Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information by Vlatko Vedral (PDF)

Description

In Decoding Reality, Vlatko Vedral offers a mind-stretching look at the deepest questions about the universe–where everything comes from, why things are as they are, what everything is. The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, he writes, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena. This view allows Vedral to address a host of seemingly unrelated questions:Why does DNA bind like it does? What is the ideal diet for longevity? How do you make your first million dollars? We can unify all through the understanding that everything consists of bits of information, he writes, though that raises the question of where these bits come from. To find the answer,he takes us on a guided tour through the bizarre realm of quantum physics. At this sub-sub-subatomic level, we find such things as the interaction of separated quantum particles–what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.” In fact, Vedral notes, recent evidence suggests that quantumweirdness, once thought to be limited to the tiniest scale, may actually reach into the macro world and make teleportation a real possibility. It is in quantum physics, he writes, that we really can find the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. Vlatko Vedral is one of the key researchers in quantum science. In this book, he offers a mind-bending account of this leading-edge field.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Review from previous edition: “By turns irreverent, erudite and funny, Decoding Reality is – by the standard of books that require their readers to know what a logarithm is – a ripping good read…Not since David Deutsch’s magestierial The Fabric of Reality has a physicist given us such a wide-ranging and intriguing picture of how quantum mechanics constructs the world.” ―Seth Lloyd, New Scientist 20.03.10″Well written and engaging, the book provides a constant flow of new ideas.” ―Science 06/08/2010″The author evinces great enthusiasm and curiosity throughout.” ―Steven Poole, The Guardian 27/03/2010″By turns irreverent, erudite and funny, Decoding Reality is…a ripping good read.” ―Seth Lloyd, New Scientist 20.03.10″A wide-ranging and intriguing picture of how quantum mechanics constructs the world.” ―Seth Lloyd, New Scientist 20/03/2010″Excellent, thought-provoking book.” ―BBC Focus Magazine, Marcus Chown 24/01/2010″An engaging, non-technical exploration of what the new theory of quantum information and computation tells us about life, the universe, and everything.” ―David Deutsch, author of “The Fabric of Reality””Let Vedral guide you skilfully through the wonderland of modern physics – where nothing is as it seems. This is the finest treatment I have read of the weird interplay of quantum reality, information and probability.” ―Paul Davies, author of “The Eerie Silence” and “The Goldilocks Enigma” About the Author Vlatko Vedral is Professor of Quantum Information Science at the University of Oxford. He has written widely about the field and has been a frequent guest on radio and television.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Reality is not what is seems, or what our intuitions tell us every day.The key theoretical foundation of Vedral’s book is Information Theory, but Vedral extends this to a much broader scope – indeed, the broadest possible as he explains that all reality is information, and that nothing exists outside the interactions between observers and the observed (in keeping with a key postulate of Quantum Physics).Vedral’s book spans many different subjects – Biology, Thermodynamics, Economics, Sociology, Quantum Physics, Computer Science and Philosophy – each in beautifully and clearly written chapters, where his theory that “information is reality’ (or “information is physical” as he states early in the book’s Prologue) emerges in all these different slices of human knowledge.At times Vedral must cut a few corners to make his story-line fit within a book that is less than 220 pages, but this does not detract from a very original and intriguing attempt to answer some of the biggest and deepest questions ever posed: What is reality? How did it all start? How (and if) will it end? And – probably very challenging for some – do we ‘need’ God to explain the Universe?You will probably not look at your chair the same way you did before reading this book…

⭐Klatko Vedral is a bright, agile physicist who has exerted himself to write a nonmathematical account of quantum information theory aimed at general readers. His efforts have met with a barrage of ill-tempered Amazon “reviews” that serve to remind us of why so many scientists are reluctant to compose popular books about their work. Granted, he is not a professional writer, and the book is sometimes a bit discursive. But it is also sound, stimulating, and unflinching in its exploration of some of the deepest philosophical and scientific questions currently confronting humankind. Personally, I am grateful to him for writing it.

⭐I found this book an easy read on a fascinating topic. I found the analogies chosen confusing much of the times.I certainly did not get out of the book an inspired understanding of the topics that I was hoping for.It was disturbing for me, as a layperson, that Dr Vedral, a physicist, seemed to have no understanding of the current reason for Global Warming; namely increased man-made levels of Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere trapping the suns heat.On Page 63 Dr Verdral writes in relation to human activity,” disorder must increase the overall and energy must randomly dissipate into the environment. As a consequence, the environment (eg our planet) absorbs this dissipated energy, which manifests itself as a rise in temperature. And so when any kind of energy is used we have global warming.”He then goes on about how it is not only eating food, going on overseas holidays and avoiding luxuries such as driving cars, the only way to this “you must not do anything”. “Quit living and there won’t be Global warming – at least none as far as man-made causes are involved (now that a tall order for the extreme environmentalists)..”It is my understanding that as long as the levels of greenhouse gasses in our Earths atmosphere are constant and the earth has reached an equilibrium temperature, then total heat absorbed by the sun plus the waste heat generated on Earth, equals the amount of heat dissipated from Earth in to space. That is; the Earths global temperature will remain constant.It seems that Dr Vedral does not understand that the Earth’s Global temperature (and any other planet with atmosphere) is fundamentally controlled by the planets greenhouse thermostat. (ie the level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere).Dr Verdal then proceeds on pg 65 to state that “We cannot prevent warming the Earth according to Physics…. Ideally we must control this rate, so that by the time the temperature becomes unbearable for us, we have a strategy for survival.,,,,,, This inevitable evacuation of the Earth is not as implausible as one might think”.Worse still, because he believes it is human activity (waste heat in general – not from our industrial age greenhouse gas emissions inhibiting earths heat dissipating into space) that is the cause of Global warming, which he relates to the Second Law. He states: “To a physicist, however, the second law is far more inevitable and there is no contradicting it. Whereas with the first law we have a fighting chance of finding ways of using different forms of energy before we reach boiling point, the second law can be a very fast killer (working currently on timescales of hundreds of years)”.He is seems to be suggesting that it is inevitable that the Second Law will destroy the planet in a time scale of hundreds of years from the waste heat dissipation caused from our current human activities – via the Second Law..I believe that Dr Vedral lets the scientists down when it comes to educating the public on the true nature of Global Warming.I also do not quite understand his reason for his concern for his first law constraint to our existence – namely that we will run out of natural resources (Coal, oil etc) and need to leave the Planet when it does. It is my understanding that for as long as the sun shines and the earth dissipates heat into space we will always have an surplus supply of useful energy in order to do work.A good reference on the contributions of the Global waste heats and that of heat trapping greenhouse gasses can be found in the New Scientist article “Power Paradox” 30 January 2012.Over the past 10,000 years the earth has generally been in Equilibrium. Now that greenhouse gasses are rising roughly 380 TW less heat is escaping into space of the 120,000 TW of solar power absorbed by the Earth.This extra heat is being absorbed into Earths oceans, rocks, atmosphere and the melting of the ice sheets.If the greenhouse blanket were to remain constant – the same as today (that is – no extra green house gases added to the atmosphere), then eventually the earth would again reach a new equilibrium temperature where the amount of heat radiated into space equals that absorbed by the suns rays plus any other sources of heat generated on Earth. Note at this new temperature means a significant amount of ice will have melted and the sea and atmospheric temperatures will be higher.This means that at the new equilibrium temperature, the Earth will absorb 120,000 TW from the Sun plus 16 TW of human waste heat plus 44 TW from natural heat sources generated on earth, and thereby radiate 120,060 TW back into space.The extra total heat energy retained on Earth from increased man-made Greenhouse gasses (the increase from 280 to 400ppm CO2), equals the extra heat currently being absorbed by the planet multiplied by the time it takes for the Earth system to return back to an equilibrium temperature.The 16 TW or so of waste heat produced by human activity does not all get absorbed by the planet as it adds to the 120,000 TW of heat arriving from our sun and this heat is dissipated back into space at equilibrium. So the extra heat added to the planet due to the 16 TW of man made heat for a given greenhouse blanket is negligible.As you can see our waste heat in comparison to the thickness of our Greenhouse blanket when it comes to increasing the average temperature of the biosphere, is insignificant.I can suggest the Classic “Order out of Chaos” by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers

⭐The author attempts to explain the universe as emerging from nothingness based on information.The book is split into 3 parts,Firstly an explanation of information theory, which is lightweight but grounded in reality. Along the way he explains how information theory works in different fields, such as biology and financial economics. So far so good.The second section attempts to explain some macro phenomena as quantum information. Unfortunately this is where the thread starts to unravel. The distinction between quantum bits (qubits) and bits is poorly explained, and then the author steps away from quantum computing to suggest that this may be happening at the molecular level. With almost reckless abandon he tosses off a few references to support his idea. Unfortunately in at least one case, his facts are either wrong or poorly stated. For example p 148: “Biological plant efficiency is super-high, around 98% of the radiation that hits teh leaf does get stored efficiently.” This nonsense, as the plant would be almost non-reflective and appear quite dark, an obvious error that defies common sense and albedo measurements. Perhaps he meant 98% of the absorbed visible radiation that is trapped by chlorophyll?The last part just goes off into la-la land as speculative philosophy. It may be that the universe is a quantum computer and it may be that information is fundamental to the universe, but the evidence presented is effectively non-existant. The edifice, like much of philosophy is built on logic, not on experimental data, without obvious testable hypotheses (at least as presented to the reader). The end result reads like mysticism, much like Fritjof Capra’s works.Overall this book tried, in a short volume, to explain quantum information, how it may be applied in the universe and ultimately as an explanation of the existence of the universe itself. After rambling through ever more speculative ideas, the books founders, failing to deliver much of substance.

⭐As I read through this book I began to find it less and less plausible. Getting to the cryptography/computer science section (my field) and finding the author’s examples to be flat-out wrong, I gave up then and there.

⭐There are some wonderful concepts explored in this book, but unfortunately Vedral is a really bad writer.On the plus side he conveys Von Neumann’s ideas about self replicating machines well, and the idea that the information content of something is proportional to its surface area rather than its volume was well put.But he glosses over too many details, starts on a topic then abandons it, states a conclusion with no reasoning, then several pages later gives the justification, but often in a hand waving way. The reader feels treated like Dr Who’s assistant, we have to take his word for things because he can’t explain them clearly and precisely.He also seems to have completely missed the point with global warming, it isn’t the waste heat of living that will kill us, it’s the greenhouse effect.However his reading list at the end is wonderful – though I would have included “The non-local universe” by Nadeau and Kafatos.

⭐This is an essential book for understanding reality and linking it to some very important theories. We ll written and clear.

⭐A new way to look at our Universe, and maybe to understand it a little bit better.

⭐Deserves to be taken very seriously indeed as a first class examination of our understanding of the universe.I’ve met Vlatko and he is remarkable.

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