CATEGORY:
It From Bit or Bit From It? Essay Contest (2013)
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Information-Based Physics and the Influence Network by Kevin H Knuth
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Author Kevin H Knuth wrote on Jun. 24, 2013 @ 16:42 GMT
Essay AbstractThis essay considers a simple model of observers that are influenced by the world around them. Consistent quantification of information about such influences results in a great deal of familiar physics. The end result is a new perspective on relativistic quantum mechanics, which includes both a way of conceiving of spacetime as well as particle “properties” that may be amenable to a unification of quantum mechanics and gravity. Rather than thinking about the universe as a computer, perhaps it is more accurate to think about it as a network of influences where the laws of physics derive from both consistent descriptions and optimal information-based inferences made by embedded observers.
Author BioKevin Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Physics and Informatics at the University at Albany. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Entropy, and is the co-founder and President of a robotics company, Autonomous Exploration Inc. He has more than 15 years of experience in applying Bayesian and maximum entropy methods to the design of machine learning algorithms for data analysis applied to the physical sciences. His current research interests include the foundations of physics, autonomous robotics, and searching for extrasolar planets.
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Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 02:26 GMT
Welcome to the contest, Kevin
The equations and formulas you are hard to determine in practice, your conclusion is that: the bit was self-generated the information? and the information self-born the bits?
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 13:57 GMT
Thank you Hoang for your comment.
I am not sure I understand your statement about the equations and formulas. But I can address your question about bits and information.
In this model, two observers make inferences about a particle that influences them. The particle actually does something. That is, there is a physical reality that occurred. This reality is the first fundamental IT. The observers record the labels corresponding to the instances that the particle influenced them. These acts of influence comprise the information that they received about the particle, and the labels are a code summarizing this information. These are the BITs. The goal now is for the observers to reconstruct what the particle did (the fundamental IT), which is a sequence of influences (a BIT sequence). I show how this is impossible by illustrating that there are many possible reconstructions, each corresponding to a separate BIT sequence path, each of which can be interpreted as a distinct path in an emergent spacetime. The observers must take all these BIT sequences (spacetime paths) into account to make inferences about a new set of relevant variables. This is the new, higher level *IT*. This is their picture of a reality that is simply unknowable.
In conclusion, we have IT -> BIT -> *IT*
where events provide information from which inferences are made about a model of those events.
Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 03:08 GMT
Hello Kevin,
I like your abstract and only had time to scan over and read the conclusion. I'll look more thoroughly later in the week. However, I like very much what I see based on embedded observers and that you seem to decide It from Bit and bit from It.
I look forward to reading in full and would be honoured if you had a chance to read my
essay.
Kind regards,
Antony
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 13:48 GMT
Thank you Antony! I look forward to reading your essay as well.
Antony Ryan replied on Jul. 23, 2013 @ 15:24 GMT
Hello again Kevin,
Sorry it has taken this long to comment.
Excellent essay! I like the way you utilise networks of influence. The whole idea feels logical and right. I especially like that you have It from Bit AND Bit from It, as I think the examples you cite are very good. Also, I think that each are as fundamental. Moreover one cannot exist fully, as we know them, without the other.
Best wishes for the contest,
Antony
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Paul Reed wrote on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 06:28 GMT
Kevin
“Knowledge about any property that does not affect how an electron exerts influence is inaccessible to us”
This focuses on the issue of what constitutes physical existence, although it is not affected by the subsequent processing (eg observation). Put the other way round, the physical circumstance exists whether or not it is sensed, sensing just invokes a perception of...
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Kevin
“Knowledge about any property that does not affect how an electron exerts influence is inaccessible to us”
This focuses on the issue of what constitutes physical existence, although it is not affected by the subsequent processing (eg observation). Put the other way round, the physical circumstance exists whether or not it is sensed, sensing just invokes a perception of it.
So, in respect of any aspect of existence, the differentiation between existent and not-existent, for us, is knowability, which is the function of a physical process. That is, we (and all sentient organisms) receive physical input and are thereby enabled to be aware of it. Thus what constitutes physical existence for us is limited by what we could be aware of. Which may or may not encompass ‘everything’, but we can never know that, so that is irrelevant. That is, physical existence is all that which is potentially knowable (ie available to be sensed). The extent to which we can capture any of this, and then process it comprehensively and accurately, is another issue. The key point is potentiality. Now, this does not have to be substantiated by confirmed (ie not individualistic) direct experience. Operating within the rules of sensing and on the basis of validated direct experience, it is possible to hypothesise. In effect then, hypothesis is virtual sensing, ie it is not belief creation. It discerns what could have been sensed had certain identifiable issues not prevented that.
So, if an electron is pink, or more generally, if a physical characteristic ‘actually’ exists, but it is not manifest, ie has no physical effect AND is not detectable of itself, then that characteristic is non-existent. Although an unlikely circumstance, one has to include the possibility that whilst a physical characteristic might not exert any influence it may react in a way which enables its manifestation. Which is an influence, but not in the context of the existential sequence (ie where it is inert), but in the physical interactions which enable the creation of a physically existent representation of it. A statement of the blindingly obvious, ie we can see it bit it doesn’t do anything!
“Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does”.
This is also an important differentiation, ie between physical substance and the physically existent state thereof. Any reality is the physically existent state of whatever comprises it at any given time. In other words, a reality is the function of the state, which is caused to alter. So focussing on what is happening, rather than ‘things’ as such, is the correct approach.
Paul
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 13:46 GMT
Thank you Paul for your summary and insights.
If one considers the two hypotheses:
A = "An entity has a proposed property, which exists but are undetectable"
and
B = "An entity does not possess the proposed property"
Then since there is no experiment we could perform to tell these apart, Leibniz's principle of Identity of Indiscernables suggests that for all...
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Thank you Paul for your summary and insights.
If one considers the two hypotheses:
A = "An entity has a proposed property, which exists but are undetectable"
and
B = "An entity does not possess the proposed property"
Then since there is no experiment we could perform to tell these apart, Leibniz's principle of Identity of Indiscernables suggests that for all practical purposes, the statements are the same.
A much stronger statement could be made by noting that since A is an untestable hypothesis, it has no place in science, which deals with only testable situations.
The result is the conclusion:
“Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does”.
In this essay I illustrate some of the published work I have done demonstrating that a simple model of influence leads to a great deal of accepted physics. What we think of as particle properties, such as position, speed, mass, energy, momentum, and helicity can all by simply described in terms of how the particle influences others.
Surprisingly, from this simple idea (which is very similar to direct particle-particle interaction, which Wheeler and Feynman explored before Feynman gave up and went on to QED) one can derive all the important features of 1+1 dimensional relativistic quantum mechanics for the single Fermion.
Questions like, "Why can't we know the particle's position and momentum at the same time?" become obviously resolved since the two quantities constitute different descriptions of the particle's behavior. You can go further than I did in this essay and show precisely how they are related. They are related by the discrete Fourier transform since position describes a single (or pair) of acts of influence (called an interval here), and momentum describes a rate averaged over many acts of influence. Demanding that an observer's inferences about intervals must agree with the inferences about rates, one must relate the probabilities with complex numbers. The only invariant scalar is the spectral magnitude (by Parcival's theorem), which must then be the probability. This is the Born rule.
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 26, 2013 @ 04:32 GMT
Kevin
“…Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does”.
Ah now that is a different way of putting it, and is not correct. We can know what something is, if that something is within the ambit of our physical existence, ie is potentially detectable (knowable). So, going back to your example, we can know an electron, but...
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Kevin
“…Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does”.
Ah now that is a different way of putting it, and is not correct. We can know what something is, if that something is within the ambit of our physical existence, ie is potentially detectable (knowable). So, going back to your example, we can know an electron, but will not know that it is pink, if that characteristic is no in way manifest in a way that is detectable by us. This is despite the fact that it may ‘actually’ be pink. But the point is we can only consider what is potentially knowable (testable was your phrase). If one calls that A, then there is always the possibility of not-A, which cannot be known, and may include ‘really’ existent properties or ‘made up’ ones (beliefs).
The significance of what an electron, or indeed anything, does, is that that concentrates on what is manifest, ie within our physical existence. In other words, you arrive at the right starting point. Now, any given reality is a physically existent state of whatever comprises it. So I cannot agree with postulate 2, and as written, 3 & 4. Because A is an influence which results in B. It does not influence B, because at the time of existence of A, B does not exist. Neither does A ‘influence’ C, B was the ‘influence’.
The point about sequence is that only one state exists at a time, the predecessor must cease to exist for the successor to exist. So the two ‘events’, which are really any two consecutive states in the sequence, are not ‘experienced by a particle’. [I would not use the word particle anyway, because that is somewhat narrow in its meaning]. Because the ‘particle’, or more precisely the physically existent state of whatever is not existent in the subsequent state. A difference is a difference.
That exposes two common, and understandable flaws in the fundamental way we view reality. First the importance of sequence is that there is only one of whatever constitutes it. Second, and interrelated to the first, physically, ‘things’ do not exist (until obviously one differentiates down to singular physically existent states which must comprise of something). That is, there is a tendency to invoke a thing, and then conceive of it as changing. But this is a contradiction. If it has changed, then it is not what it was, it is different. Your ‘particle’ would have to be an inert something in order to ‘experience (ie be existent in) more than one state. This is why I speak of physically existent states.
The reason that QM and relativity are wrong as models of physical existence (Questions like, "Why can't we know the particle's position and momentum…) is because physical existence (ie a reality) is a discrete, definitive physically existent state of whatever comprises it. It must be. Existence, as far as we are concerned, and the start point was this is science not religion (potentially detectecyable/testable & not so) involves physical presence, and that can only occur in a definitive and discrete form. QM and relativity, whether or not it was the authors intentions, effectively asserts some form of indefiniteness in physical existence. Which is incorrect. Which is why there then has to be a plethora of flawed rationalisations to keep the theories ‘on track’. One being the supposed influence of observation on the physical circumstance, which is nonsense, as it cannot happen.
I will stop there otherwise this will get too long.
Paul
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 8, 2013 @ 23:18 GMT
Dear Paul,
Thank you for your comments.
In your response you contend that we can know an electron.
I am not actually sure what this means. We have been studying electrons since 1897 and we cannot even resolve the various pictures we have of it (eg. particle or wave). You do acknowledge that we would not be able to determine that an electron is pink if its pinkness did not affect how it influences our measurement apparatus. The immediate conclusion is that the only aspects of the electron that we can know about are those that affect or govern how it influences others. The practical result is to then describe an electron in terms of how it influences.
What I have attempted in my work is to postulate a simple model of influence by focusing solely on the idea that things influence one another. The results I have obtained is that you do not actually need to know what electrons are to get the specific laws of physics and the particle properties that I describe in the essay.
I find this quite surprising, yet comforting since I cannot see how we would ever know what an electron truly is. The best we can seem to muster are analogies, and these have limited utility. I can only come up with two truisms:
- Electrons are electrons.
- I can identify an electron because of what it does.
The fact that the latter can give you the Dirac equation (even in 1+1 dimensions) is remarkable and insightful.
Thanks!
Kevin
Manuel S Morales wrote on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 07:18 GMT
Kevin,
Your focus on behavior properties are indeed fundamental, as such, serve to embed a network of influences. You closing statement, "The conceptual difficulties with quantum complementarity are eliminated when we consider these quantities to be descriptions of what a particle does rather than properties possessed by the particle." I find to be in harmony with my findings. Although my approach is vastly different than yours, I have found that quantum complementarity to be primarily an issue of perspective.
I invite you to review my findings and rate my essay when you get the chance:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1809Good luck with your entry of which I have rated highly..
Regards,
Manuel
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 13:47 GMT
Thank you for your kind words Manuel. I will be certain to have a look at your essay. I made some additional statements about complementarity in my response to Paul above if you are interested.
Joe Fisher wrote on Jun. 25, 2013 @ 16:14 GMT
Respectfully Professor Knuth,
Please excuse me, I am a decrepit old self-taut (thinking makes me tense) realist. I do not intend this observation to be taken critically, but like all of the physicists who have submitted essays to this site, you have also omitted a vital piece of information one should know about.
You wrote, “We imagine an observer to possess a precise instrument, which has access to and can count the events along a given particle’s chain²”
As I have soberly explained in my essay BITTERS, the real Universe is unique, once. Everything in the real Universe must be unique, once. Any instrument no matter how precise it is cannot measure Unique. Unique cannot be counted for unique only happens once. Some real observer using unique eyes can observe Unique once.
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Akinbo Ojo wrote on Jun. 26, 2013 @ 08:45 GMT
Dear Kevin,
Yours is a commendable striving to discern fundamental particle behavior. However, since you talk of 'influence others', 'network' I presume you imply interactions in space. Can the true nature of such be well described without first deciphering the nature of space?
I commend the following for your contemplation,
The Pythagoreans say: Space is a composite of monads...
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Dear Kevin,
Yours is a commendable striving to discern fundamental particle behavior. However, since you talk of 'influence others', 'network' I presume you imply interactions in space. Can the true nature of such be well described without first deciphering the nature of space?
I commend the following for your contemplation,
The Pythagoreans say: Space is a composite of monads and geometry is the study and science of space.
Leibniz says: monads are the true atoms of Nature - the elements out of which everything is made. He also says I think there is no empty space—the extended world is entirely full, a plenum.
Newton opines:…And my account throws a satisfactory light on the difference between between a body and a region of space. The raw materials of each are the same in their properties and nature, and differ only in how God created them. (By this he meant that the only difference is that while body was created by God, the other, space was eternal and not created).
Wheeler asks: What else is there out of which to build a particle except geometry itself?
Then going further,
Leibniz says: Within a monad there’s nothing to re-arrange, and there is no conceivable internal motion in it that could be started, steered, sped up, or slowed down, as can happen in a composite thing that has parts that can change in relation to one another.
So we can say that the only way for monads to begin or end—to come into existence or go out of existence – is instantaneously, being created or annihilated all at once. Composite things, in contrast with that, can begin or end gradually, through the assembling or scattering of their parts.
So from the foregoing, coming to the two alternate states available to the monad, the fundamental 'it', what states that can be designated 0 and 1… which will be the binary states (the bit)?
Paul Reed in his first post above talks of existent/non-existent although I am not sure he buys the ideas I put forward in my
essay.
Best regards and good luck,
Akinbo
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jun. 26, 2013 @ 15:58 GMT
Dear Akinbo,
Thank you for your kind words and comments.
> However, since you talk of 'influence others', 'network' I presume you imply
> interactions in space. Can the true nature of such be well described without
> first deciphering the nature of space?
Actually, one need not assume that entities influence one another in space. In the essay, I show how the concept of space, and the mathematics of spacetime, arise naturally from such influences.
The result is a relational concept of space as being defined by the interacting entities, much in the spirit of Leibniz (whom you quoted). Space describes the relationships among the interacting entities. Space reflects the fact that not everything happens to you.
George Kirakosyan wrote on Jun. 26, 2013 @ 09:02 GMT
Hi dear Kevin,
I enjoyed read your attractive essay being on the certainly opposite position!
Whatever you are doing it maybe really useful and right from applied point of view. However, you can be agree with me that such approach can not be productively for the cognitively investigation of events. It is the main lack of formal methodology at all, which however looks now as the inevitable reality.
You say ,,Since we cannot know what an electron is, perhaps it is best to simply focus on what an electron does,, Excuse me! - you can not, but maybe somebody will able to say you what itself is presented the electron and how it shows its known attributes/properties? I mean why we must declare something as impossible since we cannot do it? I want simply say you it really is possible, that however demand totally change our imagination about how to need to build the science!
I will put on your essay (8) point because it really written by master!
Hope you can have the patience to check my work (mainly the references) and appreciate it. http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1804
ESSAYBest wishes to you,
George
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jun. 26, 2013 @ 16:18 GMT
Dear George,
Thank you for your kind words and comments---especially given that you have a "certainly opposite position".
It may help if I clarify my statement on what one can know about an electron. There are four logical steps:
1. We can only know about something if it influences us (directly or indirectly).
2. Therefore, if an entity has properties that do not...
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Dear George,
Thank you for your kind words and comments---especially given that you have a "certainly opposite position".
It may help if I clarify my statement on what one can know about an electron. There are four logical steps:
1. We can only know about something if it influences us (directly or indirectly).
2. Therefore, if an entity has properties that do not affect how it influences others, there is no way for anyone to obtain information about those properties.
3. Since one can only obtain information about properties that affect how an entity influences others, those properties should be completely describable in terms of how it influences others. (since this is how you know about them)
4. Therefore any particle properties you can know about should be describable in terms of how a particle influences.
This means that position, speed, mass, energy, momentum, spin (helicity), charge, magnetic moment all should be able to be expressed in terms of how a particle influences.
With this in mind, the essay then illustrates how a simple model of a particle influencing others can indeed result in the physics relating position, time, speed, mass, energy, momentum and helicity. I do not, and have not shown, how one can get spin, charge and magnetic moments. This requires 3+1 dimensions. So there is still something missing here. But I think it is compelling that so much physics can come from something so simple.
Moreover, I think that thinking about them as properties possessed by the particle has led us into some logical conundrums. For example, how can a particle not simultaneously have a precisely defined position and momentum. If position and momentum are *properties*, then this is confusing. However, if they are instead descriptions of what the particle is doing, then this is no longer mysterious. Surprisingly, as I illustrate in my essay, the latter gives you the right physics from scratch!
I hope this answers some questions.
In the meantime, I look forward to reading your essay. I am on a plane tomorrow, so it will be a perfect time.
And thank you again for your high score and kind words!
Cheers
Kevin
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George Kirakosyan wrote on Jun. 27, 2013 @ 08:40 GMT
Dear Kevin,
You say:
1. We can only know about something if it influences us (directly or indirectly).
2. Therefore, if an entity has properties that do not affect how it influences others, there is no way for anyone to obtain information about those properties etc.
You have put such points as finitely. Mostly you are right but there is another way that the science...
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Dear Kevin,
You say:
1. We can only know about something if it influences us (directly or indirectly).
2. Therefore, if an entity has properties that do not affect how it influences others, there is no way for anyone to obtain information about those properties etc.
You have put such points as finitely. Mostly you are right but there is another way that the science does not recognize now as a method! It however works in life more often and successfully! A talk is about of guesswork.
We may to predict at the beginning that we will face with impossibility to make new experiments/measurements when we will reach to base elements of substance. (We will just annihilate it or deeply damage it if we try to influence with that! Here I think no need big explanatory). That we have faced actually!
So what we can do in this situation? We know there exist something actually (for example photon or electron) that we cannot touch or seen, because restriction of influence with those?
I suggest to build the imaginary model of primarily objects, on the base of known natural laws, by condition of correspondence of our model with the all known properties/attributes of real objects. (I mean on the base of model and basic laws must be possible the derivation of its all known properties!)
You can immodestly ask - how we can be convinced that our model is right?
The answer is – no direct way as before, but we just must believe to our model up on the mentioned same criterions, i.e. – 1) it is constructed on the base of well-tested laws and 2) It corresponds to all properties of investigated object without exception. Third and next confirmations of our model will came from successes of its future development ...
Please find time (after of FQXi battle!) and check on my works (references in essay) I very hope that a lot of questions will be solved for you (because you are scientist who are inclined to analytical judgement) If there will be big questions I am ready to discuss and will thankfull for your remarks.
Thank you for good score of my essay!
Best wishes,
George
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 02:04 GMT
Thank you George for your comments.
I imagine that I will get a better idea of your perspective by reading your essay.
Perhaps I will be able to comment better then.
Cheers
Kevin
Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Jun. 28, 2013 @ 00:38 GMT
Dear Kevin,
Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon. Can we produce material just by thinking about it?
I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.
I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main...
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Dear Kevin,
Thank you for presenting your nice essay. I saw the abstract and will post my comments soon. Can we produce material just by thinking about it?
I am requesting you to go through my essay also. And I take this opportunity to say, to come to reality and base your arguments on experimental results.
I failed mainly because I worked against the main stream. The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule.
Hope to get your comments even directly to my mail ID also. . . .
Best
=snp
snp.gupta@gmail.com
http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.b
logspot.com/
Pdf download:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-downloa
d/1607/__details/Gupta_Vak_FQXi_TABLE_REF_Fi.pdf
Part of abstract:
- -Material objects are more fundamental- - is being proposed in this paper; It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material. . . Similarly creation of matter from empty space as required in Steady State theory or in Bigbang is another such problem in the Cosmological counterpart. . . . In this paper we will see about CMB, how it is generated from stars and Galaxies around us. And here we show that NO Microwave background radiation was detected till now after excluding radiation from Stars and Galaxies. . . .
Some complements from FQXi community. . . . .
A
Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on May. 4, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT
……. I do love your last two sentences - that is why I am coming back.
Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 6, 2013 @ 09:24 GMT
. . . . We should use our minds to down to earth realistic thinking. There is no point in wasting our brains in total imagination which are never realities. It is something like showing, mixing of cartoon characters with normal people in movies or people entering into Game-space in virtual reality games or Firing antimatter into a black hole!!!. It is sheer a madness of such concepts going on in many fields like science, mathematics, computer IT etc. . . .
B.
Francis V wrote on May. 11, 2013 @ 02:05 GMT
Well-presented argument about the absence of any explosion for a relic frequency to occur and the detail on collection of temperature data……
C
Robert Bennett wrote on May. 14, 2013 @ 18:26 GMT
"Material objects are more fundamental"..... in other words "IT from Bit" is true.
Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on May. 14, 2013 @ 22:53 GMT
1. It is well known that there is no mental experiment, which produced material.
2. John Wheeler did not produce material from information.
3. Information describes material properties. But a mere description of material properties does not produce material.
4. There are Gods, Wizards, and Magicians, allegedly produced material from nowhere. But will that be a scientific experiment?
D
Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 16, 2013 @ 16:22 GMT
It from bit - where are bit come from?
Author Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Jun. 17, 2013 @ 06:10 GMT
….And your question is like asking, -- which is first? Egg or Hen?— in other words Matter is first or Information is first? Is that so? In reality there is no way that Matter comes from information.
Matter is another form of Energy. Matter cannot be created from nothing. Any type of vacuum cannot produce matter. Matter is another form of energy. Energy is having many forms: Mechanical, Electrical, Heat, Magnetic and so on..
E
Antony Ryan wrote on Jun. 23, 2013 @ 22:08 GMT
…..Either way your abstract argument based empirical evidence is strong given that "a mere description of material properties does not produce material". While of course materials do give information.
I think you deserve a place in the final based on this alone. Concise - simple - but undeniable.
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 02:12 GMT
Dear Satyavarapu
Thank you for your comments.
My impression is that you are taking a stance that material things cannot come from information. I could not agree more. I view information as that which constrains one's beliefs. And in this sense the laws of physics are no more than rules based on making optimal inferences.
Hoang cao Hai wrote on Jun. 28, 2013 @ 04:46 GMT
Send to all of you
THE ADDITIONAL ARTICLES AND A SMALL TEST FOR MUTUAL BENEFIT
To change the atmosphere "abstract" of the competition and to demonstrate for the real preeminent possibility of the Absolute theory as well as to clarify the issues I mentioned in the essay and to avoid duplicate questions after receiving the opinion of you , I will add a reply to you :
1 . THE...
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Send to all of you
THE ADDITIONAL ARTICLES AND A SMALL TEST FOR MUTUAL BENEFIT
To change the atmosphere "abstract" of the competition and to demonstrate for the real preeminent possibility of the Absolute theory as well as to clarify the issues I mentioned in the essay and to avoid duplicate questions after receiving the opinion of you , I will add a reply to you :
1 . THE ADDITIONAL ARTICLES
A. What thing is new and the difference in the absolute theory than other theories?
The first is concept of "Absolute" in my absolute theory is defined as: there is only one - do not have any similar - no two things exactly alike.
The most important difference of this theory is to build on the entirely new basis and different platforms compared to the current theory.
B. Why can claim: all things are absolute - have not of relative ?
It can be affirmed that : can not have the two of status or phenomenon is the same exists in the same location in space and at the same moment of time - so thus: everything must be absolute and can not have any of relative . The relative only is a concept to created by our .
C. Why can confirm that the conclusions of the absolute theory is the most specific and detailed - and is unique?
Conclusion of the absolute theory must always be unique and must be able to identify the most specific and detailed for all issues related to a situation or a phenomenon that any - that is the mandatory rules of this theory.
D. How the applicability of the absolute theory in practice is ?
The applicability of the absolute theory is for everything - there is no limit on the issue and there is no restriction on any field - because: This theory is a method to determine for all matters and of course not reserved for each area.
E. How to prove the claims of Absolute Theory?
To demonstrate - in fact - for the above statement,we will together come to a specific experience, I have a small testing - absolutely realistic - to you with title:
2 . A SMALL TEST FOR MUTUAL BENEFIT :
“Absolute determination to resolve for issues reality”
That is, based on my Absolute theory, I will help you determine by one new way to reasonable settlement and most effective for meet with difficulties of you - when not yet find out to appropriate remedies - for any problems that are actually happening in reality, only need you to clearly notice and specifically about the current status and the phenomena of problems included with requirements and expectations need to be resolved.
I may collect fees - by percentage of benefits that you get - and the commission rate for you, when you promote and recommend to others.
Condition : do not explaining for problems as impractical - no practical benefit - not able to determine in practice.
To avoid affecting the contest you can contact me via email : hoangcao_hai@yahoo.com
Hope will satisfy and bring real benefits for you along with the desire that we will find a common ground to live together in happily.
Hải.Caohoàng
Add another problem, which is:
USE OF THE EQUATIONS AND FORMULA IN ESSAY
There have been some comments to me to questions is: why in my essay did not use the equations and formulas to interpret?
The reason is:
1. The currently equations and formulas are not able to solve all problems for all concerned that they represent.
2. Through research, I found: The application of the equations and formulas when we can not yet be determined the true nature of the problem will create new problems - there is even more complex and difficult to resolve than the original.
I hope so that : you will sympathetic and consideration to avoid misunderstanding my comments.
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Anton Lorenz Vrba wrote on Jun. 28, 2013 @ 19:38 GMT
Hi Kevin,
I like many others before me pick up with your opening sentence ' I know about the universe because it influences me ' I would rather argue that you observe the universe because of it's influence it has. Knowing and understanding is an abstract process of human thought resulting from the observation. This abstractness allows one to build new models and postulate new method, as you have done in your essay, but is it closer to reality? We will never know for certain.
You relate your Equation-5 to formulations of special relativity. May I ask a simple question assuming you did not know about special relativity would you have come up with the formulations and ideas preceding Equation-5? or was it rather knowing the result and finding an alternate way to it.
We also know about the Michelson-Morley experiment, but do we really understand it? I would argue no. Please read my
very short essay I really seek an answer to the paradox.
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Anonymous replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 03:46 GMT
Dear Anton
Thank you for your comments.
I am not so sure that your restatement
'I would rather argue that you observe the universe because of it's influence it has.'
of my opening sentence is so different. Though I do appreciate the fact that you move from one's knowing to observation. However, I would rather stay away from "observation" since it is a term loaded...
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Dear Anton
Thank you for your comments.
I am not so sure that your restatement
'I would rather argue that you observe the universe because of it's influence it has.'
of my opening sentence is so different. Though I do appreciate the fact that you move from one's knowing to observation. However, I would rather stay away from "observation" since it is a term loaded with a wide variety of preconceptions.
With regard to your question on Equation 5 and special relativity. We were studying how one could consistently quantify causally ordered sets. We realized that there were no symmetries in a general poset (unlike in lattices, one which my other research was based). At one point I realized that one could imagine an observer as a chain of events, and I considered how such an observer could quantify the poset. I realized that scalar measures of intervals would be based on quantities like dpdq and it was a flash of inspiration that allowed me to realize that this could be decomposed by considering symmetric and antisymmetric components. Now had I never learned of relativity, I would have still obtained the Minkowski metric this way. But I doubt I would have realized how one could derive the Lorentz transformation, nor would I have understood its deeper significance.
It all comes down to counting discrete events.
You can read more in our paper:
Knuth K.H., Bahreyni N. 2012. The Physics of Events: A Potential Foundation for Emergent Space-Time, arXiv:1209.0881 [math-ph]
and I should mention that Prof. Mauro D'Ariano has had similar ideas that he presents in his essay on qubits. Here is a link to one of his papers:
G. M. D’Ariano, On the “principle of the quantumness”, the quantumness
of relativity, and the computational grand-unification, Quantum Theory: Reconsideration of Foundations, 5 ed. (New York) (A. Y. Khrennikov, ed.),
73 AIP Conference Proceedings, no. 1232, American Institute of Physics, 2010,
arXiv:1001.1088 [quant-ph].
Last, I look forward to seeing your essay on Michelson-Morley
Cheers
Kevin
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Gene H Barbee wrote on Jun. 29, 2013 @ 10:53 GMT
Kevin, I read your essay and liked your discipline of staying within an observation based model. It is interesting that so much familiar physics comes from observed influences alone. The new perspective you mention is the information (bit) that can be inferred about observed physical reality (it) if I understand your essay correctly.
I believe we can and must go further. I share your interest in the foundations of physics and entered the last contest with an essay entitled “A top down approach to fundamental forces”. It shows the informational basis (code or bit) for what an electron is (along with all the other particles) and the informational basis for the influences that are observed. Results of the model give us the cosmology we observe (papers are posted under this years essay “It from Information”). Someday, sometime, someone needs to take the time to interact with me about this work.
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 03:53 GMT
Thank you for your kind comments.
I too think we can go further.
In my model, when a particle is influenced its momentum and energy are affected. This is a basis for force.
In the meantime, I look forward to reading your essay.
Cheers
Kevin
Cristinel Stoica wrote on Jun. 30, 2013 @ 06:08 GMT
Dear Kevin,
I was pleased to read your essay. I am happy to see your networks of influence approach applied here to relativity and quantum mechanics, and how you discuss the "it from bit" question. I particularly liked the conclusion "Rather than thinking about the universe as a computer, perhaps it is more accurate to think about it as a network of influences where the laws of physics derive from both consistent descriptions and optimal information-based inferences made by embedded observers."
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 3, 2013 @ 07:24 GMT
Dear Cristi
Thank you for your kind words.
I very much wanted to talk more about how one derives those quantum mechanical amplitudes and some of the details about this relates to inference. But the essay had to be focused and I thought that focusing on how information leads to this concept of particle "properties" would be most interesting.
Since the essay was finished, I have now come to appreciate that this approach provides some interesting insights into contextuality.
I see that your essay has been posted as well.
fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1627
I look forward to reading it!
Cheers
Kevin
Conrad Dale Johnson wrote on Jun. 30, 2013 @ 16:23 GMT
Hi Kevin -
This is a very fine essay, and I found a lot to agree with in your approach. I appreciate it that you make your assumptions so clear as you go through your argument, acknowledging that other routes might also be possible. And it's impressive how much you can derive from a very simple model of interaction.
I think your basic argument is important - that is, since...
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Hi Kevin -
This is a very fine essay, and I found a lot to agree with in your approach. I appreciate it that you make your assumptions so clear as you go through your argument, acknowledging that other routes might also be possible. And it's impressive how much you can derive from a very simple model of interaction.
I think your basic argument is important - that is, since everything that can be observed consists of "influences", we lose no empirical information if we describe only the structure of influences themselves, without assuming this structure is due to any definite underlying properties of things.
Of course it's vastly more efficient to describe what a thing is in itself, with all its properties, than to describe all the different ways it influences other things, in different contexts. But since at the quantum level, the "thing in itself" is so problematic, it's important that we can in principle do without that notion. But then we're faced with the difficulty of conceptualizing the structure of influences in some way.
Your approach to this is essentially the opposite of the one I take in
my essay. You want to abstract from all the many kinds of influences that constitute the observable world, to see what kind of structure can be derived from basic postulates about "influence" in general. And while some of your assumptions seem questionable, I think you've demonstrated that a lot of basic physics is already implicit in a radically simplified structure of things observing other things.
My approach may be complementary to yours. You say, "we do not need to know how a particle influences others - just that it does - to obtain these relevant physical variables with their expected relations." But in fact, we know a vast amount about how different kinds of things affect each other. In fact, per your basic argument above, that's really all we know, in physics - this structure of influences. But for reasons I explain in my essay, we haven't yet learned how to describe this type of structure effectively. So by default, our theories are still cast in the language of things (particles, fields, spacetime) that posses intrinsic properties.
I argue that the reason it's been so hard to conceptualize the structure of observable information is because things "influence" each other in so many different ways, and because every way things interact only results in observable information in an appropriate context set up by other kinds of interactions. Rather than trying to reduce this complex contextual structure to something simple and abstract, I'm suggesting that its complexity can be explained as the result of an evolutionary process.
Taking a line of thought similar to your basic argument, I note that all observable information is definable in terms of other observable information, whether or not there's any underlying reality of things-in-themselves. But this implies that the structure of "influences" as a whole constitutes a very special kind of self-defining system, which I argue could be subject to a form of natural selection.
Since this idea suggests that our current physics may have evolved from much simpler structures of influence, the sort of construction you undertake in your essay seems quite relevant and interesting.
Thanks - Conrad
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 04:23 GMT
Dear Conrad
Thank you for your kind words and comments.
You present a very interesting perspective and I look forward to reading your essay. I will hold off commenting until then.
Cheers
Kevin
James Lee Hoover wrote on Jul. 3, 2013 @ 18:14 GMT
Kevin,
If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, “It’s good to be the king,” is serious about our subject.
Jim
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 06:53 GMT
Dear Jim
Thank you for letting me know about your essay.
Your title was certainly eye-catching.
I look forward to reading it.
Cheers
Kevin
Wesley Wayne Hansen wrote on Jul. 5, 2013 @ 16:15 GMT
Mr. Knuth,
Boy I'm a huge fan of your work! I've pretty much read all of your papers scattered over the web, from the NASA archives to your homepage. I reference a couple of your papers in my own essay here and linked to your "Quantum theory and probability theory: their relationship and origin in symmetry" paper on Phil Gibb's section of the forum. That, in my opinion, is a very elegant piece of work! I haven't read this essay yet but look forward to it.
With regards,
Wes Hansen
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 06:55 GMT
Dear Wes
Thank you for your generous words.
I was not aware that our paper was discussed on the forum. I am rather new here, so I will have to check it out.
Thank you again!
Kevin
Wesley Wayne Hansen wrote on Jul. 8, 2013 @ 15:00 GMT
You know, I like your "Cox-Knuth Method" largely because it's very straight forward, elegant, revealing, and because it has such a broad utility; I believe its utility is constrained only by the breadth and depth of one's imagination. So naturally I enjoyed your paper but I was a bit let down; I was hoping to gain a little insight into your metaphysics! Your imagination is readily apparent in a...
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You know, I like your "Cox-Knuth Method" largely because it's very straight forward, elegant, revealing, and because it has such a broad utility; I believe its utility is constrained only by the breadth and depth of one's imagination. So naturally I enjoyed your paper but I was a bit let down; I was hoping to gain a little insight into your metaphysics! Your imagination is readily apparent in a number of your papers but your analysis is always conservative and careful, as it should be. I can't help but wonder if you even allow yourself the luxury of a metaphysics.
To me, with this essay contest, the Foundational Questions Institute is asking, certainly an ontological question and perhaps a metaphysical question: does reality EMERGE from a more fundamental underlying information or is information DERIVED from a more fundamental underlying reality? In my opinion, you constrain yourself to the epistemological. You take the approach of analyzing the best perspective for building inferential models, which is to say, for conducting theoretical science and in that endeavor I feel you present a rather formidable argument. But just out of curiosity, what is your ontological view? Do embedded observers create physical laws with the order they IMPOSE on reality or do they investigate increasingly more accurate approximations of an order existent independent of their existence?
And while I'm on the subject, in the first paragraph of your paper you state:
"My entire sensorium is excited by all that surrounds me. These experiences are all I have ever known, and for this reason, they comprise my reality."
What aspect of reality do you think is accessed during, say, a deep meditative state? For example, a state such as that obviously obtained by
Bo Tat Thich Quang Duc (Thich Quang Duc self-immolated during the Vietnam War and as reported by David Halberstam of The New York Times, "As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him."). Or what aspect of reality do you think is accessed when one is isolated in a sensory deprivation chamber. Do you think this aspect of reality transcends the embedded observer or is it constrained to the observer's cognitive apparatus? If you think this aspect of reality transcends the embedded observer, is it susceptible to scientific analysis or is it part of the "not completely knowable underlying reality?" And if you think it is constrained to the observer's cognitive apparatus where, exactly, are the boundaries? Considerable
scientific studies have demonstrated that embedded observers are capable of responding to stimuli prior to the manifestation of said stimuli, it would seem, in the "light-cone," suggesting observers are somehow capable of responding to what you call "influences"
sometimes seconds before they happen; is it possible that said observer's cognitive apparatus extends to include the entirety of the environment he/she is embedded in – thou art that, say? This is not to undermine your poset picture or the associated Susan Sontag quote but, rather, to suggest that perhaps there exists a relative perspective and an absolute perspective both of which are somehow accessible to the embedded observer; Buddhists refer to this as the theory of two truths. Your thoughts, if any?
Best regards,
Wes Hansen
• Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis - abstract: This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity, the direction of pre-stimulus physiological activity reflects the direction of post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in an unexplained anticipatory effect. The reports we examined used one of two paradigms: (1) randomly ordered presentations of arousing vs. neutral stimuli, or (2) guessing tasks with feedback (correct vs. incorrect). Dependent variables included: electrodermal activity, heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation, electroencephalographic activity, and blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity. To avoid including data hand-picked from multiple different analyses, no post hoc experiments were considered. The results reveal a significant overall effect with a small effect size [fixed effect: overall ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15-0.27, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 × 10-12; random effects: overall (weighted) ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.13-0.29, z = 5.3, p < 5.7 × 10-8]. Higher quality experiments produced a quantitatively larger effect size and a greater level of significance than lower quality studies. The number of contrary unpublished reports that would be necessary to reduce the level of significance to chance (p > 0.05) was conservatively calculated to be 87 reports. We explore alternative explanations and examine the potential linkage between this unexplained anticipatory activity and other results demonstrating meaningful pre-stimulus activity preceding behaviorally relevant events. We conclude that to further examine this currently unexplained anticipatory activity, multiple replications arising from different laboratories using the same methods are necessary. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.
• Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition, Part 2A: A System-Wide Process? – abstract: Objectives: This study aims to contribute to a scientific understanding of intuition, a process by which information normally outside the range of conscious awareness is perceived by the body's psychophysiological systems. The first objective, presented in two empirical reports (Part 1 and Part 2), was to replicate and extend the results of previous experiments demonstrating that the body can respond to an emotionally arousing stimulus seconds before it is actually experienced. The second objective, to be presented in a forthcoming publication (Part 3), is to develop a theory that explains how the body receives and processes information involved in intuitive perception. Design: The study used a counterbalanced crossover design, in which 30 calm and 15 emotionally arousing pictures were presented to 26 participants under two experimental conditions: a baseline condition of "normal" psychophysiologic function and a condition of physiological coherence. Primary measures included: skin conductance; the electroencephalogram (EEG), from which cortical event-related potentials (ERP) and heartbeatevoked potentials (HBEP) were derived; and the electrocardiogram (ECG), from which cardiac decelerations/ accelerations were derived. These measures were used to investigate where and when in the brain and body intuitive information is processed. Results: The main findings presented here are: (1) surprisingly, both the heart and brain appear to receive and respond to intuitive information; (2) even more surprisingly, there is compelling evidence that the heart appears to receive intuitive information before the brain; (3) there were significant differences in prestimulus ERPs for calm versus emotional stimuli; (4) the frontal cortex, temporal, occipital, and parietal areas appear to be involved in the processing of prestimulus information; (5) there were significant differences in prestimulus calm/emotional HBEPs, primarily in the coherent mode; (6) there were significant gender differences in the processing of prestimulus information. Especially noteworthy is the apparent interaction between the HBEPs and ERPs in the females, which suggests that the heart modulates the ERP and that females are more attuned to intuitive information from the heart. Conclusions: Overall, our data suggest that the heart and brain, together, are involved in receiving, processing, and decoding intuitive information. On the basis of these results and those of other research, it would thus appear that intuitive perception is a system-wide process in which both the heart and brain (and possibly other bodily systems) play a critical role. To account for the study's results, Part 3 will develop a theory based on holographic principles explaining how intuitive perception accesses a field of energy into which information about "future" events is spectrally enfolded.
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 07:44 GMT
Dear Wes
You wrote:
I am sincerely sorry to disappoint you at this level.
While I believe the work summarized in my essay to be well-founded, the technical details are spread over at least four papers, which results in a viewpoint that I thought to be sufficiently radical to risk being simply unbelievable. Adding a layer of metaphysical ponderings to that would risk...
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Dear Wes
You wrote:
I am sincerely sorry to disappoint you at this level.
While I believe the work summarized in my essay to be well-founded, the technical details are spread over at least four papers, which results in a viewpoint that I thought to be sufficiently radical to risk being simply unbelievable. Adding a layer of metaphysical ponderings to that would risk tainting the practical message since the physics itself rests on just a few very simple foundational ideas. I find this way of thinking about influence to be compelling and if given a choice, I would choose this as my metaphysics---as simple as it is.
However, the metaphysics that follows as corollary or inference from this foundation is perhaps more exciting.
As I state in the essay, it is surprising that these physical laws can arise from the fact that particles influence one another rather than the way in which they do so. That something this simple can give you a concept of space, time, mass, energy, momentum, and even helicity, as well as the Feynman rules for computing amplitudes and probabilities in QM is simultaneously shocking and satisfying.
This cannot be the end of the story. If these ideas have any merit, then both charge and spin must somehow come out of this picture. Spin is a three-dimensional analog of helicity, and charge is required by CPT invariance (when it holds). It could provide a picture explaining why E&M is inherently geometrical.
While I did not have ample room to carefully discuss complementarity, one can see pretty quickly by looking at Dirac that particles cannot simultaneously be assigned a position and momentum. Confusion about this point is more readily had when focusing on Schrodinger, which is an approximation. This suggests that the conceptual difficulties that we have had with complementarity are due to this misconception that particles "possess" these attributes as part of what they are. In this picture we "assign" them properties as descriptions of what they happen to be doing.
I did not discuss quantum contextuality in this essay. But again, contextuality can arise from the fact that a particle does not change what it is when we interact with it. Instead, the particle either changes what it does when we interact with it, or more interestingly our interactions with it may probe different aspects of its behavior. I have not even begun to flesh these thoughts out, but on the surface I think that this is perhaps a reasonable way to approach the topic of contextuality.
And now for the more metaphysical ideas:
It would be good to know which laws and to what degree such laws are contingent or derivable. Could it be that they are *all* derivable? That is, God had no choice in the construction of the universe? For example, it may be impossible for there to be other universes with different fine structure constants. The laws of physics would have *had* to have been these laws!
Even more interesting is the fact that what I have shown here arises from particles that simply influence one another where the details of such influence do not matter. If one *could* derive *all the laws of physics* this way, then it would mean that particles could actually be almost anything that influences according to these simple rules. That is, the universe could be a simulation or a cellular automaton of sorts. It could be a high school student's science fair project where he or she has simulated 10^80 or so particles. If the laws were derivable this way, there would be no way for us to ever know if this was a simulation since there would be no experiment one could do to tell the difference. But even more interesting, it would not matter for it would be just as real. For what is an electron other than *something* that influences others?
Cheers
Kevin
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 07:46 GMT
Hello Again Wes,
I tried quoting you, but I used double \lt and \gt symbols, which then took my internal text as a comment.
Here is what I meant to quote above:
"So naturally I enjoyed your paper but I was a bit let down; I was hoping to gain a little insight into your metaphysics! Your imagination is readily apparent in a number of your papers but your analysis is always conservative and careful, as it should be. I can't help but wonder if you even allow yourself the luxury of a metaphysics."
Thanks
Kevin
Wesley Wayne Hansen replied on Jul. 11, 2013 @ 21:27 GMT
Kevin,
Thank you kindly for taking the time to flesh out some of your ideas. I certainly appreciate it and look forward to your future work! As you say, "this cannot be the end of the story."
Best regards,
Wes Hansen
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Member Ian Durham wrote on Jul. 9, 2013 @ 16:21 GMT
Kevin,
Just read your essay. It clarified a number of aspects of your poset approach in my mind. You should definitely read the Coecke & Martin paper I showed you last week. I think there's possibly a relation here to Rovelli's relational approach (did we discuss this?). Anyway, I love your point about the fact that knowledge about any property that does not affect how a particle exerts its influence is inaccessible to us. This is essentially related to distinguishability, though I think there are some issues to be worked out regarding bosons as of yet (see van Fraassen's work on identical particles and exchange symmetry, for example).
A couple of other quick notes: I have always suspected, despite the fact that the two signatures are mathematically equivalent, that the particle physics metric signature was more physically correct than the signature used in GR. Also, I have long suspected that there is more to spin than meets the eye, but I'll e-mail you about that separately.
Cheers,
Ian
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:40 GMT
Hi Ian
Thanks for your comments!
Thank you also for showing me the paper by Coecke & Martin. I need to get myself a copy.
I too like that the particle physics signature comes out as being the correct one. The mass-energy relationship is closely related to the Minkowski metric. But one thing that confuses me is why does the mass-energy relationship assumed to hold in curved spacetime when the Minkowski metric has to be modified? There is something funny going on here.
Last, spin and space go hand-in-hand.
I would like to understand this better myself, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Cheers
Kevin
Member Ken Wharton wrote on Jul. 13, 2013 @ 12:28 GMT
Hi Kevin,
Interesting stuff! But as promising as this looks for relativity, I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of where you've taken this on the quantum side of things. Of course, I've seen your related talk on that topic, and I know you were space-limited, but for me that's where the question of "what does a particle do?" is far more fascinating and problematic.
Are you really breaking the Newton's-third-law-style symmetry between the "act of influence" and the "response to influence"? Sure, I see why you need a partial order, but is there any deep reason why you can't have such an order and still treat both sides of influence in the same way?
Finally, I suppose I'll take you to task for being overly even-handed on the main question. Your essay clearly supports the "Bit from It" perspective, but then at the very end you turn around and claim that we can use our Bits to build another "It*" (starred here to distinguish It* from the original It.). But in what sense is It* reality at all? Isn't It* merely our best-guess reconstruction based on incomplete knowledge, which means It*'s not really reality? So why is it fair to call It* "it"? Is there any particular reason why you aren't you fully in the "Bit from It" camp?
Cheers!
Ken
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 13, 2013 @ 15:13 GMT
Hi Ken
> I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of where you've taken this on the quantum side of things.
There are so many things to talk about and so few essay contests! ;)
> Are you really breaking the Newton's-third-law-style symmetry between the "act of influence" and the "response to influence"? Sure, I see why you need a partial order, but is there any...
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Hi Ken
> I would have liked to see a bit more discussion of where you've taken this on the quantum side of things.
There are so many things to talk about and so few essay contests! ;)
> Are you really breaking the Newton's-third-law-style symmetry between the "act of influence" and the "response to influence"? Sure, I see why you need a partial order, but is there any deep reason why you can't have such an order and still treat both sides of influence in the same way?
That is great question!
Its not quite clear that the "influence" that I discuss constitutes a force.
I think it does, since when a particle is influenced, this affects the particles rate at which it influences others. So its energy and momentum change. Up until now I have focused on a free particle that influences others, but is not itself influenced. We have only just begun investigating what affect influence has on the particle and the inferences one makes about particles. If this truly is a viable fundamental perspective, then Newton's Laws should emerge along with a great deal more of physics.
> Finally, I suppose I'll take you to task for being overly even-handed on the main question. Your essay clearly supports the "Bit from It" perspective, but then at the very end you turn around and claim that we can use our Bits to build another "It*" (starred here to distinguish It* from the original It.). But in what sense is It* reality at all? Isn't It* merely our best-guess reconstruction based on incomplete knowledge, which means It*'s not really reality? So why is it fair to call It* "it"? Is there any particular reason why you aren't you fully in the "Bit from It" camp?
Fair enough. This is my first essay, and I felt that the concepts I was introducing were probably sufficiently radical.
I am right square in the "Bit from It" camp.
However, the "It" in this picture is not the usual that you think of when you think of the foundations of physics. Here there is only influence---that's it. From information about such influences, we construct a picture of reality, which I called It*. This is the physics we are familiar with: space, time, mass, energy, momentum, etc. But the "It*" is not real. The reality is the "It", which is simply not completely knowable (as I point out since the observers cannot possibly reconstruct the particles behavior).
I hope that this helps clear some things up.
If not, please feel free to "take me to task" again!
Cheers
Kevin
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ioannis hadjidakis wrote on Jul. 15, 2013 @ 09:56 GMT
Dear Kevin,
my congratulations for your excellent essay. Please have a look at http://vixra.org/abs/1306.0226 where, I think you will find the first steps in developing of a new conception of Nature that leads to your every conclusion following a different (but very similar) route.
" Any existent appears in dual form: Real (IT) - What it is, and Virtual (BIT) - How it works.IT is caused by "past" and causes "future" while BIT is caused by "future" and causes "past" ("past" and "future" are in accordance to real world). Hence, future and past are included in existent' s present."
Finally I think you are right that spacetime is only our way to conceive thinks, a kind of arbitrary dimensions we give in order to interpret and express interactions.
My best wishes
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:11 GMT
Dear Ioannis
Thank you for your kind comments.
I will be sure to take a look at your website and paper.
Cheers
Kevin
Mikalai Birukou wrote on Jul. 16, 2013 @ 20:08 GMT
Hi, Kevin,
Ever since I saw Sorkin's presentation with his take of how partially ordered sets may lead to emergent spacetime, ever since 2002, it haunted me what should those point events be, so that we get the quantum side of physics. I guess, this is what Ken Wharton asked you about.
Last year Giovanni Amelino-Camelia wrote essay, in which he stated an obvious fact that we have...
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Hi, Kevin,
Ever since I saw Sorkin's presentation with his take of how partially ordered sets may lead to emergent spacetime, ever since 2002, it haunted me what should those point events be, so that we get the quantum side of physics. I guess, this is what Ken Wharton asked you about.
Last year Giovanni Amelino-Camelia wrote essay, in which he stated an obvious fact that we have never (highlight never) detected an empty point of space(time). All we have ever detected are particle events, which are collected in experiments like LHC into statistics.
If we take this seriously, then particle events (now vertices in Feynman diagrams) are elements of the set. Partial temporal order is dictated by particle creation happening before its annihilation. Spacial order, specifically its 3D nature, might be related to spin relations (SU2 connection with O3 groups), and/or there may be something which you mentioned in Q&A part of your talk at Perimeter. Types of vertices, places where incoming particles are annihilated and outgoing ones are created, as well as types of fundamental particles are given by Standard Model. So, there are already lots of known-to-work on experiment elements here, i.e. the is a starting ground to recreate a spacetime, which should approximate to Minkowski thing. Let's not forget that with higgs all fundamental particles are simpler, i.e. none has mass.
When there is an event (in QFT), involving an electron, one cannot say for certain in how many self-energy loops were in its past. This incompletness of information at a fundamental level (QFTs) nicely implies relational nature of information at QM level, expressed in Rovelli's current essay.
I put the physical part of above arrangement in
http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1597 with clear mention of where poset-like math should be applied. By the way, when we say (as is done in QFT class) that electrons are effective particles, and are maid up of many events involving fundamental particles of Standard Model, then, composition of effective particles makes them indistinguishable. This is shorter, than Philip Goyal's arguments in his recent piece.
Please, let me know, what you think about this.
Cheers,
Mikalai.
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:33 GMT
Dear Mikalai
Thank you for your comments and questions.
When I began this work, I simply considered a casually ordered set of events. It wasn't clear to me what an event was either---in Sorkin's approach or even Einstein's for that matter. This is one thing I have tried to clear up.
The way I think about it at present is that entities can influence one another. The act...
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Dear Mikalai
Thank you for your comments and questions.
When I began this work, I simply considered a casually ordered set of events. It wasn't clear to me what an event was either---in Sorkin's approach or even Einstein's for that matter. This is one thing I have tried to clear up.
The way I think about it at present is that entities can influence one another. The act of influencing and the act of being influenced are two events that can be ordered by virtue of the fact that there is a difference between influencing and being influenced. What is this influence? I don't know, and I am not sure one could know. Its like asking what an electron is.
What I do think is that different patterns of influence is what gives rise to forces (perhaps all the different forces?). Here is why I think this. As I explain in the essay, the energy and momentum of a particle reflect the rates at which the particle influences others. Now if during this process, the particle is itself influenced by another, this necessarily changes the rates, which changes its energy and momentum. Hence this influence has the effect of a force. Its a very different model that has the aim of actually elucidating the nature of these fundamental properties that we have become so familiar with that we feel we understand them.
I had not read Giovanni Amelino-Camelia's essay. But he is right, no empty point in space has ever been observed. This idea of space as reflecting relationships among entities is an old idea that goes back to the muslim theory of Kalam and later Al-Ghazali. This was actually the idea that was held by scientists, like Leibniz, on the continent during the time of Newton. The problem is that no one really knew how to do anything with a theory of space that is defined by the entities themselves. This is similar in spirit to the idea proposed by Wheeler and Feynman when they considered direct particle-particle interactions. Since the particles set up the fields, why do you really need the fields. Their program was abandoned because they needed interactions that went backward in time.
I have not given particle creation and annihilation much thought in this context. I have some ideas on how to arrive at something like field theory, but these are half-baked at present. As for self-energy loops, I am not sure what these would look like in this context either, or even if they are necessary.
I will check out your forum entry.
Thanks again!
Kevin
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Paul Borrill replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 02:14 GMT
Kevin - do you have a reference for the Feynman / Wheeler program which "was abandoned because they needed interactions that went backward in time"?
Are you talking about this paper:
John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Phillips Feynman, “Interaction with the absorber as the mechanism of radi- ation”, Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 17, no. 2-3, pp. 157–181, Apr. 1945
or some other paper? I'm very interested in this reference.
Kind regards, Paul
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 25, 2013 @ 02:49 GMT
Hi Paul
You have one of them!
These are the two papers:
Wheeler, J. A.; Feynman, R. P. (1945). "Interaction with the Absorber as the Mechanism of Radiation". Reviews of Modern Physics 17 (2–3): 157–161.
Wheeler, J. A.; Feynman, R. P. (1949). "Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action". Reviews of Modern Physics 21 (3): 425–433.
This line of investigation was abandoned in favor of QED.
But I still find it very interesting.
Cheers
Kevin
Vladimir F. Tamari wrote on Jul. 17, 2013 @ 01:33 GMT
Dear Kevin
I read your essay with interest. You start with the electron as you might well do since in our computers it is the most familiar example of a particle mediating Its and Bits. Beyond that the discussion gets rather too technical to assimilate completely in one reading, but I think I understood your intention to describe causality in a network. This is excellent, as it shows you have an image of the workings of the Universe at fundamental scale that are linear, local and causal.
Here and there your vision wavers, threatened by the complexities and uncertainties of space-time and of probability. Have no fear, the Universe may well be just a simple network of influences of an ordered lattice of energy, and both spacetime and probability are emergent physicist-invented mathematial concepts with no real physical connection to what is happening at the smallest scales.
This is what I have tried to present in my 2005
Beautiful Universe Theory also found
here and defended in my last year's fqxi essay "Fix Physics!". Regretfully my work is qualitative and incomplete and lacks the professional touch with which you have presented your vision of reality.
With best wishes for your success
Vladimir
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:51 GMT
Dear Vladimir
Thank you for your kind words and comments.
The essay really isn't just about electrons. The influence concept gives rise to Fermions in general, which are the particles that make up all of matter.
I would like to know where you think my essay wavers. There are many missing details that one can fill in by looking at the referenced papers, or by going here:
http://knuthlab.rit.albany.edu/index.php/Program/Founda
tionsBut it is not a lattice of energy. I attempt to show in the essay that energy is merely one of several descriptions of what a particle is doing. I do believe that spacetime is an emergent description of relationships among entities. Probability is simply a means by which one consistently ranks logical statements.
BTW I enjoyed your essay.
Thank you again!
Kevin
adel sadeq wrote on Jul. 21, 2013 @ 04:59 GMT
Hi Kevin,
The main reason for joining this contest was not to win, but to see if I can get any professional physicist with interest in foundational issues, to evaluate my idea. I appreciate any criticism no matter how harsh, although I do prefer constructive ones. I have rated you fairly high ( I follow up on your work regularly in FQXI), but as I said I don’t care for rating mine, but that is your prerogative. I will also ask you some basic questions about your theory a bit later.
Many thanks
Adel
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:52 GMT
Dear Adel
I will try to get a chance to read your essay.
Thanks
Kevin
Sreenath B N wrote on Jul. 21, 2013 @ 08:32 GMT
Dear Kevin,
I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Meanwhile, please, go through my essay and post your comments.
Regards and good luck in the contest,
Sreenath BN.
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:54 GMT
Dear Sreenath
I will try to get to your essay soon...
Good luck to you as well!
Cheers
Kevin
Akinbo Ojo wrote on Jul. 22, 2013 @ 13:11 GMT
Hello Kevin,
Just a few encouraging words. Your essay is good but appeared a bit technical for me to follow. Nevertheless, someone referred me to Feynman checkerboard model and I feel yours is very similar and a bit clearer. I don't know whether to call
mine a checkerboard model, it appears a bit too simple or what do you think?
Then, if I may ask since Δx appears in your essay, do you envisage a minimum possible value? Or the value has no lower limit?
Lastly, since your essay is information-based and you are a specialist in this area, would you consider existence/non-existence as a binary choice, i.e. information?
Regards,
Akinbo
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 01:58 GMT
Dear Akinbo
Thank you for your kind words, I hope to get to your essay soon...
The dx that appears is discrete and has a minimum value.
Regarding existence/non-existence, there are two mutually exclusive exhaustive choices, so binary would be a good classification. As for "i.e. information", I am not sure what you are asking. I view information as that which constrains my beliefs.
Cheers
Kevin
Paul Borrill wrote on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 02:21 GMT
Kevin - excellent paper. I'm delighted to see someone develop the concept of an embedded observer.
I'm not sure how to think about the poset model. The Hasse diagram seems to have the same problem as Feynman diagrams (time is up). Makes it difficult to represent reversible quantum flow (unless you fold the paper ;-)
This is related to the point you make in the Mass, Energy and Momentum section - "This makes time an excellent parameter for indexing observations" - It seems to me that this is true only for irreversible, monotonically increasing time.
Although I am intrigued by your reference to Feynman's factor of i during helicity traversals. [I don't have a copy of Feynman & Hibbs]
Kind regards, Paul
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 25, 2013 @ 01:29 GMT
Dear Paul
Thank you for your kind words and comments.
The poset model is very nice in the sense that posets have a duality where one can simply flip the ordering relation (it is arbitrary after all), and this is what results in time-reversal symmetry. Literally just flip the paper upside down!
Time is simply an index. You can count backwards if you wish and you will get the same laws of physics.
Feynman and Hibbs doesn't have much to say as its literally left as a homework exercise. There have been a host of papers on the Feynman checkerboard model showing how one can derive the Dirac equation. However, in those papers one starts by assuming the factor of i in amplitude during the helicity reversals. In my paper on Fermions, (
http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2332) I show how you can derive it, which is quite satisfying.
Thank you again for your comments!
Kevin
Than Tin wrote on Jul. 24, 2013 @ 22:36 GMT
Dr. Knuth
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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Dr. Knuth
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 you have touched some corners of it.
With regards,
Than Tin
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 25, 2013 @ 01:31 GMT
Dear Than
Thank you for your comments!
I especially liked the quotes from Feynman.
I am aiming for simplicity.
How simple can the description be and yet result in the observed physics.
I believe it is far simpler than we have been able to imagine.
Thank you again!
Kevin
Mikalai Birukou wrote on Jul. 25, 2013 @ 17:18 GMT
Dear Kevin,
In continuation to above comment on having fundamental particle events as points (dated Jul. 16, 2013 @ 20:08 GMT).
Influence, or, analogously, force in a framework of Newtonian mechanics, is a useful concept for an abstract level of bigger systems that are maid of some smaller things. And probably, like Newtonian force, which already has a problem with simultaneity in...
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Dear Kevin,
In continuation to above comment on having fundamental particle events as points (dated Jul. 16, 2013 @ 20:08 GMT).
Influence, or, analogously, force in a framework of Newtonian mechanics, is a useful concept for an abstract level of bigger systems that are maid of some smaller things. And probably, like Newtonian force, which already has a problem with simultaneity in Special Relativity, an abstract influence concept will leak in the similar fashion, either at SR or at quantum level, or in the intersection of the two.
All of known interactions (influences), except gravity, at a fundamental level are described by QFTs of Standard Model, which do not have a concept of force between particles. The force is an emergent thing on a sea of elementary particle events. Quoting Anderson, "more is different". And these QFTs of Standard Model, the concepts used in them, produce the best fit to experimental data, besides having done spectacular predictions, one which has been confirmed just recently. So, it might be humble to embrace QFT concepts, following Newton's own example: "I was able to see further only by standing on the shoulders of giants".
I agree that, for example, producing electromagnetic force out of particle events in Quantum Electrodynamics (QFT) sounds highly non-intuitive for our gut-feeling, that have evolved in classical mechanical world. My own experience, when studying QFTs, was having conversations with fellow students, where we had to say that a notion of "force", or "how does particle knows where to go" are not present at QFT level. These notions arise as interpretation of integral quantities, but are not present at QFT level. This is how mass arises, all of it, out of massless fundamental (naked) particles.
QFTs were introduced historically at intersection of Special Relativity and Classical Quantum Theory, as notion of one "long-lived" particle breaks already at SR level. And even today, when we have a problem with QM picture, we fall back to QFT description. This shows that QFT does contain concepts that serve as low-level description better, than anything else we have been using these last couple of centuries. I'll also quote your words that "This line of investigation {Feynman/Wheeler program with E&M interactions} was abandoned in favor of QED.", noting that QED is currently used as a textbook example of a good QFT.
Cheers,
Mikalai
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Jul. 25, 2013 @ 20:54 GMT
Dear Mikalai
Thank you for your comments.
The direct particle-particle interactions approach taken by Feynman and Wheeler was different in that they imagined these influences to be carrying the electromagnetic force. They also assume that this is going on in a pre-existing independent space-time background. There were some very interesting successful features in this model. But it...
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Dear Mikalai
Thank you for your comments.
The direct particle-particle interactions approach taken by Feynman and Wheeler was different in that they imagined these influences to be carrying the electromagnetic force. They also assume that this is going on in a pre-existing independent space-time background. There were some very interesting successful features in this model. But it was abandoned in part because they required their interactions to travel backward in time.
The approach taken here is different, and rather than pointing at the essay, it would be better to discuss things at the level of detail in the referenced papers. The influences give rise to a causal set, which when described by an embedded observer results in an emergent concept of spacetime. There are no issues with influences and simultaneity. SR is built from the influences. This is worked out in detail in the following paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.0881The influences are not necessarily forces. What I discuss in this paper is that describing the ways in which a particle influences others gives rise to several important well-known particle properties: position, speed, energy, momentum, mass and even helicity. Its a simple model that has the potential to explain what these relevant parameters actually are. We throw around these words, especially "energy" and "conservation of energy" as if we know what we are talking about. But no one knows what energy or mass are, nor force nor space and time for that matter. We can discuss their interrelationships until we are blue in the face, but in the end, we still have no idea what we are talking about. This is what I am aiming to elucidate.
I have found a favorite quote to be important to remember:
"Familiarity breeds the illusion of understanding"
Now these influences may be related to forces. Perhaps forces emerge from this picture. That would be nice, but at this point it is merely hopeful. Consider the free particle in the essay. Its energy and momentum describe the rates at which the particle influences others. However, if someone were to influence this particle, those rates would change. An influence on a particle has the potential to change its energy and momentum. It sure smells like emergent force.
From this picture, one can derive the Dirac equation as a description of the free electron:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.2332 That is nice, but its not the end of the story. Its a 1+1 dimensional picture. Charge does not appear in 1+1 dimensions, but theory had better support it or there is a problem. But that is why its called research.
As you note, QED is a lovely theory. And any theory that gives you anything that makes notably different predictions than QED is worse than suspect---its wrong. However, as Than Tin noted earlier in the comments, Feynman (along with many of us) was struck at how the same physics could often be arrived at from a variety of perspectives. Than Tin notes the Schrodinger and Heisenburg pictures of QM as an example. Perhaps this is related to what the famous mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota refers to as the "robustness of the theory" when he discusses mistakes in his essay "Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught".
But my essay is not about deriving QED and quantum gravity and so on. It is about information that observers can possess about the universe and the consistent descriptions and inferences that result. I demonstrate that a simple model of influence has the potential to provide a framework for describing particle (electrons) properties and behavior. In doing so, the role of information is elucidated. Rather than discussing BIT from IT from a philosophical perspective, I decided to demonstrate how BIT and IT could be related by example. I can only hope that I have succeeded to some degree.
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James Lee Hoover wrote on Jul. 25, 2013 @ 23:24 GMT
Kevin,
Simple models can help us to understand what we know and what we don't know about the macro and micro world. I firmly believe that we will discover the paucity of our knowledge of physics when extraterrestrial visitors are discovered -- as surely they will be.
I think your focus on what the electron does than what it is will in itself be a reminder of utilizing what we know rather than what we think we know. I am a non-physicist but no less intrigued by cosmology and physics late in life. I would like to see your views on "It's Great to be the King."
"Rather than thinking about the universe as a computer, perhaps it is more accurate to think about it as a network of influences where the laws of physics
derive from both consistent descriptions and optimal information-based inferences made by embedded observers."
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:08 GMT
Thank you for your comments James!
While I would be very interested in seeing what another independently-developed physics might look like, I don't think that such comparisons are necessary to highlight our paucity of knowledge of physics.
I am glad that you appreciate that I focus on what we know.
I think that this is a significant strength of this approach.
Cheers
Kevin
Yuri Danoyan wrote on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 04:34 GMT
Dear Kevin
"The average human being is a naive realist: i.e., like the animals, he accepts his sense impressions as direct information of reality and he is convinced that all human beings share this information. He is not aware that no way exist of establishing whether one individual impression (e.g. ,of a green tree) and that of another (of this tree) is the same and that even the word “same” has no meaning here.”
Max Born My life & my views p.53
Regards
Yuri
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:11 GMT
Thank you Yuri for pointing me to this interesting quote from Max Born.
However, I am not sure how you envision this to be related to my essay.
I would be interested in having further comment from you on this.
Thanks
Kevin
eAmazigh M. HANNOU wrote on Jul. 28, 2013 @ 14:53 GMT
Dear Kevin,
Reality is made both wave and particle.
Why not « Quantum and Wave Mechanics » ?
Accordingly to eDuality, see my essay which is less scholarly.
I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.
Respectfully, and good luck.
Please visit
My essay.
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:13 GMT
Thank you for your comments Amazigh
I left a more detailed reply to your later comments.
Cheers
Kevin
John Brodix Merryman wrote on Jul. 31, 2013 @ 03:04 GMT
Kevin,
This is a very fascinating approach that looks at what we know, rather than what we think. If I may, I would like to offer up the premise of my last year's entry and suggest ways it might bring together various of the points you raise; The dynamic reality we all inhabit, the vectors of influences it is usefully reduced to and the issue of the reality of time and space.
We...
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Kevin,
This is a very fascinating approach that looks at what we know, rather than what we think. If I may, I would like to offer up the premise of my last year's
entry and suggest ways it might bring together various of the points you raise; The dynamic reality we all inhabit, the vectors of influences it is usefully reduced to and the issue of the reality of time and space.
We experience reality from the perspective of a theoretical point and so we model time as a sequence of events and space as a three dimensional coordinate system.
Given the temporal sequence is foundational to humanity, as the basis of narrative and linear logic, it is natural to assume it is foundational and physics incorporates this as measures of duration. The reality though is that it is the changing configuration of what is, that turns future potential into past circumstance. For example, the earth is not traveling some vector from yesterday to tomorrow, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.
This makes time an effect of action, similar to temperature. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. The faster clock doesn't travel into the future quicker, but it (thermodynamically) ages/burns quicker, so it recedes into the past more rapidly.
Spacetime is correlating measures of duration and distance, but duration doesn't transcend the present. It is simply what is happening between events, such as the wave cycling between peaks, or the earth rotating between sunrises. So there is no "fabric of spacetime," any more then there are giant cosmic gear wheels.
This leaves space without any physical properties to allow it to be bend/warped, or limited/bound, etc. Which does give it two attributes; Absolute and infinite. Absolute because it is inert, which we can measure as the cause of centrifugal force. Infinite because you can't limit nothing.
Now consider those two foundational human features arising from time; narrative and linear logic. Naturally we would consider them one and the same, so that temporal sequence is cause and effect, but that is not so. Yesterday doesn't cause today, anymore than one rung on a ladder causes the next. Exchange of energy is cause. As you develop in your theory of influences.
Now, as you well know, this is not a particularly linear process. While the laws of physics might determine the outcome of any situation, the cone of input is fundamentally incomplete prior to the occurrence of any event. Even if information could travel faster then light, then so would input and the problem persists. At best, time is a tapestry of interlocking threads, not any singular history and that gets to your description of there being no universal "it."
In fact, as I develop in this years
entry, information defines energy and energy manifests information, so since energy is conserved, old information has to be erased, in order to create new information, thus giving rise to the "arrow of time." Therefore eventually the past becomes as unknowable as the future, so we cannot reconstruct any real history, thus making the concept of determinism even more problematic. Considering past and future do not physically/ontologically exist, even the concept of determinism(set past and future) is effectively epistemic.
I think this inherent subjectively of reality is where your essay is going, at least reading it from my particular set of references/influences!
Regards,
John Merryman
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John Brodix Merryman replied on Jul. 31, 2013 @ 03:10 GMT
Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:33 GMT
Thank you so much for your kind words and interesting post.
I am keen to read your essays and will do so.
The elimination of spacetime as a physical structure, while difficult conceptually, removes a good number of difficulties.
Nikolai Tesla wrote:
"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties."
The moment space itself has properties, one can ask why those properties and not others? along with a host of other questions.
The idea of space as representing relationships between objects is quite old, and was held as the main belief on the continent during Leibniz's time. The problem is: what does one do with that? Newton's absolute space was greatly simplifying, which is what was needed at the time.
And there is another problem with space-time.
If space reflects the ability to distinguish, and time represents change, then when one considers space-time where time and space are related to one another, one must ask "what is changing that allows one to distinguish?" As far as I am aware, this has not been explained, and I see it as a big conceptual problem.
I could go on, but it would be better for me to read your essay first.
Cheers
Kevin
Branko L Zivlak wrote on Jul. 31, 2013 @ 12:16 GMT
Dear Physician,
Mass ratio of neutron/proton is fundamental in physics.
Maybe you do not have time to read essay of unknown authors. I encourage you, therefore, allow you to comment on the very essence of following formula:
Where mathematical constant are:
Physical constants:
An important physicist said it was a coincidence, or perhaps just a curiosity. Perhaps you feel the same. My opinion is opposite. I think that in terms of, such a significant relationship physicist should have an attitude.
I find your article really interesting, and I rated you fairly.
Greetings Branko
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:41 GMT
Dear Branko
Thank you for your kind words about my essay and for leaving a post.
It is always interesting when a formula is found that makes predictions. However, I think that physicists have become too enamored of mathematics. The great paradigm shifts in physics have been the result of new ideas, concepts or perspectives. Mathematics is the necessary language, and as such, mathematics can inspire ideas. Here, I would be more interested in seeing what ideas your equations inspire.
Thanks again
Kevin
Peter Jackson wrote on Jul. 31, 2013 @ 17:48 GMT
Kevin,
Quite brilliant essay. What a refreshing change to read about the very important matter of real entities and interactions! I commend your postulates and derivations.
I agree entirely; "mass is responsible for emergent spacetime", which I've analysed in further detail in a joint Hadronic Jnl paper on conceptual quantum optics with Jon Minkowski explaining how moving mirrors reflect light at c in the vacuum not mirror frame, so explaining many astronomical anomalies. Of course it appears too outlying for most to be comfortable with at first.
I suspect you may be able to apply the correct algorithms to the heuristic descriptions I use in developing the ontological construction in terms of relative motion in my essay, also apparently resolving other paradoxes, and seemingly entirely consistent with your approach.
But this is rather outside the box and doctrine thinking. Frankly I was just about to sign in to the local institution to sort my wayward thinking out until I read your essay. I own you big time for that! Thank you, and top marks. I'd like id possible for you to look over may last two essays here which are precursers to this years, describing the fundamental inter-particle, or even just inter wave/particle mechanism than seems to have that Midas touch. Of course if you think a big score appropriate this year I won't complain I've been passed over from 7th place twice running now! But far more important are the truths to be revealed.
Very well done and thank you. I hope to see a comment on my blog (there are many nice superlatives there already, but complete understanding by more would be better.
Very best wishes.
Peter
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 04:05 GMT
Dear Peter
Thank you so much for your generous comments. I am glad that you appreciate the postulates and derivations. It has been a great deal of effort to get the postulates to the point where I feel that they are sensible. The detailed derivations can be found in my papers. After over three years of work to polish them, I have come to realize that the spacetime business amounts to counting events. It is surprising to me that it is so simple at the foundation.
I look forward to reading your essays, as well as the JNL paper you note above that deals with light reflecting off of mirrors.
I like your comment about "signing into the local institution" to sort out your "wayward thinking". I am glad that my wayward thinking has compelled you to stay on your present course! I am struck by the fact that much foundations research focuses on concepts such as mass, energy, location, etc. often with little apparent regard or concern that these concepts are not really understood. In several other posts, I have written my favorite quote. I will do it again here:
"Familiarity breeds the illusion of understanding."
It is easy for us to talk about mass and energy, and while we understand their interrelationships, we do not really know what they are. That is something I implicitly tried to get across in my essay by constructing a model that has the potential to explain these *familiar* particle "properties". It is not clear to what degree such a model might explain a sizeable subset of physics, but at present it seems promising to me.
Thank you again for your kind words!
Cheers
Kevin
john stephan selye wrote on Aug. 2, 2013 @ 16:31 GMT
Having read so many insightful essays, I am probably not the only one to find that my views have crystallized, and that I can now move forward with growing confidence. I cannot exactly say who in the course of the competition was most inspiring - probably it was the continuous back and forth between so many of us. In this case, we should all be grateful to each other.
If I may, I'd like to...
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Having read so many insightful essays, I am probably not the only one to find that my views have crystallized, and that I can now move forward with growing confidence. I cannot exactly say who in the course of the competition was most inspiring - probably it was the continuous back and forth between so many of us. In this case, we should all be grateful to each other.
If I may, I'd like to express some of my newer conclusions - by themselves, so to speak, and independently of the logic that justifies them; the logic is, of course, outlined in my essay.
I now see the Cosmos as founded upon positive-negative charges: It is a binary structure and process that acquires its most elemental dimensional definition with the appearance of Hydrogen - one proton, one electron.
There is no other interaction so fundamental and all-pervasive as this binary phenomenon: Its continuance produces our elements – which are the array of all possible inorganic variants.
Once there exists a great enough correlation between protons and electrons - that is, once there are a great many Hydrogen atoms, and a great many other types of atoms as well - the continuing Cosmic binary process arranges them all into a new platform: Life.
This phenomenon is quite simply inherent to a Cosmos that has reached a certain volume of particles; and like the Cosmos from which it evolves, life behaves as a binary process.
Life therefore evolves not only by the chance events of natural selection, but also by the chance interactions of its underlying binary elements.
This means that ultimately, DNA behaves as does the atom - each is a particle defined by, and interacting within, its distinct Vortex - or 'platform'.
However, as the cosmic system expands, simple sensory activity is transformed into a third platform, one that is correlated with the Organic and Inorganic phenomena already in existence: This is the Sensory-Cognitive platform.
Most significantly, the development of Sensory-Cognition into a distinct platform, or Vortex, is the event that is responsible for creating (on Earth) the Human Species - in whom the mind has acquired the dexterity to focus upon itself.
Humans affect, and are affected by, the binary field of Sensory-Cognition: We can ask specific questions and enunciate specific answers - and we can also step back and contextualize our conclusions: That is to say, we can move beyond the specific, and create what might be termed 'Unified Binary Fields' - in the same way that the forces acting upon the Cosmos, and holding the whole structure together, simultaneously act upon its individual particles, giving them their motion and structure.
The mind mimics the Cosmos - or more exactly, it is correlated with it.
Thus, it transpires that the role of chance decreases with evolution, because this dual activity (by which we 'particularize' binary elements, while also unifying them into fields) clearly increases our control over the foundational binary process itself.
This in turn signifies that we are evolving, as life in general has always done, towards a new interaction with the Cosmos.
Clearly, the Cosmos is participatory to a far greater degree than Wheeler imagined - with the evolution of the observer continuously re-defining the system.
You might recall the logic by which these conclusions were originally reached in my essay, and the more detailed structure that I also outline there. These elements still hold; the details stated here simply put the paradigm into a sharper focus, I believe.
With many thanks and best wishes,
John
jselye@gmail.com
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Thomas Howard Ray wrote on Aug. 3, 2013 @ 13:43 GMT
Dear Kevin,
"I know about the universe because it influences me." Marvelous!
I have not heard a better or more compact description of an objective physical world since Einstein's definition of physically real spacetime: " ... independent in its properties, having a physical effect but not itself influenced by physical conditions."
You get my 10 vote, without reservation. More important, I will be studying your essay for some time to come.
If you read
my essay I hope you see that we are saying the same thing in different ways. And not really so different, at that. More to say, in due course. I hope we can have a continuing dialogue.
Thank you for a great essay -- all best in your research and in the contest!
Tom
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:45 GMT
Dear Tom
Thank you so much for your very generous words and vote!
I look forward to reading your essay, and would very much like to strike up a dialogue. Since you have seen similarities, I am keen to see things from your perspective.
Cheers
Kevin
eAmazigh M. HANNOU wrote on Aug. 5, 2013 @ 22:31 GMT
Dear Kevin,
We are at the end of this essay contest.
In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time.
Matter is thus eInfo made with eEnergy rather than answer it is made with eEnergy and eInfo ; because eInfo is eEnergy, and the one does not go without the other one.
eEnergy and eInfo are the two basic Principles of the eUniverse. Nothing can exist if it is not eEnergy, and any object is eInfo, and therefore eEnergy.
And consequently our eReality is eInfo made with eEnergy. And the final verdict is : eReality is virtual, and virtuality is our fundamental eReality.
Good luck to the winners,
And see you soon, with good news on this topic, and the Theory of Everything.
Amazigh H.
I rated your essay.
Please visit
My essay.
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Author Kevin H Knuth replied on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:00 GMT
Thank you for your comments.
I like to keep in mind the following quote:
"Familiarity breeds the illusion of understanding"
You write:
"In conclusion, at the question to know if Information is more fundamental than Matter, there is a good reason to answer that Matter is made of an amazing mixture of eInfo and eEnergy, at the same time."
I find that such conclusions are extremely difficult to arrive at since in reality no one knows what matter is, no one knows what energy is, and there is some debate as to what information is. This is basically why I am working to understand these important concepts at a more fundamental level.
Charles Raldo Card wrote on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 03:58 GMT
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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M. V. Vasilyeva wrote on Aug. 6, 2013 @ 11:18 GMT
Esteemed Prof. Knuth,
I found your essay fascinating. I also read the comments in your blog, especially your discussions with Mikalai Birukou. I find it strange that I wrote about a similar sort of events/processes and their interweaving threads of causality in the end of my own essay. But that part was not premeditated at all. Now I suspect that I was influenced by your essay -? I probably read it late at night while writing my last-moment entry.
I learned a lot reading your replies to Mikalai Birukou and am amazed at your depth of knowledge and originality of your view on things. Because of this, I would value very much your opinion of another essay that speaks of emergence, in an entirely different context: it is by Carolyn Devereux, PhD
IT from BIT considering fluctuations in a quantised space Unfortunately she is not around to answer the questions, but I found her essay very interesting and would like your opinion on it. Please.
And could you please also elucidate how your idea of emergence differs from cellular automata (CA) proposed by Prof. D'Ariano (and also Maria Carrillo-Ruiz, whose is a very short essay).
Thank you very much for all your feedback and your great ideas,
-Marina
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William C. McHarris wrote on Aug. 7, 2013 @ 14:49 GMT
Dear Prof. Knuth,
What a lovely essay — both beautifully written and to the point. It's great to see a new, straightforward perspective used to obtain relativistic symmetries. It demonstrates that the underlying symmetries in nature are ubiquitous and quite often unexpected. (It reminds me of why spectroscopists can get into trouble when they try to use sums and differences to assemble energy levels — those are not random numbers, and intricate, unanticipated relationships can easily crop up.)
I was wondering about your example of an electron having two attributes, one that it displays and one that we can't see. Could anything be done along this line with the Uncertainty Principle? (I realize that you deal with the Uncertainty Principle later on in your essay.) Maybe get time involved in a sequential uncovering of the properties?
I have downloaded your arXiv papers and will study them thoroughly, so perhaps we can continue a worthwhile discussion later on. I also made a few additional comment when answering you under the thread for my essay.
Congratulations and keep up the great (and from your bio, varied) work.
Bill McHarris
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Paul Borrill wrote on Aug. 7, 2013 @ 17:10 GMT
Kevin - I just noticed, I hadn’t rated your essay yet. This is a gem, and I rated it highly.
The issue with being unable to tell different (pink?) electrons are exhibiting a different behavior from its repertoire is at the heart of physics. Boltzmann indistinguishability and Liebniz’s indiscernability have given us great insights. I loved the way you have developed your theory of coordinated chains as Hasse diagrams.
I anticipate some resonance here and would appreciate your comments on my essay, particularly regarding the way I have extended Boltzman’s indistinguishability of particles in phase space from the indistinguishability of states in an evolution of an entangled system. If I am correct, the principle of retroactive indiscernability brings a fresh perspective to the subject.
My conclusion: the photon is the carrier of time and the universe is a network automaton.
I have tried using both Feynman diagrams and Hasse diagrams (Lattices) but without success, because I need a way to describe a dynamic reordering of the nodes on the graph.
What I enjoyed most about your essay was the notion of an embedded observer. Clearly, there is a relationship here with decoherence theory and the measurement problem.
You can find the latest version of my essay here:
http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/Borrill-TimeOne-
V1.1a.pdf
(sorry if the fqxi web site splits this url up, I haven’t figured out a way to not make it do that).
Lets connect when the contest is over.
Kind regards, Paul
paul at borrill dot com
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Anonymous wrote on Aug. 8, 2013 @ 09:30 GMT
Dear Kevin,
As per particle scenario, information is the transfer of energy with photons or ions. Electron as a matter has mass, but as described as point like zero-dimensional particle, it unlikely evolves three-dimensional structures.
Thus by
string-matter continuum scenario, we ascribe all particles that have mass as coupled tetrahedral-branes of eigen-rotational string-matter segments as building blocks. Thus lattice of simplexes of eigen-rotational string-segments have collective gravitational influence in that gravity emerges as a tensor product on eigen-rotations of string-matter segments.
With best wishes,
Jayakar
attachments:
2_Spin_simplex.pdf,
Collective_gravity.pdf
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Jayakar Johnson Joseph replied on Aug. 8, 2013 @ 09:35 GMT
Cont…
Posted by me. – Jayakar
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Héctor Daniel Gianni wrote on Aug. 10, 2013 @ 21:59 GMT
Dear Kevin H Knuth:
I am an old physician and I don’t know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics. maybe you would be interested in my essay over a subject which after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more than any other, the so called “time”.
I am sending you a...
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Dear Kevin H Knuth:
I am an old physician and I don’t know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics. maybe you would be interested in my essay over a subject which after the common people, physic discipline is the one that uses more than any other, the so called “time”.
I am sending you a practical summary, so you can easy decide if you read or not my essay “The deep nature of reality”.
I am convince you would be interested in reading it. ( most people don’t understand it, and is not just because of my bad English).
Hawking in “A brief history of time” where he said , “Which is the nature of time?” yes he don’t know what time is, and also continue saying…………Some day this answer could seem to us “obvious”, as much than that the earth rotate around the sun…..” In fact the answer is “obvious”, but how he could say that, if he didn’t know what’s time? In fact he is predicting that is going to be an answer, and that this one will be “obvious”, I think that with this adjective, he is implying: simple and easy to understand. Maybe he felt it and couldn’t explain it with words. We have anthropologic proves that man measure “time” since more than 30.000 years ago, much, much later came science, mathematics and physics that learn to measure “time” from primitive men, adopted the idea and the systems of measurement, but also acquired the incognita of the experimental “time” meaning. Out of common use physics is the science that needs and use more the measurement of what everybody calls “time” and the discipline came to believe it as their own. I always said that to understand the “time” experimental meaning there is not need to know mathematics or physics, as the “time” creators and users didn’t. Instead of my opinion I would give Einstein’s “Ideas and Opinions” pg. 354 “Space, time, and event, are free creations of human intelligence, tools of thought” he use to call them pre-scientific concepts from which mankind forgot its meanings, he never wrote a whole page about “time” he also use to evade the use of the word, in general relativity when he refer how gravitational force and speed affect “time”, he does not use the word “time” instead he would say, speed and gravitational force slows clock movement or “motion”, instead of saying that slows “time”. FQXi member Andreas Albrecht said that. When asked the question, "What is time?", Einstein gave a pragmatic response: "Time," he said, "is what clocks measure and nothing more." He knew that “time” was a man creation, but he didn’t know what man is measuring with the clock.
I insist, that for “measuring motion” we should always and only use a unique: “constant” or “uniform” “motion” to measure “no constant motions” “which integrates and form part of every change and transformation in every physical thing. Why? because is the only kind of “motion” whose characteristics allow it, to be divided in equal parts as Egyptians and Sumerians did it, giving born to “motion fractions”, which I call “motion units” as hours, minutes and seconds. “Motion” which is the real thing, was always hide behind time, and covert by its shadow, it was hide in front everybody eyes, during at least two millenniums at hand of almost everybody. Which is the difference in physics between using the so-called time or using “motion”?, time just has been used to measure the “duration” of different phenomena, why only for that? Because it was impossible for physicists to relate a mysterious time with the rest of the physical elements of known characteristics, without knowing what time is and which its physical characteristics were. On the other hand “motion” is not something mysterious, it is a quality or physical property of all things, and can be related with all of them, this is a huge difference especially for theoretical physics I believe. I as a physician with this find I was able to do quite a few things. I imagine a physicist with this can make marvelous things.
With my best whishes
Héctor
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