RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2015 9:52 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

 

 

Roger: It's possible that what we see as existing is a simulation in some other 
computer.   But, even if we are a simulation, the simulation that is us exists 
as does the computer and the code we're a simulation in.  My thinking is aimed 
at trying to figure out there are existent entities, whether we call them 
simulations, singular arithmetic computations/propositions, or whatever, 
instead of there not being existent entities.

Existence and non-existence can be viewed as different perspectives on 
nothing…. existence and non-existence are emergent and understood in dialectic 
opposition to each other… they arise out of each other, and are defined in 
terms of each other.

-Chris

 

Chris,

 

    I totally agree and that's what I've been trying to get at in my thinking 
and at the website.   Well put!

 

Well… it does seem we agree about nothing J

 

Have been pondering something I read a while ago when I began reading Russell’s 
book (online first and now in the much better form of a real book)

It is this bit of information about information. A very simple mathematical 
operation that can be described – defined by a simple recursive program 
produces an unending stream of numbers defining it to an ever more precise 
numeric precision… to infinity. Some such numbers say 10/3 are highly ordered 
and repetitive though never ending.

The example Russell gave is an unending numeric stream that is however 
different from – say 10/3 --  in that the resulting stream of numbers that it 
outputs is highly chaotic and unordered very much resembling the number streams 
generated by the best random algorithms.

The very simple operation of defining the square root of two generates an -- 
(as far as we know infinitely extending) – number stream that is characterized 
by a high degree of randomness.

Now say you are an observer from a parallel universe who somehow gets a kind of 
sample set through some absurd imaginary portal that deluges the poor fellow 
with reams upon reams of seemingly random data – each one of them, let’s give 
it a data dimension say a KB, MB, GB doesn’t matter, but constrained to a given 
chunk or window size. These inter-dimensional data packets unfortunately arrive 
to our observer in a scrambled order…. The data deluge arrives for eternity… 
but will the recipient ever be able to derive the function from the data. I 
doubt a highly random data stream – generated by a very simple operation – 
could be re-ordered.

What could those observers deduce from this endless series of out of order 
packets containing numeric data of a given range of degrees of precision in the 
infinite stream resulting from the eternal recursive refinement of this 
operation?

Would they ever be able to work back to the function from this out of order 
quantized series of numeric data packets picked from random slots in the 
infinite series?

It seems highly improbable to me, maybe there is some subtle ordering in the 
output stream that could eventually become apparent after enough data chunks 
were cross compared. Who knows, I am no expert on the randomness of the output 
of the square root of two, but in general sense there are functions f() that 
can be defined by a simple set of recursive or looping actions… e.g. a simple 
program... that can generate an infinite and – for the sake of argument – 
perfectly random numeric output stream (doesn’t matter if it is in base ten or 
base two, or any other base) – e.g. a simple program like the one that 
recursively continues to define ever increasing degrees of precision for the 
square root of two, but that is abstract and ideal in that its output is taken 
to be perfectly random – one terabyte of data in the stream looking pretty much 
like any other similar sized chunk from the stream.

I pity those observers, and feel that no matter how many resources they brought 
to bear in trying to discover the meaning of this mysterious numeric 
communication coming through their inter-dimensional portal… that they would 
never be able to figure the actual simple formula / program that produced the 
petabytes ^ petabytes ^ petabytes ^ petabytes (ad infinitum) of data in their 
transmission. Maybe some would build a religion around the mystery… who knows, 
more likely the portal would become abandoned after the last researcher was 
driven insane trying to discover the meaning.

The point of this long rambling dive into random data streams is to illustrate 
how difficult or impossible it is to derive the original function from the data 
output by it, and how the output of even a very simple program can be an 
infinite series that would take infinite storage capacity to contain. 

Another way of putting it is that an apparently infinitely huge container {in a 
meta sense} would be required in order to contain the complete set of the 
output resulting from a simple function, and that this is true no matter what 
compression algorithms one tried to apply to the output stream {e.g. the output 
is highly – or in the ideal perfectly -- random}

>From a simple program an endless stream of data and increasing complexity, in 
>fact ultimately infinite complexity in the sense of not being susceptible to 
>any form of compression.

Naturally if by some incredibly stroke of luck our observers discovered packet 
number one of the transmission – e.g. 1.414213562373095 – they would have hit 
the cosmic lottery jackpot and could potentially put it all together and deduce 
the meaning of the rest of the stream (assuming they had figured out the 
encoding of the numeric stream and were able to logically map the meaning of 
the ‘.’ Symbol)

 

In the end this rather a lot about nothing, perhaps there is a point hiding in 
there somewhere… a point about the amazing emergent complexity of nothing in 
fact J

-Chris

 

 

 

Roger                

 

                      

 

 https://sites.google.com/site/whydoesanythingexist/ 
<https://sites.google.com/site/whydoesanythingexist/> 

and a more detailed explanation along with more philosophical stuff and a 
beginning model is at:

 https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/

(click on 3rd link down)

    While we are working on different models, it's been a great discussion.  
Thanks.

 

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.