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Mikalai, I'm opening up a new thread, since the other one has become quite unwieldy.

I think maybe it helps if I phrase the problem I have with your formulation in slightly different language. So, as before, let's take two qubits that are, in the ordinary quantum formalism, described by the state

[equation]

Now, according to your postulate 3, the two qubits themselves see...

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Mikalai, I'm opening up a new thread, since the other one has become quite unwieldy.

I think maybe it helps if I phrase the problem I have with your formulation in slightly different language. So, as before, let's take two qubits that are, in the ordinary quantum formalism, described by the state



Now, according to your postulate 3, the two qubits themselves see either the state |00> or the state |11> with 50% probability, i.e. they can be described by the mixture



Now, my question is: in order to calculate the expectation value of an operator A



which of these states should I use? It seems that if your claim that your formulation solves the measurement problem is to be upheld, then this must be state (2): only then could you say that measurement merely 'discovers' some real state, and are free of the problem of why we never observe a superposition. If you used state (1), then you'd effectively say that state (2) never has any contact to observation, and the measurement problem, being, after all, about what we observe, would remain untouched.

However, this runs into the following problem: calculating the expectation value in this way means that the CHSH-Bell inequality



where A,B,C,D are local observables on either system A or B, can never be violated in your formulation!

So in order to solve the measurement problem, you would have to calculate the expectation value using state (1); but in order to get the observed phenomena of entanglement, you'd have to calculate it using (2).

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I've had a look at your essay, Mikalai - and there are quite a few points I'd like to address. I'll try not to make this too long :)

1) I agree that "It" and "Bit" are on the same level. As my essay at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1606 puts it, "My entry refers to time being nonlinear (I believe this agrees with Einstein’s description of warped time) with ”It” and “Bit”...

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I've had a look at your essay, Mikalai - and there are quite a few points I'd like to address. I'll try not to make this too long :)

1) I agree that "It" and "Bit" are on the same level. As my essay at http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1606 puts it, "My entry refers to time being nonlinear (I believe this agrees with Einstein’s description of warped time) with ”It” and “Bit” both being absolutely vital."

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2) I don't think "quantum systems are ... made of fundamental particle events" for the reason that particles seem to be made of gravitation, which seems to be made of mathematics (this makes gravity fundamental and maths even more fundamental).

Suppose Albert Einstein was correct when he said gravitation plays a role in the constitution of elementary particles (in “Do Gravitational Fields Play An Essential Part In The Structure of the Elementary Particles?” – a 1919 submission to the Prussian Academy of Sciences). And suppose he was also correct when he said gravitation is the warping of space-time. Then it is logical that 1) gravitation would play a role in constitution of elementary particles and also in the constitution of the nuclear forces, and 2) the warping of space-time that produces gravity means space-time itself plays a role in the constitution of elementary particles and the nuclear forces. Gravity, being united with electromagnetism1 and the nuclear forces, is therefore the ultimate physical source of all repelling and attracting. Mass increase at increasing accelerations is inevitable because the object is encountering more spacetime and gravity (the producers of mass; which also confer mass’s equivalent [energy] on cosmic rays that travel far enough through space, turning them into ultra-high-energy cosmic rays). But mass increase cannot become infinitely large since space-time, gravity and mass don’t exist at Lightspeed 2. The object is converted into energy which means mass and energy must be equivalent and Energy must equal Mass related to the Speed of Light (E=mc^2, in the words of Albert Einstein).

1 BITS or BInary digiTS called 1's and 0's would make the bosons of gravity and electromagnetism which would interact in Wave Packets to produce matter. This contradicts the Standard Model and Higgs field - but to paraphrase what John Wheeler said in 1989's "Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", we should not accept any pre-definition of the word BIT but we should be truly creative (I think identifying Wheeler's BITS with the binary digits of electronics is not only an obvious step, but creative because most people wouldn't take that step). All matter in the universe then has the potential to behave like a Bose-Einstein condensate (a state of matter composed of bosons cooled close to absolute zero in which atoms fall or condense into the lowest accessible quantum state, at which point quantum effects become apparent on a macroscopic scale). The bosons composing gravity and EM can all have the same properties e.g. position, velocity, magnetism and spin (force-carrying particles, or bosons, defy Pauli's exclusion principle). The matter we know obeys Pauli’s exclusion principle. So how is it different from a Bose-Einstein condensate. To exhibit Bose–Einstein condensation, the fermions (particles of matter) must "pair up" (not in the normal manner of sharing electrons) to form compound particles that are bosons. This “pairing-up” may be achieved by using e-infinity to delete distance 3. This leads to a photon (such as from the Sun) experiencing the whole universe – including BECs, gravitons, and other photons - in its existence.

2 The basic standard of time in the universe is the measurement of the motions of photons i.e. of the speed of light. This is comparable to the 1960’s adoption on Earth of the measurement of time as the vibration rate of cesium atoms. At lightspeed, time = 0 (it is stopped). Below 300,000 km/sec, acceleration or gravitation causes time dilation (slowing of time as the speed of light is approached). If time’s 0, space is also 0 because space and time coexist as space-time whose warping (gravity) is necessarily 0 too. Spacetime/gravity form matter/mass, so the latter pair can’t exist at lightspeed and photons are massless (even when not at rest). Mass increase at increasing accelerations is inevitable because the object is encountering more spacetime and gravity (the producers of mass; which also confer mass’s equivalent [energy] on cosmic rays that travel far enough through space, turning them into ultra-high-energy cosmic rays). But mass increase cannot become infinitely large since mass doesn’t exist at lightspeed. The object is converted into energy which means mass and energy must be equivalent and Energy must equal Mass related to the Speed of Light (E=mc^2, in the words of Albert Einstein).

3 The inverse-square law states that the force between two particles becomes infinite if the distance of separation between them goes to zero. Remembering that gravitation (associated with particles) partly depends on the distance between their centres, the distance of separation only goes to zero when those centres occupy the same space-time coordinates (not merely when the particles’ or objects’ sides are touching i.e. infinity equals the total elimination of distance). The infinite cosmos4 could possess this absence of distance in space and time, via the electronic mechanism of binary digits. To distinguish this definition from “the universe going on and on forever”, we can call it “electronic infinity or e ”.

The above paragraphs show that gravity is fundamental. How is mathematics “more fundamental”? Let’s borrow a few ideas from string theory’s ideas of everything being ultimately composed of tiny, one-dimensional strings that vibrate as clockwise, standing, and counterclockwise currents in a four-dimensional looped superstring. We can visualize tiny, one dimensional binary digits of 1 and 0 (base 2 mathematics) forming currents in a Mobius loop – or in 2 Mobius loops, clockwise currents in one loop combining with counterclockwise currents in the other to form a standing current. Combination of the 2 loops’ currents requires connection of the two as a four-dimensional Klein bottle. This connection can be made with the infinitely-long irrational and transcendental numbers. Such an infinite connection translates - via bosons being ultimately composed of 1’s and 0’s depicting pi, e, √2 etc.; and fermions being given mass by bosons interacting in matter particles’ “wave packets” – into an infinite number of Figure-8 Klein bottles 5. Slight imperfections in the way the Mobius loops fit together determine the precise nature of the binary-digit currents (the producers of gravitational waves, electromagnetic waves, the nuclear strong force and the nuclear weak force) and thus of exact mass, charge, quantum spin, and adherence to Pauli’s exclusion principle. Referring to a Bose-Einstein condensate, the slightest change in the binary-digit flow (Mobius loop orientation) would alter the way gravitation and electromagnetism interact, and the BEC could become a gas.

4 As Bob Berman’s article "Infinite Universe" (“Astronomy” – Nov. 2012) wrote, “The evidence keeps flooding in. It now truly appears that the universe is infinite” and “Many separate areas of investigation – like baryon acoustic oscillations (sound waves propagating through the denser early universe), the way type 1a supernovae

compare with redshift, the Hubble constant, studies of cosmic large-scale

structure, and the flat topology of space – all point the same way.”

Support for the infinite universe - (after examining recent measurements by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, NASA declared "We now know that the universe is flat with only a 0.4% margin of error." - http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html;

and according to "The Early Universe and the Cosmic Microwave Background:

Theory and Observations" by Norma G. Sànchez, Yuri N. Parijskij (published by

Springer, 31/12/2003), the shape of the Universe found to best fit observational data is the infinite flat model).

5 Each one is a “subuniverse” composing the physically infinite and eternal space-time of the universe (our own subuniverse is 13.7 billion years old). We don’t have to worry about accelerating cosmic expansion – the result of more space, forces, energy and matter being continually produced by binary digits - leaving our galaxy alone in space. As “dark energy” causes known galaxies to depart from view, more energy and matter can replace them (since the universe obeys fractal geometry, gravity is the source of repelling and attracting not only on a quantum scale but on a cosmic scale, too i.e. it accounts for dark energy – it accounts for dark matter and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, too [but that’s a long explanation best left in http://vixra.org/abs/1303.0218]). The Law of Conservation says neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed (though the quantity of each can change), so a better phrase might be “binary digits recycle spacetime” (when matter changes into energy or energy becomes matter, we commonly say matter or energy has been created). As well, other expanding subuniverses can collide with ours and their galaxies enter our space to keep our galaxy company. Combination of the 2 loops’ currents requires connection of the two as a four-dimensional Klein bottle whose construction from binary digits would make it malleable and flexible, deleting any gap and molding its border to perfectly fit surrounding subuniverses (form a continuous universe). This Klein bottle could possibly be a figure-8 Klein bottle because its similarities to a doughnut’s shape describes an idea suggested by mathematics’ "Poincare conjecture". The conjecture has implications for the universe’s shape and says you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it. One interpretation follows: This can be viewed as subuniverses shaped like Figure-8 Klein Bottles gaining rips called wormholes when extended into the spherical spacetime that goes on forever (forming one infinite superuniverse which is often called the multiverse when subuniverses - which share the same set of physics' laws - are incorrectly called parallel universes which are wrongly claimed to each possess different laws). Picture spacetime existing on the surface of this doughnut which has rips in it. These rips provide shortcuts between points in space and time – and belong in a 5th-dimensional hyperspace*. The boundary where subuniverses meet could be called a Cosmic String (they’d be analogous to cracks that form when water freezes into ice i.e. cosmic strings would form as subuniverses cool from their respective Big Bangs).

* Iin a universe structured according to the rules of fractal geometry, 5th dimensional hyperspace would occupy every fermion and boson, alongside space-time which is ultimately composed of 1’s and 0’s like particles. When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence, Einstein said: time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter.

3) Bell’s theorem, hidden variables, and How Binary Digits Produce Wave-Particle Duality

"Hidden variables" is an interpretation of quantum mechanics which is based on

belief that the theory is incomplete (Albert Einstein is the most famous proponent

of hidden variables) and it says there is an underlying reality with additional

information of the quantum world. I suggest this underlying reality is binary digits

generated in 5-Dimensional hyperspace. These allow time travel by making it possible to warp space 6 (wormholes being one example of doing this).

6 Maybe hidden variables called binary digits could permit time travel into the future by warping positive space-time. And maybe they'd allow time travel into the past by warping a 5D hyperspace that is translated 180 degrees to space-time, and could be labelled as negative or inverted. (The space-time we live in is described by ordinary [or “real”] numbers which, when multiplied by themselves, result in positive numbers e.g. 2x2=4, and -2x-2 also equals 4. Inverted “positive” space-time becomes negative hyperspace which is described by so-called imaginary numbers that give

negative results when multiplied by themselves e.g. i multiplied by itself

gives -1. [Supporting info from Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time”

– Bantam Press 1988, p.134]) The past can never be changed from what

occurred, and the future can never be altered from what it will be. Both are

programmed by the 1’s and 0’s.

I call hidden variables (or virtual particles) binary digits generated in a 5th-dimensional hyperspace which makes them - as explained in the next sentence -

a non-local variety, in agreement with the limits imposed by Bell's theorem.

(Bell’s Theorem is a mathematical proof discovered by John Bell in 1964 that

says any hidden variables theory whose predictions agree with quantum

mechanics must be non-local i.e. it must allow an influence to pass between two

systems or particles instantaneously, so that a cause at one place can produce

an immediate effect at some distant location [not only in space, but also in time].)

Comparing space-time to an infinite computer screen and the 5th dimension to its

relatively small – in this case, so tiny as to be nonexistent in spacetime (at least to observation) – Central Processing Unit, the calculations in the “small” CPU would create and influence everything in infinite space and eternal time. In other words, bosons would be ultimately composed of 1’s and 0’s depicting pi, e, √2 etc.; and fermions would gain mass by bosons interacting in “wave packets” (everything is unified by the fundamental gravity and even more fundamental maths). This permits a “distant” event to instantly affect another (exemplified by the quantum entanglement of particles separated by light years) or permit effects to influence causes (exemplified by the retrocausality or backward causality promoted by Yakir Aharonov and others (see “Five Decades of Physics” by John G. Cramer, Professor of Physics, University of Washington - http://www.physics.ohiostate.

edu/~lisa/CramerSymposium/talks
/Cramer.pdf). This means quantum

processes, in which effects and causes/distant events are not separated,

wouldn’t be confined to tiny subatomic scales but would also occur on the largest

cosmic scales.

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Well,
as you can see, I’m not good at keeping my writing short … which gave me big problems meeting FQXi’s length limits.

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I am favorably impressed by your essay. I think you raise a number of interesting points. Your postulate #4 is though something I think that needs further examination. This is in particular with respect to black holes and event horizons. This is not to say that I think it is false. It might have some greater generalization though with respect to black holes and quantum gravity. My essay It...

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I am favorably impressed by your essay. I think you raise a number of interesting points. Your postulate #4 is though something I think that needs further examination. This is in particular with respect to black holes and event horizons. This is not to say that I think it is false. It might have some greater generalization though with respect to black holes and quantum gravity. My essay It From Bit is Undecidable discusses a possible algebraic structure of the vacuum plus event horizon underlying quantum field theory. At any rate you might notice your essay score just went up.

I too think the Higgs field is connected to spacetime. One could consider this with respect to accelerated reference frames. Quantum field interactions have in the standard Feynman diagram approach pointlike vertices. These are not Lorentz invariant, which is something string theory fixes. However, without going into string theory per se we can consider these vertices as regions of large acceleration. On the Rindler frame of the particle there is then an Unruh radiation. The temperature associated with that physics can induce phase changes. The Higgs field may then be an epiphenomenon of spacetime physics.

This might also be considered with respect to inertia. Inertia is really Newton's second law. Inertia is just the property of a mass to accelerate with a changing spatial velocity. A massless particle can accelerate, but it its spatial velocity still remains the same, v = c. A massless particle can be confined in a region so that its tangent velocity in spacetime remains on a light cone. The picture attached illustrates this. In this case the particle is executing zitterbewegung. This is due to the interaction with the Higgs field that keeps the particle in a confined region. The zig-zag diagram on the left illustrates in two dimensions by the interaction of the Higgs field at the vertices. In this picture what we call inertia is a bit of an illusion. The diagram on the right shows a massless particle kept on a spiral path in spacetime, which gives the appearance on a large scale of a massive particle. The motion of this massive particle due to a force amounts to a deformation of this "tube" so that the actual particle is always on a path tangential to a light cone.

Spacetime is locally or that is flat is given by the Lorentz group, which is SL(2,C). The light cone is a projective subspace PSL(2,C). The actual path that particles take is then on this subspace, even in the case of massive particles. There is a short exact topological sequence that relates SL(2,C) and PSL(2,C), and the physics behind this involves the Higgs field. In the case of self-confinement of gluons this is determined by QCD. There is then I think a relationship between the Higgs field and weak interactions with spacetime. Remember the Higgs field couples through the weak isospin charge. Similarly with QCD two gluons in an entanglement (or bound state) that is color neutral is equivalent to a graviton; they both have the same quantum numbers. There is then I think some deep relationships between gauge fields and spacetime that currently are not understood or even explored.

Lawrence B. Crowell

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Dear Mikalai

I enjoyed reading your essay and have understood its essential features, despite the fact that I am not very adept at the math of QM but understand its basic notions.

I think you have a strong sense of how Nature should be understood. You said "To rescue a notion of system and to simultaneously have QM formalism in existing form". I have a model, a project for a Theory...

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Dear Mikalai

I enjoyed reading your essay and have understood its essential features, despite the fact that I am not very adept at the math of QM but understand its basic notions.

I think you have a strong sense of how Nature should be understood. You said "To rescue a notion of system and to simultaneously have QM formalism in existing form". I have a model, a project for a Theory of everything that tries to describe phenomena from a different starting point than QM and Relativity - I will be happy if you can read my paper. Beautiful Universe Theory (BU) As you will see In the paper the usual QM hypothesis are derivative. For example probability emerges naturally from a diffusion of energy in Universal lattice nodes - as heat in a crystal.

I fully agree with your insightful criticism of the Standard Model : "In other words, every fundamental particle touches spacetime only at two points, at creation event and at annihilation event." Excellent!! This criticism can be extended to the idea of particle annihilation/ creation in SM. Why? How? There is a complete lack of any physical mechanism that explains this idea - it may be just a Standard Model accounting trick to balance the ledger of interactions in Nature. It may have no physical parallel in nature. That is why I feel mechanisms for explaining things - such a BU mechanism - should be given serious thought, instead of wandering into surrealistic realms of Many-Worlds and infinite string solution landscapes.Too much stress on particles blinds us to other possibilities about space, the vacuum as a structured lattice and others.

"Time Hypothesis: A change of states in quantum system is time"

Absolutely . In my theory time as a dimension does not exist. So much for spacetime in SR or anywhere else. Relativity should be reconstructed in absolute space and 'no time' using Lorentz transformations in discrete steps.

Finally in my present fqxi essay I have a similar conclusion to your Bit=It but I say It=Qubit.

Good luck

Vladimir

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While at an abstract level of QM, we abstract away the fact that a system, which is a bunch of atoms, which is a bunch of particles, may have lots of events going on. These events, for example, are a primary reason behind Zurek's way of how coherence is spontaneously lost. This highlights again that current QM postulates are not fundamental enough, in light of QFT's in SM and experiments, like...

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While at an abstract level of QM, we abstract away the fact that a system, which is a bunch of atoms, which is a bunch of particles, may have lots of events going on. These events, for example, are a primary reason behind Zurek's way of how coherence is spontaneously lost. This highlights again that current QM postulates are not fundamental enough, in light of QFT's in SM and experiments, like those at LHC.

Time, on the level of effective systems, on our level, is measured by clocks. Extra interactions in Zeno effect, make clock, decay of excitation states, go slower. Notice how effective system's clock is not the same as absolute spacetime coordinate clock, and is not the same as count of fundamental events.

Higgs are quite universally connected with other matter, and may have the same effect, like making your metabolism and thinking go slower, together with wrist watches. And since time question is crucial for gravity, we immediately have suggestion that gravity is an effective phenomena, and there may be a way to do calculations to prove/disprove such proposition. Notice that there will be 4D-like partially ordered relations between events, but spacetime of effective systems has to be calculated on top of it.

There is no universal notion of time. What we measure as time with clocks, and space with gps', these are elements relevant to us, effective systems. We used to assume that spacetime notions may be applied unchanged when we go to fundamental level of particle events. Difficulty of marrying GR with SM show that such assumption is not warranted. I fell your unease, when loosing a notion of "zer time", when one has to explicitly match space and time notions used at different levels of abstraction. But such is Leibnitz' relational spacetime idea is. Due to this difficulty, we haven't seen any relational spatime formulations so far. But now, with Giovanni's "there no empty points" and Feynman's concepts used in QFT's of SM, proved in so many experiments, now we are at a point of forming calculable relational spacetime.

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Hello Mikalai

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

(http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/19
65/feynman-lecture.html)

said: “It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the...

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Hello Mikalai

Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech

(http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/19
65/feynman-lecture.html)

said: “It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don’t know why that is – it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.”

I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

The belief that “Nature is simple” is however being expressed differently in my essay “Analogical Engine” linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

Specifically though, I said “Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities” and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism … and so on.

Taken two at a time, it can be read as “what quantum is to classical” is similar to (~) “what wave is to particle.” You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

Since “Nature is Analogical”, we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And each of us surely must have touched some corners of it.

Good luck and good cheers!

Than Tin

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Dear Mikalai,

Contests FQXi - is primarily a new radical idea. "The trouble with physics" push ... In your essay deep original analysis in the basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt, given new ideas, new concepts and conclusions One of them:

«Fundamental particles have an internal spin characteristic. While spin is internal, rotation in physical 3D space changes relative spin...

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Dear Mikalai,

Contests FQXi - is primarily a new radical idea. "The trouble with physics" push ... In your essay deep original analysis in the basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt, given new ideas, new concepts and conclusions One of them:

«Fundamental particles have an internal spin characteristic. While spin is internal, rotation in physical 3D space changes relative spin orientations. This we take as a clue, that a spatial order between particle events is an accomodation of spin relationships. Here some more work needs to be done to establish exact mathematical framework.»

It is extremely important: «exact mathematical framework». In an interview with the magazine "Expert" Nobel Laureate in Physics David Gross expressed as a problem of identifying the "general framework structure" of physics.

http://expert.ru/expert/2013/06/iz-chego-sostoit-pro
stranstvo-vremya/

Your mathematical structure may be a "general framework structure?"

Constructive ways to the truth may be different. One of them said Alexander Zenkin in the article "Science counterrevolution in mathematics":

«The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence.»

http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.
htm

In the russian version of a article: «The truth should be drawn and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators.»

In an interview with the experimental mathematician Ludwig Fadden said that "mathematics closes physics» (Ludwig Faddeev interview in the magazine "Expert" - "The equation of the evil spirit" http://expert.ru/expert/2007/29/faddeev/ )

Do you agree with Alexander Zenkin and Ludwig Faddevym?

Please look also my essay and essay FQXi 2012 related to the ontological justification of "Absolute generating structure"

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1796

http://w
ww.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1362

I think your original essays on the basis of active discussion and your thorough answer should be rated much higher.

Best regards,

Vladimir

ideabank@yandex.ru

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Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I’ve Read

I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented...

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Late-in-the-Day Thoughts about the Essays I’ve Read

I am sending to you the following thoughts because I found your essay particularly well stated, insightful, and helpful, even though in certain respects we may significantly diverge in our viewpoints. Thank you! Lumping and sorting is a dangerous adventure; let me apologize in advance if I have significantly misread or misrepresented your essay in what follows.

Of the nearly two hundred essays submitted to the competition, there seems to be a preponderance of sentiment for the ‘Bit-from-It” standpoint, though many excellent essays argue against this stance or advocate for a wider perspective on the whole issue. Joseph Brenner provided an excellent analysis of the various positions that might be taken with the topic, which he subsumes under the categories of ‘It-from-Bit’, ‘Bit-from-It’, and ‘It-and-Bit’.

Brenner himself supports the ‘Bit-from-It’ position of Julian Barbour as stated in his 2011 essay that gave impetus to the present competition. Others such as James Beichler, Sundance Bilson-Thompson, Agung Budiyono, and Olaf Dreyer have presented well-stated arguments that generally align with a ‘Bit-from-It’ position.

Various renderings of the contrary position, ‘It-from-Bit’, have received well-reasoned support from Stephen Anastasi, Paul Borrill, Luigi Foschini, Akinbo Ojo, and Jochen Szangolies. An allied category that was not included in Brenner’s analysis is ‘It-from-Qubit’, and valuable explorations of this general position were undertaken by Giacomo D’Ariano, Philip Gibbs, Michel Planat and Armin Shirazi.

The category of ‘It-and-Bit’ displays a great diversity of approaches which can be seen in the works of Mikalai Birukou, Kevin Knuth, Willard Mittelman, Georgina Parry, and Cristinel Stoica,.

It seems useful to discriminate among the various approaches to ‘It-and-Bit’ a subcategory that perhaps could be identified as ‘meaning circuits’, in a sense loosely associated with the phrase by J.A. Wheeler. Essays that reveal aspects of ‘meaning circuits’ are those of Howard Barnum, Hugh Matlock, Georgina Parry, Armin Shirazi, and in especially that of Alexei Grinbaum.

Proceeding from a phenomenological stance as developed by Husserl, Grinbaum asserts that the choice to be made of either ‘It from Bit’ or ‘Bit from It’ can be supplemented by considering ‘It from Bit’ and ‘Bit from It’. To do this, he presents an ‘epistemic loop’ by which physics and information are cyclically connected, essentially the same ‘loop’ as that which Wheeler represented with his ‘meaning circuit’. Depending on where one ‘cuts’ the loop, antecedent and precedent conditions are obtained which support an ‘It from Bit’ interpretation, or a ‘Bit from It’ interpretation, or, though not mentioned by Grinbaum, even an ‘It from Qubit’ interpretation. I’ll also point out that depending on where the cut is made, it can be seen as a ‘Cartesian cut’ between res extensa and res cogitans or as a ‘Heisenberg cut’ between the quantum system and the observer. The implications of this perspective are enormous for the present It/Bit debate! To quote Grinbaum: “The key to understanding the opposition between IT and BIT is in choosing a vantage point from which OR looks as good as AND. Then this opposition becomes unnecessary: the loop view simply dissolves it.” Grinbaum then goes on to point out that this epistemologically circular structure “…is not a logical disaster, rather it is a well-documented property of all foundational studies.”

However, Grinbaum maintains that it is mandatory to cut the loop; he claims that it is “…a logical necessity: it is logically impossible to describe the loop as a whole within one theory.” I will argue that in fact it is vital to preserve the loop as a whole and to revise our expectations of what we wish to accomplish by making the cut. In fact, the ongoing It/Bit debate has been sustained for decades by our inability to recognize the consequences that result from making such a cut. As a result, we have been unable to take up the task of studying the properties inherent in the circularity of the loop. Helpful in this regard would be an examination of the role of relations between various elements and aspects of the loop. To a certain extent the importance of the role of relations has already been well stated in the essays of Kevin Knuth, Carlo Rovelli, Cristinel Stoica, and Jochen Szangolies although without application to aspects that clearly arise from ‘circularity’. Gary Miller’s discussion of the role of patterns, drawn from various historical precedents in mathematics, philosophy, and psychology, provides the clearest hints of all competition submissions on how the holistic analysis of this essential circular structure might be able to proceed.

In my paper, I outlined Susan Carey’s assertion that a ‘conceptual leap’ is often required in the construction of a new scientific theory. Perhaps moving from a ‘linearized’ perspective of the structure of a scientific theory to one that is ‘circularized’ is just one further example of this kind of conceptual change.

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