Information Dynamics: a future-reachability ledger
What this is
Status legend
standing a fixed signpost of the current frame; working worth developing but still awaiting formal or empirical tests; speculative an exploratory bridge that evidence may demote; negative falsified or actively withdrawn. These labels describe our knowledge state, not nature's final verdict.
Public mainline claims
standing Information as an ontological entry point
We keep asking whether physical law can begin from distinctions, relations, records, and allowed transformations. This is a research frame, not the conclusion that “the universe is a computer”; it must earn its keep through explanatory gain and counterexamples.
working Records / correlations make outcomes definite
Stable traces can spread through an environment without waiting for a conscious observer. Wheeler's it-from-bit supplies the question; decoherence, decoherent histories, and quantum Darwinism supply more specific physical language. Together they do not prove one information ontology or automatically settle every measurement problem.
working Lawful update + change in the reachability set
A reachability set is the set of future states a system can actually still reach from its present state under given physical laws, resources, and constraints. The working hypothesis is that information, if more than description, changes this set through lawful, embodied, costly updates. Renaming the same possibilities does not count.
standing Encoding ≠ ontology; copy ≠ continuity
A model may faithfully encode some structure without being the same kind of thing as its target. Copying the same information does not by itself establish first-person or physical continuity. These are disciplines for discussion, not additional laws of the universe.
Public experiments and notes on this site
- Intention as a change of measure / 中文: negative result a stronger originality claim was withdrawn after primary-source reading; a narrower experimental-design issue survived.
- What is a force?: parallel line sharpens “can information constitute matter?” into questions about structure, symmetry, and dynamics.
- Locality as protocol: parallel line explores locality in the language of protocols and constraints; it remains a mapping, not a verdict.
- Information and qi: parallel line records convergence, disagreement, and a step deliberately declined in another information-ontology route.
- Abundant verification needs abundant claims: discipline asks a verification program to generate sufficiently specific, distinguishable claims first.
- Euler's identity × information ontology / 中文: structural hint a public entry into one generator / many projections, not physical proof.
- Theory mainline index: map the overall map of claims, branches, terms, and objections.
- Start here: entry point the broader public route through the site.
Negative results and paths that did not work
negative · withdrawn The stronger intention-as-measure-change claim
A directional prediction first treated as an independent empirical contribution did not survive primary-source checking: the same prediction and its mechanistic lineage were already in the paper's introduction, and its two-sided test already accommodated it. The full retraction remains on the public page.
Slot for future negative results
To be added. No other failure is placed here until a public, checkable record exists.
Speculative / known gaps
- Constructor-theory bridge: Deutsch and Marletto formulate laws through possible and impossible transformations, which sits near reachability language. This site has not yet built the formal bridge. No affiliation, collaboration, or equivalence is claimed.
- The Reachable World, fourteen pieces: the public arc is “what a state is → which paths constraints close → which futures remain open.” It is a continuous popular explainer; chapters are not yet individually online, and the definition of reachability is the one on this page.
Publicly checkable external anchors
- John Archibald Wheeler, Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links (public copy of the original it-from-bit discussion).
- W. H. Zurek, Quantum Darwinism, Nature Physics 5, 181–188 (2009).
- M. Gell-Mann & J. B. Hartle, Decoherent histories quantum mechanics with one “real” fine-grained history, Phys. Rev. A 85, 062120 (2012).
- D. Deutsch & C. Marletto, Constructor theory of information, Proc. R. Soc. A 471 (2015); see also the official Constructor Theory site.
These sources anchor questions, mechanisms, and boundaries. They do not endorse this site's working hypothesis.
How to follow
Watch this ledger and the theory mainline index. New standing, working, and negative entries will appear as dated public notes on this site. Chapters that are not online will not be given invented links.