Comments on 'Decoding Reality', Information Theory, Reverse Causality & Cosmology

In reading 'Decoding Reality' by Vlatko Vedral-a book largely on information theory and perhaps quantum information theory I find myself making some criticisms on the way. That is usual enough as reconcile, compare and contrast ideas from other sources with those presented by this author from Oxford University with a chair in quantum information theory.

So far I like the book. This isn't a review so much as a critical journal entry as I progress through 'Decoding Reality. It is very easy to dissent with the definition of reality as a probability function between events.

Information theory developed by Shannon, Boole and others quanticize and reduce information to bits or quantum points. Quantification of information volume seems on the surface to miss much of the meaning of information. While a quantified information theory may work well for phone lines and computers it is difficult to reconcile with information as meaning. It is a kind of some of the parts comprising the whole but nothing more approach.

At least it seems that way for now-I haven't made it to the end of the book or even chapter four so far. Yet already it has set to me to wonder about quantum mechanics as a method to describe a universe.

Quantifying physical systems into smaller component parts has a kind of Eleatic paradox element to it; the reason the turtle could cross the several yards to the line was that it could not take infinitely smaller steps. It could take steps in units, for example, of just one inch apiece, and since there are only 12 inches per foot the turtle could not help but cross the five yards in a finite time. Reductionism and quantified particle theory approaches t explain the physical universe and information theory may take an infinitely reductionist course to describing functions and miss out on the larger phases, structures and even meaning of things including information.

Quantum cosmology today of course has numerous theories to use in describing the form of the parts that make things up at the sub-atomic level. Rather than individual particles of irreducible size comprising things, packets of wave-energy that act as mass in complex formations are believed to exist in a temporal actualization from some one inclusive, irreducible field. A quantum information theory that associates and reduces the physical universe to information bits or arbitrary packets of data of a given size would seem to have an excellent probability of being an arbitrary selection of a criteria to model the universe, yet not be a necessary one.

Shannon entropy or information theory has been used in the Hawking radiation theory of black holes and in the estimation of the amount of information that could be stored n the Universe or within a black hole. It is not just an abstract intellectual exercise. It may be a valid method for processing information about a given physical system yet fail to be a comprehensive theory of either meaning or of the nature of the Universe within or without a theistic context.

I shall need to complete reading 'Decoding the Universe' to make a determination if the author's creative thought regarding information theory and quantum cosmology can be philosophically extended beyond the more narrow communications theory context of simply a statistical flow of parts of a physical system such as hydrogen and oxygen molecules joined together in large quantity flowing downhill in a gravitational field as a mountain stream and the association of probability of change from that phenomena anomalously as information or not.Information theory as a criterion in which quantum bits form and change location does not seem to ready lend itself to a variegated criterion in which larger numbers of bits form new relationships. That is something of a paradox though since in lower level programming languages are made of 0's and 1's as machine language then progressively brought up to higher level groupings such as assembler language to higher level languages such as COBOL, Pascal,C+ and html code.Computer languages and information processing may have a simple quantum logic to it, yet real information theory may be a much different and even non-quantifiable phenomena without standard quantifiable bits for reductionist recombination and assembly.

Linguistic theory such as W.V.O. Quine developed and summarized in 'Ontological Relativity' may present different lexicons as ontologies of meaning in themselves without capability of holistic translation into other linguistic ontologies. Computer languages and a quantum information theory would have no such limitations, yet neither does engineering exploiting calculations within a given field of application. One doesn't expect tensor calculations to peel oranges though, and the universal application of any one intellectual technique to account for all possible information seems equally improbable.

The late physicist John Wheeler-a famous and good cosmologist- created an idea of a reverse causality bootstrapping universe that would let the consequent create the antecedent. In quantum mechanics it seems that such a self-creating from nothing Universe might be possible in theory. Atheistic minded physicists seem especially challenged to discover a method of creation whereby something may arise from nothing.it is a paradox that such Theories of quantum genesis seem some of the better theological speculations as well upon the nature of God. If a human being could imagine how God could come into existence, rather than of having always existed as the Bible seems to state, we should need to imagine that God in some way as the first being authored himself into existence and made the eternal past of His Being come into existence as an element of His eternal presence.

http://realityshifters.com/pages/articles/retrocausalrs.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/world/americas/14iht-obits.1.11954186.html

Wheeler of course did not intend that his quantum cosmology theory would be used for theological speculations I suppose, yet the abstract philosophical speculations of quantum cosmology and quantum physics inevitably leads to the same sort of eternal contemplations about being and nothingness, eternity and time, the eternal now, monism and pluralism as one finds in philosophy and theology.

How quantum information theory would address the abstract, non-local yet particular questions of the emergent characteristics of systems and meanings such as should occur within any good information theory is hard to speculate about.At least Vlatko Vedral's 'Decoding Reality'-The Universe as Quantum Information' takes a step in the reductionist direction toward explaining some of cosmological mechanics within a quantum information theory context. Information theory reductionism of meaning to bits of information theory seems to remind me a little of a meaningless universe of twittering bird song without mind. The Universe as quantum information my be just one way of viewing the universe as a physical structure changing as a temporal phenomena. It may not be an exclusive and exhaustive way of defining information however, while it may also omit meaning as well as failing to serve as a way to map functions of larger and non-quantum configurations of a monistic energy field in action.