Knowing One from the Other by Jonathan J. Dickau

Hi Johnathan,

I love your opening introduction below: "In an ancient tale (as once told to me); Spirit takes on the myriad forms to learn by becoming, and being, and doing, what it is to live in the world of form. Then after immersing itself in the universe of form and its living inhabitants, it begins the upward journey back to oneness, rising above the world of separate forms as it has learned all there is to know in that manner, and becomes unified again - so the cycle can repeat. Though told in this way it is an epic saga, at each step and every stage there is an exquisite interplay - a dance of information and form, where they take turns being creator and observer. Does life descend to play in or with form, bestowing consciousness and creativity? Or does form rise and evolve to acquire these attributes, so it may play in the heavens?" This remains me of the great Carl Sagan: "The cosmos is also within us, we're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." i totally agree with him. However, rather than the Cosmos within us, it is our Ancestor FAPAMA is within us and within everything that is. Below you stated that it from bit is more fundamental than bit from it, if you must decide. I understand what you said and what you are struggling with. Nature is infinite, thus it must contain all including itself as an empty set that contains itself that Russell found to be inconsistent and contradictory from Aristotelian logic worldview although Russell struggling with whether or not Aristotelian A = A is true, and think this question does not exist. at the same time his thought was controlled by A = A as was Ayn Rand's Objectivism and as you pointed out, this logic controls scientific inquiries that have been brilliantly successful that we cannot live without such as electricity, computer, phone, airplane and Starbucks.You and I have the same worldview in the sense that nature encompasses everything and both and in between. I read and rated your essay. Wishing you the best in this contest, Leo KoGuan.

Dear Jonathan,

Your interesting philosophical essay reminds me of spirituality and the ancient Hindu wisdom that the universe is a cosmic play and the Observer and the Information are basically One! I agree with your view that the "It from Bit or ...?" question depends on how it is perceived and interpreted.

I rated your essay high and wish you best of luck in the contest.

___Ram

Mr. Dickau,

I wish to congratulate you for writing such a fine essay. I have no criticism, however, I do wish to emphasize a point that has been overlooked in all of the essays except my own essay BITTERS.

Only unique is real, once. As the only real form Spirit could ever take on would be unique, once, Spirit would never have to rise up to resume a state of oneness. Oneness is the only real natural state.

Wheeler ought to have asked:

Is the real Universe simple? Yes

Is the abstract universe simple? No

Joe

Then, Joe, what is the answer to:

Is the abstract universe contained within the real universe?

Tom

Respectfully Jonathan, and Tom

The real eternal unique Universe could not arise. The real unique Universe does not have an inside or an outside. Insides and outsides are not unique. The quality of physical rising and falling is not unique. There is no seed of abstraction anywhere in the real Universe. There is nothing but an ocean of abstraction into which modern man is presently drowning. It is one thing for a man to admit that he may not know the truth about a certain condition. It is quite another matter for that man to invent and pretend to perfect an instrument that could accurately identify the supposed condition for him. Each real snowflake is unique, once. It follows that each unit of heat must be unique, once. Temperature is not a series of repeatable numbers.

Man may build a computer programmed matrix, but any active actor in the matrix would have to behave uniquely different from a real person in a real situation. This means that the temperature surrounding the actor in the matrix would have to be different than every other amount of temperature so far recorded anywhere on earth. This law applies to holographs as well.

Joe

The above comment was written by Joe Fisher

Hi Jonathan,

I liked your very readable essay. One of the best for staying on target and going right to information and form. As you show both do not mean much with taking into account that most slippery of all things "human context".

If my own work drives you a little crazy, please forgive me I was just doing my best to give the flavor of the Bhagavad Gita.

Don Limuti

Jonathen,

Your usual very intuitive and pertinent insights into learning, but I did notice why you felt the need comment on the unstructured approach. It would have been better for some organization. None the less that's the only and very small criticism as the content and prose were very valid and highly readable, which for me justified a good score. I particularly gelled with some very pertinent comments such as;

"...in many natural systems; the most interesting place to look is along the fringes, such as a shoreline or the boundary between forest and field, where the boundary is a fractal."

"seeing there is a similar interplay between form and information, which ensues from an exchange of "It from Bit" and "Bit from It" roles, allows us to make better sense of a complex reality"

"...it must be acknowledged that information can play a broader role, as architect of the theater that is space and time..". and..;

"It is presumed there can be no 'It' beyond the Planck density, but clearly the primal basis of information can and must still be well-defined - even in the matter free regime of the Planck era - for the universe to exist."

The critical concept of motion seems to be a subliminal coherent theme, or "-a Cosmic Dance." You also importantly identified up front that "the real challenge is to understand what plays the role of object, and what takes on the role of information, at a given point in the process." I'm also reminded of a couple of Einstein quotes: "Play Is The Highest Form Of Research." and; "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."

Thanks for your kind comments on mine. I do hope you get to re read the 2nd half slowly as that's where the ontological construction all comes together. The resolution of the EPR paradox (Bells inequalities) is dead serious and a very important new finding, see also the blog comments and explanations.

Very best wishes.

Peter

Thomas

No doubt about it.

Joe

Hi Jonathan

The theme of your essay is quite in line with a point of view I hold which is that recycling between energy and matter is a general principle worthy of consideration, not only in terms of information. It is virtually a necessity for a static cosmology, which is at the extreme limit of the recycling premise and one of my current interests.

As for continuous information, I think that depends on whether energy is quantized. There is a natural quantum of energy, Hh, Hubble constant times Planck constant or about 10^-51 joule. This is the amount of energy that Hubble's law implies would be lost per cycle from all photons, no matter what their wavelength. The process of losing Hh in energy every cycle corresponds to exponential decay. That is about as close to a universal quantum as you are going to get. Hh is small enough that the difference bewteen discrete and continuous would be negligible.

Anyway that's my two bits. Best to you.

Colin

I found one of Steinhardt's lectures "Inflationary cosmology on trial" on youtube. Fortunately, he encouraged questions from the audience. Although the questions were inaudible, his answer to one presumably about the energy driving inflation in the big bang was revealing. He said (at 33:00-35:00) the source was [Newtonian] gravitational potential energy and that gravity is a unique form of energy which is bottomless. The notion that gravity is an infinite well of energy is dubious. I attempted to show how gravitational potential energy can be reformulated using special relativity in last year's essay. In its modernized form, the potential energy that is available through free-fall would be limited to the rest energy of the falling object. In other words the free-fall energy from a test mass, m, can be no greater than mc^2 no matter how strong the gravitational field. This reflects Mach's principle that rest energy of an object is potential energy due to its elevation from the rest of the matter in the universe, and kinetic energy can be no greater than potential energy.

In my opinion this gives an advantage to the cyclic hypothesis because the expansion mechanism is different. The upcoming experiments Steinhardt refers to ought to spark more interest.

Thanks for the leads. It is much appreciated.

Colin