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Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links (1989) [pdf]
- zitterbewegung 9y agoObligatory posting of Physics, Topology, Logic and Computation: A Rosetta Stone http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf
- legel 9y agoThis looks like a gem, thanks! Under my elbow as I type is a small introductory book called Topology for Computing, which I’d recommend to anyone trying to investigate such links, for its concise clarity and elegant figures. https://www.amazon.com/Computing-Cambridge-Monographs-Computational-Mathematics/dp/0521136091 https://www.amazon.com/Computing-Cambridge-Monographs-Comput...
- zitterbewegung 9y agoThanks for the book recommendation. :)
- glbrew 9y agoAnyone know what book this is from? Looks like it is Chapter 19?
- Bromskloss 9y agoI can't be sure, but it might be this: https://www.google.se/search?q=ISBN+9780201515060 https://www.google.se/search?q=ISBN+9780201515060
- jchook 9y agoLooks like this paper is the opening chapter of that book. The search continues! http://toc.nkp.cz/VSE/201103/contents/vse000191986_1.pdf http://toc.nkp.cz/VSE/201103/contents/vse000191986_1.pdf
- slackenerny 9y agoA. Hey edited „Feynman Lectures on Computation” for publication and later collected some assorted papers of guest lecturers Feynman would invite in „Feynman and computation – exploring the limits of computers”. This „It from bit” paper by Wheeler (Feynman’s advisor) is the 19th there.
- godelmachine 9y agoI really would like to know the name of the book from which this index is. It's super interesting and I really want to read that book. Please let me know once you find it. Sincerely,
- slackenerny 9y agoBook already referenced by GP, click your links. These are old classic conference proceedings edited by Zurek https://archive.org/details/ComplexityEntropyAndThePhysicsOfInformation https://archive.org/details/ComplexityEntropyAndThePhysicsOf... but it’s a mixed bag unless you really fancy EG quantum field theorist’s opinions on workings of visual cortex.
- Bromskloss 9y agoThanks for posting it! It's unfortunate that the entry doesn't include the ISBN number [0], and that it consequently doesn't turn up when searching for that number [0] I consider "ISBN number" to be a reasonable expression, with the interpretation "the number that goes by the name _ISBN_".
- scottlocklin 9y agoThanks; I remember reading this in the LBL library, and just ordered a copy! If there's anything modern along these lines which doesn't concentrate on "quantum computing" I'd love to know about it.
- slackenerny 9y agoMontanari/Mezard perhaps?
- jegoodwin3 9y agohighly recommend this as well.
- scottlocklin 9y agoCool book for sure, but I was thinking of something which would mention stuff like Rovelli's forays into Information theories of QM, or that crazy paper I found in the library once and lost completely which posited quantum entanglement worked like public key crypto. The weird ideas that didn't quite pan out. I'm a fan of weird ideas that don't quite work; reading Whittaker's history of E&M or stuff like the reletivistic aether theory in Sommerfeld's book. Mostly interested as I had my own weird idea that (mostly) didn't pan out based on the Gutzwiller trace formula and symbolic dynamics of phase space.
- da-bacon 9y agoWhen I found a version of this paper, as an undergrad researcher circa 1995, it changed the course of my life and I spent an amazing decade working in quantum computing. For those who are interested, the result quoted by Wheeler, which attempts to derive quantum theory via arguments using distinguishability, appears in Wootters' Ph.D. thesis in 1980. 33 years later(!), he wrote a follow up https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.2018 https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.2018 in which he showed that result essentially only works for the real number version of quantum theory. (Pessimist would say this means it is a dead end, optimist that we are just missing something!)
- tbabb 9y agoIs this a "mainstream" view in academic quantum mechanics? It seems so much more "modern" than what I learned.
- n4r9 9y agoWheeler was certainly visionary. The most faithful contemporary worldview is probably the "QBist" interpretation [0-2] espoused by Chris Fuchs (who studied under Wheeler), Ruediger Schack, Carlton Caves, David Mermin and others. It's growing in popularity but is not mainstream. [0] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/private-view-quantum-reality/ https://www.wired.com/2015/06/private-view-quantum-reality/ [1] https://www.nature.com/news/physics-qbism-puts-the-scientist-back-into-science-1.14912 https://www.nature.com/news/physics-qbism-puts-the-scientist... [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-bayesian/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-bayesian/