[Fis] It From Bit video

[John Collier]

Interesting question, Ken. I was not overly impressed with the video because it didn’t explain one of the most crucial points about the use of information in dealing with quantum gravity, for which we as yet have no good theory. The issue with both black holes and the origin of the universe process is that the boundary conditions are dynamical. You can have as many laws as you could want and still not have a physics if the boundary conditions are ignored. Usually they are added in as an initial state, or sometimes ad hoc but when they are changing, especially if they are mathematically inseparable from the laws, there is a problem with relying on the laws alone to explain. With black holes there is a question of whether or not information disappears at their event horizon. There is a similar issue for the observable portion of the universe at any given time. It is hard to see how the questions can even be posed without referring to information. Any boundary in basic physics can be conceived the same way, and if all masses and energies come from geometry (in a Unified Theory) then information is all there is in basic physics.

I have argued for some time now that biological systems are much more defined by their boundary conditions, which are typically dynamical and changing, than by their energy flows, so information flows dominate, though energy flows place limits, so I have talked of the information and energy budgets being partially decoupled in biological systems. So information is important to biology because understanding its flow can answer questions about dynamical boundaries, just like in basic physics. The energy (and matter) flows I will leave to the biophysicists, but the paragraph above suggests that these are information flows as well. I like the potential for unification here.

Cheers,
John

From: Fis [mailto:fis-bounces at listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Ken Herold
Sent: May 26, 2015 12:30 AM
To: fis
Subject: [Fis] It From Bit video

Released recently--what about the biological?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ATWa2AEvIY

--
Ken
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