Skip to content
Back to the collection

Constructor Theory of Information

David Deutsch, Chiara Marletto

2014 · arXiv

Read the paper
HN score
0
Mentions
4
Readers
4
Months
3
What’s in a score?

From the abstract

We present a theory of information expressed solely in terms of which transformations of physical systems are possible and which are impossible - i.e. in constructor-theoretic terms. Although it includes conjectured laws of physics that are directly about information, independently of the details of particular physical instantiations, it does not regard information as an a priori mathematical or logical concept, but as something whose nature and properties are determined by the laws of physics alone. It does not suffer from the circularity at the foundations of existing information theory (namely that information and distinguishability are each defined in terms of the other). It explains the relationship between classical and quantum information, and reveals the single, constructor-theoretic property underlying the most distinctive phenomena associated with the latter, including the lack of in-principle distinguishability of some states, the impossibility of cloning, the existence of pairs of variables that cannot simultaneously have sharp values, the fact that measurement processes can be both deterministic and unpredictable, the irreducible perturbation caused by measurement, and entanglement (locally inaccessible information).

Metadata: arXiv. Abstracts retain their original authors’ rights.

In the conversation

Original HN comments, with labels from simple text rules. A label describes the whole comment and may miss context or irony. Read the discussion to make up your own mind. About the labels

4 selected excerpts · 4 total mentions

foxes
Neutral mention · rule
This often gets posted on HN but I am yet to see anything new or that deep. Their original paper is very light on detail [0]. Whatever objects you are working with in physics, is there some internal language or type theory that lets you describe physics? Seems like they want to take that kind of angle but haven't realised it. Until they have the machinery to do something kind of concrete, or at least produce some mathematics, seems like its just hand waving. [0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.5563.pdf
PeterWhittaker
Neutral mention · rule
Take a look at David Deutsch's work on quantum mechanics, information theory, quantum computing, etc. I especially like http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.5563 Cool stuff. (Related, possibly, is the concept that QM is simply probability with ranges from [-1,1] instead of the traditional [0,1]: Negative probabilities imply things that happen that we cannot measure. Or something like that, it's been a while.) (Now if only I could find that wicked cool graphic showing the hierarchy of mathematics (ZFC or something near the bottom) and physics (QM and GR, sitting atop currently irreconcilable branches of math)....)
saint-loup
Neutral mention · rule
David Deutsch, coauthor of the paper, is not without credibility in the field of quantum computing, to say the least. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Deutsch It's obviously a speculative theory, but it's a welcomed endeavor, since the field is sorely lacking conceptual frameworks to make sense of scientific advances. Link to the paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.5563
Snail_Commando
Neutral mention · rule
Per `dang's suggestion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7803158, here's the link to the paper so that we may consolidate the threads: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.5563 Edited to steal more screenspace/add context: Authors: https://web.archive.org/web/20120402224250/http://193.189.74... http://edge.org/memberbio/chiara_marletto You may also be interested in this paper: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/Deutsch_quantu... Also, http://edge.org/conversation/constructor-theory

Keep following the thread.

More in Physics

More from the same topics.

1994arXiv

On proof and progress in mathematics

William P. Thurston

In response to Jaffe and Quinn [math.HO/9307227], the author discusses forms of progress in mathematics that are not captured by formal proofs of theorems, especially in his own work in the theory of foliations and geometrization of 3-manifolds and dynamical systems.

29 mentions21 months
9HN score