The authors want to give an information-theoretic answer to the question why there is something rather than nothing. They hold that the question is only answerable if one starts the explanation from a situation where nothing exists. They then give an information-theoretic account of nothing and 'show' that such an informational nothing must be subject to 'spontaneous symmetry breaks' which create information and thereby the physical universe.
I'm sympathetic to this idea, but their approach seems problematic to me for a number of reasons: (1) Is it at all possible to have an information-theoretic concept of nothing? Information, after all, presupposes a knowing mind who poses yes/no questions. The authors say: reality arises from the posing of yes/no questions. Hence there must be a questioner for the notion of information (and a fortiori of the informational nothing) to make sense. Hence, the informational nothing still presupposes something, the questioner. I don't see, therefore, how they can claim to start from absolutely nothing, which they nevertheless claim to do. (2) Their account of the spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in the informational nothing remains unclear to me. Here are the crucial passages: "In terms of information, 'nothing' is equivalent to an infinite number of simultaneous Nullifying Information Unietss (NIEs) -- information elements that co-exist simultaneously and cancel each other. Each such element represents either a being -- existence of something or the cancellation of that existence, no-being. In information terms such NIEs resemble the notion of "bits"...The number of bits of each type is infinite... The co-existence of opposite nullifying elements derives a matching necessity within the compendium of simultaneous NIEs... Therefore, the potentially additional NIRs can cause a Spontaneous Symmetry Break" (SSB) -- by changing the matching arrangement of other NIE's which are matched to other elements, re-causing additional changes, etc." I like the idea that "nothing" is equivalent to an infinity of elements that cancel each other. This is a bit like saying that zero is the sum that results from (1+(-1)) + (2+(-2)) + (3+(-3))...etc. and then claim that all these numbers somehow remain virtually present in zero... I'm sympathetic to that idea... But then comes the notion of SSB and this is where I get puzzled.... Suddenly the authors talk about "potentially additional NIE's" that break the symmetry of the mutually cancelling elements... This seems like a magic trick... I understand that to the infinity of mutually cancelling elements more elements can be added randomly but only so long as these are mutually cancelling as well, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about the informational nothing... It would seem then that the original SSB cannot come from the nothing itself... The authors seem to acknowledge this when they write: "the actual breaking can happen only if some asymmetrical causal factors, such as random perturbations or fluctuations are introduced into the model... In general, it is maintained that an asymmetry can only be resulted from a preceding asymmetry." So where does the original asymmetry come from? I don't see how it could be implicit in the informational nothing itself... In short, the whole paper feels like a magic trick... Also, to mention one last problem with this paper, the authors claim that their informational nothing is indeed absolutely nothing: "no material, no energy, no space and no time" they write. Yet they write about the NIE's as "simultaneously co-existing"... But how can there be simultaneity without time? Perhaps of one you guys understands this better than I do? Peter -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
