Tiny particles

can be two places at once;

Never satisfied.

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/4522901

Whenever I read an article like this, I am reminded of Dennis Ritchie's phrase: "intoxicated with metaphor."

There are distinctions between physical laws and organizing principles that seem to escape the author. I think Miller confuses objective, necessary cause and effect -- heat energy input causing the rise of mercury in a glass tube -- with the subjective, incidental information effect which depends upon (it is "caused by") evaluation by a programmed observer (a human or other animal, or human instrumentation, evolved or designed to register and report within subjective structures of meaning). The thermometer is not in itself conveying any particular packet of information, it is only behaving and affecting its environment according to laws of physics. The general trend of all effects which cause subsequent effects -- these of course might be measured and thereby become information -- is entropy. However one defines entropy, it is not organization (it is not programmed) so it cannot be informed. Therefore the entropic universe is not literally a computer (nor is a really really awesomely huge computer a good metaphor for the universe).

The quantum effect indicated by Schroedinger's (Co-dependent) Cat does not contradict but rather confirms this logic. For it is not the universe which looks in the box; it is an organized, evolved or designed, energized observer. And remember that the box itself, with its "superpositioning" device, has been effected by an organized, purposive agent, who, like the observer, runs counter to entropy.

When someone makes a prediction based on these discrete computer metaphors...

Pardon, but when was the purpose of metaphor - or the purpose of layman descriptions of highly technical fields - to be predictive? Such an expectation is absurd on the face of it.

At first I thought, woo-hoo! A science article on Salon!

Unfortunately, and perhaps echoing the book under review, glibness soon took centre-stage. Scientists aren't creative? Cake icing?

Science books aimed at general readers are particularly demanding of expert review, preferably by scientists, but certainly not by Betty Crocker.

As a Ph.D. in physics who works on cosmology, the answer is pretty much "no". Maybe this book has some fun science, and I don't begrudge a popular book its slant -- it seems not to be crazy -- but the basic fact is that models of the universe as discrete exchanges of information have been around for years and remain solely the domain of crackpots like Stephen Wolfram.

It's a fascinating, attractive idea, but it has no real basis in reality; except in very limited domains, such theories have zero predictive power and, if they do, are essentially window dressing for an underlying theory that is completely different.

When someone makes a prediction based on these discrete computer metaphors, I'll get interested, but for now the only place you'll see these arguments are internet discussion boards and non-peer reviewed popular books written for the layperson.

Well, of course I'm going to rush out and buy this book. But I must say, reading the thred for this review has been pretty interesting in and of itself. Lot of great input and ideas out there.

I've come to believe that this place we call the universe must somehow resemble a mobius strip, or better yet, a Klein bottle. And all we hominids and fellow life forms are just a bunch of little corpuscle actors swimming around a strange and murky stew.

The only thing we are is actors that do nothing but act; and nothing else... We either act or don't act. And by choosing not to act, we are acting still. Yes, indeed - as the Laura Miller stated at the beginning - we are (heh,heh) DOOMED!!

It strikes me that the reason Schroedenger's cat experiment seems so ridiculous on the face of it is that, whether or not the electron's position is measured by instruments or by human observation, someone is still observing the effect of its position -- namely, the cat, who knows full well whether or not it's dying.

I think this raises an interesting proposition. If the cat's consciousness is a form of information interacting with the world around it, and if its interaction with certain other forms of information prove lethal to it, and if, once dead, the cat cannot observe anything, then for the cat to observe the position of the electron means that the cat must remain alive. So if the thought-experiment is to be true, and the universe is to be split with every quantum uncertainty, how possible is it that consciousness continues along a path of least resistance given the nature of the split? Basically I'm asking whether this proves we're all immortal.

in order for there to be "information," there has to be an "informed."

before you are so swift to find the holes in these theories, rememember,

the universe has provided a place for both the physical reality (knowledge) AND the mental reality (knower.) our current existence proves this.

any attempt to explain a trace of the way such information, makes its physical prints in our scientific way of understanding deserves much deeper rumination, i would say.

Man, this old garbage is still around? Please...

For a short version of the "moon dust" story, try http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/showquestion.asp?faq=4&fldAuto=48, or asa they point out there, dig out an old National Geographic.

JM

There is a HUGE problem with most psyco-babble about why the universe did what- the FACTS, scientific, hard facts, point towards Creation as the LOGICAL, scientific, fact-supported theory of how the Universe was created.

The problem with Evolution and the Big Bang theory isn't one of philosophy or religion, it's science.

Take the moon, for example. If it's 4 billion years old, like the earth, and tidal ripples show that it's been around as long as the earth has, why is it virtually dust-free?

We KNOW the rate of cosmic dust falling towards the earth and moon. The scientists who designed the moon lander designed it with big dishes on the bottom because they KNEW that the moon MUST be covered with more than 100 feet of cosmic dust, since it falls at constant rate and there's nothing to blow it away.

Yet the moon surprised us, it's got only about 1/4 INCH of dust on it in most places, and nowhere does it exceed an inch?

Hm. Well, let's see, maybe the moon only showed up 10,000 years ago... no, that won't work, the tidal forces. Maybe some alien sweeps the moon every once in a while... you think? Or could the other possibility be... no. No WAY God could have created the Universe. No way. That would require YOU to believe in God, in His majesty.

No way... better to believe the universe is a computer, or that Darwin, a failed Minister who was a contemporary of Lincoln and said himself in the Origin of the Species that "if the fossil records don't bear out my theories, they should be discarded." Well, here we are, many decades later, with billions of fossils NONE of which shows a bee becoming a buffalo or any transitional fossils at all...

Hm. What to do?