The Theory of Everything: Newton, Information, Complexity, and Evolution

Quoting from the Polaris Project website, Isaac Newton’s first law can be stated as “Every mass, or body, be it at rest or moving, will not alter its present state unless acted upon by an external force.” The other laws of Newton flow from the logic that is implied in this first law.

By merely stating that a body will not alter its present state unless acted upon by an external force immediately implies the second law of Newton that, “The change in direction or speed of an object, is proportional to the amount of force acting on that body. The change in motion is also in the direction in which the force is acting.”

It is when we understand information for what it is can we reappreciate the thoughts of Newton. This idea, this reality of information has its roots from those who pursue quantum physics, some times they call themselves quantum mechanics, sometimes particle physicists, what ever suites you, but a select few of these thinkers hit on the reality of information and have passed it on. Though this reality coming from quantum physics, it is a much bigger concept than quantum physics, everything includes every discipline known to mankind, it’s all dealing with information even when they are doing things like trying to control the rain through a dance.

“Informationis everything, everything is information even nothing is information, nothing is part of everything. The most basic information is the elementary particle.” Immediately one can go into philosophy, if nothing informs us there is nothing how can the elementary particle be everything, be the most basic piece of information, maybe physics has not come to an end. But be warned before you go into mysticism the entire known material is matter, we are looking at the roots of matter, the basic particle. But this philosophical question is beneath the laws of everything. This answers the questions is traditional philosophy superior to science no, because the clearest definition of information comes from quantum physics.

By answering the idea of information and rightfully concluding that information is everything, though from a premise that had no idea or a concept of understanding what everything is. Quantum physics followed an ancient line of thought, the first traditional philosophical milestone. What is a human being? So there is absolutely no need to frown on another, the question of what is a human being quantum physics answered that right down to quantum entanglement. Quantum physics answered that human beings are just like everything else we can detect presently, a human being is an information package.

Why appreciate Newton again. It is because when we understand information when understand how close Newton was to the theory of everything, destroyed merely by pursuit of alchemy, the times, Newton was around a long time ago, to only have missed entanglement is not bad, his first law only misses entanglement, not a bad achievement, not a bad thought for the times, we are watching television today all remotely controlled of course, a very different time from Newton.

If we say information is everything, we need at least one fact confirming from it beyond the mere statement that information is everything. “The first law of information, the first law of everything is that every relationship has a loss of freedom. We can put it at it’s most crude as every relationship has a cost.” A meaningful way to understand the first law of everything is from Suzanne Ngatai on a comment she made on Google + “when information is identified it therefore categorizes itself by 'being' therefore the cost is also the 'not being' of something else that comes along with this categorization…” She managed to unite the concepts of cost and freedom from the definition, obviously, the author of the first law of everything had no idea that the two concepts could be united so perfectly. Her comments will come useful in helping to understand how Newton is ‘new’ again as he enhances information and opens other doors not possible to imagine if a few bright sparks in physics told us and convinced us that information is everything.

Before getting to Newton let us understand why the first law of everything is bigger than the question if nothing informs us there is nothing how can the elementary particle be the most basic piece of information? The question seems sticky, but if that nothing can achieve a relationship there will be a loss of freedom. What can be outside the law of everything, the question can not be answered, it is foolish to even try, how do you know there is nothing, because nothing has informed you of itself and categorized as nothing. Whatever will be discovered will have no choice but to fall under the first law of everything even if it must be categorized outside a particle. Even if this is a hologram and there is a God out there, creator of it all, he has a relationship with his hologram.

Newton’s first law can be translated into the thoughts of everything, into the logic behind information being everything understanding that its first law is unbreakable.

Recalling Newton’s first law, every mass, or body, be it at rest or moving, will not alter its present state unless acted upon by an external force, let’s attempt to understand this strictly in terms of information. If this is successfully achieved, Newton helps explain evolution, it is not difficult, an information package will remain in it’s present state unless a relationship is established. This could very well be considered the second law of information, the second law of everything. Even if this is a hologram and there is a God out there, before creation of the hologram there was no relationship with the entity.

Newton has inspired the second law of information, immediately stepping above any subject whose laws are limited to particles, if anything out there exists that is not a particle, it too will remain subject to both laws of information, both laws of everything.

By understanding both laws in unison we begin to understand complexity better, but more importantly a very important concept of complexity, the evolutionary process. That we have a thumb is a cost, that is why it is important to understand words for being words, to understand that a cost, a loss of freedom is not necessarily a bad word, we are the products of incredible amounts of different categories of information in relationships upon relationships, humans are very complex. A huge variety of information is locked in our composition.

Complexity is a process that involves many variables, many pieces of information all in a relationship, it thus becomes more unpredictable. Understanding of complexity is aided when one understands information, starting first with the reality that everything is information. Multiple relationships will involve multiple forces.

We can not conclude what information prefers to remain as is or to change but we do know change requires a relationship and a loss of freedom. This of course need not be a bad thing, it is a neutral thing, remembering Suzanne Ngatai’s statement “when information is identified it therefore categorizes itself by 'being' therefore the cost is also the 'not being' of something else that comes along with this categorization…” That is all the cost is, don’t think of it as a reward, sometimes information packages are completely destroyed but the same process has occurred, a relationship, it is a cost even if it is as beneficial as evolution.

We do know that information prefers to survive, we generally abhor suicide, why didn’t the victim march on with the struggles of existing as a human being. Matter seems to have abolished anti matter from its surroundings in order to survive and thrive.

Evolution occurs because an information package needs to change to survive its environment, so that it can survive as best as possible given that it would be sharing a lot of space with different information packages. Given the circumstances a cheetah developed speed to survive its environment, a polar bear developed power and thick fur to survive its surroundings.

At one time, all bears had a common ancestor. Having a common ancestor means at one time they where all very much similar. The common ancestor is like the basic design. Having a common ancestor meant at one time all bears where similar information packages without great differentiation genetically, less variety than exists today.

Moving towards a cold environment the polar bear subconsciously desired more fur and blubber, a way to keep warm in the new environment it has found itself in. The conscious is just a part of our mind, our mind functions as our control center, it’s us, it is nothing more than organized information, just a complex machine, a complex computer.

Every thought, every desire, every emotion is merely a result of how information is organized in the brain. Our actions are a result of the relationship we have with our minds, and the way our minds are organized depends on how information is organized, we call this being wired, one can think of being wired as a giant computer, organized in 1’s and 0’s, how our 1’s and 0’s are organized depends on our experiences, are we racist, tribalism, believer in science as best language science can easily be tarnished by man, you just don’t publish those you hate and envy, so it is not a universal language, because everything is affected by politics, by how humans are wired/ programmed.

Information wants to survive in the most stable manner as possible. If this necessitates entering a relationship it must accept these costs to continue existing. Iron is reactive, it must accept to being oxidized if it exists in an oxidized environment, this relationship must be for iron to exist, that is how iron has come to be, those are its properties.

Life too wants to survive, that is why it adapts. One can see clearly the second law of information, inspired by Newton in action at the most complex of levels. The second law of everything not forgetting that it should scientifically be called law of information, snobbery aside the two are identical, but we know what something is because it informs us what it is. An information package will remain in it’s present state unless a relationship is established is the second law of information. The bears would all have remained the same if it was not that they had a relationship to their new found environments, affecting their subconscious, having a relationship with the rest of the body the genes adapted to fulfill this relationship with the subconscious need for survival. Evolution and complexity in general will never defy the second law, it makes us understand.

Our relationship with the environment gave us a thumb and a larger brain, though the larger brain is far more important. The polar bear preferred more muscle to break the ice, and more blubber to survive the extreme cold. Some animals like the crocodile, the shark stopped evolving millions of years ago. Their subconscious did not see the need to change, no relationship established the shark and crocodile remained as are since the days of the crocodile. The sharks and crocodiles saw themselves as the best as they could be subconsciously hence the lack of evolvement, but humans continued to strive such that we are still evolving. Crocodiles and sharks not evolving for millions of years means there was no information in the mind desiring improvement, hence they remained as are thanks to the second law of information that an information package will remain in its present state unless a relationship is established.

That there are two laws of everything suggests that the theory of everything is a big concept, we can understand evolution from it, as well as why iron rusts, the laws of everything, the laws of information can be considered a discipline. But the laws must be consistent in every discipline, in every way, they must be unbreakable.

Bhekuzulu Khumalo


A Concern from Thermodynamics

As usual an after editorial is added if and only if there is a major concern, I mention names when it is to uplift, but will not mention a name because if the person is not mature enough to understand it is merely a discussion, there are problems, but obviously to make an edition ones opinion is respected. But this concern with thermodynamics is real.

Thermodynamics is an inspiration for this theory of everything, but it has many shortcomings, please note I already wrote an article information and the origins of entropy, yes entropy was an inspiration but not a complete theory. Let us look at entropy, not forgetting it was the initial inspiration for a theory of everything.

The first law of entropy is known as the law of conservation of energy. Really, what about anti matter. That is all to be said on the first law, does anti matter break it, if it does, it is not a law of everything, it is steam engine physics, an isolated system, not everything.

The second law of entropy says things cannot be reversed, but in smelters, ancient man 30 000 years ago had smelters, creating pure elements copper, iron, That is why it is important to read other works, the isolation of information is reversing the process, that is how we know things because information could be isolated, pure iron last existed after super novas, man has reversed the process, taking oxidized iron ore and purifying it in furnaces. Processes can be reversed, here is a good journal piece to read just to understand isolation of information, the piece is called why economics is a science, information the grand unifier. 

Think about it, when you switch of a television you can do the reverse, switch it on, thermodynamics is therefore not about information, but a segment of information, things are reversed everyday, information reverses everyday, thermodynamics has limited principles applicable to the theory of everything.You change your mind back after thinking a decision, thermodynamics is too limited.

The third and final law of thermodynamics suggests at absolute zero there is no activity, have these people tested dark matter, is there no activity at absolute zero?

Theory of everything is simple, and some straightforward scientists like Newton were close, thermodynamics is not close, but was first inspiration long before Newton and his inspiration for the second law of everything. Thanks, William Rice for the concerns you raised about Thermodynamics in LinkedIn, thanks, no show, this is just genuine response to concerns raised about merely generalization, that is true, but some things can not be sufficiently generalized.

Why a theory of everything, when we can get relationships that affect all things we are so much the better. If it seems so easy, it is because great thoughts have gone into it, subtracting this, adding that. A theory of everything is meant to be so easy that high school people can comprehend it, make it simple an we can see the entire picture.  As simple such that a high school art student understands everything is connected.

The two laws of information are complimentary, and simple, the first law information will remain in its present state unless a relationship is established, nothing changed, it was static. Then a relationship was established.

Once a relationship is established the second law comes into effect, there is a cost, matter annihilated and abolished anti matter, and we got our big bang, theoretically, but the laws remain true factually.

To get to the definition that information is everything costs billions, if not trillions of dollars, use it, it makes everything easier, even the existence of a God does not debunk the laws of everything, they are well vetted.You get pure iron from a smelter, process can be reversed, just taking more energy to reverse, a collider is just reversing the process, let knowledge flow forward, its information, forget that steam engine physics, Newton has been vetted correctly his inspiration can pass any test, step by step. 

What is a Theory of Everything?

 A theory of everything must explain all phenomenon and how everything relates to each other. By its definition, that it is about everything it can not be reduced to only explaining phenomenon in one discipline. This article argues that understanding information will lead us to a theory of everything.

Is it possible to understand to explain all phenomenon? All phenomenon is not just particles, atoms, and physics, all phenomenon must include the housefly, human beings, otherwise it can never be a theory of everything. Everything is everything, you can not limit it. The wonders of the internet is that information is not far away, going to dictionary.com, the definition of everything is “everything or particular of an aggregate or total; all.”  Given this definition, can any concept fulfill this role or is the concept to big.

A theory of everything must explain what is common to everything, if it does not then we are giving a grand title to a concept that is misleading because it does not explain everything. What is everything? How do we know something, how do we know a thing? We know a thing because we have investigated it, or simply because we have by some means come into contact with it. How do we come into contact with this thing, we could be walking and we bump into it, a different kind of soil, a different kind of shrub or plant? Without even investigating we have bumped into something new.

We therefore know things because they essentially tell us what they are, a red stone tells us it is different from the white stones, it does not even have to speak, but it tells us it is different. Even with the familiar, when we get into our living rooms, we know that is a television, that is a chair, that is a fridge, that is food inside the fridge, everything tells us what it is, everything informs us of what it is, everything is information. Everything is information because everything informs us of its nature and characteristics even at the most basic level. Everything is therefore information, a theory of everything must deal with this concept of information, it must speak the language of information.

For philosophy’s sake, philosophers like to argue which is good, it improves our arguments, but one could argue that information is a human construct, that information comes from the thing, and not the thing from information, after all the stars and galaxies existed long before humans came into existence. This seems like a valid argument at first but completely falls apart because the fact is that those very laws of existence, the very laws that created the sun billions of years ago deemed fit to create human beings a few hundred thousand years ago. That means if human beings did not exist right now, the laws of the universe would be different, if life did not exist the laws of the universe would be very different because the fact that life and human beings have evolved in the galaxy means that the laws deemed that if such and such happens, billions of years later you will get life. Human beings can not ever be taken out of the equation because it would be a totally different universe, it might not have gravity, or the electromagnetic spectrum.

Life and humans are part and parcel of everything, you can not have a theory of everything without including life, then it is not the theory of everything but something else. That thing one talks of is merely information to a human being and to a large extent of life. A snake knows it must catch a mouse, it does not do it by instinct it hunts mice and rats. Therefore, a snake itself everything is merely information, it knows it can eat this and it can not eat that. This idea that only humans can think is a Western idea coming from the believe that only humans have a soul and this idea has been culturally placed into science, figure that out. Grizzly bears understand the patterns of their surroundings, they know when the salmon is coming, they have learnt how to hunt. Even crocodiles who are not taught how to hunt understand they must eat what is living, they don’t eat rocks by instinct.

We are humans, we are what could be considered an advanced life form built on the same structure of life as plants, genes. To a human, that thing is information, it informs us of its nature, the sun informs us it is a star, not a planet, a gnat or a television. A human being informs us that this is a human being, not a star, or leopard, or a galaxy. Everything is information, everything informs us about itself in many ways besides physical nature, location, speed, these are all part of information, differentiating information, even when it seems similar, for example no two electrons are the same, they occupy two different locations, just as no two humans or viruses are the same. You cannot study something and pretend you are not there, you will by principle miss the whole picture.

To say you want to study something as if humans don’t exist, why not study something as if nothing exists, the laws of the universe still operate in a vacuum, if you pour matter into a vacuum it will behave according to the laws, so at the end of the day one can say even the information is not important, the thing is not important, only the laws are, but the thing is there, the humans are there.

What is Common to all Information

A theory of everything must unite what is familiar to everything, what is familiar to information. A core similarity of information is that all information comes in packages from the smallest piece of information, the most basic of particles, to the largest information packages in the universe, galaxies, and everything in-between. That includes stars, planets, humans, asteroids, viruses.

All information is discrete, that means a thing is a whole, dividing it would mean it is no longer that thing but something else.

How do we know a thing is a thing? We know because information can be isolated. Looking at a dinner table, we know that this is a table, this table cloth, that a plate, and these utensils. There is a galaxy, it can be isolated to individual solar systems, to planets, to the elements that are the composition of those planets. The elements can be isolated to atomic structure, that can be isolated to sub atomic particles. Thus a galaxy can be isolated from the galaxy itself to the sub atomic particles.

As information is discrete and can be isolated, this is what allows us to learn. If information could not be isolated, how could it ever be possible to learn, we would not be able to tell the difference between a table and the utensils. We would not be able to learn this is iron and this is gold, all information would be just a continuous muddle. Luckily this is not the way things are, otherwise learning would be impossible, one would have to know everything or nothing at all. That is why we need to be careful of those who want to take the human out of the picture and say what if, there is no what if, they have never asked themselves how do they know what they know, as if televisions occur in nature without human beings, it’s because information can be isolated and with the isolation exploited. Things can be isolated from other things.

People do not learn in the same manner, one can learn addition first up to 10 + 10 = 20, or one could learn addition first up to 5 + 5 = 10, and then learn subtraction, 5 – 3 = 2. This points to another crucial factor of information, all information is independent, it exists because of the laws of the universe, a thing is because it has been deemed to be so by the laws of the universe, because of its nature. This allows discoveries to be made by taking different paths, there is no set path, what is important is that information is extracted, this extracted information becomes an individuals or societies knowledge base.

If this quality of a thing being what it is was not true, this quality of independence, all societies would have to behave in the same manner to progress, every society would continuously have to reinvent the wheel to progress, this is obviously not so. 

A not so obvious feature of information is that all information can be used to compute. I first learnt of this whilst listening to a discussion on youtube entitled “The Physics of Information: From Entanglement to Black Holes” featuring four Western scientists Leonard Susskind, Sir Anthony Leggett, Christopher Fuchs, Seth Lloyd, and Bob McDonald, a good video out of many that agree that information is everything.

Everything can be used to compute, you can use an abacus, you can use galaxies, you can use cows, pastoral societies in Southern Africa, Shepherd learnt to count by counting cows, whilst ancient far East people used an abacus, today we use electrons in microchips, but you can use bottles of beers even though it will be might tedious. If life did not exist would it be possible to use everything for computing, in that sterile world, what is going to find it necessary to compute, but life exists, you can never wish it away, it will end when the laws of the universe say it is time to end because of whatever factors that shall arise, but the factors that arise can not break any laws of information.

Relationships and Information

How is it that information can be isolated, what is it being isolated from? Information when talking in the physical sense is isolated from other information, it is isolated from a relationship. Everything is related to something, atoms, particles, lions, humans, trees, stars, planets, everything is related to something. It takes energy to have a relationship. All relationships involve a loss of freedom; all relationships take energy to sustain them. Can we truly put down a physical law, that is the law, all relationships take energy to maintain? How else can one possibly put this?

The first law of information, the first law of everything is that every relationship has a loss of freedom. We can put it at it’s most crude as every relationship has a cost.

It is how we think, if we think as things being separated it will be difficult to see, accepting this simple reality, that all relationships are a commitment therefore involve a loss of freedom and take energy our whole perspective changes. This affects all information, and information in reality will be found in a relation with other information. All elements involve the relationship between electrons, protons and neutrons. It takes energy for this commitment to be maintained, and all the participants, the electron, proton, and neutron have loss of freedom and must give energy for this relationship.

Difficult to comprehend, a man meets a woman in a library, they fall in love and get married, a relationship takes place, both parties must give something to the relationship. This something is in terms of energy. Time that could have been used for another activity is now used to maintain the relationship.

Why are we talking of energy, because energy is what allows things to transform into something else. That same single woman is transformed when she enters a relationship, she is now married. But energy is also what allows things to do things. That single man when he is married in the strictest sense should not have relationships outside that arrangement, relationships that are meant to be between a man and a woman, there are restrictions.

A theory of everything therefore must accept the fact that all relationships in the universe restrict freedom, any relationship results in an increase in complexity. What is complexity? There really is no clear definition one will find even on the world wide web. We can think of complexity as a package made up of dissimilar information. Thus an atom is more complex than its constituents. The more variables involved, the more complex. Take a human being and a star. A human is far more complex than a sun, a sun is just a big ball of hydrogen, one element. A human on the other hand is a hydro carbon that also needs various minerals like zinc, iron, potassium to survive, a human is highly complex. The earth is far more complex than a star.

The more complex means several relationships between information take place, each stage resulting in more and more energy and less and less stability. A human even in mythological biblical times lived for a mere 800 years, a star can burn for billions of years, it is less complex, a proton which is even less complex will be around for 2 x 10²⁹ years, that is a very very long time, nobody knows how that is calculated.

This ratio of the amount of energy that holds the system together, and there is still energy left for transformation, once we get that, we will understand the universe better as we will know how much energy is used up each time there is a relationship. These ratios have to be there, our best bet is to find them in computer simulations, why? Because everything is information, the ratios should be there, a computer simulates information, once we understand those ratios, even computer simulations will be better as we will purposely put this information in algorithms. This is another idea, needs working.

A theory of everything comes from accepting everything is information and therefore will not come from one discipline, if it only comes from physics, it then negates all other disciplines, if it comes from chemistry, what about biology they are also dealing with understanding information, what about psychology or zoology, they are all dealing with information, it is a comprehensive term, a theory of everything.

Our Everyday Lives

Humans are social animals, we survive and thrive on relationships. It is therefore important to be aware of how relationships work, all relationships are the same. Take a simple metal bar, heat it up, we have a relationship, the excess energy is lost as heat, light and other phenomenon of the electromagnetic spectrum as the two systems combine in this relationship. The electromagnetic spectrum is a fancy word for different types of radiation, light is radiation. What happens when 2 corporations come together in a merger, there is excess energy, people get laid off as the two systems get into a relationship. This in physics is known as the conservation of energy. A system can not deal with more energy than it needs. Having got rid of this energy what is left is energy that binds the system, but there is still more potential for mergers, this potential is the free energy of the system.

When we consider trade deals we need to consider how relationships will be affected, this disregard for how relationships occur has to be a major factor why people are now rejecting trade deals. This is nothing against trade deals but we need to understand things before just jumping in, understanding relationships will allow people to ask, is this relationship beneficial to a large number of the society or only a few, if not, they are immoral, human lives must come down to what is moral or not. But to answer the question is something moral we need to understand the process, and when dealing with humans, or any relationship we must understand information and what is common to all information.

If relationships are not handled properly, we are asking for chaos, we are asking for bloodshed, why should people who are cheated accept the status quo. Society should be such that all can achieve maximum potential in the relationship with each other understanding that we are all human beings. If we had understood 20 years ago that everything is just information, these trade deals would have been less troublesome today than they are, this is a major global problem of our times, haste and lack of knowledge has caused massive social upheavals, giving us demagogues and nationalists everywhere.

We are all dealing with information, all research is about extracting information, be one a sociologist, an engineer, a physicist, a chemist, a vet, an economist, all research is dealing with understanding the relationships between information, no need for anybody to be arrogant towards others, all information basically behaves the same. Knowledge is just information that we know, we probably know less than we think, hopefully we do at least understand a theory of everything can not logically be reduced to one discipline, then it is not a theory of everything, a theory of everything has to encompass all disciplines by its very definition that it is dealing with everything.

Bhekuzulu Khumalo

This was added two weeks after original article on 9 November 2017, it is a comment from Google +, it is worth sharing. 

Suzanne Ngatai

Refering back to the second paragraph of the original discussion statement: are you stating something as simple as when information is identified it therefore categorizes itself by 'being' therefore the cost is also the 'not being' of something else that comes along with this categorization? I could well be completely misunderstanding you. However when discussed in context of the theory of everything which sounds reminiscent of the age when philosophers were the fathers of science then I would have to weigh in that indeterminism would be a philosophically more realistic standpoint to begin with than freedom as freedom denotes in and of itself being 'free of' something, thereby excluding that 'something' from the postulated theory of everything?Of course being late to the discussion and slightly philosophically rusty I may well have missed both your points altogether.