Thursday, October 10, 2024

IPI Talk – Ali Eslami, California, USA

Our next IPI Talk will be on Saturday, 19th of October at 10.00 AM London time. 

Title: Trends in AI and predictions for the future

Abstract: AI continues to rapidly advance as we make the inexorable march towards AGI. Recent developments foreshadow the AI future. In this talk I will give you a short update on the technology, as well as my thoughts on what it means for the future of work and wealth. 

Speaker:  Ali Eslami

BIO: Ali Eslami is a tech entrepreneur with a broad background in software development and executive consulting. Starting to code at 8 years old, Ali eventually led a company that developed private crypto trading software focused on liquidity aggregation and synchronized execution. Over the years, Ali has also provided executive consulting to board members of Paramount Studios and the owner of the Lakers NBA team.

As a former professional poker player, Ali has played in some of the highest limit cash games in the world and has also had success on the tournament circuit, with a World Series of Poker bracelet and ring, as well as numerous televised final tables. Ali was selected for the 2007 man-vs-machine match against the "Polaris", the University of Alberta's preeminent poker playing AI, due to his combination of poker expertise and technical background. He and his teammate, Phil Laak, emerged with a close victory in the highly publicized match. Ali was also a member of the US poker team at the inaugural International Mind Sports competition, where he competed against players from around the world in poker games held inside the pods of the iconic London Eye.


19th of Oct. at 10.00 AM London time. Online ZOOM lecture - link will be emailed to the IPI members.

 

 

Emerging Minds Journal award for 2023 -2024

 Emerging Minds Journal award for 2023 -2024 academic year

Each year Emerging Minds Journal offers Awards for most significant contributions.

We are pleased to announce that The Winner of the 2023-2024 Most Read Article Award of the EMJSR is: Marinos Ioannou for the article: The role of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets for spintronic memory applications and their impact in data storage https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/emjsr/article/view/6 

The selection criterion does not judge the quality of the articles. Instead it reflects the readership and citations attracted.




Monday, September 16, 2024

IPI Talk – Dr. Melvin M. Vopson, University of Portsmouth & Information Physics Institute

Our next IPI Lecture will be on the 21st of Sept. at 17.00 London time. 

Title: Introducing the Second Law of Infodynamics and its Implications

Abstract: The second law of infodynamics establishes a link between the Shannon’s Information Entropy, the thermodynamic entropy of a system and its time evolution to equilibrium. It states that an isolated system moves to equilibrium in a way that the entropy of its information states decreases, or remains constant at equilibrium. This new law of physics is formulated in analogy to the second law of thermodynamics, which requires the entropy of the physical states to evolve exactly in the opposite direction, increasing or remaining constant over time. In this talk I will detail the research steps taken to formulate this new law, followed by a discussion of its implications to physics, science overall and the universe.

Author: Dr. Melvin M. Vopson

BIO: Dr Melvin Vopson is Associate Professor in Physics at the University of Portsmouth, Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, Chartered Physicist and Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Information Physics Institute, editor-in-chief of the IPI Letters and Emerging Minds Journal for Student Research. 

Melvin has a wide-ranging scientific expertise in experimental, applied and theoretical physics that is internationally recognized. He has published over 100 research articles, achieving over 3000 citations and an h-index of 27. Melvin worked previously as Higher Research Scientist at the UK National Physical Laboratory, senior R&D at Seagate, postdoctoral researcher at the University of York, and PhD student at the University of Central Lancashire. Melvin obtained his BSc and MSc in Physics at the University of Bucharest. During his MSc studies he was researcher at the National Institute of Materials Physics, Nuclear Gamma Resonance Laboratory.

21st of Sept. 2024 at 17.00 London time. Online ZOOM lecture - link will be emailed to the IPI members.

Most Read IPI Letters Article Award

Each year IPI Letters offers the Most Read Article Award to the publication that has achieved the largest number of readers. The selection criterion does not judge the quality of the article. Instead it is a reflection of the readership it has attracted.

We are pleased to announce that The Winner of the 2023-2024 Most Read Article Award of the IPI Letters is:  

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Next-Generation Blockchain Technology: The Entropic Blockchain

The storage, transmission, and processing of data become significant problems when large digital data files or databases are involved, as in the case of decentralized online global databases such as blockchain. In this article a novel method is proposed that allows for the scalability of digital assets, including blockchain databases in the download, validation, and confidentiality processes, by developing a lightweight blockchain technology called Entropic Blockchain. 

 This is a computer-implemented mathematical method to generate an information-entropic numerical barcode representation of a digital asset. Using this technique, a 1–2 Mb block of digital data can be represented by a few bytes, significantly reducing the size of a blockchain. The entropic barcode file can be utilized on its own or as an optically machine-readable entropic barcode for secure data transmission, processing, labeling, identification, and one-way encryption, as well as for compression, validation, and digital tamper-proof checks. The mathematics of this process and all the steps involved in its implementation are discussed in detail in this article.

Saturday, June 29, 2024

The Law of Functional Information

Leading mineralogist Dr. Robert Hazen on the missing law of nature that could explain why life emerges. Credit to: The Well on YouTube: https://bit.ly/welcometothewell



Sunday, June 16, 2024

IPI lecture – Dr Michael L. Wong, Carnegie Institution for Science, USA

Our next IPI Lecture will be on Saturday, 6th of July at 16.00 London time. 

Title: An informational perspective of life

Abstract: Information processing is a central feature of life and may be the key to developing bio-signatures that are capable of detecting life as we do not know it. First, I will describe how concepts that we generally associate with the field of data science are strikingly descriptive of the way that life, in general, processes information about its environment. Second, I will explore how the topologies of atmospheric chemical reaction networks of Solar System bodies are distinct from one another, with potential applications to exoplanet bio-signatures. Third, I will show how a robust method that combines pyrolysis–GC–MS measurements of a wide variety of terrestrial and extraterrestrial carbonaceous materials with machine-learning-based classification to achieve ~90% accuracy in the differentiation between samples of abiotic origins vs. biotic specimens. Fourth, I will propose a new time-asymmetric law that states that the functional information of a system will increase over time when subjected to selection for function(s).

Author: Dr. Michael L. Wong

BIO: Dr. Michael L. Wong is an NHFP Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Earth & Planets Laboratory studying astrobiology and planetary science. In his spare time, he hosts a podcast called Strange New Worlds, which examines science, technology, and culture through the lens of Star Trek.

6th of July at 16.00 London time. Online ZOOM lecture - link will be emailed to the IPI members.


Friday, May 17, 2024

IPI lecture – Dr Szymon Łukaszyk, Łukaszyk Patent Attorneys, Poland

 Our next IPI Lecture will be on Saturday, 25th of May at 16.00 London time. 

Title: Assembly Theory of Bitstrings

Abstract: Bit is the smallest amount and the quantum of information. We used assembly theory to investigate the assembly pathways of binary strings of length N formed by joining bits present in the assembly pool and the bitstrings that entered the pool as a result of previous joining operations. The bitstring assembly index (the smaller amount of steps required to assembly a bitstring of length N) is bounded from below by the shortest addition chain for N. We conjecture about the form of the upper bound. We define the degree of causation for the minimum assembly index that happened to reveal regularities for certain N that can be used to determine the length of the shortest addition chain for N. We explored the idea of assembling bitstrings by other bitstrings (binputation) and it turned that a bitstring with the smallest assembly index for N can be assembled by a binary program of length equal to this index if the length of this bitstring is expressible as a product of Fibonacci numbers. The results confirm that four Planck areas provide a minimum information capacity that corresponds to a minimum thermodynamic (Bekenstein-Hawking) entropy. Knowing that the problem of determining the assembly index is at least NP-complete, we conjecture that this problem is in fact NP-complete, while the problem of creating the bitstring so that it would have a predetermined largest assembly index is NP-hard. The proof of this conjecture would imply P NP, since every computable problem and every computable solution can be encoded as a finite bitstring. The lower bound on the bitstring assembly index implies a creative path and an optimization path of the evolution of information, where only the latter is available to Turing machines (artificial intelligence). Furthermore, the upper bound hints at the role of dissipative structures and collective, in particular human, intelligence in this evolution.

Author: Dr. Szymon Łukaszyk

 BIO: Szymon Łukaszyk received his M.Eng. degree in the applications of genetic algorithms in mechanics in 1996 and a D.Eng. degree on the Łukaszyk-Karmowski metric and its practical applications in 2004 at the Cracow University of Technology. After completing postgraduate Law on Industrial Property studies at Jagiellonian University, he heads his own patent attorneys’ office. His research interests include emergent dimensionality, entropic gravity, assembly theory, quantum mathematics, and mathematical physics.

25th of May at 16.00 London time. Online ZOOM lecture - link will be emailed to the IPI members.

Saturday, May 4, 2024

My Functional Reasoning of a Simulated Existence

 I came upon a video today (April 26, 2024), which was an interview on GBN with Dr. Melvin Vopson, October 22, 2023. As I listened to him explain his discovery, my mind was already comparing functional similarities with what I've already absorbed in my life, and I believe both of our experiences complement each other as they are essentially polar opposites. Functionally speaking, what he explains is applicable to models of expansion and contraction. Without getting deep into detail, think of the “Big Bang” theory.


  1. Everything is made of structures of components, up to the level of primitives which cannot be further decomposed.


Relative to Dr. Marvin's explanation, at the beginning of the universe, or existence itself, all this “information” was compressed in a ball of mass of incomprehensible size. When this ball of mass expanded, everything began to unravel, decreasing in density as things spread out. We can observe this space between things in the cosmos with Astronomy practices, and we have observed the space between things within the human body and anything else we have investigated throughout history. So, in a nutshell, we have discovered that everything is mere components, within components, within components, and so on.


  1. We question everything and search for proofs.


It has become very clear to me, that everything we have learned of the universe and existence, we have applied to our daily lives. Everything from the tech we use every day, to our homes, means of travel, synthetic foods, and even our educational systems. It's all data transference, or as I like to say, “electrical engineering”. I know all of this seem very elementary, but I find truth is in simplicity and it's very easy to get lost in the details of things. However, I feel our quest for “proofs”, is both very exciting and very dangerous as well.


  1. Our curiosity to understand drives us to discover useful things, but in many cases the outcome is applied to create destructive things.

What happened after splitting the first atom, in pursuit of, basically, energy amplification? Wasn't the knowledge gained from this study later used to create the Atom Bomb? Every time we discover something new, others seem to find a way to use that knowledge in some way to ransom control, which eventually results in some form of destruction. In general, the brilliant minds that are discovering these things, are simply driven by the curiosity to understand, not to destroy.


  1. Human evolution is a repetitive cycle of progress and calamities, which causes are forgotten by the post-apocalyptic generations.

Humanity is really not that old in comparison to the universe, and many life forms existed before us. There are more and more archaeological discoveries that are finding human ancestors as old as 800,000 - 1 million years old. Many things we study today were discovered thousands of years before our lifetime. Don't you think it's possible that humans discovered things about the universe, that eventually influenced the means of destruction in their day? We are now discovering technologies that existed long ago that we perceive as “far ahead of their time”. It just seems that we keep repeating the same thing, suggestively, not learning from our past actions.


  1. Maturity is reached through evolution during each life cycle but not transmitted between life cycles. (Pangaea, MU, Gondwana, Atlántida).

It's very clear to me, as actions speak louder than words, that we are nowhere near mature enough to wield the power of understanding the construct of the universe, or how exactly, it functions. If, and when we ever get to that point, we are only going to destroy ourselves. This is very evident today, as we now have biological warfare, improper use of EMF's and God know what else. As they say, “curiosity killed the cat”. But our lives don't have to continue down this path of self-destruction.


  1. The role and purpose of spiritual and religious practices is to control the believers and provide guidelines for ethical behavior, health, social constructs, etc.

How does one become mature? Simple, through the practice of discipline. But which discipline? There are many that we have developed and attempted to preserve within every culture around the world. Many disciplines have been used for power, through means of instilling fear. That's what we do now, use our technologies to win wars. But in war, nobody wins, as there is always death and destruction on all sides. Unfortunately, even spiritual disciplines have been used to gain power as well. Which sadly, creates the opinion in many minds, that spiritual or religious practices were created by man for the sole purpose of control. Many of us see it differently, but there still remains a problem.


  1. God is the all-powerful Universal creator who is referred not only by religions, (Marduk, Brahma, Pan Gu, Allah, God, Yahveh, Manitou, Quetzalcoatl, Odin, Zalmoxis, etc.) but also by the scientific (Primordial atom, Laws of nature, Living energy, Master Algorithm, etc.) community when it fails to explain the causes of some existential fact.

There are many different religions and alternative spiritual practices. And from the beginning, at least what we have discovered so far, there has always been argument of which belief system holds the ultimate truth. Fact of the matter is, they are all true. Besides the fact that definition reshapes as language evolves over time, there are little clues in many religions that suggest the same things. God is everything, God is love, only God can judge, and my favourite, we were all created by one God. But many of us argue about the name or teachings of God. I find the difference of definition comparative to that of botanical differences and similarities. Are there not variations of the same plant species that have simply adapted to different habitats? The way we perceive existence also differs by our cultural habitat.


It's all the same, we are all the same, and everything in existence developed from one source. Does it really matter how we define that source? An automobile is an automobile, whether it's a truck, a race car, or a bus. They are all serving the same purpose, just in different ways, and we are too. We have observed so much in nature, and one of the greatest things we can observe is a perfectly balanced function of self-regeneration called Photosynthesis. This is a perfect model of the natural flow of things, and how different elements work together, ultimately reaching maximum efficiency as one unit.


  1. A bit of chemistry. You can even observe this within molecular structures.

In Chemistry, molecules can only bond with other molecules by equally sacrificing a piece of themselves, basically, working together. Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons are all different and have different roles, and yet, they work with each other to serve a function. I have learned that the role of a Neutron is to influence balance and stability within a mechanism, so I try to live my life like a Neutron. I strive to influence balance within the mechanism of humanity, in hopes that we may reach our maximum potential, “I am Neutron”. I definitely don't have the educational background that compares to the greatest minds of mankind, I only have a GED. But I see a possible way to achieve the “peace and harmony” we are all aching for, and it's only found in simplicity.


You see, it's the difference of detail that separates us. But not just by detail alone, it is the emotional investment, or ego, that we accompany with those details. I haven't studied many religions, but I am in the process. However, in the book of Genesis, it says Adam and Eve were influenced by a serpent (Satan) to eat from the tree that contained the knowledge of difference between good and evil. This clearly sounds like a metaphor. But functionally speaking, what does this mean, “knowledge of difference between good and evil”? Well, for starters, both terms are clearly implemented labels, as those terms have been continuously misused, even today. I think what this metaphor speaks, is that we should not judge difference in itself, because well, look at the destruction difference can cause. After all, God created EVERYTHING, this includes difference.


  1. The Law of nature ensures that everything has a polar opposite (see 11)

Looking into nature again, we can observe that everything seems to have a polar opposite. Well, it is said that we were made in the image of God. Are we a conscious reflection of God? Our reflection is made in our image. Everything that we are capable of, our reflection is capable of as well, because ultimately, our reflection only reflects what we ourselves are capable of. Therefore, we are capable of the divinity that God has.

I mean, metaphorically, we were meant to flourish in the Garden of Eden, with God, but we got kicked out for our consumption of the knowledge of difference. Once you become aware of differences, fear of the unknown sets in as you no longer see things as they truly are, and that is as one whole. So naturally, we preserve what we know in fear of losing what we know. Only what we know is just a small piece of what we are part of. Which brings me to my own metaphor.


    1. Multiverse existence

The whole of existence is like a pane of glass, that the light of life shines through. This pane of glass has been shattered into many, many pieces, and the light of life still shines. We are the many shards of that broken glass; they are all quite different and the light of life shines through us all quite differently. Just as a white light is diffracted into multiple colours when shined through a diamond, we too, perceive and express that same light in a variety of different detail, this is our conscious awareness. Now, I perceive that the greatest pursuit that could EVER exist, is to mend the broken pieces of that pane of glass. How do we do that? By finding the right kind of glue to hold us all together, by extinguishing the fiery judgement of difference. It's all a learning process which expands our consciousness, bit by bit.


When this pane of glass is whole again, our consciousness will be with the divine consciousness of God, as was in the very beginning. It is through the practice of internal discipline ONLY, that we will become mature enough to attain that level of consciousness. Everything we are experiencing this very moment, is processed in our minds. And the way we perceive existence forms our personal perspective, which is ultimately shaped by our life experiences. When we can let go of our personal connections to existence, our collective sensory stimulation, and learn to live like a Neutron, then we can truly begin to connect with the whole of existence. All the information is out there, just like Dr. Melvin is trying to express with his research. By conquering our own minds, we learn how to resonate as a whole with the universe, and we gain access to all that data because we are part of it.


  1. CONT. The Laws of nature ensure that each aspect of existence has an opposite (Yin & Yang, Life & Death, Good & Bad, positive & negative, believer & unbeliever, good & evil, electron & positron, etc.).

The potential our minds have to create, is the polar opposite of the potential of the universe. When we create something, it starts with observation, an awareness of something, which then develops into an idea. The transition between awareness and idea is a process, you can call simulation, in our minds. From that point it's all trial and error as they say. But remember, the potential of the universe is the polar opposite of our potential. Therefore, the expansion and development of the universe IS a simulation. What we call trial and error are still labels no different than good and evil. So by removing the judgement of difference, trial and error simply becomes action and reaction, or as physics calls it, causality.


    1. Primordial information

Now, as processes continually repeat themselves by function, it would be easy to entertain the idea that at the beginning, or “Big Bang”, there was only consciousness itself, call it God. When this “God” became aware itself, it began to simulate ideas to define itself, and what it was exactly, that it had become aware of, just like we do today. And those simulated ideas, expand, evolving into other ideas. Being that we all don't seem to know what the truth is and most of us refuse to sacrifice a piece of ourselves to truly experience existence as one, we create madness as everything existing becomes contradiction through our participation of judgement. Which is the very thing that creates separation. So, this madness is essentially an identity crisis.


    1. Past experience as influences on judgements

As I mentioned earlier, it is our personal experiences, that ultimately form our judgement of existence. Everything we experience is stored in our memory; therefore, our memories influence our conscious development. What really builds our memories, is sensory stimulation, which is accompanied by emotional stimulation. It's the emotional stimulation that influences judgement of our experiences. In order to move forward in life, we must learn to let go of our past judgements, we must let go of the emotions connected to our memories.

I often find myself reliving an experience that someone may ask me to explain. Although I had moved on from those events, I had not fully let go of the emotional connection to them. This is why religion teaches forgiveness. But what if you could let go of ALL sensory and emotional stimulation?


    1. Self-Awareness post fuzzy memories from subconscious

When I experience sleep deprivation and I awake after finally going to sleep, I'm in what I call “the void”. I'm connected to my senses, but not entirely, I'm experiencing sensory deprivation and I always see the same thing, a faint green grid like pattern, or “matrix pattern”. I really have no explanation for this, but it's quite interesting. You can experience different levels of sensory deprivation through other methods such as, fasting, meditation, and even drug or alcohol consumption. Without our sensory perception, we are just consciousness in the dark. There have been studies done, that show when you sit in complete darkness long enough, the mind begins to hallucinate. I gather this occurs in pursuit of defining the moment and space that you are presently in. However, those hallucinations are influenced by our memories and emotional connections to those memories. By training our mind to detach from all sensory and emotional stimulation, we might actually begin to understand the awareness that occurred at the beginning of existence.



Original by:

Nicholas E. Barlas (Neutron)

San Francisco Bay Area, CA

United Staes of America


Revised by:

Mark C. Nicolau

Melbourne, Australia

Thursday, February 15, 2024

IPI lecture - Dr. Emily Adlam, Chapman University, USA

Our next IPI Lecture will be on Saturday, 24th of February at 16.00 London time. 

Title: Are Entropy Bounds Epistemic?

Abstract: Entropy bounds have played an important role in the development of holography as an approach to quantum gravity. In this talk I will introduce the strong and covariant entropy bounds, and then discuss how the covariant bound should be interpreted. I will argue that there is a possible way of thinking about the covariant entropy bound which would suggest that it encodes an epistemic limitation rather than an objective count of the true number of degrees of freedom on a light-sheet; thus I will distinguish between ontological and epistemic interpretations of the covariant bound. I will consider the consequences that these interpretations might have for physics and discuss what each approach has to say about gravitational phenomena. My aim is not to advocate for either the ontological or epistemic approach in particular, but rather to articulate both possibilities clearly and explore some arguments for and against them.

Speaker: Dr. Emily Adlam

BIO: Emily is a philosopher of physics focusing on the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum clocks and the philosophy of time, particularly approaches to physics which go beyond the time evolution paradigm – encompassing a range of possibilities like temporal non-locality, retrocausality, and all-at-once laws. She is also interested in pursuing the consequences of these possibilities for philosophical topics like laws and determinism.

Emily did her PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. Prior to that she completed the Perimeter Scholar’s International programme in theoretical physics, and she did her undergraduate degree in physics and philosophy at the University of Oxford. Emily was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Western Ontario before moving to Chapman University. She is also associated with Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University. 

IPI members will receive an email with the link to join the event. If you wish to attend this IPI Talk, please email: information.physics.institute@gmail.com 

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