4 ms·

At the subatomic level, is there any real difference between information and a "thing"? Seems mostly philosophical and arbitrary at that point.

by duaneb 10y ago

raverbashing 10y ago
What do you mean by that?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
cristianpascu 10y ago
Information is a mental concept. That is, it's based on the someone knowing the range of possibilities of a certain state of affairs involving things/entities. For instance the top face of a dice. You know there are 6 possibilities, but at the moment, there's only one face at the top. Same with quantum particles, we attach properties to them, and these properties can have one value out of many. Measuring the specific value yields 'information' because you put that value in the context of the possible values you could find. The particle sent you a message, its properties. But being related to reality, it's easy to be confused or rightfully associated with being a thing. I'd say that it's superposition of epistemology and ontology. You can't really separated to knower from the known.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Sure, but everything qualitative is information. What remains? Is there any other way to think about reality than information? Seems kind of silly to pull apart information as somehow separate or lesser than reality. Saying "real teleportation" is somehow different than "just information" is nonsensical. It's like saying with quantum teleportation that the two particles aren't "really" entangled, they just have the same state. Well if you can't distinguish the state, what distinguishes them? They're literally the same until something distinguishes them. Or, to put it another way, "just" information teleporting isn't any less exciting. "real" teleportation doesn't hold up to much thought anyway; it's very difficult to ground it in physical terms. Is there much point assuming people think about teleportation that way?
das3ddddddd 10y ago
This is key and why most people don't understand why the name quantum teleportation really is appropriate. And when you consider the only difference between two particles is the information state they are in. And that you do teleport the information. The name is not misleading.
- echelon 10y ago
  What about position, though?
eternalban 10y ago
I think what you are really asking is: what is the substantial reality of 'the thing', if it is merely 'information'. All following quotes are from the documentary "Atomic Physics and Reality" [1 - 'emphasis' mine.]. John Wheeler: Einstein admired Bohr and Bohr admired Einstein. And you recall that Einstein felt that 'reality' exists, in effect, 'out there', something independent of us. And the position of Bohr was rather this: that 'reality' is only a word and we have to learn what the right way is to use that word. John Bell: Bohr, I think, quite in early in life had decided that ordinary concepts such as space and time simply wouldn't work at the atomic scale. And it was always a bit unclear what Bohr would replace those concepts by, if anything. But Einstein was very attached to the space-time description, and thought that one should try very hard to extend it into the atomic domain. And this was the root of the disagreement between the two men. David Bohm: Bohr had developed a view in which he essentially would say that 'reality' was unknown or unknowable, or even had no meaning, 'reality' by itself. Reality, except at the large scale level of ordinary experience, atomic reality had no meaning, and all that we have are 'phenomena', produced in an 'experiment', and that quantum theory deals with the inter- relationships of all these phenomena. Abner Shimony: Bohr was not a professional philosopher. How much of the traditional philosophers he read, one does not know. But he was an extremely intelligent man and he must have thought through some of the issues that professional philosophers had thought through very deeply. And certainly one of the issues that he had though through considerably, with some help I think from reading, was the Kantian issue of the status of 'the thing in itself'. The 'thing' as it really is, quite apart from Human 'perception' of it. Bohr, like Kant, was very suspicious that one can say anything significant, intelligent, controllable, about 'the thing in itself'. [Bohr] once said that physics or science in general was not about 'nature' but about nature exposed to our 'observation'. And that is very Kantian. -- [1]: https://youtu.be/BFvJOZ51tmc https://youtu.be/BFvJOZ51tmc
- duaneb 10y ago
  Actually, I find it very intuitive that reality is just information. It's much easier than setting it apart as ineffable.
johncolanduoni 10y ago
Asking that question puts you in pretty good company[1]. There's a reason that the field of quantum information includes people looking fundamentally at physical systems, not just coming up with algorithms and implementations for quantum computers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics#Wheeler.27s_.22it_from_bit.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics#Wheeler.27s_.2...

At the subatomic level, is there any real difference between information and a "thing"? Seems mostly philosophical and arbitrary at that point.

by duaneb 10y ago

At the subatomic level, is there any real difference between information and a "thing"? Seems mostly philosophical and arbitrary at that point.

raverbashing 10y ago

What do you mean by that?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

cristianpascu 10y ago

Information is a mental concept. That is, it's based on the someone knowing the range of possibilities of a certain state of affairs involving things/entities. For instance the top face of a dice. You know there are 6 possibilities, but at the moment, there's only one face at the top. Same with quantum particles, we attach properties to them, and these properties can have one value out of many. Measuring the specific value yields 'information' because you put that value in the context of the possible values you could find. The particle sent you a message, its properties. But being related to reality, it's easy to be confused or rightfully associated with being a thing. I'd say that it's superposition of epistemology and ontology. You can't really separated to knower from the known.

duaneb 10y ago
Sure, but everything qualitative is information. What remains? Is there any other way to think about reality than information? Seems kind of silly to pull apart information as somehow separate or lesser than reality. Saying "real teleportation" is somehow different than "just information" is nonsensical. It's like saying with quantum teleportation that the two particles aren't "really" entangled, they just have the same state. Well if you can't distinguish the state, what distinguishes them? They're literally the same until something distinguishes them. Or, to put it another way, "just" information teleporting isn't any less exciting. "real" teleportation doesn't hold up to much thought anyway; it's very difficult to ground it in physical terms. Is there much point assuming people think about teleportation that way?

das3ddddddd 10y ago

This is key and why most people don't understand why the name quantum teleportation really is appropriate. And when you consider the only difference between two particles is the information state they are in. And that you do teleport the information. The name is not misleading.

echelon 10y ago
What about position, though?

eternalban 10y ago

I think what you are really asking is: what is the substantial reality of 'the thing', if it is merely 'information'. All following quotes are from the documentary "Atomic Physics and Reality" [1 - 'emphasis' mine.]. John Wheeler: Einstein admired Bohr and Bohr admired Einstein. And you recall that Einstein felt that 'reality' exists, in effect, 'out there', something independent of us. And the position of Bohr was rather this: that 'reality' is only a word and we have to learn what the right way is to use that word. John Bell: Bohr, I think, quite in early in life had decided that ordinary concepts such as space and time simply wouldn't work at the atomic scale. And it was always a bit unclear what Bohr would replace those concepts by, if anything. But Einstein was very attached to the space-time description, and thought that one should try very hard to extend it into the atomic domain. And this was the root of the disagreement between the two men. David Bohm: Bohr had developed a view in which he essentially would say that 'reality' was unknown or unknowable, or even had no meaning, 'reality' by itself. Reality, except at the large scale level of ordinary experience, atomic reality had no meaning, and all that we have are 'phenomena', produced in an 'experiment', and that quantum theory deals with the inter- relationships of all these phenomena. Abner Shimony: Bohr was not a professional philosopher. How much of the traditional philosophers he read, one does not know. But he was an extremely intelligent man and he must have thought through some of the issues that professional philosophers had thought through very deeply. And certainly one of the issues that he had though through considerably, with some help I think from reading, was the Kantian issue of the status of 'the thing in itself'. The 'thing' as it really is, quite apart from Human 'perception' of it. Bohr, like Kant, was very suspicious that one can say anything significant, intelligent, controllable, about 'the thing in itself'. [Bohr] once said that physics or science in general was not about 'nature' but about nature exposed to our 'observation'. And that is very Kantian. -- [1]: https://youtu.be/BFvJOZ51tmc https://youtu.be/BFvJOZ51tmc

duaneb 10y ago
Actually, I find it very intuitive that reality is just information. It's much easier than setting it apart as ineffable.

johncolanduoni 10y ago

Asking that question puts you in pretty good company[1]. There's a reason that the field of quantum information includes people looking fundamentally at physical systems, not just coming up with algorithms and implementations for quantum computers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics#Wheeler.27s_.22it_from_bit.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics#Wheeler.27s_.2...