🚀 go-pugleaf

[Followups should go somewhere else, I don't know where... I have posted
to these two newsgroups because I know nothing about the others listed in
Mr. Creighton's header, but I consider his post off-topic in both b.i-t
and s.p.rel]

Mr. Creighton has been in my kill file for some time, but I took him out
temporarily because of his email request that I read this post.  I am
sorry that I bothered to do so now, and I am not interested in continuing
the discussion, but FWIW I have a few comments below which may be helpful
to some readers; note particularly that I correct a VCM (very common ;-) 
-misconception-) concerning the phrase "expanding universe".

On Thu, 30 Jul 1998, John Creighton wrote:

>    No I actually don't believe the universe is a
> computer but my mind has been over firing with ideas about
> material that is well beyond what I learned.
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Then why did you post this stuff?  Especially in these two science
newsgroups where you are likely to encounter people who -do- know what
they are talking about?

If you post suggestions for a new "theory" to sci newsgroups, concerning
material way over your head, you can expect a blunt and somewhat
exasperated response.  You don't know what you are talking about--- as you
admit--- so it is no surprise that someone who does thinks your ideas
are--- this is an understatement--- premature at best.

-Saying- that you know you don't know what you are talking about, and then
going on and talking anyway, is not evidence of sound judgement, IMHO. 
Among other things, science is best left to sane persons with sound
judgement. 

For the benefit of lurkers, I stress that it's OK, in fact laudable, to
ask questions in the appropriate ng if you are trying to learn a -real-
theory, such as information theory or relativity theory--- questions from
a serious student are rarely if ever "stupid" and almost invariably draw
an earnest and thoughtful response from contributors who are further along
in their level of understanding.

My irritation is due to the fact that you posted ideas which are
uninformed, incomprehensible, and incompletely developed (to say no more). 
Maybe on talk.sci or alt.sci.bartalk this is acceptable and entertaining,
but it has little if anything to do with serious learning or intellectual
inquiry. 

>         If any part of these posts is off topic please post
> follow-ups to the appropriate newsgroops.

They are off topic in sci.physics.relativity and bionet.info-theory, the
only two newsgroups in your (overlong) list I have ever read. 

> 1. The universe can be modeled as if it were a digital
> computer.

As far as that goes, it is an old idea, going back to Edward Fremkin (if
memory serves) in the early seventies.

> 2. Hard drive space is a function of energy.
     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It is true that most axiom systems contain undefined terms, but it is
customary to give many examples clearly illustrating what you have in mind
by these undefined terms.  I have good intuition for the notion of a
"point" because someone drew lots of intersecting lines once, and I got
the point ;-)

> 5. All reference frames are equally valid.
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Do you mean by "reference frame" what I do?  Who knows?  You didn't
provide any examples.  In str, this is a defined term.

[O.K., I see now that you said -something- about this below, but you gave
neither a definition nor an example, so my comment stands]

> 7. Information can not be destroyed.
     ^^^^^^^^^^^

Another undefined term with no examples provided.

Are you aware of Bennett's work on Maxwell's Demon?  To say no more, this
casts doubt on the reasonablity of this assumption.

> 8. Length contraction is a consequence of

the universal compression algorithm.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You have provided absolutely no clue as to what you might mean by this or
why anyone would think there should be a universal compression algorithm
which has anything to do with special relativity. 

> Missing axioms to predict relativistic length and time

If you knew your ideas were poorly thought out, why did you post them at
all?

> Hard drive space- A place to hold information. Contains a
> specified number of entities that can take on a specific
> number of combinations. Their is no hardware difficulty in
> maintaining any combination.

This seems like utter nonsense to me.

> Reference frame- An allowed path occupying a position in the
> vertex of its own light cone.

This is a definition?  It makes no sense to me (-events- have light cones;
paths do not) and certainly does not correspond by the meaning of that
term in str. 

> Information- The smallest amount of hard drive space
> required to store an arbitrary sequence of  symbols, allowed
> by the universal compression algorithm.
> 
> Universal Compression algorithm- The set of instructions the
> universe uses to store information. It is believed to be the
> most efficient possible in compressing information. It is
> also believed that the Universal law set algorithm is made
> easier as a result of this algorithm.

Two words: Halting Problem. 

> Universal law set algorithm- The set of instructions that
> govern how the universe behaves.

>    Consequences
> 
> 1. Gravitational Read shift is due to conservation of
> information. In other words information required to
> described momentum --> information required to described
> position.

If you claim to be doing science, you need to derive this claim.

> 2. Conservation of momentum is a special case of
> conservation of information.

Same comment.
 
>  Where I am coming from
> 
>         My ideas begin when I thought about the statement
> "the universe is expanding". Sense space is relative I
> considered this a meaningless statement and nobody seemed to
> object.

Probably nobody knowlegeable bothered to read your post.  If you knew
anything about gtr you'd understand that gtr does not say that "space is
relative" (whatever that is supposed to mean).  You -can- find clear
explanations in my archived postings on my relativity page (see URL
below), in the s.p.r. FAQ and cosmology FAQ, and in gtr textbooks of what
"expansion of the universe" means.  Of course, if you lack the
prerequisites, these explanations won't make sense, in which case you need
to learn the equivalent of an undergraduate math/physics major.

> I suggested in sci.relativity that it was more
> correct to say that the universe is increasing in entropy
> then to say that the universe is expanding.

There's nothing wrong with saying the universe is expanding, if you know
what astrophysicists really mean by that phrase.  Entropy is a tricky
concept in gtr and someone who has no understanding of str or basic gtr is
not going to be able to talk sensically about thermodynamics in curved
spacetime.

>         In another post I expanded on these ideas. I
> considered the uncertainty principle as a statement of
> information being quantified. I also considered many of the
> variables that we measure today as consequences of our
> measuring procedures; most notably space and time.
> 
>         To these suggestion I hardly got any response. It
> seemed most people didn't feel confidant enough about their
> background in this area to respond and the ones that did
> felt that this was far to subtle a topic to try to explain
> to someone with my education level.

You didn't say what level that is.

> Eventual I took Chris H's suggestion to check out his site on entropy. 
> 
>          I had difficult getting the information I wanted
> because lack of software and lack of background but a
> primmer on the subject of information theory started to help
> me form my new ideas into a rough set of axioms even though
> the primer covered very little.

It's a big, big subject.  In that paper I focused on a small subset of the
more important ideas.  For a more complete impression of the field you
need to consult a textbook like Thomas & Cover, Elements of Information
Theory.  IMHO, you need to pick -one- thing and really study it, in the
proper order, after acquiring the proper prerequisites.  Formal study in a
university setting is best, because few people have the discipline or read
sufficiently intelligently these days to be able to get much out of
"self-study".

> It also started to give me the idea that the popular suggestion that the
> universe is a computer is more then just a suggestion but a tool to
> allow you to say some concrete things about the world. 

Scientists won't be interested unless you have a self-consistent, well
defined theory (a coherent body of definitions and theorems in which you
can -compute- defined quantities or other mathematical objects) which you
can use to make precise predictions (possibly qualitative, but -precise-;
see for instance stability theory of differential equations for a model of
precise but qualitative statements).

Sorry if this seems harsh, but it irritates me that people waste bandwidth
in sci newsgroups on such loony, poorly informed, one-hundredth baked
ideas. If you want to talk with scientists about science your first task
is to carry out a serious study of their field, at least to the point that
you have some understanding of what they mean by "scientific theory" and
to the point where you have some grasp of what they consider to be the
fundamental problems in that field. 

Please, no more, John.  If you take my advice and try to learn more about
what relativity theory or information theory -really- say, and want to ask
questions about technical points in the appropriate ng, I am sure I or
someone else will be happy to help you out, but I am definitely not going
to discuss this particular set of "preideas" any further.

Chris Hillman

Please DO NOT email me at optimist@u.washington.edu.  I post from this account
to fool the spambots; human correspondents should write to me at the email
address you can obtain by making the obvious deletions, transpositions,
and insertion (of @) in the url of my home page:

   http://www.math.washington.edu/~hillman/personal.html

Thanks!