Information is physical. Information can flow in an energy medium such as in an optical fiber cable, or it can ride on this illuminated screen made of energetic materials, or it can ride on just matter too, like when you print this on paper. But it doesn’t have to, and I think it often doesn’t. People are often aware when they have received information in an odd way, but maybe it was riding on energy. Maybe it was a chemical signal from someone’s body riding on air, like a pheromone. When it gets more difficult and more complicated to guess how that information showed up, we turn to thinking of vague means known better as paranormal stuff like telepathy, and we have doubts about this because whatever that situation was, its generally not repeatable like a good science experiment. Perhaps the specific phenomena was experienced by more than one person and perhaps at different times at most.
Or maybe the information showed up by spooky quantum mechanics, so perfect for this Halloween day. You may have heard of quantum entanglement theory, which Einstein described as “spooky actions at a distance”, and he was skeptical. Recent experiments in Germany have shown that quantum entanglement is indeed real: the pairs of entangled quantum particles were photons in the experiments separated by 10 km. But entangled quantum units can be pairs of anything in the physical world. China is currently setting up a space-based experiment to use satellite and earth-bound emitter/detectors. Spooky distance of hundreds of miles.
How do scientists detect entangled particles? The detection physics and mathematics are incredibly difficult, but basically they are detecting and counting non-trivial coincidences. When a particle with a positive “spin” hits one detector at the exact same time as one with a negative spin hits the other detector, it counts as a coincidence, a possible paired set. The detections of pairs must be determined to be “instantaneous” in order to count as a coincidence, literally co-incidence. Too many of these coincidences in a given stream of photons means that statistically the particle pairs must be entangled per quantum mechanical theory. So that when one particle shows up and says, “I’m positive!” the other of the pair must declare “then I’m negative” at the same time. You can’t know the spin state until the moment of detection, just like you can’t know the exact position of a quantum particle (Schrödinger’s cat). Non-trivial coincidences count.
It’s important to realize that these detectors are made of special materials for energy detection and technologies such as cryo-temperatures or the coldness of space. As such, they can only detect energy flows up to their inherent speed limit: the speed of light. However, information that is not riding on energy or matter does not have this speed limit. My information dynamics theory holds that physical information is independent of matter and energy, so there are “pure” information flows that don’t involve transport by energy or matter.
There are many reasons described in my book to determine that information is physical and independent. I submit the information about the respective particle spin states is indeed flowing between the entangled particles. That there is a tiny amount of time in between detecting the “Spin positive!” and then “Spin negative!”. That the information transmitted is simply flowing at least as fast as can be detected by energetic materials, so “instantaneous” is all one can say about these coincidences in such an experiment. It could be faster, yes? If it was a pure information flow.
Indeed, these separation experiments were needed by quantum physicists to solve the EPR paradox, which was an Einstein-led description of the discrepancy between classical physics and quantum mechanics that is introduced by theory of entanglement. Experiments up to this point had been subject to the “loophole” problem, the possibility of a subtle, hidden transfer of relationship information between the particles at the point of detection. In the lab experiments, no matter how rigorous, the separation distance between detectors was short, leaving the possibility of a material/energy connection where the relationship information traveled at the speed of light.
Separating the detectors by great distance means entanglement relationship information transport can only happen at speeds greater than light: showing there are no energy/matter transport pathways. My information dynamics theory about physical information bridges this “EPR gap” between classical and quantum physics. Entanglement relationship communication, or pure information flows, are indeed not only possible but they are required if information flows independently of energy.
However, if we can’t show that information has transited between two things in a way that is independent of taking a ride on energy and matter, coincidences would be a trivial aspect of information dynamics theory. Yet, we all experience non-trivial coincidences in our lives. These are just like the non-trivial coincidences in the photon entanglement experiments: if there are too many of them we have to say that the information traveled somehow. Our personal experiences therefore buttress information dynamics theory by showing there are more possibilities of entangled pairs of information objects than subatomic particles.
Mysterious entanglements seem to happen, but we can’t make a detector for a pure information flow that is made with materials and technologies like the ones used in the experiments for energy detection. Detecting information flows that are not riding on energy needs something different than an energy flow detector. Many times in history, when humans can’t say how something happened, they decide it is either not real, or they attribute it to spirits and paranormal-type ideas. Over history, it always turns out that something mysterious has a real-physics explanation that couldn’t be reached with old technologies or ideas.
I think that counting non-trivial coincidences is a good method, just like the Bell tests do, but how can we detect a flow of information that isn’t on an energy carrier or embedded in some materials? If we could count a statistically significant preponderance of these non-trivial coincidences, with a method to determine they are in fact non-trivial, then we could say for sure that somehow that information did indeed get transported by some means. Perhaps the only detectors of pure information flows are human minds, and I would guess animal minds too, like the dog who alerts to the arrival of an owner when separated by great distance. I think the method needs to include the kinds of non-trivial coincidences that have “great distances” involved, and I think measuring “great complexity” also works. Information increases in complexity, and so some non-trivial coincidences simply are too complicated for statistics to be applicable. Probabilities become a useless measure when there’s no chance that information flows were dependent on a energy/matter pathway: the relationships communication could not be random, and had to flow independently between entangled pairs. A relationship is a connection link between two information objects, such as photons and people. Each common or matching characteristic can be a link thread, and many threads can create a robust multiplexed weave.
Have you received information in a way that you can’t explain? More precisely, have you received information at a significant distance so that there can be no mysterious energy or chemical-signal transport medium involved? I’ll bet that you have. Its happened to me too of course. The times that really stand out are those when I was not physically close enough to my “entangled pair” for there to be some kind of transport phenomenon that involved energy or matter. These are times when the situation was definitely too complex to be explained as a random event. These are times where it was definitely non-trivial. How about you, can you put one or more of your amazing coincidences into this box of non-triviality, where there is no energy/matter transport medium due to separation by distance or time, and the complexity of the situation was just too high to be a random event?
I can remember two situations several years ago that involved meeting a person in a non-trivial way, where the dynamics of the situation was just too complicated for randomness to be involved at all. One was with a somewhat famous person who I hadn’t heard of before: there was just no way that meeting her was just a mere coincidence. Another involved meeting a rare mathematical decision analyst like me, who worked for the National Security Agency. I’ve had plenty of chance meetings, but these were not like those whatsoever. In those situations, I believe the pair entanglement happened at a distance, resulting in a personal meeting as amazing, non-trivial coincidences.
There’s a mantra in science: usually the simplest explanation is the one that is true. Put simply, such non-trivial coincidences as mine and yours may be explained as some means of independent, “pure” information flows between “pairs” of entities. These flows may also seem instantaneous, perhaps even faster than the speed of light. In the quantum particle detection experiments, the best they could do was mark the coincidences as “instantaneous” pings because the photon detectors themselves were limited by speed-of-light energy/materials construction.
What can you look for in examining one of your own non-trivial coincidences for a pure information transfer? In a word, complexity. If the situation of the coincidence is just way too complicated and seems uncanny or incredulous, I submit there’s a pure information flow at the root of it. Just like a photon, you can be one quantum of an entangled pair. There are definitely a wide variety of human entanglements but these kinds of coincidences, the non-trivial, nonrandom event kind, will not have a direct conduit for transmitting or receiving information. It will seem something that should not be known was the key to the coincidence, and there was no way for that information to flow in any kind of medium, not even chemical signals drifting in the air between bodies. It is the complexity of quantum entanglement that make the situation of paired photons non-random too. What kinds of complexity were involved in your coincidences? How many degrees of complexity do we need to decide an event was not random?
Can information flow faster than light? I submit that non-trivial coincidences prove information can flow independently and the quantum entanglement separation experiments reveal it must flow faster than light for communication to happen between distant entangled particle pairs. This closes the loophole, the EPR paradox: 1) the pure information flow is due to the information shared by the entangled quantum pair, and 2) the separation distance is not contradictory to relativity theory because information can flow faster than light independently of space-time limits like the local realism problem Einstein decided was “spooky action at a distance.”
Information flows faster than light. Let’s prove it with our own non-random coincidences.
Bill Custer's thought sphere 