Essay Abstract

My working assumption here is unusual: that our current well-established theories already give us most of what's needed to explain the foundations of physics. These theories don't seem fundamental, because we haven't clearly understood what it takes to make a universe like this work. Specifically, I ask how it's possible for a system of interactions to make any information about itself measurable and communicable, or even definable. Clearly our universe has this sort of functionality, though we take it for granted. Yet there are strong arguments that only a quite complex and finely-tuned physics could accomplish this. The question then is how a self-determining system like the physics of our universe could have come to exist. I sketch out one conceivable scenario, as a sequence of emergent levels, to show that it's possible to address this question empirically, on the basis of current theory.

Author Bio

I have a long-standing interest in the foundations of physics and the evolution of Western thought, going back to my graduate work many decades ago in the History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz. I'm grateful to FQXi for supporting this odd community, and for yet another crack at presenting and discussing my thoughts.

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Dear Conrad Dale Johnson,

I agree with your basic assumption - "that we already know, to a great extent... what the base-level structures of our universe are." I also agree that the 'fine-tuning' problem is very key to the solution, and believe that the 'multiverse' or 'landscape' is the least imaginative solution to the problem. As you note, if the tuning were such that no stable structures could form, "no information would be physically observable, or even meaningfully definable?" This agrees with my interpretation of information as energy that crosses a threshold in a (pseudo-) stable system, changing its structure and 'in'-forming it, thereby producing a record. Thus, as you say, before the universe cooled enough for stable structures to form, "physics as we know it would not have been definable."

I hope you will read my essay relating time and energy, because I believe that it supports your picture: the incredibly high energies involved during this period correspond physically to vastly 'faster' time, effectively yielding a longer period for supporting your thesis of self-evolving structure, and 'rules'. Events that don't obey the 'rules' don't survive this evolution. You map the details in reasonable fashion, but I believe your key insight is given in the above. I have spent quite a bit of time thinking of this problem, and I think that your approach is masterful. Once we reach stable systems, the rest follows.

You don't focus on consciousness in your essay, but in light of your education at Santa Cruz I'm assuming that you don't preclude the idea of the possibility of some primordial consciousness during this period preceding stable structures. Congratulations on an excellent essay, which I will score later.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Conrad,

    You say: "There were no rules or constraints at all, since there was no context in which any constraint could be defined". In fact, there is the rule of non-contradiction, that protects and directs existence, identity and support all our maths?

    ..." we need to be more creative in considering what the "why".." In my essay, I do proceed by asking "why" in order to eliminate the "how " which requires an observer....

    Good luck,

    Marcel,

      Edwin Eugene,

      Thanks very much! - I will certainly read your essay and respond to it. It's very encouraging that my "mapping" in Part II seems reasonable to you. Though I've also spent a lot of time working on this approach, this is my first attempt at a presentation, and it seems to me painfully inadequate.

      I'll postpone discussing the issues you raise till I've digested your essay. As to consciousness, it's a term with a wide range of meanings. I don't have any notion what it might mean in physics. Since I'm suggesting the universe is a system for defining and communicating information, and since our minds do those things too, there's surely some analogy there. But I tend to believe that what's really interesting in the concept of consciousness relates to us humans. Nor is it something that exists in itself; it needs the context of all the unconscious information-processing going on in our brains. But that's another conversation.

      Thanks again for your thoughtful reading - Conrad

      Marcel,

      Thanks for reading and responding. The thing is, there needs to be some context to define things before they can contradict each other, or not. In the scheme I've outlined in Part II, I try to show how mutually contradictory alternatives like +/- and left/right might first become definable within a system of other binary oppositions. The system that first gives meaning to the rule of non-contradiction seems to be the pre-metric structure of electromagnetism.

      I'll check out your essay soon.

      Conrad

      Dear Conrad Dale Johnson,

      FQXi.org is clearly seeking to confirm whether Nature is fundamental.

      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

      Dear Fellow Essayists

      This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,

      FQXI is clearly seeking to find out if there is a fundamental REALITY.

      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

      Dr. Johnson:

      I agree with you very good point that we already have the necessary model entries and data to obtain a next level model of the Theory of Everything. This includes a suggestion that until we do form a TOE with the available data, forming a more basic will be useless. That is, all the metaphysics stuff is a waste of time.

      Hodge

      Hi Conrad,

      Nice to meet you again in this contest. We have similar topics but completely different ways on how the approach the topic. I think both believe, that the meaning of fundamental concepts depend on the context on which they are applied. The context in which our current theories apply is the actual universe with enough complexity to be able to create a web of meaning, that actually defines these fundamental concepts.

      As I understand your essay in the early universe you see these conditions not as given. The primordial universe is a chaotic ocean of indeterminate events. With no structure and no laws. I like your archaeological picture of the remaining fossils of that time. Finally the microwave background is part of these fossils.

      I could not follow you then on how our current universe then was created. However the question, how such a state can be described poses an epistemological problem insofar that we try to describe within our current context.

      I did not try to answer that question in my essay. I was happy, that I could pose the problem.

      Best luck for the contest

      Luca

        Dear Conrad,

        I have read your comment on the essay of Marc Seguin, it gave me the reason to red your own essay and make some remarks:

        "So not only are the deep structures of physics bizarrely complex and counter-intuitive, but it seems they might have to be like this to function as the basis for any higher-level structure." The basic of your quest is indeed the counter intuitive, bizarre and complex appearance of our reality when we are trying to understand it. This only means that we are not yet "ready" with our intelligence to comprehend it. Maybe we cannot yet see the foundations of our reality....The slightly different universe you are mentioning is just another Reality Loop.

        "For a cell to be able to reproduce, it has to do a lot of other things". Is the constituents of cells or the structure of the dell that makes it possible to reproduce ?

        I think that "causal emergence" is one of the reasona that a cell becomes a cell with all its properties, so its constituents let emerge the cells properties...and so you can go down and up all the levels....

        "physics has remained essentially constant all that time, though the interactive environment it supports has gone through great transformations." I think that this is only valid for the physics of our own Reality Loop. History as you describe it is only a collection of explanations of memories of our brains, it is not stable physics is changing each moment with the growing of information.

        "a superposition of all possible paths, all the chains of connected events" The superposition of ALL possible paths is in line with what I call "Total Simultaneity".Only you are placing it inside the reality you are living in. The chains of connected events I think is only ONE chain of connected events that is leading to our unique reality , others "that play no further role in the emergence of any higher-level systems".are just probabilities in another Reality Loop. EVERY path has its own Reality Loop.

        "Each axis defines opposite alternatives". There are an infinty of axes we can think of each one representing its own "reality". Could you agree with that ?

        "In contrast to these emerging higher-order symmetries, the creation of the spacetime metric would have required another leap". You are very near here to my own perception. I argue that both time ans space are emergent entities from Total Simultaneity. They seem to be restrictions. So it is not that "the more dimensions, the more liberty" no it is the opposite of Total Simultaneity and Total Consciousness.

        You are really close to my own thinking Conrad, your loops are inside your own reality, mine are the limits of a reality. I hope that you can spent some time to read comment, a,d maybe rate my essay "Foundational Quantum Reality Loops" that also gives a solution to fine-tuned reality, teh MWI and so on. I liked very much your contribution.

        Best regards

        Wilhelmus de Wilde

          Hi Luca - - Yes, I'm afraid my sketch of the emergence of our current world can be hard to follow. In physics we usually think in terms of causality - well-defined information generating more such information. What I have in mind here is rather what we see in quantum measurement, where definite information comes into being just to the extent that there's a context to define it. I've developed that idea at more length in other essays. Here I summarize it briefly in Part I of the essay, and then try to show how this is relevant to understanding current physics. - - The basic idea is that what's needed to set up a universe like ours is a system of contexts in which each type of information can be defined and measured, so as to provide contexts for other kinds of information. I argue that - at least in our universe - it takes all the complexity of atomic structure to support such a self-defining, self-measuring system. So in a sense, our current universe only came into being in the so-called "era of recombination", with the emergence of stable atoms. Before that, the history that we can now reconstruct, all the way back to the earliest moments, would not have been distinguishable from any other set of events. - - Nonetheless, we can imagine a sequence of stages through which the physics of our current universe emerged from much more primitive self-defining systems. This gives us a way into the analysis of physics from a functional standpoint - a kind of analysis that's unfortunately only vague suggested in this sketch. - - Thanks for taking the time to read and respond! - Conrad

          Dear Wilhelmus - - Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the essay. In answer to some of your questions - - As to what makes it possible for cells to reproduce, of course their constituents and structure are both needed. Most importantly, even though self-replication is what's fundamental, from a functional standpoint, it doesn't work by itself. This kind of foundation is not something that stands alone, not needing anything beyond itself. As a general principle, everything needs more than one kind of basis to be what it is. - - As to the "infinity of axes" - even within one reality, from one point of view, we can choose any set of axes we like. But our 3-dimensional space needs 3 orthogonal axes to define it, and these are given in the structure of electrodynamics. - - I don't see any reason to deny the existence of other "realities" - other self-defining systems emerging in the underlying plenum of unconstrained events. But I don't get how that's relevant to understanding the physics our universe - I'll check out your essay and see if it helps me. Thanks again! - - Conrad

          Dear Conrad,

          I have finally managed to come back to your essay. Really interesting, and fluent to read, congratulations! And the basic idea, that of co-emergence of observers and contexts, is - I believe - a deep and crucial one. So I start by saying that I truly like your idea of contextuality, including the complementarity (and perhaps circularity) between the main characters exchanging information and the contexts in which they move. If I only managed to set the necessary and sufficient conditions that define contexts in specific situations, I would be able to make huge progress in many questions, including several of my ongoing research projects. I have been working on this front ever since last year's contest, and it has actually made a difference in the way I stand before my work. So thanks for that.

          Now going to the details, there are two points that I am still pondering.

          First, I am not sure that our universe needs to be exactly the way it is for it to "work". I do agree that a small change in fundamental constants would blow ourselves up. Yet, I do not see why perhaps a larger change of constants carefully tuned in some other region of parameter space could not give rise to some other interesting universe. One containing subsystems (as ourselves) that wonder about their ontology. They need not be based on the chemistry of carbon, they may well be completely different, as long as they have the enough complexity to have the feeling they exist. I have the impression, however, that the number of interesting universes is vastly smaller than the number of possible universes. Not that I have made the calculation, this is just an impression. But I am not sure we need to justify why things are exactly the way they are in order for existence to be possible. Maybe there is a certain range of alternatives. So when you say "I want to ask what it means - and what it takes - to be a foundation for a world like ours", I am not sure we should aim at exactly a world like ours, or to a somewhat broader set of worlds containing the interesting stuff. If we only aim at exactly our world, I fear we might be restricting ourselves to certain particular choices that are not actually fundamental. My project, however, requires us to define precisely what I mean by "the interesting stuff", or what you mean by "a world like ours". Which worlds are those?

          Second, and assuming we already know which those worlds are, I would suggest to do the search in the opposite direction. Instead of starting from all possible universes and trim them down to get to our world, I would try to define the set of worlds we want to arrive at, and work backwards. Like those children puzzles that look like labyrinths with several entrances and one exit, where you have to draw the path that takes you from one entry to the exit. They are easier to solve backwards, because the problem has a definite target, but the starting position is undefined. The necessity of each decision thus becomes more evident, because an alternative decision would take us away from the target. I know this may well have been the path in which you thought your deduction, and then you wrote the final version in the forward direction. For me it would have been instructive to know your internal backwards process, so as to follow it more transparently.

          This year I will be rating all essays at the end, because last year I was left with the sensation that my criterion evolved as time went by, and my marking was inconsistent. But rest assured you'll get a good one from me!

          I've still not been through Marc's essay, but will do so very soon. See you there!

          inés.

            Hi onrad Dale Johnson

            Nice analysis...." Clearly our universe has this sort of functionality, though we take it for granted. Yet there are strong arguments that only a quite complex and finely-tuned physics could accomplish this. The question then is how a self-determining system like the physics of our universe could have come to exist."

            Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed................ yours is very nice essay best wishes .... I highly appreciate hope your essay and hope for reciprocity ....You may 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 Conrad,

            I read you article a while ago and annotated it, but only now, at last, have I found time to comment on it! Sorry for the delay...

            As our conversations during the last contest attests, we do share similar views about what an "ultimate", maximally explaining theory should be. I like your focus on the functional importance of interactions, measurement and communication, as essential features of any universe that can self-determine itself, and thus be truly said to exist.

            I find the scenario that you sketch (interaction - reconnection - balancing opposites, etc...) bold, ambitious and thought-provoking, and I realize it is just one conceivable scenario. But some aspects of it I find a little difficult to grasp or make sense of. For instance, I'm not sure I would agree that "before there were any atoms in the universe, physics as we know it would not have been definable". Surely, an universe made only of photons would still have measurable properties, for instance, the relationship between the wavelength of the photons and the expansion of space... Could it be that, instead of having to reach at least atomic-structure level to be defined, a universe has to reach consciousness-level in some of its sub-structures? As you know, this is the thesis I find most believable, the existence of conscious sub-structures being the very condition that makes a mathematical structure become, "seen from the inside", a physical universe...

            I agree with you when you say that it is "perfectly possible for any kind of system to emerge within this chaos, so long as it could provide its own constraints", and that we live in such a self-defining system. As you so eloquently put it, we can think of our laws of physics as "selection rules, picking out random events in an underlying chaos that just happen to fit together, making contexts for each other [...] in the big picture everything happens, but only what happens to follow all these rules can make any definite impact on other things. The rest remains "virtual" - a subliminal ocean of indeterminate events."

            Your concept of the "Archaeology of Physics" is fascinating... it would be indeed amazing if we could find "layers of pre-metric structure" in the basic structures of physics today. You mention that electromagnetism could be such a pre-metric level... perhaps... but I have to confess that I found this part of your argumentation a bit strange and hard to make sense of. It is, of course, extremely ambitious to imagine how the physics of our universe could have, in a certain sense, "evolved" out of chaos. I will keep thinking about it...

            Of course, that's what the best essays in this contest do, make you think... Thank you for, once again, a strong entry. I hope that my up-vote will give you a little bit more visibility...

            Marc

              Dear Inés,

              Thanks for your very encouraging comments. The support from you and Marc in particular, in the last contest, gave me the nerve to attempt something in this essay that I knew would be difficult for readers to follow, so I'm not hoping for high ratings. But it seemed important that I try to show how these ideas can at least in principle be useful in explaining the strange combination of theories on which physics is currently founded. Hopefully, a first step toward a clearer and more coherent presentation.

              In response to your particular comments:

              >> If I only managed to set the necessary and sufficient conditions that define contexts in specific situations, I would be able to make huge progress in many questions...

              I'm very interested in how this problem appears to you. We have amazingly powerful tools for analyzing certain aspects of the world - involving entities with intrinsic properties in one-on-one relationships with each other, where the context is defined by abstract parameters (like space, time, temperature). The challenge is to develop adequate tools for dealing with systems more generally. In physics, biology or the human world, relationships depend on a context of other relationships, and of other kinds of relationships... and the contexts that relationships make for each other are rarely reducible to any simple structure of parameters.

              Physicists tend to bracket off the question of context, treating "the measurement problem" as a technical issue in quantum theory, with little relevance to other lines of research. I imagine that in neuroscience the problem of interdependent contexts is much harder to ignore. Generally, the difficulty in understanding contexts is not only their complexity, or interdependence, but also that they involve multiple layers of functionality that are hard to sort out. I have some ideas about a categorial framework for distinguishing levels of functionality, along with the layers of context-structure that correspond to each... as exemplified none too clearly in Part II of this essay. This obviously needs a lot of work and a fuller presentation, but I hope someday to make it useful.

              >> First, I am not sure that our universe needs to be exactly the way it is for it to "work"... I do not see why perhaps a larger change of constants carefully tuned in some other region of parameter space could not give rise to some other interesting universe... My project, however, requires us to define precisely what I mean by "the interesting stuff", or what you mean by "a world like ours". Which worlds are those?

              I agree that there could well be very different kinds of self-defining worlds - worlds "like ours" only insofar as the various kinds of information that define them would all be measurable in terms of each other. Maybe that could be done without atoms, or in a completely different spacetime - I don't think "fine-tuning" offers any evidence against this possibility. But the fine-tuning of the one universe we can investigate does strongly suggest that the requirements for any system that supports quantitative measurement are both stringent and complex. That gives me hope that eventually we'll be able to explain most of the diverse complexities of physics in our universe as necessary to enable this one particular informational system to define and communicate itself.

              >> Assuming we already know which those worlds are, I would suggest to do the search in the opposite direction. Instead of starting from all possible universes and trim them down to get to our world, I would try to define the set of worlds we want to arrive at, and work backwards... For me it would have been instructive to know your internal backwards process, so as to follow it more transparently.

              That makes very good sense... to start by formulating general conditions for any self-determining system. I wish I could have done that... but at least it's something to work toward. Meantime, it would have helped a lot to explain my internal process. Basically, I began with a schema worked out over many years for describing the stages of emerging functionality in systems of relationships - the "categorial framework" mentioned above. That gave me a map for laying out the "forward" approach, starting with "anything goes" - the superposition of all possibilities. The problem is that to explain this map would require a more philosophical context and a much larger scope - so again, something to work toward in future.

              I truly appreciate your making the effort to consider these issues with me. And by the way, evidently you found time this past year to dive rather deeply into the wonderful world of quantum theory! Hope you've been having fun in other ways as well.

              Conrad

              Dear Marc -

              I'm deeply grateful to you and Inés for taking my efforts seriously, and I realize that's not easy to do. I was determined in this essay to sketch out my draft "archaeology of physics" even though I knew it would be hard to follow, mainly to overcome my own doubts that I could make it seem sensible at all. Since I've worked hard to make all my previous essays cogent, I felt this time I could reach a bit further, expose something that's very much work-in-progress.

              I was very glad that you found connection between our perspectives on many points... but I'll focus here on what you found problematic.

              >> "I'm not sure I would agree that 'before there were any atoms in the universe, physics as we know it would not have been definable'. Surely, a universe made only of photons would still have measurable properties, for instance, the relationship between the wavelength of the photons and the expansion of space..."

              The notion that atomic structure is needed to make any kind of information definable is surely hard to swallow. In our universe, photons have wavelengths that get red-shifted with the expansion of space, and that doesn't seem to have much to do with atoms. But I don't see how anything at all would be measurable in a universe made only of photons. Unless there's something to detect the photons, and something to measure space and time, I don't see how wavelength would be definable.

              The historical aspect of my claim seems more glaringly wrong. Our best theories tell us that all kinds of particles, even a lot of helium nuclei, were out there interacting at high energies in very complex ways, long before there were atoms. No one seems to wonder why all this pre-existing structure turned out to be perfectly arranged to make atoms... but I think my approach to this makes sense, and is quite in keeping with the evidence of "delayed choice" experiments in QM. That is, before the emergence of atoms, all kinds of interaction-structure were possible. With the emergence of a context in which space and time and material structure were finally determinable, only the past history that produced atoms could be relevant as a basis for the future history of our universe.

              >> "Could it be that, instead of having to reach at least atomic-structure level to be defined, a universe has to reach consciousness-level in some of its sub-structures?"

              When I first read that, I thought you were suggesting there could be sub-structures at the sub-atomic level that were in some sense "conscious". Probably that's not what you have in mind... but anyway, I went back to your last essay on "Wandering Towards Physics" to check on how you use that word. By the way, I was again really impressed by the scope and depth of that essay, a masterly piece of work! And from your initial quotation from Fuchs to the end, you treat consciousness as a matter of having a "first-person" point of view, "from inside" the world. You also sometimes include "self-awareness" as a criterion.

              It seems fairly clear that a photon doesn't have a point of view, or if it does, it's limited to a view of two simultaneous instants, its emission and absorption. Electrons and other fermions are in contact with other particles over time, and constantly change their internal phase in response, and are also self-interacting. With atoms we have intensely self-interactive nuclei and electron-shell structures that exchange compound messages (photons carrying linear and angular momentum) with other atoms, as well as providing the basic structure needed for any kind of clock or measuring-rod. So maybe it does make sense to think of "self-aware sub-structures" as emerging here in stages. In any case your notion of "co-emergence" is appropriate to describe the way various kinds of primitive structure make contexts that help define each other.

              >> "... it would be indeed amazing if we could find "layers of pre-metric structure" in the basic structures of physics today. You mention that electromagnetism could be such a pre-metric level... perhaps... but I have to confess that I found this part of your argumentation a bit strange and hard to make sense of."

              It's obviously my fault, not yours, that this is hard to follow. My first two stages in Part II are at least a bit plausible, and the last two are just hand-waving, with no real attempt at explanation. But I knew I'd have trouble with the section on electromagnetism, which is very awkwardly half-explained. Pre-metric electromagnetism is indeed a thing - unfortunately all the papers I've found on it are very technical, and I haven't yet been able to translate them into a clear mental image. I would at least have liked to make a complete inventory of this system of mutually-defining, bilaterally symmetrical variables, but didn't have the time or space even for that.

              Maybe I also failed to make clear that I consider the universal attraction of gravity and the balancing expansion of the universe, the phase-interference of quantum systems and the gauge-symmetries of the nuclear forces all to be layers of pre-metric structure in our current physics. The great obstacle to here is my lack of clarity about how the final stage might work, to quantify all these diverse aspects of the world and incorporate them into the structure of atomic interaction in continuous spacetime.

              I have to confess that I still feel doubtful whether I can make these conjectures clear and presentable. Happily, the standards for these contest entries are not so rigorous! It makes a great difference to me to get these thoughts into print and in public, though I know I'm presuming more than I should on the patience of my readers. It makes it more possible to envision what a really successful version might look like.

              Again, many thanks for your help -

              Conrad

              Conrad,

              I was intending to give a detailed response to your essay this evening, but I can't. Why? You are saying a lot of important things, and it's going to take me a while both to digest them and to understand them fully. While it is a secondary issue in terms of rating essays, I also suspect (but am not quite sure yet) that we share a number of important ideas, but express them in somewhat different ways.

              Meanwhile you get a 9 from me for factual accuracy, understanding of the topic, depth of analysis, clarity of writing, and what I would judge a nicely novel approach to how "fundamental" physics came about in our universe. Good work.

              Cheers,

              Terry

              Hey Conrad, you are too modest! I think you make an important contribution! Whether other readers notice it or not, I cannot say. But in my humble opinion, you are taking the path that needs to be taken, that is, get one's hands dirty in the attempt to really exhibit the consequences of the hypothesis that our universe might be, as Wheeler put it, "a self excited circuit". Or, in your words, that the universe is the way it needs to be in order to be observable from within. We may later discuss whether the exact path you have taken is the most convenient one, whether we should start from one end or from the other, but ultimately, those are implementation details. The important thing is that all of us who like the self-excited idea really engage ourselves in defining the implications of that idea, and come up with some concrete consequences. Otherwise, we simply remain at the enunciation stage, where we make the self-excited statement, and that's it. Your essay is very important as an attempt to go further.

              I myself have been trying to think about these consequences ever since I read Marc's and your essays last year. My dream would be to deduce certain properties of the world around us (some characteristic of the basic equations, the 4-dimensional structure of spacetime, or some other aspect) from the self-excited hypothesis. Needless to say I have made little to no progress. What I am demanding is very difficult! But we must still try, and your essay is one such attempt. From my side, as I commented above, I would start at the other end, for which we need to list the requirements for conscious observers to exist. The ones I have come up with are roughly the following:

              - observers must be small compared to the whole. This means, the whole cannot be conscious, only small subparts can.

              - observers must have a sense of identity, some sensation that certain parts of the world constitute an "I", and all the rest does not. I believe that both sensory systems and the illusion of free will are required for the notion of I to emerge. One must realize that one can control certain parts of the universe (some of our thoughts, some of our movements, etc.) and not others (the parts that are outside ourselves).

              - observers must have a memory. Memory is required for two things. First, for the notion of "I" to emerge. Second, for the world to be observed and kept track of. If we forget everything instantly, then there is no way to model the world.

              - The requirement for memory to exist implies two things. There must be something like time, and such a time must have a well defined direction of flow. I tend to think time must be a 1-dimensional "thing", but to be honest, I am not sure what this means. Could time have more dimensions and still be time? If time has a direction, then there must be irreversible aspects in the evolution of things. The universe must start with order and tend to disorder, at least, when observed at the scales of observers. The storage of information in memory is an irreversible process, so time must be perceived as flowing in the direction of increasing disorder.

              This is as far as I got. As you may have noticed, these requirements are not carefully defined, and probably there are more to be set. I just want to mention these thoughts to you, so that you realize that (a) you are not alone in the search for consequences of the self-excited hypothesis, and (b) that I find the problem very difficult, and am myself pretty much stuck in the search.

              Ok, I send this for the time being, and hope to be able to write to you again soon, to tell you why I believe this duality between system and context is important in my research. I first need to polish the ideas! It's quite amazing how unpolished our thoughts can be, if we do not share them!

              More soon!

              Inés.