Dear Edwin,

I'm happy you see some value in my appropriation of Laozi. I think that there's a set of similar ideas that you can see popping up throughout history, in really disparate places, that formulate in different frameworks similar core insights---and that, once recognized, those ideas can serve to correct what I see as some fateful and potentially misleading ideas in traditional Western philosophy. Most notably, a core strain in the latter is that everything starts with substance, something that, in some way, is capable of standing on its own, of yielding a foundation not itself upheld by anything else. Eastern metaphysics, with its emphasis on relationalism or denial of such things as fundamental substances, natures or characters, may help overcome some long-ingrained prejudice here.

That's not to say that those wise ancients got everything right. Nobody did, and likely, nobody will for the foreseeable future; but we need to survey all the options on the table, pick what works and discard what doesn't, even if it hurts sometimes, if we ever want to get down to business.

Anyway, thank you for your comment. Your essay is on my reading list, although I may be slow to comment due to some work related issues; I remember finding your last one very intriguing.

Dear Aditya,

thanks for your kind words! And you're right to spot the influence of Wittgenstein on my thinking (although more the Tractatus, early-period Wittgenstein). As I said above, I think there's a cluster of ideas related to the unutterable, to what cannot be grasped with the concepts we have at our command, that surfaces in different formulations and with different thinkers.

As for the minimum of information, I'm leaning on a concept from algorithmic information theory here: Kolmogorov complexity, which roughly relates to the shortest program (on any kind of computer---in fact, it turns out to be irrelevant which computer you use) that suffices to reproduce a given object. So for a piece of text, or a picture, or whatever, there are generally many possible programs that produce it as output; you take the shortest, measure its length in bits, and get a unique measure of the amount of information needed to specify that system.

It comes with a catch, though: due to issues related to the halting problem, it's in general impossible to compute the precise minimum value. (However, certain approximations exist.)

I'll certainly have a look at your 'linguistic turn' on the contest's question!

Dear Jochen Szangolies,

While you are in Düsseldorf and not in Vienna, I guess you are equally competent in quantum theory as is Quantinger. Therefore I guess that your utterance

"is that it's by no means certain that entanglement is really necessary for quantum computing: DQC1, for instance, is a proposal for quantum computing that does not rely on entanglement to achieve a speedup over what's classically possible"

relates to several essays of this context.

Could you please explain how DQC1 is proposed to work? I guess, QC stands for Quantum Computer. If I recall correctly, at least two decades ago, first systems including quantum computing parts were claimed having already achieved a considerable speedup.

Curious,

Eckard

Dear Jochen Szangolies

In qualifying the aim of the 'What is Fundamental?' essay contest, Dr. Brendan Foster, the FQXi.org Science Projects Consultant wrote: "We invite interesting and compelling explorations, from detailed worked examples through thoughtful rumination, of the different levels at which nature can be described, and the relations between them.

Real Nature has never had any finite levels.

I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

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

Dear Jochen,

I enjoyed reading your interesting essay, a little surprising considering your QM background but a good analysis. I found similarities with my last yrs essay though I identified a model and cognitive neural mechanism for greater self-understanding than most seem to think possible and you suggest. It used multiple layered feedback loops with some similarity to latest AI. Please do falsify it if you have time. prev fqXi essay

I'm certainly one for mental models and did Architecture training to hone visualization skills. Adding dynamics was then a small step, hlped by yacht racing and processing a number of inertial frames. It was nice to read your rationalisation of that.

Good score coming, but most importantly I do hope you'll read my essay where with different more coherent starting assumptions I appear now to have derived complementarity classically along with QM's predictions & CHSH>2. It needs your skills. See also the matching code in Declan Trails.

Many thanks. Look forward to chatting, & best of luck.

Peter

    Dear Jochen,

    I really enjoyed your essay, your parallels with the Dàodéjīng (but also with the "emptiness of emptiness" of the buddhist conclusion) are very well implemented. My essays about absolute relativism has many points in common with yours and I'm particulary intrigued by some of your statement. You worth a good vote and I wish you luck!

    I've a question. You write that "Consider the world as a set of objects. Call that set 'everything'. Then, 'everything' has no information content at all, since it must have the same information as its complement, i.e. 'nothing'.", but I've not understood fully what's your definition of "information".

    Bests,

    Francesco D'Isa

      Quantinger and Mr. Beam are nicknames of Anton Zeilinger.

      Kadin might also be courious concerning the DQC1. Are all details secret?

      Eckard

      Four Verses from the Dàodéjīng by Jochen Szangolies

      Hi Jochen Szangolies

      You said nicely 'Among them is the problem of fundamentals: since every model of the world reduces to some set of fundamental facts, we expect the same thing to hold of the world as a whole. This, however, ultimately confuses the map with the territory.' And about the Mirror test..." it's certainly not necessary to be able to pass that test in order to have a sense of self, but I'm merely taking it the other way around---that having some idea of what 'you' are is necessary to pass the mirror test. Because by passing that test, a child, or ape, or bird essentially says 'that's me'; so there needs to be an idea of 'me' beforehand." You went into philosophy.... dear Jochen Szangolies.............. very nice idea....

      I highly appreciate your essay and hope and request you please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

      Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

      -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 GR on any condition

      -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

      -No many mini Bigbangs

      -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

      -No Dark energy

      -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

      -No Multi-verses

      Here:

      -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

      -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

      -All bodies dynamically moving

      -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

      -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

      -Single Universe no baby universes

      -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

      -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

      -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

      -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

      -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

      -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

      -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

      -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

      - Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

      http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

      I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

      Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

      In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

      I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

      Best

      =snp

      Hi Jochen Szangolies

      You said nicely 'Among them is the problem of fundamentals: since every model of the world reduces to some set of fundamental facts, we expect the same thing to hold of the world as a whole. This, however, ultimately confuses the map with the territory.' And about the Mirror test..." it's certainly not necessary to be able to pass that test in order to have a sense of self, but I'm merely taking it the other way around---that having some idea of what 'you' are is necessary to pass the mirror test. Because by passing that test, a child, or ape, or bird essentially says 'that's me'; so there needs to be an idea of 'me' beforehand." You went into philosophy.... dear Jochen Szangolies.............. very nice idea....

      I highly appreciate your essay and hope and request you please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

      Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

      -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 GR on any condition

      -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

      -No many mini Bigbangs

      -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

      -No Dark energy

      -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

      -No Multi-verses

      Here:

      -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

      -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

      -All bodies dynamically moving

      -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

      -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

      -Single Universe no baby universes

      -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

      -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

      -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

      -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

      -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

      -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

      -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

      -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

      - Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

      http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

      I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

      Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

      In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

      I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

      Best

      =snp

        Dear Eckard,

        the details of DQC1 are, of course, completely public---see for instance the publications here and https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.0548.

        The problem considered in DQC1 (Deterministic Quantum Computation with One pure qubit) is the evaluation of the (normalized) trace of a unitary matrix. This is generally believed to be hard classically, but a quantum algorithm can be formulated that provides an estimate in a number of trials that does not scale exponentially. The algorithm's answer is obtained by Pauli measurements on a single qubit whose state is separable from those upon which the unitary acts. Consequently, there's no entanglement present.

        However, there is another kind of quantum correlation, known as quantum discord, that is often postulated to be the reason behind this algorithm's advantage over classical resources. Discord involves quantum states that are probabilistic mixtures of 'pure' quantum states; only such mixtures serve as 'resource' states for DQC1.

        But all of this is still very much an open area of research. Still, it's an exciting idea!

        Dear Peter,

        thanks for your kind comments. I'm not sure why you think that my QM background is at odds with the themes of my essay---quite to the contrary, I think it is my background there that opened up the possibility of viewing the world rather as covered by perhaps even superficially inconsistent pictures, rather than as being wholly cut from the same marble (because of the notion of complementarity).

        I will try and have a look at your essay---although one cautionary note upfront is that I think it's generally not a good idea to try and produce a classical explanation for CHSH > 2, since that's easily done via data-rejection, timing issues, or similar such tricks. In my opinion, you should instead focus your efforts on inequalities that take only actually observed events into consideration, such as the Clauser-Horne one. But more on that probably later.

        Hi Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta,

        thanks for your comment and your appreciation. I'll try to have a look at your essay, but I can't promise I'll find something interesting to say. I will have a look, though.

        (Sorry for just copy-pasting your name, I was unsure which address to use.)

        Dear Francesco,

        thanks for your comment! I'll have a look at your essay, 'absolute relativism' is a nice turn of phrase and indicates that you're already aware of the main problems relativist approaches face---as phrased by Connor Oberst, "if you swear that there's/ no truth, and who cares/ how come you say it,/ like you're right". (But that just as a diversion.)

        Regarding my definition of information, I essentially appeal to algorithmic information theory---there, the information content of an object is defined by the shortest program necessary in order to make a computer output that object (or a description of it). So a string like 'aaaaaaa....a' can be reduced to 'na', where n is an integer, while a jumble of random characters in generally can't be reduced much.

        This captures the intuition that information content ought to have something to do with the redundancy in some object: what is highly redundant can't tell you anything new, and thus, contains little information; if there is little redundancy, however, there's new information at each step. In other words, low-information objects can be highly compressed, high-information objects have little room for compression.

        Does that help clear things up?

        Dear Jochen,

        thank you very much, you was very clear. I found your essay very interesting and I wish you luck!

        (Yes, my text is an attempt to handle that paradox, I hope it will interest you).

        All the best,

        Francesco

        @All, I'm sorry if I'm a bit tardy in my replies---work has been keeping me a little busy lately. This should clear up in February, though, so I hope to be quicker with my answers then.

        In the meantime, why don't you have a look at the discussion of my essay over at the fantastic blog on all things consciousness, Conscious Entities where Peter Hankins provides his insightful commentary on the issues I discuss in the essay!

          Jochen,

          "covered by perhaps even superficially inconsistent pictures" Yes, right on.

          also "inequalities that take only actually observed events into consideration" agree entirely, you'll see that's what I've done. (But of course it must still give CHSH>2).

          I actually model the interaction events physically at a larger scale and reveal a classical natural 'complementarity' hidden within 'OAM' itself, so QM's starting assumptions need a slight change (to match Maxwell's inclusion of 'curl'). All experimental outcomes then follow classically. Yes I know that sound ridiculous after 100 years but it's none the less true. The full ontology and (slightly complex in 3D) process and protocol are given, with a short video to assist.

          I'd greatly value you studying the model carefully and analysing/discussing. It seems few really understand QM and most that do are sold on nature being weird. Are you familiar with John Bells rather ignored views & comments that a classical description must exist? (around p172-5 I recall - quote on request)

          Very best

          Peter

          Hi Jochen,

          I liked your essay very much. And I love the Tao Te Ching. It helps to widen our imagination of the world.

          So allow me to make one sceptical remark: Do you really belief the various incompleteness theorems are an indication (or prove?) for the existence of something beyond our modelling capacity? Sometimes I hope so. And sometimes I'm sceptical. Let me try to formulate my scepticism:

          Your model in figure 1 seem to me to assume a realistic world view in the sense, that the object is independent of the model. This makes the entities (object, model) together build a new object, that can be modelled, and that is bigger, than the original object. This is analog to Thomas Breuer's "The impossibility of accurate state self-measurements". A system wants to measure an object with n properties. Let us say, that the the measurement system needs n properties itself to distinguish these n properties. So together system and object have n^2 possible properties (possible states). More than the system can measure. So a system within the total can never have the full information. Is this at the root quantum complementarity?

          Not so sure. In classical systems with symmetries for instance only the relative distance is measurable. So if the object has a location x (like a property) and the measurement system has location y. Only the distance (x-y) has a physical significance. The domain of the distances is of the same range as the properties of the measurement system. So classical systems seems to work very well although it seemed we had some incompleteness here. And no wonder classical physics worked so well for many years.

          Finally let me say that your argument with the Mary case is beautiful.

          Regards,

          Luca

            Hi Luca,

            thanks for your nice comments (in particular in regard to the Mary's room argument)! As for your skepticism, I think there's many different ways of approaching this question. One, for instance, is that I think Gödel's two incompleteness theorems establish a limitation of the human capacity to formalize mathematics, not a limitation on mathematics itself, as it's usually phrased---in other words, it's not that 'mathematics is incomplete', but rather, that the axiom systems human mathematicians can formulate---being necessarily finitely specifiable, effective, and so on, which ultimately boils down to being computable---don't suffice to capture all of mathematics.

            But to say that this implies the existence of something beyond our modeling capacity would require a belief in the preexistence of mathematical objects, i.e. some form of Platonism---which is not something I myself would be willing to commit to.

            But things get clearer once one things instead of abstract formal systems in terms of computers. The halting problem is an instance of the same phenomenon that also gives rise to incompleteness (Lawvere's fixed-point theorem, which Noson Yanofsky, who also has an entry in this contest, discusses in a very accessible way here), and the two are equivalent in some ways. Now, with the math we know how to use, we can't in general predict whether a given TM halts; nevertheless, one might justifiably hold that there's still a fact of the matter regarding whether it will or won't. But Turing machines are themselves abstract entities, and would require an infinite tape or something equivalent to build; so again, it's not immediately clear if that has any real-world significance.

            So let's now turn to physics. You mention Breuer's results, which I think are very interesting; but there's many more indications of a connection between QM and logical independence (in fact, John Wheeler managed to get himself thrown out of Gödel's office for suggesting a connection). For instance, Caslav Brukner and colleagues could show that if they encode a set of axioms into a quantum state, measurements related to propositions that are not derivable from those axioms yield a random outcome. However, this is not specific to Gödel's incompleteness, as the axiom systems were too simple for Gödel's construction to apply---Gödel's theorems then simply mean that such phenomena never 'go away', so to speak.

            A more qualitative line of reasoning is the following: you can represent any non-computable function with a computation plus a source of randomness; consequently, if we are beings using computational methods to model a non-computable world, we should expect the world to look like a computation with intermittent random events. That's of course exactly what we have in QM. An obvious counterexample here might seem to be Bohmian mechanics: but actually, it turns out that a model that reproduces quantum mechanics by introducing nonlocal influences (as BM does) cannot be computable---otherwise, one could use these influences to transmit information, contradicting the tenets of special relativity.

            There are many more results pointing in a similar direction scattered about the literature (and of course, there's my own argument that I cite in the essay); but I think it's as yet unclear what the picture is they paint. Zwick in the 1970s, and later on Peres and Zurek, proposed that QM's "inability to completely describe the measurement process appears to be not a flaw of the theory but a logical necessity which is analogous to Gödel's undecidability theorem". I think that it's again as with the incompleteness theorems in mathematics: they're not a limitation on mathematics itself, but on human mathematicians; likewise, the limitation we see is not one on physics, but on physicists: using computable models, which we must if I'm right, to model a non-computable world, will inevitable lead to something like a quantum description.

            But this is an argument that needs to be made much more carefully, and which I'm in the agonizingly slow process of working out. We'll see what comes of it!

            Dear Fellow Essayists

            This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,

            Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.

            All objects, be they solid, liquid, or vaporous have always had a visible surface. This is because the real Universe must consist only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

            Only the truth can set you free.

            Joe Fisher, Realist

            Thank you Jochen for the details. Admittedly I don't feel in position to comment on them.

            The more I wonder why FQXi decided not to immediately show this key posting of you.

            Regards,

            Eckard