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Post by carnyx on Feb 1, 2011 20:40:44 GMT 1
Rather than interrupting other threads, I thought I'd post my musings here on the nature of information, time, the universe, etc.
I reckon that the nature of information is ultimately serial, i.e. that at it's most elemetary... it is a change of state with respect to time. And as it is relative, it has the same characteristics as time.
As I pointed out on an earlier thread, time can only be determined as a number of successive events in a sequence, that are counted between two successive events in a separate sequence. Thus, the measurement of time, and the measurement of information both share the same fundamental detection process, and therefore must have the same fundamental properties.
For both time and information, it all has to do with the detection and comparison of events in two separate sequences.
In other words, to get any information, we will need a sequence of pulses or events representing the 'clock' reference, and a separate series of pulses or events representing the data stream.
This raises the interesting idea that information has an upper limit based on the frequency of gamma rays .. currently reported as 10^30 hz.
Now as any event involves the movement of matter, energy must also be involved. So, it might be possible to determine the minimum amount of energy involved in the transmission ( i.e realisation) of a single piece of information.
And, information has the same characteristics of time, and is relative. As information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, neither can time. Neither can it be measured to be any shorter than the cycle of the most energetic gamma-ray.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Feb 1, 2011 21:26:31 GMT 1
I suggest you go back to holographic principle is you want the actual connection between physics, information, discreteness and all that.
Not this waffly, pretty-souding word-salad -- it's garbage I'm afraid.
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 1, 2011 21:33:47 GMT 1
Well, time might merely be an illusion that we experience due to the the way our brain interacts with the world of quantum mechanics. We are told that at the quantum level time has no meaning and might even run backwards and that what we think of as time might simply be a series of quantum 'events' that do not in reality have any temporal separation from one another but which our brain interprets as a 'flow' of time. If this is true then time would really be an 'emergent' property of brain function in the way it 'constructs' objective reality.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 1, 2011 23:12:08 GMT 1
STA, enough of your cacophony.. you have been bested before in an earlier discussion on time, which left you a mumbling shambles. You know this, and so you are trying the ad-hom stuff because you know what is coming. But it ain't going to work, so you had better pull your knickers up and engage your brain on this one: or piss off, to avoid another thrashing.
So watch. This is an example how to muse about physics; to play; to create amusement ... Time as we all know it can only be measured by detecting a series of events emanating from one process, and counting the intervening events emanating from another sequence. It is therefore a relative unidirectional scalar quantity.
And, as information is also a sequence of events; a serial process; it is fundamentally the same as time .. i.e. it is also a unidirectional scalar quantity.
As any detectable event involves a change of momentum ( an effective displacement of mass) and therefore involves energy, there may be an upper limit to the rate of producing serial events.
The fastest known detectable serial process in the universe is the frequency of gamma rays, currently at around 10^30 Hz. They are very energetic, and so this very energy represent a practical limit to the ability to measure time, and thus information. In other words there may be an upper limit to the energy and mass and length involved in measuring time, and also information
Here is one for STA; do all of the individual frequencies of em radiation travel at the same speed? For example does a visible and a gamma ray travel at the same speed of light?
At the other end of the scale there may be a lower limit to the energy and mass and length involved in each quantum of time, or information.
So, is there an envelope of dimension MLT within which a detectable event ..( aka a quantum of time, or information) can exist?
(Another one for STA: If an event involves the effective movement of mass, then can the resultant transverse velocity of the E or M waves within say a gamma ray, exceed the propagation velocity?)
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Post by speakertoanimals on Feb 2, 2011 2:15:46 GMT 1
Yes, as far as we have been able to measure. Although theories such as doubly special relativity do predict a slight change in speed wrt frequency.
This is all bollocks. The stuff about gamma rays is bollocks. We already have perfectly good estimates of the possible lack of continuity on the smallest time scales and smallest length scales -- the Planck time and the Planck length, where we expect quantum gravity effects to come into play, hence the possible non-continuous nature of spacetime to become apparent.
First, the picture of em radiation as E and B waves doesn't apply on quantum scale of the photon. Second, even an idiot knows that the waves are waves of change of VALUE, nothing is moving transverse to the direction of travel -- it's not a wave like a water wave, where the water moves up and down, but the wave moves forward.
Muse all you like, but if you start from a position of ignorance or misunderstanding, musing will only ever make it worse.
As I said meaningless word salad.................
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Post by Progenitor A on Feb 2, 2011 8:23:34 GMT 1
I reckon that the nature of information is ultimately serial, i.e. that at it's most elemetary... it is a change of state with respect to time. And as it is relative, it has the same characteristics as time. But some information comes in parallel form - multiple symbols arriving at once. Sure by introducing a delay we can clock it out as a serial stream (after suitable encoding if the data is analogue) but did yoou have that in mind when you considered all information to be serial?
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Post by carnyx on Feb 2, 2011 20:54:53 GMT 1
@nm#5
With regard to the idea that all information is serial in nature ( i.e it involves time) it is based on the idea that human thought, and communication, is serial in nature. So even when the eye is presented with a picture, the human mind will think about it in a serial manner.( Indeed, any painting or drawing is produced serially ..)
In other words, sense resides within the sensor aka the human mind which produces serial thoughts.
And as we know that 'signal' has all the characteristics of 'noise' .. and noise is a serial concept, then time is involved.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Feb 2, 2011 21:03:47 GMT 1
Except human thought is MASSIVELY paralle, why we can do so much with a few pounds of mush. Consciousness or attention may be serial, but thought isn't.
Communication actuall parallel as well -- we have sound (words), we have intonation, we have gestures and facial expressions. Which is why talking on the phone is such a poor substitute.
You don't half come out with some nonsense carnyx -- as I said, pretty word-salad, but devoid of any actual content or attempt at seropis reflection. Down the puib after ten pints kind of non-thinking, which you may think is brilliant at the time, but is just mush.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 2, 2011 21:23:52 GMT 1
@sta #4
I warned you not to make crappy remarks, or you will get thrashed. Here is your first stripe;
You were asked ;
To which you answered;
This response is worthy of Vicky Pollard at her best! yebutnobutyes.
Is your doubly special relativitythe latest attempt to 'explain' those MAGIC observations? The one where gamma rays apparently travel more slowly than visible light? And has created a real problem for relativity?
You need to come clean. "The Science" is definitely not settled, or you would not be talking about "doubly special relativity" would you?
Now unless you stop the crappy remarks, you will get the second stripe.
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Post by Progenitor A on Feb 2, 2011 22:34:38 GMT 1
@nm#5 With regard to the idea that all information is serial in nature ( i.e it involves time) it is based on the idea that human thought, and communication, is serial in nature. So even when the eye is presented with a picture, the human mind will think about it in a serial manner.( Indeed, any painting or drawing is produced serially ..) In other words, sense resides within the sensor aka the human mind which produces serial thoughts. And as we know that 'signal' has all the characteristics of 'noise' .. and noise is a serial concept, then time is involved. OK, I will go with that.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 2, 2011 23:26:38 GMT 1
@sta#7
You start by taking a great exception to this statement;
Yet in the middle of your attempt to decry it, you say;
How do you account for this sudden agreement? Is this an example of the outcome of an internal battle between your parallel thought processes? Do you really know what you think? Are you only conscious of it after the event?
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Post by speakertoanimals on Feb 3, 2011 2:35:24 GMT 1
It is, of course, perfectly good science! As far as we can MEASURE, light always travels at lightspeed, whether visible light, or gamma rays. Except there are some astrophysical observations that suggest that perhaps this is not the case: www.universetoday.com/11889/high-energy-gamma-rays-go-slower-than-the-speed-of-light/Some theorists are not totally surprised by this. Relativity, after all, is in some sense wrong, in that it is not a quantum theory of gravity. In doubly special relativity, the idea that motivates it is that we have a length scale where we think quantum gravity effects ought to come into play -- the Planck length. Except according to classical relativity, what you think a length is depends on how you are moving (Lorentz contraction). So then, one observer would see below Planck-scale (hence quantum) effects, another would not. One suggestion is that we need to modify relatvity, so that we have TWO invariants -- the speed of light, and the Planck length. Hence the double in doubly. One possible consequence of these theories is that the speed of actual photons depends on frequency -- hence the interest in whether or not this effect has actually been seen for gamma rays. Rather than being a real problem such an effect (which is actually the difference in travel time for lower energy and higher-energy gamma rays, NOT between visible light and gamma rays) is actually what people have been looking for, in the sense that we are looking for where relativity gets it wrong, and the first signals as to what a theory beyond relativity (ie quantum gravity) might be doing. The problem is that we expect effects to be small, or occur only at length scales and energies beyond what we can probe directly here on earth. Hence astronomical observations, which involve a slight-indirect approach. And difference of four minutes over a distance to galaxy of 700 million lightyears (remembering of course effects of expansion ) -- its not that big! And others think there are better explanations for this dispersion other than -- Oh! It's quantum gravity peering over the parapet at last!
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 3, 2011 13:49:40 GMT 1
Blimey, did she smile?
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Post by speakertoanimals on Feb 3, 2011 14:11:40 GMT 1
Agreement? No!
The whole point about the brain is that it is parallel.
DO we really know what we think? Most of the time, no, what we are consciously aware of is only, in a sense, the tip of the iceberg, the unconscious processing going on underneath that leads to conscious thought is, by definition, not accessible.
Is conscious thought really parallel? Speech (without tone, intonation, gesture, facial expression that makes up full communication) and writing ARe serial. But conscious thoughts are in some sense MORE than we can express in words, in that serial fashion. So, I can have in my mind abd be thinking about a definite THING, even if for the moment I can't recall the WORD for that thing. Methods of expressing thought may be serial, I'm not so sure thought itself is................
ANyway, the nature of consciousness isn't the issue, what is your casaual assumption that thought is serial, which I think we can dismiss now.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 3, 2011 21:57:11 GMT 1
God, you are such a twerp! Time, you dork,Time is what we are talking about !
Thinking is a sequential process ... and so involves Time .... No matter how many processors are involved, they are all changing state in SEQUENCE ... i.e SERIALLY.
Thoughts are communicated serially! You typed your stupid nonsense-post one letter at a time! And, via lots of parallel sequential processes, I managed to reconstruct your manky stuff.. as a sequence.
And then I was able to see that it made no sense!
But I shall retun to your post on the new extra-special relativity that has had to be brewed up to account for the observed difference in velocity between visible and gamma waves .. when I have time
And now,m can y omake some sensible commment on the thread postulate that time and information share many features and so may be physical, and limited, in some way.
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