Ask A Genius 672: Relational Degrees of Freedom
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/01/10
[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are you thinking about recently regarding informational cosmology?
Rick Rosner: All right, we were discussing Ed Fredkin and digital physics. I first came across the concept of digital physics around 1972, when a physics professor, who was the father of my brother’s basketball teammate, lent me the book “Gravitation” by Wheeler and others. It was a monumental work on gravity, a massive, 1000-page book that I barely understood. However, it introduced me to Wheeler’s concept of “It From Bit,” his vision of a computational universe, which was the prevailing idea in digital physics at that time, around 1977. I’ve been contemplating it for quite a while, and looking at the universe, I don’t see a clear computer-like correlation. The bits of information don’t seem to be stored in proton-electron pairs or in the arrangement of electrons around a nucleus. These don’t act as gates or bits in a computer. The state of an electron in relation to its proton, or the state of protons linked via shared electrons, doesn’t seem to correspond to the binary states in a computer, as digital physics might imply.
Now, I’m sure if I delved deeper into digital physics, someone would clarify that this isn’t exactly what they mean. But without that deeper understanding, I think the information in the universe is more about the interactions among particles. It’s not holographic or holistic, terms I dislike, but rather aggregate information held among the entirety of matter.
Jacobsen: I prefer the term ‘relational.’ It differentiates between digital physics and informational cosmology; whether it’s the 1972 version, 1978, or 1992 version, it’s more about relational physics versus digital physics.
Rosner: I think that’s a good term.
Jacobsen: It doesn’t confine us to discrete versus continuum.
Rosner: Yeah, I like it. This talk was meant to discuss what to call this concept and how much credence to give it. We know that the information we observe in the universe, which includes every part’s interactions with every other part, defines all matter. This shared information prevents the universe from being too fuzzy, despite its quantum mechanical fuzziness. It’s unfuzzy due to the sheer number of particles, yet fuzzy in quantum terms. This setup requires widespread information sharing, with geographic locality playing a role. Things in one part of the universe have more information about each other than about distant parts.
There are laws governing interactions among matter, like the inverse square force law and the inverse square law for waves such as light and gravity. Simply put, things closer to each other have more effect on each other than things far apart. The information is both shared universally and localized in a straightforward way.
Jacobsen: But the localization is representative of the tightness of the information’s association with each other. So, it’s not thinking because the way you’re phrasing it almost has an intuitive grasp of Newtonian Mechanics in it. It’s sort of like it’s out there and things are kind of distant apart from one another as opposed to informationally related and informational relationship determines the tightness of themselves in space-time, in terms of distance.
Rosner: Yeah. So you’re just taking what you see with gravitation and all the forces that work over a significant distance, which is really just gravitation and the electromagnetic force. They have the inverse square and really when you’re talking about being down a potential, well, it’s one over X instead of one over R. But that’s a straightforward thing that everybody who studied physics knows and if you say well extend it to the idea that how every part of the universe is defined and the particles in it is to find relationally, it may not work exactly as inverse squared but it’s kind of what’s behind Mock’s principle though a lot of physicists will say, “Yeah but Mock’s principles never been adequately mathematically integrated” It’s never been proven in any kind of substantiated in any kind of way except for intuitively to be the deal behind inertia. So, your term relationally seems to apply that at least when you’re talking about how everything in the universe is defined in relation to everything else, it’s right in that sense.
Jacobsen: Here’s an analyst conversation in philosophy; is it being or non-being? Is that the split of everything of existence? I take the same perspective on is it discrete or continuum. I don’t think those are adequate. So, in the same way you’d have to sidestep being and not being to get to a proper answer, to question properly; I think similar with discrete or continuum; I think it’s “neither is the answer.” It’s relationally.
Rosner: Also, I think you can put it on… you just said continuum; I think you can put it on a dial or a continuum where you can kind of up for discussion is how distributed is the information in a strictly digital universe. All the information is, at least by according to my naive understanding of it, is strictly localized. It’s like every bit of information is like in one place in the hardware.
Jacobsen: So, maybe, it’s relational degrees of freedom; in the sense, the looser the relationship the more distant and the tighter relationship the closer?
Rosner: We don’t need to solve it now but we can just say that there’s this up for discussion or up for trying to figure out is where along the continuum between completely local information and completely distributed information, where are different forms of information in the universe? We know that the gravity and electromagnetism work according to this inverse square deal which is fairly strictly geometrical and that maybe something [11:40] in with regard to like inertia or with regard to the universe defining itself quantum mechanically via the whole history of exchanged particles over the entire lifespan of the universe. That may be at a different point on the local versus distributed dial.
And then there are two questions; it’s that how distributed is the information and its question one. And question two is; is the information in the universe just about the universe itself or is it also about this other thing that’s being modeled in the universe the same way our minds model the external world? Our mind is a thing that can be itself be modeled geometrically we hope but it is modeling, the information that we work with in our minds is about a world external to our minds. And we know that the universe we live in has all the information that needs to define itself. So, on the one hand, you have a universe that’s self-defined and on the other hand you have our minds which are defining an external reality, modeling an external reality.
One’s entirely internal; the Universe defining itself. And one’s entirely external; the mind modeling external reality which includes the brain and the mind and all. One’s external and one’s internal and then there is a dial or a continuum as to whether those two things are perfectly equivalent which is IC as we understand it or whether the mind is completely distinct from and in function and form from the universe and the intuition that they’re probably equivalent and each working on two different levels; one defining itself as the universe does and the other defining something that it’s modeling that’s external, whether both the mind and the universe do both or not.
[Recording End]
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