Hello Brian

Thanks for an interesting exploration. I have rated your essay, and found it nice to connect with someone who has lived part of the experience of computer development, during its pioneer period.

In so far as Rolf Landauer showed an equivalence relation between information as bits and thermodynamics, this would imply that the essentially informational structure of my Harmony Set implies an increase in energy in the evolving world modeled by it. If you have a chance I would appreciate your looking over my essay in that context, and passing an opinion.

Best wishes

Stephen Anastasi

    Dear Chidi,

    Thanks for your comments. I agree with you that the stochastic nature should be characteristic of the observers as well as the laws. I'm not sure about and would like to find out how the stochastic variables could impact different architectural levels of computers and future computational machines. I'm looking forward to reading and understanding your work.

    Best wishes,

    Brian

    Thanks, Zoran.

    Circuit = Connectivity, Topology and Function of Information Network. Circuit design might be the link between BIT and IT.

    I am particularly interested in those circuits that their internal connections are switchable due to thermal fluctuations and/or the inputs/outputs are bidirectional. There are also those circuits where the set of possible circuit solutions may be magically influenced by its topology. I found some flavors of such circuits in the book "Connectivity and Superconductivity" edited by J. Berger and J. Rubinstein.

    The motto in the semiconductor and computer hardware industry has been "from physics to functions". In the past, computers are built from devices up and depended on better transistors with lithographic scaling advancement. It looks like device scaling is finally slowing down as we approach atomic limit. So we have to look for more innovation in the "function" part and be more creative ideas in circuit architecture and designs. I would suggest "from functions to physics" will be the new motto. I hope this incoming difficult period for the computer hardware industry will stimulate more interdisciplinary collaboration between fundamental physics and computer engineering.

    Best wishes,

    Brian

    Hi Stephen,

    Thanks for your comments. As you have noticed, in the pioneering period of computers and the information industry, we had many great scientists. The list of the names is long, Szilard, von Neumann, Shannon, Schrödinger, Brillouin, Feymann, Landaurer, and many others. I hope physicists will come back to the computer industry as it now moves beyond the era of silicon CMOS scaling.

    Best wishes,

    Brian

    Hi Brian,

    I like your essay but I don't share the idea that it is the observer who is making the laws and the laws were not always there.

    However, as a computer designer, I would want you to evaluate the possibility that discrete units of space and their emergence from nothing and annihilation to nothing can serve as Nature's bits for software programs. I attempted an amateur program for digital motion which you can look at in my essay.

    I don't also know if your "access time inequality" may be relevant to signal transmission and coding across empty space, especially as you ask a very relevant question: what will be the role of circuit design in foundational physics?

    I believe if what I conjecture is correct, circuit design will play a major role.

    Best regards,

    Akinbo

      Dear Brian, I read and rank your essay with great interest especially on Wheeler's visit to China so early. He is a real great man, I am disappointed that he did not get his Nobel Prize especially on his delayed choice experiment and others. I like your idea to try to develop " participatory chip. That would be great. By the way, if I may say my KQID theory does express that this participatory chip is possible. Please make comment and rank my essay.

      Best wishes, Leo KoGuan

        Hi Brian,

        I just read your submission and I must say that you gave a very innovative approach to the subject question. The simplified circuit structures you had in your submission made me wonder, if the universe was really a computer simulation, what kind of circuit structure would that employ, afterall, we are all P's in that universe computer simulation. Anyway, thanks for entering the contest for your very different and enlightning view points, and good luck.

        Jim Akerlund

          Dear Brian

          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 Hoang,

            Thanks for your comments. As you implied, the role circuit design is similar to free thinking, although the circuit itself has to be built in physical world.

            Best wishes,

            Brian

            Hello Akinbo,

            Thank you for your comments. Let me have a clarification. I think Wheeler's thesis "it from bit" is about a possibility in the future since observers will collectively play an ever-increasing role. My professional interest is actually on "bit from it", i.e., how to make bit more efficiently from it. The two directions are kind of orthogonal, not totally opposite. I can see Wheeler's point in the recent trend in computer industry. The industry has become more service-science oriented and the best computers in the future may be designed by "participants".

            I'm looking forward to reading your essay. It seems to be a very interesting.

            Best wishes,

            Brian

            Hi SNP,

            Thank you for your comments. I think Wheeler's "it from bit" is a fundamental thesis about an evolutional path in the future as observers collectively will play an ever-increasing role in our world. My professional focus is about "bit from it", i.e., how to make information processing more efficient from its physical representations. The two directions are kind of orthogonal, not totally opposite. However, I am surprised to see Wheeler's impact appearing in the latest trends in computer industry. The industry is getting to be more service-science oriented (for example, cloud computing) and perhaps the best computers in the not far distant future will be mostly designed by end users as "participants".

            Best wishes,

            Brian

            Hi Jim,

            Thank you for the kind words. Like the second law of thermodynamics, I would imagine that the universe circuit structure allows the maximum freedom for all participants, including the possibility to change the circuit structure, yet it still follows the principle of equality and fairness. I am looking forward to reading and providing feedbacks to your essay.

            Best wishes,

            Brian

            Dear KoGuan,

            Thanks for your comments. The computer industry is getting more service-science oriented (cloud computing as an example). Someday in the not far distant future, the finest and highly inter-connected network of machines may indeed have its laws designed by the end users or "participants".

            I have made comment on your essay with great interest and ranked it. Your essay is a classic with a style almost like John Wheeler that I used to be enlightened. Congratulations and I hope more people will have a chance to read your essay.

            Best wishes,

            Brian

            Hi Brian,

            I enjoyed your article and appreciate your remark that a hierarchical architecture has design advantages. I have suggested such an architecture (which I term "fractal") in my essay Software Cosmos.

            My focus has been on the software level rather than the hardware, but I think once we have a plausible software design for the cosmos we would be able to suggest the hardware requirements and have something a circuit designer might love to create!

            Hugh

              Hi Hugh,

              I have downloaded your essay and will read it carefully. I am very interested to find out the viewpoints from thinkers like you on the software side. I believe there are a lot of opportunities to collaborate. IT and BIT are treated currently by theorists at a rather primitive level. I think there are a lot of missing meanings and representative middle structures between the low levels and the real complex world.

              Best wishes,

              Brian

              Hi Brian,

              You wrote:

              > I think there are a lot of missing meanings and representative middle structures between the low levels and the real complex world.

              I absolutely agree with you on that. As you will see in the essay, geometric algebra provides a common language to link the theoretical side to a computational approach. Software libraries are available, but having an efficient way to perform those calculations would be very useful. There was an attempt made by Christian Perwass about a decade ago to do an FPGA implementation, but the results were mostly disappointing. I think we could do a lot better today.

              Failing that, probably the most useful low level primitives would involve handling quaternion algebra. The unit quaternions are isomorphic to the three dimensional hypersphere which has uses as an index structure, so a discrete approximation would also be very handy.

              Hugh

              Brian,

              In the context of your interesting essay on Circuit and Computer Design and the fundamentals of information, you and your readers might be interested in some of the recent developments in superconducting circuits (my own area of research) for quantum computing, see, e.g., the Wikipedia entry on Superconducting Quantum Computing. A lossless superconducting circuit is a macroscopic quantum system which can be interfaced using conventional I/O lines.

              In terms of your recollections of Prof. Wheeler, I knew Prof. Wheeler when I was an undergraduate at Princeton 40 years ago, and he was a superb lecturer. But I disagree with his assertion that information is more fundamental than matter. See my essay ( "Watching the Clock: Quantum Rotations and Relative Time" ), where I present a simple realistic picture of the microscopic world that avoids most of the conventional paradoxes, and also leads naturally to a form of general relativity.

              Alan

                • [deleted]

                • Post #22

                Hi Brian,

                Unfortunately it looks like the direct link I gave to Google Books for the FPGA Implementation paper does not work. You will have to google for "Christian Perwass" and his article "Implementation of a Clifford algebra co-processor design on a field programmable gate array" and then click on the PDF link in the results to get to it.

                Hugh

                Alan,

                I looked for your research at Google Scholar and got a big surprise. Wow, I found an older brother! I followed your path to study superconductivity with Prof. Tinkham at Harvard. I also did a postdoc to Stony Brook.

                I read your essay once and it is very interesting. I will rank and leave feedback on your board. Your New Quantum Paradigm is a brave attempt for achieving physical intuition and consistency for all of modern physics. I have to read it a few more times to have a better understanding of what seems to be a major effort on your part.

                Making theories simple used to be a trademark of Prof. Tinkham's teaching. Your essay is surely consistent with his teaching, although the scope of your study cannot be broader.

                It's my great pleasure to see you here.

                Best wishes,

                Brian

                Brian,

                I'm sorry I did not recognize your name. I am familiar with some of your earlier work, and we probably met many years ago. Thank you for your comments, including those about Prof. Tinkham and simplicity. I realize that what I am proposing is viewed as heretical, but thus far no one has been willing to point out where it is incorrect. I am hopeful that my essay will cross the threshold to be reviewed by the panel of judges, but it needs a few more good ratings before the end of July for that to be the case. Let's continue this discussion via regular email - my email address is on my essay.

                Alan