Dear James and Steve,

I again ask you: Which came first, visible Natural reality, or humanly contrived abstract information about the behavior of invisible atoms? Obviously, Natural reality must have come first. And Nature must have adhered to providing the simplest visible physical construct of the real Universe obtainable. Visible physical presence cannot possibly be finitely measured. For instance, although you can affix the same numbers to a ruler, or a meter, or a gauge or a timepiece, you are assuming that all objects you are supposedly measuring have the same finite characteristics. But there must only be one single infinite surface.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

I totally agree that people often do not agree about the interpretation of a measurement. This is the difference between our subjective versus our objective realities. When we measure the world, our conscious brain tries to make sense out of those measurements, but the result is subjective since how we think about the world is unique to our memory and experience. This is the world as it exists only inside of our mind and is in some sense a selfish world view.

When others agree with our interpretation of a measurement, we form an objective view of the world outside of our minds that others share. This objective reality is useful and helps people cooperate and survive with compassionate world view.

When someone comes up with a notion of infinity or of zero or of some kind of supernatural agent, those notions can often be useful in certain limited contexts. Many people can agree about these notions even though they do not derive from measurement but from reasoning.

There are competing world views and very smart people often argue endlessly about the meaning of physics and information and so on. In fact, there are people like myself and you and others that all have singular world views with little or no advocacy...and yet here we are proffering our unique world views despite a lack of agreement.

That is what life at the fringe is all about...

" ... here we are proffering our unique world views despite a lack of agreement.

That is what life at the fringe is all about... "

Yes! Nice talking with you again.

In measurement the role of gravity in Quantum Mechanics has been entirely subsumed by the Spin co-ordinate system being taken as axiomatic, when at origin it was devised on an ad hoc provisional basis ONLY. And what that provision was lacking in measurement, was a solution for the mathematical problem of how to equate the quadratic form of 1/r^2 with distribution of that (as intensity), in the finite confines of a spherical volume, given any finite quantity of energy. Hence the decision in formulation of GR to dispense with 'force' and go to its constituent parameters in the geometric progression of spherical surface co-ordinates.

Spin, thus normalizes to 1 where the c proportion of difference between the electrostatic and magnetoststic intensities in a point charge (Maxwell) is subsumed by the classical gravitational model that the electron's mass would require an orbital velocity in excess of light velocity (eg: the QM time parameter is already at c). While in GR there is still lacking a rationale for an inertial proportion as determinant of a maximum (upper) mass density bound, and so can only treat macroscopic bodies with a parameter of 'average' mass density.

Those are the clues. jrc

    "At the borderline between large and small objects, the writ of one set of nature's rules rather mysteriously falls away in favor of the other..."

    There is nothing mysterious about it. It is the size of the information content that matters, not the size of the physical container, carrying that content. As the information content approaches one-bit, things MUST become quantized, because that is the nature of information.

    Rob McEachern

      Robert,

      That goes to density in field theory, which might be paraphrased as content of information in a larger volume at equivalent 1 Bit is equal to the same content in a smaller volume. It what that 1 Bit of information means to the information density at the receiver. jrc

      John,

      Information does not "mean" anything, in and of itself. Information recovered at a receiver is, in essence, nothing more than a "serial number" that can be used to "look up" the appropriate response to that number. So the response or "meaning" is entirely dependent upon what the receiver looks up, not the received information itself, which merely serves as an address at which the response or meaning can be found - assuming the receiver has made a suitable, a priori association between the information/address and a suitable response to the reception of the information/address.

      In other words, a received set of information bits, is treated by the recipient as a single symbol, not as a sequence of measurements. That is why physicists, attempting to treat it via measurement theory, utterly fail to "get it." It is no more a set of measurements, than the letters in my name are a set of measurements. One has to make measurements, in order to recognize those letters, but then you have to know, a priori, that you are supposed to treat those measurements as a very specific, single-symbol - my name. But what does my name actually mean? Nothing. It is merely a label for me. But if you do not already know something about me, merely receiving my name is not going to be of much immediate use - because it has no associated meaning. That is what information is. Think of the smell receptors in a dog's nose - that trigger responses like - that's the smell of my owner. And all the sensory measurements your body makes while approaching a red-traffic signal, mean exactly one thing - stop the car. It has nothing to do with physics. It is a symbolic process, not a physical one. And that is what the quantum is all about: elementary things that know, a priori, how to respond to the other elementary things they happen to encounter. Such things do not need to determine how to behave, upon encountering another thing. They already know how to behave. They only have to determine the name/serial-number (information content) of the other thing in order to respond to it appropriately. And that is why seemingly different measurements (like those differing due to noise) may all end-up eliciting the exact same behavior (spin-up) even when there are measurable differences of the spin orientation; because the particle is "programmed" to ignore such variations, because they are of no significance to it.

      Rob McEachern

      Thanks Robert,

      I get that. As well as your point about QM, which itself is symbolic analysis and procedural rather than physical. It's a stretch to compare information density, which is dependent in communications on the physics of apparatus, with field theory which treats energy as real in the material sense. But I'm sure you know that too. But thanks for the informed soliloquy. jrc

      edit:Robert

      the buttons off on this thread. Just to be clear, your post is exactly my own objection to the egeneration incarnation of information as being something real. And really Thanks for That. :-) jrc

      Not just the e generation John.

      For vision there has to be receipt of sensory information, in the form of photons providing frequency and intensity data. It is just information. Yet Relativity does not take account of that, and so the things seen are regarded as Objects themselves. That is the category error and cause of the paradoxes. (I don't know how much you have read/ followed my postings over the years-sorry if its old hat.)

      Oh but now you focus on the information and not the noise...if the bit of noise comes from a single determinate source, we are in a classical Shannon universe. If the bit of noise comes from any number of sources, we are in a quantum universe.

        Georgina,

        https://www.chemheritage.org/.../robert_bunsen_and_gustav_kirchoff

        "Yet Relativity does not take account of that..."

        wrong, that's your categorical error. 'Special Relativity' is not only about, but starts with the clearly stated take-off from Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, by it's title "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". It is exactly what happens to those wavelength/frequencies, at velocity, and thus the reaction/inductance by recptors that the bare bones geometric hyperbolic function accurately prescribes, that preserves in reality the absolute requirement under Maxwell that there will exist in anything, everywhere, a light velocity proportionate difference between the electrostatic and magnetostatic intensities of any point charge. That's the known and and universally accepted convention in all modern physics. And is only disputed by those whom either haven't studied the physics leading up to it, or who simply do not understand (or like) the theoretical outcome. Seriously, check your six. jrc

        John, I'm not disputing that it functions within its own framework. I have never said that the mathematics is wrong. I have only suggested an alternative solves a number of issues. Einstein does not talk about vision or about the different temporal origins of photons that are received by an observer but only considers reference frames. Which are what is deemed to be the observers present; what is in 'his field of synchronized clocks and rods. But what is in his seen present is (has to be because of how vision works) the product of processing received information and that therefore is a Map that is temporally non-homogeneous, even without the processing effects added to the temporal composition. The product of the information is being regarded as THE 'reality'. The photon information in the environment is one part of the Terrain, emitted from objects. It is not Objects and nor is the product of its processing. (In regard to your" my own objection to the egeneration incarnation of information as being something real")

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        • Post #21

        Georgina,

        Let's take just the blue-green spectral line of hydrogen. The only way we can detect Doppler Shift is by it's position in what would always appear to be a continuous visible spectrum. Light is going to go at light velocity. So...at velocity, if a star were viewed as it moved very rapidly away from us, even though hydrogen would emit that BG wavelength, by the time it was through the Transition Zone of emission, it would be 'stretched out' and the absorption spectral line would be detected in a region more towards the red end of visible. But we would know it by its position among its companion Hydrogen spectral lines. All the other emissions would do likewise, so ultra violet would become visible while red would become infrared. (The Transition Zone of 2 wavelengths is it's own theoretical study)

        Likewise, light going at light velocity, would be encountered more rapidly by an approaching receiver. What slays people is that at velocities at the very high end of the velocity scale, the receiver physically compresses along the direction of motion. All of which physically preserves the electrodymanics of the induction of the 'leap-frog' electro-magnetic reaction to the absorption of energy by that c proportional difference between the electric field and its companion magnetic field.

        Doppler shift of sound in not the same thing. What your sensory organs do with that electromagnetically induced reaction, that you become consciously aware of is 'information'. You may wish to ascribe information to reactions that you are unaware of, but then the onus is upon you to physically prove what that is. In physics, they are known as properties, having known characteristic results.

        How we become 'informed' is still a great mystery in neural-physiological research. I'll accept their findings.

        Sorry to wear an old hat, but it's well sweat-stained and I like the darned thing. :-) jrc

        John, sorry I don't know what Doppler shift has to do with what I wrote. Could you address the concept of a reference frame in Relativity together with the process of sight? IE that photon sensory information has to encounter the retina to enable the sensory system to generate the seen image. (Though I suppose in this day and age one could contemplate information being directly fed to the visual processing areas of the brain, but that's a by the way.) The content of the reference frame does not exist as Terrain but as generated Map. The paradoxes treat the Map as Terrain.

        I am not using 'what one becomes aware of' as information (as you have described it), but the EM 'signal' that is received. The product of processing is knowledge or experience not information, as I am using the term. It is what I have called 'potential sensory data'.

        Don't get me wrong; I realize that at everyday speeds and distances an aspect of the Terrain will closely match the one generated by information processing. That makes sight useful. But Still Terrain and Map can not be regarded as identical.

        The map is a representation of the Terrain from information received -so it is a partial view. There will also be gaps in the information processed, as some will not cause a change in a photorecetor pigment that goes on to form part of the signal sent to the brain. The brain will do 'significant' gap filling as necessary. Some information is amalgamated and the brain works to accentuate important features that allow discrimination and identification. That we see high intensity as lightness and lack of intensity as darkness (pertaining to amount of photons received) and colours with some correlation to frequency (but also other factors) does not mean these are Terrain characteristics. They are Map product characteristics. So over to you re. Reference frames-

        Georgina,

        "For vision there has to be receipt of sensory information, in the form of photons providing frequency and intensity data. It is just information. Yet Relativity does not take account of that, and so the things seen are regarded as Objects themselves."

        I accept that colloquialisms have a utility in logical discourse, to summarize otherwise lengthy detail. But. (1) sensory information is confined to the physiology. (2) photons exhibit frequency and intensity but only transport energy. (3) the data is provided by the generality of Maxwell's equations. (4) Relativity takes all that into account, it says so in the title. (5) things seen are not regarded as the objects themselves, refer to (3). (6) people start learning about subjects without prior knowledge, so there is not sufficient 'knowns' to support full incorporation of knowledge as 'information'.

        It may be common in discourse to speak of 'a red photon', or that the photon 'carries information' that the apple is red. Those are colloquialisms. There is quite literally no experimental evidence that 'red' exists anywhere other than the mind. Yes, I said that. What makes anything visible is just as dark as any other region of the spectrum. What can be said is that what we do know something of, is only the response of a detection system and to a lesser extent through deduction, the behavior of an emitter. That is the science (not much, eh), not the psychology, metaphysics or philosophy. How could a photon provide information when science can't agree on what it is? Some says its a flower, some says its a weed. :-) jrc

        Hi Georgina,

        " ... Terrain and Map can not be regarded as identical.

        The map is a representation of the Terrain from information received -so it is a partial view."

        By definition, then, a map (m) and the ideal Map (M) only map with 1 to 1 to 1 certainty, within the boundaries prescribed by quantum mechanics.