On Mon, Sep 2, 2019 at 11:57 AM Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
>> Yes Euclid said nothing about physics in his proof, but he should have. > A proof is only as good as the assumptions it starts out with and Euclid > assumed physics could be ignored. > > *> That he is not assuming your materialist religion is* [...] > My cue to skip to the next paragraph. > *the reality is that being prime or not is independent of any physical > laws,* > The reality is being prime means being unable to be divided by any integer except for itself and 1, and if the amount of computation possible in the expanding accelerating universe is finite then beyond a finite point no integer can be so divided, so EVERY integer beyond that is prime. Meaning needs contrast, if every number has the property of being prime then beyond that point the very concept of prime loses its meaning. > * > if Mechanism is true* [...] > I said I believed Mechanism was true because I would say yes to the digital doctor, but that was on Thursday and today is Monday. In Brunospeak what does "Mechanism" mean on Monday? > *Of course, if your god cannot* [...] > My cue to skip to the next paragraph. *> even with holy water* [...] > My cue to skip to the next paragraph. > > May be it is time to choose some other god, > My cue to skip to the next paragraph. > *>>> That is like arguing that 1 + 1 = 1, because one cloud + one cloud is > one cloud.* > > >> With a cloud sometimes it's 1 and sometimes it's 2, but with fingers > and rocks and many other things there is an invariance, it's always 2, and > 2+2 is always 4. We get these answers because we've agreed on a way that is > internally self consistent to measure how far a number is from zero. Using > that distance measure we say 300 is much further from zero than 8/45 and is > therefore larger, but there are plenty of other ways to measure distance, > if we used the 3-adic way for example then 8/45 is larger than 300. So why > don't we use 3-adic arithmetic and teach it to children? Because although > it's just as self consistent intuitively it seems wrong and because it is > useless in dealing with physical objects like fingers. > > > A (serious) question; are the 3-adic numbers Turing universal, > No, but natural numbers are not Turing universal either, but a Turing Machine with a natural number of states is Turing universal. > > *I assume a universal machinery,* > And natural numbers are not machinery and no other sort of number is either. Machinery needs change and change needs matter. > *and I chose natural numbers, because everyone is familiar with them,* > Everyone is familiar with natural numbers because that's what they were taught, they are extraordinarily useful in describing the physical world so taxpayers were willing to pay people to teach it to their children. But p-adic numbers, unlike natural numbers and real numbers and imaginary numbers and complex numbers, have little or no connection to the physical world. So p-adic numbers are only taught to graduate students who want to be pure mathematicians of the most abstract sort, but they're just as internally consistent as any other sort of number. *> How could any digital machine distinguish between being implemented in > this or that Turing universal machinery, once you accept the idea that we > are in a simulation?* > I'll be damned if I can see why that is relevant to the question at hand, but we might be able to detect errors and glitches in the program that's simulating us if we look closely enough at the sub atomic level. Preston Greene makes the point that if you want to test the efficiency of a new drug it is important that the subjects not know if they are receiving the drug or a placebo, in the same way... *"if our universe has been created by an advanced civilization for research purposes, then it is reasonable to assume that it is crucial to the researchers that we don’t find out that we’re in a simulation. If we were to prove that we live inside a simulation, this could cause our creators to terminate the simulation — to destroy our world."* Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let’s Not Find Out <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/opinion/sunday/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation-lets-not-find-out.html> > *Still doubting that elementary arithmetic is Turing universal? If not, > you have to show me how a universal machine can* [...] > I can't say anything about that until I know it you're talking about elementary arithmetic or a Universal Turing Machine. > *> you invoke your “god” implicitly, but* [...] > And that is my cue to say goodnight. John K Clark > > -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3182VLmWR9sEwQHkaNH5CSt3pdaradwK4Ho%2BxXDwmZiQ%40mail.gmail.com.
