IT from BIT considering fluctuations in a quantised space by Carolyn Devereux

Dear Carolyn,

I am so happy you were not offended by my 4 questions. I managed to annoy some by that post.

I am rating your essay high not because of your answers but the quality of your essay.

Best regards,

Akinbo

*Most PhDs are saying 1011 so that should be the correct answer.

The implication is that most likely in our list of binary choices underlying our information theoretic physics, existence/non-existence would lie at the "very, very deep bottom" in that list. I would value a few comments from a PhD on my essay, even if you cant rate high not being written in the kind of language you may prefer.

Carolyn,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Carolyn

How about this construction?

http://vixra.org/abs/1208.0059

Yuri

Dear Madam,

Can there be perception without a perceiver? This does not conflict with the notion that space is real. Reality must be invariant under similar conditions at all times. This means it must be perceived as the same to all (subject to physical laws and deficiencies), which implies it must be capable of being conveyed to others in a language. These are the necessary conditions for describing reality. Since space and time fulfill these conditions, they are real. Perception does not create or affect reality, but only reports its state at a given moment. Hence your view is correct. Your definition of dimension as a degree of freedom does not clash with our views, as we are free to change any dimension of an object as we want. But the effect will always be deterministic. If we reduce the length (x-axes), either the breadth (y-axes) or height (z-axes) or density (radius) will increase and vice versa. But what is the degree of freedom with time?

Consider an example: A B → C D. Here a force makes A interact with B to produce C and D. The same force doesn't act on C and D as they don't exist at that stage. If we change the direction of the force, then B acts on A. Here only the direction of force and not the interval between the states before and after application of force (time) will change and the equation will be: B A → C D and not B A ← C D. Hence it does not affect causality. There can be no negative direction for time or cause and effect. Hence there cannot be any degree of freedom with time. Time cannot be a dimension.

Regards,

mbasudeba@gmail.com

Carolyn,

No apology for was needed for "Much Ado..." I don't think even mine was original! It showed similar thinking.

Thanks for promising to read and rate mine. If you do please do comment on it too, I'll value your views (and score!). I also noticed I'd neglected to apply yours, so if you felt a pleasant shove from below that was me (apologies!)

Well done and very best wishes. I hope you stick around.

Peter

Dear Carolyn -

I think your concept of a quantum BIT of fluctuating space-time probably provides a unit that will be of use to mathematicians.

The essay in general was a fine exposition of the essential nature of space-time and the emergence of particles. You begin with both space and energy, but I wonder if this doesn't 'wire in' certain assumptions about both (and later, about space invariance, space lag, inertia causing mass, etc)?

I think the most basic starting point is pure energy - and we should ask: 'What is a field of pure energy like before it even becomes associated with motion or space?' I say Energy must perform the necessary permutations, or self-organization, that aligns positive and negative charges in such a way as to produce the proton and electron, before space and motion can exist.

Your thoughts on harmonic oscillations and resonances as underlying matter and the Cosmos are very interesting to me - I myself describe a cosmic paradigm of correlated energy vortices that remain distinct but interact in a correlated manner with the 'un-aligned' charges of the primordial energy field.

If 'gravity is an entropic force that is created from the synchronisation of the space-time quanta' as you propose, the underlying resonances would be caused by this primordial field - as would 'the stable overall wavefunction.'

In your conclusion you state that 'Wheeler's "IT from BIT" refers to information defining the Universe; that by using information we are in some way creating the Universe. This assumes that we have a unique place in the Universe and that without us the Universe does not exist - an idealist viewpoint.'

I think this view is actually quite realistic if we factor evolution into the Cosmos - as we must. Ultimately, even 'matter' is simply very ancient information, supported by the appropriate biological configurations. And because evolution involves constant change, the field of our reality is also continually shifting.

Rather than an idealist/realist divide, I think there is a 'greater cosmos' - independent of our 'Species Cosmos' - and that it is because the two cosmae are essentially in some type of superposition, or close proximity in the primordial field of energy, that they are interacting with that field in a similar manner. Thus they too are correlated - and this explains why, in spite of our 'subjective' condition, our outcomes yield - within a certain field of parameters - 'objective' results: Our species Cosmos is the mirror of the 'greater Cosmos'.

I was thoroughly engrossed by your essay, and if I have spoken at such length about my own paper, it is simply because I believe this to be the most useful thing to do on this platform; we should be comparative in our critiques.

I have rated your essay, of course, and hope you will express your views about mine soon. I also wish you the very best in the competition -

John.

Carolyn,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Carolyn,

The foamy quantum idea at the beginning of your paper that mentioned geometries making a bigger, less Euclidean picture arise, is an appropriate way to think of it as having right triangles line up like an upside-down stair case, or and other lined up succession, and introducing another triangle that opposes it? In other words, would a mismatch of of slope or incline produce behavior that on a larger macroscopic level looks like a curved surface? A ball in this sense would behave differently because the little incongruities would make the big picture behave like a fluctuating curve. This is just an attempt to get a feel for this sea of foam idea when considering geometries. I can't seem to pierce the idea intuitively.

Festering delightfully,

Amos.

Dr. Devereux

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And you have touched some corners of it.

With regards,

Than Tin

Carolyn

my champion, you disappeared again :) I have a question.

Have you thought about the dimensions of space in your model? Admittedly, the number of dimensions is one of the most important characteristics of a space (I saw in a post above that you basically treat dimension as a degree of freedom). But what I mean are the properties of spaces of various dimensions, which mathematicians often overlook. Like, for example, take the number of Platonic solids or regular polytopes -- it turns out that 4D has the most (6), followed by 3D (5), and all the higher spaces have just 3 (and 2D has infinity, but it's not that interesting a space). But 4D, it turns out, is a particularly rich space. A 100 year old book 'geometry of four dimensions' (available online from Google books) made me appreciate the differences and inherent properties of 4D in comparison to 3D (and I read some on other spaces -- fascinating stuff). Each has its own characteristics that go far beyond the 'degrees of freedom'.

What I am alluding to is this: have you asked in the framework of your model, why do we observe 3D? It should answer this question.

Looking forward to your reappearance :)

-Marina

Dear Carolyn,

Sorry to disturb you again with my questions. I am not a professional physicist so seeking clarification from the experts: Is it being implied by the relational view of space and as suggested by Mach's principle that what decides whether a centrifugal force would act between two bodies in *constant relation*, would not be the bodies themselves, since they are at fixed distance to each other, nor the space in which they are located since it is a nothing, but by a distant sub-atomic particle light-years away in one of the fixed stars in whose reference frame the *constantly related* bodies are in circular motion?

You can reply me here or on my blog. And please pardon my naive view of physics and for asking what may not be the topic of your essay.

Accept my best regards,

Akinbo

Dear Carolyn

During a discussion about space, another contestant recommended me to read your essay. I'm glad that this happened, I think your work is interesting and insightful. But there are some issues that I would like to discuss with you and I'd be happy if you could give me your thoughts. In your essay you only give a vague idea of what you understand by space, you just define it as a "place" which is then filled with energy (please correct me if I'm wrong). Then you take as postulate that space and energy must be conserved. However, it's not clear to me what space is made of for you and therefore what physical feature of space you are claiming to be conserved. If you think that space is place then what do you understand by place and what is a place made of? If space is neither made up of energy nor of matter (or something else), how can the resonances gain energy or mass from space if according to your view, space only seems to store energy but space itself is not made up of a substance? Doesn't it sound redundant to talk about something called "space" that in order to exist should be made up of some physical substance and then fill it with another physical substance called energy? I think that in general we can distinguish space with two connotations: 1) space as an abstraction to organize the relative position of things in the universe (in the sense of Kant) or 2) space as the extension of the fundamental substance of the universe from which all things emerge (such as the resonances that you mention).

I'm asking you these questions because I have studied the notion of space and I also have a view of space that substantially differs from the current view. According to GR, space is a physical entity different from energy, fields and material particles. It is some sort of deformable container or substrate that owns its existence to the metric tensor g_ik. The "degree" of deformation depends on the content. As you know QFT has a different view of the vacuum. According to QFT, particles are created from the field, in a certain sense they are resonances of the field or quantum vacuum. In my previous two essays, I gave some ontological arguments to reconsider the notion of space as a material substance (of course not the ordinary matter of the standard model). In my view, material particles of the standard model are resonances or excitations of the material vacuum or space, whereas fields are states of space just as Maxwell conceived electromagnetic fields. However, I think that there is a caveat, because assuming that space is a substance (made up of matter or energy) seem to imply that space itself not only represents an absolute frame of reference but also a substantial medium for the resonances (see my previous essay). This view is clearly irreconcilable with relativity theory that denies absolutes frame of reference. I just wonder if you have realized about this. Surprisingly, the view of space is not in contradiction with Lorentz invariance, when we understanding it not as the exclusion of privilege frames but as the equivalence of the physical laws for all observers.

In my current essay, I present an argument where I make clear that space, as modelled in relativity, may not be the same physical entity as the space described by QM or classical electrodynamics. I'd be very happy if you could take a look at my essay and leave me your opinion. Thanks a lot and congratulations for your work.

Best Regards

Israel

Dear Carolyn,

One single principle leads the Universe.

Every thing, every object, every phenomenon

is under the influence of this principle.

Nothing can exist if it is not born in the form of opposites.

I simply invite you to discover this in a few words,

but the main part is coming soon.

Thank you, and good luck!

I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

Please visit My essay.

Hi Carolyn,

Thank you, yours is a delightful essay that puts forward a specific model for thinking about the cosmos. I had some questions about it though. You wrote:

> Without energy there can be no matter and no Universe.

This would be a materialist assumption, rather than a realist assumption. In other words, there could be realistic theories that do not start with matter/energy. The matter/energy could be emergent in such theories.

> The time period of the space quantum will determine the maximum speed at which information can transfer from one quantum to another.

This sounds a bit like essayist Vladimir Tamari's Beautiful Universe model. But I think his quanta are fixed in space, and provide for more of an ether model.

> Axiom 5: Time is discrete and a quantum of time has a fixed time period.

This is useful for a computational model, which I like. But does this require asserting a priviledged frame of reference and violating a tenet of SR? Or is time defined locally and coordinated in some way?

> The maximum speed of travel in the Universe would apply to everything in the Universe including the speed of gravity

Is this in accord with observation? Or do you mean the speed of gravitational waves rather than gravitational force?

> Since the force will only occur as a function of the surface area of the touching resonances the force would follow a 1/r2 law. These are the properties of gravity.

Do you mean Newtonian gravity (which is a 1/r^2 central force) or GR (which is not)?

> When we make a measurement the "cloud" is "frozen" to a particular state (i.e. the position of the individual resonances). After the measurement the resonances are free to move again into a multitude of possible energy states.

Do you have a model for quantum entanglement or the delayed choice experiment?

> As local resonances create and annihilate, and space globally moves (curved space-time), a statistical nature of the Universe emerges and time could become asymmetrical.

I wonder if it might have something to do with the emergence of resonance via synchronization that you mentioned earlier.

> This 'information' comes together as resonances allowing IT to form.

I do like the potential for emergence that your model has.

> Wheeler's "IT from BIT" refers to information defining the Universe; that by using information we are in some way creating the Universe. This assumes that we have a unique place in the Universe and that without us the Universe does not exist - an idealist viewpoint. The alternative view is that substances can exist without human intervention - the realists.

The simulation paradigm that I detail in my essay Software Cosmos suggests that the material world, the "It"s, exist as a result of calculation, from "Bits". It can be realistic in the sense you give here, as the cosmos does not rely on any single observer in order to exist. However, it can define layers of reality below the physical, and so is not materialism. Thus it can model our sense of conscious awareness. I would be most interested whether you would see my picture as a way to apply your model.

Hugh