of nature structure, then the future is set in stone.

        You talk about causation, but no matter what side of the freewill/no freewill fence you sit on, surely causation is a thing that has to be assumed. We can represent reality with words or math relationships, but there is nothing that converts this type of blueprint into physical reality. That is, the blueprint, the law of nature, IS the physical reality. Causation is implicit in the blueprint or the description of reality. So we have already assumed causation as a first principle.

        In my essay, I discuss why information should be seen as subjective experience, even at the particle level. I contend that information at the particle level includes category information and category relationship information i.e. law of nature information. I would contend that causation is essentially the same at the particle level and at the level of living things. But living things are more complex and can utilize stored/represented information.

        I think the Laplace argument is far too speculative, and without any evidence anyway.

        Cheers,

        Lorraine

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        • Post #40

        Lorraine,

        I agree with your statement that reality is "mostly deterministic but not 100% deterministic", in the predictive sense mentioned previously.

        But I disagree with the statement that "surely causation is a thing that has to be assumed."

        Assuming causation as a first principle is not the "starting point" of the scientific method. Rather, experiencing repeatable sequences of events is. Causation is a secondary "assumption", namely that when I see the first events in a previously seen repeatable sequence, I then employ induction, to infer that those events will cause the next events in the sequence to occur. But I would never have made such an assumption, if I had never observed repeating sequences of events. In other words, "causation" is a conclusion, not a premise, of the scientific method. Induction, of course, is based on the assumption that the past will resemble the future, in the sense that sequences of events that have always been seen to repeat in the past, will continue to do so in the future. But it is the experience of repeating sequences of events, that causes that assumption to seem reasonable, in the first place.

        There is nothing in the laws of physics, that dictate such repeatability. It is repeating "initial conditions", rather than the laws per se, that enable us to deduce the fact that laws even exist. If you could never repeat an observation or experiment, because the initial conditions could never be reproduced, there would be no "scientific method".

        With regards to what information is, consider your introductory statement, that "the word information meaning "knowledge communicated" comes...", in the following context.

        Claude Shannon worked for a telephone company. One day, Claude's boss comes into Claude's office and says, "The board of directors is looking to add value to our phone system. They want to send other kinds of information over the phone, not just speech. Figure out if we can do that." Claude wisely asks what this other kind of information is about. Surely it would make a difference, if it were about bank account numbers, as compared to videos. The boss informs Claude, in no uncertain terms, that it does not matter "What the information is about!", all he needs to know, if he wants to keep his job, is that it is going to be about whatever the customers want it to be about, and "Whatever you come up with, it had better work for anything and everything, without making our customers worry about what their stuff is about! How the heck are they supposed to figure out if your technique might not work if their information is "about" something you failed to take into consideration? Just you make darn sure your technique is independent of whatever their crap happens to be "about!"!"

        So, being a good engineer, Claude came up with a way to characterize the limitations of "knowledge communication", that is independent of whatever that knowledge may happen to be about. Consequently, his re-definition of information, is not "about" anything, other than determining under what circumstances communication is even possible.

        Rob McEachern

          Hi Lorraine,

          I was happy to read your essay. You managed to tie together many of the concepts. You have a very interesting picture. Wonderful chain: Information - Numbers - Time - Life - Ethics. I just remember the famous words of Kant: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not seek or conjecture either of them as if they were veiled obscurities or extravagances beyond the horizon of my vision; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence."

          World contests FQXi - it contests new fundamental ideas, new deep meanings and new concepts. In your essay deep analysis in the basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt, given new ideas, images, and conclusions.

          Your words are wonderful in conclusion:

          "Whatever the final shape a physical theory of information takes, you can be sure that 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? "

          I'll put a rating of "happy nine"...

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

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

          I have only one question: Why the picture of the world of physicists poorer meanings than the picture of the world lyricists?

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ho31QhjsY

          Please read my essay this year, and if you have time - an essay last year. I think we are the same in the spirit of our research

          I wish you success,

          Vladimir