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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

1. A CoCreative Participatory UniVerse

Signorelli, Camilo and Xerxes Arsiwalla. Moral Dilemmas for Artificial Intelligence: An Application of Compositional Quantum Cognition. arXiv:1911.10154. As signs of a general intelligence become evident across nature’s universe to human developmental course, Oxford University, Cognitive Neuroimaging Lab researchers then scope out ways to better understand and appreciate so as to gain and maintain an ethical guidance.

Traditionally, the way one evaluates the performance of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system is via a comparison to human performance in specific tasks. However, these tests leave out important features of human intelligence: the capability to transfer knowledge and make complex decisions based on emotional and rational reasoning. These decisions are influenced by current inferences as well as prior experiences, making the decision process subjective and apparently biased. In this context, a definition of compositional intelligence is necessary to incorporate these features in future AI work. Here, a viable description will be suggested from recent developments in quantum cognition, natural language and compositional meaning of sentences. (Abstract)

Strasberg, Philipp, et al. Quantum and Information Thermodynamics: A Unifying Framework Based on Repeated Interactions. Physical Review X. 7/2, 2017. We cite this entry by PS, Gernot Schaller and Tobias Brandes, Technical University of Berlin, and Massimiliano Esposito, University of Luxembourg as an example of the fluid intersect of these several fields as this foundational phase continues to morph into identities and comprehensions far removed from 20th century rudiments.

We expand the standard thermodynamic framework of a system coupled to a thermal reservoir by considering a stream of independently prepared units repeatedly put into contact with the system. These units can be in any nonequilibrium state and interact with the system with an arbitrary strength and duration. We show that this stream constitutes an effective resource of nonequilibrium free energy, and we identify the conditions under which it behaves as a heat, work, or information reservoir. We discuss how nonautonomously driven systems, micromasers, lasing without inversion and the electronic Maxwell demon can be thermodynamically analyzed within our framework. (Abstract excerpt)

At this point, it is worth revisiting the debated question of whether quantum thermodynamics offers advantages (e.g., in terms of a higher power output or efficiency) in comparison to classical thermodynamics. There is ample evidence that states with quantum properties such as entanglement, coherence, or squeezing can be used to extract more work than from thermal states. However, this by no means implies that quantum thermodynamics outperforms classical thermodynamics. In the repeated interaction framework, the nonequilibrium free energy captures both quantum and classical effects, and we will now use it to analyze the thermodynamics of work extraction. (26)

Timpson, Christopher. Information, Immaterialism, Instrumentalism Old and New in Quantum Information. Bokulich, Akila and Greeg Jaeger, eds. Philosophy of Quantum Information and Entanglement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. In our computer age, the Brasenose College, Oxford University, philosopher physicist contends that the missing essence needed to make sense of quantum phenomena is informational in kind. By this approach a novel recovery of nature’s perennial fertility can be appreciated once more.

And yet, for all its timeliness, some of the most intriguing of the prospects that quantum information science presents are to be found intertwining with some surprisingly old and familiar philosophical themes. These themes are immaterialism and instrumentalism; and in this essay we shall be exploring how these old ideas feature in the context of two of the most tantalizing new questions that have arisen with the advent of this field: Does quantum information theory finally help us to resolve the conceptual conundrums of quantum mechanics? And does the theory indicate a new way of thinking about the world - one in which the material as the fundamental subject matter of physical theory is seen to be replaced by the immaterial: information? (208)

Let us call the thought that information might be the basic category from which all else follows informational immaterialism. On this view, the new task of physics, foreshadowed in the development of quantum information theory, will be to describe the various ways in which information can evolve and manifest itself. Why might one be led to such a view? The thought could be as straightforward as this: We now have a fundamental - that is to say, a quantum - theory of information; so perhaps the fundamental theory of the world could just be about information (immaterial) rather than about things (material). (209)

Timpson, Christopher. Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Clarendon, 2013. The Brasenose College, Oxford University, philosopher of physics achieves a thorough coverage of this 21st century shift from mechanical matter to realize, as everywhere else, a real communicative aspect is its most basic characteristic. On page one, John Archibald Wheeler’s vision is duly noted whence this essence accords with an “… elementary act of observer participancy.” Main aspects from Claude Shannon’s work to the Clifton-Bub-Halvorson theorem (search) are well covered, along with a foray into Quantum Bayesism. What then might Nature be trying to learn, read, and say through us human phenomenon?

Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics is a conceptual analysis of one of the most prominent and exciting new areas of physics. Against what many have supposed, quantum information can be clearly defined but it is not part of the material contents of the world. Timpson's account sheds light on the nature of nonlocality and information flow in the presence of entanglement. In addition it permits a clear view of what the ontological and methodological lessons provided by quantum information theory are; lessons which bear on the gripping question of what role a concept like information has to play in fundamental physics. Topics discussed include the slogan 'Information is Physical', the prospects for an informational immaterialism (the view that information rather than matter might fundamentally constitute the world), and the status of the Church-Turing hypothesis in light of quantum computation. (Publisher)

There is a feeling that the advent of quantum information theory heralds a new way of doing physics and supports the view that information should play a more central role in our world picture. In its extreme form, the thought is that information is perhaps the fundamental category from which all else flows (a view with obvious affinities to idealism), and that the new task of physics is to discover and describe how this information evolves, manifests itself, and can be manipulated. We can call this kind of view, which would do away with material items like particles and fields at the fundamental physical level and replace them with an immaterial basis of information “informational immaterialism.” (1)

Trugenberger, Carlo. Quantum Gravity as an Information Network: Self-Organization of a 4D Universe. arXiv:1501.01408. Among his technical papers at this site, the Swiss physicist and entrepreneur (bio below) conceives an overall model of an inherent cosmic spontaneity from which life and persons emerge. The contribution is a good example of circa 2015 abilities to explain a naturally procreative universe. While written in an abstract scientific language, it shows how human intellect seems able to describe any breadth and depth of a greater genesis.

I propose a quantum gravity model in which the fundamental degrees of freedom are information bits for both discrete space-time points and links connecting them. The Hamiltonian is a very simple network model consisting of a ferromagnetic Ising model for space-time vertices and an antiferromagnetic Ising model for the links. As a result of the frustration between these two terms, the ground state self-organizes as a new type of low-clustering graph with finite Hausdorff dimension 4. The spectral dimension is lower than the Hausdorff dimension: it coincides with the Hausdorff dimension 4 at a first quantum phase transition corresponding to an IR fixed point while at a second quantum phase transition describing small scales space-time dissolves into disordered information bits. The large-scale dimension 4 of the universe is related to the upper critical dimension 4 of the Ising model. At finite temperatures the universe graph emerges without big bang and without singularities from a ferromagnetic phase transition in which space-time itself forms out of a hot soup of information bits. When the temperature is lowered the universe graph unfolds and expands by lowering its connectivity, a mechanism I have called topological expansion. (Abstract)

Carlo A. Trugenberger earned his Ph.D in Theoretical Physics in 1988 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich and his Master in Economics in 1997 at Bocconi University, Milano. An international academic career in theoretical physics (MIT, Los Alamos Nat. Lab., CERN Geneva, Max Planck Institut Münich) lead him to the position of associate professor of theoretical physics at Geneva University. In 2001 he decided to quit academia and to exploit his expertise in information theory, neural networks and machine intelligence to design an innovative semantic technology and to co-found the company InfoCodex Semantic Technologies AG. His scientific work has been recognized in the press and the semantic technology he co-designed has won international benchmarks and awards.

Vedral, Vlatko. Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. A noted young physicist, with appointments at Oxford and the National University of Singapore, writes a popular paean to this quality that is seen to subsume both matter and energy. Verdal’s doctoral thesis joined Claude Shannon’s information theory with quantum phenomena, which guides the technical course of the volume. It then takes off into an eclectic mix of Maxwell’s demon, beam-splitters, social networks, the universe as a quantum computer, holography, and maybe, with J. A. Wheeler, that out of its randomness may arise a self-created reality or simulation due to human observations. Nature’s literal book via Galileo’s mathematics and geometry can now be understood, it is said, as this deep informational essence. For popular updates see "Living in a Quantum World" in Scientific American for June 2011, herein), and "In from the Cold" in the New Scientist, for October 13, 2012.

Von Baeyer, Hans. QBism: The Future of Quantum Physics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. The emeritus College of William and Mary physics professor writes a first book length essay on this fledgling synthesis of quantum phenomena and Bayesian probabilities. Four sections of Quantum Mechanics, Probability, QBism, and the QBist Worldview give a succinct, accessible coverage of each aspect. The author engaged in many discussions with its main conceiver Christopher Fuchs, along with David Mermin, Marcus Appleby, and others to distill its pedigree and potential to express a cosmic development entwined with our interactive affirmation. All this arrives at J. A. Wheeler’s (CFs mentor) popular It from Bit participatory universe which is well explained. As Edward Witten herein, and an increasing number realize, a reunion of human-like agencies with a dynamic nature and its animate trajectory rings ever more true. See also a book review Is QBism the Future of Quantum Physics? by Kelvin McQueen at arXiv:1707.02030.

In physics and the philosophy of physics, quantum Bayesianism (QBism) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that takes an agent's actions and experiences as the central concerns of the theory. This interpretation is distinguished by its use of a subjective Bayesian account of probabilities to understand the quantum mechanical Born rule as a normative addition to good decision-making. (Wikipedia)

Von Baeyer, Hans Christian. Information: The New Language of Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. At the frontiers of quantum physics is a conceptual shift to perceive encoded information, “the infusion of form, flow of relationships and communication of messages,” as “…the irreducible seed from which everything else grows.” In this accessible work, von Baeyer explains that the universe is granular and discrete in kind so it can carry such bits of relative knowledge. The work of physicist John Archibald Wheeler is duly noted in this regard human beings by their conscious choices can participate in the creative evocation of universal reality. And by this capacity, nature can be appreciated as truly textual in kind.

Wheeler, John Archibald. At Home in the Universe. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics Press, 1994. In this volume are gathered the sagacious Princeton physicist’s visionary writings about a unique self-creating universe which ultimately requires sentient observation to come into full phenomenal existence. As a result, the cosmos is a “self-excited circuit” which informed human beings may in some way bring into manifestation by our participatory recognition. Wheeler’s legacy is gaining ever increasing reference, in works as Paul Davies’ The Goldilocks Enigma, the information/computation turn, and lately the Alan Turing centennial. A succinct article is John Wheeler, Relativity, and Quantum Information by Charles Misner, Kip Thorne and Wojciech Zurek in Physics Today April 2009, from which the quote. Might one imagine, in translation, a genesis cosmos trying read its ascendant genetic code via the human phenomenon?

No working picture that can be offered today is so attractive as this: the universe brought into being by acts of observer-participatorship; the observer-participator brought into being by the universe.

Wiesner, Karoline. Nature Computes: Information Processing in Quantum Dynamical Systems. Chaos. 20/037114, 2010. The University of Bristol, Centre for Complexity Sciences, mathematician proceeds with her project to reinterpret quantum phenomena, increasingly seen to exhibit nonlinear complexity, as an effort to close on and articulate a self-existent essential reality that is somehow graced by a “semantic software.”

Nature intrinsically computes. It has been suggested that the entire universe is a computer, in particular, a quantum computer. To corroborate this idea we require tools to quantify the information processing. Here we review a theoretical framework for quantifying information processing in a quantum dynamical system. So-called intrinsic quantum computation combines tools from dynamical systems theory, information theory, quantum mechanics, and computation theory. We will review how far the framework has been developed and what some of the main open questions are. On the basis of this framework we discuss upper and lower bounds for intrinsic information storage in a quantum dynamical system. (Abstract, 037114-1)

Considering nature as a quantum computer is gaining more and more attention in the scientific and popular-science literature. Such an idea, albeit very compelling, requires further tools for quantifying the computation. We reviewed the tools developed for intrinsic quantum computation. They include a set of information-theoretic functions measuring the information content of measurement sequences obtained through repeated observation of a quantum system, and they include a computation-theoretic representation of the underlying computation, the so-called quantum generator. (037114-5)

Wolchover, Natalie. A Physicist’s Physicist Ponders the Nature of Reality. Quanta Magazine. November 28, 2017. In this popular online journal, a science reporter interviews Edward Witten, the renowned string and quantum field theorist, at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Studies. He is presently interested in AdS/CFT dualities (anti-de Sitter spaces and Conformal Field Theories, see Wikipedia), but also in J. A. Wheeler’s “It from Bit” insight (see section intro) which has now become “It from Qubit” by way of quantum analogue. In this regard, it alludes to a deep informational quality (uniVerse) which then requires retrospective observers (humanVerse) to actualize (in so many words). Both human and universe have a significant interactivity which we need appreciate and work into our formulas.

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