What are the fundamental information-processes in physics?

[Naty1]

One assumes information to exist at a locale. The other that information is created at a locale. And these are two different views (though in both cases you would appear to find information at a locale).

I have my doubts about those assumptions...here's why...and I do have yet to read thru all that is posted above here, but before that, I wanted to post a dramatically different idea from that expressed in the above quote: From Leonard Susskind, THE BLACK HOLE WAR,2008.

I can't find the exact paragraph I want: the essential idea is the holographic principle (conjecture), that information in a region of space resides on the enclosing surface...In the case of a black hole, for example, Beckenstein's and Hawking's work shows if you add a bit to the black hole the horizon increases by one Planck area...but more generally, every time you describe a volume of space you can pick an ever larger "horizon", a larger enclosing surface, even to the edge of our universe if one exists, and the information content of the original volume is included on the surface area...but each time it resides at a different location..a different horizon! Information about a location in spacetime appears to have no definite location itself!

Susskind goes on to discuss that information in a finite region (or equivalently surface area) of space is itself finite...hence it appears space is discrete...this has been discussed in at least one other thread recently...and so appears to conflict with quantum field theory which is continuous...

and if that were not enough to support Conrad's assertion that information in the world is not very clear, you can also consider the horizon of a black hole and it's information content: Susskind points out

...the experimenter is faced with a choice: remain outside the black hole and record data from the safe side of the horizon, or jump into the holeand do observations from the inside...'You can't do both' "

he claims.

So it sounds like information resides in different places and your location may determine what information is accessible...

And as a reminder, I want to see what's been made in this thread of information loss in black holes ...

and just for fun here's the vote taken in 1993 at the theoretical physics conference in Sanata Barbara California:

WHAT HAPPENS TO IFNORMATION THAT FALLS INTO A BLACK HOLE (votes cast)
1. It's lost: 25
2. It comes out with Hawking radiation: 39
3. It remains (accessible) in a black hole remnant: 7
4. Something else: 6

I wonder how such a vote would go today??

 

[Naty1]

Conrad, post # 7 says:

But first – reproduction is clearly the fundamental information-process underlying biological evolution.

Via Charles Seife, Decoding the Universe, Chapter 4, LIFE, :

It is not the individual that is driving reporoduction; it is the information in the individual. The information in an organism has a goal of replicating itself. While the organisms body is a by-product, a tool for attaining that goal, it is just the vehicle for carrying that information around, sheltering it, and hel;ping the information reproduce.

(I know that's weird punctuation, but I quoted it as published.)

 

[apeiron]

In the case of a black hole, for example, Beckenstein's and Hawking's work shows if you add a bit to the black hole the horizon increases by one Planck area...

And so what about reversing the argument? If you instead keep subtracting away bits from the event horizon around a locale, eventually you would get down to some minimal amount of information. With QM saying you can never get down to just nothing at a locale.

Discrete points in spacetime would thus be seen as a limit on observation. All about getting down to the least amount of bits that can be seen. And so that becomes the event horizon which defines something as a location.

 

[Naty1]

And so what about reversing the argument?

No problem..I agree...it's Hawking radiation...

Discrete points in spacetime would thus be seen as a limit on observation

I'd say it differently: Below Planck Scale, nothing exists as we know it...there might be no information...

... when an observer interacts with its environment, not only does it spread information,

or perhaps the information is already everywhere...encapsulated in a boundary/surface condition...

The process has to preserve certain information from the past, so that it doesn’t have to begin from the same baseline again and again each time.

This seems to be different from what Rovelli in RQM says...removing information via new question (postulate #2) eliminates some prior information...to maintain his postulate #1.

I'd be interested if you guys that have been in the thick of the discussion could agree on a list of issues/uncertainties...I suspect that would be incredibly long when you got done. Then it would be interesting the pare the list down to a manageable number to try to tie together in a coherent theory...Given the relatively narrow scope of Rovelli"s RQM paper and all the things it touches even so, suggests a tough road ahead...good luck...

 

[ConradDJ]

This seems to be different from what Rovelli in RQM says...removing information via new question (postulate #2) eliminates some prior information...to maintain his postulate #1.

Well, certainly much prior information is lost. This is also true in biological evolution, of course. To recap from my post above –

I'm thinking that a "measurement event" may represent this kind of [evolutionary] process. It involves the gathering of several kinds of information determined in other measurement-events...

Not all past information needs to be preserved, only what’s “relevant” (Rovelli’s term) to determining what can happen in future.

The idea is that what's essentially being passed on, from one measurement-event to the next – not through anyone interaction, but in the sum of many interactions that constitutes the "entire measurement situation" – is the functionality of measurement itself, i.e. the ability to create new measurement-situations.

As to “tough road” – right. But to me, it’s not so much that there’s a long list of issues... it’s that there are so many ways in which information gets physically determined / communicated – all of physics is involved.

As in the black hole issue you raised – we know how to discuss information as if it’s “just there” in the world... we can quantify it, we can break it down into information about particles, information about fields... But to approach information from the standpoint of how it gets to be physically observable, in each case... is like heading into an unexplored jungle.

For his limited purposes, Rovelli could avoid all that. But it also means that he offers no answer to basic questions like – how do all these different observers actually end up agreeing on what’s going on in the world? As he shows, the QM formalism says that indeed they all do... but we get no insight into what makes this work.

Again, I think the reason it’s hard to understand the basic information-processes is that there are quite a few of them, and none are simple, and they’re all interdependent. This is what we would expect, as the result of an evolutionary process... but that doesn’t make this kind of approach less daunting. So "good luck" is needed...thanks.

 

[apeiron]

I'd be interested if you guys that have been in the thick of the discussion could agree on a list of issues/uncertainties...

I'm not too sure what even the question is here

But the standard lament in the systems science circles in which I move is that standard issue reductionist modelling - the modern information theoretic approach being its latest form - manages to leave out essential aspects of reality, such as meaning, observers, and other contextual or global factors.

So aim number one would be to provide an alternative model in which these kinds of things get represented again.

In practice, the standard view of information is that bits just exist. They are substantial locales just waiting to be counted. No meanings are implicit in their existence, no observers are required.

The systems view would then be - at least my version of it - that bits can only exist within bit-shaping contexts. So we have a dyadic or dichotomistic story. The existence of a bit implies the existence of a matching context. And the nature of this relationship can then be generalised mathematically in the language of symmetry, symmetry-breaking and asymmetry. Hopefully.