Is Bit It? by Jennifer Nielsen

Dear Jennifer,

Thanks for an interesting essay. I especially enjoyed your physical example of Gödel's theorem: "from within a GameBoy universe, the GameBoy cannot be entirely encoded and explained."

I also enjoyed your discussion of physical (thermodynamic) entropy and information (communication) entropy. ET Jaynes, the first to extensively link the two in 1957 reminds us of "...a persistent failure to distinguish between the information entropy, which is a property of any probability distribution, and the experimental entropy of thermodynamics, which is instead a property of a thermodynamic state... [Many] authors failure to distinguish between these entirely different things [leads to] proving nonsense theorems." Your observation that "there's no reason to quantify a quantity" seems original and worthwhile.

Also you mentioned that "anything you and I perceive... may be represented...". This establishes a link between perception and the physical world, while yet distinguishing between the two.

You ask, with Lee Smolin, "What is the substance of the world?" I hope you will enjoy reading my essay, where I make an attempt to answer this.

You make numerous mention of post-EPR, post-Aspect, but it is not really post-Aspect. It is post-Bell. Nothing in Aspect's experiment argues for non-locality. ALL non-locality arguments are based on Bell's inequality. If Bell made any mistake in his simplistic inequality, all of the following experiments do not prove, or even suggest, non-locality. Currently it's not fashionable to even suggest this, but it's good to keep in mind.

Michael Crichton had the right idea.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

I agree that they are similar in form, just as electric potential and gravitational potential are similar in form. But I don't think they are identical, and it seems (to me) that the Holography Principle and other ideas are based on the identity of information entropy and thermodynamic entropy. -- Edwin Eugene Klingman

Jenny, you are correct that Bell's is not the only inequality. What I meant was that, if his basic argument 'proving' non-locality had never been presented, I don't think there is anything in the data that would prove it. Nature doesn't agree with Bell, and he concludes from this that local reality is non-existent. However Bell also suggested that what is proved is a lack of imagination.

Good luck in the contest and in your career.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Jennifer,

Hi. First off, you're a very good, fun writer. After you become a famous physicist, I think you could make a second career in writing physics books for the lay person, like Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, etc. have. My only other comments are:

1. In regard to the quote "Physicists like to say that all science is either physics or stamp

collecting", because I'm a biochemist/cell biologist, I resemble that comment! :-) This next part isn't meant in a critical way but only as an observation and a "Hey, biochemists are scientists, too"-type, rah, rah attitude. Given that I don't do physics, I can't say for sure, but from what I read, I do think physicists and mathematicians could learn some stuff from biochemistry in that:

A. We have to think in terms of physical mechanisms in which molecules and things are actually moving and doing stuff. Unfortunately, modern physicists seem to focus so much on the math that they don't really care about explaining phenomena in physical, "mechanical" terms. For instance, why does a negatively charged thing attract a positively charged thing. We can describe it mathematically, but what is the mechanism that pushes/pulls these two things together. Exchanging photons between them doesn't seem to explain anything to me. If you and I throw a ball to each other, we don't necessarily move closer or farther apart.

B. We have to think about possible artifacts interfering with experiments. Taking things out of the natural, physiological system can very often alter the results compared to what is obtained within that system. Many things in math and physics seem to ignore this possibility. Also, I assume physicists have positive and negative controls for experiments? We have to do this kind of thing for every experiment.

C. Many emergent phenomena may be ultimately derivable from physics, but I'm guessing it's faster to do biological experiments to figure out how a cell works than to derive the workings from electrons, protons, math, etc.

2. My view is that whether the universe is made of its or quanglements, both of these are existent entities. Maybe, faster progress would be made in answering questions like Smolin's "what matter really is" and "why is there something rather than nothing?" if we argued less about what to call these fundamental existent entities and worked more on how such an entity might produce the universe we live in. That's what I try to do in my essay and at my website:

sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite

Anyways, I think yours was a very good essay and I look forward to seeing your name in a future newspaper article about winning the Nobel Prize! Good luck!

Roger Granet

Jenny,

You actually seem like a nice, normal physicist! :-) Actually, I shouldn't talk; there are lots of very nice, but pretty weird chemists and biochemists. But, the nice part is what counts, I guess!

I know what you mean about running around asking what is charge and what is mass. It took me many years to understand how ATP actually provides energy to things in the cell and to visualize things in terms of molecules moving around and bouncing into each other. That's been real helpful for me, at least, in trying to understand all this stuff. But, there's a long way to go! Your punk rock astrophysicist prof. was probably right!

I agree that taking on being and "isness" is pretty hard, but I don't think it's insoluble. I think humans can figure it out, but we can't give up just because it seems hard. It's like that famous quote about the surest way to success is to try just one more time. If you're really bored sometime, my own views on this are at my last FQXi essay (analog vs. digital) and at my website at:

sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite (3rd link down for the why something rather than nothing stuff).

If you've eaten your carrots, and your eyesight is good, my current essay is at:

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

Unfortunately, it came out as real small print even though it looked fine when I was typing it on my computer. But, I used the computer's text editor so that's probably why. Any comments you have would be great!

I bet you'll be a great physicist because you can already see why it's worthwhile trying to understand physical mechanisms. You're already way beyond many of the full professors on that! See you!

Roger

One of the better essays I have read, and rated as such. Thanks.

Could you kindly rate mine please, and a opinion would be appreciated.

Jenny, I have not rated you yet, but agree it is a good essay. For some reason, a troll is giving everyone low scores when they are posted. This did not happen in previous essays. But I notice that, instead of your name, Brendan Foster's name shows up as "Created by". Also, you do not show up in your comments above as 'Author' [look at author's comments on other pages.] Brendan also shows above your Abstract, where your name should show. So I would email Brendan Foster, who is an FQXi administrator, to ask what the problem is. If you got an acceptance email, it probably has an address to start with.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Jennifer.

I enjoyed reading your essay because I felt you have an intuitive dissatisfaction with the fundamentals of physics. Welcome to the club. As an academic you have the advantages of knowing the subject and the math in depth, but the disadvantage is that you are expected by professors and colleagues, to 'toe the line' of accepted theory - very basic things that are now accepted without question. Freewheelers like me can dare to question these fundamentals openly not being accountable to the system.

You said "quanglement implies something more, a connection that doesn't rely on codified information at all". In my current essay I concluded that It=Qubit. For me these were not just words but are based on my work-in-progress Beautiful Universe Theory also found here. The theory proposes a universal lattice made up of qubit-like nodes exchanging angular momentum causally and locally to describe all of physics. These nodes may well be the 'something more" you mentioned?

With all best wishes for your success

Vladimir

Dear Jennifer,

I agree with what Roger says. Excellent style, charisma and content. You've done a great job with quanglement and I like that you question the fundamental nature of the Universe with such passion and humour. I am working on a cosmogony theory away from the essay, that I think ought to (partly) unify the four forces of nature. It relates the mass of the proton, neutron and electron to 99.99999% of prediction and is testable given a suitable computer simulation. Anyway, the offshoot of this is may essay which only touches upon my main theory via simplexes. I'd be grateful if such a rising star could take a look at it. I'd love to collaborate with somebody like you in future!

All the very best,

Antony

Ms. Nielsen,

I thought your essay was utterly fascinating. It was written in such a clear expository fashion, this old reader who knows nothing about physics or video games actually understood every one of the points you were making. You were not trying to make points. Your arguments looked solid to me, and your poetic ending was sublime.

Thank you for submitting your essay.

Perhaps you might have to settle for voting in the general community box.

Joe

Thanks Jennifer,

I very much look forward to that and further discussing your work

Cheers,

Antony :)

Dear Jennifer,

I too think it's very cool that we can say all that in binary lol. Good to see yet another woman on board -- and I hope you won't mind me burdening you with certain responsibility by pointing out that out of the handful of us taking part this year in this traditionally male-dominated discussion, you're the most qualified. I loved how you summarized our typical female sensibility and pragmatism in the concluding quote from Michael Crichton. Thanks for all good laughs! I dare say that I too have a few laughs in my essay. I invite you to read and comment on it :)