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arXiv:0812.0418

Reality - an emerging representation of the world

Martin Andrew Green

Published Dec 2, 2008• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Some unique source -- the world, W -- must underlie all the information realized in the universe throughout time. Perceived reality, R, is a progressively emerging representation of W in the form of the geometrical universe. Time corresponds to the process of emergence. When first represented in R, information about W is expressed in a non-localized, quantum manner. As the emergence proceeds, most information becomes inaccessible (entropy), supporting the robust, redundant encoding of accessible records. The past is encoded in and inferred from present records; the anticipated future will preserve present information and reveal unpredictable new information about W. Emergence of the future demands non-unitary reduction of quantum states and increased Kolmogorov complexity of the quasi-classical records in terms of which the quantum states are known. Given the limited information content of records, the quasi-classical universe lacks fine details; whereas the future must be uncertain to admit new information.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.0812.0418

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Some unique source -- the world, W -- must underlie all the information realized in the universe throughout time. Perceived reality, R, is a progressively emerging representation of W in the form of the geometrical universe. Time corresponds to the process of emergence. When first represented in R, information about W is expressed in a non-localized, quantum manner. As the emergence proceeds, most information becomes inaccessible (entropy), supporting the robust, redundant encoding of accessible records. The past is encoded in and inferred from present records; the anticipated future will preserve present information and reveal unpredictable new information about W. Emergence of the future demands non-unitary reduction of quantum states and increased Kolmogorov complexity of the quasi-classical records in terms of which the quantum states are known. Given the limited information content of records, the quasi-classical universe lacks fine details; whereas the future must be uncertain to admit new information.
The mathematical representation of the universe consists of sequences of symbols, rules and operators containing Gödel's undecidable propositions: information and its manipulation, also with Turing Machines. Classical information theory and mathematics, ideally independent from the medium used, can be interpreted realistically and objectively from their correspondence with quantum information, which is physical. Each representation of the universe and its evolution are, in any case, physical subsets of the universe, structured sets of observers and their complements in the universe made with spacetime events generated by local quantum measurements. Their description becomes a semantically closed structure without a global object-environment loss of decoherence as a von Neumann's universal constructor with a semantical abstract whose structure cannot be decided deterministically a priori from an internal observer. In a semantically closed structure, the realization of a specific event that writes the semantical abstract of the constructor is a problem of finding "which way" for the evolution of the universe as a choice of the constructor's state in a metastructure, like the many-world Everett scenario, from a specific result of any quantum measurement, corresponding to a Gödel undecidable proposition for an internal observer.
Redundancy-Limited Emergence of Classical Histories in Quantum Systems This work investigates how classical reality emerges from underlying quantum dynamics, focusing on the role of environmental information, noise, and fundamental entropy limits. In quantum theory, systems evolve into superpositions of many possible outcomes. However, in practice we observe a world with definite, classical histories. A widely accepted explanation is decoherence, in which interactions with the environment suppress interference between different quantum states. More recent developments, particularly in quantum Darwinism, emphasize that classical information becomes objective when it is redundantly recorded across many independent parts of the environment. This paper addresses a key unresolved question: how many distinct classical histories can physically exist? To answer this, we construct a minimal computational model in which a system’s history is encoded into multiple environmental fragments, each subject to noise. By computing how much information about the system can be recovered from subsets of these fragments, we identify a characteristic scale that determines how many fragments are required to reconstruct the system’s history. Our results reveal a simple and robust relationship: the ability to recover classical information depends on the entropy of the noise affecting environmental records. As noise increases, more fragments are required to reconstruct a history, reflecting a loss of distinguishability. This leads to the definition of a “recoverability factor,” which quantifies how efficiently entropy can be converted into usable, classical information. We then connect this information-theoretic result to fundamental bounds from gravitational physics. In particular, existing entropy bounds limit the total amount of information that can pass through a region of spacetime. We show that only a fraction of this entropy—determined by the recoverability factor—can contribute to distinguishable classical histories. This leads to a new principle: the number of classical histories is not limited only by total entropy, but by the efficiency with which that entropy can be encoded, preserved, and accessed. Applying this framework to cosmological entropy estimates, we derive explicit upper bounds on the number of distinguishable classical histories in the observable universe. While this number is extraordinarily large, it is nonetheless finite and strongly constrained by both entropy and noise. These results refine the standard picture of quantum branching. While quantum theory allows a vast number of possible outcomes, only a subset can become physically meaningful in the sense of being stable, redundantly recorded, and accessible to observers. More broadly, this work provides a quantitative bridge between decoherence theory, information theory, and gravitational entropy bounds. It suggests that classical reality is fundamentally constrained not just by physical laws governing entropy, but by the efficiency of information transfer within those constraints.
This paper examines the role of Quantum Darwinism in explaining the emergence of classical objectivity within The Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Decoherence explains why macroscopically distinct alternatives become practically inaccessible to local observers, but it does not by itself explain why multiple observers can independently agree on the same classical state. Quantum Darwinism strengthens this account by describing how information about stable pointer states becomes redundantly encoded in environmental fragments. However, this paper argues that redundancy is necessary for objectivity but not enough to explain objectivity. A simple qubit test model implemented in Qiskit is used to demonstrate redundant environmental coding. The discussion connects this claim to Strong Quantum Darwinism, Spectrum Broadcast Structure, and Quantum Discord, which sharpen the distinction between mere correlation and objective classical records. Finally, this paper proposes phase anti-redundancy as a future direction; While pointer state information becomes locally redundant, cross-branch phase information appears to remain globally encoded and increasingly difficult to recover. This suggests that branch objectivity may require not only redundant classical records, but also the fact that cross-branch phase information is encoded in global correlations rather than in locally accessible environmental fragments.
Reality is presented to us both in a digital and analog manner, the first as evidenced by the findings about the nature of space and sub-atomic entities, and the latter by the uncertainties at the quantum level. It is not sufficient to regard reality, our universe, simply as both but dialectically, one in terms of the other. The most fundamental law of understanding is that we apprehend something in terms of what it is not. We need contradiction to discern anything. Our understanding is process based and has deep historical roots extending back more than 4500 years. In modern times, scientists have relied upon Cartesian reductionism to discern the nature of our world, but deduction also is inherently dialectic, relying upon induction for its integrity. Logic, itself, is the language of innate order in the universe, but its digital aspect is bi-valency that describes what digital physicists have found to be the case in our reality. Evidence is in the form of how the syntax of the binary system and relationships within it reflect what happens here. Such has major implications for us in the form of inherent computations, phenomena as illusions, and complexity arising from simplicity.
Abstract It has historically proven difficult to explain the relationship between neural activity and representative information content. A new approach focuses on the unique properties of cortical neurons, which allow both upstream signals and random electrical noise to affect the likelihood of reaching action potential threshold. Here, each electron is modeled as an electromagnetic point source, inter-acting in a probabilistic manner with each neuronal membrane. The electron is described as some set of probability amplitudes, distributed across five orthogonal axes: x, y, z, energy state , and time . The membrane potential of each neuron is defined by the probabilistic spatial position and atomic orbital of each local electron, after some time evolution. The mixed sum of all probabilistic component pure states is the physical quantity of information held by the neural network, given by a complex-valued wavefunction. If the probabilistic trajectory of each electron over time t affects the voltage state of multiple computational units, then the system state must be computed as a whole, with the state of each neuron being resolved as every component pure state is resolved. This computational process yields a defined system state at a defined location in time, which immediately becomes the past as a new probability density forms. If the membrane surface of each computational unit is also a charge-detecting polymer substrate that meets the criteria of a holographic recording surface, then this encoding process will generate a holographic projection of representative information content. The constructive and destructive interference of high-dimensional probability amplitudes yields a non-deterministic computational outcome for each neuron. That now-defined system state is paired with a multi-sensory percept, which is exclusively accessed by the encoding structure, with content limited by the range and sensitivity of the sensory apparatus. This model usefully offers a plausible explanation for both perceptual content and non-deterministic computational outcomes emerging from cortical neural network activity.
Every physical measuring needs a finite, different from zero measurement time and provides information in form of the choice of a measurement result from all possible measurement results. If infinitely many (different) measurement results would be possible, the choice of a measurement result could deliver an infinite quantity of information. But the results of physical measurings (of finite duration) never deliver an infinite quantity of information, they describe past, finite reality. Therefore the set of all possible measurement results a priori is finite. In the physical reality only a finite information quantity can be processed within a finite time interval. For mathematical models whose representation requires a processing of an infinite quantity of information, for example irrational numbers, no (exact) equivalent exists in the physical reality. So mathematical calculations, which have an equivalent in physical reality, can include only rational (finitely many elementary) combinations of rational numbers. Conclusions arise from this for the foundations of mathematical physics.