Professor Yanofsky,
[My pledge: goo.gl/KCCujt] First my positive reactions:
-- Very nicely written! It is entertaining and easy to read, with a really nice and accurate mathematical and physics history intro.
-- Definitely novel! The path you took was definitely not any path I was expecting, which is exactly why I liked it and feel you are exploring the kind of new approach for which FQXi is looking.
-- Your examples also caught me off guard, which again is cool! While I was aware at least in concept that larger arrays of random numbers create larger opportunities for finding unexpected order.* In the white noise you can find any song you wish, but only if you know the song ahead of time and build your pattern of selection from chaos upon it. Order from chaos, but only if we apply the order.
* In retrospect, the example in my own essay of how larger expansions of pi provide increased opportunities to find matches to larger arbitrary strings of digits would seem to be an example of this principle.
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Negatives (this is the "ouch" part, sorry, I hate it too, but I think it's best to be clear here also, instead of hand-wavy and vague):
-- When I look at fundamental physics, it is very hard for me to understand how this idea of pattern selection applies temporally. Are you perhaps suggesting some kind of Wheeler-like end-of-the-universe observing the beginning, as I think you are referring to in your reference [4]?
So that is maybe not so much a negative on your concept of perceived order as fundamental -- anthropic probabilities alone say we are certainly missing something extreme and profound, given the insanely unlikely origins of our particular universe -- as a lack of clarity in your essay as to how your idea maps to the universe as we see it.
For example, as I read it I was wondering if you intended some sort of solipsistic interpretation in which you (and others? did I just try to invent multiple solipsism? heh!) are some sort of independent entities looking upon chaos? Or something Wheeler-like, where the consensus originates from the conclusion of the universe? So, it just felt incomplete and left me a bit baffled as to where exactly you were placing the "ordering function" in all of this chaos, and what the origins of these ordering functions (us) is. Also, how do we get the consensus that most would agree exists, especially scientists who make independent measure and come up with similar conclusions?
I am not of the Wheeler-ish school on this point, I should note. I think the universe existed just fine and dandy before we humans ever came around to impose our own ordered perceptions upon it. As you know from my essay, I also think that rather than imposing order, we mine or extract it from the preexisting universe. But that is irrelevant to your excellent argument. I have been wrong many times (ask my wife), and certainly don't assume myself to be correct on such deep topics just because it make since within my necessarily very limited scope of knowledge.
And of course, there is also that anthropic monkey wrench in all of this, which seems to imply rather powerfully that the incredible order we now perceive was somehow inserted into the very origins of our universe. My own essay does nothing more than suggest how to get better at finding and extracting that order. I don't even attempt to explain where that order might have come from, as you do!
-- While I liked your random number matrix examples, I do wish you had used a smaller font so that you could have spent at least about two pages elaborating on where your order-imposers reside, and how they manage (or if they manage?) to see the same beautiful songs when peering into the white noise of the universe.
-- Also, this is perhaps more a question, but it was also a concern that I recall having as I read your essay:
In computation you need things like memory to create filters. If your observers are independent of the universe, what is the source of their own computational structures by which they are capable of perceiving order in chaos? How does your strategy avoid simply turning the creation (selection, perception) of order to an earlier step, that being the "creation" of the observers themselves?
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And again: Nice essay!
Cheers,
Terry Bollinger (Topic 3099, "Fundamental as Fewer Bits")