Contextuality: Wheeler’s universal regulating principle by Ian Durham

Hi Ian,

Nice essay! Higher-level than the other ones you've written for this contest, but I think you've framed the more technical parts in a nicely accessible manner.

"The universe as a whole must not be physically deterministic!" Hear, hear! (Although I'm not fully persuaded by your argument, I agree with your conclusion...)

Some nitpicks: I'm not convinced that it makes sense to assign Shannon information to actual physical *signals*, rather than to the source itself. Sure, in certain special cases you can do it, but it hardly seems generally possible.

For example, you write:

> As Schumacher and Westmoreland note, "Information is the ability to distinguish reliably between possible alternatives" [16]. In this sense, information is encoded in the properties of the particles.

In the quote, they're talking about subjective distinction, which is in turn defined by *possible* alternatives, and therefore depend on the properties of the *source*, not any particular message. How do you conclude from this that information is now objectively encoded in physical particles that are themselves the signal? (Although I suppose you recognize this when you start talking about domains later... ) Still, my point is that "information content" is a dangerous notion, as it might lead one to falsely conclude that Shannon Entropy is a localized physical property that propagates with signals, like charge or mass.

I think you could have bypassed the seeming mismatch between Shannon entropy and classical thermodynamical entropy by simply pointing out they're somewhat different concepts. (Our uncertainty of classical systems *would* decrease if we kept track of past measurements and used a correspondingly finer-grain description; but that's not what we do when we define thermodynamic entropy.) As you discuss, the quantum analog is much stronger.

Now, of course I know that you have a research program to establish a connection between these two types of entropy, but I suppose that made me even more surprised that this issue never really came up. After all, what makes your research interesting is that these *are* inherently different notions and you're finding connections between them. If you assume they're the same from the outset, your research conclusions won't seem as strong.

Finally, even though I agree with your ultimate "bit from it" conclusion, I wonder how you'd address the orthodox-QM argument that unitary evolution implies that fine-grained "entropy" (in at least one of the above senses) never really increases at all. I guess one way would be to put in some formal indeterminism, as I do, but I've never seen you advocate that explicitly.

PS -- If you ever find yourself thinking of entropy as associated with spacetime regions rather than instants, please let me know -- I think there might be some overlap between our programs if you start going down that road.

Dear Ian Durham:

Hi Ian, I am an old physician that does not know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing in physics I am writing you just because you are a physicist and you can be interest to know about the experimental meaning of "time" I think can help to better understanding of "space-time" and find out about the Einstein short verbal "space-time" description. We have something in common I like fishing and I spend a week in the Maine coast which is beautiful, I was at a couple hundred meters from Rockefeller place, but I didn't do fly fishing, I remember I fished lots of mackerel.

I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay "The deep nature of reality".

I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don't understand it, and is not just because of my bad English) "Hawking, A brief history of time" where he said , "Which is the nature of time?" yes he don't know what time is, and also continue saying............Some day this answer could seem to us "obvious", as much than that the earth rotate around the sun....." In fact the answer is "obvious", but how he could say that, if he didn't know what's time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be "obvious", I think that with this adjective, he is implying simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn't explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure "time" since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure "time" from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental "time" meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls "time" and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the "time" experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the "time" creators and users didn't. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein's "Ideas and Opinions" pg. 354 "Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought" he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about "time" he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect "time", he does not use the word "time" instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or "motion", instead of saying that slows "time". FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that "time" was a man creation, but he didn't know what man is measuring with the clock.

I insist, that for "measuring motion" we should always and only use a unique: "constant" or "uniform" "motion" to measure "no constant motions" "which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of "motion" whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to "motion fractions", which I call "motion units" as hours, minutes and seconds. "Motion" which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using "motion"?, time just has been used to measure the "duration" of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand "motion" is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.

With my best whishes

Héctor

Professor Durham,

As I have modestly explained in my essay BITTERS, one real unique Universe is eternally occurring, once.

The questions Wheeler ought to have asked were:

Is the real Universe simple? Yes

Is the abstract universe simple? No

Is unique, once simple? Yes

Is quantum theory simple? No

Is unique, once the simplest? Yes

Could 0 and 1 be the simplest? No

Joe

Dear Ian,

Brilliant essay with fantastic examples illustrating contextuality in the spin 1/2 boxes. The jigsaw was a super way to show information content also. What I found remarkable was the conclusion that It must be more fundamental then Bit. Fantastic! I agree that information content increases over time, while matter/energy remains constant. This is a simple, yet excellent way to challenge Wheeler.

All the best for the contest - please take a look at my essay if you get the time.

Antony

Hi Ian,

1. I accepted Landauer's principle that information is physical. In KQID, bit = it, thus, idea, spirit, souls, God, and us are physical. Existence is bits and bits are physical. Everything including non-things because KQID postulates that everything is a thing, hence, everything is physical and physical is bit without any exception. This means also that there is no non-physical Existence, thus physics covers legitimately everything including religions, beliefs, ideas as well as bits-waves things.

2. KQID prescribes a block Multiverse per absolute digital time T ≤ 10^-1000seconds in which information, energy and everything is conserved and no new information, energy or anything at all. Time is symmetry in this T-moment, everything can go backward or forward in time, or the time-past-present-future collapse into the NOW. Our Multiverse reboots, refreshes and resynchronizes itself. Time disappears. But time reemerges when our Multiverse jumps following Feynman's sum-over-histories per T following KQID relativity ψτ(iLx,y,z, Lm). This means every second, we have a new randomly minted ≥10^1000 qbits which is also ψI(CTE) as the bits-wave functions of consciousness(C), time(T) and energy(E). The energy content of these qbits have energy equivalent depends upon the temperature according to Landauer's equation KbΘLn2 where Kb is Boltzmann's constant, Θ is temperature and ln2 is log base 2.

To me diversity of opinions are healthy and they are the symphony of ideas. We must not adopt conformity as healthy or wise. I don't agree with some of your opinions but I enjoyed and appreciated your idea tremendously. Diversity of ideas are beautiful. Thanks for participating in this forum and I believe all participants would agree.

Best wishes,

Leo KoGuan

Dear Jan,

my remark :

Shannon and Other Structuralisms

In comparison with Wheeler Structuralism ( 0-1 structure underpins all of our data and all our sciences ) and Category Structuralism ( by Roman Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Burbaki, Abramsky and Coecke ) where the universals of human culture exist only at the level of structure,'culinary triangles' or other intuitive ordered things ; Shannon bits mathematics is pure mathematics. Shannon mathematical assumption is based on elementary algebra of common logarithm logax, where the logarithm of x to the base 2 is defined by the equation y = log2 x. This definition is of course applicable only when y is RATIONAL NUMBER. Beyond Shannon rational bits there exists new world of real, irrational, imaginary and complex bits, the world of Weierstrass theorem and the world of real lines contained infinitely many imaginary bits.

Thus, it could be difficult to find real differences between Wheeler binarism and Alternative Gospel of structures , indeed. In fact, similarity between Wheeler and Topos Gospel by Doring & Isham philosophies are obvious.

Dear Ian,

You still haven't given an opinion on what if... Eddington is right on the second law and Wheeler is right on Bit from It, would the matter-energy of the universe still be a constant? Also, my essay may not meet the standard of professional physicists but please view. I will also want to know your take whether the Planck length can be of any physical significance. Your suggestion above of possible superposition of existence and inexistence is quite intriguing. Nevertheless...

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

*I have rated you already, so no matter. But glad to get your binary answer.

Dear Ian,

I wish I'd reached your essay earlier. It's very relevant to mine, which is more ambitious (possibly overly).

I like and agree with your explanations and propositions and think 'matter-energy' is a fair descriptor if it. Of course it may also be a fair descriptor of Bit, but importantly you point out;

"the result of a quantum measurement will always produce a result that lies in the domain of classical quantity-value objects".

So we assume 0 and 1 are JUST 0 and 1, which as von Neumann pointed out is inconsistent with QM. What if it were more? What if it had 'fractal' domains with a complete Bayesian/Godel distribution in each. So if we knew a different way to ask, we could ask not just; "up or down?", but exactly "How High?" or Low in each case.

You hint at this then fall short, but do get closer than anybody. I hope you'll read mine as I construct that ontological road to the end, and find it appears that; "perhaps the key to understanding the universe IS lying right under our very noses".!

If Honus's card tells us 1, there are infinitely higher orders where all the traits of Honus himself exists. Your essay has helped me rationalise this better but I hope you'll also try to falsify my apparently quite radical but realist finding.

Well done for your own which should be much higher so hold tight for just a moment while I send a signal to cause a trigger to impart some significant motion. It's quite fun. I hope you'll try it too!

Best wishes

Peter

Obviously; Peter enjoys playing the role of propagator.

I'll return here soon, after reading for detail, and will likely wish to impart a bit of motion as well. Some keen insights Ian! I hope more people get around to reading this one, now that they have extended the deadline.

Have Fun,

Jonathan

Dear Ian,

I will appreciate a look-in on my amateur essay. I doubt you will enjoy it because not so technical with terms like entanglement, contextuality, etc. But purpose of this current post is to learn something from you...

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 blogmy blog. And please pardon my naive view of physics.

Accept my best regards,

Akinbo

I enjoyed your essay greatly Ian..

It was interesting, informative, and educational. You do an excellent job of explaining some highly technical subject matter in a way that is lucid for those not familiar with the concepts of topos or category theory. I really like the discussion about the meaning of orthogonality. But I am not certain about your final conclusion that there is an unending increase of information because of contextuality.

That would depend on a rich environment of objects and spaces that permit interaction and provide new context. The cold dark end predicted in some cosmological models fairly mainstream, would rob isolated sub-atomic particles of any context after a while. The sheer distance would assure the possibility of interaction eventually becomes almost nil. Once all defining contextual information is stripped away; what then?

I'll be reading this essay again, because I'll learn something. And again; your clarity of exposition makes some otherwise challenging material easy to understand. Good luck in the contest.

Regards,

Jonathan

Hello Ian

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 each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

Good luck and good cheers!

Than Tin

I wanted to comment briefly..

The cornerstone of my essay is ultimately contextuality, in the broader or general sense. As you point out, context defines the arena in which events and measurements take place, and the range in which the important variables may be found. I especially like the observation that we can't know for sure if a unit quantity of information is a bit or a trit (does quit come next?) until a range of variation is determined.

So as I point out in my essay, the concept of either/or choices arises in the context of learning about the larger subject of magnitude - and it is necessarily so. But the object-constancy perception is a key part of the way we characterize discrete units of things, be they 'it' (objects, particles, ...) or 'bit' (a binary digit). But it is subtle, and not binary. It is arguable that distant things are perceived as less tangible, for example, because they lack immanence.

Key to figuring out if information actually sees an unending increase, due to contextuality, is the question whether it can be known that a 'reset' to an earlier state has occurred, without some necessarily contextual measurement that again disturbs that state, or adds new information because it has a slightly different measurement basis. While on the one hand a reset might hypothetically happen, the statement immediately following assures we can never verify that it is true.

Comments?

Jonathan

Ian,

Thanks, Yes, I understand, but think it's still a bit of a logical minefield, which I've been so bold as to offer a resolution to!

If a bunch of Huygens wavelets, or Erwin's 'spherelets' are expanding and all heading to meet somewhere, like a football team, are they the powerful winning side when still all in bed? or just it's potential, which may then appear at home or away?

Jonathan's right. Einstein said very pointedly in '52 after trying to make sense of interpretations; "The entire Special Theory of Relativity is contained within the postulates", which in both German and English specified; "...propagates" at a certain speed c'. With space now full of particle systems which can move realtively we don't even really need dark energy or a Higgs field with a local rest frame!, but it is allowed.

I'll spread the word about yours a bit more, it seems it's been visited by the trolls! I do hope you'll get to mine.

Best of luck.

Peter

Peter