[Fis] Gravity, Holism, and Biological Information Processing--Bill Miller's contribution: the "It" of a machine, truth and trust

[Prof. Dr. Thomas Görnitz]

  In my original message, I had attached also the original German  
text. The text was blocked by FIS due to its length, so here is the  
English text again for FIS.
 
Dear Gordana, Lou, John, Eric, Stuart and all,
the many contributions in the current discussion are so extensive,  
rich and interesting that I am not in a position to respond to all  
these good thoughts.
All the best
Thomas
 
Nevertheless, I would like to supplement some of the information, the  
energy and the matter with my ideas from physics.
 
We humans primarily perceive shapes (Gestalten). Gestalt psychologists  
such as von Ehrenfels, Wertheimer, Köhler, Koffka and Lewin made this  
clear more than a century ago.
 
Our perception is aimed at a wholeness, a holon. As a rule, we  
perceive wholes. Let us consider three lengths of 3, 4 and 5 inches  
that are joined together, but not in a line. Then it is impossible for  
us not to perceive a right-angled triangle. In our perception, the  
distances become properties of the triangle, its boundary lines. 
 
We see an abundance of different material shapes around us. These  
material shapes can in turn be broken down into parts. I can pick  
leaves from a tree. A leaf is simpler than a whole tree.
How do the parts relate to the whole? 
I would like to make it clear that classical physics is essentially  
based on structures in which a whole is described mathematically as  
the sum of its parts. 
Classical mechanics provides the prime example of a whole being  
described as the sum of its parts. The state space of the planetary  
system is the “direct sum of the state spaces” of the individual  
planets. Nevertheless, we can of course perceive the planetary system  
as a whole, even if the mathematical description in classical physics  
does not correspond to this.
 
It is right to add that the general theory of relativity also has a  
holistic structure. It describes the changes in the space-time  
structure. The space-time structure forms a whole, but it is not  
described as consisting of separate parts. 
Therefore, the general theory of relativity has the problem of  
capturing more than just a single object. 
Thus Einstein had to carry out his famous calculation of Mercury's  
orbit, which deviated slightly from the predictions of Newton's theory  
in the observations, with the mathematical model of a massless  
Mercury. Of course, the mass of Mercury, which is only about 0.00002%  
of the mass of the sun, disappears in relation to it, but it is not  
zero. As with all physics, this is not nature itself, but its best  
possible mathematical description.
 
In contrast to classical physics, quantum theory is characterized by  
the fact that, on the one hand, parts can be defined in it. On the  
other hand, it has the only mathematical structure known to me that  
makes it clear that in its description “a whole is more than the sum  
of its parts”. The mathematical term for this is the “tensor product  
of state spaces”.
In the quantum-theoretical description of nature, wholes are thus  
formed from parts in accordance with the laws of nature. For  
mathematical reasons, these wholes are even more than the sum of their  
parts. 
 
It is very important that in the mathematical description there is no  
longer any trace of the original parts. 
The states in the whole, in which we can also speak mathematically of  
the parts, form a set of measure zero in the state space of the whole.  
They can be ignored, just like the mass of Mercury in relation to the  
mass of the sun.
 
The formation of wholes also happens without the influence of a  
consciousness that perceives this wholeness. 
 
I see a difference in whether we humans perceive and describe the  
forms as a wholeness with our consciousness - for example, we can  
regard the planetary system as a wholeness, although it is not  
described mathematically as a wholeness - or whether we have to state  
the emergence of a wholeness with completely new properties from parts  
for reasons of natural law.
Until now, the terms “emergence” or “systems theory” have often been  
used to describe such transitions to completely new properties.
 
The overwhelming successes in the applications of quantum theory prove  
quantum theory to be the best description of that part of nature that  
can be described scientifically. 
 
This statement is possible because quantum theory overcomes the  
millennia-old notion of an exclusive reality of the material.
 
Without the concept of “meaningful information”, the realm of the  
living would be inexplicable from a scientific point of view. 
Living beings are unstable structures that have arisen in natural  
evolution because they not only react to energies due to their  
instability, but because they are able to perceive and react to the  
properties of material and energetic structures. 
Such properties can then become meaningful information for a living  
being, to which this living being can react intelligently. 
Through such intelligent reactions to meaningful information, living  
beings can stabilize themselves in their interaction with their  
environment. Even from single-celled organisms onwards, living beings  
control themselves intelligently in order to improve their chances of  
existence. 
 
I think one of the difficulties with the term information is that on  
the one hand it is used in the sense of “meaningful for a living  
being”. Such a meaning can be recognized by the fact that regardless  
of the carrier of this information (in all cases, these are real or  
virtual photons in the case of living beings), the meaning has an  
effect. For example, the energy of the photons (e.g. red or blue  
light) is normally completely irrelevant for the meaning of a read text.
 
However, the concept of information is also used in the sense of  
Shannon in connection with problems of coding and decoding. This is  
not primarily about meaning, but about the size of information  
relative to two semantic levels. This can be, for example, the number  
of words in a message from a language in relation to the number of  
letters used for it. Although this use overlaps with meaning, it is  
not identical to it in my view.
 
A third use of the term “information”, which is probably even more  
difficult to understand, is the term “quantum bit”.
The quantum bit is primarily the mathematical description of a quantum  
structure with a two-dimensional state space. They are the  
mathematically simplest of the possible quantum structures.
 
A distinction must be made between, on the one hand, the quantum bits  
in the quantum computer. These quantum bits are properties of material  
or energetic structures, i.e. photons or squids, ions, electrons or  
similar. 
They are usually described using a two-dimensional real state space,  
the Bloch sphere.
In contrast to the quantum computer, my field of work is quantum bits,  
which are to be understood as independent quantum structures and form  
the foundation of quantum physics. Their state space is a  
two-dimensional space above the complex numbers.
 
Although they can be described as the simplest possible information  
structures, as quantum bits, no special meanings may be assigned to  
them. As the foundations of physics, they have an objective character.
 
Because of this freedom of meaning, I prefer not to refer to them as  
quantum information, at most in the abbreviation “AQIs”, but as  
“protyposis”. 
It can be jokingly remarked that the term “protyposis” does not mean  
anything and therefore nothing wrong.
 
Such an abstract and absolute bit of quantum information, AQI, has the  
smallest possible effect, Planck's quantum of action. This bit has the  
lowest possible energy density and is an independent mathematically  
and physically based quantum structure, not a property of anything. 
Because of its lowest energy density, it is spatially extended over  
the entire cosmos. 
As it is known that the action is the product of energy times time,  
the energy of an AQI is approximately 1 AQI = 10 - 32.5 eV if the  
cosmos is around 13.9 billion years old.
 From about 1041.5 AQIs, a structure can be formed that we can  
describe as the mass of a proton. Such a mass is not normally referred  
to as information. To the 1041.5 AQIs can be added a vanishingly small  
structure of about 1038.5AQIs, which is called the kinetic energy of  
1 MeV of such a proton. The kinetic energy is also not normally  
referred to as information, although it is a structure of AQIs. 
1 MeV are orders of magnitude of energies that occur in nuclear  
explosions. In addition, structures on a proton in the order of  
between 10 and perhaps 1000 quantum bits can still be described as  
meaningful information. 
 
The AQIs that we can describe in the cosmos therefore almost all  
appear in a form in which we do not describe what is formed as  
“information”.
(Incidentally, the phenomena that are attributed to so-called “dark  
matter” are indeed caused by AQI structures. However, these have not  
formed into either material or energetic particles or quantum fields.  
They have no charges and therefore only have a gravitational effect. )
 
Of course, an AQI is still free of any concrete meaning assigned to it. 
Only properties (i.e. structures from AQIs) on structures that are  
formed from AQIs (i.e. on energetic or material quantum particles) can  
become information in the usual sense. 
“Meaning” only arises in cosmic development with the first life forms.  
“Meaning-free quantum information” is therefore necessarily a  
difficult abstraction claim. 
 
To repeat:
The important and new thing about quantum theory is above all that it  
relativizes differences that seem insurmountable in everyday life. 
During my studies in the communist part of Germany, we were supposed  
to learn: “There is only matter and motion is its basic property.” For  
over a century, however, we have known in physics that motion (kinetic  
energy) can be converted into matter and matter into motion (energy).  
Quantum theory thus relativizes the difference between matter and its  
properties and therefore suggests that there is a common scientific  
basis for both. Of course, this basis for explaining nature cannot be  
the smallest material particles. 
 
But many other differences are also relativized by quantum theory,  
such as between localization and extension (wave-particle dualism),  
between force and substance (bosons and fermions), between fullness  
and emptiness (“Dirac-Sea”, Heisenberg: the vacuum is the whole)
 
Information about properties can become meaningful information if it  
has an effect on a living being.
 
The most appropriate description of quantum fields is that they are an  
indefinite (even infinitely large) number of quantum particles. 
Quantum fields are the most complex structures with which it is still  
possible to access experiments. 
But even quantum particles with their infinite-dimensional state space  
are not yet simple structures.
Planck's formula E=hc/λ or ϱ=hc/λ4 also shows that spatially ever  
smaller structures mean an ever-greater energy density. This is also  
no indication of simplicity.
Only the AQIs are actually simple. 
 
Living beings are structures that have arisen naturally through evolution. 
 
Insofar as their structures can be scientifically understood, this  
evolution is based on “information chemistry”. 
All chemical processes are electromagnetic interactions. All  
electromagnetic interactions, chemical bonding, and ion flows are  
influenced by the energies available in each case (i.e. by real and  
virtual photons) and also by properties in the neighborhood of the  
molecules involved, which are also transmitted by photons. Such  
properties of enzymes respectively catalysts then mean “meaningful  
information” for the respective process. 
 
Living beings are therefore structures that interact with matter and  
energy and are triggered by information. 
 
It was only with quantum theory that it became possible to relativize  
the fundamental distinctions between matter, energy and information in  
everyday life. This also makes the interaction between them  
scientifically comprehensible. 
 
Without this equivalence of matter, energy and information, only a  
dualistic description would be available. 
However, this is then always faced with the problem of how the psychic  
can influence the material. Such a long-accepted separation in the  
sense of Descartes is difficult to accept from a scientific point of  
view today. 
Since quantum theory shows that the material can be understood as a  
special form of meaning-free quantum information, dualism is no longer  
necessary today.
 
Here are a few more explanations: 
If information influences the processes in a living being, then this  
information becomes meaningful for the living being itself. 
For other living beings, the same information can remain completely  
meaningless.
 
Living beings are structures that have the “will” to continue to exist  
in a changing environment. This requires them to be able to learn from  
previous experiences. 
Living beings must therefore be able to recognize repetitions, i.e.  
regularities, in the processes of nature. 
As there are never two completely identical situations in an expanding  
cosmos, the rules are not based on sameness but on similarity. Such  
similarity arises when non-essentials can be ignored. 
 
If even more can be ignored, rules can even become laws. 
Laws of nature are thus found by ignoring a lot of non-essentials. 
Natural laws are therefore approximate descriptions of natural processes.
The history of the natural sciences shows that with increasing  
precision, some things that were previously ignored become significant  
after all. 
 
In everyday life, we take it for granted that not only the facts, but  
also possibilities that have not yet become facts, have an influence  
on our options for action. We usually imagine such future  
possibilities with our inner images like as something factual. At the  
same time, however, we know that they are possibilities. 
 
Such a reciprocal structure between facts and possibilities was not  
yet so clearly recognizable at the beginning of quantum theory. This  
is why it is still often referred to as “microphysics”. In my view,  
this is too narrow.
 
The realization, which became clear in the mathematical structure,  
that not only the factual, but also possibilities that have not yet  
become factual can already produce real effects in a physical system,  
led to an understanding of the transition from classical physics to  
quantum theory.
Possibilities in the sense of classical probability theory, i.e. as  
unknown facts, have no effect on the system in question, although they  
may have an effect on an observer who has only incomplete knowledge of  
the system.
Rules and laws of nature capture a very significant aspect of natural  
processes. 
 
For phenomena beyond the regular, e.g. for the unrepeatable, i.e. the  
unique - one could call such things “No LAW” with Stuart Kauffman -  
repetitions will not be recognizable - otherwise one could establish  
rules for them as well. They cannot be recorded or described  
scientifically.
 
The description of nature began historically with the description of  
material objects. Their existence must be understood as something  
factual. 
The scientific explanation “from the simple to the complex” already  
led in antiquity to the idea of material objects so small that they  
could no longer be divided. They were therefore the simplest thing  
that could be imagined within this framework. Thus, they were to  
provide the basis for describing nature.
 
The transition to laws of nature in the mathematical forms of  
differential equations led to classical physics and to the idea of a  
deterministic change of facts. 
The more precise description of quantum theory shows that the facts  
are often a fairly accurate approximation of a non-deterministic  
event. However, since the mathematical structure of natural laws is  
deterministic, it should be remembered that in quantum theory only the  
change of possibilities is described as determinate. 
The facts that arise for us from the possibilities, on the other hand,  
are limited by the possibilities and are extremely precise in their  
possible values. (This accounts for the enormous accuracy of quantum  
theory.) But which of these facts actually becomes factual is a matter  
of chance.
 
Machines do not arise in evolution in a natural and lawful way.
Machines as intentionally built structures naturally satisfy the laws  
of nature, which the builders have taken into account in their  
construction. 
Machines therefore do not arise by themselves in evolution, which  
takes place on the basis of natural law! Machines require a  
consciousness that constructs them and initiates their construction -  
or at least a consciousness that initiated the construction of the  
machines that build the new machines.
 
 
 

Prof. Dr. Thomas Görnitz
Fellow of the INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF INFORMATION STUDIES

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Fachbereich Physik
J. W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main
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