Constructing a Theory of Life

Rob,

Thanks! And figuring out how those initial conditions came to be and what they are is a question everyone has an equal chance at answering. Academics are more about describing systems like the universe as they already are and not about how those systems came into being in the first place, so they have no advantage on the second topic. What irritates me is when they pontificate about this second topic (e.g., Why is there something rather than nothing?) and other topics outside their area while at the same time deriding amateurs for their ideas on these same topics.

Also, physical laws describe physical things, interactions and changes in the universe. They're not fundamental like the initial conditions and what brought those initial conditions into being. As you say, the initial conditions and how those initial conditions came into being dictate the game.

But, given that, I agree with them that anyone's ideas on these topics should match reality, be testable and be able to make testable predictions.

Roger

Hi all,

Contructing a theory of life, a toe at my humble opinion must consider the spherical volumes and sphères and their motions and oscillations.We can unify G c h with objectivity. The main aim being to explain also this quantum weakest force the quantum gravitation. Several works are relevant about the geometrical algebras (Clifford, Lie,...) these works with quanternions, octonions are relevant considering the quasicrystals and the corrélations ith our space time .These works consider an external cause , primordial for the shapes, geometries, topologies like the strings and a 1D primordial field.My model of spherisation with quantum and cosmological sphères Inside an universal sphere in optimisation consider an intrinsic cause in the finite primordial series implying also shpapes, geometries, topologies.The relevance is that this can converge and we can reach this quantum gravitation.It does not seem to be an emergent electromagnetic force but needs an other logic non baryonic.The problem also about our consciousness can be analysed also considering the finite primordial series.The body mind soul problem can be also solved in this road considering the singularities and main primordial codes.

Spherically yours dear thinkers.

The real big question is about what are this aether, this vaccuum.Must we consider that aether is luminiferous ? I Don't think , I beleive that this aether is gravitational , it is intuitive of course but we need to superimpose new parameters non baryonic to this standard model.I am doubting that this infinite Eternal consciousness has created only photons like primordial essence of all things. This DM is intriguing also if it exists and that we are not obliged to modify our newtonian mechanics.

If the quantum gravitation is emergent due to our coupling and gauges of our standard model, so I will accept, but that seems odd and imply that we need to insert this matter non baryonic, in the cold probably, lambda of our cosmological model seems relevant, thjis zero absolute intrigues me a lot. Our scales quant and cosm need this matter to balance many things, to solve several problems that we have

Luboš Motl was right to use sarcasm:

"Some of the most experienced readers already know that a kettle may heat water. Fortunately, the authors allow us to formulate even such statements in a more "natural" and more "profound" way: For instance, a kettle with a power supply can serve as a constructor that can perform the task of heating water. LOL, it's a constructor. Who would have thought? One would think that a kettle isn't constructing anything..."

"Constructor theory: Deutsch and Marletto are just vacuously bullsiting", Luboš Motl, 27 May 2014, https://motls.blogspot.com/2014/05/constructor-theory-deutsch-and-marletto.html

I don't see any harm in clearly differentiating objects that have a more profound effect on a system than more passive background objects. The outcome with the kettle working is going to be very different from the kettle switched off.

Nature and nurture, an idea from biology, might be applied to physics. Eg. The nature of a particle being what it is, and its behaviour due to its 'initial condition, i.e. its behavior when emitted from a substance or device, is affected by the environmental exposure it incurs, between emission and result. Such as an electron passing through the magnetic field of a Stern Gerlach apparatus. The outcome spin up or spin down state is a product of the interaction of particle and field not merely the behaviour and nature of the particle unchallenged.

"You're a long way from the pituitary..."

Dissect a human brain. seeking q source or mechanism of thought. It never appears. Reductionism fails for emergent phenomena. Unlike intrinsic properties (e.g, the optical spectrum of water), extrinsic properties (chirality) are not "in" there" below a characteristic emergence scale. Self-awareness is not even localized.

Turbulence, spin glasses. Good luck with synthetic local deterministic processes efficiently predicting real world global emergence.

The problem is not explaining why some people are crazy. The problem is explaining why most people are not crazy, since no two brains are small scale identical (even for identical twins).

@Uncle Al, I don't even think there are any "emergent phenomena". We see something at one scale that we didn't, or couldn't, at another scale - but nothing actually emerged except a concept. "Emergence" is just a fashionable sort of hand-waving.

Joe, of course visible objects can be differentiated, otherwise we would be functionally blind.

I have re-posted this from the "Agency in the Physical World - FQXi's Next Research Program" Blog, because it is also relevant to the "Constructing a Theory of Life" Forum:

What is information:

Information = knowledge = subjective experience of one or more relationships between categories, whereby every "higher" category is ultimately related to the most fundamental-level categories like energy and momentum. Every information category, even the most fundamental ones, can be defined as a relationship between other categories. So that information/knowledge is always contextual (i.e. related and categorised): information does not objectively exist without context (i.e. i.e. without relationship and categorisation), as if it were a binary digit in a vacuum.

How do we represent information:

The physical universe exists because of information relationships. But the relationships are not to be equated to the mathematical symbols we human beings use to represent them. We represent relationships symbolically as: (law of nature) equations, algorithms (these mainly exist in living things), and initial-value number assignments (where every measured number can ultimately be traced to simpler relationships between categories in which the "numerator" and "denominator" categories cancel out, leaving a number, which is a thing without a category).

What knows information and what creates information:

The universe itself creates and knows all the types of relationships (represented by human beings as equations, algorithms, numbers). More precisely, parts of the universe create and know relationships: i.e. agent-observers create and know relationships, where agent-observers are "information-integrated": particles, atoms, molecules, and living things. This "creation" and "knowledge" are otherwise known as "free will" and "consciousness".

I think you should have made clear that you are quoting yourself; re-posting what you have written on the other page.

Joe, what do you mean by a 'real thing', when you also say only one unified, infinite surface has ever existed?

As expected, David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto fail to clearly distinguish information from the symbolic representation of information [1].

For example, they say: "Information can ... be moved from one type of medium to another..." But they should have said: "Symbolic representations of information can ... be moved from one type of medium to another...".

So it is not surprising that they are never able to say what information itself is. Instead they 1) try to describe the "character" and "properties" of this thing they can't define (i.e. information); and 2) make assumptions about this thing they can't define (i.e. information):

"we are concerned with the nature and properties of information"; "information has a counter-factual character"; "information is a qualitatively different sort of entity"; "information does resemble some entities"; "information is not abstract"; "the intuitive concept of information is associated with that of copying"; "This will allow us to express information in terms of computation"; "our search for a deeper theory of information"; "An information variable is a clonable computation variable"; "we assume that unlimited resources are available for conversion into information storage devices"; "we assume that unlimited resources are available for information processing too."

1. Constructor Theory of Information, David Deutsch, Chiara Marletto, https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.5563v2

Many atheists, including the high priest of materialism, R. Dawkins, deny the reality of free will.

"If free will could be shown to be an integral part of how nature works, rather than a social invention, that would definitely be a boost for human dignity."

The author is perhaps making the same error as Dawkins, etc. in thinking that a scientific explanation is an anti-religious argument.

If free will could be shown to be an integral part of how nature works it means that a) the atheistic evolutionists are wrong about the nature of free will (as they are on many other matters) and b) you can argue, scientifically, that God made free will an essential part of His creation, otherwise how can we be judged if we have no free will?

Atheists might not thank you if your research reinforces holy scripture!

The universe is ordered. All higher phenomena, like planets and living things, are based on underlying laws of nature and quantum events.

These laws of nature and quantum events are representable, by us humans, as equations, algorithms and numbers:

1. Laws of nature are representable as mathematical equations, i.e. relationships between categories, and incorporate an algorithmic step which derives a "time"/ "number-change" category.

2. Quantum events are representable as the creation of a new algorithmic step which specifies a new mathematical equation, e.g. a new number assignment equation.

The point that I'm getting to is this: physics assumes that the universe knows these equations, algorithms and numbers. But physics is either too cowardly to admit to these assumptions, or too stupid to notice that it has made these assumptions in the first place.

I repeat: Physics assumes that a knowledge aspect exists in the universe right from the start.

An environment in which physics fails to notice their assumptions, leads to nonsensical questions like: "how did consciousness evolve?" [1], and nonsensical notions that consciousness is an "emergent property" [1].

1. Constructing a Theory of Life, Miriam Frankel, 31 July 2018, https://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/230

Re emergent phenomena I have to disagree with "a gas has a temperature, based on the average motion of its particles: the faster they move, the hotter the gas. But the concept of temperature is meaningless if you try to apply it to any one of those gas particles individually".... I disagree because the temperature of the individual particle is the same as the temperature of an assembly of particles whose average motion is the same as the actual motion of the individual particle.

Also... this article repeats the common unjustified assumption that it is "observation" that collapses quantum states when it could well be, and is much more likely to be, just a certain level of interaction.

There are other similar problems throughout

The view that a state of affairs can exist in the universe (e.g. that (what we represent as) law of nature relationships, number relationships, and algorithmic relationships can exist in the universe), without the universe knowing about it, can't be supported. The existence of these relationships and the knowledge of these relationships are 2 sides of the same coin. [1]

Fundamental-level knowledge is of e.g. momentum relationship, energy relationship, and time/change derived from an algorithmic relationship (delta represents an algorithmic relationship).

But fundamental-level knowledge is different to the higher-level algorithmically-acquired knowledge of living things. Living things have no direct experience of fundamental-level knowledge. And conversely, particles atoms and molecules have no experience of higher-level knowledge.

And without physics, human beings would have no idea of the fundamental-level information relationships that inform the universe.

But physics has failed to notice that the existence of relationship and the knowledge of relationship are 2 sides of the same coin. So we keep getting nonsensical questions like: "how did consciousness evolve?" [2], and nonsensical notions that consciousness is an "emergent property" [2].

................................

1. More precisely, the universe is not an entity: it's the parts of the universe that have this knowledge, where the parts of the universe are particles, atoms molecules and living things.

2. Constructing a Theory of Life, Miriam Frankel, 31 July 2018, https://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/230

What about enzymes? They are able to exhibit catalytic function because of their particular shape. Shape resulting from folding of the sequence of amino acids. the individual amino acids or ions they are contain do not have the necessary shape to function as the whole enzyme does. So the function is only present at the scale of the whole enzyme. Making catalytic function of the enzyme an emergent property.