Ask A Genius 1019: The Dr. Claus Volko Session
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/25
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: As we did previously, I have a question from someone, Dr. Claus Volko. His question is framed as a statement. Dr. Claus Volko says, “I would like to learn about Rick’s ‘theory of everything’ if possible.” He has no specific questions.
Rick Rosner: So, in a nutshell, the universe is described by quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is the theory of information. Enough people work in quantum mechanics to know if that is generally known. It is known roughly, but to be more specific, quantum mechanics is a precise mathematical characterization of how systems operate given incomplete information. The standard example is the two-slit experiment. If you hang up a sheet with holes and fire photons (particles) through it and you have a detector that tells you which hole the photon passed through, the interference pattern created on the other side of the sheet will show that each photon passed through all the holes, within reason.
If you have many holes clustered around a one-inch diameter target and another hole three miles away, you will not see much interference from the distant hole. However, within reason, you can see a pattern created by each photon passing through all the reasonably accessible holes. This is because the system, which is the universe, has yet to be set up to detect which hole the photon went through. Given incomplete information about which hole the photon passed through, and according to quantum mechanics, which can perfectly mathematically describe the situation, it went through all the holes. Since quantum mechanics is the most thoroughly confirmed scientific theory in history, it makes sense to say that the universe is based on information.
Then you have to ask for information to whom. Where is the information, and who is using it? What is it, and where is it? Just because you have evidence that the universe is information, it does not tell you much about the nature of that information in terms of its utility. My theory, or our theory of informational cosmology, postulates that information is in a closed-ish system like the universe, and a highly self-consistent system must exist. You can only have an information system if it is self-consistent, like our brains. This theory suggests that information works the same way in the universe as in our minds. The universe’s matter, space, and time are physical manifestations of the information in a vast, self-consistent information-processing system akin to a giant mind. There must be some mathematical system that people will eventually develop to characterize the information in their minds.
The universe, with the same math, applies to both. This means you can draw many analogies, such as our minds thinking about the world around us, and you can argue that the universe thinks about something, perhaps some world beyond the universe. You can make many other helpful analogies. I argue that the universe appears “Big Bangy” as a characteristic of information rather than an actual Big Bang with a starting point of 13.8 billion years ago. The universe is constantly unfolding or boiling up in a rolling Big Bang that, over some vast period, generally has an apparent Big Bang age of 13.8 billion years because that is how much information the universe contains. So, no single Big Bang and the universe operates on the neutron cycle. If you work off an analogy with our minds, we can understand that our brain, our mind, has a moment-to-moment information capacity.
It is hard to measure, but it is probably measurable. Over the series of moments of our thinking, we can form new thoughts and retrieve old ones. So, the universe itself can cycle old matter. A galaxy forms and the stars in the galaxy have lifespans ranging from a billion to probably 20 billion years. Stars have existed for several tens of billions of years. So, over 20, 30, or 40 billion years, a galaxy will light up and then run out of fuel as all its fusible elements are fused, eventually going dark and fading away. The universe has a mechanism built into its structure, facilitated by particles that travel across the universe, such as photons and neutrinos. This mechanism allows old galaxies to light up again when informationally appropriate. Moreover, there you have it in a nutshell.
Jacobsen: If you were to explain this at the most basic level, how would you describe it?
Rosner: The theory?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: The mathematics and physics behind the universe are analogous to the information in our minds. The universe is an information map, just as our minds are, and you can reason by analogy. In simplest terms, if you want to lose some people who might think it is nonsense, consciousness is likely an emergent property of a sufficiently complex information processing system. The information processing that generates the feeling of consciousness is probably informationally efficient and likely to emerge in any sufficiently complex information processing system. By complex, I mean multimodal, nonlinear, and self-consistent.
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