Is Bit It? by Jennifer Nielsen

Jennifer Nielsen

I certainly will rate yours (and all the kind people who have commented on my essay) when I get a rating code! For some reason still awaiting mine.

Cheers!

Jenny

Edwin Klingman

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

Vladimir Tamari

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

Jennifer Nielsen

Dunno if I'd classify it as a dissatisfaction with the foundations of physics but I have a dissatisfaction with considering any explanation (or at the very least any of our current explanations) final. I came to science because I am big on empiricism (somewhat obviously, I guess) but I do think science is about exploring reality on a fundamental level, and I appreciate that FQXi is encouraging this side of the "ballgame" so to speak. Obviously more immediately practical areas will garner more funds, but paradigm shifts become inevitable after lots of information is gathered and I think formalizing how people are processing all the new information through essays is extremely important and can lead to "aha" and (heheh) "Eureka!" moments.

I will check out your essay and am interested in your concept of a "something more." While I took a relativist approach in the end of my essay (I don't literally think that photons and electrons are mythical as Crichton indicated, although I do think that they are essentially models not the deepest reality), I believe that we are going to get closer to understanding it in the near future. It's been a while since the last major shift in understanding (relativity & quantum mechanics). I do suspect people who think about it deeply are going to be rewarded again soon.

Cheers...

Jenny

Vladimir Tamari

Jennifer - grateful as we are for fqxi to give opportunity for potentially left-of-field ideas to be heard I think they do not go far enough - they are too worried about supporting the wrong horse. That the fundamentals need to be challenged is their whole raison d'etre but they have shown no willingness to support researchers like Eric Reiter's unquantum work who has experimentally proven that the point photon concept is wrong.

You said "It's been a while since the last major shift in understanding (relativity & quantum mechanics). I do suspect people who think about it deeply are going to be rewarded again soon." Yaaaaay!! Its been some 30 years! I think you have not tried to challenge one of those foundational issues, or even a simple theory about why diffraction occurs, to say that! The current impasse is becoming obvious to more and more people, though, so you may be right after all.

See My last year's "Fix Physics!" essay for an outline of what I think should be done.

BTW What is the difference between an "Aha!" and a "Eureka!" moment? The former elicits responses like "well, well!" - the latter "A towel! A towel!"

Vladimir

Antony Ryan

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

Jennifer Nielsen

Thank you Antony -- I greatly appreciate your comments!

I'll check out your essay and be happy to chat more about your theory.

Cheers,

Jennifer Nielsen

Antony Ryan

Thanks Jennifer,

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

Cheers,

Antony :)

Jennifer Nielsen

I think it's important to realize that an essay isn't going to come to the final conclusions about the universe but I am hoping that properly defining "it" and "bit" and "Information" and "quanglement" may help us get started on something more final than what we have now!

Thanks for your comments. I just received my voting code and am going to start reading and commenting on others' papers.

Cheers and good luck.

Joe Fisher

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

Jennifer Nielsen

Joe,

Thanks so much for your comments -- I'm delighted that you found it understandable. I teach physics in the summers to incoming freshman pre-medical students, and my deepest hope is that some of them leave having internalized the scientific method and made it their own. To me the power of science is that any person can use the scientific method to make discoveries for themselves once it is taught to them, and is thus one of the most empowering approaches to participating in "reality" (whatever that is). So science, to me, is a universal thing, not something that should be reserved to a few people who have studied intense mathematics or are going for PhD's. :) I like that FQXi is opening the playing field and potentially rewarding people who give deep thought to these things regardless of whether science is their profession or not.

Will browse for your essay, or you can link it to me if you have written one! Otherwise (if you are just a reader) kudos for reading and learning with us and submit next time :D

Jenny

Joe Fisher

Jenny,

My essay is called BITTERS. I do hope you can find a bit of extra time to comment on it.

Joe

Joe Fisher

Jenny,

I have just checked my essay and I was delighted that you did leave a comment.

Because I believe that the real Universe consists of unique, once, there are no measurements in it.

Thanks again,

Joe

M. Vasilyeva

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 :)

Jennifer Nielsen

Laughter is the best medicine for all of us, sometimes especially physicists! :D

I will read your essay soon. Excited to finally have a community code so I can take part in the ratings etc!

I hardly feel the most qualified but I have at the very least put in a lot of (sometimes awkward) thought! :D

Glad to see there are other "gggrrls" in here-- high five and mega kudos!

^_^

Cheers!

Jenny

Jennifer Nielsen

Another possible point I thought of later is that Aspect and Wheeler were contemporaries ^_^ But I do think it took a while before the result of the Aspect experiment and the others like it thereafter were generally accepted (correctly or incorrectly) as a hard-to-dispute win for non-locality.

It's definitely true that we need more physicists with imagination; if somebody could reinterpret Bell's logic that would be quite a development.

Cheers and good luck -- I have my code now so I will be reading and rating :) I'm excited to be part of the community.

Best of luck!

Jenny

Ralph Walker III

Hi Jennifer,

Very cool essay! You made several excellent points and not once did I become dizzy with words I couldn't pronounce or mathematical symbols I've never seen before. (AND, you have a sense of humor . . . so . . . are you really a physicist ? ? ?) If you teach half as well as you write, then your students are indeed, very fortunate. Two pho-thumbs up from me on your essay.

Would you also consider reading mine? I was deeply struck by your comments about, "the power of science is that any person can use the scientific method to make discoveries for themselves once it is taught to them, and is thus one of the most empowering approaches to participating in "reality" (whatever that is). So science, to me, is a universal thing, not something that should be reserved to a few people who have studied intense mathematics or are going for PhD's. :)"

I'm beginning to wonder if stating my author credentials as simply, "a non-specialist member of the general public" was a mistake; so far, I've not even had a response to questions and comments I've made on other people's essays. (Although I still think that mentioning I'm a lawyer would have been far worse . . .)

Here's the link to my essay (and I promise I won't sue, or tell anyone if you read it.)

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1910

Best to you,

Ralph

Jennifer Nielsen

Thank you, Ralph! Don't worry about your bio -- the "III" after your name was enough to convince me you were someone important ;)

I will definitely take a look at your paper, and thank you for commenting (and forgiving my early AM facetiousness!)

I am glad that my comment stood out to you and I appreciate that you enjoyed my essay; I certainly had a lot of fun with it myself after I began writing it, despite much staring at a blank computer screen with a more blank expression and even more blank mind before anything finally came out.... :P

My dad is also a barrister--you guys deal with the law, this is natural law -- close enough, right? :)

*clicking paper now* Good luck in the contest !

Ralph Walker III

Well no wonder you're so brilliant - you're Dad is a lawyer!!

Whew . . . I understand the 'blank' expressions, blank mind, etc. If anyone had taken a picture of me the first couple of days after I 'tried' to begin writing, they might have mistaken me for 'a cow straddling a railroad track staring at an oncoming train' . . .

Again, I really enjoyed your essay. If you are so inclined, I would enjoy keeping in touch. (If nothing else, I can whine about the cost of having 2 sons and a daughter in college at the same time . . .)

Best,

Ralph

Jennifer Nielsen

My email is JLNielsen@KU.edu and like most of the "youth" I'm on all too often logged in on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/JennyLN. I run a little physics forum/group on there known as "Jenny's Think Tank and Holistic Comedy Bar" (the "holistic" being a reference to Doug Adams book, "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"). Anyone who likes is quite welcome to saunter over there :)

Cheers and thanks for the comments!

Jenny

Jennifer Nielsen

Heh, this is my editing face:

Meme - Editing Face

Michel Planat

Dear Jennifer,

Nicely written and deep.

But I don't see 'quanglement' as a primary concept.

If one refers to non-locality, one can violate GHSH inequality without entanglement as explicitely shown in in Sec. 3.1 of my essay.

Anyway, there are a lot of potential quantum structures to deal with that

can lead to quantum Gameboys and further FQXi's.

Have a nice not too binary day.

Michel

Jennifer Nielsen

If you can prove that CHSH can be violated without entanglement that is quite an accomplishment! Kudos for trying and having the confidence you succeeded -- good luck in the contest. I'll study your proof. Would like to know what the "potential quantum structures to deal with that" refer to, perhaps a perusal of your essay will help.

Cheers and take care,

Jennifer

Michel Planat

Dear Jennifer,

The conventional proof of CHSH is given in Sec. 3.1 of the essay. It applies equally well to all squares of four n-qubit observables. The example provided is without entanglement. A step further you get the famous Mermin's square of Fig. 3a that contains 9 such CHSH proofs, and so on. As there are 10 such Mermin's square, there are 9x10=90 distinct two-qubit CHSH proofs. There are 30240 CHSH proofs with thre qubits, this number has to do with the 12096 3QB pentagrams, each of them containing 15 CHSH proofs, corresponding to the edges of the Petersen graph. The 15 CHSH proofs (that are 1x1 squares can be seen at the edges of the line graph of the Petersen graph, not shown in the essay).

The significant step in the essay is being able to see the geometries (Fano planes, Mermin's squares and so on) as being controlled by the dessins d'enfants). Don't refrain to ask me the questions you like when you study the paper.

Thank you again for your interesting essay.

Best wishes,

Michel

Jennifer Nielsen

Thanks Michel! Will check it out. Been really busy past week but will try to spend some more time in here reading, learning and evaluating! Good luck in the contest!

Jennifer Nielsen

You know, it would be cool if our names auto-linked to our essays when we posted :) Would make it a lot easier to click and read all of your papers. (But I am searching through the list when FQXi loads in...it's been a bit splotchy probably because so many people are logged in...)

Michel Planat

Sorry about that. The link to my essay is here

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

Michel

Edwin Klingman

Hi Jenny,

It *is* an exciting community. There are academics here, and also those who have been out of academia for long enough to have escaped the very real constraints that apply. For example, a surprising number of essayists have dealt with the fact that 'meaning', 'knowledge', 'awareness' and other aspects related to information inherently imply consciousness. Very few academics will touch this topic, at least not physicists.

You have read my essay and have some idea of my built-in bias, which is that numbers and 'bits' are derived from physical reality, not the other way around.

Wang Xiong's treatment of information as symmetry breaking, Mark Feeley's treatment of probability in QM, McHarris' essay on non-linearity, Janzen's treatment of time and relativity, Gordon's analysis of Bell's inequality and Vishwakarma's essay on the stress-energy tensor are examples of why FQXi is a great place! There are many, many more.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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