On 11/29/2017 2:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 28 Nov 2017, at 14:52, Jason Resch wrote:



On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com <mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:



    On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
    <mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:


        On 27 Nov 2017, at 04:04, Jason Resch wrote:


        Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2
        wrote:

        "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we
        understand them today, it takes a computing machine an
        infinite number of logical operations to figure out what
        goes on in no matter how tiny a region of space, and no
        matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going
        on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount
        of logic to figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is
        going to do?"

        Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,

        Yes.    :)



    Very nice. It seems then Feynman's intuition was in the right
    place. The second half of the above quote was:

        "So I have often made the hypothesis ultimately physics will
        not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the
        machinery will be revealed and the laws will turn out to be
        simple, like the checker board with all its apparent
        complexities. But this is just speculation."


    So it looks like that simple machinery is the machinery of the
    universal machine and the simple laws  are those of Peano (or
    Robinson?) Arithmetic.


        in the sense that even the tiniest region of space is the
        result of an infinity of computations going through an
        observer's mind state as it observes the tiniest region of
        space?

        That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical,
        which is suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general
        relativity, but with Mechanism, spece and time might be less
        physical than here suggested. The reason is that it is not
        clear how "empty space" could make a computation different
        from another,


    I think what I was thinking here were "closed loop feyman
    diagrams", where any possible diagram might be drawn in the
    tiniest area of space, so long as it is closed, e.g.
    fluctuations/particle creations are permitted so long as they all
    cancel out. So if space is physical, and enables any of these
    fluctuations to happen, then this noise can take any possible
    value from the observer's point of view (like the polarization of
    a photon).

        and so space could be only a marker differentiating some
        computations, like time seems to be in the indexical
        approach. All this would need big advance in the mathematics
        of the intelligible and sensible arithmetical matter. I
        expect space to be explained by quantum knot invariant
        algebra due to subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical
        operators (I mean []<>[] and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on
        this, apparently space and time are really in the "categorie
        de l'entendement", I don't know Kant in English sorry, but
        this means mainly that they belong to the mind).


    Thanks I very much appreciate these additional insights. I do
    subscribe to the belief that time is an illusion created by the
    mind. I have a little more trouble seeing that when extended to
    spacetime as a whole.  Though perhaps what's come closest to
    helping me see this picture is Amanda Gefter's excellent book
    "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn"--I would recommend it to
    everyone on the Everything list. It takes the approach that only
    things that are invariant are real, and from there proceeds to
    deconstruct almost all of physics.

    Jason


I wanted to add, it also shows that the function (if you can call it that) of practically every physical law is to ensure consistency between observers. I think you would like it.


That is needed to have first person plural realities, but truth is also very useful. "just consistency" is good for multi-user video game, but the truth requires sound proposition,

What does "sound" mean?  "True" is not definable in logic.  ISTM it's just a marker "t" for the rules of inference, i.e. those transformations that preserve "t".  Without empiricism or something like it "t" has no interpretation.

Brent

and consistency is too cheap (PA + []f is consistent), that is why we need both nuances: []p & <>t and []p & <>t & p.

So yes, I like what you say, and it is the main motivation for the Z1* logic ("intelligible matter", []p & <>t), but the X1* logic (sensible matter, []p & <>t & p) requires some notion of Truth/God/One.

Bruno



Jason


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