Emergence by Antony Garrett Lisi

Dear Garrett, this beautiful text would make a great preface for a collection of more technical papers on different emergent phenomena. For the purpose of this contest I think it would have benefited from a more detailed discussion on how goal-oriented behavior fits into this general scheme of emergence. But I like your essay nevertheless. Cheers, Stefan

Dear Garrett,

I enjoyed reading your essay, which is well written and contains good arguments in favor of reductionism.

I consider reductionism should be the default position, and give up only when it is clear that it won't work. In my essay I discuss some possible limitations of reductionism, and I would welcome your critical view on these.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

The Tablet of the Metalaw

Dear Antony,

What a beautifully written essay! You caught the natural power of emergence in an almost poetic manner. However, science focuses on phenomena that can be mathematically modeled. This tendency has resulted in blind-spots when addressing an understanding of emergency. Within this area of interest there exists much more mystery. It can be beauty itself, but there exist unknowns too. I don't feel that in your essay. Thank you, Graham

PS. Excellent last sentence... a nod to 'elephants'.

Dear Antony Garret Lisi

I invite you and every physicist to read my work "TIME ORIGIN,DEFINITION AND EMPIRICAL MEANING FOR PHYSICISTS, Héctor Daniel Gianni ,I'm not a physicist.

How people interested in "Time" could feel about related things to the subject.

1) Intellectuals interested in Time issues usually have a nice and creative wander for the unknown.

2) They usually enjoy this wander of their searches around it.

3) For millenniums this wander has been shared by a lot of creative people around the world.

4) What if suddenly, something considered quasi impossible to be found or discovered such as "Time" definition and experimental meaning confronts them?

5) Their reaction would be like, something unbelievable,... a kind of disappointment, probably interpreted as a loss of wander.....

6) ....worst than that, if we say that what was found or discovered wasn't a viable theory, but a proved fact.

7) Then it would become offensive to be part of the millenary problem solution, instead of being a reason for happiness and satisfaction.

8) The reader approach to the news would be paradoxically adverse.

9) Instead, I think it should be a nice welcome to discovery, to be received with opened arms and considered to be read with full attention.

11)Time "existence" is exclusive as a "measuring system", its physical existence can't be proved by science, as the "time system" is. Experimentally "time" is "movement", we can prove that, showing that with clocks we measure "constant and uniform" movement and not "the so called Time".

12)The original "time manuscript" has 23 pages, my manuscript in this contest has only 9 pages.

I share this brief with people interested in "time" and with physicists who have been in sore need of this issue for the last 50 or 60 years.

Héctor

Dear Antony,

I esmete hight the perfection, accuracy and brevity of your thoughts in the essay.

You are absolutely right «Our fates are not guided by mystical energies or the motions of the planets against the stars.»

In my essay , is shown that if you do not use the mystical properties of matter and fields, then there is every reason to believe «Everything complex emerges from vast numbers of simpler things and their interactions», that the universe is much simpler than it is thought to be.

I assert that all fundamental interactions have the property of forming a potential pit of stability, as a strong interaction and, therefore, easily are united by a single formalism.

There is only one essence and the only universal quantum mechanism in the universe that operates on the principle of the classical heat pump (air conditioner) in solitons, and that functions both at the micro- and macro-level of fractal matter. This mechanism allows using a small fraction of the external energy to control in many times big fraction the energy of the system. This mechanism allows «It is the unimaginably large numbers of interactions» in solitons, it is easy to formalize in the levels of fractal matter. This mechanism is also the answer to the questions of this competition.

However, everyone loves their fiction and "magic", built by their "gods", so very few are able to see the rational grain in other people's ideas because of their illusions.

My assumptions seem to me simple and logical, but, perhaps, I'm subjective and of course, I would like to know the evaluation of the work from your point of view.

Kind regards,

Vladimir

Do you agree with the idea of "Substrate-Independence" from Max Tegmark?

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27126

Dear Antony Garrett Lisi

I inform all the participants that use the electronic translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to integrate modern physics into a single theory. Let FQXi will be the starting point of this Association.

Don't let the New Cartesian Physic disappear! Do not ask for himself, but for Descartes.

New Cartesian Physic has great potential in understanding the world. To show potential in this essay I risked give "The way of The materialist explanation of the paranormal and the supernatural" - Is the name of my essay.

Visit my essay and you will find something in it about New Cartesian Physic. After you give a post in my topic, I shall do the same.

Sincerely,

Dizhechko Boris

Antony,

Simple, compact and straightforward, but yet you say what needs to be said to meet the criteria. We often forget the staggering volume of particles we contain - "100 trillion atoms in each human cell," and the nature of bonding "number of possible interactions rises exponentially with the number of atoms."

"this compounding of complexity -- and activity at a higher level -- requires a readily available source of energy to drive it, and a place to dump the resulting heat." -- though the physicist I reference in my essay sees the participation of atoms in this entropy dance.

"Within a viable environment, at every high level of emergence, complexity and behavior is shaped by evolution through natural selection. For example, human goals, meaning, and purposes exist as emergent aspects in psychology favored by natural selection." I like your clearly pointing out that goals and purpose are emergent aspects favored by natural selection.

Entropy is an important aspect of my essay with the special concepts of Jeremy England included. I also speculate on field studies to explain dark matter.

Hope you have a chance to read and comment on mine.

Jim Hoover

James, I read your essay and I agree with your emergence and complexity approach, ever your essay is very short.

I also deal with emergence factor to understand that different laws through our universe:

Please, consider to have into account my essay which main proposal is:

"A essay that could revolutionize the future of Cosmological Physics: Aristotle, Newton, Einstein,..."

The Dynamic Laws of Physics (and Universal Gravitation) have varied over time, and even Einstein had already proposed that they still has to evolve:

ARISTOTLE: F = m.v

NEWTON: F = m.a

EINSTEIN. E = m.c2 (*)

MOND: F = m.a.(A/A0)

FRACTAL RAINBOW: F = f (scale) = m.a.(scale factor)

Or better G (Gravity Constant) vary with the scale/distance due to fractal space-time: G = f ( Scale/distance factor)

(*) This equation does not correspond to the same dynamic concept but has many similarities.

Garrett,

Thank you for your thoughtful essay on the ladder of emergence.

If you have a moment, could you take a look at my essay, The Cosmic Odyssey of Matter, which presents a formal method for identifying and quantifying the ladder of emergence, from subatomic particles, to living organisms and social groups (summary on page 9).

This method focuses on the structural connections and configurations of matter, but there is another parallel discussion on properties and interactions, which was left out due to this contest's word/page limits.

This essay may support your argument that human interactions such as thought and love arise naturally from the interactions of elementary particles, and it also suggests an upper (local) limit to the ladder of emergence.

link to The Cosmic Odyssey of Matter

Regards, Ed Kneller

Hi Antony

An inspiring and reflective read. I trust you will do well in this contest.

It's fine if you don't recall, however i emailed you a couple of years back. I'm an Australian surfer who spends an inordinate amount of time contemplating the nature of the world. I have an essay submission and I wonder if you might be so kind as to review it please? It focuses on the unanswered question of complexity of the world, the question of emergent awareness at the top of list. why do elementary particles for example, interact in such a way that cascades to ever higher levels of ordered structure, as described in your essay? Its one thing to observe that they do, and quite another to attempt answer this question. I argue that an organization principle is needed to fill this role in our understanding, and I point to a possable candadite.

Here's a question which you can read my essay to learn my view. Why is the universe prospectively littered with wet world's, a universe of pumping surf? Can you imagine the variety of setups out there, and what the experience of surfing might present in lower or higher gravity than earth? Boggles the mind.

Anyway, love your work and hope to hear from you. In the mean time I'll give your rating a nudge in the right direction.

Steven Andresen

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2890

P's, I just bought a sail boat to tour our local island surf. Loving life

Hi,

I very much liked your style of writing. To me ypour essay with carefully framed sentences seemed almost like poetry.

Best,

Jarmo Mäkelä

"the Feynman infomorphism"--

Dear Garrett Lisi,

You've said that "(the 3 generation) ... issue remains the most significant problem." I wonder if there might be more freedom and constraints available for addressing the problem by linking the proper time of an entangled system of particles to the Fokker-Pryce center of inertia and then mapping it to the set of possible coordinate times that define this proper time. Then by inferring from G. 't Hooft's work on computer automata that algorithms may underlie Hilbert space-- which means a selection algorithm would be needed to select from this set of coordinate times. The algorithm would work best by selecting only one from many possible fields rather than by selecting, say, one set comprising hundreds of fields from permutations of hundreds of types of fields. In other words, by selecting one of your E8 fields.

Dear Anthony Garrett Lisi,

It is a pity that I could not see your essay earlier.

Yes, the arguments in favor of hierarchy of emergence all the way from most fundamental to higher levels of abstraction, are entirely agreeable. All that one requires is to lay down a formal mechanism or process of emergence that leads to irreducible representation or symbolic description of abstract objects / notions. I suppose then, you may be curious to know if such a formal description is possible at all. In fact, this is what I have attempted in my essay.

In case, your curiosity lead you to peruse my essay, I would love to discuss more details, and how such an information processing can be organized in evolving systems.

I hope to see your comments.

Rajiv