Fundamentality Here, Fundamentality There, Fundamentality Everywhere by Marc Séguin

Dear Marc Séguin

Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.

My essay is titled

"Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin". It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.

Thank you & kind regards

Steven Andresen

Professor Seguin,

This is a very thought provoking essay, so I thought I might offer a few that come to mind...

Your metaphysical handwaving seems to assume there is that "purely abstract structure" in the "All=nothing." Yet wouldn't all that abstract structure equally cancel out to nothing as well? Is there some platonic math hiding in zero, or does it arise with the divisions, distinctions and interactions arising from that total equilibrium? Wouldn't it be even more fundamental if you could describe the process by which even that mathematical structure comes into being, from the zero up? For example, say there is just the fluctuating vacuum. Such that it is only energy and the forms expressed by this energy. For instance, temperature would be an elementary description, thus form of this energy. Given the energy is dynamic, it is constantly changing form. Simple as that seems, it opens a Pandora's box for physics, as it creates the effect of time. Since there is only the energy, it is always and only present, thus "conserved." Now our awareness manifests as flashes of perception and so we think of this point of the "present" flowing past to future, which physics codifies as measures of duration, but the far more logical explanation is that it is change turning future to past, as in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. Duration is simply the state of the present, as events coalesce and dissolve. This makes time an effect of action, similar to temperature. As evidence of this underlaying dichotomy of energy and form, consider that after a few billion years of evolution, we developed a central nervous system, specializing in processing form/information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process energy. Consider as well that the seat of this information processing, the brain, is divided into two hemispheres. The left, linear, sequential, rational side effectively equates to the sequencing of time, while the right, emotional, intuitive, circular feedback side effectively equates to thermodynamic feedback loops. E.O. Wilson described insect brains as a thermostat, but they have been shown to have the ability to count, as a navigation tool. Navigation is logically the substrate of narration and thus logic, history and civilization. Consequently the fundamentality of time to human existence, sort of like the earth as the center of cosmic perception. So if time is really an effect, where does this leave space? Is it reducible to geometry, or is geometry a mapping of space? Which is truly abstracted from the other? We could as easily correlate measures of temperature and volume, using ideal gas laws. Might it be that space is that physical zero? The all=nothing? The vacuum might fluctuate, but first you need the vacuum.

Emergence and other features prove that a reductionist approach with the Standard Model as its foundation does not work.

Quantum mechanics is not a general framework, quantum mechanics is just a kind of mechanics. And quantum field theories are not build over quantum mechanics. In fact, quantum mechanics and quantum field theory are two disjoint theories as Dirac correctly mentioned.

Elementary particles are not quantum fields. There are misguided attempts to interpret particles as excitations of associated fields, but this is physically meaningless. First, those excitations do not correspond to real particles but to unphysical bare particles. Second, fields are unobservable by definition, what we really measure in experiments are particles. Third, those fields are based in approximations like models of infinite chains of harmonic oscillators.

Wave-particle duality is a misnomer based in a misunderstanding about quantum theory. Particles always behave as particles. That wave-like phenomena refers to the collective behavior of ensembles of particles.

Electrons and anti-electrons are not localized "disturbances" or "bundles" in the electron field. Even ignoring that the Standard model deals only with unphysical bare particles, those "disturbances" cannot be localized in the model, because "x" and "t" in the Standard Model are dummy parameters not related to physical space and time coordinates.

"Because of the well-known incompatibility between quantum mechanics and general relativity, we simply do not know how to satisfactorily describe

gravity as a quantum field." We know how to describe gravity as a quantum field, as a spin-2 field, in the quantum field theory of gravity. The problem is on that people that pretends to quantize General Relativity. That people is trying to quantize geometry.

Of course, the Standard Model is not fundamental, but not only because of the large number of constituents. Considering the "Super Model" as a "Theory of Everything" would be so incorrect like the past half dozen of occasions that physicists believed they had explained everything or were close to explain everything.

There are good reasons why chemistry is not simply called "molecular physics" and they are not historical: e.g., nuclear chemistry and supramolecular chemistry deal with something more than just molecules. The claim "chemistry should be nothing more than electromagnetism and quantum mechanics applied to protons, neutrons and electrons" is so wrong like when Dirac pretended that the "whole of chemistry [is] thus completely known".

Biology is not applied chemistry, but that does not mean that we have to appeal to the anthropic 'principle' to explain the origin of life. The 'principle' is a mere tautology, which does not allow us to explain anything or to predict anything that we did not already know.

Contrary to what a reductionist as Steven Weinberg claims, thermodynamics is not deduced from statistical mechanics alone. Statistical mechanics requires of a previous knowledge of thermodynamics principles and laws, and that is why some scholars prefer the term statistical thermodynamics to refer to this fusion of disciplines.

Weinberg himself tried to deduce the second law of thermodynamics (in the form of H-theorem) from "the level of the elementary particles": he claims that the second law is a consequence of unitarity; he could not be more wrong! Weinberg even pretends that his H-theorem is more fundamental than the theorems "derived in statistical mechanics textbooks", because textbooks use the "Born approximation", whereas he does not. What the reductionist does not mention is that textbooks often deal with condensed matter situations, where the scattering approach that he uses is invalid, because interactions are persistent.

Finally, add my vote "no" to the poll of if consciousness is more fundamental than space/time/matter. Consciousness is an emergent property of matter.

Marc, It is good to see you back with another strong entry. I like your idea of no information meaning the whole ensemble of all abstractions, but where can you go from there? If each abstraction [math]a[/math] has a probability [math]p_a[/math] then they can be selected on the basis of that measure. Add the constraint that our experience has to take place in a habitable universe and you are done. The information gained in selecting an abstraction with probability [math]p_a[/math] is [math]I=-\log_2(p_a)[/math] in bits. Where then does the probability come from? Doesn't that require some arbitrary information about the universe? That would spoil the philosophical approach rather badly. The solution is to invert the problem and use the information content to determine the probability so [math]p_a = e^{-\ln(2)I}[/math] The information [math]I[/math] is the length of the shortest description of the abstraction in bits and if [math]S=i\hbar \ln(2)I[/math] the whole thing turns into a simple path-integral-like sum over the ensemble. A whole universe from nothing in one easy step.

Hi Philip, you have successfully proven that it is possible to link some unknown but assumed to be existent and exclusive abstractions like information and probability to derive the ultimate unknown abstraction, nothing = something. However, the question remains, do we really know what 'something' is in-itself and do we really know what 'nothing'is in-itself? Surely not, since we even do not know what the term 'information' should mean to discriminate between 'nothing' and 'something'. According to the zero-information approach of Marc, nothing must be something, it merely cannot be fully formalized in bits or other formal systems, since it has zero bits of 'information', zero bits of formalizable content. This tells me that the whole menue of 'nothing' as well as that for something cannot be completely understood by human beings with only the menue card at hand.

Every shortest description of 'nothing' or 'something' must remain incomplete, since it neither can determine the essence of either of them, nor their relationship other than concatenating two unknowns to come to a third unknown. Otherwise one could say that the shortest computer program that is able to emulate 'nothing' has exactly zero bits and is complete - and that therefore an infinity of such programs run unnoticed permanently on our computers, non-existing programs that emulate, well, 'nothing'.

I think the failure here is to assume that undefinable, unknowable things must necessarily be equal to non-existent things and that non-existent things must necessarily be equal to unknowable, undefinable things. But this would mean that the non-existence of a real elephant in my room is an unknowable thing and that there could well be a real elephant in my room, albeit in a rather undefinable manner... so, just a moment... where are you...elephant...at least there is the potential for such an elephant to be here, since I have enough space in my room... and you are invited to guess whether or not there is indeed an elephant in my room at the moment - and state some probabilities for either case. The big question is, I think, which things we should reasonably consider as non-existent and which things we should reasonably consider as existent, but undefinable.

Hi Marc,

I will refer to your comment a couple of replies above and to your comment here.

O.k., agreed. We then have to re-define the terms mathematics, structure, relationship to 'enable' consciousness, means to be consistent with it. Since consciousness is qualitatively different from non-conscious 'abstractions' (non-concious abstractions cannot built for example a Boing 747 and have no Qualia - at least this is the most reasonable induction by observing non-conscious matter), we are talking not anymore about quantities and self-consistency of formal systems, but about different qualities of them. Surely, a certain amount of complexity needed for a 'thing' to be conscious is a quantitative statement, but it is surely also a qualitative statement, a statement that make a qualitative difference.

So, in another somewhat ambigous manner, your informational approach states that strong emergence is fundamental to consciousness, since it is another quality different from non-conscious 'abstractions'. If an 'abstraction' can realize its own 'essence', namely being an emergent abstraction, then it really gets paradoxical, since the starting premise was that all abstractions are a complete ensemble, existing somewhat in a timeless realm with eternally fixed 'qualities'. Human recombination of some of them does not change or add something to this eternal realm of abstractions. Hence some 'strong emergence' does not fit into your picture. But nonetheless, a structure that is complex enough to become aware that it is a structure, is a qualitative, an analytical insight into fundamental reality.

You wrote

"Yet, for me, the only thing that could possibly be truly fundamental must be unique and non-arbitrary, hence, contain zero information, yet explain everything. It is such a high-level (or you could say low-level) approach to the problem that most would considered it meaningless (or at least, useless)... But from an ultimate/metaphysical perspective, could it be just simple (and crazy) enough to be true?!"

O.k., once more agreed. But now you give a good reason for defining God as being truly fundamental, not in its more traditional definition, but simply as a truth which is at least totally conscious of two truths, namely of itself being THE fundamental truth and that he / she is conscious about this fact - and nontheless being able to explore a realm of itself that this God knows is non-conscious, unconscious so to speak. This God for example can re-define and re-structure some non-conscious realms of himself to become 'physical' - without in the first place having to know what these non-conscious parts of himself are in detail. He only knows the results a posteriori by realizing that they are consistent with the observations that they have a consistent dual meaning in reference to his own truth, namely a realm where time is present and things, although being temporal truths, do change according to their temporal relationships. Altough it may seem that such a God has merely discovered such a 'physical', self-consistent realm within himself, its free will to examine its 'non-conscious' realms may have lead to construct such a realm in the first place instead of discovering it. And additionally such a God may be well aware that he / she has constructed its own yet non-conscious extensions. This is also a kind of bootstrapping facts from nothing. This God may simply imagine something and decide that this imagination should have a permanent reality, he may not even hold this reality permanently in his conscious awareness, but it could well be delegated into some sub-realms of himself (the latter he may or may not have also created in the first place).

The same seems true to me for your approach, since it re-defines things to be consistent with consciousness, without having to figure out in the first place whether or not 'consciousness' can at all be put into a sufficiently consistent and complete 'mathematical' pattern that unequivocally also contains some signs of Qualia. To be honest, I do not believe that such a mathematical pattern can achieve more than pinpoint to some neuro-physical correlates, not even to all of them, since brains, albeit being similar, have some delicate differences when it comes to certain areas of activities. Similar approaches delegate the problem of consciousness into a sub-realm of mathematics.

Once more I would like to say that the imagination involved in this - and foremost the Qualia of at all being able to imagine something like a God - seems to me to be the main reason for being able to at all create a consistent enough induction scheme that seems to realistically invoke what is truly fundamental. And in some sense you are right with your approach, since it subsumes all of reality under a common principle, the better known things as well as the yet unknown things. Every attempt to state what is truly fundamental must as well subsume some unknowns, since we are not all-knowing beings. But we can simulate that we already know everything, at least in reference to the truly fundamental basis of existence. This is not much different from a God which simulates some things for the sake of them staying permanently in his / her realm of experience or existence.

In summary, I think that your approach, albeit I am not comfortable with it (but others may also be not comfortable with the notion of God), is not totally senseless and I agree that maybe reality is more crazy than we suspect it to be. A reality where crazyness and rationality may well coincide into a perfect whole and we realize that both terms - crazyness as well as rationality - are just limited terms to describe one and the same matter of facts. I am not against crazy ideas, indeed i like them!

Marc, thanks for having replied, so I can make more sense of your motivations to take the approach you did.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Marc Séguin, after reading your essay, I thought that you should definitely get acquainted with New Cartesian Physics. Look at my essay, FQXi Fundamental in New Cartesian Physics by Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich Where I showed how radically the physics can change if it follows the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes. Do not allow New Cartesian Physics go away into nothingness, which wants to be the theory of everything OO.

Sincerely, Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich.

Dear Marc,

thank you very much!

Have a nice day,

Francesco

Marc,

Does such information exist without a medium? Is there structure in the void?

Abstraction is necessarily abstracted from our experience and while it is defined by its consistency, is it completely logical? Consider the idea of a dimensionless point as an abstraction of location; If it has zero dimension, does it really exist, any more than a dimensionless apple? It is a multiple of zero and last I heard, any multiple of zero is still zero. Obviously it is more conceptually efficient to overlook this than deal with insisting on some infinitesimal dimensionality, but does that negate zero being zero, or is something being ignored?

How about the idea of space as three dimensional; Isn't it really just the xyz coordinate system and a mapping device, rather than foundational to space? Presumably volume, thus 3 dimensions, is prior lines and planes? Consider that any such coordinate system requires the 0,0,0 center point and multiple such points can exist in the same space, just as people all exist in the same space and are the center of their own coordinate systems. Lots of political conflicts revolve around different coordinate systems being applied to the same space. Are longitude, latitude and altitude foundational to the surface of this planet, or just a mapping device?

Obviously nature is incredibly complex and the patterns and laws we manage to extrapolate from it are also complex, but are they prior to nature, or an expression of its regularity?

Wouldn't it be even more foundational if we could explain how these abstractions emerge from ever more basic patterns, than assuming they exist in some platonic realm? Is there proof of that realm, or is it just belief?

Regards,

John

https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3039