When a Digital Philosopher looks at physics he or she can see many similarities to biology. The thought that biology might be leading the way towards a better understanding of physical processes must seem very spooky to a physicist. Are there “Hierarchies of structures (or small groups of structures, such as or – pairs), each of which is functionally identical to others of the same species”? Wow! The particles of physics fit that prescription perfectly. Is there “The existence of inherent information and inherent information processing”? The nature of biological information processes are rather complex. They range from decoding the genetic code and implementing the design so as to grow a new copy of some living thing, all the way to the kinds of information processing that go on in the brain of a creature trying to solve a problem (like, how to not get eaten by that other creature). In physics, when two high energy particles collide, the computational problems are much simpler and more like what happens in ordinary computers. For example, the vector sum of the momenta of the incoming particles must be added up and then divided amongst the departing particles, so that the sum of all the individual momentum vectors is not changed by the interaction. Second the sum of the charges of the incoming particles (usually a number like –2, –1, 0, 1, or 2 but some times a larger integer, in the hundreds) must be divided up amongst the outgoing particles so that the sum remains the same. The same is true for spin and total energy. It’s computationally very simple; much like bookkeeping. The ideas about arithmetic belong to mathematics. The actual adding, subtracting and multiplying done to integers are digital informational processes.
So far it may seem that we have built a few straw men and then proceeded to knock them down. This is a sign of the incompetence of the author with respect to explaining Digital Philosophy. The story is compelling despite the poor telling of it.
So here is the difference between physics and biology, as seen from the eyes of a Digital Philosopher: Whatever there was before we knew about DNA that could have encouraged the belief that underlying Biology, there had to be a Digital representation of information, there is much more reason to believe that underlying physics there is a Digital representation of information. Every small integer that occurs anywhere in physics is a clue to Digital Philosophers: physical information must have a Digital Means of representation. Examples include:
· The number of spatial dimensions: Exactly 3
· The number of different electrical charge states: Exactly 2, and –
· The number chiral parity states: Exactly 2, left handed and right handed
· The number of directions for time: Exactly 2, forwards and backwards
· The number of CPT modalities: Exactly 2 out of 8, CPT & –C –P –T
· The number of spin state families: Exactly 2, bosons and fermions
· The number of measurable spin states of an electron: Exactly 2, up or down
· The number of particle conjugates: Exactly 2, particle and anti-particle
· The number of different QCD color charge states: Exactly 3, R, G or B
· The number of Lepton and Quark generations: Exactly 3
· The number of Leptons or Quarks per generation: Exactly 2
· The spin of any particle that is a boson: Exactly n (n always a small integer)
· The spin of any particle that is a fermion: Exactly n ½
· The maximum number of inner orbit electrons in an atom: Exactly 2
The list above is a small sample of the totality of small integer phenomena in physics. If you have a good imagination, you can dream up worlds where most such things might be any real number. What all this means that even the facts above need explanations.
Digital Philosophy insists that Things don’t just happen. When 2 particles have an elastic collision, the vector sum of the momenta of the outgoing particles is the same as the vector sum of the momenta of the incoming particles. From the point of view of a Digital Philosopher, there are 2 aspects to such a process that seldom occur to a physicist. The process involves a computation, in that one kind of information (the 2 momenta prior to the event) has been transformed into another kind of information (the 2 momenta subsequent to the event). We hypothesize that that process must be a digital informational process. Secondly, the information related to the event must pass the same conservation test as does the momentum, since information is also conserved. While that seems straightforward in the case of an elastic collision, consider the case of an inelastic process such as the complex decay of a very heavy particle.
A large number of particles stream out in every direction. Since physics is reversible and information is conserved, it is illuminating to look at the time-reversed process. A large number of particles come in from many different directions and all collide to form a single heavy particle. This is why we call the process “inelastic.” While not very likely, it’s still good physics. However there is one problem, all of the information represented by all of the tracks of all of the incoming particles must still exist after they all collide to form one particle! Where is all that information? Conversely, by reversing our reversed example, we see that all of the information that is represented by all of the tracks of all of the decay products, must have existed before the decay of the heavy particle. Digital Philosophy must take on the burden to find the answers to such questions.
