On 8/22/2012 6:21 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 8/22/2012 7:43 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/22/2012 1:09 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
On 8/22/2012 2:44 PM, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/22/2012 4:36 AM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Hi Jason,
Nothing "in the theory" suggests that landscapes are a problem! But that is
kinda my point, we have to use meta-theories of one sort or another to evaluate
theories. Occam's Razor is a nice example... My point is that explanations should be
hard to vary and get the result that one needs to "match the data" or else it is not
an explanation at all. One can get anything they want with a theory that has
landscapes. Look!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory_landscape
"The string theory landscape or anthropic landscape refers to the large number of
possible false vacua in string theory. The "landscape" includes so many possible
configurations that some physicists think that the known laws of physics, the
standard model and general relativity with a positive cosmological constant, occur
in at least one of them. The anthropic landscape refers to the collection of those
portions of the landscape that are suitable for supporting human life, an
application of the anthropic principle that selects a subset of the theoretically
possible configurations.
In string theory the number of false vacua is commonly quoted as 10500. The large
number of possibilities arises from different choices of Calabi-Yau manifolds and
different values of generalized magnetic fluxes over different homology cycles. If
one assumes that there is no structure in the space of vacua, the problem of finding
one with a sufficiently small cosmological constant is NP complete, being a version
of the subset sum problem."
Boom, there it is! The computation problem!
NP-complete problems, or just N-problems, are ones that consume a lot of
computational resources for large problems. But the required resources are finite
and the problems are solvable. So what's the problem?
Brent
--
It is all about how big the finite problems grow to and whether or not their
demand for resources can be kept up with the load. It seems to me that Nature would
divide up the labor into as many niches as possible and have a distributed "on demand"
system rather than a single top down computation system.
But you're trying to explain nature. You seem to be assuming nature as a limited
resource in the explanation, thus assuming the thing you're trying to explain. Bruno
at least puts his explanation in Platonia where the resources are infinite.
Brent
--
Hi Brent,
Of course I am trying to explain Nature, in the sense of building a ontological
theoretical framework. If one starts assuming that Nature has infinite resources
available then one has to ask why is there a finite world with all the thermodynamic
drudgery?
How do you know the world is finite? Most cosmologies allow that the multiverse is
infinite in extent.
Bruno does not seem to ever actually address this directly.
Sure he does. The UD only uses finite resources at any give step - the states are
countable and are only executed finitely.
It is left as an "open problem". This is why he dismisses the NP-Complete problem so
casually... It is easy to think that way when thinking in top -> down terms. I am
assuming the known physical laws, particularly thermodynamics and working back down to
the ontology.
Physical laws are never 'known'. They are models to explain our observations. If you
assume them, then you've assume the model is correct and the ontology is whatever exists
in the model. Why would you do that??
He and I are looking from opposite directions. It does not mean that we fundamentally
disagree on the general picture.
There is really only one major disagreement between Bruno and I and it is our
definitions of Universality. He defines computations and numbers are existing completely
seperated from the physical and I insist that there must be at least one physical system
that can actually implement a given computation.
I think it is probably a consequence of his theory that persons can only exist when
physics exists and vice versa; but it is difficult to work out the implications
(especially for me, maybe not for Bruno).
This puts the material worlds and immaterial realm on equal ontological footings and
joined together in a isomorphism type duality relation because of this restriction.
That means you need a material primitive AND an immaterial primitive.
I care more about the philosophical stuff and he the logical stuff. That a nice division
of labor. :-)
Logic is just some rules to keep us from talking self-contradictory nonsense.
Brent
--
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