Re: [Fis] Fw: Is quantum information the basis of spacetime? Some New Theories

[Bruno Marchal]

On 14 Nov 2016, at 09:59, Joseph Brenner wrote:


Dear All,

It is fascinating to watch the evolution of ideas about information  
as a function of some new theories which beg for critique:


1. Andrei gives a correct explanation of the origin of Irreducible  
Quantum Randomness. In my opinion, however, it is not necessary to  
assume that randomness at the quantum level has the properties of  
APPARENT randomness at the cognitive level, that is, apparent free  
will.



I completely agree with this. Free will actually needs determinacy,  
indeed self-determinacy.






Any cognitive equivalent of non-locality is a cognitive projection.


The appearance of basic physical indeterminacy has to be, and actually  
is, explainable in terms of arithmetical self-reference.


The physical is emergent from the first person interference of  
infinities of computations going through our states.







2. Karl returns to a Platonic world of numbers which are causally  
effective. I think the appropriate term for this approach is pre- 
scientific.



I would side on Karl about this. We teach in secondary school (12 to  
16 years old) the intended number theoretical content of the following  
first order arithmetical formula since a long time:


0 ≠ (x + 1)
((x + 1) = (y + 1))  -> x = y

x + 0 = x
x + (y + 1) = (x + y) + 1
x * 0 = 0
x * (y + 1) = (x * y) + x

x = 0 v Ey(x = y + 1)

and I have never heard any parent taking their kids out of the school  
when their kids are taught that the arithmetical proposition are  
either true or false. We do have an intuition about 0, 1, 2, ..., and  
believe the induction axioms applies on the iterated constructions.


Then not well known fact is that if we assume computationalism, in the  
non constructive sense of accepting a brain transplant for *some*  
level of description, we have to extract physics (but not our relative  
geography) from number self-references.


It is the belief in some primary physical universe which is pre- 
scientific, in that setting. To invoke a physical universe to select a  
computation among the infinitely many one which exist cannot work. All  
computations participate, and indeed statistically interfere, and the  
"winners" are those who multiplied in the continuum. This needs an  
understanding of the seven first steps of the Universal Dovetailer  
Argument/Paradox.






3. Alex sees the same form of causal effectiveness in Fisher  
information, as interpreted by Frieden. A critique exists of  
Frieden's inventions which seems correct to me. The new concepts  
(e.g. "bound information") and gaps in Frieden's theory are exactly  
those which can be filled with the real dynamic properties of energy/ 
information. The discussion of these is far from exhausted.


As an inhabitant of space-time, I am glad that it does not seem to  
require any of the entities of theories 2. and 3. as its BASIS. If  
it did, I might not exist.


You exist, but might not be what you thought you are. In the Digital  
Mechanist theory you are a universal person indexically lost in a  
present interval distributed in a labyrinth of "dreams". It has the  
strong evidence the dreams cohere enough to say hello to itself and  
share experiences.


Technically the correct theology of the ideally correct universal  
number is quite close to Moderatus of Gades and Plotinus. Those are  
platonist theories in the sense they don't take matter as primary. But  
intuitively it is close to Sri Aurobindo following quote:



Computationalism makes big chapter of machine/number theology once we  
take seriously Church thesis and the level-variable choice of  
functional substitution in brain operation.


I am not saying that Digital Mechanism is true, nor that I like it or  
anything. Just that Digital Mechanism entails a non Digital physics  
and a non digital science of the persons, but the physical,  
sensible, ... realities are in the head of the universal numbers. That  
does not prevent them to obey laws, and indeed they do, and compared  
to observation, thanks to quantum mechanics, it fits very well.


The universal machine already know it has a soul, and that its soul is  
not a machine, nor is its body. This is a theorem in computer science,  
once accepting classical definitions already suggested by antic  
greeks. I can provide all the references.


Best,

Bruno





Best wishes,

Joseph

- Original Message - From: "Andrei Khrennikov" 

To: "'FIS Webinar'" 
Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2016 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is quantum information the basis of spacetime?


   Dear all,
I make the last remark about "physical information". The main  
problem of quantum physics is to justify so called
IRREDUCIBLE QUANTUM RANDOMNESS (IQR). It was invented  by von  
Neumann. Quantum randomness, in contrast to classical,
cannot be reduced to variations in an ensemble. One single electron  
is irreducibly random.


The operational 

[Fis] Is information a matter of... dimensions and symmetries?

[tozziart...@libero.it]

Dear FISers, 

In touch with Ludwig Wittgenstein's favourite example, let's play a chess game. 
 Imagine that the chessboard is the
information.  

We have the whites, e.g., Jaynes, Logan, Kauffmann, Marijuan (more or less!), 
Loet, Chu-Hsi (Zhu Xi), Susskind's account of loss of information in black 
holes.  (I also side with the whites, but I did not dare to put my name 
together with the great scientists I quoted!).  

And the blacks, e.g. Brillouin, Collier, Wheeler, Murray Gell-Mann,
Lloyd, Layzer, Muller,  Rizzo, Leydesdorff, Hawkins' account of absence of  
loss of  information in black holes.   They are all first-rank scientists.

Whites do not believe very much in the foremost role of information in our 
world,
blacks do.  

Who wins the game? Nobody wins. 
The two players are too strong and well-grounded to be defeated, and, weirdly, 
both logical and experimental results were not decisive in order to produce the 
winner.   

There is just a possibility to tackle the issue and see who wins: to change the 
rules of the chess game and the shape of the chessboard.  The 2D chessboard 
must become… a
3D chessboard.  Equipped with symmetries.

 

The following text comes from our most important (according to me, of course) 
published (topological) paper.  You can find the whole manuscript (with the
mentioned references and the proper mathematical treatment) here: 

http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/products/a-topological-approach-unveils-system-invariancesand-broken-symmetries-in-the-brain/

Symmetry is a type of invariance occurring when a structured object does
not change under a set of transformations (Weyl).  Symmetries hold the key
to understanding many of nature’s intimate secrets, because they are the most
general feature of countless types of systems. Huge swathes of mathematics,
physics and biology, including the brain, can be explained in terms of the
underlying invariance of the structures under investigation.  In physics, 
symmetries can be “broken”.  Symmetry breaking consists of sudden change
in the set of available states: the whole phase space is partitioned into 
non-overlapping
regions (Roldàn, 2014), so that small fluctuations acting on a system cross a
critical point and decide which branch of a bifurcation is taken. In
particular, in spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB), the underlying laws are
invariant under a symmetry transformation, but the system as a whole changes.
SSB is a process which allows a system cast in a symmetrical state to end up in
an asymmetrical one.   SSB describes
systems where the equations of motion or the Lagrangian obey certain
invariances, but the lowest-energy solutions do not exhibit them.  “Hidden” is 
perhaps a better term than
“broken”, because the symmetry is always there in such equations (Higgs). In
case of finite systems with metastable states, the confinement is not strict:
the system can “jump” from a region to another (Roldàn). Concerning the brain,
that is the main issue of our FIS discussion, its activity is an example of an 
open system, partly
stochastic due to intrinsic fluctuations, but containing islands at the edge of
the chaos, which maintains homoeostasis
or allostasis in the face of environmental fluctuations (Friston 2010).   The 
brain
retains the characteristics of a complex, non-linear system with
non-equilibrium dynamics (Fraiman et. al., 2012), equipped with random walks
(Afraimovich et.al., 2013); it operates at the edge of chaos (Tognoli et.al.,
2014;) and lives near a metastable state of second-order phase transition,
between micro- and macro-levels (Beggs
et.al., 2012), characterized by infinite correlation
length, countless dimensions, slight non-ergodicity, attractors (Deco et.al., 
2012) and universal power laws,
testified by the presence of spontaneous neuronal avalanches (De
Arcangelis).  

In such a multifaceted framework, the Borsuk-Ulam theorem is
useful.  This theorem tells us that, if a sphere is mapped continuously into a 
plane set,
there is at least one pair of antipodal points having the same image; that is,
they are mapped in the same point of the plane (Beyer and
Zardecki, 2004).  Bain
symmetries can be studied in a topological fashion, i.e. in terms of antipodal
points on a hypersphere.  If we enclose symmetries, equipped with antipodal 
self-similar points, into the abstract spaces
of n-spheres, they can be evaluated
in guise of projections on Sn-1,
where they stand for the broken symmetry.  This means that brain symmetries, 
hidden at a
lower level, are detectable at a higher level of analysis, and vice versa.  In 
other words, a symmetry break occurs when
the symmetry is present at one level of observation, but “hidden” at another
level.  

It must be emphasized that the symmetries are widespread at every level of
organization and may be regarded as the most general feature of systems, perhaps
more general than free-energy and entropy constraints too.  Indeed, recent data 
suggest that thermodynamic

Re: [Fis] A provocative issue

[Rafael Capurro]

Dear Pedro,

your wise comments are no less inspiring for me than the last comments 
by Loet, namely that the concept of information is 'relative' to each 
context (and therefore 'objective' with regard to such context). This 
happens with other concepts too, of course. I said this in my PhD 
(1978). Then Fleissner and Hofkirchner created what they called 
"Capurro's trilemma" that is well known in this list. Loet's remarks on 
the contextual relativity is a solution (better: a dissolution) of the 
trilemma. But this does not mean that we might like to make analogies, 
equivocies and univocities from time to time that can be also useful or 
inspiring.


The oriental thinkers you refer to, remember me what I discovered during 
and after out last meeting in Vienna, that helped me to question my own 
presuppositions (blindness) concerning the 'metaphysical' concept of 
'in-formatio' I analized in 1978. I prefer not to quote this in extenso 
but just raise you attention (maybe your curiosity) to pp. 8 ss of this 
paper: http://www.capurro.de/icil2016.pdf


I still think that the concepts of message/messenger and translation 
(trans-lation, tra-ducción, Über-setzen) (DNA etc.) is a key issue for 
biology (and not only for biology). I say this without all your 
knowledge regarding biology.


If after twenty years (I remember our meeting in Vienna in 1995) 
discussing this concept we can say that at least we were able to 
question again  and again our presuppositions and this is the spirit of 
science (and philosophy).


best

Rafael





Dear Arturo and FISers

We will forgive your life!  Some other people in this list also 
have strong reservations to a single, canonical approach to 
information, either from Shannon, Boltzmann, or Fisher backgrounds. 
In my case, mostly biologically and socially grounded 
("sociotype"), I see a complex panorama of biological information, 
mostly "relative" concerning communication with the environment 
(via cellular signaling systems), but sort of "objective" 
concerning the inner self-production processes (shared DNA and 
genetic/translation and many other codes). But both are elegantly 
intertwined in the advancement of a life cycle. My hunch is that 
this type of relative/objective duality culminating in existential 
maintenance has some generality and could be "exported" to physics 
too. It is curious that some oriental thinkers (Chu-Hsi or Zhu Xi, 
9 Centuries ago) had already advanced sort of similar ideas... 
Well, above all, info is "paradoxical" and has kept all of us 
amused in this list, at least for the past twenty years!


Best--Pedro
PS. Let me remind that you have not answered yet my topo-evo 
comments in the earliest messages. That point is, I think, very 
important in the present discussion.


El 11/12/2016 a las 16:57, tozziart...@libero.it escribió:



Dear FISers,

I know that some of you are going to kill me, but there’s 
something that I must confess.


I notice, from the nice issued raised by Francesco Rizzo, Joseph 
Brenner, John Collier, that the main concerns are always 
energetic/informational arguments and accounts.


Indeed, the current tenets state that all is information, 
information being a real quantity that can be measured through 
informational entropies.


But… I ask to myself, is such a tenet true?

When I cook the pasta, I realize that, by my point of view, the 
cooked pasta encompasses more information than the not-cooked one, 
because it acquires the role of something that I can eat in order 
to increase my possibility to preserve myself in the hostile 
environment that wants to destroy me.  However, by the point of 
view of the bug who eats the non-cooked pasta, my cooked pasta 
displays less information for sure.  Therefore, information is a 
very subjective measure that, apart from its relationship with the 
observer, does not mean very much…  Who can state that an event or 
a fact displays more information than another one?


And, please, do not counteract that information is a quantifiable, 
objective reality, because it can be measured through 
informational entropy… Informational entropy, in its original 
Shannon’s formulation, stands for an ergodic process (page 8 of 
the original 1948 Shannon’s seminal paper), i.e.: every sequence 
produced by the processes is the same in statistical properties, 
or, in other words, a traveling particle always crosses all the 
points of its phase space.  However, in physics and biology, the 
facts and events are never ergodic.  Statistical homogeneity is 
just a fiction, if we evaluate the world around us and our 
brain/mind.


Therefore, the role of information could not be as fundamental as 
currently believed.


P.S.: topology analyzes information by another point of view, but 
it’s an issue for the next time, I think…



*Arturo Tozzi*

AA Professor Physics, University North Texas

Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy

Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba

http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/

Re: [Fis] A provocative issue

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear Arturo and FISers

We will forgive your life!  Some other people in this list also have 
strong reservations to a single, canonical approach to information, 
either from Shannon, Boltzmann, or Fisher backgrounds. In my case, 
mostly biologically and socially grounded ("sociotype"), I see a complex 
panorama of biological information, mostly "relative" concerning 
communication with the environment (via cellular signaling systems), but 
sort of "objective" concerning the inner self-production processes 
(shared DNA and genetic/translation and many other codes). But both are 
elegantly intertwined in the advancement of a life cycle. My hunch is 
that this type of relative/objective duality culminating in existential 
maintenance has some generality and could be "exported" to physics too. 
It is curious that some oriental thinkers (Chu-Hsi or Zhu Xi, 9 
Centuries ago) had already advanced sort of similar ideas... Well, above 
all, info is "paradoxical" and has kept all of us amused in this list, 
at least for the past twenty years!


Best--Pedro
PS. Let me remind that you have not answered yet my topo-evo comments in 
the earliest messages. That point is, I think, very important in the 
present discussion.


El 11/12/2016 a las 16:57, tozziart...@libero.it escribió:



Dear FISers,

I know that some of you are going to kill me, but there’s something 
that I must confess.


I notice, from the nice issued raised by Francesco Rizzo, Joseph 
Brenner, John Collier, that the main concerns are always 
energetic/informational arguments and accounts.


Indeed, the current tenets state that all is information, information 
being a real quantity that can be measured through informational 
entropies.


But… I ask to myself, is such a tenet true?

When I cook the pasta, I realize that, by my point of view, the cooked 
pasta encompasses more information than the not-cooked one, because it 
acquires the role of something that I can eat in order to increase my 
possibility to preserve myself in the hostile environment that wants 
to destroy me.  However, by the point of view of the bug who eats the 
non-cooked pasta, my cooked pasta displays less information for sure.  
Therefore, information is a very subjective measure that, apart from 
its relationship with the observer, does not mean very much…  Who can 
state that an event or a fact displays more information than another one?


And, please, do not counteract that information is a quantifiable, 
objective reality, because it can be measured through informational 
entropy… Informational entropy, in its original Shannon’s formulation, 
stands for an ergodic process (page 8 of the original 1948 Shannon’s 
seminal paper), i.e.: every sequence produced by the processes is the 
same in statistical properties, or, in other words, a traveling 
particle always crosses all the points of its phase space.  However, 
in physics and biology, the facts and events are never ergodic. 
 Statistical homogeneity is just a fiction, if we evaluate the world 
around us and our brain/mind.


Therefore, the role of information could not be as fundamental as 
currently believed.


P.S.: topology analyzes information by another point of view, but it’s 
an issue for the next time, I think…



*Arturo Tozzi*

AA Professor Physics, University North Texas

Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy

Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba

http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/




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--
-
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 0
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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Re: [Fis] Fwd: Who may proof that consciousness is an Euclidean n-space ??? (Jerry Chandler)

[Karl Javorszky]

Explanations



Thank you, Jerry, for pointing out the excellent treatise by Hempel &
Oppenheim on the Logic of Explanation. As I understand their viewpoint, the
ultimate explanation refers to a system of facts that are known to all who
use that system in which the explanation is placed. The explanation
pictures reality, but the reality is outside of the explanation. The
principle, expressed by Pythagoras, of “a²+b²=c²” is the deepest possible
explanation of how measurement instruments, like theodolites, work; but
note that the explanation makes no mention of sides of triangles, it is a
simple algebraic statement, into the terms of which we project, think,
look, visualise unto their application as a tool to calculate distances.
The validity of the explanation is rooted in the facts that the numbers
deliver. The ultimate explanation shows a relation among numbers – let me
hope that I have interpreted the Hampel-Oppenheimer work correctly (by
restating the results of Wittgenstein).

Now we have a discovery – made possible by the availability of computers –
of basic numeric relations that are as fundamental as “a²+b²=c²”. The
present task is to alert the fellows in the applied fields that here is an
explanation, and this could well be that explanation which you have been
looking for. The task before the customer of the invention is again that of
looking ideas into numbers, with the difference that we now look not sides
of triangles but strings of matter-cum-energy-cum-information into the
numbers. We see in reality the patterns this numeric explanation delivers
by the magnetic field lines, by the eruptions of strings from the Sun, by
the patterns of radiation as stars collapse, and as they explode … there
are very many fields where the relevance of the explanation is visible to
the eye; wherever filaments appear, a reorder is at work. The “where” has
many variations, here it can be visualised as a string connecting the
possible “wheres” during a reorder. The “what” can be anything that numbers
can represent: dense or very dense predictability loads are this layman’s
associations. The force lines are visible as lines in an Excel
illustration, if one makes the trouble to set up one’s own resorting and
track-following machine.

The numbers support a different set of their interpretation, too. The
resorting can be seen as the infusion of an ingredient into a cell. After
the flooding of the cell with ingredient A has been completed, a reorder
into A has taken place. Now a different biochemical constituent is to be
supplied into the cell. Enter flooding by ingredient B. Can anyone tell,
how this – concurrent or almost concurrent flooding with A and B - will
affect the state, positions, availability of the elements of the cell? Yes,
the satisfied customer of the string-thickness-measuring toposcopic
tautomat can deliver. He has spent up to 10 hours of programming “
*sort(a,b)*” in many variations, but now he is very content, because he can
see the force lines, generated by organising natural numbers.

The bees also utilise this kind of built in hardwired numeric table.
Likewise do we all, including children and animals. The ability to be
oriented in space is delivered by ganglions that are organised in a
phylogenetically more archaic way than those of the cortex. The regions and
functionalities of the brain are of course highly interconnected, far more
than the layers of an onion. That bees, besides knowing how to be oriented
in space, also can count up to four, and communicate about it, has nothing
to do with the statement that the knowledge of spatial orientation is a
more archaic capacity of the brain than that of abstracting of perceptions
and enumerating the abstracted ideas. If the bees can count abstract ideas
up to four, that would indeed be an argument.

The algorithms proposed here allow a conceptualisation of a feed-back loop
that condenses information. Let us imagine cell X to be flooded by
ingredients A and B and that this leads to a discontinuity, as too many
elements that are to be flooded by B are not available because they are
presently flooded with A, therefore the system breaks down. The resulting
discontinuity could well have the form of an electric discharge, which then
causes some concurrent flooding to stop. Then the frequency of how often an
electric discharge happens would signal and determine the biochemical
logistics of the cell by ingredients: voilá a ganglion, connecting hormonal
states with patterns of bursts.

Clever use of the discontinuities (of the firings of our ganglions while we
think), means that there exist regularities about the genesis of
discontinuities (which a less clever setup does not make use of). A numeric
tool that keeps producing non-realisable predictions, ending in predictable
breakdowns, by being in itself, on design, potentially self-contradictory:
such a tool will not be first on the list for well-educated humans to take
fancy to. The pity is that Nature is not