What We Don't Know

By | January 28, 2007
5 Comments

Wired has a run-down on some big questions that remain unanswered (or partially answered). My favorites are:

How can observation affect the outcome of an experiment?

Why is fundamental physics so messy?

How does the brain produce consciousness?

Is the universe actually made of information?

That last one is a good question to mull over when you have some time on your hands (say, for example, when flying across the Pacific.) If everything is information, it explains quite a bit. For example, it explains why the universe seems so inordinately fond of the stuff, as demonstrated by billions of years of MEST compression and the Law of Accelerating Returns. An intriguing, related idea — if it is not, in fact, just a restatement of the same idea — is articulated by this guy, who suggests, if I understand him correctly, that the universe is made of numbers. But then he also argues that (maybe) the universe contains virtually no information, so perhaps I’m missing something.

The four questions listed above may be more closely connected to each other than we realize. Consciousness would appear to emerge from information acting upon itself. I am of the opinion that intention is one of the key enablers of this interaction. But then again, it could be one of its results. Observation is another key enabler and/or result of this mysterious interaction. Conscious observation plays some role in the resolution of quantum outcomes. Maybe it enables us to slightly tweak or mess with outcomes. Or maybe it’s what’s driving the whole show.

One problem that the “universe is made of information” formulation does not solve is the ultimate question: why does anything exist at all? We get to keep chewing on that one irrespective of whether information is a cause, or result, of the existence of the universe.

I noticed that several responses to the various questions (not necessarily just the ones I listed above) made reference to the Large Hadron Collider, which is going on-line soon. We’re hoping that the LHC is going to answer a lot of questions for us, but why do Iget this sneaking suspicion that it might raise as many questions as it answers?

  • http://triticale.mu.nu triticale

    The Law of Accelerating returns? I hadn’t noticed that the Law of Accelerating ever left.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Dude, that is mest up.

    [That's right, I changed my comment. You know how you always think of the perfect thing to say a couple of hours later? Normally there's nothing that can be done about that, but when you're paying the hosting fees...]

  • http://triticale.mu.nu triticale

    …why do I get this sneaking suspicion that it might raise as many questions as it answers?

    Because the more we know, the more we realize we don’t know. All those primary questions have been around for a long time, but they were discussed in much simpler terms. In fact, the messiness of fundamental physics was invisible when the discussion was in terms of Newton’s laws.

  • Karl Hallowell

    To the contrary, triticale, has the Law of Accelerating Returns arrived yet? Not according to my log-scaled scale. Exponentially increasing is linear. Standards are high in this corner. :-)

    My take is that we’re far from formulating any basic theories of physics in terms of information. For example, I have experience both with particle physics and with quantum computing, and the two are very dissimilar. Usable quantum computers are extremely difficult to design, make, and run. Notice I haven’t said “program”. We’re not to the point where we have programmable quantum computers.

    At a more fundamental level, it’s not clear to me how to describe information of a quantum field theory (which IMHO would be the first step in constructing any information theory involving the standard model, string theory, or a host of other possible theories). But it might be a way to explain some stuff that has long caused problems.

    For example, “renormalization” is the label for a number of ways for getting theories (interesting in some way) from infinite divergent series (usually the terms correspond to possible particle interactions, say like an electron and positron annihilating to create an “electron neutrino”, its anti-particle, and a photon). (Infinite series are a common occurance in particle physics theories BTW.) In particular, why chose a particular renormalization (aside from the obvious, that it better fits physical observation)? Or it may turn out that the renormalization problem remains.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Criminy, Karl, why not just put that entire last paragraph in parens and be done with it? Do you have a background programming LISP, by any chance? :-)

    On LOAR, if the linear returns come in half the time with each iteration, aren’t they accelerating? (It seems we’ve had this discussion before, but I’m hard to teach.)

    I tend to agree that we’re a long way from really putting physics and information theory together. Probably because we don’t yet really understand physics all that well. Not to mention information!