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A
Neo-Classical Information
is Reality Postulate —"there is no spoon" |
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Programmed
Reality
By James Driessen JD/MBA/B.S. Mech.
engineering |
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Ever
wonder about the information is reality postulate? Ever wonder why it might be
different today than it was say at the turn of the century? In 2001 for example, it was called the
“simulation argument,” meaning we live in a programmed reality. Programmed reality
(or “intelligent design” in religious circles) could never really catch on as
anything more than a “pseudo science” because in 2001 scientists all told us
that information could never be the “substance of reality.” It had to be the other way around. It was science’s inevitable conclusion that
information could never mean anything without a person to observe it. Science held that information was the result
of the physical and thereby no way that the physical could ever be the result
of the information. Consider the analogy
of the human body for example. If living
cells make up a human body, you cannot also say that a human body is what makes
up the cells. It was just not
fathomable.
In
other words, without an observation (and thereby comprehension of what the
information means) the information itself could never be “conveyed.” Any such
non-conveyable information was useless and non-existent (and not information at
all). Information by itself is just something
in the abstract with no purpose or substance.
In order for information to become information, it had to become
physical and transmittable. Without the
physicality of the words on paper, the sound or radio waves of communication,
the light waves of visible information, or the physical data bits on a media
substrate like a disk or flash drive, the information remained meaningless with
nothing to decode it.
Flash
forward to today, and concepts of information science have once again come full
circle. We realize that existence alone
does not make a “reality.” We have
turned the information question back in on itself and decided that nature can
exist (with trees falling in the woods and making noises) but reality occurs
only when an observer is there to sense it.
Reality and existence are not the same
thing. Reality is the subset of
existence. It is the observer that can
turn the existence into a reality.
Existence can make a reality, but reality in turn can almost never flip
itself around to make an existence. Without a consensus on that reality,
existence is the abstract component and reality is what we need in order to
physically interact.
Science held that information was the result of the physical and thereby no way that the physical could ever be the result of the information.
We have heard the radio, TV,
and internet methods about the power of positive thinking and how if you wish
for something hard enough and believe in it long enough, that somehow it will
become reality. But experience tells us
this is not the case. As long as an
observer can properly retain the existence information state within its memory,
a consensus (or agreement with a third party observer) is the requirement for a
resulting reality. You cannot normally conjure up a reality all by yourself.
But, just because trees fall all by themselves in the woods all the time and
always when they do, they will always make a noise —that does not mean that
they will always make a reality. Without the subjective components of sense and
perception arising from the stimulation of an observer’s internal senses
created by external phenomena (known as “qualia”)
reality remains disjunct from existence and no
quantum collapse can occur without it.
Let’s
say it again in our minds to see if this statement is properly comprehended:
Without subjective components of sense and perception arising from the stimulation of an observer’s internal senses created by external phenomena (known as “qualia”) reality remains disjunct from existence and no quantum collapse can occur.
It
is the existential tree falling (in modern quantum mechanics) that remains
irrelevant to the observation to turn it into reality. We might rethink the falling tree thought
experiment to reconsider (even within the most modern schools of quantum
science) that there is an inexplicable nature of what experiencing the falling
tree in reality actually means.
Today,
science is stuck once again with the ineffable nature of what it means to experience
things (even if we can resolve the nature of being things). In this life of ours where thinking about the
quality of things has brought the quantum sciences back from particle physics
and into this realm of macro-quantum mechanics, a tree’s falling is real to a
squirrel in the tree ... even if the squirrel’s reality never was capable of
creating the human observer thought experiment.
There always remains a probability of the tree’s existence, whether or
not consensus human reality ever took place.
Probability
together with enough squirrels, birds, bugs, or even satellites with cameras
merely flying over do not create an information system capable or retaining qualia, or at least incapable of the super-positioning
state of consensus reality so that the “information” about the existence of the
tree falling will remain unrecorded in memory.
In our reality existence can only be what the mind remembers.
That
falling tree’s existence has still not been adequately collapsed into a
consensus reality (though we are getting much closer and the world view of
trees falling in the woods is changing).
We
may have to rethink the mechanics of the Qubit
(quantum bits of reality) and remember that the "0s and 1s" are not
the true and false logical mechanisms we want them to be (at least not in the
true and false sense we understood them to be) but they are a set of tools for
communicating information amongst sentient, sapient, and salient capable human
beings. Squirrels and birds and insects
in trees, for example, will most certainly retain their own realities, but
those world entities have yet to develop an information network capable
communicating such a consensus reality with other squirrels (as we believe
humans have).
The
first Matrix movie dropped in 1999 and suddenly it became popular to think of
us as living in a simulated reality. The
science that was missing however (if there was any in the movie) was that no
matter what the nature of reality (even if it is simulated) our reality is
still the only one we have. Think electronic circuitry 101 with imaginary
numbers and right-hand rules,
Where
“Ontic” = all non-hidden variables and “Phenom” = all hidden variables, the sum of all the Ontic is always greater than the sum of all the Phenom. This simple
formula today will help us to at least understand the "why" of
consciousness and even perhaps a little bit more about the "how" of
consciousness (even if we can never reach consensus on the "what" of
consciousness.)
If
this all sounds confusing to you, our nature of experience is meant to be that
way. This is the new counterintuitive counterfactual of today's quantum
information theory. It has to be mind
boggling because the unobservable that once took a primary position in the tree
falling thought experiment reality calculation now takes on a completely
different position. We now know that in
this reality, in order for this reality to exist, the observable reality must
always remain greater than the unobservable.
In 2001 we were fine with having more unobservable (hidden variables)
“existing” than observable (unhidden variables). Today, however, all of the probabilities and
possibilities of the unseen universe, within this reality (the one that counts)
the number of unhidden variables must always remain greater than hidden
variables for a consensus reality to ever take place. Existence can certainly take place and might
even become a reality, but it can only become reality if and only if there is
enough information recorded that can result in a consensus reality to emerge
from the mere existence. For any reality
to truly drop out of the mere existence, we will need a sapient, salient, and
sentient memory to displace that existence into a reality.
This
particular version of the Ontic/Phenom
equation (corollary to Bell's inequality) is a counterintuitive interpretation.
Bell always assumed that there are more hidden variables than unhidden
variables. This is true in an “All that
there is” sense of existence. However,
in reality physics, we now know that the issue of whether a variable will be
hidden or unhidden depends solely upon who is going to be the reference
observer. It is quite simple. Science simply had to lose its arrogance of
thinking that our reality was the center of the universe. Much in the same way in our development we
had to once admit that the earth was not the center of the solar system. When
our observers are not the only observers that can exist, we are no longer the
center of existence. Rather, we are only
the center of our own reality.
The
“information is reality postulate” has changed from where it was in 2001. With our new epiphenomenal studies and the
statement of qualia as a nature of experience (that
is to say that —today we have been able to boil it down to consciousness) and
the “information is reality postulate” has received a new birth. We are now simply stating in our own personal
version of consensus reality that it always takes at least two brain cells to
come up with one imagination. Therefore, we are in a sense born again. The
number of physical unhidden variables will always outnumber the hidden
variables in our own version of reality.
So let’s also repeat that together in our minds to see if we really
understand it:
It
always takes at least two brain cells to come up with one imagination.
It
is no longer a chicken and egg problem.
It is an epi-phenomenal problem and the
chicken is the egg. All reality is
information only. Existence alone can
never create a reality without an observer.
Or in other words, as one of my favorite pop culture movie quotes puts
it —“there is no spoon.”