I read some of it. Here were my initial impressions upon an initial scan and then reading Chapter 1, especially as it relates to PR. Would be interested in hearing your viewpoints:
Initial scan...
1. An impressive work, especially for someone who doesn't appear to be a physicist. Reads like a textbook. Must have taken a long time to research and write (he implied 30 years in one of the forums)
2. He seems to be completely rewriting physics, which is a massive undertaking. It is too early to see if all of his ideas are consistent with existing experiments.
3. I don't get his treatment of infinity as an actual number, but maybe I will see what he is talking about when I get into it a little more.
4. He doesn't appear to believe in a creator of the universe, nor in parallel universes, both of which points differ from my view.
5. The idea that the universe has infinite regress (has existed forever) bothers many people, but I don't find anything particularly illogical about it. However, it differs from the programmed reality model in that if the universe was the result of a program, it must have had a start, which I tend to believe. My theory makes no prediction about what physics is right and what physics is wrong. Rather, it might make predictions (when I get around to thinking about it) on a meta-level, like what patterns of discoveries might we expect to see.
6. If he eventually says that null physics implies that everything is ultimately information, then there will be some overlap between our two theories. I haven't read that far yet.
7. He will need to make some prediction that are ultimately proven true in order to be taken seriously. Not sure if he does that in the book - I haven't found one yet.
There is an interesting discussion that he has on JREF (a highly skeptical, and often closed-minded, forum) here:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94861 The poor guy ends up sparring with a lot of know-it-all physicists. He takes a bad rap, but I've seen this before. You can take any two physicists and they will spend more time showing what they know and fighting in an insulting manner with their colleagues, than they will take to try to understand the other's point of view.
Chapter 1...
1. The idea of all aspects of the universe summing to zero, as he points out, is not a new one, but his take on it is a little different. I think that either way, having the sum of the energy in the universe adding to zero makes total sense. I suspect that he may have something to say later on about antimatter accumulating elsewhere in the universe.
2. One interesting point was the idea that antimatter and matter may be purely symmetrical and that the slight asymmetries measured in the lab are due to the fact that measuring equipment is all constructed of matter, so the very act of measuring is asymmetrical.
3. I tend to agree that there is determinism underneath the quantum mechanical wave equation. See my <http://www.theuniversesolved.com/theuniversesolved/blog/post/2008/03/Go-Albert---Is-Quantum-Mechanics-Deterministic-after-all.aspx>blog on that topic.
4. He isn't really saying (yet, at any rate) that everything is information and therefore "null," but rather that the sum of everything is null.
5. So far, everything is consistent with VR theory. In fact VR theory may actually explain all he is saying about matter and why everything is null.
6. Re. his point about things existing regardless of whether or not they are observed is a direct contradiction to the traditional view of quantum mechanics. In the VR view, he would be right because something's existence is just data and if the data structure is in place (ready to be observed), then it can be said to exist.
