Ask A Genius 495 – Newton: Observer and Thinker-Abouter
January 5, 2019
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about Newton? What about intuitive physics?
Rick Rosner: He was a good observer and a good thinker-abouter about things. You would have to be a genius to figure out things that he figured out. For Big Bang theory, it is a good commonsensical theory, especially with all that we know about the world and what is going on in terms of information.
But that commonsensical picture will probably be replaced. A commonsensical, at least in our minds, notion that the universe is made out of information. That information is held in a self-consistent information processing entity in a way similar to us.
The common sense conclusion – though this seems like a reach at this point – is that the laws of information within consciousness or something that approximates consciousness have deep analogies or equivalences with physics.
Jacobsen: In a sense, we are not saying the universe is at root information. It is made out of it. But it emerges.
Rosner: It is information held in some structure. The tacitness of the hardware may be so far divided from the universe’s information that we may simply be unable to tell what the information is.
Information held in a self-consistent system has laws. These laws are the laws of physics. They manifest themselves in interrelated ways. The information is perceived in the information-processing system. Then the information as perceived by the material world that is made out of information, which could be a commonsensical thing.
But we haven’t gone far enough to really make the case that this is the most reasonable thing given that this is what we imagine at this point.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
License and Copyright
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Rick Rosner 