The Universe As Information

[padma norbu]

It seems like more and more people are agreeing on the Universe as Information. The first person I know of to have seriously advanced a thorough consideration of this idea was an author and mathematician named Lionel Snell sometime back in the 60s. Over the years, he added to and refined this idea into a few different books which he published under various pseudonyms. I have some information I want to collect and share here some time later, but I wanted to open the thread up now to see what other people have on the subject, since I would rather like to read something new first after I am done with the laundry.

[padma norbu]

Oh, heck, in the media section I'm not sure if we're allowed to begin threads unless they have a media link, so here is one:

phpBB [video]

Vallee has a tendency to bore people into daydreaming, so I will summarize the last 10 minutes of slides in which Vallee argues that people are beginning to advance this idea of a New Physics, which, according to Vallee does not require dimension.

Guillemant's Research has proposed that
- the future is already realized and in transformation
- under the influence of our observations and intentions
- Synchronicities are caused by a double causality: our intentions cause effects in the future that become the future causes of present effects

4 Requirements for a new physics
1. Recognize the universe we perceive as a subsystem of a meta-reality of information associations.
2. Recognize dimensions as a cultural artifact. Do away with them.
3. Treat the present as over-determined (by the past and by the future)
4. Consciousness traverses associations - thus generating the mind's impression of space and time.

[padma norbu]

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/mf_gleick_qa/

Kelly: According to your book, information underpins everything.

Gleick: Modern physics has begun to think of the bit—this binary choice—as the ultimate fundamental particle. John Wheeler summarized the idea as “it-from-bit.” By that he meant that the basis of the physical universe—the “it” of an atom or subatomic particle—is not matter, nor energy, but a bit of information.

Kelly: That sounds almost spiritual—that the material world is really immaterial.

Gleick: I know it sounds magical, but it needs to be understood properly. Information has a material basis. It has to be carried by something.

Kelly: The extreme view would be that all these bits that make up atoms are running on a very big computer called the universe, an idea first espoused by Babbage.

Gleick: That makes sense as long as this metaphor does not diminish our sense of what the universe is but expands our sense of what a computer is.

Kelly: But as you note, some scientists say that this is not a metaphor: The universe we know is only information.

Gleick: I’m not a physicist, but that concept resonates with something that we all recognize: Information is the thing that we care most about. The more we understand the role that information plays in our world, the more skillful citizens we will be.