It, Bit, and Us by Dean Rickles

Dear Dean ,

I have enjoyed reading your essay very much. It is very clearly presented and well set out. Carrying us smoothly on a journey of developing scientific ideas about reality and how it can be modeled. I found it educational and it will be a good reference text for those interested in the historical consideration of this question.

I can see some similarity with Julian Barbour's essay. He also gives an overveiw of historical development of the ideas and talks in some detail about it from bit. It is perhaps unfortunate, for you, that I read his essay first.It makes yours seem less original. However if I had read them the other way around it would have been Julian Barbour's essay that suffered from comparison.

Julian Barbour suggests that bit from it may be more useful, restoring realism to scientific theory. I actually think that both are equally legitimate as both processes are occurring. Wheelers viewpoint is dealing with information recieved from external reality and which can be used to construct a mathematical representaion or experience of the reality the -it-. So the bit forms the it. The other viewpoint, as Julian sets out, says the fully real object in unobserved external reality is the -it- and from that information is produced, that can be interpreted. The -it- forms the bit.

This duel it-bit and bit -it direction, highlights the important fact that we are dealing with two different facets of reality. Information being a link between them. Of course the information undergoes a number of processes in between.

One tiny error is that traffic lights in the UK are mostly 4 state, 3 colour lights with the sequence red, red and amber, green, amber. Which means if the amber is showing with the red one must be prepared to go, but if amber is showing alone one must prepare to stop. It does not effect the point you were trying to make. It is just a distraction.

I do think this is one of the best essays I have read. You really do a good job of answering the essay question.I am not sure that it is in itself groundbreaking though. I wish you good luck.

Best regards Georgina.

Hi,

I will do the same critic I did to Barbour's essay. It is an interesting essay but I wonder how comes that authors want to talk about digital and computation without citing or saying anything about universality, the work of Turing and the current state of information theory. But, on the contrary, overuse Wheeler's idea of lightly equaling matter to information. Thanks.

Btw, I also find a bit odd to see a header of the FQXi Institute in your essay, as it if were already endorsed by the institute.

Dear Dean,

I like the way you presented the idea of "It from Bit": you made the point very clear, but in the same time emphasized its subtleties. It happened that I just wrote about it (from bit) few hours ago, as a comment to Julian Barbour's essay.

Maybe the "it" part is infered, interpolated by us, from the "bit" part - the outcomes of the observations we make. It is indeed difficult to assign an ontology to something that depends on our future choice of what observable to measure. But I think that it is possible for a solution to the Schrödinger's equation - a wavefunction - to be ontological. There are two main problems to be overcomed to allow the wavefunction to be real. 1) Two consecutive measurements which don't commute seem to imply that, between them, a discontinuous wavefunction collapse should take place. This is not necessarily true, as I explained in this article and this video. After the first measurement, the observed system becomes entangled with the first measurement device, and the second observation observes in fact the composed system. This brings in the discussion the additional degrees of freedom, those of the first measurement device, and we are no longer compelled to conclude that a discontinuity in the evolution occurred. 2) The choice of the observable seems to decide the past history of the system. This is true, but it doesn't necessarily violate the reality of the wavefunction. We can see the wavefunction describing the system as being undecided until our observations determine it. The observations determine the "delayed initial conditions" of the wavefunction. This way, the wavefunction is real, but it has to satisfy the "atemporal" consistency condition that the "bit"s contained in "it" are compatible with "it"self. Maybe this "atemporal consistency condition" is similar to Schrödinger's condition that the static wavefunctions need to be self-consistent.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica, Infinite Resolution

Hello Dean,

I particularly like the last two paragraphs, including the quote, "At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer..."

Thanks

joseph markell

Dean,

You say that the problem with representation is that it isn't clear whether there really *is* anything in the world being represented.

Alfred Korzybski, in 'Science and Sanity' declares that "the map is not the territory" and, in so many words, implies that the ability to distinguish the two is the basis of sanity. Of course he probably included an escape clause for philosophers.

You discuss the Stoics but then say "The system of thought that results is a representation of the hypothesized features of the world." I like this statement and believe that it applies well beyond the Stoics. The "system of thought" is the neural maps in our brain, the connections and re-connections and it is just these internally formed models that are "in-formed" by information.

You then state that digital states "mean something", but this is true only for particular observers. In another thread someone suggested that "Watch out for the bus!" has consequences and so this information should be considered 'real'. But if you only speak Chinese, "Watch out for the bus" means nothing. Yet the energy of the moving bus is real in all cases. Clearly information has reality only with respect to an observer. You seem to be claiming that nothing else has reality. I dare you to stand in front of the bus and argue this point.

Wheeler's statement that "every particle, every field [etc] derives its very existence entirely...from the apparatus-elicited answers...bits." and that "all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and ...this is a participatory universe" is mystical and meta-physical, not physics.

For Wheeler, "Before measurement by an observer, there is no physical reality." [I believe that Zeilinger says the same thing.] I personally hope Joy Christian's position on Bell's inequality is accepted before physics plunges over the cliff. When physics becomes indistinguishable from mystical religions, religious taxpayers will revolt and even "separation of church and state" will enter the picture.

You claim that Eddington's view has much in common with Wheeler: "...from the existence of mathematical law we infer that our minds have access to something akin to themselves that is in or behind our universe." I subscribe to this wholeheartedly, and my previous fqxi essay Fundamental Physics of Consciousness develops this position in a serious way. But I disagree that this is compatible with most of Wheeler's idea, despite his conclusion that "We see, finally, our own puzzled faces looking back at us."

My theory, which includes consciousness as a primordial field, is based upon the existence of physical reality, and of the actual physical interaction of consciousness with reality. It distinguishes between map and territory where Wheeler confuses the two.

Thanks for an excellent treatment of this complex subject.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dean,

Thanks for the extensive reply. I'm happy with these answers, particularly "I'm not denying the existence of an 'external world' or anything of that sort." Many seem to be doing just this; I'm glad you're not. That takes care of the 'mystical' issue.

I didn't realize Eddington was author of the 'fishnet' story, but it's one of my favorites.

And I agree with you about meta-physics. All of today's theories are meta-physical to some extent.

By clarifying these points you've probably headed off a number of questions (and maybe opened up more?)

Thanks again for an excellent treatment of this topic, and good luck in the contest.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dean,

Thank you for the very insightful essay! I appreciate the philosophical acumen you bring to the topic. I was also struck by the remarkable similarity of your ideas with those in my essay. If you're so included, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, and any references to your further thoughts along these lines.

Regards,

Tom

P.S.: On the top of p.5 of your essay, there appears to be a typo in the phrase "there is no such thing as a no phenomenon".

Hello,

I am disappointed by all essays I read that limit their scope to epistemological issues. I understand this is the prevailing attitude in modern philosophy departments because ontology is accused as being naive realism and reductionism. However, I know of no significant contribution or advancement to science that came out of a philosophy department. If I am in error, please provide a reference.

This essay contest is not in my opinion of course about philosophy and questions like: what can we know about reality, if anything at all?" It is about the conflict between quantum mechanics and general relativity. General Relativity cannot survive spacetime quantization while QM is gaining points constantly.

I think the effort in this essay was to undermine the analog vs. digital issue. This is a widespread practice in philosophy departments worldwide in an effort not to upset the status quo, like saying for example, "fine guys, from an epistemological perspective you are both correct, let's continue business as usual". This position does not serve science and humanity very well. Reality does not care about our physical theories and our understanding of them. Is this so hard for modern philosophers to understand this?

Thank you.

Thanks for your answer. I think, however, that you may be underestimating the digital view. Perhaps because it has been longly underestimated with simplified views such as the It from Bit and the like. But one does not need to align bits with matter but with processes. It is a mistake to equal digital with discrete matter.

Dear Dean,

I enjoyed reading your stimulating essay. You distinguish between two ways the analog/digital debate can go: '...(1) as a claim about the discreteness (or not) of space, time, and matter; (2) about the computational nature of the universe.' In my own essay, I pursue the latter course.

I've taken the liberty to comment on some of your passages, in a manner I hope will be welcome:

'Often the assumed denseness of an analogical model is parasitic on the assumed dense nature of the process or object functioning as the model.' I would point out that, similarly, often the assumed "sparseness" of a digital model is assumed to reflect some ontological discreteness in nature.

'...the question "Is reality digital or analogue?" concerns representation,

and representation involves intentional systems...' The digital strikes me, specifically, as paradigmatically a product of definition. The analog is too--technically speaking (i.e. as a mathematical definition)--though through common experience it is more familiar and so is more readily associated with the natural reality it represents. That is, one thinks of the real mercury in a thermometer as 'analog', since its expansion appears macroscopically to be continuous, whereas the scaled markings are 'digital' and clearly imposed for the sake of "reading" the temperature.

"...that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe." [Wheeler] This may be what Wheeler calls 'reality', on some phenomenological basis, but it cannot be the usual sense implied by physical realism. I would agree that this describes physical knowledge, though not necessarily physical reality. I can sympathize with the sentiment of a participatory universe, though I suspect Wheeler goes somewhere with this I would not dare to. Again, he seems to be talking about "experience" rather than "external reality".

'For Wheeler, in an important sense, epistemology precedes ontology: bit

precedes it.' However, 'bit' is a concept historically derived from 'it' (info theory from thermodynamics). Even if we consider it logically independent, it is still a concept derived from general experience in the real world (bit = thing), just as set theory is. The conclusion is recycled as the premise.

'...there is no such thing as a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.' This is an ambiguous use of 'phenomenon'. It should mean EITHER the representation in experience (or in science) OR the thing it represents, but not both. Similarly in the expression '...past events are not definite'. 'Definite' is ambiguous, since it can refer to what is definitely known or what is causally determined. Wheeler should have known better. But your sympathetic conclusion is justified: 'Theories about the physical world inescapably bear our imprint; they are constructed to account for our experience.'

'All we have to go on in science... is pointer-readings, the record of some interaction, and the relationships between such entities. These take the form of coincidences [events]...' This reminds me of Keith Oatley's description (in 'Perceptions and Representations, 1978) of "flying blind"--the metaphorical position of the brain, sealed inside the skull, obliged to navigate solely by instrument. Also, Maturana and Varela pursued similar ideas ('Autopoeisis and Cognition'), generalized to the case of the organism in relation to its environment. Taking off on these concepts, I once wrote a chapter in a philosophical novelette, to explore the encapsulated brain metaphor through a Cartesian theater analogy. The protagonists somehow find themselves inside the control room of what appears to be a space ship of some sort, but turns out to be an advanced alien machine-based life form(!) They discover for themselves the art of flying blind when they try to figure out how the thing works, simply by trial and error of observing correlations between inputs (control levers) and results on their instrument displays. They then develop a program to account for these correlations, thus creating an automatic pilot and (largely) working themselves out of a job...

'All physical theories are, in this sense, approximations: they go beyond what

is observed (namely, discrete events).' I think more can be said than that they are "approximate" in a quantitative sense. There is a qualitative difference between theory and reality, which I like to characterize as the difference between artifact (the 'made') and natural reality (the 'found'). Certainly I agree that expecting too much can get us into trouble. I do think, however, that there is some utility yet to be squeezed out of recognizing this qualitative difference, and not mistaking the map for the territory.

Thanks for a well-written essay, a pleasure to read!

Dan

The scope of this essay contest (discussed here) expressly includes the philosophy of physics as an appropriate viewpoint.

Nice essay Dean. Incidentally, I know Steven French (actually, we should nominate him for FQXi membership), though I haven't seen him in several years. He was the external examiner on my PhD thesis which dealt with Eddington's Fundamental Theory. Great guy.