Related papers: Constraints on physical reality arising from a for…
When does society eventually learn the truth, or take the correct action, via observational learning? In a general model of sequential learning over social networks, we identify a simple condition for learning dubbed excludability.…
I show that physical devices that perform observation, prediction, or recollection share an underlying mathematical structure. I call devices with that structure "inference devices". I present a set of existence and impossibility results…
Existing physical theories do not predict every feature of our experience but only certain regularities of that experience. That difference between what could be observed and what can be predicted is one kind of limit on scientific…
There are many ways we can not know. Even in systems that we created ourselves, as, for example, systems in mathematical logic, Go\"edel and Tarski's theorems impose limits on what we can know. As we try to speak of the real world, things…
These lectures deal with the problem of inductive inference, that is, the problem of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information. Is there a general method for handling uncertainty? Or, at least, are there rules that could in…
I propose here a new concept of information based on two relevant aspects of its expression. The first related to the undeniable fact that the expression of information modifies the physical state of its receiver. The second to the…
This article explores the constraints of perception and cognition in relativistic physics. Describing reality as a cognitive representation of our sensory inputs, the article shows how the limitations in perception translate to the…
The paper investigates an evidence-based semantics for epistemic logics. It is shown that the properties of knowledge obtained from a potentially infinite body of evidence are described by modal logic S5. At the same time, the properties of…
In our previous arXiv papers (more systematically the informational conception is presented in the paper "The Information as Absolute", 2010) it was rigorously shown that Matter in our Universe - and Universe as a whole - are some…
It is shown that as knowledge is structured, it comes in modules. This provides different " layers of reality ". Each layer of reality has its own distinctive inductive logic which may differ from that of the others. All this is woven…
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 our previous arXiv papers ("The Information and the Matter", v1, v5; more systematically the informational conception is presented in the paper "The Information as Absolute", 2010) it was rigorously shown that Matter in our Universe -…
The problem of explaining the relationship between subjective experience and physical reality remains difficult and unresolved. In most explanations, consciousness is epiphenomenal, without causal power. The most notable exception is…
The accessible information quantifies the amount of classical information that can be extracted from an ensemble of quantum states. Analogously, the informational power quantifies the amount of classical information that can be extracted by…
The ubiquitous nature of modern Information Retrieval and Virtual World give rise to new realities. To what extent are these "realities" real? Which "physics" should be applied to quantitatively describe them? In this essay I dwell on few…
There are investigated the generalized methods of cognition of the Existing, i.e. everything that is able to influence to the cognizer, and everything differed from the Existing is postulated as indistinguishable from the non-existing and…
Learning commonsense knowledge from natural language text is nontrivial due to reporting bias: people rarely state the obvious, e.g., "My house is bigger than me." However, while rarely stated explicitly, this trivial everyday knowledge…
Incompleteness theorems of Godel, Turing, Chaitin, and Algorithmic Information Theory have profound epistemological implications. Incompleteness limits our ability to ever understand every observable phenomenon in the universe.…
No consensus seems to exist as to what constitutes a measurement which is still considered somewhat mysterious in many respects in quantum mechanics. At successive stages mathematical theory of measure, metrology and measurement theory…
Since its emergence, quantum mechanics has been a challenge for an understanding of reality which is based on our intuition in a classical world. Nevertheless, it has often been tried to impose this understanding of reality on quantum…