Fourth prize in the FQXi’s 2013 Essay Contest ‘It from Bit, or Bit from It?’ The Tao of It and Bit

Abstract. The main mystery of quantum mechanics is contained in Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment, which shows that the past is determined by our choice of what quantum property to observe. This gives the observer a par-ticipatory role in deciding the past history of the universe. Wheeler extended this participatory role to the emergence of the physical laws (law without law). Since what we know about the universe comes in yes/no answers to our interrogations, this led him to the idea of it from bit (which includes the participatory role of the observer as a key component). The yes/no answers to our observations (bit) should always be compatible with the existence of at least a possible reality – a global solution (it) of the Schrödinger equation. I argue that there is in fact an interplay between it and bit. The requirement of global consistency leads to apparently acausal and nonlocal behavior, explaining the weirdness of quantum phenomena. As an interpretation of Wheeler’s it from bit and law without law, I discuss the possibility that the universe is mathematical, and that there is a “mother of all possible worlds ” – named the Zero Axiom. Wheele