• [deleted]

Dear Brian,

I asked about Berkeley because I thought your response would actually help me to understand your perspective. If I were to assign Berkeley to one of your Universal models it would be physicalism and not Solipsism. I would go even further based upon my own view and suggest that you might find that your work, as I understand it at this point, might be somewhat of an extension of George Berkeley's view. In any case, I am certain that Dr. Johnson did not refute Berkeley's view by kicking a stone. His act makes me wonder if he had perhaps not read Berkeley's writings for himself.

You: "In the virtual reality conjecture, like solipsism, the physical world is not objectively real or complete in itself. Yet it also holds that there is a real world out there, apart from us, so it is not solipsism. It concludes there is a real world, but that it is not the world we register. In it, every registration, by us or an electron, is an information transfer, a processing event that just looks like a "particle". It says that quantum mathematics describes what is really there, as processing waves. Science can, eventually, resolve this one way or another, because it is a contrast of two distinct hypotheses about the physical world."

I found this paragraph to be very clear and very helpful. The explanation of randomness is something I am still thinking about while I continue to study your essay. Thank you for your helpful resonses.

James

6 days later
  • [deleted]

Hi all,

This thread is super, a very beautiful discussion.Dear TH you know it's essential to have a deterministic road.It's essential to respect our newtonian fractalization.You are skilling but you forget some foundamentals about our realism.The most impressing is that you insist on the realism and on the other side you work with irrationalities when you want explain the pure physicality. The relativity is not that. Now of course all rationalist can understand that it's difficult for you to change your line of reasoning after several years of work in the road of irrationalities and irrealities.

How can you say that Bell's theorem is correct, that has no sense,I don't see the relativity special or general there? But perhaps you can convince me with strong arguments?

Reagrds

Steve

8 days later

Dear Brian

You have written an excellent essay, your arguments are very conclusive and interesting. On my essay I have arrived to similar conclusions from a different perspective, I try to explain how we should understand emergence of classical reality just like how a world ruled by a non-classical logic (quantum reality) determines what is seeing by a world ruled by classical logic (the realm of general relativity). About discreteness I think there is nothing fundamental about it, we see discrete features on quantum reality just because we use tools based on classical logic to get a partial understanding of the quantum world. We can construct emergent universes based on a discrete ground basis as in a continuous one. I would like to hear your opinions about it.

Regards,

J. Benavides

    • [deleted]

    Dear Brian Withworth

    You wrote amusing 10 points, why universe is simulation. But we can ask ourselves, what is objective universe. This is (probably) only classical Newtonian mechanics. When we pass to special relativity theory (SR), objectivity begins to disappear. I did one derivation of SR, which use more little steps in transition to SR.

    http://vixra.org/pdf/1012.0006v3.pdf

    Time is dilated. Longitudinal length is shortened as consequence of equivalent inertial frames. Only standstill matter becomes important as stuff, where time running. And this stuff is built up from elementary particles. Therefore, without general relativity and quantum mechanics, we almost obtain some 'subjective' conclusions.

    You mentioned also ur-stuff. This is from Weizskacker and it is also used by Zeilinger and Brukner. Those three physicists are important as reference for this contest.

    Otherwise, virtual reality can be a useful thought experiment for our physical world. It needs to be developed. But, it is not enough only digital nature of physical world. Unlocality is also important.

    p.s.

    I was late for this contest, so my essay is:

    http://vixra.org/pdf/1103.0025v1.pdf

    The essay from 2009 is

    http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/571

    I see how you save the space. Abstract is not in pdf. :)

    Regards Janko Kokosar

    Dear Brian,

    Congratulations on your dedication to the competition and your much deserved top 35 placing. I have a bugging question for you, which I've also posed to all the potential prize winners btw:

    Q: Coulomb's Law of electrostatics was modelled by Maxwell by mechanical means after his mathematical deductions as an added verification (thanks for that bit of info Edwin), which I highly admire. To me, this gives his equation some substance. I have a problem with the laws of gravity though, especially the mathematical representation that "every object attracts every other object equally in all directions." The 'fabric' of spacetime model of gravity doesn't lend itself to explain the law of electrostatics. Coulomb's law denotes two types of matter, one 'charged' positive and the opposite type 'charged' negative. An Archimedes screw model for the graviton can explain -both- the gravity law and the electrostatic law, whilst the 'fabric' of spacetime can't. Doesn't this by definition make the helical screw model better than than anything else that has been suggested for the mechanism of the gravity force?? Otherwise the unification of all the forces is an impossiblity imo. Do you have an opinion on my analysis at all?

    Best wishes,

    Alan

      • [deleted]

      Hello dear Bryan,

      Your essay is well written, well explained, well presented.

      The problem is that you confound the computing and the universal dynamic. Thus of course it exists one universe(sphere) and these mwi are just a play of computing. The realism never will be other than this pure objectivity of uniqueness and its entropy.

      Now you can compute emergent universes on the 2D picture after all, but frankly for the convergences in 3D and the universal axiomatization...??? Let's be serious a little.If you can create a flower with your computer, tell me it ....

      But beautiful essay as Tommasi ,interesting.Good luck thus.

      Steve

        4 days later

        Brian,

        You may recall that my essay analyzes Anton Zeilinger's logic and concludes that his logic fails if the state of one or more of the entangled particles changes en route from the source to the detector. You seemed to believe that there is no physical reason for the photon to change:

        In a comment above you state: "Your Bell experiment logic is interesting. If the properties of a photon can change en route, without physical interaction, or just before it is observed, isn't the objective reality hypothesis conceded? That a physical photon "thing" can change its properties for no physical reason, is indeed a floodgate. So I think I support Zeilinger."

        I de-emphasized this argument after becoming aware of Joy Christian's work implying Bell's calculations are in error, but, assuming Joy is wrong (which I do not) my argument still applies.

        Yesterday I received Phys Rev Lett 106, 080404 (25 Feb 2011) Antonelli, Shtaif, and Brodsky's paper titled "Sudden Death of Entanglement Induced by Polarization Mode Dispersion" in which they note that the relation between the violation of non-locality and the sudden disappearance of entanglement are due to CHANGES OCCURRING EN ROUTE! The changes are due to the optical birefringence associated with the optical fibers over which the photons travel. They claim that understanding this relation to non-locality is of utmost importance and say "the arbitrary birefringence characterizing fiber-optic transmission produces a PREVIOUSLY UNOBSERVED combination of physical effects" [my emphasis].

        They conclude that "The ultimate limits imposed by fiber birefringence to applications based on non-local properties of polarization entanglement were shown to be intriguingly related with the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death."

        Without vouching for their calculations, I would point out that the concept of "change en route" as an argument against Zeilinger's (and others') logic is exactly what I proposed in my essay.

        You may wish to look at their paper.

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Dear John.

          To do as you do, turn around the common assumption that the physical world defines everything, and instead say the quantum world defines the physical, is a major shift that will need more than mere logic to be accepted, and rightly so. My paper doesnt try to "prove" this point, but to start people thinking about it as an alternative view, arguing that it is neither unscientific, nor untestable nor a God theory.

          Discreteness is fundamental to information processing, as information is defined as a choice from a set of options. If that set were infinite it could not be enumerated to make the choice, i.e. every processing output must be discrete. That the physical world is discrete is built into the VR model. Whether the world we see is discrete or not remains an open question, but some support that it is includes:

          1. Planck limits on length, time, energy etc suggest that everything we measure is discrete.

          2. Heisenburg's uncertainty principle defines h as the discrete value.

          3. Photon wave energy quantization suggests that wavelength changes are discrete

          4. Non-discrete continuity creates infinities and paradoxes, e.g. Zeno.

          5. A discrete world with no infinitely small has no infinitely large, e.g. black holes suggest a finite capacity to space, c is the maximum speed, etc.

          6. In calculus infinitesimals "tend to zero" to approximate reality, i.e. it sets small discrete values to "zero". If this works because it really is so, then the world is discrete.

          7. Spin networks, loop quantum gravity and all quantum simulations assume discreteness.

          8. Cosmological models suggest fundamental upper bounds on the world's information processing rate, which as argued, implies lower bounds.

          Others may have other points. Note that if the physical world is not discrete, of if any measure of it can be infinitely large, this model is immediately falsified.

          all the best

          Brian Whitworth

          Hi Alan

          Sorry, I havent really got to that yet - give me another year or two! Currently analyzing mass and charge in processing terms before going on to gravity and how matter moves (as distinct from how light moves which Ch3 covered). Maxwell got his equations by visualizing emanating electric vortices which interacted when the source moved to give magnetism. But to get published, he was convinced to just submit the mathematical results of his structural vision. I dont know where his original logic is written down. Today, the legions of mathematical physics are lost in the semantic desert of string theory. So a structural model like the one he used to get his equations might have a chance, but probably not. Certainly it cannot be a mechanical structure, but it could be a processing one.

          all the best

          Brian

          Hi Steve,

          Thanks for your comments. Well everything depends on where you sit. So I can indeed create a flower using my computer, but it will be a digital one (2D or 3D). To me it is not a "real" flower, but an avatar who sees only digital "things" might consider it as real as the rest of his virtual world. Who then is to say that the "real" flower I see outside my window is not also created thus? What proves that my world is objective?

          Its all a matter of perspective, as a virtual world can be unreal from the outside but real from the inside. The movie 'The Matrix" made this point brilliantly, but cunningly kept its ultimate reality physical - Neo exits the matrix into a physical world, which is still objectively real. Hence the VR conjecture is the opposite idea. It "thinks the unthinkable", that all physicality is virtual, even though, as you say, it is real to us who are in it.

          PS. the paper doesnt talk of computing but of processing, whose definition doesnt assume a physical base. Our computing is processing with a physical base, i.e. classical computing, but quantum computing is non-classical so could have a non-physical source.

          A final point. Any theory that we are fundamentally deluded about the nature of the world is hard to take. The tolerance of this forum to oddball papers is a credit to its openness. Even readers who explicitly disagreed with this essays conclusions engaged its content honestly. For me, even to air this idea openly is a privilege, for which I thank FQxI members.

          all the best

          Brian

          • [deleted]

          Dear Eugene,

          You may be right but we must make haste slowly to interpret new results. Thank you for the paper you link to that I will read. Also, it is you I refer to in the last comment. The miracle of science is that we can disagree but remain colleagues. The unity of science lies not in its conclusions but in its method. Scientists are like an intellectual herd going into the unknown in all different directions, so when one breaks through the others can follow. If we all went into the unknown in the same direction, we would surely fail. It is in this sense that you are indeed my colleague.

          thanks again and all the best,

          Brian

          Brian,

          Thank you for that gracious response. You state it perfectly, and it is a pleasure to consider you a colleague.

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          • [deleted]

          Hi Brian,

          You are welcome. It's beautiful explained, you know you are just arrived to explain me at this momment what is the mwi really. Thanks thus. In fact it's the computing. You know I liked so much the film Avatar, it's so wonderful these ideas.

          All the best for the final.

          Steve

          2 months later
          • [deleted]

          This will help clarify what constitutes Reality (it's only 2 pages, or you could go to the Facebook page referred to):

          Reality

          Absolute

          As it is not possible to know anything beyond the confines of our existence, it has to be assumed that our understanding of it involves presuppositions and limitations. There is always the possibility of other, unattainable, information. Simply, if 'A', there is always the possibility of 'not-A'. This does not imply that there is an existence other than our own, only that there is always the possibility thereof.

          So what can be known, irrespective of when or how, may never be absolute. Our knowledge can only ever be regarded as having validity based on an intrinsic perspective. Put the other way around, from an alternative point of reference (which, even if it existed could never be experienced by us) our understanding may be shown to be incorrect.

          In delineating what cannot be known, and the boundaries within which we function, this existential conundrum shows how an objective analysis of reality can be formulated (ie it proves, and defines, a specified closed system). As the possible state of 'not-existence' is unknowable, trying to define it, or view reality from that perspective (ie one supposedly without pre-conditions, variously referred to as the 'truth', 'actual', 'real', etc) is pointless scientifically.

          For the scientific process then, the task is to investigate reality as experienced by us, and not conjecture about the unknowable.

          Reality

          Evidence indicates that all individuals have the same experience of certain entities under the same circumstances. Even in other situations, similarities occur. This implies that 'something' (which could be labelled (awkwardly) real reality) exists independently of individual consciousness, and it is then experienced, not created by experience. How this (ie all individuals having a similar experience) ultimately occurs is a metaphysical question, as it addresses the concept of what is the 'true' nature of experience, and is therefore irrelevant to an objective analysis.

          First there is the boundary of existence, then there is one that is determined by individual consciousness. So, the reality that can be identified in these individual experiences can only ever be an accurate, but experiential representation, of what actually exists within the confines of our existence. In other words, while procedures can be followed that logically ensure that the inferred reality is correct, that can never ultimately be proven, given the limitation of consciousness.

          Simply, 'what might really be' is unknowable. Experiencing 'what is' results in 'what appears to be' (an experience), a first order representation of 'what is'. Then that can be refined to 'what really appears to be'. The latter is best referred to as reality, although it is actually an approximation thereof, since otherwise the narrative becomes over complicated and potentially confusing. And anyway, nothing more accurate is achievable, that is, within the boundaries of our consciousness, 'what really appears to be' constitutes 'what is'. Having necessarily established the correct status of what will be referred to as reality, progress can then be effected in determining how to identify it.

          Another way of expressing this would be a less immediately elegant expression of a well know phrase, which would be: 'I know I know, I know you know, you know I know, so we all know we know, but that is all we know, because we do not really know what we know'.

          Extrapolating reality from individual experiences

          Entities whose manifestation has a form independent of the process of experience comprise reality (ie existent entities). They transcend our experience of them since they exist separately, unlike non-existent entities which only appear to transcend our experience in that they refer to attributes beyond our existence. However, there are several factors involved in perception which interfere with the resulting representation of them.

          These can be resolved with the application of reverse engineering to the experiential process, and/or logic, whilst technology can be used to enhance the sensory/thought process. The fundamental aim being to identify what has been, or what could have been, directly (or indirectly) perceived when any identifiable interference resulting from the process of experience is eradicated.

          Although reality comprises existent entities, those that are not experienceable directly, for technical reasons, must also be included. Otherwise that knowledge would be lost. Therefore, if an entity can be identified on the basis of other (preferably direct) experiences and verifiable reasoning, then the resulting inferred entity can be deemed to exist, albeit hypothetically (ie it could be labelled as an inferred existent entity, as opposed to a realised existent entity).

          So, the criteria for existence is that either entities can be experienced directly, or their existence can be determined logically from other validated experiences. The critical point being whether the inability to achieve an experience is a function of the process, or because the entity alluded to has no form of experienceable existence whatsoever.

          Conclusion

          Within the inescapable constraints of our existence, our experience of reality does not create it, though it is the only function through which it is manifested. The process of experience interferes with the resulting representation of reality, but those effects can be identified and eradicated in order to discern what actually instigated the experience.

          Reality does not exist a priori, in the sense that an experience causes one option amongst many to be realised, and the other 'possibilities' may or may not continue to exist. It exists a priori in that it is independent of the sensory/thought process whereby it is realised.

          © Paul Reed

          April 2011

          Extracted from Theory of Reality and Time posted on Re Ality (Facebook, look for the boy with his cat)

          Defintion of Key Concepts

          Not Real Reality

          That which possibly exists, but is not experienceable

          Real Reality

          That which is experienceable by any living organism.

          Entity

          Anything which is experienceable by any living organism (ie Real Reality).

          [NB: In the sense that everything is undergoing a continuous process of change, then every discrete stage of every sequence of change represents a different entity, because the previous state (ie entity) no longer exists. As this is too cumbersome to account for grammatically in a narrative description, then labels such as 'attribute', 'characteristic', etc, are used to refer to changes when the entity is not 'fundamentally' changed. This is the elementary unit of Real Reality].

          Reality

          That which is deemed to exist once any interference in an experience of Real Reality has been eradicated.

          Process of experience

          The entire process whereby any entity is detected by any living organism.

          Experience

          The representation of an entity resulting from a process of experience effected by any living individual organism.

          Sight based experience

          A representation of any entity which is enabled by that part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum which is able to convey information that is realisable as a direct optical image of that entity.

          Interference

          Any effect which alters the representation of Real Reality during the process of experience.

          Change

          The process whereby any entity becomes another entity.

            Hi Paul,

            Good to hear from you and your view on your reality.

            I advise you to read the article in NEW SCIENTIST n° 2812 (14 may 2011) : "THE GRAND DILUSION" by Graham Lawton (deputy editor of New Scientist), it gives another view on the reality as we are aware of.

            best regards

            Wilhelmus

            11 days later
            • [deleted]

            Hi Brain ,

            want to congratulate you on your win. Congratulations! Thank you too for taking the time to respond to my questions posted here on this essay thread. Very thought provoking stuff. I think the whole "what is reality" question is very interesting.I am unsure if the "uncaused" definition is sufficient on its own but thank you for explaining.

            Well done.

              Dear Georgina

              Thanks for thinking of me and your question certainly made me think. A normal cause is an event between objects assumed to self-exist, e.g. the sun causes light to shine on earth. If the entities caused - the sun's photons - exist in and of themselves, we call them real. But if I see my image in a mirror, it is unreal as its very existence is caused, i.e. it doesn't exist in or of itself. It only exists because I look. Likewise, if the physical world only exists if we observe it, like an image thrown up on demand, it isn't objectively real. The hypothesis that the physical world is a processing output is testable, and the paper gives ten factual reasons in support. The next chapter, on matter, makes a prediction to test the theory.

              all the best,

              Brian

              Hi Edwin,

              To win anything is nice, but really I posted to get feedback from knowledgeable people, like yourself, for which I thank you.

              kind regards

              Brian

              6 days later
              • [deleted]

              Dear Brian,

              Congratulations. You are right about virtual reality, this the nature of the relativistic view of the universe and hence it is digital. The absolute view of the universe is sigularity and it is analog. Please see my article submitted in this contest at your convenience.

              Who am i?.

              I am virtual reality i is absolute truth

              I am digital i is singularity or analog.

              Love,

              Sridattadev.