Informational Unification of Intelligent Life with Fundamental Physics. by Jesse Liu and Sonali Mohapatra

Dear Lorraine,

Thank you for your interesting question.

An instructive way to understand it is that even though information may be instantiated on nucleic acids or tape, the hardware-software matters if information can be read, understood and transferred - an idea we briefly discuss later in the essay. Another example is that we cannot play the song off a CD using an MP3 player even though it's the same song (and essentially same information), because the hardware and software are incompatible. Similarly, a cell does not have the hardware or software to directly decode the information on tape and vice versa.

Best,

Jesse

Dear Jesse,

But, are you claiming that information can simply exist in an objective or Platonic way, without local physical instantiation, and without being fully embedded in the universe via relationship to other aspects of physical reality?

Best,

Lorraine

Dear Lorraine,

Interesting question. Actually quite the contrary - information must exist physically, as we argue in say section IIIA. Substrate independence does not imply information need not have local physical instantiation. The media of instantiation is unimportant for the content of the information, but information still requires a physical medium to exist. A state with information is physically distinct from one without - indeed Landauer's principle implies erasing one bit results in energy dissipation. Information is related to other aspects of physical reality via the fundamental interactions (forces). After all, if a non-interacting physical object cannot change, it cannot be distinguished from a state without information.

Best,

Jesse

Jesse and Sonali -

A very interesting and well-informed essay, with a tremendous scope. My only criticism would be that the level of detail often seems to overwhelm the broad picture you're sketching. But the details are all relevant, and I appreciate the references.

I hope you'll find time to look at my essay and let me know what you think, since it deals (at a higher level of abstraction) with a lot of the same issues as yours. My goal is to give a general perspective on what makes information meaningful, even at the physical level, and I'd appreciate feedback from the two of you, who've clearly given the question a lot of careful attention.

One difference between us is that I don't consider "consciousness" to be a significant "phase transition" in itself. That is, there seems to be a continuous expansion of ability to perceive and interact with the environment from bacteria on up to us primates, and defining at what point we want to call this "consciousness" seems unimportant. On the other hand, there is clearly a major transition with the emergence of human consciousness. I argue that while language is a primary element, there's something deeper in the kind of interpersonal connection we humans evolve, that makes language possible. That is, it's not so much self-consciousness that makes us human as our consciousness of each other's consciousness, which also reflects us back to ourselves.

Of course at every point in this story, there are many interdependent factors involved. That's why there's such an overwhelming abundance of relevant detail, and why defining "life" or "consciousness" is so problematic. I've tried to use the notion of recursively self-sustaining systems to develop an overarching view of how meaning has evolved - which unfortunately means bypassing most of the significant considerations you raise here.

Thanks for your fine contribution - I look forward to seeing how others respond in this thread.

Best wishes - Conrad

Dear sonali Mohapatra

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 Jesse Liu and Sonali Mohapatra,

Please excuse me for I have no intention of disparaging in any way any part of your essay.

I merely wish to point out that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate.

Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it.

The real Universe must consist only of one unified visible infinite physical surface occurring in one infinite dimension, that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.

A more detailed explanation of natural reality can be found in my essay, SCORE ONE FOR SIMPLICITY. I do hope that you will read my essay and perhaps comment on its merit.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Hi Jesse/Sonali

I found your essay to be quite on the mark regarding its treatment of intelligence. I am in total agreement with the three phase transitions you suggest - life, consciousness and language. My essay looked more at extrinsic intelligence (Constitutional nation state) since intrinsic intelligence (brains) required a lot more expertise.

The model that I ended up suggesting for extrinsic intelligence could also be construed to agree that consciousness is at a different stage compared to language. This becomes possible if 'consciousness' can be understood as Constitutional Democracy, while 'language capacity' is understood to be technological prowess triggered by the fourth Right in the model (Economics of Hayek and Smith).

It may help to know that the model originally only had seven stages; two stage (the fourth and seventh) were added later on, in order to add more sophistication. The essay did not permit enough space for me to add this nuance of a two phase wrinkle being present within it. But since your essay addresses this squarely (albeit at the intrinsic level of brains), I thought it would be good to point this out.

Warm Regards, Willy

Nice essay Sonali Mohapatra,

Your ideas and thinking are excellent, but I want have some discussion on some points like...

Fundamental physics enjoys spectacularly principled and predictive success. The recent direct observations of the Higgs boson [1, 2] and gravitational waves [3] are among the most exquisite experimental tests of the Standard Model and General Relativity.

You are considering expanding Universe , that means 40 % of Galaxies in the Universe which are red shifted, Why don't you consider remaining 60 % which are blue shifted and quasars ? Quasars are blue shifted. I hope you are not angry with those Galaxies ? There are many places like Dark matter and Dark energy the expanding universe model fails

............... At this point I want you to ask you to please have a look at my essay, where ...............reproduction of Galaxies in the Universe is described. Dynamic Universe Model is another mathematical model for Universe. Its mathematics show that the movement of masses will be having a purpose or goal, Different Galaxies will be born and die (quench) etc...just have a look at my essay... "Distances, Locations, Ages and Reproduction of Galaxies in our Dynamic Universe" where UGF (Universal Gravitational force) acting on each and every mass, will create a direction and purpose of movement.....

I think intension is inherited from Universe itself to all Biological systems

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example 'Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary' (1994) , 'Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe', About "SITA" simulations, 'Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required', "New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations", "Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background", "Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.", in 2015 'Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, 'Explaining Pioneer anomaly', 'Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets', 'Observation of super luminal neutrinos', 'Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up', "Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto" etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like... No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading...

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Best wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please................

=snp. gupta

Dear Jesse and Sonali

You present a general approach to the problem, interesting, well written. This is a starting point, a wandering, it does not really "explains" the evolution to complexity displayed by the universe, but it points to a road.

I recognize part of your reasoning, as I also wandered by similar paths long ago. But it comes a time when one has to reach results. That time has arrived to me, and I have clear results to present. Maybe you would be interested in seeing my essay because, as you are young, so I think, and you have already pretty consistent ideas on the subject, you may benefit from my work and advance in your understanding of the subject.

All the best,

Alfredo Gouveia Oliveira

Jesse and Sonali,

I read your essay with great interest. Certainly the development of language and mathematics provided a tremendous boost to human learning. I like your phases of development: life, consciousness, language and high intelligence. In my essay I noted the brain development from a stimulus-reaction, to remembering past events (hence learned behaviors) and to the ability to imagine future events. If I were to rewrite it, I would include language development.

For my use of aims and intentions, the person needs to imagine future outcomes and select a path to achieve the most desirable outcome. I ignore the weak use of intentions as in "I intend to lose weight" with the hidden meaning that "I probably won't lose it".

In my essay I pose some new ideas. I raise the possibility of an information dimension where our thoughts, imagination, and emotions are stored. Think of the emotions around your first teenage love and the subsequent breakup. The brain uses its power in the physical dimension, such as its electromagnetic impulses, to access this dimension. But this information dimension does not have to follow the physical laws. We can imagine things that are not true in the physical world. For the most part, humans use this dimension that is within the brain. In some rare cases, people can access information beyond the individual brain.

While this is not part of my essay, I mention it to stimulate your thinking. In the quantum world, one experiment was to separate entangled particles by a large distance, then simultaneous measure their spin. The knowledge of the first particle's measurement was conducted faster than the speed of light to the second particle. So if this pair-wise knowledge occurs in the information dimension, then maybe the information dimension is not bounded by the speed of light, i.e. information could have different properties than in the physical world.

Jesse, thanks for your response, and I'm sorry I didn't see it a few days ago.

First, going back to look at your essay again, I was struck by the first paragraph. My essay makes a similar point, with the opposite emphasis - that is, though the principles and predictive precision of physics are unmatched, we have no clarity at all as to why physics works the way it does; in fact this question hardly seems approachable. In biology, while principles are not exact or highly predictive, there's a very clear understanding of why things happen the way they do, all the way down to the molecular level.

So we have two complementary descriptions of the "great divergence." I emphasize the way things are understood in biology, because the goal of my essay is to show that in principle it should be possible to understand physics, and also the emergence of the human mind, at a similar depth.

I also noted the question you mention in passing, in your essay - "to what extent do these emergent structures have the same reality as their building blocks?" Thankfully there are a number of essays here, particularly the one by George Ellis, that give a clear answer. Without doubting that everything in the world obeys the principles of physics, evidently other kinds of principles are equally important at higher levels, and don't just reflect our need for simplified descriptions. I'm sure you agree, since you note above the importance of qualitative features that emerge in phase transitions, even in physics. I like the way you put it - that there are "different ways of processing information" at different levels, that enable different levels of response.

As to natural language, I fully agree that "natural language may have the same informational importance for human intelligence as genetics has for life." I would say that language was certainly necessary for the emergence of reflective thought in any form, and was definitely the key factor in bringing about "qualitatively distinct behavior" in our early human ancestors.

On the other hand, the RNA code very likely evolved sometime after self-replicating proto-organisms had reached a high level of evolved complexity, though so little is known about how all this happened. Similarly, spoken language must have evolved when proto-humans were already operating in a new dimension of interpersonal connectedness. Though the emergence of language is also still hard to understand, it's recapitulated to some extent by each new one-year-old. The book by Reddy (in my essay's references) gives a good account of the unique kind of pre-verbal contact between kids and moms out of which language emerges.

Anyway, thanks again for your efforts in pulling together so many different viewpoints on the evolution of meaningful information. Your essay certainly deserves a much higher rating!

Conrad

Hi Sonali, I'm glad to hear from you.

You bring up some key aspects of language. The one that's central to my essay is just its ability to get itself passed on from one brain to another, constructing the channel through which eventually tremendous amounts of information began to flow. I'd be happy to respond to your thoughts in that thread.

Something I find very interesting to consider is that for nearly all of human evolution, until about 2,500 years ago, all the information "downloaded and encoded in language" could only be passed on orally, in real-time face-to-face interaction. Even after written records began to be made, it was a long time before writing began to play a major role in preserving and transmitting culture, as was happening in Greece when philosophy and science began - certainly a "crucial phase transition," from our standpoint today. And now we're going through a similar transition, with emerging electronic media. If you're interested, I wrote about this in an earlier FQXi essay.

Thanks again - Conrad

Hi Jesse and Sonali,

An extremely well written essay. I enjoyed it a lot. I agree that information is the necessary link to answer a lot of these fundamental questions, and that information is physical. I would suggest reading "Information as a Physical Quantity" by Neal Anderson. I think you might enjoy that paper.

I have not quite wrapped my head around (or agree) with top down causation yet but I see it is very popular, and exploring it further will be a major takeaway from this contest. I wonder if the consciousness box in Fig.1, should have 'lower intelligence' written within in. I am not quite sure we can any consciousness without some amount of intelligence accompanying. However consciousness as form of information phase transition is something I concur with and discuss in detail with the associated math in my own submission "Intention is Physical".

"What are the theory-independent observable phenomena and informational links behind the origin of life and intelligence that a unifying framework must contain?"

I suggest some thermodynamic constraints, inspired by derivations based on the Landauer Principle to explain emergence of both learning and intelligence, as well goal directed agency in agents modeled as Markov finite state machines. Have a look if can.

Cheers and good luck.

Natesh

PS: I rated your essay, deservedly high because I think this is top-notch work. And I also got introduced to Goldenfeld and Woese's work from your references. Thanks for that.

Thank you for your kind comments and pointing out the interesting mapping between our and your interesting essay. What you call 'extrinsic intelligence' motivated by social systems is certainly something we were thinking about during the writing process, though we did not discuss it extensively beyond referring to humanity influencing the natural environment. Viewing collective systems (of intelligent agents) and its structures as having its own intelligence is certainly interesting for us to think about further.

Best,

Jesse

Thanks Alfredo for your kind remarks. As you say, this essay was our first survey of what phenomena an 'explanatory theory' must be able to derive, tackling the question holistically from a natural science stance. We certainly consider developing our ideas further in the future, where we can profit from your ideas.

Best,

Jesse

Thank you William for your interest in reading our essay. We certainly are in agreement in thinking there's something more to information in addressing the question at hand, though our approaches differed. Of course, we argued that information must ultimately obey the laws of physics in contrast to what you propose in your intriguing 'information dimension' idea. I suppose one might argue the fact our human imagination has the ability to invent new hypothetical situations or laws of physics that may or may not be realised in the universe as some loose way of arguing some abstract/emergent structure encodes these ideas. Call it our imagination - facilitated by the richness of information we can hold in our natural language - certainly helps with our agency. You present interesting ideas for me to ponder over so thanks again!

Best,

Jesse

Hi Natesh, Thank you for your very kind comments. Goldenfeld and Woese is a fine read and we thank you for your reference. Having a quick look at it, it certainly looks consistent with our argument. Yes I came across your extremely well-written essay some weeks ago on the minimal dissipation hypothesis (but have yet to digest the details!) for manifesting learning like phenomena and enjoyed your engineering perspective.

From my particle physics background, the use of 'top-down' confused me at first (as it means underlying microscopic theory in my field) whereas in this context it is quite the opposite. The ideas of top-down causation certainly appear in some of the literature we surveyed, but my understanding is that it is a feedback mechanism of the macroscopic structures imposed on the microscopic, when the reductionist would usually study the inverse. I would personally have to read and think about it more to appreciate it, but the approach is usually very absent in particle physics so I was quite intrigued.

I'm glad you agree with our stance that consciousness is a distinct phase transition. While we do not develop this idea very deeply or concretely given the constrained scope, it does not seem far-fetched. And yes we thought quite a bit about how we wanted to distinguish consciousness from 'lower intelligence'. We used the Legg-Hutter definition of intelligence, which seems somewhat independent to perhaps the integrated information theory of consciousness, so we settled for now on them being separate concepts. One might imagine a somewhat sophisticated AI on our phone, but at least intuitively it doesn't seem conscious. I think this is far from unambiguous though.

And thanks for your suggestion to that question - we'll certainly think about it!

Best,

Jesse

Hi Jesse

I think your essay is written to high scholarly standards and moreover, unlike many other essays in this contest, it is dealing with the topic of this contest in a fairly direct manner. I rate your essay very highly as a consequence.

Do you think a work on Constitutional Democracy can be supported by Conant's Good Regulator Theorem or Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety? I tend to think so. For instance, Good Regulator Theorem was created with the brain as a case study. If you disagree and it is not too much trouble, please do let me know why it can't be used in the social domain.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/books/Conant_Ashby.pdf

Regards, Willy