What if energy and information are a dichotomy? Think waves; The energy is what drives it, while the information, frequency and amplitude, is derived from its activity/fluctuations.
So that ANY attempt to measure the energy coalesces as information.
Consider that our reality is essentially a function of energy radiating out, as form coalesces in. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass gravitates inward, yet there is all that missing mass. What if it is a dynamic extending out to the very edge of definition and distinction, even to photons, where any interaction and thus transmission/measurement, is a process of collapse. So that our measurements create the information.
For one thing, it might explain the missing mass, as mass simply being the dense end of this spectrum and the contraction extends all the way to the edge of information creation.
As biological organisms, we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through and further organizes the information precipitating out, so might there be a subconscious tendency to “see” in terms of the clarity of the information we are able to extract and try to explain it as fundamentally digital, because the underlaying activity is necessarily fuzzy?
Consider the question of time. As these mobile organisms, with a narrative based culture, we naturally think of it as the point of the present, moving past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration.
The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. There is no literal “dimension” of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
So energy is “conserved,” because it is the present. Its changing form creates the effect of time. As well as temperature, pressure, color, sound. Think frequencies and amplitudes. Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don’t call them the 5th and 6th dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions, bodily functions and environment, not the sequence of thought.
Basically then, energy and the forms it manifest go opposite directions of time. Energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while the thoughts manifested go future to past. Lives go birth to death, while life moves ont tohe next generation, shedding the old. Products go start to finish, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product.
So back to this dichotomy of energy and form, what if quanta are more like frequency and amplitude, emergent from the underlying energy, rather than actual, distinct entities? Might it explain why our efforts to measure and thus “see” them, seem slippery?
Here is an interesting interview with Carver Mead, from a couple of decades ago, arguing for a more wave based understanding;
