On Emergence and Wheeler\'s dream by Maria G. Carrillo-Ruiz

Maria,

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

Maria,

As of 7-6-13, 7:47 am EST, the rating function for your essay is not available. Sorry I can't help you out right now by rating your essay. NOTE: I have logged in using a PC and a MAC and different browsers but it appears to be a site function issue.

Manuel

Maria,

I have sent an email requesting that FQXi extend to those of you who had their essay posted on July 5, 2013, be allowed additional days to compensate for the days of not being able to rate these essays.

My experience in conducting the online Tempt Destiny (TD) experiment from 2000 to 2012 gave me an understanding of the complexities involved in administrating an online competition which assures me that the competition will be back up and running soon. Ironically, the inability of not being able to rate the essays correlates with the TD experimental findings, as presented in my essay, which show how the acts of selection are fundamental to our physical existence.

Anyway, I hope that all entrants will be allocated the same opportunity to have their essay rated when they are posted, and if not possible due to technical difficulties, will have their opportunity adjusted accordingly. Best wishes to you with your entry.

Manuel

PS I will be reviewing and rating your entry after this function has been turned back on.

Dear Maria

I just read your short and interesting essay. Despite that it is short I could catch the deep insight into the nature of reality. You have presented a crucial view that makes clear that information actually emerges from the stuff the world is made of. From my view your arguments are of considerable weight to decide if Wheeler's dream is feasible or not. I have some comments and questions, that I'd be glad if you could address.

You: something new appears at scales not directly specified by the equations of motion. An emergent feature also cannot be explicitly represented in the initial and boundary conditions.

As I understood, you are saying that there are some new features that appear "out of nowhere". Lee Smolin and other physicists argue that even the laws of physics should evolve. This implies that future (or past) events are not predetermined by immutable physical laws. As you rightly mention, the initial conditions of the equations do not guarantee that we would know with certainty the evolution of the system because new features will appear during the evolution of the system. So, my questions are: Do you have any idea of how these new features emerge? Is there any emergence law that these new features follow or is their appearance stochastic?

You: Reality is ultimately composed of one basic kind of stuff.

I agree with this. I believe that all the universe is composed of the same stuff. This will also helps us to build a unified theory.

You also mention that: Information emerges from our perception of the reality of things and there must be a primordial reality in which this information is being encoded.

Some people argue that codes are more important than the stuff. But I disagree, I think that without the stuff there could not be information whereas the opposite is not true, that is, without information the stuff still exists. In my work I support the view that the stuff is fundamental. You may be interested and taking a look. I'd be happy if you could leave some comments.

Best Regards

Israel

Dear Maria,

Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon. So you can produce matter from your thinking or from information description of that matter. . . . ?

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.

===============

Please try Dynamic Universe Model with some numerical values, give initial values of velocities, take gravitation into consideration( because you can not experiment in ISOLATION). complete your numerical experiment.

later try changing values of masses and initial values of velocities....

Calculate with different setups and compare your results, if you have done a physical experiment.

I sincerely feel it is better to do experiment physically, or numerically instead of breaking your head on just logic. This way you will solve your problem faster.....

Best

=snp

Maria,

I thought that your concise no-nonsense essay was very well written, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Joe.

Maria,

I very much liked your short and to the point essay. I was attracted to it by the fact that it was written by a woman -- there are very few of us participating in this traditionally male dominated discussion and I make sure to read them all. I especially value your vision, because of your high qualifications (the only other female PhD in physics this year is Jennifer Nielsen). Alas, I have no such qualifications and my interest in physics and this contest lies in honing my personal vision of the world and understanding of its inner workings.

My method consists of visualization of the 'underlying reality' (lol I know) and then finding a match for it among the writings of professionals like yourself. This works for me for 2 reasons: 1. in my mind 'I thought it up myself first' and 2. that's how I choose among the countless schemes of reality offered by physics today.

It so happens that I love the idea of CA and your essay clearly describes the rationale behind this model as well as how a complex "behaviour can emerge out of the sum of many, simply interacting components". As a non-professional, I could not have done a more beautiful job :)

I wish your essay was longer. You introduce the doctrine of ontological monism that states that "reality is ultimately composed of one basic kind of stuff" but then do not offer a suggestion as to what sort of stuff that may be, as if inviting the reader to fill in the gaps. Alas you do not elaborate beyond the suggestion that emergent reality may be the result of "interaction of the constituents of a primordial medium", which, in my mind, resonates with the main theme of my essay that builds upon my last-year idea that, ultimately, there is no other 'stuff' in the universe but the dynamic structure of space itself.

This year I try to convey the idea of reality emerging as a result of the underlying CA-like recursive processes that together shape the dynamic structure of spacetime. Curiously, my view is similar, in principle, to that of another non-professional, Margriet Anne O'Regan, who finds "information's ontological identity" in pure geometry of all things. Would it be correct of me to say, in the context of ontological monism, that all 'things' are ultimately 'made of' the underlying CA-like processes? However, in this view, information, rather than emerging "from our perception of the reality of things", can also be defined as a formative process that gives 'space' its dynamic shape, thus revealing the geometry of 'things in it' (which suggests 'It" from 'Bit').

I would love to know whether I 'got you right' and I hope you could find time to read and to comment on my essay.

-Marina

Carolyn Devereux, whose fine essay appears above this one also has a Ph.D.

Joe

Thank you Joe! I scanned the list for names and missed her.

Hello Maria,

I will be reading your essay in more detail because I suspect discrete physics is the way to go. On cellular automata, can these be the discrete units of space itself? See my essay and give me your opinion. 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 Maria,

I have now read your essay. So much said in very few words.

I will be scoring you high because your essay goes to the fundamentals. You may check my essay as well since there are aspects that will interest a Monist.

Best regards,

Akinbo

Dear Maria,

This is a nice essay. I particularly liked your last paragraph:

"One can argue then that information has to do with pattern recognition. We could then reverse this idea an impose rules (or laws) of interaction of the constituents of a primordial medium, so that the emergent phenomena represent reality. Like the emergence of complexity in cellular automata, reality could be the result of growing patterns produced by the evolution of an self-evolving, self-regulating computer code. However, there must be a primordial reality in which this information is being encoded."

This seems to describe what I propose in my essay. You might want to take a look at it, I would love to have your comments on it. If you like it, then you can find my complete theory here.

Patrick

Hi Maria,

What an exciting look at what may lie behind the veil of reality!

I recommend Leibniz "Principles of Philosophy known as Monadology" written sometime in the 1800's or later 1700's.

Good luck with the deeper, inner looking,

Amos

Maria,

I can't help but notice that you have not replied to anyone?

Nonetheless, I found your understanding of the topic intuitive and your 'emergence' analogy reflective in many ways of the findings of a recently concluded 12 year experiment I have conducted. I am please to give you a high rating. However, before I do, I would like to run some questions by you if I may via email. My email address is: msm@physicsofdestiny.com

I look forward to hearing from you and supporting your efforts before the conclusion of this competition.

Regards,

Manuel

Dear Maria

I enjoyed your short and sweet essay because it answered the fqxi essay question very well. At the same time it uses the paradigm of Model, of CA, of Emergence, all of which are basic aspects of my Beautiful Universe Theory also found here. In this theory the basic 'kind of stuff' is a node of energy rotating in place to create polarity in units of Planck's 'h'. Because of that I concluded in my fqxi essay The Cloud of Unknowing that It=Qubit.

With best wishes for your success.

Vladimir

Dear Maria,

Nice concise essay, which I like as it shows the author knows their subject! I think your essay is relevant and interesting. My essay examines information exchange, so hopefully you get a chance to look at it too.

Best wishes,

Antony

Hi Maria,

Your essay is very interesting and well written.

Your conclusion is: "Like the emergence of complexity in cellular automata, reality could be the result of growing patterns produced by the evolution of an self-evolving, self-regulating computer code. However, there must be a primordial reality in which this information is being encoded."

I would add something to this conclusion:

The digital physics' point of view, in principle, is that a program for a universal computer exists that is able to compute the evolution of universe. The computer could be a cellular automaton or a universal Turing machine.

The loop quantum gravity (LQG) supports digital physics assuming that the spacetime is quantized. The theories that combine digital physics with loop quantum gravity are formulated by Paola Zizzi (Computational LQG) and some other scientists: In the quantum computer view of space-time at the Planck scale quantum space-time is a universal quantum computer that quantum-evaluates recursive functions which are the laws of Physics in their most primordial and symbolic form. In other words, at the Planck scale because of the isomorphism between a quantum computer and quantum space-time (quantum gravity), the laws of physics are identified with quantum functions. This is the physical source of computability, and leads to the conclusion that at the Planck scale, only computable mathematics exists. We would like to make a remark: Deutsch says that all computer programs may be regarded as symbolic representations of some of the laws of physics, but it is not possible to interpret the whole universe as a simulation on a giant quantum computer because of computational universality. We fully agree with that, and we wish to make it clear that, in our view, quantum space-time is not a simulation but is itself a quantum computer, and, by quantum evaluating the laws of Physics, it just computes its own evolution. [arXiv:gr-qc/0412076v2] This is very interesting point of view and according to Lee Smolin (LQG) self-organized critical systems are statistical systems that naturally evolve without fine tuning to critical states in which correlation functions are scale invariant [arXiv:hep-th/0412307v5].

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.

Finally what is the primordial reality in which this information is being encoded? Take a look at my essay if you are interested. Thank you.

Best regards

Dear Maria,

Another great essay, as I mentioned above, so my high rankings hopefully helps move you nearer to where you belong. Please have a read of my essay if you get chance, any comments would be appreciated. Though very different approach to your super essay, I can appreciate Other viewpoints, so hopefully my essay won't disappoint you!

Very best wishes,

Antony

Hi, votes are vanishing again.