fredrik

I agree this is the eye of the needle. Not everyone might agree that standard QM does offer a "good interpretation of probabilities" in the first place, even though I suppose most people think so(?). If probabilities are conserved at all times, things gets easier, But I see no fundamental reason for elevating such an (admittedly natural) expectation to something that must never be violated. To me it's an expectation supported by the accumulated experience of science, making it a good case, but to assume that expectations can't change is naive in principle. It's often argued that probabilities are conserved by definition. But then the missing point is that real life is not a mathematical system. The ensembles and imagining of infinite experiment series is the weak point in the logic, ultimately making it (IMO) nothing more than an expectation, no matter how good. I think it will be very exciting to see what comes out once we have some better proper understanding of gravity in the context of quantum information. My personal guess is that the interpretation of probabilities and information from standard QM will not be left untouched. /Fredrik

Regardless of how the attitude of this problem has evolved in Hawkings and other minds, I think it is a mistake to think along the lines that "we know certain laws to be true". In my opinion we really don't. There is a subtle but important difference in optimally inferring something, and assuming this optimally inferred statement for the truth (whatever that really is btw). In a certain sense, the optimal inference is the closest thing we come to the truth, but still this makes our effective "truth" something dynamical and relative. One could ask if any scientist would seriously claim to know the truth in the first place, because it sort of seems like an unscientific statement in itself. /Fredrik

Foodchain I don't think you upset anyones day Even Einstein used to be a layman. Like Ben has explained, as compared to newtons mechanics QM isn't deterministic in the sense that particle positions can't be predicted to have exact trajectories, and the reason is that while in newtons mechanics the vision is that it's in prininciple no problem to specify complete information in the initial conditions. In quantum mechanics the information concept is taken more serious. And momentum and position are logically related in quantum mechanics. This relation alone, implies logical restrictions on the mutual simultaneous specification of information. But at the statistical or probabilistic level, one can still say that QM is deterministic in the sense that while the evolution of particle positions is not, the probability is. So the evolution of probability distributions is deterministic. At least in the standard QM. This is how we maintain some order still. On this side of things I see things that aren't satisfactory yet. But that belongs to the parts that noone yet fully understands, as it touches gravity and unification issues. I personally find this inconsistent. If you take the information and measurement ideals serious, then I do not like the deterministic treatment of probabilities. I think consistency of reasoning implies not only second quantization but possibly n'th quantization, but we need some rules to control this expansion or we will inflate the model beyond handling, in which case it's useless. At this level, issues that you mention, stability of structures and formalisms will be considered. But alot of this is speculation and matter of opinion of what path to choose. I thought this touched on your questions... If you know how many socks of each you have, you obviously know the probability for drawing a particular colour. But the question of mine, is that if you know that you obviously already performed an infinite measurement series in the past, because how else did we obtain that information in the first place? However none of these objection invalidates current effective models, on the contrary it might suggest the expansion to the domains where we currently don't konw as much. Next we come to the dynamics! Usually it's heuristically derived from the classical equations of motion with some operator substitutions and so one. And that apparently works. Fine. But the question is wether there is a deeper understanding on this? I think so. But that also belongs to the cloudy parts. For example, in QM one usually considers the hamiltonian to be given, outside the initial information and the wavefunction. But in effect I think the ahamiltonian is also information. It's information regards the expected, evolution of the information. This kind of reasoning will lead to relativistic thinking all by itself. This is also something I never liked. In general relativity we have a proper relation between the system and the dynamics, but then it's not a quantum model. So one problem is how to unify them. I think a proper analysis of QM foundations will lead us right to relativity from a much more fundamental information perspective. But this is also speculation and a matter of choice of route to explore. So if your questions touches any of that which noone yet can answer, I think noone should discourage you in asking good questions. /Fredrik

Yes I agree with this. The langugage and terminology is always an issue. And I confess that I am pretty sloppy at times too. Sometimes english isn't too bad although informal, sometimes it's ambigous. I guess my estimate of foodchain was based on my subjective understanding of his thinking(beeing bio interested) based on my past reading of his posts and how this is processed in my brain. Which in a nutshell illustrates also my understanding on physical interactions. The menu formed that is sustained/survived for me is the one that harmonises with the interactions I participate in. Sort of analogous to that organisms and lifeforms that grow and survive are those that are in harmony with it's environment. Different environments select different structures. Most yeasts like simples sugars, mold like starches. Foodchain should bring me feedback if I'm wrong, but I was trying to put in a way I think (as per my vision of foodchains relative menu) would be most efficient in a short message. /Fredrik

What you say make perfect sense here of course. I don't disagree with any of this. But the reason for my comment is that I got the feeling(?) foodchain didn't get a satisfactory answer to this question. So I guess I questioned if this was really what he meant? I sure don't know, I'm just guessing and this was in bold on my menu, I can't see foodchains menu with his eyes But if that's really what he meant, my comments was misdirected in the first place. About the other things, spacetime formations, the question seems to boil down to what spacetime is, how can we induce spacetime structures from a starting point when all blurs? It's alo easier to do it the other way around, to consider how given structures "dissolve"... but the other way around seems to be more tricky? How do structures emerge when we do not have any given expectations to what they will be? Everyone knows it's easier to rip something apart, than to put it back together, and the reason is a probabilistic one (entropy). I don't have the answers to all the questions, and to my knowledge nonone else has either. But I'm sure alot of people have ideas. But if this was not even near what foodchain talke about we could leave this at this point. /Fredrik About uncertainty of the menu, what I meant was that there is always idealisations. Any experiment has a finite duration, and collects finite data, so there is always a uncertainty even in the statistical structures. Like in statistics, you make a long experiment, and get a mean and a standard deviation. But there is always an uncertainty in the mean too. We consider infinite measurement series but that's where we leave reality. In some cases, like particle physics this idealization is clearly decent enough! But if we are talking about logical structures of the theory, it's not acceptable in general. An infinite measurement series would require infinite information capacity and infinite time probable. So at some point, some domains, our "menus" remains inherently uncertain as well, unless we appeal to idealisations. This was what I meant with that. The menus evolve as well. Sometimes new items appear on the menu, that wasn't there before, I want a clean logic to cope with that without breakdown of the formalism. Becuase that happens in reality, and reality doesn't break down. It finds new ways. /Fredrik

Hmmm maybe you are trying to understand the concept of self organisation in the context of a probabilistic model. That is I think a good perspective, and on that part I think we are still looking for good answers. I think one should then view things in a bigger perspective. Given a menu, and we are to make a choice. If we have no reason to prefer any item over the other, we might as well consider that we make a "random choice". But of course, where did the menu come from in the first place? Suppose we don't quite know the menu either, then we have to first guess the menu, before we can make a choice. I think of self organisation as structures as emerging as per a learning rule, successful structures become self-stabilized, because they are more in phase with the environment. This self-organisation I picture taking place at all levels, starting with spacetime formations. Perhaps one could say that a perfectly random chaos might not be stable. And perhaps there is an aswer in terms of probability, that strucutres are simply more likely to appear, then it is for a "perfect chaos" to be conserved. But there is as far as I know, not yet a complete understanding of this. But when the modern physics is better understood I expect alot along these lines, including much better answers to your questions. We can't yet answer everything. /Fredrik

Yes, but "agree with experiments" is not entirely trivial statement, because there is a feedback, from our understanding in designing new experiments and devices, beeing constrained to the same rules as everything else. So I think this should be seen in a larger context where our understanding, and our theories evolve... in this context there is another thing beyond falsification, which is effiency or fitness of methodology. One can be correct and right, and yet inefficient. So the effiency of inference in making good predictions is part of the fitness. One observations of mine that that QM fails to predict is the real life relation between the fundamental forces. I can't ignore this observation. So I wouldn't say is flat our wrong, but my personal thinking is that the methodology leading to it, can be severly improved, which in turn will have some spinoff benefits. My main issue with QM is not the uncertainy principle. It's for example the idealisation of objective probabilities, and slight issues of unitarity and the nature of spacetime. Maybe one can think that - this isn't QM - this is about gravity etc.. but there is only one world. It's bound to be related - this is a basic universal observation. A probabiliy space is a mathematical object. It's a sample space, event space and a measure constrained to the axioms of probability. The problems resides in that it's logically hard, or impossible to impose an exact bound on our own ignorance. We can do it by hand, trial and error as per some scientific method, or one can try to formalize the scientific method itself, and implement this into the theories themselves so that can evolve on their own, without ad hoc input. The match with reality is just postulated. I think this can be done better. I want the probability space itself to be elevated as an, to principle, observable, dynamic structure. This should I think be founded, at the level of QM axioms. The benefit, that remains for me to proove of course, is that is that this will increase the fitness of the methodology dramatically, and it will resolve some of my issues mentioned. I didn't mean to explain any of this now. It's too early. I just add my personal opinion to the record that there are more issues with QM than the old "classical mechancs, determinsm/realism" issues. Even if you get over that, there are still issues to be resolved in the future. That's what I think, and is working towards. I see things at two levels. Theories as ouput of a scientific methology. My attention is at the latter, and then you can try to device a theory of the theories that can be attributed a sort of fitness if you think of a theory as an organism cruising through the unkonwn. In that perspective, QM has alot to wish - at least IMHO. /Fredrik

Ben, from your response I think you misunderstood me. I am one of those ho definitely argue for measurements. I would even suggest that standard formalisms doesn't take this to full consistency. There are alot of idealisations. Did you ever observe a probability space? I haven't. But have we observed something that looks close enough to a probability space? Yes. The notion of probability space and how that is *deduced* is not trivial to me at least. I was not refering to the classic objections that stems from the resistance of reevaluating the ideals of determinism and realism. This is another part of the discussion. Perhaps that was what the original poster meant though, I don't know. This is not an issue for me. The uncertainy principle we have to live with no doubt. But there are other issues. The logic in the current theories is not clean enough IMO. Of course, if you choose to not observe this, and observed only the correlation between numbers produced from numbers and the numbers produced from our measurement apparatouses, then you are home as long as they agree. But if you choose to observed also the evolution of the theory itself, it somehow doesn't reach the same standards. I don't suggest that QM or the standard model is off chart. I am just thinking that we are not yet completely understanding the logic of it. In particularly since the unification is not yet completed. I think this is partley related to our insufficient understanding on the QM foundations, and i don't exclude the possibility that there may come tweaks to it. I don't think I do philosophy only, I try to do reality. /Fredrik

I definitely expect us to do better. In my thinking "Shut up and calculate" is more like an engineering attitude, using scientific results as a tool only, with no intention whatsoever of extending the application of, or refining the tools themselves. But I have a little hard to see how science would progress as well if going beyond the "shut up an calculate" philosophy was discouraged. "shut up an calculate" is the business of computers, I don't quite compare myself with a computer. Even the simplest computer outperforms me on number crunching, but we beat them on thinking outside the box. But is a relevant question. I think the difference is in the bigger dynamic context of evolution of theories and understanding. If we expect to learn no more, the difference would only be that we may find a simpler (less resource consuming) representation of our theory. In the context of progress and improvement, this compactification is I think an essential step. It's like when we sleep at night, our brain reorganizes new information. Not because it makes much of a difference at an instant, but it may prepare us for upcoming progress. /Fredrik

Those comments was meant to be in defense of those who disagree with me I don't think it's as simple as: if someone doesn't understand me - they are ignorant, or I am stupid. Communication is a mutual thing, and I really DO understand that people who come from another view, does not make sense out of my ideas. Why would they? Also, how much can I expect anyone else to "invest" in trying to understand my little ides? I expect nothing of noone, I was just trying to be a little humble, to keep a good atmosphere, and say that I have an understanding even for those who disagree and doesn't see what I mean. I don't understand everybody elses thinking either, but that's part of reality. But I sure can understand that who parties/humans/particles can disagree, without necessarily one of them beeing stupid, or flawed. Yesterday I didn't get around to anything. Hang on. I'll avoid elaborating on my on thinking here, beucuse it's not ready for explaning in details and ther are many complications, and this thread isn't the right place. It was just meant as comments to compare with your ideas. We can resume our discussions in the other place later, so we don't trash this thread. /Fredrik

Hello Doctordick, yes I'm the same one indeed I'll respond later, as I mentioned before I try to do some other stuff as well so I deliberately try to keep the pace of communications down a little. The reason I consider the concept of discard is that, there is not other choice! A particle beeing bombarded with radiation simply can't absorbd and keep that energy arbitrarily, some of it's reemitted with a delay or reflected. Also consider yourself when you try to learn, when your brain gets saturated, you need to develop a better strategy. Anyway "discard" is just a word, and perhaps a bad one. It's not like it's a _choice_ to discard, it's a constraint from limiting information capacity. Information available to whom, me, you or some god? and can this subject simply harbor unlimited amount of information? If not, the issues needs solution. There is a clear potential in this approach. Understanding physical interactions as communication may provide (I personally think at least) deep insight to reality. /Fredrik Yes, that is a decent way of putting it. So the question, is what the best data compression mechanism is? Usually different kinds of data, may be _best optimized_ by certain algorithms. This is why pure reason alone, can not tell us the answer, we need real data. And the theory is bound to be a dynamic entity, responding and morphing to a "data stream". What I focus on, is the logic and physics of the relation between the input, updating the theory, and output... As you also noticed some parts of this contains something like a chicken/egg situation, that is exactly why I come to think that the solution is a relational and evolutionary. So there is not unique objective starting point, all we can hope to see is the transformation of states, relatively speaking. But, this will be interesting to noone until it's done. Until then, it will look just like philosophy and baloney. If you get someone on the same page, it might be able to communicate with reasonable effort, otherwise "on your own" is the most efficient way I think. /Fredrik

I'm not sure what physical means, but if I assume you are new to QM, I would say that the closest thing to attaching and "significance" to the wave function is in terms of the observers information about the system the wavefunction describes. You can say that the wavefunction encodes the observers information about something. Clearly information about something can come in different forms. Direct, or indirect. In the case of indirect information, there exists a relation between the information, and an equivalent direct information. For example, there is a relation between information about position and momentum. The uncertainty relation follows directly from the relation. It's easy to see how can can add similar types of information, but how to do add dissimilar types of information? I think this is what QM is about, or should be about. But others may disagree, that's just my personal private opinion. Moreover the dynamics equations of QM, should I think be interpreted as evolution of expectations, which i think is best viewed in terms of information and probabilities. When I was first encountered quantum mechanics from the "mechanical" point of view, it sure is hard to understand what is going on. I think to appreciate it, one should think about how we learn things. How does the process of aquiring the knowledge of a fact look like? And does perhaps this process itself have any implications on thinkgs? can we really separate the process of learning facts, from the facts themselves? Analyze that and it makes more sense. In this sense, classical mechanics is much more speculative than is QM. But once I got over that first edge, I noticed more things that was not satisfactory. I think few "experts" would bet their grandmother on the QM won't be revised, although I'm sure some probably would But if I have to guess, this revision is not going to make it any easier to understand from the point of view of classical mechanics, it's probably going to get even worse. /Fredrik

I'm not sure I caught your point, but I have no illusions that QM is perfect. But your arguments against it make we wonder. If your objection is that to "only" predict the probability for a specific prediction, rather than the exact prediction is a sign of failure then I think you are missing a point that part of the truly foundational things, IS the concept of information and knowledge, and in my thinking at least the core of the business is that fact that we obviously do not know everything. That's reality. The problem of any living thing in reality is how to make progress and survive, while beeing immersed in things we don't know and understand. What can we do about it? It seems we can analyse what the do know, and try to extrapolate our understanding to areas where we have limited explicit experience. Given a set of initial conditions and prior assumptions, induced from our past experience, we formulate a prediction. At the simplest level, one can think that we don't know, so any guess is as good as any, and we let the feedback discriminate. At the next level one may see that we got alot of faulty predictions, so our attention is turned to the logic of making predictions. By definition there is no way of KNOWING. There is not mathematical formula that can create information we don't have. The only thing we can do is to perhaps have mathematical formulas that help us, efficiently produce predictions of the unknown, from what we know that allows us to progress. The success is in the survival, of organisms or theories. My issues with QM is that it I am not sure it takes these issues into FULL account. The whole idea that we can assign an objective, exact value of the probability itself, is disturbing and is not quite self-consistent IMO. Self-consistency, suggest something more. But this is more advanced objections that IMO has little to do with the issue of uncertainy principles, and the counterintuitive things that I think anyone encounters when trying to understand QM, coming from classical mechanics. If I missed your point I apologise. /Fredrik

Perhaps another interpretation of the question but... I think it's for the same reason we bother finding theories for any observation. Why not just file all the data anyone ever made in a gigantic archive, and say that, this is what we know, what's beyond that is speculation? Some obvious problems with that approach is that first of all the information capacity required would quickly get overwhealming. So we would have no choice to but discard data - or GROW lager memories! and how do you do that? it can be done, but it's not like instant noodles - due to limited information capacity. Thus facing reality, we should make sure that we dicard the least valuable information, because information capacity is limiting. The most crude way to do it, is to keep only the raw data that we think is most relevant in some sense. But a more advanced way is to actually process the data, and effectively accomplish a data compression, with a minimum information loss. Thus we can store more information with less storage capacity. Also, a living organism, human, or I figure even a particle, has to do processing, and make choices on how to respond to reality, given the limitations. Two limitations are information capacity and processing capacity. Similarly, more advanced processing should suggest, along with finding theories that allow data compression, finding theories of theories that allow compression of theories. Because the theories themselves take up some memory, and also processing power. Like in comp science, more efficient compression algorithms usually take longer time to decode and encode. So you sort of transform "information capacity" for "processing time". Simplifications and finding more fundamental principles, and more efficient representations for the benefit of increased fitness of responding to the environment is I think one of the fundamental issues in nature. I think it applies to physics as well as biology. /Fredrik

> What is a consequence of faster than lightspeed ? Space-like separated spacetime events, can't be connected by a signal slower or equal that of light speed, only by faster than lightspeed. And according to SR postulates, there are no such signals in nature, which means there can according to SR be no causal relation between space-like separated events. Time-like and light-like events are those than can possibly be causaly related. Of course there could still be correlations, which is not the same as causality. Of course, one might argue howto prove a causality without resting on correlations for evidence, or how to make a foolproof definition of physical causation in terms of measurements only /Fredrik

I see your thinking but I don't think of it as "just a" hobby with no results, in the sense that a hobby is definition less serious than work. A hobby you do out of love and passion for free or you even pay for it, employed work you do for money becauase you need it. If you can get both the passion and the money, that would be great of course. But if it's a choice, then I made mine. I did however take a brake from physics thinking for 10 years, but I did other toying and modelling meanwhile, that actually brought me back to physics from a completely unexpected angle. I've tried to broaden my views and I have to say that a brief dive into biology was the best damn thing I've done for a while. It really does bring physics into a new light for me. I have collected inspiration. Of course if I was born rich, there is no way on earth I would be employed anywhere. I could do full time research and still get time for other things and pay my bills. Of course experimental disciplinces is another story because the labs you need access to. Other will have to deny this, but my information on whihc I acted, was that at least for many years I wouldn't have had to any research anyways, I'd have to do other peoples research. That is - trying to answer other peoples questions. Some problems are I think also hard to solve in that environment, in particular those that go against the mainstream. Convinving your alikes is easy, but to convince a doubter takes more work, and politics. Perhaps at the point where you are a respected professor you get more freedom. These "issues" has nothing to do with what "physics" is for me, and make the choice easy. But I think this depends on what you want to do. I didn't feel that I fitted in any of the standard approaches. If you do, there isn't a problem. The other fear I had was that beeing force to answer other peoples questions in physics, would compromise my own brain. If I was going to see the reasearch as just another "job" I would probably for this reason be better off working with something different. /Fredrik

This sounds like great advice to me. Snail, asking for opinions is good, but to speak for myself I would under no circumstances taken anybody elses advice on anything like this, unless I could stand up for it on my own. If I did, I would have done so way back I might have done string theory today. But I just couldn't. As with many levels of education people do it for many reasons. Some people just want a good job, some people love the subject and barley has the formal "carrier part" in their plans. I don't know what plans you have but if you can, broaden yourself in all fields of life until you can find your own answers pointing you one way or the other. Like Martin also mentioned, neither life nor physics end if you don't get a academic carrier. I really love physics and philosophy but I made the choice to not go the academic route at all for various reasons. Not because I couldn't, I had top grades, but because the politics of academic reality seemed unacceptable for me at the time. I didn't spend much thinking of carrier plans until the last years, I just wanted answers, and the answers I received during asking the carrier questions, made me change direction. But I have a good life, a job outside the academics in the measurement technology business. And best of all is that I have my interests left uninterfered with. I do exactly what I want, and I do not have to allow any constraints get in my way (except time constraints, but that only encourages me to optmize the approach). Of course beeing a hobby projects extends over longer periods, but that's not bad, because it gives you time to ponder in between, if you like that My personal goal is not recognition from others becuse I'm so "clever", all I want is to understand the world, and wether that is best done in the academic world or not, may be individual. The rest is just plain normal life we are all constrained to. /Fredrik

This is really interesting stuff. What I find interesting is that these questions have relevance even outside cosmology specifically. I am personally not that much focusing on the cosmology in particular, but I still share the same questions. And I think that many deep questions from different fields will receive a common resolution. I'm currently circling around these topics, but I keep getting bounced back and forth different topics as if they are unseparable, or different sides of the same coin. Yesterday I tried to toy with a picture what the concept of temperature, and equilbirium would mean, in a world composed of questions and answers. What would the generalization of "information temperature" be? If you elaborate the [math]1/T = \frac{\partial S}{\partial E}[/math] S ~ Missing answers to considered question E ~ Significance/Relevance of given questions The questions and the possible expected set of answers are formulated in terms of a) probability spaces and corresponding b) probability distributions. Each probability distribution is assigned a probabilistic relevance, that is associated with energy or mass. This I picture by means as origination from a compilation of the history of interactions. Thus if we evolve a new probability space, at first the probability distributions has no significance, or mass. This means that for this "empty" field (think vacuum) to be in equilibrium with other fields at a given information temperature, the entropy of the zero-mass "question" must be zero. In other words, take to it's extreme: we do not lack answers to irrelevent questions. Ie. there is no driving force behind asking irrelevant questions. The only possible drive if there is a small increase of significance of the question, then the entropy of the distribution will grow. Now it seems if the temperature is constant, and the relevance of a given question increases, the amount of missing answers must also increase. So, if we add "energy" one way of maintaining the equilibrium is to make sure the uncertainty increases correspondingly so that somehow the probability of each possibility is constant. But wether this is favourable or not, must bring the change itself in as a question, and to eventually explain how the originally (and statically) improbable, can be shown to have a definite probability to grow more probably to the point where it's no longer improbable. The hardest parts seems to find the appropriate formalism, which is what I am trying to wrap my head around. Standard probability theory axioms fails because the probability spaces themselves need to be dynamical. And my conclusion is that an evolutionary model seem to be the only possibility I can see, and the only hope would be to identify the magic consistent induction step, or "learning rule". But even this is probably evolutionary which means I'm not sure it can be entirely consistent, except to a certain estimate level of accuracy, so I'm struggling for an acceptable starting point. I have alot of missing answers here... so you might consider it fuzzy, but my experience still assigns massive significance to these basic questions, which I can't ignore even though the head hurts. I've tried to elaborate a few of the unsolved issues to try and get an overview, which is not easy either because my memory is too small Vaccum is interesting because while it's supposedly empty, something doesn't smell right with the notion of a certain amount of nothing. There must be something "supporting" this void, that is related to the observer who claims it to be void from his point of view. Sorry about the ramblings. /Fredrik

> I realize what you are saying, and to be honest I have no real clue as to what I am talking about, that’s why its posted in this particular section here on SFN. I think the way to go is to keep reflecting over this. Even though your own confidence in the question is low at this point, I think you are asking a question in the right direction, but gaining confidence in it takes time I think. If you want an opinion I think you should invest more thinking along the lines, or keep it in the back of your head during your journey. /Fredrik

I think the interesting question connecting to the laws of physics, is that how can the selection mechanism be "given"? Given to whom? If it's not given, where does it come from? My thinking the selection mechanism itself is also evolving. Human sophistication in selection seems complex these days because many things take place also in the human brain. It seems to me development of technology and so on is the more important one these days, rather then evolution of the human genome itself? It seems one subtle difference is that in biology it's not such hard problem to define _the population_, most people could imagine the senses of the population of a certain spieces on earth. But in physics in the various "landscape" problems, these populations are pretty fuzzy, and even ambigous, or subjective at minimum. They are not hands on options, they are only abstractions within a specific setting. And when you get into that I think more extreme care must be taken to an extent that is effectively unneccessary in picturing a population in biology. I personally belive in and work on some evolutionary ideals merged with and information theoretic approch with bayesian reasoning. And I've personally gained alot of insight into reality from physics point of view, by spending a few years trying my best to understand yeast cells, and biology in general. It seems the everyday problems of a yeast cell is not that fundamentally different from mine. I've always like to study in terms of "projects", because that makes it more "real". Taking a course is really different, because you are presented both the answers and the questions. But that's simply not how real problems appear in reality and it can be terribly boring. But set aside he optimum way to study, I have personally have alot of use of some brief studies in biochemistry, molecular biology and the physiology of cells. Of course I was reading all those books as someone coming from physics, so every line I read I was trying to make the connection to the bigger picture. And it's analogies at all lelves, that's my experience. The DNA stuff had lots of fascinating parallells to data compression and optimation problems and even learning models. Because DNA is basically a storage device. There are also many highly interesting problems in the complexity of regulation within the cells, with many different solutions, like coregulations of genes etc. All these I did as a three year hobby project, under the "cover name" of homebrewing. One thing just leads to the other, and trying to solve a problem originating from beer brewing, lead my back to physics. /Fredrik

My simple simulation did not seem to properly agree with the bekenstein bound. I'm going to get back to this later, but it's getting more clear what's going on. It seems that Bekenstein bound probably applies to special cases (I assume that's the whole point of the notion "bekenstein system" in the first place). The next step would be to interpret this special case in the big picture. I suspect that a satisfactory understanding requires the information theoretic interpretation of 1) Entropy 2) Energy/Mass 3) Configuration/Phase space volume with an integrated a dynamics These three concepts are clearly related. I think my first attempt failed because I failed to realize that the bekenstein bound isn't supposed to apply to a general case(only to bekenstein systems). The intuitive associations I've made so far are 1) Entropy ~ an estimated measure of missing predictive power (missing information) 2) Energy/Mass ~ Thd confidence of any given data, can be associated with a "mass/energy", or "intertia". Defined as resistance to revision (change of opinon, as response to conflicting data). 3) The extension would be to define a generalized "phase space", which would most probably have a dynamical topology and dimensionality in the general case. This would contain a dynamical relatin between "volume" and "mass", but the explanation should be due to a fundamental relation between probabilistic "resolution" and "confidence". The papers I've read mostly seem to not revise the whole notion of "entropy", I think that's needed. Also, semiclassical uses of mass and energy are freely mixed between GR and quantum notions. This is also quite disturbing. Anyway, I think that this black hole / entropy thing, as well as the vaccum issue are the prime targets to test new ideas. /Fredrik

I read one of Smolins related papers but haven't read up on them in detail, but I also think the evolutionary thining needs to be taken seriously. In my thinking, two obvious "scarce resources" in an evolutionary "learning" model is memory and processing power. The individual implementing the most efficient learning strategy that makes optimum use of given memory and processing capacity will dominate. But there is also another detail, which would be that optimum is still relative. Clearly, in a a world where special cases apply to the environment one can make a more efficient strategy, at the expense of loss in generality. A lifeform that makes a mistake (high risk) and run into a scenario where his model is not flexible enough to evole, it dies. In my thinking, "processing" is also part of the defining relation of time. The last time I did a quick reading on Smolins alternative to the anthropic principle, my impression was that he is not even trying to develop the ideal of falsification mechanisms. Of course the anthropic principle is not the option, but I still feel smolins suggestion is not radical enough. But at least progress is made in the right direction. But perhaps I could read the papers more carefully. The first paper I read, didn't give me a major incentive to read more. And applying to the "scarce resources" of memory and processing power, it's impossible to ready every single published paper. /Fredrik

Some of my personal reflections... I think this is an excellent focus. Ajb says bio students might benefit from some QM studies, but I also think that physics students may also benefit from some biology studies. During a typical physics education I think reductionism in absurdum is often the dominating way of reasoning. So at first it's tempting to think like this biology is explained by biochemsitry, and chemistry in general, which in turn is explained by physics. So if you understand physics, you should understand it all. Well, now it seems that it's not quite that easy. As is well known it's always alot easier to take something given a part, than to put something that works together in a process where you need to invent the parts. It's similary far easier to "invent" a cause, when you know the history, than it is to actually PREDICT the future given a state of incompleteness. So I think we still do not understand everything in depth to make the full connection here, but I think you took a first step by asking the question. I do not think that ordinary or classical QM are fit to explain this connection. But perhaps once we understand the theory of QG _in depth_ more intereting insights to evolutionary mechanisms will appear. At least that's what I think. /Fredrik

Not to advocate the derange from physics, but I am personally careful about rejecting things because I can't define it properly, or proove it (yet). Computers or bots would reject questions as irrelevent when not properly formulated, but humans know better. We both find the questions and the answers. I find plenty of useful intuition from my own brain. To me it's still a fact that the human brain outperforms most other systems in nature in it's beauty. I am not one bit religious, so don't get me wrong, but I'm not bold enough to ignore intuition coming from one of most amazing construct known to man, not matter how fuzzy it is. But the proper connection to the brain is not IMO, in the "classical QM" and schrodinger cat stuff. I think the connection to the theory of physics and the scientific model has interesting links to the brain. But the link is not direct and hands on. It's in deeper abstraction layers, where one models the models. The model is under knowledge or understanding, and this is continously modelled. Input to the human brain is analogous to measurement or interaction. My personal intuition is that the right connection, is not between the brain and the physical theories, it's rather the brain and how physical theories come into beeing. It's an abstraction of the scientific method itself, thus beeing much bigger than physics itself. There is ongoing research in these fields and I expect lots of new insights eventually. I think the intuitive connection is onto something, what's probably less successful is the direct application of the old QM formulations. The more modern and evolutionary generalizations is I think the better place to look. /Fredrik

Ok, that makes sense, that some smells gives positive feedback to the brain. But that seems complex And wouldn't this possibly be slightly dependent on individual too, and your genes, rendering the answer subjective to the individual? I'm not sure how much research there is on that. Anyway, I got the impression that the original question was in relation to some more basic estersynthesis chemistry lab? Maybe I didn't get the question posed in the proper context? When I looked into taste bud receptors some time ago I was surprised to see how little research that has been done. Part of the problem is that it's not easy to hijack - in vivo - the nerve lines in humans... for obvious reasons. So much research is made on rats and mice. And some test panel testing on humans. But in the end the biochemical and neurochemical knowledge of something as "simple" as sweetness and salt receptors is incomplete even though the basic mechanism are often more or less known. Also, research is often made with single compounds... like a particular salt or so. But not so much is known what the response is to other compounds. /Fredrik