Hello Prof. McHarris,

Thank you for your informative essay, It reminded me of my software engineering dissertation titled "Predicting the Unpredictable", an exercise in cognitive mechanics which used a benign form of "simulated evolution" to investigate the nature of memory and the mechanics of choice at the cellular and neural network level. Nothing self replicating or predatory, but...

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Hello Prof. McHarris,

Thank you for your informative essay, It reminded me of my software engineering dissertation titled "Predicting the Unpredictable", an exercise in cognitive mechanics which used a benign form of "simulated evolution" to investigate the nature of memory and the mechanics of choice at the cellular and neural network level. Nothing self replicating or predatory, but sufficient in itself to break through local minima once random elements where introduced into the "simulated breeding process". Avoiding the twin pitfalls of self replication, and over complication which brings incomprehensibility to the means by which objectives are achieved, I found myself a rock (reality) to which I could tie myself while sorting through the foundations of the philosophical and epistemological musings of Descartes, Kant and the like.

According to you, you have had on foot in Chaos and the other in the Quantum Mechanics domain for some time, and I can appreciate the discomfort which comes with trying to keep these major ice-flows from drifting further apart, but I wonder whether you have considered that chasing one's tail is just the beginning of a process which when interrupted by accident (chaos) has only one way to go; that is, a spiral.

In my essay titled "Hierarchic Space-Time" I present a context within which (bit) must be held by something material (it), which must then recognize the information carried by the (bit). I then go on to present a case where the primordial bit (pbit), which has the property of direction, i.e. pointy bit, brings about a template form from which the material (it) springs. To complete this relationship one must see the material (it) created by the template form as holding momentarily the (pbit) so as to make the (pbit) an instance of information. When the (pbit) measures the (it), and the (it) measures the (pbit), we have a complimentary interaction causing a change in both, which represents not only an instance of information recognized, but the instantiation of the first observer. This observer, as defined, in moving from one place to another is subject to gravity, and in that sense may move in circular or spiral fashion.

I believe you will benefit by reading Prof. Unnikrishnan's essay titled "Matter and its Configuration States in the Making of Information", which I rate highly, and, of course, I welcome any comments you may have on my essay.

Regards.

Zoran.

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Bill,

Whoa!! Hopefully the regular participants in these forums will gravitate to your paper. Physics is stuck in its own hubristic loop and really needs to accept it is being left in the dust by other disciplines.

Hopefully you will engage as well, as you have much to add to this conversation.

I would like to offer up one idea, which was the subject of my last years...

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Bill,

Whoa!! Hopefully the regular participants in these forums will gravitate to your paper. Physics is stuck in its own hubristic loop and really needs to accept it is being left in the dust by other disciplines.

Hopefully you will engage as well, as you have much to add to this conversation.

I would like to offer up one idea, which was the subject of my last years entry;

We experience time as a sequence of events and physics re-enforces this by treating it as a measure of interval, but since it is only detected as an effect of action, we should think of it not as a measure from one event to the next, but the process by which change happens. Thus it is not a sequence from past to future, but the process by which future becomes past. To wit, the earth isn't traveling some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. This makes time an effect of action, rather than the basis for it. So the reason different clocks run at different rates is simply because change happens at different rates. The presumed vector of time is duration, yet duration doesn't transcend the point of the present, but is the state of what is physically present between the occurrence of events. This makes time similar to temperature, rather than space. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. Time is the linear effect, while thermodynamics is the non-linear effect. The two sides of our brains reflect this, as the left side is a linear processor, while the right side is more of a scalar processor, ie. what rises to the surface, "instinctively." Thus it is associated with emotion and intuition. Scalar processes are like pressure, heat, etc. which explains why they are associated which the heart, which is a pump.

If time were a vector from past to future, logically the faster clock would move into the future more rapidly, but the opposite is true. It "ages" quicker and thus moves into the past faster.

Not that we don't experience time as a sequence from past to future, but then we still experience the sun as moving across the sky.

The problem is that as sequence, time is the basis of narrative and cause and effect, linear logic, so it is difficult to not think of it as foundational.

I could go on, but this makes the point and you may not want to engage in the conversations.

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Dear William

Your conclusion seems to be a prelude to an " infinite loop" - Even though you have very good analysis.

I am will be rate when the rating system continues to operate.

And to change the atmosphere "abstract" of the competition along with demonstrate for the real preeminent possibility of the Absolute theory as well as to clarify the issues I mentioned in the essay...

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Dear William

Your conclusion seems to be a prelude to an " infinite loop" - Even though you have very good analysis.

I am will be rate when the rating system continues to operate.

And to change the atmosphere "abstract" of the competition along with 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 :

THE ADDITIONAL ARTICLES AND A SMALL TEST FOR MUTUAL BENEFIT

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.

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

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Dear Prof. McHarris,

Your essay presents some very interesting points. With respect to explaining the quantum from classical chaos, Chapter 16 from Ian Stewart's Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos makes a similar point. Also, I was impressed by your struggle to work with two different communities of scientists, apparently little interested into each other's field. In...

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Dear Prof. McHarris,

Your essay presents some very interesting points. With respect to explaining the quantum from classical chaos, Chapter 16 from Ian Stewart's Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos makes a similar point. Also, I was impressed by your struggle to work with two different communities of scientists, apparently little interested into each other's field. In particular, I can imagine you encountered many quantum skeptics, people who don't believe classical mechanics, being it chaotic, can explain the quantum, due to results like EPR, Kochen-Specker, delayed choice. I am among these, and like Prof. D'Ariano, I would be very interested to see a chaos-based mechanism leading to violations of Bell inequalities. On the other hand, classical chaos is still full of surprises, so who knows? I find myself thinking that some strange phenomena usually attributed to classical chaos, are in fact due to global consistency. But at this time I find this very unlikely, so I don't entertain such thoughts.

At first sight, it may seem that quantum mechanics can't provide support for nonlinear chaos, but this is not quite so. And I am not thinking here at the position defended so well by Prof. Tejinder Singh above and in his essay. I am thinking that even the linear quantum mechanics doesn't contradict nonlinearity at the classical level. The reason is the following: although most classical equations are nonlinear, after quantization, we get linear equations. Why? Because quantum linearity happens in a much larger space, an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. It is known that nonlinear equations can be linearized, i.e., expressed as linear equations of higher order, but in quantum mechanics, something even better happens. Each nonlinear degree of freedom is replaced by an infinite number of linear degrees of freedom. Nonlinearity remains hidden in the Hamiltonian.

Could you please provide some links to your papers, and other papers showing the analogies between quantum mechanics and chaotic phenomena mentioned in your essay?

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

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Dear Prof. McHarris,

I enjoyed your essay and thank you for some interesting new ideas and enabling me to recall others. My Ph.D. focused on nonlinear dynamics in the mid-1990s but I veered into neuroscience, machine learning, astrophysics and now theory. So its been a while since I have thought in these terms.

I wish that you had provided a little more insight into how you think...

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Dear Prof. McHarris,

I enjoyed your essay and thank you for some interesting new ideas and enabling me to recall others. My Ph.D. focused on nonlinear dynamics in the mid-1990s but I veered into neuroscience, machine learning, astrophysics and now theory. So its been a while since I have thought in these terms.

I wish that you had provided a little more insight into how you think nonlinear dynamics is coming into QM. Perhaps you can point me to some of your key papers (or I could of course just go dig them up).

In our symmetry-based derivations of the Feynman rules

(Goyal P., Knuth K.H., Skilling J. 2010. Origin of complex quantum amplitudes and Feynman's rules, Phys. Rev. A 81, 022109. arXiv:0907.0909v3 [quant-ph].)

we find that associativity of combining measurement sequences in parallel results in additivity. So I am left wondering where nonlinearity would come in. With such a basic symmetry forcing linearity, it is hard to imagine room for nonlinearity. Though as Cristi Stoica points out in his comments above, the classical equations can still be nonlinear, and nonlinear equations can often be broken into linear ones in sufficiently high dimensions.

Despite this, your essay reminded me of work by Pedrag Cvitanovic where he used (classical) periodic orbit theory to derive the energy levels of the Helium atom. I have not kept up with this work, so I do not know where it has led. But your essay made me remember this. At the time, I felt it was quite impressive, and should have shaken the quantum foundations more than it has seemed to.

I also remember coding fractal generating programs based on Barnsley's book Fractals Everywhere. It was always interesting to me that you could think of these processes in two ways: one by an deterministic iterative process and second by a random iterative process. Watching fractal ferns appear on my Amiga computer dot by dot reminded me of electrons appearing on a screen after passing through a slit apparatus. I always wondered whether some nonlinear or iterative process could be behind such confounding behavior.

And now you have sparked a thought for which I thank you and the FQXi people for setting up this essay contest. In my essay, I discuss a new way to think about electron behavior in terms of interactions. Perhaps I should take some time to consider an electron "moving" through two slits by influencing atoms along the walls of the barrier. Could it be that these simple patterns of influence lead to rules guided by the boundary conditions to give rise to the diffraction pattern electron by electron. I have considered this before, and worked for a short while to see what I could work out. But now I am once again emboldened by the fact that I now recall the fractal ferns coming into focus. Perhaps with this perspective, I can make some headway.

Thank you again

Kevin

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Dear William. C. McHarris:

I am an old physician, and I don’t know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics, I read your essay and if you think I did not understand anything, you are right I did not, because I lack all the necessary knowledge to do it. What I learned was the kind of mind you possibly have, that could be the ideal to...

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Dear William. C. McHarris:

I am an old physician, and I don’t know nothing of mathematics and almost nothing of physics, I read your essay and if you think I did not understand anything, you are right I did not, because I lack all the necessary knowledge to do it. What I learned was the kind of mind you possibly have, that could be the ideal to understand the value for physics of my essay. What I did result from a kind of mental accident, because I was not seriously searching. Physics, specially theoretically physicists are really needing at least for the last fifty years the experimental meaning of, as I use to say the so called “time”. I think my essay can land real physics down to earth. The only thing I possibly understand of your essay is: When you say “non linear dynamics into quantum mechanics…does not lead us into” “the quagmire of assuming hidden variables” I refer to them in my essay

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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Dear Sir,

Your highly thought provoking essay is an excellent analysis of an important subject. Here we compliment your essay.

Mathematics is the science of accumulation and reduction of similars or partly similars. The former is linear and the later non-linear. Because of the high degree of interdependence and interconnectedness, it is no surprise that everything in the Universe is...

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Dear Sir,

Your highly thought provoking essay is an excellent analysis of an important subject. Here we compliment your essay.

Mathematics is the science of accumulation and reduction of similars or partly similars. The former is linear and the later non-linear. Because of the high degree of interdependence and interconnectedness, it is no surprise that everything in the Universe is mostly non-linear. The left hand sides of all equations depict free will, as we are free to chose or change the parameters. The equality sign depicts the special conditions necessary to start the interaction. The right hand side depicts determinism, as once the parameters and special conditions are determined, the results are always predictable. Hence, irrespective of whether the initial conditions could be precisely known or not, the results are always deterministic. Even the butterfly effect would be deterministic, if we could know the changing parameters at every non-linearity. Our inability to measure does not make it chaotic – “complex, even inexplicable behavior”. Statistics only provides the minimal and maximal boundaries of the various classes of reactions, but never solutions to individual interactions or developmental chains. Your example of “the deer population in Northern Michigan”, is related to the interdependence and interconnectedness of the eco system. Hence it is non-linear.

Infinities are like one – without similars. But whereas the dimensions of one are fully perceived, the dimensions of infinities are not perceptible. (We have shown in many threads here without contradiction that division by zero is not infinite, but leaves a number unchanged.) We do not know the beginning or end of space (interval of objects) or time (interval of events). Hence all mathematics involving infinities are void. But they co-exist with all others – every object or event exists in space and time. Length contraction is apparent to the observer due to Doppler shift and Time dilation is apparent due to changing velocity of light in mediums with different refractive index like those of our atmosphere and outer space.

Your example of the computation of evolutionary sequence of random numbers omits an important fact. Numbers are the inherent properties of everything by which we differentiate between similars. If there are no similars, then it is one; otherwise many. Many can be 2,3,…n depending upon the sequence of perceptions leading to that number. Often it happens so fast that we do not realize it. But once the perception of many is registered in our mind, it remains as a concept in our memory and we can perceive it even without any objects. When you use “a pseudorandom number generator to generate programs consisting of (almost) random sequences of numbers”, you do just that through “comparison and exchange instructions”. You develop these by “inserting random minor variations, corresponding to asexual mutations; second, by ‘mating’ parent programs to create a child program, i.e., by splicing parts of programs together, hoping that useful instructions from each parent occasionally will be inherited and become concentrated” and repeat it “thousands upon thousands of time” till the concept covers the desired number sequences. Danny Hillis missed this reasoning. Hence he erroneously thought “evolution can produce something as simple as a sorting program which is fundamentally incomprehensible”. After all, computers are GIGO. Brain and Mind are not redundant.

Much has been talked about sensory perception and memory consolidation as composed of an initial set of feature filters followed by a special class of mathematical transformations which represent the sensory inputs generating interacting wave-fronts over the entire sensory cortical area – the so-called holographic processes. It can explain the almost infinite memory. Since a hologram retains the complete details at every point of its image plane, even if a small portion of it is exposed for reconstruction, we get the entire scene, though the quality is impaired. Yet, unlike an optical hologram, the neural hologram is formed by very low frequency post-synaptic potentials providing a low information processing capacity to the neural system. Further, the distributed memory mechanisms are not recorded randomly over the entire brain matter, as there seems to be preferred locations in the brain for each sensory input.

The impulses from the various sensory apparatus are carried upwards in the dorsal column or in the anterio-lateral spinothalamic tract to the thalamus, which relays it to the cerebral cortex for its perception. At any moment, our sense organs are bombarded by a multitude of stimuli. But only one of them is given a clear channel to go up to the thalamus and then to the cerebral cortex at any instant, so that like photographic frames, we perceive one frame at an instant. Unlike the sensory apparatuses that are subject specific, this happens for all types of impulses. The agency that determines this subject neutral channel, is called mind, which is powered by the heart and lungs. Thus, after the heart stops beating, mind stops its work.

However, both for consolidation and retrieval of sensory information, the holographic model requires a coherent source which literally ‘illuminates’ the object or the object-projected sensory information. This may be a small source available at the site of sensory repository. For retrieval of the previously consolidated information, the same source again becomes necessary. Since the brain receives enormous information that is present for the whole life, such source should always be illuminating the required area in the brain where the sensory information is stored. Even in dream state, this source must be active, as here also local memory retrieval and experience takes place. This source is the Consciousness.

Regards,

mbasudeba@gmail.com

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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...

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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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Hello Bill - I'm a seventy yr old lady so I can call you that !!!!

I love it that you question 'mainstream' & are looking for alternatives such as might be found in non-linear processes with their concatenating feedback - & feedforward - loops.

My own investigations have led me to conclude that ‘information’ is NOT digits – no kind nor amount of them (including any that can be...

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Hello Bill - I'm a seventy yr old lady so I can call you that !!!!

I love it that you question 'mainstream' & are looking for alternatives such as might be found in non-linear processes with their concatenating feedback - & feedforward - loops.

My own investigations have led me to conclude that ‘information’ is NOT digits – no kind nor amount of them (including any that can be extracted from quantum phenomena!), nor how algorithmically-well they may be massaged & shunted through any device that uses them.

Nor whether they are processed non-linearly !!

Unequivocally they – digits – make for wonderful COUNTING & CALCULATING assistants, witness our own now many & various, most excellent, counting, calculating devices BUT according to my investigations real thinking is an entirely different phenomenon from mere counting, calculating & computing.

For which phenomenon – real thinking – real information is required.

My own investigations led me to discover what I have come to believe real information is & as it so transpires it turns out to be an especially innocuous – not to omit almost entirely overlooked & massively understudied – phenomenon, none other than the sum total of geometrical objects otherwise quite really & quite properly present here in our universe. Not digits.

One grade (the secondary one) of geometrical-cum-informational objects lavishly present here in our cosmos, is comprised of all the countless trillions & trillions of left-over bump-marks still remaining on all previously impacted solid objects here in our universe – that is to say, all of the left-over dents, scratches, scars, vibrations & residues (just the shapes of residues – not their content!) (really) existing here in the universe.

Examples of some real geometrical objects of this secondary class in their native state are all of the craters on the Moon. Note that these craters are – in & of themselves – just shapes – just geometrical objects. And the reason they are, also one & at the same time, informational objects too, can be seen by the fact that each ‘tells a story’ – each advertises (literally) some items of information on its back – each relates a tale of not only what created it but when, where & how fast & from what angle the impacting object descended onto the Moon’s surface. Again, each literally carries some information on its back. (Note : Not a digit in sight !!)

How we actually think – rather than just count, calculate & compute – with these strictly non-digital entities, specifically these geometrical-cum-informational objects, in precisely the way we do, please see my essay.

Yes, geometrical-cum-informational-objects do, indeed, get processed non-digitally by our brains - & I'm quite sure that many of these processes are thoroughly non-linear - with massive amounts of feedback/feedforward loops, but which processorial work results in 'collations' - not in SOLUTIONS TO 'algorithms' or arithmetical or algebraic calculations - just collations - just 'regroupings' of select geometrical objects according to pre-established re-grouping (collating) protocols !!!!!

I did not make the distinction between computing with digits & real thinking with real information, sufficiently strongly in my essay.

This contest is such a wonderful ‘sharing’ – Wow – & open to amateurs like myself – Wow. How great is that !!! Thank you Foundational Questions Institute!!! What a great pleasure it has been to participate. What a joy to read, share & discuss with other entrants !!!

Margriet O’Regan

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