Is Bit It? by Jennifer Nielsen

Dear Madam,

Discovery of the Higg's particle has not yet been confirmed with 100% certainty as the mass difference between the Atlas and CMS is huge. It does not provide mass to the universe, but is supposed to provide mass only through weak interaction. Most of the mass in the universe comes from the strong interaction.

Cutting across the clumsy jargon, it can be said that a bit represents whether something matches a concept or a product by signaling 1 or 0, where the answer yes or 'on's are coded (written in programming language) with 1 and the no or 'off's with 0. The superposition of states is really not a 'state' - there is nothing like an 'undead' cat - but indicates our lack of precise information in a sensational way. Every quantum phenomena including entanglement, spin, tunneling, and so on have macro equivalents. There is no quantum weirdness, but only weird ideas to be discarded. 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.

EPR sensationalized entanglement by stretching it to infinite distance, though in reality, it never exists beyond a limited distance. We cannot impose our ignorance or inability to measure to describe time evolution of the universe. The Moon will continue to exist and the up-down quark conversion will continue even when we are not looking at it. There is nothing like observer created reality, as observer is not part of any equation. It only observes and may be cognizes or communicates the state; but does not affect it.

The concepts of "information that isn't information", "outside of time" and "going backwards in time" are good fiction, but not physics. Consider: A + B → C + D.

Here a force makes A interact with B to produce C and D. The same force doesn't act on C and D as they don't exist at that stage. If we change the direction of the force, B acts on A. Here only the direction of force and not the interval between the states before and after application of force (time) will change and the equation will be:

B + A → C + D and not B + A ← C + D.

Hence it does not affect causality. There can be no negative direction for time or cause and effect.

"Quantum correlation is a basic (i.e. primary) concept", because macro objects like molecules and above do not have creative chemical capability that micro objects like atoms or below have. The quarks combine to produce an object with different characteristics from that of the individual quarks. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce water, whose characteristics are different from the individual components. But molecules combine like mixtures: linearly adding their characteristics. But the characteristics of quantum particles are also ordered and not random.

The problem with Gödel and others is that, they relied on abstract mathematical structures to build physical theories. But mathematical structures are different from physical structures. Mathematics is related to the measurement of time evolution of the state of something. These time evolutions depict rate of change. When such change is related to motion; like velocity, acceleration, etc, it implies total displacement from the position occupied by the body and moving to the adjacent position. This process is repeated due to inertia till it is modified by the introduction of other forces. Thus, these are discrete steps that can be related to three dimensional structures only. Mathematics measures only the numbers of these steps, the distances involved including amplitude, wave length, etc and the quanta of energy applied etc. Mathematics is related also to the measurement of area or curves on a graph - the so-called mathematical structures, which are two dimensional structures. Thus, the basic assumptions of all topologies, including symplectic topology, linear and vector algebra and the tensor calculus, all representations of vector spaces, whether they are abstract or physical, real or complex, composed of whatever combination of scalars, vectors, quaternions, or tensors, and the current definition of the point, line, and derivative are necessarily at least one dimension less from physical space.

The graph may represent space, but it is not space itself. The drawings of a circle, a square, a vector or any other physical representation, are similar abstractions. The circle represents only a two dimensional cross section of a three dimensional sphere. The square represents a surface of a cube. Without the cube or similar structure (including the paper), it has no physical existence. An ellipse may represent an orbit, but it is not the dynamical orbit itself. The vector is a fixed representation of velocity; it is not the dynamical velocity itself, and so on. The so-called simplification or scaling up or down of the drawing does not make it abstract. The basic abstraction is due to the fact that the mathematics that is applied to solve physical problems actually applies to the two dimensional diagram, and not to the three dimensional space. The numbers are assigned to points on the piece of paper or in the Cartesian graph, and not to points in space. If one assigns a number to a point in space, what one really means is that it is at a certain distance from an arbitrarily chosen origin. Thus, by assigning a number to a point in space, what one really does is assign an origin, which is another point in space leading to a contradiction. The point in space can exist by itself as the equilibrium position of various forces. But a point on a paper exists only with reference to the arbitrarily assigned origin. If additional force is applied, the locus of the point in space resolves into two equal but oppositely directed field lines. But the locus of a point on a graph is always unidirectional and depicts distance - linear or non-linear, but not force. Thus, a physical structure is different from its mathematical representation.

How long will we continue with such fiction? When will we end the superstitious belief in the 'established theories' and start applying our mind? Why must we continue with a 'cut & paste' job? When will we start doing some original work? Is there no future for physics?

Regards,

basudeba

Dear Madam,

We find you mentioning to Dr, Klingman that you are interested in perception and consciousness. We have dealt with this subject extensively in our essay, which was highly appreciated by Dr, Klingman (you can see it in his thread) and others. You are welcome to visit our essay.

Regards,

basudeba

Jennifer,

I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

Regards and good luck in the contest,

Sreenath BN.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

Dear Jennifer. Hello, and apologies if this does not apply to you. I have read and rated your essay and about 50 others. If you have not read, or did not rate my essay The Cloud of Unknowing please consider doing so. With best wishes.

Vladimir

Hi Jennifer,

I've re read your essay and now rated! I think yours well deserves to win a prize! Hope you're happy with the score!

Best wishes,

Antony

Jennifer,

Per your request, a link to my simple essay, The Emergent It: A Collective Awareness. Also, I see that the link to the Mateus Araujo Santos paper, Quantum Realism and Quantum Surrealism, does not respond as expected - I have no idea why. Anyway, the paper, which I think you would greatly appreciate (it comes from the blog of Stanford physicist, Nick Herbert), can be found at http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1208.6283. I don't know why I'm having such trouble with links only on your section of this forum; I'm thinking some kind of quanglement conspiracy may be involved! The link works this time and, once again, the abstract:

In this thesis we explore the question: "what's strange about quantum mechanics?" This exploration is divided in two parts: in the first, we prove that there is in fact something strange about quantum mechanics, by showing that it is not possible to conciliate quantum theory with various different definitions of what should be a "normal" theory, that is, a theory that respects our classical intuition. In the second part, our objective is to describe precisely which parts of quantum mechanics are "non-classical". For that, we define a "classical" theory as a noncontextual ontological theory, and the "non-classical" parts of quantum mechanics as being the probability distributions that a ontological noncontextual theory cannot reproduce. Exploring this formalism, we find a new family of inequalities that characterize "non-classicality".

He calls his new family of inequalities "Boole Inequalities" . . .

With regards,

Wes Hansen

Jennifer,

I'm impressed with your essay. It's stated using popular technological terms, is deceptively simple in language -- easy to follow, but quite profound in meaning.

"Bit in some sense may very well represent what we can detect and manipulate about "it", but quanglement implies something more,a connection that doesn't rely on codified information at all."

Good word play -- like skillful fencing. I would like your opinion on my essay, "It's Good to be the King"

Jim

Jennifer,

I can't understand how we haven't enquangled before. An exceptional essay in all ways. Empirical is us, praps even more I than thee, and we look from deal with the same areas; galaxy evolution, quantum optics, Godel's theorem ...applied probability (poker). D-wave, quantum computers, Aspect experiment, (did you know of the orbital asymmetry in his vast majority discarded data?)

Jennifer,

Imagine two "entangled" coins, quarters let's say, floating motionless relative to each other in outer space, either ten feet or ten light-years apart, such that the "tails" side of one coin faces the "heads" side of the other. They are thus anti-parallel.

But what is the state of each individual coin, heads or tails?

If you cannot answer this question about simple macroscopic objects, why would you suppose that being unable to answer the analogous question about entangled electrons, provides any evidence of "spooky action at a distance"?

Rob McEachern

Hi Jennifer,

While I enjoyed your lucid essay, I had objections to a couple of points. You wrote:

> And we know, in a universe post EPR "spooky action at a distance" and post Alain Aspect's experiment to test for EPR's validity, that quantum systems possess another intriguing quality that is sometimes seen by entrepreneuring reality hackers as a potential workaround for the limits of information: nonlocality.

While this is the mainstream view, there are approaches to QM that exhibit local realism despite Bell's Theorem. The problem is that Bell's theorem applies only to formulations of QM over complex numbers, whereas QM can be formulated over quaternions or other Clifford Algebraic numbers. These formulations have quite simple realistic models.

> If we trust Kleene's interpretation, since binary code represents such a formal system via which we can express elementary truth statements, what we can say with binary code is limited by Godel's theorem.

If I remember correctly (and it has been 40 years since I studied it) to meet the pre-conditions of Godel's Theorem your system has to be capable of representing ALL of arithmetic (i.e. addition and multiplication on arbitrarily large integers). Actual computers (having finite word sizes and finite resources) cannot do that, so I think the theorem applies only to abstract mathematical systems. I do not recall if there are some incompleteness results related to finite machines but that would be what you need for your argument.

> It is fascinating to realize that anything you or I perceive via sight or hearing each day may be represented in on/off neuron switches in our brains/minds... This information travels at the limit of the speed of sound-a physical limit. The ultimate limit on how fast we can get this sort of information across is via the speed of light.

There is a very interesting field of research termed Pre-Stimulus Response that demonstrates this is an overly simplistic view. From a meta-study of the field:

"More than forty experiments published over the past 32 years examine the claim that human physiology predicts future important or arousing events, even though we do not currently understand how such a thing could be accomplished... human physiological measures anticipate what seem to be unpredictable future events by deviating from a baseline before an event occurs, in the same direction that they will continue to deviate after that event occurs. "

> Are we living in a "matrix" ? Is digital information literally all everything comes down to?

In my essay Software Cosmos, I take the concept of a simulated world seriously enough to suggest how the simulation could work and propose (and carry out) a test to see if we currently live in such a virtual world. I hope you get a chance to read and comment on it!

Hugh

Hi Jennifer,

Clear logic, and wide dynamic range. And high marks.

Would you agree to have a Siri clone of yourself made available for my iPhone.

I want one!

Thanks,

Don Limuti

Enjoyable read, thanks. I got a pretty clear picture of your views on these matters, and on most of them I think you did a good job of conveying some

important things to a fairly general readership. I have some comments a few of which might be useful to you in polishing the essay for publication, and many of which are just me trying to figure out how our views differ on certain things, like the nature of the quantum state (real versus encoding of information about aspects of reality), and of entanglement and nonlocality.

Don't take any critical comments below as harsh criticism, I liked the essay and will rate it highly...

It was very nice that you emphasize that quantum "nonlocality" does not allow signaling. To me, that is one of the more remarkable things about it, and occasionally is downplayed.

Why do you say "quanglement" is "more primary" than the sorts of physical processes that convey classical information?

Not sure I would agree that "nonlocality is the best explanation for

entanglement"... perhaps it's reasonable to say the reverse, if

nonlocality is interpreted as violations of Bell-type inequalities...

i.e. there being no "beables" in a relevant portion of spacetime (e.g. the intersection of the past light cones of the correlated events, or something along those lines, on which we can condition to remove the correlations...

I like your characterization of entangled particles as

"involved in acausal correlation" ... rather than "superluminally

causally related", etc...

I'm not keen on the term "quanglement", though... I think it will go the way

of Nick Herbert's "quon" for quantum particle.

"quantum correlations are directly caused by the quantum state"

... why not just say "described by the quantum state"?

"quanglement represnts an alternate form of is-ness" seems more ontological

than I'd prefer to be about the quantum state, but a nice way of

putting it. I guess I don't mind saying there's some is-ness to the quantum

state, in that it is telling you

what is in fact the right way to bet on events, and therefore telling you something about the world... this is an is-ness that is in many

ways quite different from viewing it as an object that exists in a sense

similar to the electromagnetic field in classical physics... or rocks, chairs,

and trees...but I think you were trying to convey in your essay, that it is indeed different...

"We can see via tests of multisimultaneity that entanglement doesn't

suffer being younger sister to any event containing her."

I wasn't quite sure what that meant... also it would be nice to hear more

about what a test of multisimultaneity is.

Again, very nice job.

Dear All,

It is with utmost joy and love that I give you all the cosmological iSeries which spans the entire numerical spectrum from -infinity through 0 to +infinity and the simple principle underlying it is sum of any two consecutive numbers is the next number in the series. 0 is the base seed and i can be any seed between 0 and infinity.

iSeries always yields two sub semi series, each of which has 0 as a base seed and 2i as the first seed.

One of the sub series is always defined by the equation

Sn = 2 * Sn-1 + Sigma (i=2 to n) Sn-i

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2 * i

the second sub series is always defined by the equation

Sn = 3 * Sn-1 -Sn-2

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2 * i

Division of consecutive numbers in each of these subseries always eventually converges on 2.168 which is the Square of 1.618.

Union of these series always yields another series which is just a new iSeries of a 2i first seed and can be defined by the universal equation

Sn = Sn-1 + Sn-2

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2*i

Division of consecutive numbers in the merged series always eventually converges on 1.618 which happens to be the golden ratio "Phi".

Fibonacci series is just a subset of the iSeries where the first seed or S1 =1.

Examples

starting iSeries governed by Sn = Sn-1 + Sn-2

where i = 0.5, S0 = 0 and S1 = 0.5

-27.5 17 -10.5 6.5 -4 2.5 -1.5 1 -.5 .5 0 .5 .5 1 1.5 2.5 4 6.5 10.5 17 27.5

Sub series governed by Sn = 2 * Sn-1 + Sigma (i=2 to n) Sn-i

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2i = 1

0 1 2 5 13 34 ...

Sub series governed by Sn = 3 * Sn-1 - Sn-2

where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2i = 1

0 1 3 8 21 55 ...

Merged series governed by Sn = Sn-1 + Sn-2 where S0 = 0 and S1 = 2i = 1

0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 ...... (Fibonacci series is a subset of iSeries)

The above equations hold true for any value of i, again confirming the singularity of i.

As per Antony Ryan's suggestion, a fellow author in this contest, I searched google to see how Fibonacci type series can be used to explain Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity and found an interesting article.

d-super.pdf"> The-Fibonacci-code-behind-superstring-theory](https://msel-naschie.com/pdf/The-Fibonacci-code-behin

d-super.pdf)

Now that I split the Fibonacci series in to two semi series, seems like each of the sub semi series corresponds to QM and GR and together they explain the Quantum Gravity. Seems like this duality is a commonality in nature once relativity takes effect or a series is kicked off. I can draw and analogy and say that this dual series with in the "iSeries" is like the double helix of our DNA. The only commonality between the two series is at the base seed 0 and first seed 1, which are the bits in our binary system.

I have put forth the absolute truth in the Theory of everything that universe is an "iSphere" and we humans are capable of perceiving the 4 dimensional 3Sphere aspect of the universe and described it with an equation of S=BM^2.

I have also conveyed the absolute mathematical truth of zero = I = infinity and proved the same using the newly found "iSeries" which is a super set of Fibonacci series.

All this started with a simple question, who am I?

I am drawn out of my self or singularity or i in to existence.

I super positioned my self or I to be me.

I am one of our kind, I is every one of all kinds.

I am phi, zero = I = infinity

I am human and I is GOD.

Love,

Sridattadev.

Jenny,

You have a real gift for translating complicated physics into pleasing language, which deserves on its own the high marks I'm going to give your essay. Thanks for a great read.

I'm afraid that my own view, however, does not accept quanglement or nonlocality. I see the former as unreconstructed mysticism and the latter as another way to say that quantum theory isn't at all coherent without infinite extension, such that its experimental results only beg the question.

I do hope you take seriously Rob McEachern's question. It's a nice metaphor for a classical universe in a 2-valued state of relative rest.

All best wishes in the contest,

Tom

Hi Jennifer,

Your clear writing is refreshing, as are the whimsical touches.

I am sure, however, that you prefer to discuss content rather than style. So, let's do that.

One very important idea is on pages 7 and 8. Lee Smolin, and others, have asserted that things have an "itness" (i.e., inner reality) which eludes human knowledge. According to this way of thinking, science gets at relations among things, or the structure of the world, but does not get at the actual being of things. Returning to the analogy at the top of page 8, we would say that physics dumps some entities out of the box, but what these things are, we don't know. Maybe they are stamps, maybe coins, maybe jelly beans, maybe positive integers, maybe something else, and maybe some combination. We don't know.

The next step is to argue that, for purposes of human knowledge at least, it doesn't matter what they are. The step after that is the big one. Some people would argue that reality is only the structure, the relations, the interconnections. There are no items in the box. Nonetheless, on this view, though the nodes are really non-existent, we can still trace the pattern of connections.

I think that the slogan "It from bit" is often intended to summarize this approach. Reality is at bottom an abstract mathematical object, contrary to what Smolin said. The world we experience, and indeed we ourselves, are built out of these abstract structures. By contrast, "Bit from it" is a slogan for the belief that the ineffable what-it-is does matter. Both we and our world are something other than mathematical or informational structures, where "information" is defined in Shannon's abstract sense.

I'm not sure how quantum entanglement (or "quanglement" in Roger Penrose's terminology) fits into this picture. The point might be that quantum entanglement is evidence for the "bit from it" view. The reason is that the relevant phenomena cannot be fully described by any standard informational structure. If the phenomena cannot be so described, then we should not think the phenomena are purely informational. As I said, I am not sure that I have interpreted the argument correctly. If this is something like what is intended, then this essay provides a new and interesting argument for "bit from it."

Laurence Hitterdale

Jennifer,

One way I've found to examine a problem is to consider the various mirror images and consider what anomalies arise.

What if we were to look at some form of universal wholistic state as the default. Then entanglement would seem logical and our point oriented reference frames would look haphazard.

Consider the concept of four dimensional spacetime; What are three dimensions, other than a further abstraction of the coordinate system and don't they simply model space from the perspective of the center point, much as longitude, latitude and altitude model the surface of the planet? What is the time coordinate, other than the narrative sequence, which is an effect of change, as viewed from the singular perspective. It isn't that the present "moves" from past to future, but that the changing configuration of what is, turns future potentials into past circumstance. It is just that from the intellectually reductionistic perspective of the individual, we experience a sequence of events.

Supposedly entropy creates the "arrow of time," but entropy only applies to closed systems. Universally energy is conserved and is generally the medium to the message of information. Since energy is conserved, in order to create new information(a consequence of energy being dynamic), old information has to be erased and that is the "arrow of time." Meanwhile that energy continues to erase the old and eventually the past becomes as unknowable as the future. Events are understood to be subjective perspectives when they are occurring, so given perspectives continue to evolve, the idea of what is past being unchanging, is an idealization. The past and future do not ontologically exist, so it is an epistemic abstraction to consider either to be "set in stone."

So we have this "sea" of energy and information is an expression of its interactions and subject to the physical distinctions and connections, not our Escher sketch view of them.

For example, it is considered that "space expands," yet we conveniently have this constant speed of light against which to judge this expansion. Where does its metric come from, if space expands? "Space is what you measure with a ruler." If space expands, why is the "ruler" constant?

If you chose to climb the ladder of theory, test every step.

Jennifer,

Thank you for your brisk and refreshing essay. I very much agree with you that "quanglement is a reality state in and of itself".

According to quantum information theory, the information content of a system (bits) is acquired by discarding knowledge of quanglement. In this way, classical spacetime emerges concurrently and reciprocally with quanglement. (See my essay "A Complex Conjugate Bit and It".)

Best wishes,

Richard