Information Equals Reality

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-bAAZRp82M

How does music (or any other artform) communicate universal ideas?

Here are quotes from two quantum physics experts who would probably be surprised to hear me insist that they are providing the answer to that question.

"...quantum physics requires us to abandon the distinction between information and reality."
- Anton Zeilinger, professor of physics at the University of Vienna, from the book "What We Believe But Cannot Prove"

"The conventional history of the universe pays great attention to energy: How much is there? Where is it? What is it doing? By contrast, in the story of the universe told in this book, the primary actor in the physical history of the universe is information. Ultimately, information and energy play complimentary roles in the universe: Energy makes physical systems do things. Information tells them what to do."
- MIT Professor and quantum computing expert Seth Lloyd, from his book "Programming the Universe".

I'm going to deal with my question about artforms and how this all ties in to my way of imagining the dimensions, but first I'd like to work through some steps... so please bear with me here.

One of the commonly-leveled objections against any theories requiring there to be additional dimensions past spacetime is that those dimensions are not observable, and so there is no way to verify any predictions made by such theories: this is one of the central themes of Lee Smolin's book "The Trouble With Physics".

Quantum mechanics, then, is the golden child of science from the past one hundred years - because it makes predictions and paints a picture of reality which, although often portrayed as unimaginably strange, has stood the test of time: quantum effects are observable and verifiable, and all without the need to theorize the existence of additional dimensions.

But this is where it starts for me: because I've been proposing that quantum mechanics shows us that we are not actually on a limited one-dimensional line of time. Instead, observable phenomena such as quantum interference patterns, and demonstrations of entanglement of widely separated particles shows us that we are actually in a fifth dimensional probability space, where our fourth-dimensional reality twists, turns, and folds without us being aware of it, just as the two-dimensional Flatlander on the mobius strip is unaware of his motions in the higher dimensions.

The question of whether our reality is created in the fifth dimension or the fourth has been the subject of this week's poll here at the tenth dimension blog. What do you think? Way back in 1919, Kaluza proposed this idea to Einstein - that the field equations for gravity and light could be united if they were calculated in the fifth dimension. Einstein ruminated on Kaluza's radical idea for two years, and then gave it his full endorsement. If Einstein believed our reality originates in the fifth dimension, why is this not common knowledge for the general public?

With "E=mc squared", Einstein firmly established in our minds the equivalence between energy and matter, and how our universe is just an interplay between those two states. Now, experts like Anton Zeilinger and Seth Lloyd are telling us we can take a step even further back: our reality is just an expression of the information encoded within the underlying fabric of quantum fields.

Okay, information equals reality, and we're in the fifth dimension rather than the fourth. If we can accept those ideas, then where does that lead us?

I'm proposing that this is the key to understanding how our currently observed reality is a pattern within the multiverse of all possible universes. If there is a data set out there that could represent every possible timeline for our universe and for all other possible universes, then each of us is navigating through that data set. And with the recently published proof from David Deutsch's team at Oxford, we have a way to see how that is just as true at the quantum level as it is for us at the physical level, as each of us navigates through the available paths of our fifth-dimensional data set though choice, chance, and the actions of others.

But I take all this even further: if our reality is information, then like any other data set there are many ways of analyzing that data. Richard Dawkins showed us how we can think of our genes as a "river out of Eden": a continuous pattern of information conveyed from generation to generation back to the primordial beginning of life. He also introduced us to the concept of memes: ideas that are transmitted across time and space. Imagining memes within the information vs. reality paradigm is an important part of the ideas I play with in my book: and the concept of memes is how we get to the question of how music and art communicate emotion.

Memes connect emotions and ideas across time and space: so the song you loved when you were 18 will still have an emotional connection for you when you're 40. But memes are not just learned, they are deeper than that, because they are part of our shared experience as human beings. This is how we communicate to each other through body language: a joyful physical presence or a depressed stance are part of the tools that any actor or dancer uses to express emotion, and these are memes that work across time and space. But we're not just talking about human beings here: this is how we can recognize emotions in the vocalizations of other living creatures - the rising question of a cat asking for food, the pained yelp of a dog who has been kicked, the sorrowful keening of a mother bear who has lost her child, are part of the same vocabulary of memes that allow us to recognize whether a piece of music is happy or sad, energetic or peaceful. The connection between blues phrasing, in terms of melodic shape and timing, to the speech of someone expressing the same emotions, is an easily recognized example of how both are part of the same meme-set. And the fact that the vocalizations of other non-mammal creatures are much harder for us to recognize the emotion within (is that frog's croak happy or sad? I'm not sure) shows us how near or far we are from other creatures not just with our shared genes, but with our shared memes as well.

We can use that same vocabulary to move ourselves to different trajectories within our probability space. Try this one: imagine a warm ball of energy starting at the base of your spine, gradually working its way up your back, making you sit up straighter, creating a radiant glow out through your shoulders and the top of your head that opens your eyes wider and makes you feel more alert. Do you feel it? It really is that simple to change your energy, because it's all just information. Think about this: just standing up straighter, you might say, improves your body mass index (my son the med student will say "not really", but he's the one who said this to me as a joke, and I still think it's a useful idea)!

Metaphysical ideas of auras and vibrations, energy transference, entrainment (or "like attracts like") are all part of this picture as well. If information equals reality, all we are talking about is recognizing the patterns that are encoded within that information.

Here, now, is one of the more tongue in cheek songs from the collection of 26 songs attached to this project, whose lyrics are printed at the end of the book: try to imagine this one with Spinal Tap performing the verses and oh, I don't know, Jimmy Buffett performing the choruses. The song is called "What I Feel For You".




And here are the lyrics:

WHAT I FEEL FOR YOU
words and music (c) by Rob Bryanton (SOCAN)

Much greater minds than mine
Have tried to figure out
The secrets of the universe
And what it’s all about
Masters of the abstract
Seekers of the spell
That fits it all together
I know the quest so well

But it all keeps coming back
No matter what I do
The only thing that’s real for me
Is what I feel for you

And what I feel for you
Is what makes me carry on
My world would be so pointless
My reality so wrong
The secret gears and levers
That spin behind the scenes
To make what’s here before us
Must only do one thing

Cause it all keeps coming back…


Much greater minds than mine
Have tried to figure out
The secrets of the universe
And what it’s all about
Masters of the abstract
Seekers of the spell
That fits it all together
I know the quest so well

But it all keeps coming back
No matter what I do
The only thing that’s real for me
Is what I feel for you
The only thing that’s real for me
Is what I feel for you

Some of the previously discussed songs from this project that touch on similar ideas include Everything Fits Together, Connections, Big Bang to Entropy, and Change and Renewal (these song titles are hotlinked to previous blog entries featuring those songs). Or some of the videos created for those songs are below.









Enjoy the journey,

Rob Bryanton