[ Sunday 17 July 1983 - Saturday 23 July 1983 ]
[notesbook Creation - The Metaphysics of Peace = CMP I: DB20]
[page 88]
Model the Universe as without memory communicating through time from its first state to its last state. Its initial mass energy determines the rate of communication, that is the spacetime resolution of the system, via Planck's constant. If the resolution had been infinite, there would have been no change. As it was, change was possible, and all possible structures were explored. So what is time? Times arrow is a direction of communication. Mathematics describes the system because it deals with structures which do not involve contradiction. Other structures, which do involve contradiction, are short lived.
cf bandwidth of TV link. Resolution can be improved by better coding, eliminating redundancy.
[page 89]
Fishermen of Connemara. Driving a tunnel through the London clay. Ewen McColl / Sean Keane
Reduction of variety, it is bad to use a man as a common labourer.
Relativity makes us look at the relative motion between two particles. This is a special case of communication between particles. it may be that all intelligibility lies in spatially extended structures though they may be very small. The wave function formalism allows for superposition = interpenetration., but this might be a time blurred reality, part of a cycle of communication which repeats with a certain regularity (frequency). There always comes a time with such a setup when a communication error opens it to change ie the emission of a photon, etc, and a whole new history starts [the Universe is quantised in time as well as in space]
The whole theme of Einstein's work is that physics must be done locally. Communication does in fact move from point to point, at a velocity whose maximum is c
[page 90]
Conservation of mass energy = conservation of rate of communication, ie the maximum resolution of the Universe is fixed and does not change unless Planck's constant changes.
Why does the Universe expand? The same amount is happening, but it is spread over much more space and time. Small islands of low mass energy (planets) are giving rise to intelligent astrophysics.
We should expect to find all mathematical structures realised, if not in this then in other Universe.
What we are saying in effect is that the computer modelling approach is very close to how things actually happen in the real Universe only there is no memory and we have real time on line full on parallel processing, the parallel processors each feeding into another in an hierarchical network.
Exact properties of electron etc are averages over a long time. QED is an exercise in summing all different possible interaction of of an electrically charged particle. Measurements over long times confirm this behaviour, although a long time in an electron's life is in fact many electrons.
[page 91]
A lot of physical problems require renormalisation in the mathematics which, it would seem, are a bit of a fiction since they involve, like calculus, competing and cancelling infinities. For this reason we might see them as as hocery which might eventually be circumvented by models closer to the truth. If we are to replace quantum mechanics, we must do it at the root, with a very different physical picture.
[classical] electron has infinite self energy.
Science at a given time is what works.
Classical mechanics is a special case of quantum mechanics where h is allowed to go to zero
Quantum mechanics 1926 and 1927.
Quantum mechanics is a method of computing the probable outcome of a series of physical experiments.
Probabilities are added by wave functions, not by classical linear methods.
[page 92]
Feynman: Difficulties of quantum mechanics: the classical two slit experiment. The communication approach changes nothing, The wave function remains true as the quantum mechanical model of reality What the communication approach might add to this, we are not yet quite sure, except that it provides an overview. The quantum mechanical behaviour of physical particles is obviously quite close to the core of the Universe. What is important is a particular value of h.
The consistency of quantum mechanics is guaranteed by the uncertainty principle which says that at those points where we would expect contradiction, we cannot know what is going on. In other words, we cannot resolve the Universe to get a contradiction out of it. This is analogous to the ambiguity of language preventing a head on collision of apparently contradictory, of perhaps, complementary views of reality.
The concept of [invisible] interfering alternatives is fundamental to all of quantum mechanics.
When alternatives cannot possibly be resolved by any experiment, they always interfere [interact].
[page 93]
In general relativity, energy is conserved.
The boundary of a boundary is zero is a mathematical model which makes conservation of energy automatic. But, Mr Wheeler (page 539) you have begged the question, since you have simply plugged in a mathematical model which makes certain that energy is conserved. .So what? Perhaps it is not/ Information (entropy?) is not conserved. Misner, Thorne and Wheeler
Feynman: Quantum mechanics and path integrals. Feynman.
Are interfering alternatives time division multiplexing?
Observations are part of the physics of the event, and, naturally, change it. Just as a third party changes the interaction between two people. Eg marriage guidance counsellors, family court etc.
Quantum mechanics and path integrals. Let us assume that each time slot of electron life adds a certain amount of definition to our knowledge of how electrons behave in a given situation. This may be done with one electron or many electrons. The values of various electron parameters do converge on a certain limit, just as human average weights etc do, but it may be that this
[page 94]
average is in fact a meaningless mathematical artifact.
The critical point for starters is to reformulate quantum mechanics in terms of communication theory If that works, then we can go on to gravitation, QED, QCD and right up through evolution etc to the questions of human knowledge and creativity which are studied in this essay.
An electron, through its self potential, is continually communicating with itself. The average of this communication over a long period is what we might call the real electron. Cf article in Scientific American.
Feynman: 'We find in quantum mechanics that the amplitudes φ are solutions of a completely deterministic equation (The Schroedinger equation). Knowledge of φ at t = 0 implies its knowledge at all subsequent times. The interpretation of the absolute value of φ squared as the probability of an event is an indeterministic interpretation.' Feynman, page 22.
A deterministic equation or law, such as Schoedinger's equation, places a limit on the complexity of a physical situation. Since the outcome of a deterministic event is
[page 95]
completely specified by the initial conditions, the equation says in effect that once you know the initial conditions you know the lot.
[the basic initial and ongoing condition in the Universe is that no inconsistency will be observed.]
Feynman and Hibbs page 22: 'Why can we only predict the probability that a given experiment will lead to a given result? From whence does this uncertainty arise?' From the limitations of communication in the Universe? He says it is a question of size.
These, they say are in the nature of philosophical questions. They are not necessary for the further development of physics. Is this so? Maybe the nagging question of uncertainty is the key to the next step forward, and suggests, a la Wheeler a binary [digital] basis for the Universe.
Let us postulate that the Universe is a communication channel without memory, that is each succeeding state exists as a direct result of the state which immediately preceded it. Let us postulate further than this channel has a finite bandwidth, related to the total mass-energy of the Universe via Planck's constant through a relationship of the form I = E/h. giving a
[page 96]
value of approximately n bits per second. Given this bandwidth, we must accept a limitation on the spacetime resolution of events in the Universe. This seems to provide a natural explanation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Low velocity particles Schroedinger; high velocity, Dirac (relativistic)
Feynman and Hibbs p 24: 'Today any general law that we have been able to deduce from the principle of superposition of amplitudes, such as the characteristics of angular momentum seem to work. But the detailed interaction still elude us. This suggests that amplitudes will exist in a future theory, but their method of calculation may be strange to us.'
Some of the constraints of communication might be added to the ins and outs of the wave equation etc.
Lagrangian: Classical action is an extremum of the Lagrangian. This is the basic law of classical mechanics.
Classical limit deals with very high [infinite?] data rates, where the resulting path is specified with corresponding precision.
[page 97]
. . .
Feynman and Hibbs page 36: unit of time defined as h / mc2 = period of one bit of information transfer.
page 57: Putting a particle through a narrow slit causes it to forget its velocity information. Using a communication analogy, not as much information can get through a narrow slit as a wide slit.
page 246: The energy of the vacuum state, predicted by the mathematics, but does it occur in reality? cf negative, imaginary etc roots in quadratic equations portraying some aspect of reality in which negative roots are meaningless.
page 245: Does a vacuum act like a uniform density of mass in producing a gravitational field.
QED, despite its manifest experimental success, seems beset with mathematical and logical chicanery. There must be truth in it because it works, but it looks very awkward.
Why in God's name do things attract one another in the first place? That is what makes them all stick together and brings
[page 98]
a unity into the whole thing. The answer to this question must lie well outside the range of human perception, since it is an essential components of the whole mechanism that embodies human perception. It must be accessible only through the intellectual processes of insight and verification which form the stuff of science. There is therefore no practical limit to the "faroutness" of the eventual explanation. What we discover is that we are driven into more and more weird and wonderful (and sensibly remote) explanations of what is going on. At least the early mythological explanations dealt with categories and beings whose nature and motivations were readily understood by all in terms of their own desires and feelings and activities. Hence we have the Greek pantheon, a very human lot, to be gradually replaced by the more recondite speculations of the more scientifically oriented of the Greek philosophers. The communication model, then, should not be ruled out of court on the basis of weirdness. [Now in 2003 it does not seem the least bit weird, and harks back to the communications between the gods and men of old.]
Feynman and Hibbs page 251: All this cosmic jive is a mathematical discussion about where the world it at, and is expressed in mathematical language which might very well describe the structures that are being realised by a digital computing system of finite bandwidth. These structures are real realisations of
[page 97a]
the mathematics whose claim to existence is simply that they do not involve any contradictions. In other words they are there in the structure of being to be realised either by universal insight or human insight. This is a metaphysical statement, but it must say something about science, specifically, we might be able to find ways (such as by our computers) to realise mathematical structures that have not as yet come to be in the Universe, but this involves a contradiction, because for a mathematics to come to be in the human mind is for it to come to be simpliciter. Nevertheless it must be translated into a more operational form by the sort of transcription process that converts my DNA into me. The human being exists in the world specified in two ways. Does the electron? Its second specification is the scientific one. Other intelligent beings might get an entirely different slant on this.
. . .
Mathematics exists to be discovered by intelligence, either ours or the Universe's. It has already done the science we are doing now, but we might yet discover something it doesn't know,
[page 98a}
except that we are it at work. Everything we do is part of the Universe and must come into our explanation of it, which is part of it too. It must have an explanation which is the explanation of itself. That is where consciousness leads us.
Mathematics is the study of consistent structures, ie those involving no contradictions [but see Mortensen]. The content of such structures depends upon their initial conditions, ie postulates. The Universe itself comprises also consistent structures, realised in some way [mathematical structures are realised in human minds and culture], probably by communication. The Universe itself imposes its own initial conditions, although the indeterminacy of the Universe probably means that it runs through all possible initial conditions, thus realising in some way all possible non-contradictory (consistent) structures, to be found around us. If we postulate that the structure of the Universe is the result of an intelligent process with the same general behaviour as the human mind, we must also accept that anything we can come up with and prove to be consistent will probably be found somewhere in the Universe, even if it is only in the human mind, which is, after all, part of the Universe.
[page 99]
The new postulate of relativity has obviously got to be related to the intelligibility of the universe and of mind.
A physical theory is always a mathematical structure, subject, in some instances, to a bit of ad hocery.
The above argument about mathematical structure does not preclude the same structure appearing in many different places, eg the entropy formulation on thermodynamics and information theory.
Material generally means spatially extended. The computer example developed elsewhere shows that spatial extension has nothing to do with spirituality. One can postulate that all physical, which means all, systems are spatially extended and their intelligibility lies not in the spatiality itself, but in the structural connections, that is communication between distinct points in space. Of course it need not be Euclidian - the back plane of a computer exists in space, but the connections to be found there obey a mapping of their own. What is important is the topology, not the Euclidian metric. The upshot of all this is that there is no contradiction between matter and spirit, material and intellectual and intelligible.