PATTERN OR STUFF by Gary Glenn Miller

Gary,

As of 7-6-13, 7:20 am EST, the rating function for your essay is not available. Sorry I can't help you out right now by rating your essay.

Manuel

Gary,

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

Hi Gary,

What strikes me in most essays I've read is that everyone thinks about the universe as an ordinary object we may imagine to look at from without: this only would be justified in a universe which has been created by some outside interference.

Wheeler, in his paper about (b)its, wonders ''How come a value for the quantum so small as h-bar = 2.612 ﾃ-- 10-66 cm2?'' -as if this value has been set, ordained by someone or something outside the universe, as if the meter is defined even outside the universe. However, there is nothing mysterious about the Planck constant. If in blackbody radiation there are more energy levels per unit energy interval at higher temperatures, then we need increasingly more decimals to distinguish successive energy levels at higher energies. If there can be no maximum to the energy or temperature, then size of the energy gap between two subsequence levels can become arbitrarily small. Though energy is quantified, there is no minimum limit to the size of the quantum, so the Planck constant, length and time have no special significance. The Planck constant h is like the number 1 in mathematics, encompassing all values between 0.5 and 1.5. If we can measure the Planck constant to one more decimal at a higher energy or temperature, then we can write that number as 1.0, which encompasses all numbers between 0.95 and 1.05. So if we subsequently set h = 1 in our equations, then every time we improve the accuracy of the Planck constant, we increase the magnifying power of our microscope with a factor 10. Just like c is a conversion factor, a number which says how many kilometer space distance corresponds to one second time distance, its value the product of an arbitrary choice of the units of length and time, the Planck constant is a conversion factor relating energy and time, its value just as arbitrary.

If the information as embodied in particle properties and the associated rules of behavior a.k.a. laws of physics must be the product of a trial-and-error evolution, then information only can survive, become actual information when tested in practice, in interactions between physical, material particles. Only that information survives which enables its carriers, readers/writers to survive, material particles (stuff) then express and preserve each other's existence, properties by exchanging information, bits. If in a self-creating universe particles have to create themselves, each other, then 'its', particles, particle properties must be as much the cause as the effect of their interactions, of forces between them, so if particles only exist to each other if, to the extent and for as long as they interact, exchange information, then you cannot have one without the other, nor can one be more fundamental then the other.

If particles in a trial-and-error evolution create themselves and hence the conditions they can exist in, then their properties are interaction-dependent, agreeing with quantum mechanics, but contrary to what a property is in classical mechanics, to what the dictionary says it is: an unchangeable, privately owned, mortgage-free quantity. If information adjusts itself to the context it creates, lives in, then particle properties, the 'its' and bits are different in different ecological niches, conditions, circumstances. Though we assume that interactions between particles are weaker as they are farther apart because their properties are 'diluted' by distance, we can as well say that they become more different qualitatively when farther apart: as if from the point of view of a nail, a magnet looks more like a cork as it is more distant. The question it or bit only makes sense as long as we cling to causality, a concept I think it is time to banish from physics.

Regards, Anton

I agree, I think that all essays should be put online at the same day, and, seeing as how many essays there are, allow a longer period to rate them.

Anton

Respectfully Professor Miller,

I found your essay to be exceptionally well written and meticulously argued. I am a decrepit old realist, so please excuse me while I plead for realism.

The real Universe must be simple. After all about seven billion people now reside, once, on earth plus billions of supposedly lower forms of life do also. I am not saying the abstract universe of abstract Quantum Theory must be wrong because it is too complicated, I merely wish to point out that everything in the real Universe is unique, once. Each real snowflake is unique, once. Each real atom must be unique, once. Each real stat must be unique, once.

Each pattern is not unique. Mathematics is not unique. Information is not unique.

I do hope more time is granted for us to rate the later essay entries like yours.

Joe

Dear Gary,

I like your essay for taking us further back in time. It was indeed a golden era for philosophy and 'common sense'. You missed out Zeno of Elea, a student of Parmenides, but I guess it may not be relevant to scope of this year's essay. I will in separate correspondence want to know what you think of his Dichotomy Argument and whether you agree on the mathematical solutions proposed.

On discrete pattern and continuous patterns... Discrete patterns are easily contemplatable with many objects separated by space, so we can use natural numbers. When it comes to space itself which some believe has a discrete nature, what will do the separation? Then for continuous patterns, this will imply divisibility ad infinitum, another difficulty.

One idea of the Pythagoreans not mentioned is their belief that the mathematical or geometric point was not an abstract object of zero dimension as advocated by the Platonic school, but was an extended real object, which they called a 'monad'. Therefore, when looking at how "fire can be breathed into equations" consider this as a possibility, particularly, if such monads can emerge from nothing and be annihilated to nothing, an idea mentioned by Leibniz and which I develop here.

On the continuum problem, check out Peter Jackson's essay and see if we can disagree with him. I have a soft spot for discreteness with an excluded middle. I agree that the stage is about set for "Pattern theory as a foundation" which will become more feasible when geometric fictions are eliminated. For what patterns can do, have a look at Antony Ryan's piece.

Best of luck in the contest. A good score from me.

Akinbo

Sorry Gary,

I have received word that no extensions to the final deadline will be made. I will keep this in mind when I get a chance to review your essay later this week.

Best wishes,

Manuel

Thanks for the mention Akinbo.

Gary - I look forward to reading your essay as soon as humanly possible.

Antony

Dear Gary,

Your essay was a nice read - very thorough in describing humanities struggle with this topic. I think you could write an excellent book on this subject! I also like how the journey explores patterns as a possible way to answer the most fundamental questions.

Well done & best wishes,

Antony

Dear Gary

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

Dr. Miller

I very much enjoyed your essay and your perspective. You wrote:

"We have indicated how C.S.Peirce's Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, Carl Jung's Quaternio of archetypes, and, therefore, the Pythagorean Tetrakys can be considered as arche, i.e., as adequate generators of our Cosmos of "Pattern."

I suspect what mathematicians call today a "quaternion" might have this kind of generational power. In my essay Software Cosmos I describe the software architecture of a simulated cosmos. There are several ways in which the 3-sphere (isomorphic to unit quaternions) appears as a useful way to structure information in a compuational model of the cosmos.

Perhaps this is an example of the Pattern that you describe so eloquently here.

Hugh

Dear Glenn,

I enjoyed the historico-philosophical journey through the development of the concepts of it and bit, substance and patterns. While I must admit that I did not exactly understand Peirce's classification system, I still got a rough idea.

All the best,

ARmin

Dear Glenn,

I have rated you already. 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

Dear Gary,

This is a brilliant essay !

I am so pleased that at least someone here is talking about patterns, this is exactly what I am describing in my essay.

I am a real fan of John Wheeler (but also Dirac) and eventhough I am not a physicist, I really hope that you will read my essay and let me have your comments. If you like it, you can read my complete theory here.

I can't believe your rating is not higher, I have done my best to change it !

Patrick

Dr Gary Glenn Miller:

I read your essay, it is nice and enjoyable and I agree with you that we first should look back to find bases to continue to go forward I keep the last words of your essay conclusion : " Then, we have seen how the "meanings" in nature are given by feedback loops rather than by pointing to things that simply exist. Thus, we have set the stage for Pattern theory as a foundation."

I am an old physician, and I don't know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics, but after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more the so called "time" than any other. I did look backwards to find the necessary knowledge to start writing my essay.

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 in "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

Dear Sir,

An excellent essay detailing the historical perspectives in a highly readable style. We wish you could have also looked ahead. You can read our essay:

"INFORMATION HIDES IN THE GLARE OF REALITY by basudeba mishra http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1776" published on May 31.

Regards,

basudeba

WOW, I just received word they have decided to extend the deadline! The new deadline will be one week later -- Community Voting will close at 11:59 PM ET, August 7, 2013.

I guess sometimes it does pay to speak up?

Meanwhile, I wish to rate your insightful and well written essay highly but would like to run a question or two by you if I may via email before I do. What is your email address or if you prefer you can send an email response to my email address at: msm@physicsofdestiny.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,

Manuel

Dear Gary,

Interesting, deep and well written philosophical essay. I spent much time on it. I realize how useful it would be to think Pierce's three categories and Wheeler's "fourthness" in the Grothendieck's language (the dessins d'enfants).

You can have a look at Sec. 2 of my own essay to have a hint about what I mean

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

but you would need the extra litterature mentioned in my reference [4] to fully appreciate my suggestion.

While Tegmark's mathematical universe seems to me untenable, patterns are necessary for the intelligability of the world as you describe it so nicely in an historistic perspective.

Best wishes,

Michel

Dr. Miller

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.

Good luck,

Than Tin