[Fis] Fw: Information Conservation in black holes

[Joseph Brenner]

Dear Folks,

 

I return following absence due to travel to Bruno’s interesting note of February 3. I appreciate the opportunity it provides for discussion and comparison of two very different approaches as to what is important in the Foundations of Information Science. The A sections below are my understandings of Bruno and the B’s my position. Direct quotes from Bruno are so indicated.

 

1. A. Whatever ‘was’ present ‘when’ there was something rather than nothing, natural numbers = Shannon information could be assigned to ‘it’, and the generation of interpretations of that information by putative universal Turing machines ‘became’ possible.

 

B. If this can be taken to mean that information and matter-energy are not identical but emerged together from some unknown substrate I have no problem.

 

2. A. One can extend the putative operations of the Turing machines to the numerical aspects of natural phenomena, which include the machines themselves, and further ascribe their inability to operate in certain areas as a putative cognition. This is ‘mathematical reality’.

 

B. We may, as an exercise which reminds one of the science-fiction of Stanislas Lem, ascribe a degree of self-reference to the operations we are observing.

 

3. A. “None of the internal logics of the universal machine is classical logic. It oscillates between intuitionist logic and quantum logic, with some intuitionist quantum logic and quantum intuitionist logic.” In all intuitionist logics, the Axiom of absolute Non-Contradiction is retained although that of the Excluded Middle is weakened. 

 

B. Such non-classical logics are fine for the universal machines as defined, but they remain propositional logics. In my non-propositional logic in and of non-arithmetical reality, key Axioms are of Conditional Contradiction and the Included Middle. No intuitionist logics can be applied to real, contradictorial and emergent processes in the thermodynamic world.

 

4. B I accept the correction that computers work according to data, etc. and only interpret like algorithms.

 

5. A. A mechanistic view predicts empirical structures for universal machine ‘experiences’ = operations. “If we are not machines, this provides the tool to measure the degree of (local) non-computationalism. In that case I would bet we are in a (physical, in the computationalist sense described above) simulation.”

 

B. SINCE we are not machines, I am not sure that local non-computability can be measured this way but it is a fair question. However, SINCE we are not machines, I do not see the need for calling our existence a simulation!

 

We thus have available two sets of tools, one for reality and one for mathematical reality. The key would seem to me to make sure they are used in their proper respective informational domains.

 

Best,

 

Joseph

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bruno Marchal 
  To: Joseph Brenner 
  Cc: fis 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2016 11:45 AM
  Subject: Re: [Fis] Fw: Information Conservation in black holes


  Dear Joseph,




  On 30 Jan 2016, at 19:31, Joseph Brenner wrote:


    Dear John,

    Sorry you have been ill.

    I agree fully with your statement: All of these explanations, and even stating the problem, require information notions, not just energy as in classical physics.

    What I object to are statements or implications that information, whether in boundaries or not, is ontologically prior to and/or independent of energy. 


  I beg to differ on this. I consider Shannon information as given freely by the numeration of natural numbers in base two or higher, or sequence of them.


  The interesting things is not information/number, but the interpretation of such information, and this can be defined at first by what the universal machines do when given such information/number.






    This is how the positions of people like Lloyd and Tegmark come out, giving 'computation' an agential, anthropomorphically flavored role at the ground of the universe.


  Lloyd and Tegmark seem not really aware of the importance of the discovery of the universal machine, by Emil Post, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and some others. That is mainly a discovery in arithmetic, as a very weak segment of arithmetic is already Turing universal, and so emulate all Turing universal system.


  This is not anthropomorphically flavored, it is Turing-machine, or universal number-morphically flavored. A concept definable in elementary arithmetic. That concept generalizes both human, bacteria, and the physical computer.


  It is also a theorem of arithmetic, accessible to the universal machine themselves, and once they "believe" in enough induction axiom, they get the cognitive ability to deduce their own limitation, and to begin to measure the gap between provable and true. A gap which entails many modal nuances in the ways the machine can refer to itself, and what she can prove and expect, and hope or fear with respect to some universal goal (like "help yourself").








    The establishment by Wu Kun and others of information as a categoryimplies separation only in classical logic and category theory, which are just as limiting as the classical physics John refers to.




  Classical logic is the simplest logic, and so the more polite to use to describe the other logics. 
  None of the internal logics of the universal machine is classical logic. It oscillates between intuitionist logic and quantum logic, with some intuitionist quantum logic and quantum intuitionist logic.













    A basic problem is the inability of people to keep in mind the operation of two aspects of phenomena, cooperative and antagonistic, at the same time. 


  I can agree with this. My favorite exemple is that intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence has a negative feedback on intelligence.










    Computers work according to algorithms. 


  Not really. They work according to data, number, information, that they interpret at some level like an algorithm, or like data. 










    The ground of the universe, in my view, is in the tension, not the separation, between being and non-being, and no algorithm can handle that (now who is being anthropomorphic?!)




  Tegmark and Lloyd miss that elementary arithmetic is Turing complete. So we don't know really if there is a physical universe.  


  We know only that there is an infinitely complex reality of all computations, in arithmetic. Complex, as most relations between form and function are not algorithmically decidable.


  Yet, the self-reference ability of the universal machine suggests to define the physical reality by what makes some number dream stable and sharable, and apparently it is not much more than self-referential correctness and consistency.
  The (full) arithmetical reality, the one which contains all prime numbers and "can decide" the Riemann hypothesis, is also full of relative number experience/dream, some stable and sharable. In a testable way, at least for precise version like classical computationalism.


  Mechanism predicts the multi-verse apparent empiric structure by a more general multi-experiences structure. But it is not human experience, it is the universal machine experience.
  If we are not machine, this provides the tool to measure the degree of (local) non-computationalism. In that case I would bet we are in a (physical, in the computationalist sense described above) simulation.


  Best,


  Bruno







    Cheers,

    Joseph






    ----- Original Message -----
    From: John Collier
    To: fis
    Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:58 PM
    Subject: [Fis] Information Conservation in black holes


    List,

    Sorry I haven’t been able to respond to the interesting remarks on my last post, but it took a while to digest them, and my current health concerns take up a lot of my time, so I haven’t had time to come up with responses that are properly thought out.

    In the meantime, here is an interesting Nature news report about Hawking’s (and Strominger’s) recent proposal for how information can be preserved in black holes (which his 1976 paper set up as a problem for the laws of physics, which imply information conservation at the most basic level. The solution involves a way empty space can carry information in QM via “soft particles”. The answer is apparently not completely worked out as yet, and there are critics.

    http://www.nature.com/news/hawking-s-latest-black-hole-paper-splits-physicists-1.19236?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20160128&spMailingID=50572206&spUserID=MTc2NjY1MTQ2NQS2&spJobID=843774519&spReportId=ODQzNzc0NTE5S0

    Seth Lloyd described a different possible explanation in his book Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos, Knopf (2000) that involves taking into consideration the information in boundaries, which I found plausible, since the information preservation in physics follows from consideration of basic laws together with the constraints of boundary conditions, neither alone.

    Perhaps the two approaches are not really distinct. They may eventually cast light on each other. For the time being the Hawking/Strominger proposal also looks like it can solve the “firewall” problem as well, which has the Black Hole boundary being very hot (again, contrary to physical expectations), because information can be transferred into radiation instead of energy, so the information transfer doesn’t require a high temperature at the black hole boundary, unlike other forms of radiation production.  All of these explanations, and even stating the problem, require information notions, not just energy as in classical physics.

    John Collier
    Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate
    University of KwaZulu-Natal
    http://web.ncf.ca/collier




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