"Now and again a poem comes like that, like a ball kicked in from nowhere: in this case, I was completely absorbed in writing one of the last of the Oxford lectures when I had this quick sidelong glimpse of something flying past; before I knew where I was, I went after it."

one that is deeper than embodiment—means that also required are a comprehensive micro macro or input output map (to include the dynamics + importantly error due to subjectivity) AND its mesoscale reduction to dominant causal interactions.

More at Babel Blog
jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog

Below, a summary of hard to find subthreads on implications for causality, determinism, + emergence of spacetime following from the intersection of Wheeler's it from bit, Jim's common now + my work (on hourglass emergence, endogenous coarsegraining + collective computation).

x.com/C4COMPUTATIO...

This morning of Two Pi Day I revisited part of a correspondance w Jim exchanged in the weeks before he left us on May 17, 2023. In addition to the usual topics—time, information processing, coarse-graining, IGUSes, collective computation—there were references to Wheeler. . .

x.com/C4COMPUTATIO...

Paper motivating the work by Nobel Prize winner Laughlin @PNASNews on how D'Arcy Thompson's "length problem" could be solved w sound tinyurl.com/yxsw37ns

The question of how biological systems from cells to organisms 'overcome' spatial or apparent information processing constraints to estimate global variables, compute macroscopic states, or just 'see' the big picture—the forrest + the trees—is one of biology's most dismissed yet important questions.

Self-portrait in negative space—I don’t work in statistical mechanics, particle physics, cosmology, information theory, theoretical computer science, quantum mechanics, or really even in biology, ethology, evolutionary theory, or cognitive science. Rather, I work...more at jessicaflack.wordpress.com

I created this composite image for a talk on coarse-graining in nature. Wheeler discussed his "it from bit" proposal in 1989 @sfiscience, a talk he later turned into the paper.

"Information, physics, quantum: The search for links." philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ….

Wheeler, who cites Wiliam James, wanted to know how a vision of one world arises out of the information-gathering activities of many observer-participants. Essentially abt collective computation, it's remarkable to think this question could unite physics + biology + even AI. 1/n

Jim argued that a sense of time flowing arises from computation—as an entity computes an action (output) from a perception (input), w each image of the environment that an entity captures constituting its 'present'.