Related papers: Compressibility, laws of nature, initial condition…
Herein we consider various concepts of entropy as measures of the complexity of phenomena and in so doing encounter a fundamental problem in physics that affects how we understand the nature of reality. In essence the difficulty has to do…
Depth is a complexity measure for natural systems of the kind studied in statistical physics and is defined in terms of computational complexity. Depth quantifies the length of the shortest parallel computation required to construct a…
The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, `all-at-once,' retrocausal, or in…
This book presents a methodology and philosophy of empirical science based on large scale lossless data compression. In this view a theory is scientific if it can be used to build a data compression program, and it is valuable if it can…
The Principle of Least Action has evolved and established itself as the most basic law of physics. This allows us to see how this fundamental law of nature determines the development of the system towards states with less action, i.e.,…
I argue that data becomes temporarily interesting by itself to some self-improving, but computationally limited, subjective observer once he learns to predict or compress the data in a better way, thus making it subjectively simpler and…
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
A general information-theoretic framework for deriving physical laws is presented and a principle of informational physics is enunciated within its context. Existing approaches intended to derive physical laws from information-theoretic…
The theory of evolution by natural selection cannot be used to evaluate the truth value of the following proposition: Through evolution, there exists at least one species that can adapt to any one given environment. To address this issue,…
We present a theory of information expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible - i.e. in constructor-theoretic terms. Although it includes conjectured laws of physics that are…
Neural compression is the application of neural networks and other machine learning methods to data compression. Recent advances in statistical machine learning have opened up new possibilities for data compression, allowing compression…
No matter how counterintuitive they are, quantum phenomena are all simple consequences of the laws of Quantum Mechanics. It is not needed to extend the theory with hidden mechanisms or additional principles to explain what Quantum Mechanics…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…
In a recent paper, PNAS, 118, e1921529118 (2021), it was argued that while the standard definition of conservation laws in quantum mechanics, which is of a statistical character, is perfectly valid, it misses essential features of nature…
Complex systems are found in most branches of science. It is still argued how to best quantify their complexity and to what end. One prominent measure of complexity (the statistical complexity) has an operational meaning in terms of the…
A mechanism is proposed that allows to interpret the temporal evolution of a physical system as a result of the inability of an observer to record its whole state and a simple example is given. It is based on a review of the concepts of…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
I postulate that human or other intelligent agents function or should function as follows. They store all sensory observations as they come - the data is holy. At any time, given some agent's current coding capabilities, part of the data is…
More than hundred years ago the 'classic physics' was it in its full power, with just a few unexplained phenomena; which however led to a revolution and the development of the 'modern physics'. Today the computing is in a similar position:…
Reductionism is a prevalent viewpoint in science according to which all physical phenomena can be understood from fundamental laws of physics. Anderson [Science, 177, 393 (1972)], Laughlin and Pines [PNAS, 97, 28 (2000)], and others have…