Physical Simulation / Simulation of Physics

collaborative editing » http://www.informationphysics.com/wiki/index.php/InformationPhysics

But let's keep this local.

Question from Yon re: the most important texts for the ideas of information physics. Got me floored. Let's look at where they might be in the great informational landscape:

• Cahill's group in South Australia (see Process Physics )
• Ed Fredkin's (unpublished and incomplete) book
• Wolfram's A New Kind of Science (WANKS)
• all sorts of other wacky types

What are the papers that get me excited?

• Takesue and Hattori, “Additive conserved quantities in discrete-time lattice dynamical systems” Physica D 1991, vol 49 pp295–322. Because it gets at a proper physical problem - conserved quantities - and analyses this in (admittedly 1D) cellular automata.
• Damasio. Somehow I read from his book “The feeling of being” as well as from a few Dennett parts, that perception (an informational process) is based around the understanding of physics: an evolved perceptual machine that “understands” better gets on better.
• Cahill: I couldn't get my head around the paper I tried to read - prhaps there are some new things of interest, I should check the site again.
• David Chalmers (another bloody Adelaidian, dammit, they're everywhere!) seems to have similar ideas around perception and information (see below). But I do not kno what to recommend to read.
• The people who want to claim that there is a global background reference frame. People like Hartwig Thim (no url) or the quantum vacuum people, see e.g. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoPhysics/message/59 for a copy of an article covering some ideas. Pop science, I know, but there are some rather less intelligible versions of this thesis floating around at the moment, too.

So we have some strange mixture of Quantum Physics, perception, evolution, Cellular Automata theory and other abstract nonsenses. Hurrah! as Sir Alexander Davies would say.

David Chalmers: “Wherever we find conscious experience, it exists as one aspect of an information state, the other aspect of which is embedded in a physical process in the brain…. The laws of physics might ultimately be cast in informational terms, in which case we would have a satisfying congruence between the constructs in both physical and psychophysical laws. ``The Puzzle of Conscious Experience'' 1999 (Category Consciousness)

• for limiting procedure on information see also: Bekenstein Bound