Thank you Colin,

While I'm not sure I would call the universe static, I think the Big Bang/Inflationary scenario has some big problems and deficiencies. Just ask Steinhardt; he raked it through the coals in a lecture I attended and a Scientific American article. You may want to check out the FQXi Forum page for the paper "Dimensional reduction in the sky," which offers insight into (and my comments about) the theory of Rainbow Gravity, and a view of cosmology which decidedly DOES NOT favor Big Bang/Inflation, and may offer some useful insights.

All the Best,

Jonathan

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

Dear Jonathan,

In your enchanting essay you have clearly elucidated the relationship between It and Bit in as diverse fields as physics, mathematics, biology, sociology and human culture. This approach is somewhat similar to what I have done in my essay. Although you have given equal importance to both It and Bit as they are intertwined and hence need each other to survive by changing their roles often, you have also said that 'there can be no It beyond the Planck density' and 'so information reigns supreme, in the universe before matter appears', thereby giving primacy to Bit than to It. So in physics, in extreme cases, you are siding with the Bit and same is the case with mathematics as 'the principles and objects of mathematics are discovered rather than invented'; there by giving objective existence to mathematics. It is good to see that you have considered solving the epistemological problem existing between It and Bit by analyzing the psychology of human mind. Comparison of the interplay between It and Bit, on one hand, and creation and destruction of the universe, on the other, to 'Lila Rasa' or 'Cosmic Dance' is simply revelation of the sort of relationship existing between It and Bit. In Hindu mythology, Lord Shiva's 'Thandava- Nruthya' is called 'Cosmic Dance', which results in the destruction and creation of the universe.

Thanks for producing such an entertaining but thought provoking essay. Please go through my essay too and post your invaluable comments in my thread. I would like to rate your essay with a very high score.

All the best in the essay contest,

Sreenath

Thanks greatly Sreenath..

Your comments here are warmly appreciated. I'll see what I can find out about Thandava-Nruthya, through a web search, now that I know what to call it. Your insights complement my own, so I'm thinking I'd better read your essay through - so I may learn what other gems you have to share.

All the Best,

Jonathan

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  • Post #75

Dear Jonathan as you think further on whether existence/non-existence being a binary condition, see a short piece below:

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

    OK then Akinbo...

    I shall attempt to answer your question with all due brevity, but an honest answer precludes that only yes/no replies are considered valid. This caveat is necessitated in part by the nature of your query and by essential information not provided (only some of which is commonly available), but it is also dictated by the fact that my circumstances are unusual or unique. There are some basic facts to consider, in the set-up of the problem. The largest bills printed were $10000 notes, and a stack of 100 would easily fit in most people's pocket, and the smallest are $1 notes, but it is ludicrous to assume that anyone's pocket has space for one million of them. So there are natural limits, or boundary conditions to consider. One important feature of this problem is that all denominations of money have discrete values, but there are a number of ways a one million dollar sum might be constituted, and a limited subset of these that would actually fit in a pocket. I reason that a stack of 1000 $1000 notes would be mighty a tight fit, for a fairly large pocket. And since the $1000, $5000, and $10000 notes are no longer printed this makes it harder to obtain a stack of 'crisp notes' that total one million and will fit in a pocket.

    Assuming the above limits present no obstacle, we are then left with distinguishing and counting the notes found in our pocket. While the hand as detector might be able to reliably count the number of notes, and while someone with enhanced tactile skills might distinguish one bill from another in pocket; most people would pull the stack or wad of money from their pocket in order to count it, to visually inspect the bills for authenticity, and so on. I am like most people, Akinbo, and I would pull the notes from my pocket and count them. Then, even if I was urgently needed on the job; I would immediately go to the Bank or Credit Union - and make arrangements for them to authenticate and store or deposit my new found wealth - before I went about my business. Having done so; any later attempt to probe my pocket that comes up empty handed would convey no additional information beyond what was known - unless I had put the receipt in that same pocket. One might also have the earned expectation that more money would appear, because it already happened once, and in this case finding nothing would confirm or deny this expectation.

    Of course; if I found money in my pocket, then just left it there and went about my business (unlikely), I would have been surprised it was missing later - and this would be new information. It is also true that if I took it out and counted it, then slid it back into my pocket, it would be a shock later - and losing it after realizing you had one million dollars would definitely confer information, which would almost certainly be unwelcome. So yes; there are instances where an empty pocket conveys new information, but the loose definition of the problem does not allow me to say whether the scenario in the previous paragraph or this one plays out. As far as going to work goes; I am here in the very same studio where I recorded Pete Seeger, and where if I peek around the corner I can see my Grammy award on the shelf, but this is my home too and the bed I slept in last night is right behind me. So there is seldom a time I am 'on my way back from work' - unless I do a remote session as on "At 89." My guess is that I would likely stash the cash before showing up for a recording gig, so it is far fetched that I would leave a million dollars in my pocket, then go to work with it, but if I did I'd expect to find it there later.

    So ends part one,

    Jonathan

    As explained above;

    The answer is 'yes' for 1) above IFF one left the money in one's pocket (in which case an exact accounting is lacking) or counted it and then returned it to pocket (assuming no further action was taken), so there would be a reasonable expectation to find something there.

    The answer is 'no' for 1) above when one has removed the money from one's pocket, perhaps to count it, and subsequently acted to store the money elsewhere - leaving it out of one's pocket before going to work. An expectation more will magically appear does not justify being surprised by empty pockets, if one has deliberately set the money aside before work, though if a million appeared twice you would wonder.

    There are some scenarios allowable by the problem description where only a partial answer is possible, the correct answer is somewhere between 'yes' and 'no', or the result is indeterminate, and so on. I'll say that aThe great majority of cases fall into one of the two categories above, but... A funny thing happened on the way to work... Anything can happen. Unless some details of the day's activities are known, an exact answer eludes us.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

    Hello again Akinbo,

    I will still attempt to get to specific replies for 2) 3) and 4), and I think my initial answer explains any variance.

    All the Best,

    Jonathan

    Dear Jonathan. Hello, and apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not read, or did not rate my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes.

    Vladimir

    Greetings My Friends,

    This message was meant to be a reply to Akinbo (in his blog), but because it has more general relevance I am also posting it here.

    While I acknowledge that sometimes life reduces choices down to either/or decisions, the tendency to assume this applies more generally is a harmful logical flaw prevalent in modern society, because it fails to ask "Is there a middle path?" In more detail; sometimes the middle is excluded erroneously, in other cases the fact there are multiple choices is not considered, and in some cases there is a virtually continuous range of choices - where sometimes our choice among these cases is determined by how we interact with the system. According to an article in August's Scientific American by Meinard Kuhlmann; that sometimes applies for the choice of 'particles vs vacuum' which begs the question "Is there a particle or no particle?"

    I first read about the hierarchy of objects and spaces as a point made in passing by Alain Connes, in one of his papers about non-commutative geometry. Measurable is a subset of topological, which is a subset of smooth - in relating the categories of well-defined spaces. This point has more than passing importance, however, to people who study differential geometry and topology. In some cases; one can assert that the boundary between stable conditions or well-defined regions is a fractal. That is; there are interpenetrating regions of yes and no, or black and white, as in an M.C. Escher artwork. So while sometimes a simple yes or no will suffice; sometimes a more subtle answer is called for.

    More to follow..

    All the Best,

    Jonathan

      Here is the rest of the story.

      There seems to be an erosion of our natural perceptual ability to distinguish shades of gray, as an effect on the human populace over time. I've written about this in editorials, but few scholars have speculated on its cause. I suspect migration of a large segment of the populace to cities might be a factor.

      The studies begun at Tübingen, and run by the German Psychological Association for a number of years, showed a marked decline in perceptual acuity at discerning shades of gray and other colors, for people at the end of the study vs the beginning. Early on more than 200 shades were easily distinguished, and later participants could discern only half that - focusing mostly on bright colors. I would hate to imagine a world where everything must be reduced to yes or no, black or white.

      So let's celebrate the world's colors and shades of gray, while we still can.

      Have Fun!

      Jonathan

      Hi Jonathan,

      You must really be fun to be with online. I enjoyed your replies on my blog as well as here. Those questions were meant to focus on the subject of the essay contest. I have received varied replies. Some felt the way I framed the post was rude so I stopped. It was just meant to tickle our brains on what Wheeler meant by saying information underlies everything. I have got replies that there can be superposition between existence/non-existence, some have said they don't know what 'elicit' means even when Wheeler used the term. Anyway, on second thought I think like you suggested I would stop going to work from that day henceforth and enjoy my million dollars!

      Best regards,

      Akinbo

      Then regarding your essay which I am scoring 7 immediately after this,

      1) What are those atoms of space that do the computing which Gerard't Hooft told you to discountenance? You may have been misled from winning a Nobel prize, so think again :).

      2) What can separate those atoms of space since space can no longer be what will separate itself into discreteness?

      3) Can you call a dance a dance without dancers? I know only of music without dancers, not a dance without anybody dancing.

      4) While your cat can be half-dead or half-alive, can it be half-existing and half-non existing? If it can kindly breed the kittens because I am ready to buy if you will sell!

      All the best wishes coming your way

      Hello Jonathan,

      I enjoyed your essay, especially your development of the dance and dancer theme, moreover, I like your conclusions. You say:

      "Perhaps instead of asking 'It from Bit or Bit from It?' we need to see reality as 'It from Bit and then Bit from It?,' which allows it to be a dance, an interplay, or a cyclical phenomena, rather than a simple relation.".

      I agree completely, but then I come to the same conclusion via a different route, one where the nature of consciousness, thought and the cosmos are redefined in terms where the nature of information is related to the mechanics of observation; and where the mechanics of observation allow us to differentiate between indication and information.

      Thank you for your most interesting essay, and good luck.

      Zoran.

        Thank you greatly Zoran,

        I appreciate your kind remarks, and that my treatment of the topic resonates with you. Your essay is already on my list, and I actually glanced at it just yesterday. It looks quite interesting, and it appears that my findings are largely compatible with yours. I wish you good luck also.

        Have Fun,

        Jonathan

        Your answers are:

        4) - I don't have a cat.

        3) - If you gaze at a fog you will see it is not just a diffuse mass, but is in fact engaged in a flickering, fluttering, dance at all times - that pulsates with the slightest vibration. The same might be seen to happen for pure energy devoid of substantial mass (i.e. - in the massless regime near Planck scale).

        2) - Call it what you will; emptiness it is.

        1) - There is a figure called the 0-brane. Following the construction in analogy to the spheres used by Greene in "Elegant Universe" the 0-brane is actually two points bracketing a location in space, but it is usually seen to be a point like object that holds an instant of time, the instanton. This is the minimal case.

        To explain; even a point in space is assumed to have duration, but a point in spacetime is a pure fiction as it has no extent in either space or time, and thus does not actually exist. Only things possessing duration can exist within time, or said differently they must possess a parcel of time to exist at all.

        Have Fun,

        Jonathan

        Hi Jonathan,

        I interpret your answers as follows:

        4) I don't have a cat means you have a cat but it is not existing. :)

        3) Probably energy can be the dancer?

        2) If what separates two things and not extension (space), then they are continuous and not separated.

        1) There are a lot of fancy names like 0-brane, quantum pixel, instanton, etc. Why everybody must name same idea differently is an ego trip. Why not retain the initial term used by the Pythagoreans, used by Leibniz even if its characteristics or properties are refined as our knowledge increases.

        When you say, "0-brane is actually two points bracketing a location in space", what is a location? Is a location not a discrete expression of space/position? And if it is and holds an instant of time or it is a point in space with duration is that still not a monad? Then what is a bracket? Will that not be a composite geometrical object made of points?

        I will check Kea's papers and see what she is offering.

        All the best.

        Akinbo

        Dear Jonathan -

        First I'd like to congratulate you on your highly engaging prose. You've taken great care to express your views cogently, and this makes your far-reaching message very forceful and significant.

        You state: 'In considering the question "It from Bit, or Bit from It?" one must always ask 'With respect to what?''

        Indeed, Physics needs to revise all its assumptions before it can consider foundational questions. It and Bit might seem to have set identities to those who consider them through a prism of unquestioned assumptions - but in reality, as you say, they are interchangeable.

        In my essay, I describe It and Bit as 'correlated' by evolution. You say: 'Though we imagine there must always be an 'It' if information about an object or 'Bit' is detected, this is actually a learned behavior - but it is one acquired very early in our development.'

        I would add - ' ... and, even before - over the course of our evolution.'

        Your description of childhood habituation is very pertinent, and the process-like nature of Chinese and Native American languages provides a fascinating insight. I show how the 'process' begins with the appearance of life on the planet: Ultimately, 'matter' is simply very ancient information, supported by appropriate biological configurations. The entire system is continually shifting.

        When you say - 'Maybe there is something unifying 'It' and 'Bit' we need to examine', it jumps out at me that this can only be the evolving observer. It wasn't long ago that evolution entered into human consciousness: Pre-Darwin, the order of things was entirely created by God. But to deny or ignore evolution in our interpretation of the physical world is no longer possible: It places physics in a mystical position - for we are indeed subjective to the Cosmos, our view at any given time is partial, and shifting - and therefore we cannot see the 'whole thing', and we must also somehow configure continuous change into all our conclusions and 'facts'.

        In this broader perspective, the definition of It and Bit clearly must be expanded to something more than Wheeler intended. They are involved in a 'cosmic dance', as you say (a dance choreographed by evolution, I add). The presence of mathematics in the cosmos represents how intimately invested we are in the field of observation.

        I don't want to recap my essay here; these few words are really about you, and how thoroughly interesting it was for me to read your essay and see the many similarities in our 'dance steps'. This was particularly evident to me in your concluding remarks.

        Of course, I've rated your work highly - and I hope you'll soon read my rendition of the 'ancient tale', and give me your impressions.

        I wish you the best of luck in the competition,

        John.

          Hi Jonathan,

          I replied to your post regarding my essay and hope you will visit it. I found your essay deep and thought provoking.

            Thank you very much Gene!

            I do appreciate the kind remarks, and that my essay made you think. That was the desired effect. I shall look on your page to see how you replied shortly.

            All the Best,

            Jonathan

            Thanks greatly John!

            Your insights and praise are appreciated. I guess I'll have to take a look at your essay, and see what you have cooking. And I agree; the assumptions we need to change or challenge may not be the obvious ones, so we must call virtually all our assumptions into question. That is pretty much the approach I took in last year's essay. I really like your statement about the evolving observer, and that has links into some of my other work in progress. Are you familiar with The Reflexive Universe by Arthur M. Young? He elaborately explains why the evolution of consciousness and of the universe follow the same pattern.

            I will have to look for more links between our work, when I read your essay.

            All the Best,

            Jonathan