Gravity, Time and Leibniz.

[uwot]

How could time be independent of events? What possible metaphysical meaning could be attached to a time interval in which nothing occurs?.

Beats me.

Einstein's mass/energy equivalence principle defines physicality as an energy density map so the universe as an event is simply the journey of energy through time.

So what is energy in a physical sense? What do you mean by time in this instance?

[Wyman]

Leo:

You've said some version of this several times:

You and I may be able to see this but very few physicists are able to make a distinction between a physical model and the mathematical representation of a physical model.

What is the difference between a physical model and mathematical model? My guess preliminarily is, that you are making an analogy between a collective (shared among physicists) physical model and the phenomenal perception of the the individual observer in some Kantian sense. Then you are making an analogy between the mathematical models used by physicists and the faculties we use to judge our phenomenal perceptions. Perhaps I'm way off, but I think the distinction you take for granted between physical and mathematical is at the heart of your viewpoint and needs some elucidation.

[Obvious Leo]

So what is energy in a physical sense? What do you mean by time in this instance?

In my philosophy I simply equate energy with information. At the Planck scale information/energy ENCODES for emergent patterns of organisation which are defined by the observer as particles of matter. Therefore these particles have only an epistemic status and exist only as observer constructs. This is what Bohr was getting at with the Copenhagen interpretation long before the Standard Model was even invented. A quark is only a quark because that's the way we've inter-subjectively agreed to describe an observation. The same could be said for all the various particles, waves, fields and forces in physics because these things simply cannot be granted any objectively real ontology. We can model these particles as encoding for atoms and the atoms as encoding for molecules and once we do that we move from the domain of physics into the domain of chemistry and then onwards into biology. We can think of the patterns of organisation in nature being embedded within each other in layers of informational complexity like matryoshka dolls. We can invent whatever laws of physics and chemistry we like to model what we observe but what we cannot do is say that the laws are making reality, when in fact it is reality which is defining the laws.

This is a profoundly different way of thinking the world because it means that Newton's reductionist definition of determinism is false. The universe is defined as a non-linear dynamic system, or a dissipative structure, and it is well understood that such systems are self-organising. They run counter to the second law of thermodynamics by evolving from the simple to the complex, exactly as the universe has been doing for the past 13.8 billion years. What evidence is there for this? YOU AND ME.

What is the difference between a physical model and mathematical model? My guess preliminarily is, that you are making an analogy between a collective (shared among physicists) physical model and the phenomenal perception of the the individual observer in some Kantian sense.

Precisely. To put it most simply I say that physics is modelling a holographic representation of reality and not reality itself. Since the speed of light is finite this proposition is unarguable because we can never observe reality the way it is, only the way it was. Newton's world is a timeless one because it is a frozen snapshot of a world which exists no longer, which means our models of physics are dissecting a lifeless cadaver on a slab.

Perhaps I'm way off, but I think the distinction you take for granted between physical and mathematical is at the heart of your viewpoint and needs some elucidation.

You're not way off, mate, you're spot on. What my philosophy seeks to offer is the noumenon which underpins the observed phenomena, the ding und sich of the physical world. However a detailed elucidation of my reasoning lies beyond the scope of this forum. I've written millions of words on the subject but I've done my best to condense the gist of it into this synopsis. I'd be honoured if you took the time to read it carefully and offer me your thoughts.

https://austintorney.wordpress.com/2015 ... n-de-jong/

[Wyman]

So what is energy in a physical sense? What do you mean by time in this instance?

In my philosophy I simply equate energy with information. At the Planck scale information/energy ENCODES for emergent patterns of organisation which are defined by the observer as particles of matter. Therefore these particles have only an epistemic status and exist only as observer constructs. This is what Bohr was getting at with the Copenhagen interpretation long before the Standard Model was even invented. A quark is only a quark because that's the way we've inter-subjectively agreed to describe an observation. The same could be said for all the various particles, waves, fields and forces in physics because these things simply cannot be granted any objectively real ontology. We can model these particles as encoding for atoms and the atoms as encoding for molecules and once we do that we move from the domain of physics into the domain of chemistry and then onwards into biology. We can think of the patterns of organisation in nature being embedded within each other in layers of informational complexity like matryoshka dolls. We can invent whatever laws of physics and chemistry we like to model what we observe but what we cannot do is say that the laws are making reality, when in fact it is reality which is defining the laws.

This is a profoundly different way of thinking the world because it means that Newton's reductionist definition of determinism is false. The universe is defined as a non-linear dynamic system, or a dissipative structure, and it is well understood that such systems are self-organising. They run counter to the second law of thermodynamics by evolving from the simple to the complex, exactly as the universe has been doing for the past 13.8 billion years. What evidence is there for this? YOU AND ME.

What is the difference between a physical model and mathematical model? My guess preliminarily is, that you are making an analogy between a collective (shared among physicists) physical model and the phenomenal perception of the the individual observer in some Kantian sense.

Precisely. To put it most simply I say that physics is modelling a holographic representation of reality and not reality itself. Since the speed of light is finite this proposition is unarguable because we can never observe reality the way it is, only the way it was. Newton's world is a timeless one because it is a frozen snapshot of a world which exists no longer, which means our models of physics are dissecting a lifeless cadaver on a slab.

Perhaps I'm way off, but I think the distinction you take for granted between physical and mathematical is at the heart of your viewpoint and needs some elucidation.

You're not way off, mate, you're spot on. What my philosophy seeks to offer is the noumenon which underpins the observed phenomena, the ding und sich of the physical world. However a detailed elucidation of my reasoning lies beyond the scope of this forum. I've written millions of words on the subject but I've done my best to condense the gist of it into this synopsis. I'd be honoured if you took the time to read it carefully and offer me your thoughts.

https://austintorney.wordpress.com/2015 ... n-de-jong/

I will. I am back from vacation and think and write here in proportion to how busy I am - i.e. it is a principle form of procrastination.

What my philosophy seeks to offer is the noumenon which underpins the observed phenomena, the ding und sich of the physical world

Don't they all, starting with the one who asked the questions that haven't been answered yet:

Plato:
But we who live in these hollows are deceived into the notion that we are dwelling above on the surface of the earth; which is just as if a creature who was at the bottom of the sea were to fancy that he was on the surface of the water and that the sea was the heaven through which he saw the sun and other stars.

[Obvious Leo]

starting with the one who asked the questions that haven't been answered yet:

You'll find that I take a slightly different approach. Indeed all philosophies seek to answer questions which haven't been answered yet but what I'm trying to do is ask questions which haven't been asked yet and attempt to answer these.

[surreptitious57]

Obvious Leo : I have had a quick skim through your synopsis and am pleasantly impressed. You clearly are very knowledgeable
on both physics and philosophy and I think I could learn much from you as a consequence. You do have a confrontational style
[ Descartes would not know his epistemological elbow from his ontological arse ] but think that it should be celebrated rather
than discouraged. I hope that you carry on contributing to the forum as your input would be much appreciated at least by me

You mention Max Tegmark. I have read his book Our Mathematical Universe / My Quest For The Ultimate Nature Of Reality and
would thoroughly recommend it. With regard to the hypothetical models of how the Universe might end which you alluded to he
cites five possible scenarios : Big Chill which is eternal expansion / Big Crunch which is a re collapse back to a Big Bang / Big Rip
which is an infinite rip in spacetime tearing everything open / Big Snap in which the fabric of spacetime shows a granular nature
when it is stretched too far / Death Bubbles in which spacetime freezes in the form of bubbles which then expand at light speed

And the central theme of the book is there are four types of multiverse : Level One Multiverse which is a region of space that may be
unobservable now but is not unobservable forever / Level Two Multiverse which is a region of space that is forever unobservable as it
is expanding beyond light speed [ does not violate general relativity ] / Level Three Multiverse which is mathematical quantum space
in the Level One Multiverse [ also known as Hilbert Space ] / Level Four Multiverse which is all the mathematical structures that exist
beyond the other Multiverses [ he thinks everything is ultimately reduced not to subatomic particles but to mathematical properties ]

[Obvious Leo]

Thank you for your gracious words, mate. Indeed I do write in a confrontational style but in all honesty I can make no apology for it. The philosophy of physics has been my life's work as well as a deeply personal journey and I find it impossible to disguise my contempt for those who would suggest that the understanding of our universe should be beyond the capacity of any moderately well educated person to grasp. Such a proposition is a negation of everything that philosophy stands for so I reject it utterly, but I'm aware of the fact that my personal commitment to the notion that Simplicity is Truth occasionally crosses the line into ridicule of those who would say otherwise. In other words I hold to the view that if it sounds like bullshit it more than likely is and then I set out to show why.

Max is always good for a read and I've got the title which you refer to. I don't know how much of my synopsis you've covered but you'll find that the autopoietic cosmos which I advance in my philosophy is strictly an eternal and cyclical entity which in modern physics is known colloquially as the bang/crunch model.

[uwot]

In my philosophy I simply equate energy with information.

Fair enough, but I don't see how that gets you any closer to the ding-an-sich. What is energy/information made of, or what carries it?

At the Planck scale information/energy ENCODES for emergent patterns of organisation which are defined by the observer as particles of matter.

To me this would imply that there is something more fundamental going on beyond the Planck scale. Perhaps I am misunderstanding encodes, but it suggests organisation beyond the elementary.

Therefore these particles have only an epistemic status and exist only as observer constructs.

But are the phenomena not 'real'? And isn't that the basis of physics?

This is what Bohr was getting at with the Copenhagen interpretation long before the Standard Model was even invented.

What I understand of the Copenhagen interpretation is that it is pragmatist/positivist/instrumentalist. There are phenomena that we can study and learn to manipulate. To do so we need to measure all the properties and interactions, for which we need mathematics. The noumenal 'truth' won't affect that, hence: Shut up and calculate.

A quark is only a quark because that's the way we've inter-subjectively agreed to describe an observation.

Isn't that true of cat and dog?

The same could be said for all the various particles, waves, fields and forces in physics because these things simply cannot be granted any objectively real ontology.

As I said; my suspicion is that they can, but regardless of the cause, the collective phenomena that we chose to call those things demonstrably exist, they are phenomena after all.

We can model these particles as encoding for atoms

Again: I don't see how something fundamental can code for anything; unless this is where Leibnizian monads step in.

and the atoms as encoding for molecules and once we do that we move from the domain of physics into the domain of chemistry and then onwards into biology. We can think of the patterns of organisation in nature being embedded within each other in layers of informational complexity like matryoshka dolls. We can invent whatever laws of physics and chemistry we like to model what we observe but what we cannot do is say that the laws are making reality, when in fact it is reality which is defining the laws.

Well, the world is going to do what it does regardless of how we explain it. I've made the point somewhere that any model is subject to the problem of induction.

This is a profoundly different way of thinking the world because it means that Newton's reductionist definition of determinism is false. The universe is defined as a non-linear dynamic system, or a dissipative structure, and it is well understood that such systems are self-organising. They run counter to the second law of thermodynamics by evolving from the simple to the complex, exactly as the universe has been doing for the past 13.8 billion years. What evidence is there for this? YOU AND ME.

What evidence do you have that you and I, by existing, have caused a decrease in entropy? It seems plausible to me that the colossal energy of the universe can create extraordinarily intricate structures and still be winding down.

[Wyman]

Obvious Leo wrote:
This is a profoundly different way of thinking the world because it means that Newton's reductionist definition of determinism is false. The universe is defined as a non-linear dynamic system, or a dissipative structure, and it is well understood that such systems are self-organising. They run counter to the second law of thermodynamics by evolving from the simple to the complex, exactly as the universe has been doing for the past 13.8 billion years. What evidence is there for this? YOU AND ME.

uwot:
What evidence do you have that you and I, by existing, have caused a decrease in entropy? It seems plausible to me that the colossal energy of the universe can create extraordinarily intricate structures and still be winding down.

uwot has you there - we may be eddies or backwashes.

[Obvious Leo]

What is energy/information made of, or what carries it?

This question makes no sense. I define information as the fundamental unit of physical reality and if it were made of something then it wouldn't be fundamental, would it? This is where physics is so hopelessly confused. It defines the sub-atomic particles as fundamental entities and yet they all have different physical properties, such as mass, charge and spin. No explanation is offered as to the origin of these properties because the spacetime model simply doesn't allow for it. Yet from E=mc(2) we know perfectly well that mass is simply an emergent form of energy. In an informational reality I simply say that the matter particles are being encoded for, which defines the universe as a non-linear computer.

If you were to read my synopsis it would save me an awful lot of repetition because I outline the process in there.

https://austintorney.wordpress.com/2015 ... n-de-jong/

But are the phenomena not 'real'? And isn't that the basis of physics?

No the bloody phenomena are NOT real. The phenomena are observer constructs and nothing more. A quark is only a quark because that's how we've all agreed to model an observation. Its quark-ness is no more an objective feature of the universe than the chair-ness of a chair is. And YES. This means that the basis of physics is fundamentally WRONG because it ignores the observer and mistakes the map for the territory. This is logical positivism in a nutshell.

What I understand of the Copenhagen interpretation is that it is pragmatist/positivist/instrumentalist. There are phenomena that we can study and learn to manipulate. To do so we need to measure all the properties and interactions, for which we need mathematics. The noumenal 'truth' won't affect that, hence: Shut up and calculate.

Agreed. Bohr clearly laid down the guidelines for physics by declaring that physics could make no statements about an objective physical reality. It's a great pity that almost from the outset every physicist immediately proceeded to ignore him.

Isn't that true of cat and dog?

It's true of EVERYTHING.

As I said; my suspicion is that they can, but regardless of the cause, the collective phenomena that we chose to call those things demonstrably exist, they are phenomena after all.

This is simple Kant 101. Do phenomena exist subjectively or objectively?

Again: I don't see how something fundamental can code for anything; unless this is where Leibnizian monads step in.

Hence the title of this thread. Leibniz was the world's first information theorist and his monads were the first informational "bit" so I acknowledge him by using the same terminology in my philosophy. However Wheeler was the genius who predicted that the universe of sublime austerity which a true unification model would reveal would be an "it from bit" paradigm.

What evidence do you have that you and I, by existing, have caused a decrease in entropy? It seems plausible to me that the colossal energy of the universe can create extraordinarily intricate structures and still be winding down.

The only problem with this hypothesis is that all the evidence is pointing the other way. The second law of thermodynamics requires that all sub-structures within the cosmos must devolve from the complex to the simple. However they still need to evolve from the simple to the complex in the first place and that the universe as a whole is evolving from the simple to the complex is a proposition beyond dispute.

"All things originate from one another, and vanish into one another according to necessity and in conformity with the order of time"...Anaximander

uwot has you there - we may be eddies or backwashes.

We may also be figments of the mind of god, as Newton supposed, in which case all philosophy is meaningless.

[Scott Mayers]

I only read the OP and a few responses so far but feel that I have to interject to respond to the first before I read on as you appear to have gone into some great detail that I might not be able to respond until later.

I agree with Obvious Leo that we have to consider a simpler description if one is supplied. But there are also ones which are expressed equivalently that can both not steal away Einstein's original interpretation as well as provide a description that most can relate to easier AND also to bring the conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics together. I initiated a discussion with you, Obvious, in the thread, Geometry (a useful fiction) where I was hoping to begin by raising two questions for discussion that would aid in this. I hope you won't forget to reply at some point as it relates to this as well. (I am not certain of how you interpret the scientific philosophies in the early twentieth century era, especially concerning logical positivist goals.)

I too have thought of this in depth and have found that this Einstein's theory can be equivalently be expressed in other terms that avoid the conflicts. To begin, I'll refer to your alternative explanation as well as Einstein's regarding the speed of light and gravity by contrasting it with my own interpretation.

First, I question how it is not recognized that if Einstein's particular explanation that space warps light towards gravity, when considering the idea of a 'beginning' of our universe, if light is constant with respect to space, gravity, and time, shouldn't time itself not be slowed down the further back we go in time itself when the universe was highly dense (thus higher gravity)? This would lead to a universe we perceive as having a closed limit in 'time' as an origin but in reality, the apparent periods of time would appear smaller the closer it gets to the singularity. That is, as we approach what 'appears' as a singularity, what might seem only a minute to us from our vantage point should be a much longer duration if we were to be back there (or, rather, then).

Second, I questioned why one would not originally presume that if we certainly had any beginning (from nothing), this requires an acceleration just as a car must accelerate if it originates as unmoving with respect to the observer. Yet, the Big Bang theory was only inferred from the constant expansion recognized prior to the 1999 discovery of our universe to be accelerating. I found the explanation of rapid initial expansion as a device to save the theory prior to any direct evidence of actual acceleration.

Third, the concept that space itself is a something originally described as an 'aether' is now something that even many of today's theories have re-invoked but by avoiding the original terms. It is as if there is a fear of institutional science to challenge the past ideas if they've appeared 'disproven' by simply maintaining them but redefining the similar ideas in new terms instead that hide the conflicts. I believe that there is essence to space as true 'nothingness' should not even have volume as a descriptor.

I will begin with this and await response to respect your own suggestion you gave me in my intro to limit my content to allow appropriate participation.

[uwot]

What is energy/information made of, or what carries it?

This question makes no sense. I define information as the fundamental unit of physical reality and if it were made of something then it wouldn't be fundamental, would it?

I presume you are familiar with Lego. The blocks come in different shapes and sizes and when pushed together in the appropriate way, will stick together, so they exert a force of sorts. With them, you can build very complicated structures. Granted it's not a perfect analogy, but my question equates to 'What are the fundamental Lego blocks made of?'

This is where physics is so hopelessly confused. It defines the sub-atomic particles as fundamental entities and yet they all have different physical properties, such as mass, charge and spin. No explanation is offered as to the origin of these properties because the spacetime model simply doesn't allow for it.

I don't think physics is confused. Physics, in this instance, is about studying the blocks. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that you are claiming the blocks are fundamentally 'made of' their dimensions, shapes and the fact that they grip. I say they are made of plastic; I don't know what sort of plastic, and for all I know they could as easily be made of wood or some alloy without affecting what you could do with them. It's the oldest question in philosophy (western, that is), being the issue that most exercised the Pre-Socratic. Physicists are no different to anyone else in their curiosity, but unless the nature of the plastic makes an observable difference, it isn't something physics needs care about and many physicists don't.

Yet from E=mc(2) we know perfectly well that mass is simply an emergent form of energy. In an informational reality I simply say that the matter particles are being encoded for, which defines the universe as a non-linear computer.

So you have a program; what are you running it on?

If you were to read my synopsis it would save me an awful lot of repetition because I outline the process in there.

https://austintorney.wordpress.com/2015 ... n-de-jong/

As I have explained, I read your synopsis and found it too wordy for me. It's the Marmite thing: you either love it or hate it and through no fault of yours, I didn't like it, which is a pity as there are interesting ideas there.

But are the phenomena not 'real'? And isn't that the basis of physics?

No the bloody phenomena are NOT real. The phenomena are observer constructs and nothing more.

Well, that's simple Descartes 101: our subjective experiences are the only thing we cannot doubt are real.
Look at what you say about quarks:

A quark is only a quark because that's how we've all agreed to model an observation.

Yes, an individuals immediate perception of a sensation is subjective, but the fact that enough people can experience a sufficiently similar phenomenon to agree to call it the same name suggests that there is something external that stimulates that phenomenon.

...Leibniz was the world's first information theorist and his monads were the first informational "bit" so I acknowledge him by using the same terminology in my philosophy. However Wheeler was the genius who predicted that the universe of sublime austerity which a true unification model would reveal would be an "it from bit" paradigm.

And it is a great irony of physics that what we normally regard as 'physical' the stuff the universe is made of, the plastic of the bricks, the donkey carrying the information, is irrelevant.

What evidence do you have that you and I, by existing, have caused a decrease in entropy? It seems plausible to me that the colossal energy of the universe can create extraordinarily intricate structures and still be winding down.

The only problem with this hypothesis is that all the evidence is pointing the other way. The second law of thermodynamics requires that all sub-structures within the cosmos must devolve from the complex to the simple.

No. It only requires that the overall entropy increases

However they still need to evolve from the simple to the complex in the first place and that the universe as a whole is evolving from the simple to the complex is a proposition beyond dispute.

Actually, the red shift of distant galaxies suggests that the universe is expanding and 'flattening out' exactly in line with thermodynamics, or at least it did until 'dark energy' popped up.

"All things originate from one another, and vanish into one another according to necessity and in conformity with the order of time"...Anaximander

I used a version of this in an article I wrote, it's on my blog: http://willibouwman.blogspot.co.uk/2015 ... nches.html Anaximander was the first physicist in the modern sense in that, while everyone else was trying to work out which substance: earth, water, air or fire was primordial, he said there was some stuff, the apeiron, and it was the measurable qualities, hot and cold, wet and dry that defined an 'element'. The point I make is that while physics can tell you what fundamental particles do, what 'information' defines them, physics cannot tell you what particles are made of. You're right, it could all be ideas in the mind of god, but I really think you need something to peg your information to.

[Scott Mayers]

When you reduce everything absolutely, you achieve a structural form of information at a point which can describe each point in space as having a quantized set of directions defined by both linear and circular such that the sum 'speeds' (not simply velocity) add up to each point as moving constant. This is my own addition to the idea that nothing goes faster than the speed of light. Rather everything at every point exchanges information at this rate but through different directions.

If we reduce mass to a point "on it" these are represented as real spin directions that create curves, whereas non-material points act in simple vector directions at a point. Since these points lack "mass", this directional vector is a pure momentum of information. Thus, I describe the difference between matter and energies (which reduce to momentum at a point where it can be intuitively described as an electromagnetic wave with infinite frequency and which loses its magnetic property at that rate) as perpendicular phenomena. The circular direction (spin of a point) acts as another dimension after the vector one. If a point has all spin, it is pure matter at a point; if it has no spin but only straight-lined vector, it is pure momentum (energy without material velocity) and all that is in between are variations of energy (and matter). The information of each of the three linear directions plus the spin directions add up to a constant. This is part of my own developing theory and must be based on a re-inspection of logic.

This makes both relativity and QM fit upon the correct interpretations.

[uwot]

If we reduce mass to a point "on it" these are represented as real spin directions that create curves, whereas non-material points act in simple vector directions at a point.

All very well in terms of physics, but it doesn't address the philosophical question: What is 'mass' if it can be attached to a dimensionless point? (The Higgs field, you might note, can only be inferred from the creation of 'particles' that look a bit like Hogg's bosons. The field itself cannot be directly detected. The same is true of the other fields, they are demonstrably there, as fields of influence, but what makes them work is another matter and if all you are interested in is physics, it doesn't matter.)

[Scott Mayers]

If we reduce mass to a point "on it" these are represented as real spin directions that create curves, whereas non-material points act in simple vector directions at a point.

All very well in terms of physics, but it doesn't address the philosophical question: What is 'mass' if it can be attached to a dimensionless point? (The Higgs field, you might note, can only be inferred from the creation of 'particles' that look a bit like Hogg's bosons. The field itself cannot be directly detected. The same is true of the other fields, they are demonstrably there, as fields of influence, but what makes them work is another matter and if all you are interested in is physics, it doesn't matter.)

I didn't say it was always 'dimensionless'. But you are correct that I need to supply the philosophical argument prior to this and demonstrate how others arise. I already have the answer and a full first draft of my theory complete. I can't argue against the Higgs field but believe this can be derived from Einstein's initial interpretation of space-time. I'm with Obvious Leo here that a simpler explanation applies. Gravity can be reduced to another known phenomena: a Kasimir effect. I already discovered the logical argument to describe this same phenomena for gravity. It doesn't go against the math using Einstein's interpretation but inverses it to a cause from multiple points in space due to the expansion of space itself. It is like the expansion of space places an inverse "pressure" on matter(s) whereby when two different forms of matter exist, a "shadow effect" as I termed what I learned later is also the Kasimir Effect, pushes the masses together. No longer is it necessary to impose a space that is necessarily 'flexible' as Einstein's time-space description but still operates identically, just inversely. Therefore, no Higgs field is necessary.