What is the universal dovetailer? TY, AG On Sunday, September 8, 2024 at 5:10:55 PM UTC-6 Russell Standish wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 08, 2024 at 07:34:55AM -0400, John Clark wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 7, 2024 at 11:16 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > > I've been reading Marchal's de facto autobiography. It's hugely > > impressive, leading me to be more open to his main conclusion, IIUC, that > > arithmetic is at the core of reality, yes, physical reality. AG > > > > > > If a mathematical sphere is the fundamental reality and a physical > billiard > > ball is just an approximation of one, then why is a billiard ball > > astronomically more complex than the sphere? Wouldn't you expect an > > approximation (or a simulation) to be simpler than the real thing? I > think it > > would be more accurate to say that a meteorologist's mathematical model > is an > > approximation of a physical hurricane, and a physical hurricane is NOT an > > approximation of a meteorologist's mathematical model. > > > > Mathematics is the language of physics but mathematics is not physics. > That's > > why Physics is more fundamental than mathematics, and that's why you > can't get > > milk out of the English language word "COW". > > > > That's not Marchal's idea at all. Most of the complexity of a billiard > ball is accidental anyway. > > The idea is that if consciousness is a computational thing (ie > mathematical), then phenomena (ie physics) is entirely due to random > splitting of the trace of the universal dovetailer (which is also a > mathematical thing). > > So either physics is arithemetic, with true randomness built in, or > consciousness is not computational. > > I would go further that this conclusion follows if computationalism > was weakened to functionalism, but the logic is not quite so clear cut > in that case. > > -- > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders [email protected] > http://www.hpcoders.com.au > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/d9dcd51c-bd12-49a1-a131-719a264012een%40googlegroups.com.
