Dear Tommaso Bolognesi,

Having looked into http://pirsa.org/05090001, I am sure your essay is a much more proficient presentation of something I am still not yet a fan of. Do you know the nice book by LaMettrie "The Man - a Machine" written at the time of Laplace in French language? Today he would perhaps write something like "The Man - a Computer Program" or "Spacetime - a Lattice Computing itself".

I understand that the PI rather than you are responsible for such progress. Should we merely adapt our wording accordingly and speak instead of twin, grandfather, Ehrenfest, barn, Andromeda, etc. paradoxes of twin, grandfather, etc. bugs? No. There are certainly new bugs to be found and to be removed, e.g.:

- an Adam and Eve bug: For reasons of genetic repair, a causal set must not begin with just one male and one female primordial individual if it aims to mimic or even be reality instead of bible.

- Steven Dufourny's bug: There must not be a starting point in space and time at all. While this seems to preclude the application of all so far imaginable methods of programming, this does not matter. With a friendly grin we may declare the programs not yet debugged.

- a missing clock bug: If the program outputs the whole spacetime including past and future then it needs an additional clock as to mark out the border between past and future here and now.

- a smallest step-width or smallest CA bug: Division by (almost) zero is to be excluded as usual.

Presumably there are many more bugs. Bugs tend to be unseen. Do never loose hope.

Regards,

Eckard

    Dear Eckard,

    I expected your post to terminate with a satanic 'hihihihi' grin. Should I take the fact that it doesn't as an indication that you expect a serious answer from me? I am not sure. In any case, since you wrote that you are not YET a fan of causal sets, I feel encouraged to comment at least on one point.

    I am aware of the idea, discussed for example by M. Tegmark, that the program might output the whole spacetime (past and future, so to speak) in one shot, thus raising a question whether we need a clock that points to, and marks the progress of the present inside the whole structure.

    My view is different; the universal computation is really unfolding step by step, in the sense that the future is not available until it is actually computed, and this is because, following Wolfram, the computation is irreducible: no shortcut is possible. The only fundamental 'clock', in this picture, is the one that counts the steps at the front of the computation as they happen -- in my favourite setting, the steps of the ant walking on a graph.

    Regards

    Tommaso

    Dear Tommaso,

    While I consider the truth not negotiable, I appreciate the realism of you, Steven Wolfram, and other followers of Dedekind. Please read my essay carefully as to get aware that to me the present moment here and now is the only fix point in the whole entity that we are calling universe. I do not deny the possibility to pre-calculate partial pictures of future with the caveat we are unable to include all possible influences.

    Those who are modeling the world with finite elements, CAs and the like do usually not need extended, in particular imaginary numbers for that. This is one more view we have in common.

    As I pointed out in my third essay analog models were forced to be even closer to reality because they were bound to integrations. I am right now dealing with premetric electrodynamics. While it is appealing to me in so far, it begins with directed quantities and its metric enters as late as possible, I doubt that differential forms are close enough to reality.

    What about preferences for a discrete or continuous world, I see several rather superficial reasons for both and also a lot of possible mistakes. While to me the difference between analog and merely continuous is more important, I do not yet see a discontinuous analog computing. If the world is digital then analog models should also be digital. Shouldn't they?

    Regards,

    Eckard

    Dear Sir,

    We had given a different theory for charge interactions by showing that Coulomb's law is wrong. We repeat it again.

    According to our theory, gravity is a composite force of seven forces that are generated based on their charge. Thus, they are related to charge interactions. But we do not accept Coulomb's law. We have a different theory for it. We derive it from fundamental principles. In Coulomb's law, F = k Q1 x Q2 /d^2. In a charge neutral object, either Q1 or Q2 will be zero reducing the whole equation to zero. This implies that no interaction is possible between a charged object and a charge neutral object. But this is contrary to experience. Hence the format of Coulomb's law is wrong.

    As we have repeatedly described, the atoms can be stable only when they are slightly negatively charged which makes the force directed towards the nucleus dominate the opposite force, but is not apparent from outside. Hence we do not experience it. We have theoretically derived the value of the electric charge of protons, neutrons and electrons as +10/11, -1/11 and -1. The negative sign indicates that the net force is directed towards the nucleus. Charge interaction takes place when a particle tries to attain equilibrium by coupling with another particle having similar charge. The proton has +10/11 charge means it is deficient in -1/11 charge. The general principle is same charge attracts. Thus, it interacts with the negative charge of electrons. The resultant hydrogen atom has a net charge of -1/11. Thus, it is highly reactionary. This -1/11 charge interacts with that of the neutron to form stable particles. These interactions can be of four types.

    Positive + positive = explosive. By this, what we mean is the fusion reaction that leads to unleashing of huge amounts of energy. It's opposite is also true in the case of fission, but since it is reduction, there is less energy release.

    Positive + negative (total interaction) = internally creative (increased atomic number.) This means that if one proton and one electron is added to the atom, the atomic number goes up.

    Positive + negative (partial interaction) = externally creative (becomes an ion.) This means that if one proton or one electron is added to the atom, the atom becomes ionic.

    Negative + negative = no reaction. What it actually means is that though there will be no reaction between the two negatively charged particles; they will appear to repel each other as their nature is confinement. Like two pots that confine water cannot occupy the same place and if one is placed near another with some areas overlapping, then both repel each other. This is shown in the "Wheeler's Aharonov-Bohm experiment".

    We had also commented on many other aspects of your essay.

    Can we expect a clarification on the points raised by us?

    Regards,

    basudeba.

    Hi Eckard,

    is it too much to ask you to briefly summarize what you mean by 'the difference between analog and merely continuous', without having me try and spot it somewhere in you essay? I personally consider 'analog' and 'continuous' as the same thing, at least w.r.t. the theme of this FQXi contest. I am happy of the clear distinction between the fundamental concepts of continuous and discrete, and regard with some suspicion any theory that claims to be fundamental, while providing, at the same time, some hybrid mix of these two ingredients. Thanks.

    Tommaso

      Dear Tommaso,

      If something is an analogue of something else, the two things are similar to each other. Each analog computer used the analogy between a real composition of lumped electric components and an real object with similar properties as to model that object.

      Usually, the modeled object was considered to behave continuous. Therefore analog is often equated with continuous.

      While I share your suspicion concerning some mixes between continuous and discrete, e.g. Donatello Dolce's sweet donation of a cyclic space-time, and in particular in mathematics Cantor's paradise, it happens indeed that e.g. a measured spectrum has both continuous and discrete components at a time.

      Hopefully you will not take it too much amiss that I do not focus on the question discrete or continuous. Old engineers like me tend to have no problem with easily switching back and forth between these two rather equivalent worlds.

      I am deliberately focusing on analog (in the sense of performed with means that are as real as the object itself) vs. digital (in the sense of mathematical which gets rid of this usually unwelcome immediate link to reality).

      The question "analog vs. digital" is of course prone to be (mis?)read as continuous vs. discrete. Perhaps, "analog vs. digital" was chosen because digital signal processing undoubtedly proved superior as to support those who feel entitled to fight for CA and the like. Being perhaps the only lonely one who emphasizes the aspect that analogy to reality implies realism, I am perhaps also the only one who arrived at hurting and rather unbelievable conclusions that were punished mainly in my public rates. I hope for rehabilitation by more prudent readers.

      We may also switch from reality to its model and return. However, reality has some peculiarities: Any measured quantity belongs to positive values of elapsed time, and primary measured quantities do not contain imaginary values. In other words, in principle reality could always be expressed within R.

      Analog models are bound to reality. Hence they automatically obey these restrictions, no matter whether they work continuous or discrete.

      Regards,

      Eckard

      Dear Sir,

      Your reply shows the inadequacy of the present experimental approach. But it did not negate our contentions.

      Will you please clearly say what we have written is wrong? If so, where it is wrong, what is wrong and how it is wrong.

      We had shown specific examples where your views are different from our views. Both us cannot be correct. Hence kindly prove us wrong to save your view.

      Regards,

      basudeba.

      Science is not only objective (which by the way you are far from it with all kind of personal remarks about people all the time) but it is also about a human enterprise where people have to be open and listen each other. You must go first read and learn before writing gibberish in this contest.

        'All kinds of personal remarks about people all the time'?

        Where would these be? Are you referring to this thread, to my answers, and to my contribution?

        In case this was really your intention, I suggest you to be more polite and constructive here, in case you are sincerely interested in interacting (which I doubt).

        Hi Toamaso,

        This was to me a very readable essay (being not professional).

        I agree with your principle of minimality (Occam), and as I write in [link:fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/913]my essay[link/]the the lowest level where we can make measurements is the Planck scale, fundamental laws of physics are unaccessible there. Is your universal computing running there ? (and of course who or what is causing it to run).

        You mention : "Emergence occurs whenever complex patterns arise from a multiplicity of interactions", when we jump down to the lowest level (in my opinion the Planck level) it is our own consciuosness that reaches out to the level after that to form these patterns to the causal deterministic universe that we live in. Is our consciousness (creative substratum) that computational force that organises the "bits".

        When you say that the total order of "computation" does not represent physical time, it means that these processus take place in the for me "fifth" dimension, because if "it" does not take causal time it does not exist, in fact you say there that every "computation" is already done, just like a quantum computer with more as 10 qubits, is this right ?

        You say : "a spacetime in which all events are pairwise causaly related may support some notion of TIME, but certainly not of SPACE", but in my opinion causal time is stuck to space in our 4D Universe, or did you mean here that the uncertainty principle is valid, partcle or wave, it does not take timelaps for the wave to be observed as a particle and this phenomenon is not Space related.

        Congratulations with your position in the contest.

        Wilhelmus

          2 months later

          Dear Tommaso,

          Congratulations for being selected as a prize winner by the judges.

          I don't think I have properly read your essay.(Seems you didn't need my vote anyway.) There were just too many.I will have to put that right, now that the judges have chosen your essay as a prize winner. You must have done a good job. So well done!

          Regards Georgina.

          2 months later