Talk:B. Roy Frieden

Copied from VfD discussion

155 Google hits for "B. R. Frieden Tucson." Looks like original research as well. Another vanity article I couldn't let pass by. - Lucky 6.9 22:49, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Keep: I don't understand mathematics beyond division, so I haven't a clue about whether the article is accurate, but the problem here seems to be in the article's name. B. Roy Frieden turns up a lot of hits. B.R. Frieden virtually none. Further, the B. Roy Frieden looks entirely consistent with the article's description of him. I can't say that it's significant or not, but he does have the Fischer chair, etc. Geogre 02:17, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Keep. Frieden's "Extreme Physical Information" theory has gotten a certain amount of press. From skimming some websites and newsgroups, it seems to be considered interesting and not crankery. See for example this skeptical book review [1]. The article as it stands is a promo piece, certainly written by Frieden himself (try a reverse DNS lookup on 150.135.248.126). Move to cleanup for NPOV-ification, which might be hard but oh well. Wile E. Heresiarch 07:32, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Also the article should be renamed to Extreme physical information theory or something; it's the theory that gets any press -- Frieden himself is not otherwise notable. Wile E. Heresiarch 07:34, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Works for me. It was the self-promotional tone and the whacked-out Google search that threw me. Clean and rename. - Lucky 6.9 08:56, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Comment: Looks like another article came in from the same proxy. See Extreme physical information. I'm far from a mathmetician, but this could use a look from someone who knows the subject. - Lucky 6.9 19:12, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • Comment number two: Wile was right about the proxy. It's from the University of Arizona. - Lucky 6.9 19:14, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• The article needs a lot of cleanup/attention, but EPI is a real (if unlikely) physical theory; Frieden has 39 papers in the Scitation index[2], and other writers cite his work at least occasionally. It's a well-known enough theory that people would reasonably want to look it up- keep. -FZ 13:17, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Also delete B Roy Frieden - This is a new attempt to recreate the vanity page under a new title. User acknowledged it is his (and his name) on Wikipedia:Help desk. - Tεxτurε 20:34, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

end moved discussion

B. Roy Frieden's anonymous POV-pushing edits

B. Roy Frieden claims to have developed a "universal method" in physics, based upon Fisher information. He has written a book about this. Unfortunately, while Frieden's ideas initially appear interesting, Frieden's work is highly controversial:

• Binder, Philippe M. (2000). "Physics from Fisher Information: A Unification (a review)". American Journal of Physics. 68: 1064–1065.
• Kibble, T. W. B. (1999). "Physics from Fisher Information: A Unification (a review)". Contemporary Physics. 40: 1999. (the reviewer has some positive comments but concludes that Frieden's work is "misguided")
• Case, James (2000). "An Unexpected Union---Physics and Fisher Information". SIAM News. July 17. eprint (highly favorable)
• Matthews, Robert (1999). "Physics and Fisher Information (a review)". New Scientist. January. unauthorized electronic reprint
• Physics from Fisher Information: A Unification (a review) from Cosma Shalizi (Computer Science, University of Michigan) (highly critical)
• Physics from Fisher Information (a review) from R. F. Streater (Mathematics, Kings College, London) (highly critical)
• Physics from Fisher Information thread from sci.physics.research, May 1999 (mostly critical)
• Fisher Information - Frieden unification Of Physics thread from sci.physics.research, October 1999 (mostly critical)

User:Lucky 6.9 was dead right about WP:VAIN. Note that Frieden is Prof. Em. of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. The data.optics.arizona.edu anon has used the following IPs to make a number of questionable edits:

1. 150.135.248.180 (talk · contribs)
   1. 20 May 2005 confesses to being Roy Frieden in real life
   2. 6 June 2006: adds cites of his papers to Extreme physical information
   3. 23 May 2006 adds uncritical description of his own work in Lagrangian and uncritically cites his own controversial book
   4. 22 October 2004 attributes the uncertainty principle to the Cramer-Rao inequality, which is potentially misleading
   5. 21 October 2004 adds uncritical mention of his controversial claim that the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution can be obtained via his "method"
   6. 21 October 2004 adds uncritical mention of his controversial claim that the Klein-Gordon equation can be "derived" via his "method"
2. 150.135.248.126 (talk · contribs)
   1. 9 September 2004 adds uncritical description of his work to Fisher information
   2. 8 September 2004 adds uncritical description of his highly dubious claim that EPI is a general approach to physics to Physical information
   3. 16 August 2004 confesses IRL identity
   4. 13 August 2004 creates uncritical account of his work in new article, Extreme physical information
   5. 11 August 2004 creates his own wikibiostub

These POV-pushing edits should be modified to more accurately describe the status of Frieden's work.---CH 21:54, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

For the record: subsequent to my protest, B. Roy Frieden created a user account as noted above. I have exchanged some polite emails with him and he feels that his second book (which I plan to examine) overcomes objections raised by myself and other critiques regarding his first book. We have more or less agreed to reopen the discusssion in sci.physics.research once I have obtained his second book.---20:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

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Moving "Counter Criticism" content here

I have moved the "Counter Criticism" section from the main page to below, as its style is not particularly neutral and rather confrontational. Some of these points may be worthwhile to reintroduce into the article (preferably not by B. Roy Frieden) if they are rewritten and appropriately sourced. See WP:NOR, WP:AUTO, WP:NPOV. —BryanD (talk) 17:30, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Since criticism has been introduced here, it is only right that some of the conceptual perforations made by these authors should be considered.

Streater's claims:

Streater has a short section in his text referring to lost causes in theoretical physics, essentially making three claims against EPI.

Claim 1: Streater claims that: Frieden generally identifies I with the kinetic energy, and J with the potential energy. Rebuff: It is Streater who claims I equals the kinetic energy in this criticism: a wrong and baseless claim, except in quantum mechanics. To explain further, EPI is formulated through aims and operations that center on demonstrating, algebraically and philosophically, that the central, elementary laws of physics arise out of Fisher Information. These are expressed by values of information functions I and J generally, with I generally not being the kinetic energy and J not being the potential energy. It is quite clearly shown that I and J are informations that, only outwardly, look like the familiar energies of mechanics; and that these associations were made merely to motivate a person with a standard physics background to think in a different direction on this fundamental level. Our thesis is that the laws of physics arise out of information. The derivations of each chapter demonstrate this. The right physics results out of I and J in each case, something that Streater has not denied.

Claim 2: Streater claims that “Frieden claims to have derived quantum mechanics from information theory, forgetting that he started with Schrodinger's equation.” Rebuff: Frieden’s approach does not start with the Schrodinger equation. It starts with general forms I and J as above. Schroedinger himself was ever-mystified as to where the Fisher Information (called ‘kinetic energy’ in standard introductory physics) came from in his now-standard Lagrangian-based approach. Schrodinger never resolved this issue; but had he been a biologist he might have heard of R.A. Fisher’s foundation work using his ‘Fisher Information.’ Fisher’s biological work, in the UK, was, in fact, going on during the same years (circa 1922-25) that early quantum mechanics was being developed just across the channel in Denmark, Germany and France. Too bad Schrodinger was not aware of this.

Claim 3: Streater claims that “Frieden claims that the position of a particle does not send it into an eigenstate of energy. As it is, his result is hardly new, being the basis of the Rayleigh-Ritz method of finding the eigenvalues, known since the nineteenth century.” Rebuff: Frieden did not originate the statement “measuring the position of a particle does not send it into an eigenstate of energy.” It originated in the work of the esteemed John A. Wheeler. He believed in, and championed, a participatory universe, whereby each physical effect follows from the way a user carries through on it with a particular choice of observing apparatus. Indeed, even when the apparatus is changed during the experiment (a so-called “delayed choice” experiment) the output changes accordingly.

Shalizi's Claims

Shalizi has a more extended claims against EPI, though curiously he notes at the end of his commentary that it may not have peer support. It might be seen why this could be the case when considering some of his claims.

Claim 1: Shalizi claims that Frieden does not really maximize Fisher Information; he simply requires that its variation be stationary. Worse yet, says Shalizi, he is admirably candid about the fact that simply doing this doesn't give us any very interesting equation of motion. To get that, he subtracts from the Fisher information a new quantity of his own devising, the "bound information," and requires that the difference between these two, which he calls the "physical information," have stationary variation. Rebuff: Fisher Information really is maximized, but out of the variation of quantity I - J, not just of I, and the assumption of such stationary variation is standard in physics, as Shalizi undoubtedly knows. This is particularly apparent in quantum mechanics, where the Fisher Information I = J, the full amount needed to launch quantum mechanics via the ‘participatory universe’ thesis of John A. Wheeler.

Claim 2: Shalizi is unable to see any reason why the physical information should be maximized. Rebuff: Unlike a Lagrangian, Fisher Information is generally not invariant under change of coordinates, e.g. from Cartesian to spherical, so Shalizi would have liked some reassurance on this point, which is not forthcoming. As the book makes clear, there are no “correct” physical variables, until you first define what you mean by “information.” It’s not C.E. Shannon’s form, but rather the continuous generalization due to Fisher.

Claim 3: Shalizi claims that Frieden evidently believes that Nature thinks in Cartesian coordinates. He tries to justify his "extremal physical information principle" (pp. 79--82) by saying that physicists are in a non-cooperative game with Nature, trying to seize as much data as we can from Her, and the upshot of this is that physical information should have stationary variation. I couldn't say why he thinks this should convince anyone not raised on the lumpenfeminist idea that modern science is a way of raping and torturing Nature. Rebuff: The inference is wrong. Observers do not want to seize a maximum amount of data but, rather, a maximum amount of information in the data taken. It’s not quantity - it’s quality that matters. As a matter of fact, Nature itself operates by this principle: “natural selection” (Darwin) is selection for maximum information I.

Claim 4: Shalizi claims that adding bound information (or rather, subtracting it off) reduces the scheme to vacuity. Frieden pulls these terms from out of, to put it politely, the air, and they seem to have no independent significance whatsoever. They are simply whatever he needs to get the equation he wants at the end of the variational problem, subject only to the (really rather mild) constraint that they have the right symmetry properties. Frieden's scheme is at best mathematically equivalent to orthodoxy; it adds nothing empirical; places fundamental and useful concepts in doubt; does nothing to unify physics either internally or with statistics; and it is associated with some really bad metaphysics, though that last perhaps reflects more on Frieden than on the scheme itself. I see absolutely no reason to prefer this scheme to conventional mechanics, rather the reverse. This is at best an extended mathematical curiosity. Rebuff: The reason is, as shown throughout the book - from one physical scenario to another - Nature simply acts that way (also, see Wheeler’s previously noted hypothesis). For example, in biology: Darwinian “natural selection”, i.e., “survival of the fittest,” can be derived on the basis of the principle of Fisher Information J – I = minimum. See Frank, J. Evolutionary Biology, “Natural selection maximizes Fisher Information”, Jan. 2009, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01647.x As to Shalizi’s other remarks, “placing fundamental and useful concepts in doubt” is the purpose of any worthwhile new theory; e.g., Galileo’s assertion of having observed a non-centrist universe. Was he wrong: in fact, and in trying to make it known? Shalizi just doesn’t ‘like’ the idea behind the book; but evidently, this is not out of having read and well-understood it. Finally, contrary to what he claims, information does rule.

That information rules is supported by Meijerin (http://www.sintropia.it/journal/english/2013-eng-3-01.pdf), who argues that Frieden's Fisher Information framework has a fundamental property of intrinsic information, and this produces matter. Intrinsic information is defined to be the most complete way of describing a contextual object. This is consistent with Barbieri (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257780021_The_Paradigms_of_Biology ) who explains that there are three paradigms that reflect on reality, the chemical/physical paradigm, the information paradigm, and the meaning paradigm, and where information can be an intermediary between the other two.