Ask A Genius 628: Is there structureless structure?
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/09/14
[Recording Start]
Rick Rosner: Hello?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s functioning. Alright, let’s get started.
Rosner: Okay.
Jacobsen: We were going to talk about the concept of locality and its contrast with the holographic principle.
Rosner: Yes, more or less. Off the record, you mentioned a Google search on ‘informational cosmology,’ a term we’ve somewhat adopted, and found earlier instances of its usage.
Jacobsen: That’s right.
Rosner: Not too surprising, really. It’s a useful term, applicable to various concepts. Anyone familiar with quantum mechanics, computing, and related fields understands the concept of information. Some of them also grasp the idea that the universe could be an information processor, or even fundamentally made of information, which feels intuitively correct.
Jacobsen: Indeed.
Rosner: If you were creating a futuristic science fiction movie, set in, say, the 22nd century, and needed some speculative physics, you might base it on information. It has a modern, science-fiction feel and seems plausible, though information theory wasn’t developed until 1948 by Claude Shannon at Bell Labs. So, it’s a relatively new field, and its deep connections with quantum mechanics weren’t immediately obvious.
Jacobsen: That makes sense.
Rosner: Seventy years on, people are quite familiar with the concept of information. It wasn’t a popular topic in the 1930s, but now it’s prevalent. We could use Google Ngram to track its historical usage, but that’s a task for another time.
Jacobsen: Agreed.
Rosner: Regarding what others have said about informational cosmology, the concept of a holographic universe versus an information-based one sparked thoughts about the nature of locality versus holography. It’s akin to the philosophical debate on atomism versus infinite divisibility – whether the universe’s components are endlessly divisible or ultimately composed of indivisible atoms. Recent discoveries point to limits in the divisibility of the universe’s components.
Jacobsen: A compelling point.
Rosner: Right. The question of locality’s limits, or its spectrum, is likely resolvable through theory and observation. Locality is practical for our daily lives, providing spatially limited, manipulable material objects. However, non-locality is essential too. Without it, the universe wouldn’t be able to communicate the existence of local entities, rendering them isolated.
Jacobsen: So both aspects are crucial?
Rosner: Exactly. Local entities need their existence acknowledged by the broader universe, to an extent. For instance, we’re unaware of happenings on planets outside our solar system, except for the scant details we can infer, like from the closest planets around Alpha Centauri. Local information must be communicated to ensure continuity, like an apple remaining on the table even if you leave the room. The universe incorporates both locality and non-locality in this system.
Jacobsen: There are varying impacts of non-locality?
Rosner: Yes. We obtain information from photons, whether it’s about a nearby apple or a distant galaxy. Distance reduces the detail we can discern. Large structures are visible from afar, but finer details require specific information systems, like spacecraft transmitting data from Mars.
Jacobsen: Local information is more detailed?
Rosner: Precisely. Local entities have distinct structures, unlike the blurrier representations in a holographic view, where even a small snapshot can reveal general images of distant entities. The key physics and metaphysics questions involve understanding how information operates within the universe, determining the nature of both local and non-local phenomena. That concludes our first discussion topic.
[Recording End]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 