Terry, thanks for a very clear and interesting essay.
It seems there are two types of information covered in your essay. There is the information required to describe a theory such as the standard model, and there is the information in the state space of the theory. Mostly you are talking about the former, but for example, when you talk about redundancy in symmetry that is about the latter.
Do you make any distinction between the roles played by these two types of information?
Terry,
I've been mulling this over. If I accept the Kolmogorov (Kolmogorov-Chaitin) complexity as the ultimate foundation standard, let me understand:
You would have me believe that the world is fundamentally made of information bits that are algorithmically compressible. Okay, I'll entertain that notion.
Except that you used the example of Einstein, E=mc^2, to serve as a minimum Kolmogorov complexity, arguing that mathematical conciseness is the standard.
The equation, however, is not irreducible. The meaning of the equation is in the expression E = m. The second degree addition tells us that the relations in the equation are dynamic, that energy and mass may take infinite values. The binding energy then was discovered through experiment, setting a practical limit.
So I find myself moving ever closer to Brian Josephson's premise that meaning itself is fundamental. And meaning seems to be that which contains the requisite first degree information to "Be fruitful and multiply" as the Bible has it. So I suspect that meaning precedes construction. Or compression.
Enjoyed the essay.
Best,
Tom
Jeff,
I did a boo-boo and replied to you at the essay posting level instead of directly to your above post. So in case you or anyone interested has not seen my reply, you can either mosey down a couple of posts to the next Author posting, or try this direct link. I also posted an essay assessment under your essay, which I assume you have seen. For anyone else interested, my assessment of Jeff's essay is located here.
Cheers, Terry
Peter Jackson wrote on Feb. 17, 2018 @ 17:30 GMT
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3099#post_144251
Dear Terry,
I was most impressed, even inspired. Your ability to find the right questions is leagues above most who can't even recognize correct answers! Lucid, direct, one of the best here.
I entirely agree on simplicity as the title of my own essay suggests, but isn't a reason we haven't advanced that our brains can't quite yet decode the complex puzzle (information)?
But now more importantly. I'd like you to read my essay as two of your sought answers are implicit in an apparent classical mechanism reproducing all QM's predictions and CSHS>2. Most academics (& editors) fear to read, comment or falsify due to cognitive dissonance but I'm sure you're more curious and honest. It simply follows Bell, tries a new starting assumption about pair QAM using Maxwell's orthogonal states and analyses momentum transfers.
Spin 1/2 & 2 etc emerged early on and is in my last essay (scored 8th but no chocs). Past essays (inc. scored 1st & 2nd) described a better logic for SR which led to 'test by QM'. Another implication was cosmic redshift without accelerating expansion closely replicating Euler at a 3D Schrodinger sphere surface and Susskinds seed for strings.
By design I'm quite incompetent to express most thing mathematically. My research uses geometry, trig, observation & logic (though my red/green socks topped the 2015 Wigner essay.) But I do need far more qualified help (consortium forming).
On underlying truths & SM, gravity etc, have you seen how closed, multiple & opposite helical charge paths give toroid... ..but let's take things 2 at a time!
As motion is key I have a 100 sec video giving spin half (+, QM etc.) which you may need to watch 3 times, then a long one touching on Euler but mainly Redshift, SR, etc. But maybe read the essay first.
Sorry that was a preamble to mine but you did ask! I loved it, and thank you for those excellent questions and encouragement on our intellectual evolution.
Of course I may be a crackpot. Do be honest, but I may also crack a bottle of champers tonight!
Very best
Peter
Peter Jackson replied on Feb. 18, 2018 @ 20:16 GMT
Terry,
I omitted the link to the Ridiculously Simple; 100 second video glimpse.
Peter
Peter Jackson replied on Feb. 18, 2018 @ 20:19 GMT
..this time with the first 'h'(ttp); https://youtu.be/WKTXNvbkhhI 100 sec..Classic QM
Peter Jackson wrote on Feb. 21, 2018 @ 12:35 GMT
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3099#post_144803
Terry,
Did you see my 17.2.18 post above & 100sec video deriving non-integer spins from my essays mechanism resolving the EPR paradox? (I've just found the 'duplet state' confirmation in the Poincare sphere)
That all emerged from a 2010 SR model http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1330 finally able to resolve the ecliptic plane & stellar aberration issues and a tranche of others (expanded on in subsequent finalist essays).
i.e you'll be aware of George Kaplans USNO circ (p6) following IAU discussions.
(Of course all including editors dismiss such progress as impossible so it's still not in a leading journal!)
Hope you can look & comment
Peter
Hi Peter,
Wow, what generous comments! I am very pleased in particular that you said I may have inspired you a bit. That makes me feel better than anything else you could have said, because in the end that was the hidden intent of the essay: To encourage folks to look at themselves as capable of more than they ever imagined. Sometimes nothing more than writing up a new idea in a way that people can understand is the best way to help them realize their own potential. There are just too many distractions sometimes, and that in turn keeps us from realizing that we can focus our minds and efforts to develop powerful new ideas. Take that to a community level and wow, the threads and bundles of possible positive futures opens up in ways no one could have anticipated.
On to other issues! The first is that you accidentally and very innocently stepped on what recently has become a hot button of mine, which is this:
OMG how can you even kiddingly call yourself a 'crackpot' for believing and advocating an extremely common sense compatible position that Einstein, Bell, and any number of very smart people feel must be correct??
Entanglement is always an interesting debate, but I don't think even kiddingly using that particular term for self-deprecation is a good idea. It is one of the most overused ad hominem phrases in all of science, and for that reason it is also one of the most damaging mental toxins that limit the overall ability of such communities to increase their collaborative intelligence. Intelligence at the delicate community level simply cannot function well if at the individual level its members can with impunity inject such mental toxins to kill off any cross-community communication that they don't happen to like.
And that is not even getting into the ethics of using such mental toxins specifically to harm other human beings!
That said, sigh, I've used that term myself, more than once, although usually with accompanying definitions of the behaviors for which I was using it. Usually it was more frustration for the lack of a better word for describing a certain set of strongly self-defeating behaviors and analytical approaches. Physician heal thyself indeed!
But let's get back to the issue of entanglement.
How the heck can you being in the company of no less than Einstein on that point merit anyone calling you names? Forget spin entanglement, Einstein alone had the brilliance back in the early 1900s to see that no quantum probability wave function can be reconciled with classical physics. His very first shot across the bow was a pointed thought experiment that he posed to his audience of fellow quantum physicists: If you have a large wave function, say one a light year across, how do you keep multiple people from finding the same electron as they individually search that wave function?
The only resolutions Einstein could see were either (a) there was never more than one point-like electron in the wavefunction to begin with (de Broglie's pilot wave model), or (2) the quantum wave function had to collapse "instantly" across its entire lightyear diameter, removing itself at faster-than-light speeds so that no one else could find the same electron. To Einstein, for whom the principle of locality was absolute, that was enough to prove that wave functions as defined then (and now) could not possibly be complete descriptions of physical reality. It was and is an amazingly perceptive argument.
Having said all that, allow me now to shock a few folks with another disclosure: My position on quantum entanglement is precisely the opposite of those who believe that locality is the primary reality. That is, not only do I accept the reality of quantum entanglement for both experimental and theoretical reasons, I consider space and time as we know them to be secondary to the world of quantum entanglement.
Our universe emerged from a fully quantum place, and we continue to "mine" what remains of that initially infinite range of undefined futures through the process we call entropy. The two are opposite sides of the same coin: a past that is closed to any further change via accumulation of classical information ("history"), and a future that remains partially open through a sort of mining of the many shreds and fragments of indefinitely broad, undefined futures that existed before the Great Break, and which have not yet been consumed by entropy. We call that two-faced coin space, and it is a place where the original quantum symmetries from before the Great Break now can be seen only within the nooks and crannies of smallness or coldness or indifference (transparency) in which entropy can be held at bay for a while longer. Everywhere else the coin of space displays itself as the eternally changing Hamiltonian of "now". This universe-encompassing Hamiltonian grasps in one hand the statistically irreversible givens of the past, and in the other hand the freedoms of the yet-to-be-defined quantum future, and from them both forges still more pages to add to the ever-expanding annals of entropy.
And life is there, snatching its opportunity to persist and expand by setting up the givens of the past to ensure a future that ensures their continuity into the future.
Back to entanglement, again.
Given all I said earlier about Einstein's amazingly perceptive arguments against entanglement, how can I possibly also believe that entanglement is real?
Peter, on page 8 of your 2017 FQXi essay you say: "The entanglement experiments of Aspect34 and Weihs et al35 reported unexplained 'rotational inconsistencies' but results followed predictions when ignored, so they were."
Fact-based turnabout is fair play, I think. So here is my own pro-entanglement anomaly for you and others either to accept or to discount as you see fit:
My main point is that things have, um, moved along quite a bit since the now-ancient days of Aspect. A lot of hard-nosed business folks figured out years ago that arguments against the very existence of such phenomena do not matter much if you can simply build devices that violate Bell's inequality, use them to encrypt critical data transmissions, and last but not least make a lot of bucks by selling them.
I'll make two additional remarks on your many interesting comments:
First, spin.
I like to think of spin as a bit like gearing. The outside gear is the observer turning the entire system around a few times, like a pot on a pottery wheel. The inner gear is the "spin state" or degree of resulting rotation in response to the external maniputations of the observer.
Spin 1/2 has a half-speed gear inside that doesn't finish one full circle until the outside one spins twice, so the observer would see it lagging noticeably in comparison to her potter's wheel. For spin 1 the inner gear (observed object rotation) and outside gear (rotation of the potter's wheel) are locked together. For spin 2 the object is geared for high speed, circling around twice per observer induced wheel rotation.
All of this is very easy to visualize, since we've all seen gears e.g. on bicycles that go faster or slower than the driving gear. However, for spin 1/2 I assure you that this simple visualization is not the one that usually gets presented, which is an odd sort of thing that doubles the outer gear instead. I would suggest that this much more continuous view is a better way to understand half spin, and that this continuity could even help provide some insights into why 1/2 is so different. Even in this simple model, for example, it is the only spin that is slower than the driving spin. Spin 1/2 (and also the higher fermion spins of n+1/2, n=1,2,...) also has the very interesting property of causing the object to half-turn in response to one normal turn.
Think about that in terms of phases. If the opposite sides of the object represent plus and a minus phases of some sort, then half-spins have the potential to match positive and negative phases of adjacent identical fermions in ways that integer phases do not. Could this be related to the zero-probability surfaces that form in xyz space between adjacent antisymmetric fermion wave solutions? I honestly do not know, since one has to be careful how one interprets such models But it certainly smells interesting...
The second topic is your video. I'm sorry, but I watched it several time and never saw even a hint of anything other than classical Bertlmann's socks propagation of correlated spin, which does not violate Bell's inequality and so doesn't explain why customers do not sue the bejeebers out of the makers of the ID230 for false advertising. Oddly, their market instead is expanding.
Cheers,
Terry
Eckard,
Your essay caught me completely off guard. For a number or reasons I pretty much accept the "now is real" interpretation a the only one that is logically self-consistent, since all block models of time require a sort of magical preconstruction of the block that on closer examination cannot be made self-consistent without some kind of causality-enforcing "growth" from past to future. Any such "growth' process looks a whole lot like... well, time, and time with a very definite sense of "now" at the future face of growth.
I am very much aware of the SR and quantum arguments for the block universe, but am also unimpressed by them. Since there exist computational models by which an infinite number of inertial frames can co-exist and show the exquisite symmetry of SR, but with only of the frames being "real" and all of the others "virtual", I do not see any logical path for justifying the need to create a block universe. That would be sort of the most ham-fisted attempt at a solution, and as I noted above, it doesn't really work anyway due to self-consistency issues. Computer science tends to ingrain the value of virtual into your world view, and of how real these virtual worlds can become, with each one potentially being the site of the single "real" frame.
I've also been a fan of Fourier transforms for decades, particularly the complex variety. I once "invented" a fractional integration/differentiation spectrum based on Fourier transform phase shifts. A chemist friend who actually used fractional calculus in his work was quite excited by it, but I just laughed and said I was very confident that all I had done was come up with an idea that someone else likely had done at least a century ago... which turned out to be exactly the case!
I very much like and agree with your idea that Fourier transforms are even more relevant to particle physics than we give them credit for, though I suspect we differ in some of the details of what part of which variety of transform gets applied where. If you get a chance sometime and have not already done so already, you should look up the chirality issue for fermions in the Standard Model. The left-handed and right-handed version of the electron (and other fermions, except neutrinos) present some interesting opportunities to link Fourier components to both particles and how particles obtain mass.
My only disappointment in your essay was that I was hoping that in the last couple of pages you would take your model a bit further into particle physics to show how it might connect there. I realize though that the length limits of these essays are tough, but for me this one ended too quickly.
So again, thanks. Yours is one of a very small number of essays that I will stash away for a closer look after the FQXi commentary period.
I will put a short posting under your essay thread to point to this one as my assessment.
Cheers,
Terry
Dear Terry
If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don't rate them at all. Infact I haven't issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.
Beyond my essay's introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity's effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me and my essay in questioning this circumstance?
My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a "narrow range of sensitivity" that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn't then gas accumulation wouldn't be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.
Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn't we consider this possibility?
For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we "life" are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.
My essay is attempt of something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up a potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond formation activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemistry processes arose.
By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might explain for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.
To steal a phrase from my essay "A world product of evolved optimization".
Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest
Kind regards
Steven Andresen
Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin
Terry
Thanks for looking. You clearly have your own well established ideas, something we're all guilty of to some degree. I studied the ID230 and essentially it seems to be based on random number generation and not any 'action at a distance' so found it's descriptions a little misleading and struggle to see it's direct relevance. Can you explain.
I was also surprised you didn't see from the video how adding different rates of z axis rotation to a 180o y axis rotation transformed it to either spin 1/2 or spin 2, or indeed other non-integer rates. (The North pole returned in either 90o or 360o y axis rotations). It's beauty is in it's simplicity.
Did you a) not see it do so? or b) not think it replicates the data?
I was also disappointed you couldn't follow the mechanistic sequence reproducing Dirac's formulation. It is indeed multi faceted so it's clear (we) have to do a better job breaking it down into brain-manageable steps.
Re Dr Bertelman's socks; Did you read my (top scored) 2015 essay; The Red/Green Sock Trick. which clarifies how my red lined green socks (& vice versa) avoid Bells theorem as he anticipated, the solution; "..will be found by going round the back". Most understood in 2015 so I hope at least you may also!
That essay also shows how the QM solution emerged from an SR solution free of paradox (as 3 prev finalist essays) so unified with the fundamental probability distribution of my 'Law of the reducing Middle' (which the ID230 uses), consistent with Prof Phillips excellent essay here.
But all have their own embedded ideas, whether mainstream or not. I know it can be hard to suspend them to explore others as I try to do so systemically but still often struggle. That's human nature, and we all have limited time. If yours is to short, thank you anyway for the time you spent.
Very best
Peter
PS. Are you aware of the IAU/ USNO's big 'ecliptic plane/stellar aberration problem? (astral navigation etc.) I have the clear solution but entrenched thinking won't allow it to emerge. What on Earth can I do?
Terry,
I forgot; - Of course I'm NOT suggesting; "there is no such thing as entanglement." at all. I show an 'entangled' relationship of antiparallel polar axes reproduces QM predictions, and only then say "there is no such thing as 'spooky action at a distance' required!"
p
Terry,
Like your practice of numbering responses by paragraphs. and a useful analytic. Had not thought of approaching my reading in that manner. Like that free acrobat permits highlighting and commenting.
Many interesting thoughts in your responses. Skipping beyond a few of them to
(4) Euler's identity - yes, apparent deepness of connection between math and matter befuddles. re inversion, i did try to work with conductance early in exploration of impedance quantization. Shoulda been trivial. Seemed more sensible to work in terms of what goes easy rather than what resists. Simple thing in mathcad (left a link for you to pdf of an early mathcad file in our thread on my essay) to work either way. Was very puzzling. Gave it a lot of attention, as somehow it seemed a philosophical item of importance, to opt for conductance rather than resistance. Could not make any sense of it, still don't understand why. Couldn't get the numbers to work. One has to calculate to figure anything out. Couldn't calculate. Had to give up, switch back to impedances. Can't believe there is anything fundamental in the modeling that would cause this. Wish i had a student to chase it.
(5) renormalization - you are calling conductance 'the primary fraction'? Like that, but of itself it is not enough to result in finiteness if i understand correctly. Impedance has both capacitive and inductive components with pi/2 phase shift between them in 'free space', a consequence of how wave function of interest excites the eight-component 3D Pauli vacuum wavefunction. Capacitive impedance is zero at the singularity, inductive is infinite. Going from ohms to mhos doesn't get rid of the singularity, just shifts its phase. However either extreme results in an infinite mismatch.
(5a) Regarding applications of quantum impedance matching in amo/condensed matter, agree there are possibilites as yet unimagined. Been humping on that for years. Only way to understand the inertia of mainstream is to experience it. Would seem obvious. The computer holding me a willing captive at this very moment is chock full of impedance matches. How could a quantum computer be any different? So far in our investigation of impedance quantization it seems the concept is firmly grounded in reality. Computers require impedance matching. Quantum computers require quantum impedance matching. Have a Buddhist friend that likes the phrase 'not no mind'. Me, i go with compassion for ignorance, otherwise would hate my not no self and go lusting for the not no gold mines' kitty kats. What a funny world we live in. Mortgages and back taxes.
(6) dude! We got got gravity. That was our black hole info paradox paper/poster for the 2013 Rochester Conference on Quantum optics, information, and measurement. Vetted by Optical Society of American, world guardian of quantum information theory/experiment. Poster is perhaps quickest click. http://vixra.org/pdf/1306.0102v1.pdf
(7a) excellent. You know math better, perhaps i have found a teacher please. The uniqueness of 3D space is an area pretty new to me, and i've never seriously looked at quaternions. When trying to model particle physics one picks and chooses what to learn very carefully, as there is infinity of beauty and complexity in every direction. For the purposes of tying together loose ends it seldom suffices to simply chase down the ends and knot them, unless one agrees to be satisfied with the tangle that connect them. Lacking that the universal PhD path dives in and start untangling. The village idiot just tracks down the ends and ties the knot. and poof fairy tale tangle vanishes and he steps in a cow pie. So it goes. Michaele and i are more modelers than typical theorists, and def not math types. Calculators.
(7b) thanks for link to Traill, Peter Jackson also recommended him and I took a look but was not able to wrap the mind around it, will try again.
re intuition, i think much of it has to do with what one experiences in life, what the Buddhist might call dependent arising. For me it was working with my brother, designing/building/operating vibratory piledrivers, synchronized spinning eccentric weights. Standing next to them, feeling the energy transfer,... Made one want to laugh, to dance and sing. That and dad was an electronics guy, we build the electronic analog and ran it on the bench. Mechanical and electrical impedances. Quantization comes easy once one gets that.
took a look at the Rochester poster. Had forgotten superheavies (top/higgs/Z/W) line is in the wrong place by a power of alpha in figure 4. Better reference for that figure is the big bang/bounce paper http://vixra.org/abs/1501.0208
Dear Wayne,
Thank you for alerting me to your essay! My assessment is here under your essay.
Cheers,
Terry
Marc,
Thank you for such generous, detailed, and insightful comments! That is the best critique section I've seen yet for my essay, and your comments definitely made me consider how to do a number of items better.
I put the diagram together with a focus on capturing the idea of "excursions" away from the main message, and freely confess that some of my choices for labels were more humorous winks and nods at my own essay than realistic examples from actual data compression. It's an old technique to see if folks are paying close attention, and in this case, you are the only one who said they noticed.
Labeling the main path that way, though... yes, that is pretty much an error, and I definitely would do it differently in retrospect. Since I'm pretty sure I'll be doing new versions of that same figure in the future, that insight of yours will be helpful. Thanks!
So again: Thanks, that is really good feedback!
On your additional comments, Euler's identity is in many ways is easy to understand, and certainly it is exceptionally elegant. The point about a physics interpretation is a bit more subtle, though. Sometimes things that seem very familiar can have additional implications that our familiarity actually makes harder to see. For that challenge, it really is a shot in the dark in the sense that I'm not assuming any specific link to physics, just that its very brevity may imply a more specific physical implication that so far has been overlooked.
By binary I am showing my computer science roots: We reflectively translate everything numeric into zeros and ones. Other options did not work out that all well in the early years of computers, and binary is a pretty decent choice for a "universal" format for representing numbers.
I'll now go take a look at your essay. You have me curious!
Cheers,
Terry
Terry,
Not sure what you mean:
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
My comments above did not apply to you, basically the contest in general.
Jim
Tom,
Thank you for your well-stated questions about information versus meaning.
Information (bits) and meaning are not the same thing at all, nor does the idea of binary compression create meaning. All compression does is eliminate bits that are not part of the primary meaning of the message.
To get at the meaning, you have to have some much broader context by which to interpret those bits. Since you mentioned the Bible, an example would be a Unicode version of the Bible in, say, German. Until you understand both Unicode and the German language, that bit string remains just that: a string of bits. The meaning only comes from that broader context.
Or for another analogy, compression is more like panning for gold. It helps pull out the gold, sure, but the value of that gold depends entirely on the person doing the panning.
For more on the relationship between data and meaning, please see this posting I did about how the meaning of a given string of bits can vary over time.
Thanks again for some well-stated questions!
Cheers,
Terry Bollinger
Cheers,
Terry
Terry,
Perhaps because I think like a complex systems scientist, I agree with your gold mining metaphor -- applied to information. Information without waste and redundancy is efficient and useful. On the other hand, waste and redundancy are assets to creativity. The meaning that one assigns to information is a subjective judgement; it does not necessarily contain the requisite information to "be fruitful and multiply."
A priori meaning is that which precedes information, and continues without the user's knowledge. For example, Leslie Lamport said, "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable." Unusable, not meaningless. For in the context of the system, rejected information is useful somewhere else in the system.
Thanks for bringing the dialogue to a higher level. It is most welcome.
Best,
Tom
Hi Terry,
I saw the amazing brainstorm in your 2/17 "quick addendum" comment on Karen Crowther's essay, but thought it was more appropriate to respond here. (Unfortunately since your comment is hidden in that thread, I can't link to it directly.)
The basic idea is that perturbative theory is more fundamental than non-perturbative theory, even where the latter is actually available -- which isn't the case, so far, with the Standard Model. I'd never thought of it like that, but it does make sense to me. It has always seemed to me significant that a beautifully simple formula like Newton's gravitation law has to be computed perturbatively as soon as you have more than two interacting bodies. I think what this points to is just that the actual physics of our world is being done in the vast numbers of one-on-one relationships between things (and parts of things)... while the seemingly simple "formal solutions" represent the summary result of this, not its underlying cause.
What's really daring is your insistence that not only physics but sacrosanct Math itself - at least to the extent it's computable - also works this way. I was indeed shocked, not so much by the anti-Platonic idea as by the intellectual energy behind it. But as I've come across your responses to many another essay in this contest, I've come to realize you're one of those who can "think five impossible things before breakfast." I'm in awe.
Now for another of your dicta, which I also agree with: not only entropy but also meaning increases with time. Referring here to your reply to Noson Yanofsky above, and to your comment on Josephson's essay: "Meaning itself appears to be inherent and pre-programmed into the very fabric of our cosmos, both at the level of the Standard Model and deeper. I do not think we are remotely close to understanding how that works, or even how to frame the question properly."
Framing this question is a central concern of mine. My my last FQXi essay proposed a recursive definition of meaning, expanding on Bateson's "difference that makes a difference." As argued also in my current essay, for any kind of information to be meaningfully definable, there has to be an appropriate context of other minds of information, that have meaning in other contexts. In relation to your quantifying the "impact on reality per bit," the point is that "impact" depends on the "pre-programming" of some part of reality to receive this particular kind of information and translate it into some other kind, that has an impact somewhere else. In the earlier essay I tried to outline the three great recursive technologies that accomplish this in the physical, biological and human worlds, each working by a form of natural selection. In a still earlier essay I pointed out the "semantic" dimension in the mathematical language of physics - another way of getting at the issue of how different types of physical information help define each other.
My sense is that Josephson's "semiotics" doesn't get to this key issue. If we think of "meaning" in terms of signifying, we have a relation between sign and signified where the context goes unnoticed. This is also the problem with much discussion of measurement in quantum theory, where the many-faceted complexity of any actual measurement arrangement gets abstracted into a relation between object and observer.
It's quite understandable that even though measurement-contexts clearly play a key role in quantum physics, it only seems possible to describe them theoretically in a highly abstract form. But I think this is why I'm so impressed your notion that "perturbative" theory has to be fundamental - it shows a willingness to get involved in the many-leveled nuanced "lumpiness" of the world. So more power to you! (But do stop for breakfast once in a while.)
Conrad
All,
I just did an evaluation of Karl Coryat's excellent essay The Four Pillars of Fundamentality. It is both funny and profound, and I recommend it highy!
For anyone interested, I once again inadvertently got "into the zone" while contemplating Karl's Pillar #3 (Relations), resulting in another one of my on-the-fly mini-papers. This one addresses two topics: (a) the deep physics level fundamentality of "relations", which is the topic of Karl's Pillar #4, and (b) a years-old space-as-entanglement idea from my personal physics notes.
I had not intended to present the space-as-entanglement idea here, but it just seemed too relevant. It is equivalent to a hugely simplified, non-holographic approach to constructing 3-space out of a direct 3D (not 4D) web of group-level entanglements. The entangled "unit of space" is an overlooked direction-only conjugate component of particle spin. Since these were just personal musings, I was genuinely surprised to find out that a lively community for exploring the idea that space is a form of 4D holographic entanglement has existed for years. My version is much simpler (3D), much more direct (just a web), and I think kind of fun to read as a mind-stretching exercise if nothing else!
Cheers,
Terry
All,
Another very well written essay that I must recommend is Marc Séguin's Fundamentality Here, Fundamentality There, Fundamentality Everywhere.
It was one of my most enjoyable reads. It is lucid, learned, well-stated, well-ordered, addresses the topic in an interesting and engaging way, and has a sly self-deprecating sense of humor that had me chuckling multiple times. It is also spot-on for the question that FQXi asked this year.
On looking back at my assessment of Marc's essay, it looks like I got a bit carried away again. This time the topic was the nature of qualia. That is the word for the internal sensations and emotions that you can bring up in your mind without external sensory inputs. Try it: Close your eyes and imaging red and green lights, alternating. Those are qualia.
Notice that even though your optical system consistently maps the external light frequencies that we call red and green into the corresponding qualia in your head, the very fact that you can bring up the qualia without any external stimulation shows that all that is going on here is mapping: the light frequencies get mapped into those "somethings" in your head that you can also bring up from memory. For all you or I know, what red light brings up in my head might be what you would have called green. That sort of thing happens all the time for folks with synesthesia (which makes me jealous!).
So if you happen to have any interest in qualia, you can see what I wrote in my comments on Marc's essay.
Cheers,
Terry
Dear Terry,
Thank you for the kind words about my essay! To keep the ball rolling, may I recommend another excellent essay,
"What if even the Theory of Everything isn't fundamental" by Paul Bastiaansen
fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3063
I too got carried away with my comments on his thread... I used, of course, your very helpful and honest "what I liked/what I liked less" approach, and even referred to your essay contestant pledge!
Cheers,
Marc
Terry,
I like your definition (quote?) of QM. The thing about history is that nobody can see it as history at the time.
There's history being written in my essay you've so far missed due to normal embedded assumptions. To make it more visible I've posted the below check list which the ontology builds on; Hope you can find the l time to look with a fresh mind.
AS MOST STRUGGLE WITH THE CLASSICAL SEQUENCE (TO MUCH TO HOLD IN MIND ALL AT ONCE) A QUICK OUTLINE INTRO IS HERE;
1. Start with Poincare sphere OAM; with 2 orthogonal momenta pairs NOT 'singlets'.
2. Pairs have antiparalell axis (random shared y,z). (photon wavefront sim.)
3. Interact with identical (polariser electron) spheres rotatable by A,B.
4. Momentum exchange as actually proved, by Cos latitude at tan intersection.
5. Result 'SAME' or 'OPP' dir. Re-emit polarised with amplitude phase dependent.
6. Photomultiplier electrons give 2nd Cos distribution & 90o phase values.
7. The non detects are all below a threshold amplitude at either channel angle.
8. Statisticians then analyse using CORRECT assumptions about what's 'measured!
The numbers match CHSH>2 and steering inequality >1 As the matching computer code & plot in Declan Traill's short essay. All is Bell compliant as he didn't falsify the trick with reversible green/red socks (the TWO pairs of states).
After deriving it in last years figs I only discovered the Poincare sphere already existed thanks to Ulla M during this contest. I hope that helps introduce the ontology.
Very best. Peter