WHAT BIT OF IT DON\'T YOU UNDERSTAND? by Sundance Bilson-Thompson

Dr. Bilson-Thompson,

Hi. I totally agree with your essay. I think it's right on. I said some similar things in my essay, too, which I attach below. I don't put these in to detract from your essay but just to say that I totally agree with this line of thinking. Plus, I like your first name!

Thanks!

Roger

1. In regard to making faster scientific progress, I totally agree and mentioned in my essay:

"I further propose that more and faster progress towards a deeper understanding of the nature of existence could be made if we argued less about whether or not to call this state an "it", a "bit" or anything else, and worked more on figuring out what the properties of a generic existent state might be and how these properties could be used to build a model of the universe"

2. In regard to your idea about "minimal arbitrariness", which you use to suggest why objects move in straight lines unless acted upon:

"It seems that an object set in motion is required to obey Newton's first law by a lack of information. It is tempting to say that Newton's first law could be derived from a "principle of minimal arbitrariness" - at least classically an object cannot invent new information to

define how it will behave.

In my essay, I use a similar idea to suggest that any existent entity that is a building block of our universe should have a spherical shape:

"Next, there is no other information about this three-dimensional existent state other than that there is a three-dimensional state. What does this imply about its shape? Because there is no information to define corners, angles, asymmetries or size differences in any dimension, the state would have to be identical in all three dimensions. That is, it would be a sphere.

http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Granet_fqxiessay2013final.pdf

Dear Sundance,

I welcome your essay that really close to me. You honestly say - this is an empty pastime and nothing more and I am fully agree with you! I understand that you have written short because nothing more speaking on this matter - if we do not want such empty pastime. However, the serious problems in science starts from such ,,trifles,, that brought it to a wall ...

I just sure my workEssay will in according to your taste. If yes, then we can continue this talk! (I wait you in my forum)

Sincerely,

George

Sundance,

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.

Hello Sundance,

Your essay was a pleasure to read. It packs a punch and I really like it. However, I do take issue with your statement that:

"viewing the universe in terms of matter, energy, and spacetime is no better or worse than viewing it in terms of information".

I think the history of science has taught us that a change in perspective can dramatically alter our understanding of the physical world. You give an example of this when you state:

"Why do objects continue to move in straight lines at constant speed unless acted upon by a net external force? This simple fact, Newton's first law of motion, contradicted the earlier views of the ancient Greeks and medieval philosophers"

and it changed drastically our collective understanding of the "map" of the physical world - our "map" of the wall in Plato's "cave of shadows". The realization that one cannot adequately distinguish between the "particle" and "wave" nature of matter, led to a complete overhaul of our view of the world and what was and was not "physically" realizable. Similarly, a transition to a perspective where we view physical processes as computational processes, will not merely be another way of looking at the world. It will lead us to a greater and deeper understanding of Nature.

Once again, your own words hint at this deeper understanding:

"It seems that an object set in motion is required to obey Newton's first law by a lack of information. It is tempting to say that Newton's first law could be derived from a "principle of minimal arbitrariness"".

Such a "principle of minimal arbitrariness" has already been laid in place by the (much neglected) work of B. Roy Frieden which is built around the principle of "extreme physical information" (EPI) (see fo e.g.: "Lagrangians of physics and the game of Fisher-information transfer", 1995 by Frieden and Soffer). Frieden was almost two decades ahead of his time. Additionally in an essay, in the present competition, and in an accompanying paper arXiv:1305.3621 Jonathan Heckman has presented a striking set of relationships between statistical inference, string theory and general relativity, built around extremizing the "Fisher distance" (i.e. determined by the Fisher metric) between possible configurations of a system.

We have not, by any means, reached the "end of physics" imho. If we had, then, perhaps, it might have been fair to say that any one interpretation of physical processes is as good as any other. But, thankfully we have reached the end of this very long comment!

Again, congratulations on an excellent essay.

Best,

Deepak

Dr. Bilson-Thompson,

I found your economically concise essay to be exceptionally clearly written, and your assertion as to the rational treatment of information as being a useful adjunct to our understanding of reality to be irrefutable.

Joe

Dear Bilson,

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

Dear Sundance,

I just read your short and to the point essay and just wanted to mention that I found your discussion of a the "principle of minimal arbitrariness" a worthwhile example of the kind of conception of information that can usefully deepen our insights into the nature.

I suspect that that some people may perceive too strong a polemical tone in your essay (beginning with the title) for them to rate it highly, but I personally see nothing wrong with forcefully making your case.

All the best,

Armin

Sundance,

What a wonderful eminently sensible level headed view, incorporating all the key issues. Kipling comes to mind; "If you can keep your head while all about you are loosing theirs...". I agreed with all points, well expressed, even though my own approach is a little different, I kind of get on and test things to destruction resulting in my essay. (why does an exploding train carriage and the phrase; "dja think y'used enough dynamite there Butch?" come to mind?)!

But anyway; the highlights for me were; "We have moved from a clockwork universe, to a cosmic steam engine gradually winding its way down to a state of maximum entropy, to a computer."

"it makes no sense to ask whether matter or information is more real. The universe is a computer for running a perfect simulation of itself, just as Australia is a perfectly detailed 1:1 scale map of Australia." ...and;

"how does the object 'choose' the radius and centre of its circular path from the potentially infinite number of circular paths at its disposal?"

And I wholly agree your conclusion; "it is better to take a more pragmatic interpretation and see information (as) just another probe of reality."

I hope you may prove to be on the same wavelength as my essay, which builds an ontology deriving a new EPR paradox resolution from orbital angular momentum. The problem is it's seemed largely 'invisible' so far! I'd really value your thoughts and comments (not to mention score!). Do read the consistent McHarris and Watsone essays too if you have time.

Very well done for your own, getting far more value in three pages than many do in nine.

Very Best wishes

Peter

"If spacetime and matter are real, but their interactions are isomorphic to the

functioning of a computer, then viewing the universe in terms of matter, energy,

and spacetime is no better or worse than viewing it in terms of information, and

different approaches may suit different situations. But then it makes no sense

to ask whether matter or information is more real. The universe is a computer

for running a perfect simulation of itself, just as Australia is a perfectlydetailed 1:1 scale map of Australia."

Sundance, well said! The universe is a perfect simulation of itself. :) I agree with the very pragmatic approach you are taking here.

In my essay I also argue that "bit" results from "it" but I maintain that there may be also be an "inter-it" which cannot be adequately described by bits at all. (Although my approach to this is pragmatic not mystical.)

Cheers!

Jenny

Dear Sundance,

Nice essay. I will be commenting after a second read. Also since you are interested in quantum gravity I will like to know your take whether the Planck length is of any physical importance, if so what real or empirical evidence do you know. 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

Dear Sundance,

Your "principle of minimal arbitrariness" is exactly why reality exists, and my theory builds on exactly this concept. Thank you.

Fundamental Theory of Reality, "Reality is nothing but a mathematical structure, literally"

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1877

Adel

Hello Sundance

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

Sundance,

in ancient physics there was no arbitrariness in the choice of the center of the rotation of celestial bodies, because the structure of space was taken to be that of a ball with a center. Bodies on Earth where not assumed to move naturally in circles, but up and down. Newton changed the structure of space, in order to have his dynamics. So, ancient and classical physics equally implement a no-arbtrariness principle.

The general point you make seems correct to me, but you refer to a rather naive idea of information as a foundational notion...

ciao, carlo

Hi Sundance:

Nice short essay! I like your point that we should relax on the fundamental questions and just see what the concept can do for us to get actual results.

You make a number of points (maybe you could have used a bit more of the 12 pages to flesh them out) and I want to just ask one question. You say that the zeros and ones of information have to live somewhere (e.g. the computer of the bug eyed alien scientist). If that is so then you point out that we have not gained anything. We have just moved the questions up one level. I guess the hardcore "It from bit" people will object and say that you miss the point. Information is not living anywhere (no computer, no scientist, ...). It just is. There are then two question: Can we make sense of this, and is the world like this? Would you agree?

My answer to both of these questions is no. I try to give the arguments in my essay.

All the best from sunny Hamburg.

Cheers

Olaf

P.S.: Are these numbers in the essay your phone number?

+61 8 8313 5996

Lonely?

Hello Sundance,

I think your essay was flowed well and you raise good points. Perhaps The Fibonacci sequence as hinted at in my essay might be an answer to one of your questions.

I think you e planned things clearly to a broad audience in an interesting and relevant way.

Best wishes,

Antony

Hello Sundance,

short but very interesting essay.

Good luck for the contest

Torsten

Dear All

A standard-issue big city all-glass high-rise stands across the street from my usual bus stop. When I look up the high-rise facade, I can see the reflections of the near-by buildings and the white clouds from the sky above. Even when everything else looks pretty much the same, the reflections of the clouds are different, hour to hour and day to day.

After I boarded the bus, I rushed to get a single seat facing four others on a slightly elevated platorm. From my vantage point, I can't help noticing the shoes of the four passengers across from my seat are not the same, by either the make , the design, or the style, and that is true even when the four passengers happen to be members of the same family.

I could change the objects of my fascination from shoes to something else, to buttons on the dresses for example, but I do not think the result would have been any different. Diversity or Uniqueness would still rule the day! (There is a delightful essay on the subject of uniqueness by Joe Fisher in this contest.)

I am pretty sure people are fascinated by the diversity and the uniqueness in the world, when the other side of it is the inevitable boredom of sameness every time.

However, we have a need to know where all this beautiful and enchanting diversity comes from. Borrowing Wheelerian phraseology of "How come the quantum?", I ask "How come the diversity?" A standard physics answer is "Entropy always increases." (I am not a physicist, and I don't know if that is the final answer.)

Whenever I'm out of my depth, I go back to my theory of everything (TOE), which is a mental brew of common sense, intuition, gut, analogy, judgement, etc. etc. , buttressed when I can with a little thought-experiment.

The thought-experiment is simple. Imagine cutting a circle into two precisely, identical, and equal parts. Practically, there is no way we can get the desired result, because one part will be bigger or smaller in some way.

Physics - especially quantum physics - says it don't matter, do the superposition!

But superposition is fictive, an invention like the Macarena dance, and it has given us a cat, alive and dead at the same time.

I have heard that angels can dance on the tip of the needle, and now I'm finding out some of us can too!

Cheers and Good Luck to All,

Than Tin

Having read so many insightful essays, I am probably not the only one to find that my views have crystallized, and that I can now move forward with growing confidence. I cannot exactly say who in the course of the competition was most inspiring - probably it was the continuous back and forth between so many of us. In this case, we should all be grateful to each other.

If I may, I'd like to express some of my newer conclusions - by themselves, so to speak, and independently of the logic that justifies them; the logic is, of course, outlined in my essay.

I now see the Cosmos as founded upon positive-negative charges: It is a binary structure and process that acquires its most elemental dimensional definition with the appearance of Hydrogen - one proton, one electron.

There is no other interaction so fundamental and all-pervasive as this binary phenomenon: Its continuance produces our elements - which are the array of all possible inorganic variants.

Once there exists a great enough correlation between protons and electrons - that is, once there are a great many Hydrogen atoms, and a great many other types of atoms as well - the continuing Cosmic binary process arranges them all into a new platform: Life.

This phenomenon is quite simply inherent to a Cosmos that has reached a certain volume of particles; and like the Cosmos from which it evolves, life behaves as a binary process.

Life therefore evolves not only by the chance events of natural selection, but also by the chance interactions of its underlying binary elements.

This means that ultimately, DNA behaves as does the atom - each is a particle defined by, and interacting within, its distinct Vortex - or 'platform'.

However, as the cosmic system expands, simple sensory activity is transformed into a third platform, one that is correlated with the Organic and Inorganic phenomena already in existence: This is the Sensory-Cognitive platform.

Most significantly, the development of Sensory-Cognition into a distinct platform, or Vortex, is the event that is responsible for creating (on Earth) the Human Species - in whom the mind has acquired the dexterity to focus upon itself.

Humans affect, and are affected by, the binary field of Sensory-Cognition: We can ask specific questions and enunciate specific answers - and we can also step back and contextualize our conclusions: That is to say, we can move beyond the specific, and create what might be termed 'Unified Binary Fields' - in the same way that the forces acting upon the Cosmos, and holding the whole structure together, simultaneously act upon its individual particles, giving them their motion and structure.

The mind mimics the Cosmos - or more exactly, it is correlated with it.

Thus, it transpires that the role of chance decreases with evolution, because this dual activity (by which we 'particularize' binary elements, while also unifying them into fields) clearly increases our control over the foundational binary process itself.

This in turn signifies that we are evolving, as life in general has always done, towards a new interaction with the Cosmos.

Clearly, the Cosmos is participatory to a far greater degree than Wheeler imagined - with the evolution of the observer continuously re-defining the system.

You might recall the logic by which these conclusions were originally reached in my essay, and the more detailed structure that I also outline there. These elements still hold; the details stated here simply put the paradigm into a sharper focus, I believe.

With many thanks and best wishes,

John

jselye@gmail.com

Hi Sundance,

Thanks for a thoughtful critique of the simulation paradigm. You wrote:

> If the universe is nothing more than information we have to ask ourselves whether that information resides in some storage medium... But it seems doubtful that this would actually help us learn more about how the laws of physics came about, for instance.

In my essay Software Cosmos I take up this challenge. While it is not possible to learn much about the "hardware", the "software" structure of such a universe can reveal a lot, and actually answers a host of cosmological puzzles.

> Surely it is better to take a more pragmatic interpretation and see information of just another probe of reality.

I hope you get a chance to take a look, as I would be curious to see if my picture was compelling enough to change your views.

Hugh