Re: Numbers
peterdjones wrote: Georges Quenot wrote: peterdjones wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: It is just the idea that there could be no difference between mathematical existence and physical existence. Then why do we use two different words (mathematical and physical) ? For various historical and practical reasons and because identity is still a conjecture/speculation. Just like we used to consider inertial mass and gravitational mass. So you meant there might not be any difference,not there cannot possibly be any difference. I meant the idea is that it is possible that there is no difference it would be a mathematical monism in which one and only one particulat mathematical object would exist. This seems logically difficult and then: why just this one? Why only mathematical objects and not any other kind ? We were talking of mathematical objects and I asked why only one of them would be given physical existence (as *you* suggested). The question of whether there could be other type of objects than mathematical is a different one. I can figure what could mathematical objects and that they can exist (though I am afraid I cannot easily transmit that feeling). It is harder for me to imagine what non mathematical objects could be and how/why they happened to come to existence. Did some God pull them out of nothingness? We can go some way to explaining the non-existence of HP universes by their requiring a more complex set of laws (where we are believers in physical realism). Whether HP universes require or not a more complex set of laws is a very good question but it seems unlikely that it can be easily answered. For some physicists, the currently known (or freseeable) set of rules and equations for our universe *is* compatible with HP events. Physical MWI is more constrained than mathematical multiverse theories, so there is not so much Harry-Potterness. This is just an opinion. It must refer to prejudices about what physical MWI and mathematical multiverse theories could or could not be. Moreover, physical MWIs have measure and can at least predict the HP universes will be rare (or faint, or something). This question of measure is difficult but I see no reason why this should differ between physical MWI and mathematical multiverse theories. Such events might appear in other portions of our universe. For others, it is just the opposite, it might well be that there do not exist any set of rules and equations that would correspond to a HP universe. There cannot fail to be. The HP game my nephew plays on is a mathematical simulation -- what else could it be? I am not sure that what your nephew plays with is a rich enough mathematical description so that, even if it was turned physical by some God or magician, it would contain conscious beings. Furthermore, most of this HP universe is in the brain of your nephew. What is in the game would be almost nothing without your nephew's imagination to fill the (huge) gaps. However, we are bound to end up with physical laws being just so. Not really. What is just so is that a conscious being has to live in only one universe at once just as he has to live in only one place and in only one period of time at once. That does not follow form the mathematical hypothesis. If I am a set, I am a subset of any number of other sets. If I am a digit-string, I a m a substring of any number of other substrings. This is where we have a different intuition about what mathematical objects can be and what a mathematical object containing (description of) conscious beings might be. For me this is just like you have to live here and now and not in Egypt 3500 years ago. What aspect of a mathematical object I could be is not so clear to me but it is unlikely to be as trivial as a digit string. It is no more mysterious that I do not live Harry Potter's life that I do not live Akenaton's life. From the common-sense POV, yes. From the MM POV, no. Maybe there is more than one MM POV. MM does not really have POV. You and I have POV on what MM can or cannot be. And they do differ. And lots of HP-like events have also been reported in *this* world. Nowhere near enough! (compared to what MM predicts). MM does not predict. You do and I do from our respective interpretations of what MM could or should be (or not). Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), All the evidence points to this. OK. So in your view this makes sense and is likeky to be true. Those are two different claim: it is likely to be true, but seeing *how* it is true, making sense of it is the Hard Problem. IMO the hardest part of the hard problem is seeing how mind emerges from mathematical description -- from physics in the map sense, rather than the territory sense. Switching to a maths-only metaphysics can only make the Hard Problem harder. As I
Re: Numbers
peterdjones wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: peterdjones wrote: [...] (To put it another way: the point is to explain experience. Physicalism explains non-experience of HP universes by saying they don't exist. MM appeals to ad-hoc hypotheses about non-interaction. All explanations have to end somewhere. The question is how many unexplained assumptions there are). I would like to understand your view. How do *you* solve the HP universe problem? In your view of things, amongst all the mathematical objects to which a universe could be isomorphic to, *what* does make only one (or a few) exist or be real or be physical or be instanciated and all others not? In your view, what means that only mathematical objects exist ? I can try to answer to this but I do not see how it helps to answer my question. It is hard to explain what it means to someone that resist the idea (that must be like trying to explain a mystic experience to a non believer). It is just the idea that there could be no difference between mathematical existence and physical existence. Then why do we use two different words (mathematical and physical) ? For various historical and practical reasons and because identity is still a conjecture/speculation. Just like we used to consider inertial mass and gravitational mass. I would say that it it meaning mathematical existence IS different to physical existence. ? No it referred to IS NOT different from. I meant that mathematical monism is likely to make sense only if physical monism, mathematical realism and Tegmark's hypotesis also make sense and can possibly be true. makes sense only in the case in which the three other mentionned conjectures also make sense and could be true. I don't see why the mathematical realism needs to be true. The difference between mathematical existence and physical existence could consist in physical things exisitng, and mathematical objects not exisiting. That would not be mathematical monism or it would be a mathematical monism in which one and only one particulat mathematical object would exist. This seems logically difficult and then: why just this one? I believe that we have a diffculty here because we have very different intuitions about what mathematical objects can be and about what a mathematical object corresponding to a universe hosting conscious beings could look like. I already mentionned three possibilities to deal with the HP universe problem in this context. I understood that it did not make it for you because of this difference between our intuitions. All explanations stop somewhere. The question is whether they succeed in explaining experience. Do you mean that it is just so that the mathematical object that is isomorph to our universe is instantiated and that the mathematical objects that would be isomorph to HP universes are not? We can go some way to explaining the non-existence of HP universes by their requiring a more complex set of laws (where we are believers in physical realism). Whether HP universes require or not a more complex set of laws is a very good question but it seems unlikely that it can be easily answered. For some physicists, the currently known (or freseeable) set of rules and equations for our universe *is* compatible with HP events. Such events might appear in other portions of our universe. For others, it is just the opposite, it might well be that there do not exist any set of rules and equations that would correspond to a HP universe. However, we are bound to end up with physical laws being just so. Not really. What is just so is that a conscious being has to live in only one universe at once just as he has to live in only one place and in only one period of time at once. It is no more mysterious that I do not live Harry Potter's life that I do not live Akenaton's life. And lots of HP-like events have also been reported in *this* world. However -- so every other explanation ends up with a just so. At some point, yes. The question is just what just so one is willing to accept or to resist to. In physical MWI it is just so that the SWE delimits the range of possible universes. In Barbour's theory it is just so that Platonia consists of every possible 3-dimensional configuration of matter, not every 7-dimensional one, or n-dimensional one. In Mathematical Monism, it is just so that, while very mathematical object exists, no non-mathematical object exists. Oh yes. All of the five conjectures I mentionned can be perceived as just so. It just so happens too that they do make sense to some people and do not to other people. Isn't that a bit ad'hoc? Does it explain anything at all? Also, you reject mathematical monism as not making sense for you but what about the ohter conjectures I mentionned? Do you find that physical monism (mind emerges from matter activity), mathematical realism (mathematical
Re: Numbers
peterdjones wrote: [...] What we can be sure of is that 1) we exist 2) we are conscious 3) there is some sort of external world 4) there is some phenomenon of time. *You* are sure of that and of what it might mean. Please do not decide for others. These are all quite problematical for Mathematical Monism; As *you* believe and understand them, certainly. *I* do not see any problem for mathematical monism (I do not need the upper cases) to make sense. [...] Arguments should start with what you can be sure of. What we can be sure of (as well as what it might mean) can be very different from my viewpoint and from yours. In order to have a chance to make the point, arguments that *you* address to *me* should start wtih what *I* can be sure of and not with what *you* can be sure of. And vice versa indeed. What I can be sure of is probably weaker than what you can be sure of. It is likely to be quite different too. That must be why it can be compatible with more (or different) ideas. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
Georges Quenot a écrit : SKIP I consider the possibility that mind emerges from matter activity. I think that modern physics and the synthetic theory of evolution provide a resonable (though partial) account for the technical capabilities of the human mind. What remains unclear to me is consciousness. The simplest explanation is that this is just the way things appear to human organisms but I still find that a bit short. Does Comp have more to say on this issue? Georges. [I repost the following message for John as he asked me do so because he experienced some problem for posting to the group after he changed his mail address.] [JM[: So you consider matter as primary and mind as some consequence of it? In another Mindset (pardon me the pun) the reverse holds, I could formulate it as: matter is the figment of ideation (mind?) as mind-interpreted impacts from 'reality-percept' do seem as (physical???) effects. This position comes from the (Q?)atomic physics based observation that ultimately the fundamental base of 'matter' does not contain matter-like ingredients. (I just asked Bruno about HIS position of consciousnes) John --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Georges Quénot wrote: There might be universes interacting one with each other (though from my viewpoint I would tend to consider a set of interactive universes as a single universe) but it might also be that the one in which we live is among the ones that are not causally connected to any other. if every possibe universe is instantiated, then universes where a duplicate of me witnesses magic and miracles are instantiated, If you are a being that have never observed magical events any duplicate of you will never have observed any magical event either (otherwise you would differ and no longer be true duplicates). A true duplicate of you will have had exactly the same experiences (magical ones and all others) as you had. It might be that your futures will differ but as long as your are duplicates you will experience no difference and as soon as you will have a different experience you will no longer be true duplicates. You will never be aware that your previously counterpart has had a different experience and is no longer your counterpart (that's contingency and necessity). and overlays of normal universes and magical universes are instantiated as well. *As well*. But it might be that you are just in one which *is not* overlayed (that's contingency). What overlayed might mean is not so clear to me anyway. In case of such overlays there might be counterparts of you in all of them but it might also be that none of them can be aware of what the others are aware of. And what about 3. ? if every universe is instantiated, wolrds where everyone is a sorcerer and no-one is a muggle are instantiated. If you are not a sorcerer, there would be no counterpart of you in such worlds (that's contingency and necessity). If you are a sorcerer, it's a mystery to me why you do not observe magical events in this universe. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Georges Quénot wrote: |...] And what about 3. ? if every universe is instantiated, wolrds where everyone is a sorcerer and no-one is a muggle are instantiated. That was mot my 3. There might be worlds with only muggles, worlds with only sorcerers, worlds with both sorcerers and muggles and even also various overlays of them. But my 3. was that, by contingency, it might have just happened that you have appeared as a muggle in a non-overlaid world with both sorcerers and muggles. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 19-mars-06, à 14:09, Georges Quénot a écrit : I am sorry. I don't see. What Comp can say about the relation between first and third person concepts that could not be said in a simple mathematical-monism context? But this just depend of your theory of mind. With the comp-or-weaker, we can translate the definition of knower, observer, etc. (already existing in the literature and defended with some unanimity by platonist minded researcher), and then do the calculus. Comp is just my theory of mind. That's fine. It is useful because it makes things completely precise and testable. For instance? About consciousness? What is yours? Wow... I am not so sure I have a clear one. I consider the possibility that mind emerges from matter activity. I think that modern physics and the synthetic theory of evolution provide a resonable (though partial) account for the technical capabilities of the human mind. What remains unclear to me is consciousness. The simplest explanation is that this is just the way things appear to human organisms but I still find that a bit short. Does Comp have more to say on this issue? Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Georges Quenot wrote: If you are a being that have never observed magical events any duplicate of you will never have observed any magical event either (otherwise you would differ and no longer be true duplicates). That doesn't work the other way round. A duplicate of me up to 16:51 GMT 20 mar 2006 could suddenly start observing them. Your duplicate will know. Not You. And he will no longer be your duplicate. A true duplicate of you will have had exactly the same experiences (magical ones and all others) as you had. It might be that your futures will differ but as long as your are duplicates you will experience no difference and as soon as you will have a different experience you will no longer be true duplicates. You will never be aware that your previously counterpart has had a different experience and is no longer your counterpart Why not ? I can remember my past selves' experiences, although they are more different to my present self than some of my other-world counterparts. You might point out that I can only remember because my present self has memory-traces that were laid down by my past selves. Considering how physics run in this universe, yes. But that is to assume that causality works in the common-sense way, from past to future, and not across worlds. But if every mathematical structure is equally real, that constraint should not exist globally. It should not exist in all worlds. It could exist in some. Contingency again. and overlays of normal universes and magical universes are instantiated as well. *As well*. But it might be that you are just in one which *is not* overlayed (that's contingency). Yes, but how likely is that ? Very good question. This is right here that the difference of viewpoint makes all the difference. Many-world theories always come down to an appeal to coincidence. Indeed. That is contingency. If every world is instantiated, there will be worlds where everyone becomes a sorcerer at the stroke of midnight. Yes, and we will all know when it will happen. Be patient. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
John M wrote: --- Georges Quénot [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John M wrote: [...] Don't be a sourpus, I was not attacking YOU. Well. I do not know exactly why I felt concerned. I probably missed your point. [...] By George! (not Georges) don't you imply such things into my mind after my decade under nazis and two under commis, now 3+ in the (hypocritical) US 'free' speach! Well. OK Again. But what was your point then? Georges, I am not sure whether I wrote this to you in personal or list-mail, you did not quote my text. I think it was on the list (I just hit reply). After going through a thousand posts of the same subject and none is relevant to my thinking, forgive me if I get edgy. I do not repeat the exercise to find where and upon what did I write what. Could you leave it this way? I did not want to offend you. That's OK. I must be too sensitive on these subjects. I do not want the debate to turn passionate either. I was just asking what you intended to mean by: ] 2. Is reasonable or rational thinking exclusive for ] ONLY those, who live in a 'numbers' obsession? ] or is it an elitist heaughtiness to look down to all, ] who do not share such obsession? How about vice versa? ] 3. Suppose the 'numbers based' worldview gains ] universal approval (by ~3006?) - what will that help ] in the betterment of the world? or even in the ] betterment of human thinking? Or even of more civil ] general life- conditions? What you said just above is a sufficient answer for me. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
John M a écrit : to more recent posts: 1. do we have a REAL argument against solipsism? I am not sure to understand what you mean by REAL here. There are arguments against solipsism. Wittgenstein for instance produced some. None of them is lilkey to be decisive. They may work with some people and not with other people. Like any argument about anything if one digs enough I think. Like all the arguments I produced in this discussion. Arguments are just arguments. 2. Is reasonable or rational thinking exclusive for ONLY those, who live in a 'numbers' obsession? Certainly not. I am not sure that reasonable or rational thinking is something very well defined either. On my side, I often mention that I am considering and presenting *conjectures* or *speculations*. I do not require anybody to believe them or even to find sense in them (I find sense in them but I am not sure I need to believe them anyway). or is it an elitist heaughtiness to look down to all, who do not share such obsession? How about vice versa? I certainly do not think that my way of thinking or of seeing/understanding things is superior in any way to the one or other people. I do not feel obsessed by numbers by the way. I am just considering seriously (I just mean as possibly making sense) the four conjectures I mentionned as well as the associated developments I made. I am very well aware of the fact that all this is likely to appear highly ridiculous to most people and even dangerous to a few people. 3. Suppose the 'numbers based' worldview gains universal approval (by ~3006?) I would say nope. Even by 3006. And I don't worry at all about that. -what will that help in the betterment of the world? I don't know. In case it would not, are you suggesting we'd better refrain using our freedom of thinking and freedom of expression when it comes to such speculations? (that must be what I meant when I mentionned that a few people are likely to consider such way of thinking as dangerous). or even in the betterment of human thinking? I can't figure on which groud one could say that some human thinking would be better than another. Or even of more civil general life- conditions? Again I don't know and again, in case it would not, are you suggesting we'd better refrain using our freedom of thinking and freedom of expression when it comes to such speculations? Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
John M wrote: to more recent posts: 1. do we have a REAL argument against solipsism? (Our stupidity may allow also all the bad things that happen.) 2. Is reasonable or rational thinking exclusive for ONLY those, who live in a 'numbers' obsession? or is it an elitist heaughtiness to look down to all, who do not share such obsession? How about vice versa? 3. Suppose the 'numbers based' worldview gains universal approval (by ~3006?) - what will that help in the betterment of the world? or even in the betterment of human thinking? Or even of more civil general life- conditions? Just another comment: whether Descates' dualism is true or not and whether Plato's dualism is true or not (I adopt the way Bruno refers to them), this will have no effect at all on the way I will behave with other people. As far as my ethics is concerned, this is completely neutral. I understand that this might not be the case for other people (what they think about these dualisms might bias their ethics) but I do not see how or why one should be more dangerous than the other. Finally I am currently agnostic about both and, for both, my common sense says dualism while my Okham's razor says monism (and I am not an integrist of Okham's razor). Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Georges wrote: - The multiverse is isomorphic to a mathematical object, This has to be saying simply that the multiverse IS a mathematical object. Otherwise it is nonsense. No, because all mathematical objects, as mathematical objects exist (or don't exit) on an equal basis. Yet the universe is only isomorphic to one of them. It has real existence, as opposed to the other mathematical objects which are only abstract. That is the question. That [The universe] has real existence, as opposed to the other mathematical objects which are only abstract. is what I called a dualist view. There is also a monist view in which there is nothing special about the universe among all the other objects it is isomorphic to (as all objects isomorphic one to each other are the same object) and in which the realness of the universe is only perceived as such from the inside. Both view seem to have their champions here. I guesse that when saying This has to be saying simply that the multiverse IS a mathematical object. Tom ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) defends the monist view as obvious and the only one making sense while when saying [The universe] has real existence, as opposed to the other mathematical objects which are only abstract. you defend the monist view as obvious and the only one making sense. For me, it is not obvious either way (both views make sense to me) and I think we need to postulate something either to include or to exclude the dualist (or the monist) view. Common sense seems to be in favor of dualism while Okham's razor would be against it. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Numbers
[EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Georges wrote: - The multiverse is isomorphic to a mathematical object, Context: this is a conjecture/speculation. This has to be saying simply that the multiverse IS a mathematical object. Otherwise it is nonsense. In http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/toe_frames.html, Max Tegmark asks Which mathematical structure is isomorphic to our Universe? and not Which mathematical structure is our Universe?. So I guess he sees a difference between both questions and that implies that the second one is not a nonsense for him. He would probably explain better than me how this could be. I think that we need another conjecture/speculation to require the identity. This would be the exclusion of the dualism I referred to (there needs to be something special in the particles for the universe to actually/physically exist). Indeed, one might argue that we rather need a conjecture/speculation for the *inclusion* of that dualism. But the possibility seems to exist just like for other forms of dualism and a speculation is always needed either for their inclusion or their exclusion (still other views can also be considered). Another note about numbering. It seems to be that if you repeatedly make descriptions of descriptions, you eventually end up with all 0's or all 1's, I don't follow. showing that numbers describing numbers is meaningless. I do not believe much in absolute meaning and I don't think that numbers needs to mean something (nor to be meant in some way) to exist. Does this also prove that numbers do not have a Platonic existence? I don't think so. Numbers could have platonic existence even if they were undescribable (and, indeed, if they were undescribed). The Fermat theorem constraint is always there, ready to apply to natural numbers, whenever/wherever/however/... they happen to appear. Even if natural numbers had no platonic existence, this constraint would be there (and, hence, there would be something since it is something). I also feel that this type of constraint implies the (platonic) existence of natural numbers (as well as the existence of a lot of mathematical structures above natural numbers). This is not a proof either, indeed. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Hal Ruhl a écrit : Hi Georges: Hi Hal, I was responding to Bruno's comments. However, I would have the same response to your position. Why that selection? I wrote could. This means that it *could* be that all else be wihtin (and identical to) the world of numbers. Indeed, it could also be that something from the all else (and possibly even all ot the all else) be outside of the world of numbers. However, as I have replied to John, I have nothing against TOEs (or against anything else) without numbers, I am just completely unable to figure out what they might look like. I am also completely unable to imagine that numbers could not exist. The basic idea is that any such down select as to the possible basis of a or all universes is information and why make things that complex? If you look at my posts over the last few years my model does not make any selection as far as I can tell. [I am still refining it.] The set of all divisions of my list includes all possible foundations for states of universes and only requires that they follow logically from the consequences of dividing the list. There seems no good reason why my list is not the same size as the largest of lists so it would be countably infinite. The set of all of its divisions [its set of subsets] is a power set so would be uncountably infinite. That seems plenty of room. The only reasonable exclusion I can think of would be those divisions that would describe internally illogical universe states such as those that would contain an object that was simultaneously completely spherical and completely cubical. I see no reason why my model would exclude either Bruno's basis [if I understand it correctly] or what I believe yours to be as two out of its infinite variety of universe underpinnings. What do you think about universe numbers ? Georges. At 03:00 AM 3/8/2006, you wrote: Hal Ruhl a écrit : Hi Bruno: As I see it, to hold that numbers are the precursor existence of all else is a selection. I would not hold that one is the precursor of the other. Rather I suggested that both could actually be the same. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Hal Ruhl a écrit : Hi Bruno: As I see it, to hold that numbers are the precursor existence of all else is a selection. I would not hold that one is the precursor of the other. Rather I suggested that both could actually be the same. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Norman Samish wrote: Why is there something rather than nothing? When I heard that Famous Question, I did not assume that nothing was describable - because, if it was, it would not be nothing. I don't think of nothing as an empty bitstring - I think of it as the absence of a bitstring - as no thing. Given that definition, is there a conceivable answer to The Famous Question? This formulation is known to be problematic. The second part rather than nothing is at best redundant and at worse meaningless or contradictory. As far as I know, all alternative formulations are also problematic for some reason (but everybody is welcome to propose its own). It might be that there exist no sound formulation for the question. This does not means that the problem it is supposed to points to does not exist or is meaningless. I imagine that all of us for which the question is not meaningless share a common intuition about it even if it cannot be clearly spoken of. I like the formulation question of existence which simply refer to such a common intuition while it leaves completely open many issues otherwise closed or biased (just like in Who created the world?). I am not sure that the semantic disctinction between nothing and no thing helps much. For instance, it brings in the concept of thing which might not be necessary and lead us in a wrong direction. I have followed only a small part of discussions in this group and the following idea might have been proposed and commented many times but what about arithmetical realism? Answers to the question of existence often involve some kind of necessary being (usually called God). What about the idea that natural numbers *have to* in some way float around (in an intemporal sense)? Being 2 could make sense even if nobody/nothing exists to figure out that. An answer to the question of existence would then simply be: something exists because this has to exist (and this is something). I understood that it is a quite common idea in this group that we could be the sons of natural numbers. So, not only the natural numbers could have to exists but it could also be that nothing more needs to exist for all what we see also exist. Something wrong? Comments? I would also appreciate references about the first appearances of these ideas. Georges. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Artificial Philosophizing
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Georges wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So Bruno says that: a) I am a machine. b) ...no man can grasp all aspect of man Tom says that to philosophize is one aspect of humanness that is more than a machine (i.e. simply following a set of instructions). Jef and Brent say that we are machines who (that?) philosophize. Brent says that realizing we are machines is the beginning of (or another step in) the death of human hubris (arrogance). I thought that Bruno maintains that humility is on the side of realizing that we cannot totally understand ourselves. Pascal, Reason can begin again when we recognize what we cannot know. Could we try to make sense of this, given that we believe in sense? Tom Given that we believe in sense? Who/what gives that? Do we believe in that? Georges. Georges, you are using sense by asking those questions. Well, all my education (and probably even my genes) tried hard to convice me that I do. Still, I have a (very strong) doubt. Obviously, things tend to appear just as if I would. But maybe just as obviously as the sun tend to appear to be moving around the earth. Obviously also, the sense view is very well suited for us to best live and reproduce. This means it is almost always appropriate and efficient for everyday life discussion and decision making. But being appropriate and efficient in such cases does not mean at all that it is correct. It does not follow that it is appropriate everywhere, especially when we are in the kind of discussions we have here, about what would be a machine or what it might mean that reality actually exists. I was just wondering whether people here were willing to have a look on what they are sitting on. List, OK, we don't have to use any of those scary words like sense and reason and faith. We're just trying to get at reality. Or are people starting to get nihilistic? Have a little faith (oops) and let's talk. I suggest we start out by concentrating on the fact that Brent and Jef don't agree with Bruno's b) above. (And also perhaps Bruno doesn't agree with himself (Bruno's a) vs. b) above)). If we truly are machines, then by definition we should be able to (in theory) figure out the list of instructions that we follow. I feel a flaw in the then just there whatever definition of machine you want to consider. Georges. -- Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CLIPS-IMAG, 385, rue de la Bibliothèque, B.P. 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9 Tel: (33-4) 76 63 58 55, Fax: (33-4) 76 44 66 75
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote:
Hi George:
Hi Hal,
At 09:13 PM 11/16/2004, you wrote:
Hal Ruhl wrote:
My use of these words is convenience only but my point is why should
existence be so anemic as to prohibit the simultaneous presence of an
All and a Nothing.
The prohibition does not come from an anemia of existence
(as you suggest) but rather from the strength of nothing(ness),
at least in my view of things.
I am not sure I understand where we disagree (and even if we
really disagree) on this question of the {something, nothing,
concept, existence} question.
Even if we consider that defining something automatically
defines (a complementary) something else, this happens at the
concept level. It might well be that both defined concepts
simultaneously exists (say at least in the mind/brain of a
few humans beings) but this says noting about whether either
one or the other actually gets at something that would exist.
Even if the *concepts of* something (or all) and nothing do
need to exist simultaneously for any of them to exist, it
(obviously ?) does not follows that something (or all) and
nothing also needs to exist simultaneously (or even simply
makes sense in any absolute way).
Last but not least, what is the complementary concept of a
given concept is not that obvious. Let's consider the concept
of a winged horse. Regardless of whether it actually gets
at something or not, it can be considered to be opposed to
non winged horses or to winged things that are not horses
rather that to anything that is not a winged horses. In
set theory, a complementary of a set is always considered
only within a given larger set and never in any fully open
way (and there are well known and very good reasons for that
whatever common sense may say). Similarly, defining an all
or something in a fully open way is likely to be inconsistent.
The situation is different here from the case of the winged
horse and probably from all other cases and there is no reason
that common sense be still relevant (like in the set of all
sets paradox). This might be a case (possibly the only one)
in which defining/considering something does not automatically
make appear a complementary something (even simply at the
concept level).
This would be an arbitrary truncation without reasonable justification.
Just as the opposite.
I provided a justification - a simple basis for evolving universes -
which does not yet seem to have toppled.
It might be not so simple. I went through it and I still can't
figure what evolving universes might get at. Up to this point,
I did not find something that would sound to me as a (more)
reasonable justification. This may well comme from me.
What appears reasonable or not or what appears as an actual
justification or not is certainly very relative. Currently, I am
still in the process of trying to find some sense (in my view of
things) in what you are talking about (and/or of trying to
figure out what your view of things might be). *Not* to say it
necessarily hasn't.
Georges.
Re: Fw: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote:
All members of [is,is not] definitional pairs including the [All,
Nothing] pair have a conceptual foundation within the All. Why would
the [All, Nothing} pair be the only one denied a mutual and concurrent
physical expression?
Well... It seems that we do not share the same conception of
what nothing(ness) might be. It seems that I am even unable to
figure out what your conception of it might be. I see no problem
with that. I suppose that this just means that we are different
human beings.
I feel that the {all, nothing} pair requires a kind of frame
it would have to fit into while the {something, nothingness}
do not. The best image I can get of our two views would be
that in yours nothing would be the empty set while in mine
nothingness would be the absence or inexistence of any set.
But I am probably still out.
I do not see either why the [All, Nothing] pair should have a
conceptual foundation within the All and I can't even figure
what that might mean.
Still, when you write Why would the [All, Nothing} pair be the
only one denied a mutual and concurrent physical expression?,
I suspect (though that does not truly follows) that you mean the
[All, Nothing} pair would be denied something that would be
granted to some other pairs. This implies that the all have
some internal structure from which one couls identify strict
and non empty subparts. Therefore, nothing would not remain
the one and only thing that coud be opposed to the all.
Last, I am not sure we need to involve anything physical here,
even between quotes. Physicality might well just be how things
appear (to SASs for instance) from within the all.
Quite frustrating. I guess on your side, too.
Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
rmiller wrote: This is starting to sound like discussion Hume must have had with himself. Might be. And was Hume finally able to conclude something ? Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
John Collins wrote: There do exist consistent approaches to set theory where you do have a universal set and can therefore consider taking complements to be a sinle-argument operation. to bypass the obvious paradox (that any set can be used to make a necessarily larger powerset) you need to concoct a map from the universal set onto its own powerset. I was not thinking of that one but rather to the inconsistency that appears when one wants to consider things like the set of all sets that do not containe themselves. The easiest way to do this is to have lots of 'urelements' or' indivisible but somehow different sets, which can then be mapped to larger sets in the powerset. If you find urelements philosophically objectionable (which most computationally-minded people do) This is the first time I heard of such things as 'urelements' and I haven't that faintest idea of what that might be but, for sure, I must be severely computationally-minded. then there exist other more difficult approaches: Try a google search for Alonzo Church, Willard Quine or Thomas Forster to see some people who have tried... I have heard of the first two but not on that topic. Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: [...] The idea that defining a thing actually defines two things seems self evident [once you notice it]. At least one case of unavoidable definition also seems self evident [once you notice it]. The problem with evidence is that on one side there is no other known basis to build certainties and on the other it appears to be very relative [once you notice it]. :-) Also, (self) evidence that seems so sounds like a pleonasm to me. Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: Boundaries: I have as I said in one post of this thread and as I recall in some earlier related threads defined information as a potential to erect a boundary. So the All is chuck full of this potential. Actual boundaries are the Everything and any evolving Something. This is unclear to me. To take a practical and simple example, from which wavelength a monochromatic radiation ceases to be red ? The All and the Nothing are not mutually exclusive. I understand that one can have a view differing from mine on this question. In any sound sense of these concepts for me, they are exclusive however. Perhaps the exclusive idea is based on a hidden assumption of some sort of space that can only be filled with or somehow contain one or the other but not both. This is intersting. I have exactly the opposite feeling. In my view, there cannot be anything like space or time (and therefore no other time/place for any something to hide or coexist) if there is(*) nothing. (*) is must be considered here in an intemporel mode and not in the present one. Somehow like equals in 2 and 2 equals 4 Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Eric Cavalcanti wrote: On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 08:39, Georges Quenot wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: [...] The idea that defining a thing actually defines two things seems self evident [once you notice it]. At least one case of unavoidable definition also seems self evident [once you notice it]. The problem with evidence is that on one side there is no other known basis to build certainties and on the other it appears to be very relative [once you notice it]. :-) But that's inevitable, or isn't it? Can we have any certainty other than those logically derived from assumed principles? That's part of the problem, yes. And in this case, isn't it desirable that at least the assumed principles are self-evident? Oh, lots of things appear desirable. That does not make them true (unfortunately in many cases). And when desirableness comes in as a cause (if not a reason) things turns even more relative. Could we have something better? That's another part of the problem. Also, (self) evidence that seems so sounds like a pleonasm to me. Yes, I think I agree with you, but that's the common usage. Yes and no. I don't feel it is neutral, even if frequent. A'self-evident' means evident without proof. But can something be 'evident' only after proof? It seems to me that an 'evident' proposition doesn't need proof either. I meant: did anyone ever encounter such a thing as an evidence that did not seem to be so ? How can one discriminate between an evidence and something that would just seem to be an evidence ? Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: At 05:39 PM 11/16/2004, you wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: [...] The idea that defining a thing actually defines two things seems self evident [once you notice it]. At least one case of unavoidable definition also seems self evident [once you notice it]. The problem with evidence is that on one side there is no other known basis to build certainties and on the other it appears to be very relative [once you notice it]. :-) Here I was not trying to support the idea that Self-evident is necessarily a positive characteristic of an idea but rather that Monday morning quarterbacking can make it appear so. Do you mean that for the particular idea that defining a thing actually defines two things ? This was in response to the comment I received. I suppose that many ideas originally considered to be self evident after near term reflection were ultimately rejected. Do you consider that this could be the case for this particular idea ? Also, (self) evidence that seems so sounds like a pleonasm to me. To me self evident is a belief. OK. Fine. The validity assigned to most mathematical proofs appears - as has been said by others - to be dependent on the belief of the majority who examine the proof. In most cases this belief is all that is available so it is not redundant but it is no more than majority opinion. I agree here. And sometimes, even unanimity fails (there is a famous example: Cauchy produced a false theorem about the continuity of a series of continuous functions, he taught it and it was in class books for years whithout anyone finding any problem until some day someone noticed that it fails for the Fourier series of f(x) = x; of course, he saved the theorem by adding an additional premise but the false theorem had been recognized/believed as true in the mean time). Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: At 05:58 PM 11/16/2004, you wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: Boundaries: I have as I said in one post of this thread and as I recall in some earlier related threads defined information as a potential to erect a boundary. So the All is chuck full of this potential. Actual boundaries are the Everything and any evolving Something. This is unclear to me. To take a practical and simple example, from which wavelength a monochromatic radiation ceases to be red ? Color is a complex and local system reaction to the collision between a small system - a photon to temporarily stay with a particle view - and a larger system - a photo receptor etc. The information in the photon [its energy] and the information in the chemistry of the photo receptor determine the initial path of this response in a given large system and create a boundary between this initiation and the initiation that would have been if the information differed. [By the way I do not support this description of such systems but that is another discussion.] Do you mean that it is a nonsense to say that a monochromatic radiation of 700 nm is red if it does not actually hit and activate some photoreceptors of the appropriate type ? The All and the Nothing are not mutually exclusive. I understand that one can have a view differing from mine on this question. In any sound sense of these concepts for me, they are exclusive however. Perhaps the exclusive idea is based on a hidden assumption of some sort of space that can only be filled with or somehow contain one or the other but not both. This is interesting. I have exactly the opposite feeling. In my view, there cannot be anything like space or time (and therefore no other time/place for any something to hide or coexist) if there is(*) nothing. As I said my approach to physics differs from the standard one re space and time etc. I meant here something similar to the standard space and time as considered in physics and common sense. I could consider other possible senses but I currently can't figure any. My use of these words is convenience only but my point is why should existence be so anemic as to prohibit the simultaneous presence of an All and a Nothing. The prohibition does not come from an anemia of existence (as you suggest) but rather from the strength of nothing(ness), at least in my view of things. This would be an arbitrary truncation without reasonable justification. Just as the opposite. Georges.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: At 08:48 PM 11/16/2004, you wrote: Darwin seems to have felt this way about Origins [Stephen Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, page 2] so why should my ideas be special? We agree here. Interesting reference. Georges.
Re: Who believe in Concepts ? (Was: An All/Nothing multiverse model)
Hal Ruhl wrote: At 07:56 AM 11/14/2004, you wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: I would appreciate comments on the following. I placed the definitions at the end for easy group reference. Proposal: The Existence of our and other universes and their dynamics are the result of unavoidable definition and logical incompleteness. Justification: 1) Given definitions 1, 2, and 3: [see original post] I have already a problem here. It might not be specific to this proposal but this is a good opportunity to raise the question. Defintion 1 and everything that follows depends in a strong way of the concept of concept and on strong properties of that concept (like the possibilty to discrimate what is a concept from what is not and to gather all concepts in a set/ensemble/collection with a consistent meaning). Perhaps I could find a more neutral word or define what I mean by concept. Please note however that the complete ensemble can not be consistent - after all it contains a completed arithmetic. Generally smaller sets can not prove their own consistency. snip It des not sound consistent to me for various reasons. Is seems not to be consistent for you either. Yet you mean to draw something from it ? Let's assume nothingness exists. Therefore something (nothingness) exists. That is one of my points if one replaces your nothingness with my nothing and your something with my All. Indeed I inserted that because I perceived a similarity between this and what you said. But this was rather an illustration for the question of whether words used in this utterance actually get at something and whether their combination can make sense. Put in such an extreme form, it appears to me as a mere game of word or a sophism and I wonder if anyone can get convinced by such reasonning. Any definition defines two entities simultaneously. Generally but not necessarily the smaller of the two entities is the one about which the definition says: This entity is:. The definition creates a boundary between this entity and a second entity which is all that the first is not. Most of the second entities may have no apparent usefulness but usefulness of an entity is not relevant. Therefore nothingness doesn't exist. Do you mean to cite the first instance or the second instance here ? Therefore nothingness doesn't exist (because something exists) or Therefore nothingness doesn't exist (because assuming it exists leads to the assertion of both a proposition and its negation) ? Not at all. One can not define a something without simultaneously defining a nothing and vice versa. This is not obvious to me. Defining a property that would always be true does not imply that it have to or even it just could be false sometimes. But this is not the point. My first therefore (and therefore the second one) holds even though because this is the minimum property that one would expect of any solid sense of nothingness. In case you insist to define simultaneously a something and a nothing, you would just have demonstrated the inconsistency of any sound (nothing,something) theory. I think that (at least) Heidegger seriously claimed that. That is the usually unnoticed aspect of the definitional process. This leads you to the exclusionary statement below. That's why there's something rather than noting. To the contrary both exist if either does. You insist to claim that. Yet they are also exclusive since by its very nature, nothingness excludes the existence of any something. Georges. I disappear when I am named. Who am I ?
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: At 08:16 AM 11/14/2004, you wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: 4) A Something: A division of the All into two subparts. That too, sounds bad to me. It might well be that the only something that deserve the title of Something would be the All itself. Everything else might appear so only in our minds (and/or in other types of minds). I believe my use of the term Something in the text of the justification is consistent with my definition. One must allow for the case that the All could have internal boundaries of some sort. Hi Hal, I would say that this is a matter of faith. Indeed, It *could*. But no one has the ability to prove either It has or It hasn't any such boundary (in an absolute sense, of course). From this point of view, I am at best agnostic and I seriously doubt It actually has. That's why I would also like to say : One must allow for the case that the All could have no (true) internal boundaries of any sort. Georges.
Who believes in Boundaries ? (Was: An All/Nothing multiverse model)
Georges Quenot wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: At 08:16 AM 11/14/2004, you wrote: Hal Ruhl wrote: 4) A Something: A division of the All into two subparts. That too, sounds bad to me. It might well be that the only something that deserve the title of Something would be the All itself. Everything else might appear so only in our minds (and/or in other types of minds). I believe my use of the term Something in the text of the justification is consistent with my definition. One must allow for the case that the All could have internal boundaries of some sort. Hi Hal, I would say that this is a matter of faith. Indeed, It *could*. But no one has the ability to prove either It has or It hasn't any such boundary (in an absolute sense, of course). From this point of view, I am at best agnostic and I seriously doubt It actually has. That's why I would also like to say : One must allow for the case that the All could have no (true) internal boundaries of any sort. In a previous post, I asked TOE participants their opinion about the existence of Concepts. What I meant might not be clear. It is in fact equivalent to the (hopefully) clearer idea of Boundary mentionned here. Again, using the upper case for Boundary, I mean here something that would exist in an absolute sense and not just the relative, contingent and fuzzy boundaries we use in everday life. A Concept would be something tht would be on one side of a Boundary ande vices versa. Do some TOE participants believe in such Boundaries, even at least in some particular cases ? If yes, which ones and on whice bases ? To take a particular example. It is often considered in this group the concept od Self-Aware Structure (SAS). Who believes that Boundaries can be drawn around individuals SASs and/or around the category ? Georges.
Who believe in Concepts ? (Was: An All/Nothing multiverse model)
Hal Ruhl wrote: I would appreciate comments on the following. I placed the definitions at the end for easy group reference. Proposal: The Existence of our and other universes and their dynamics are the result of unavoidable definition and logical incompleteness. Justification: 1) Given definitions 1, 2, and 3: [see original post] I have already a problem here. It might not be specific to this proposal but this is a good opportunity to raise the question. Defintion 1 and everything that follows depends in a strong way of the concept of concept and on strong properties of that concept (like the possibilty to discrimate what is a concept from what is not and to gather all concepts in a set/ensemble/collection with a consistent meaning). Though we make such assumptions everyday and it work perfectly well in practice for most current affairs, it is far from obvious (at least for me) that it follows that things are really so (just think of the concept of dog in an evolutionary and/or universe-wide perspective for instance). Personnally, I do not believe in Concepts (the upper case denotes here a solid sense for the concept of concept, for instance, a sense strong enough to make correct assumptions such as: concepts cae be isolated concepts can be discriminaed from things that aren't concepts and/or one from another, concepts actually get (or not) at things in the real worlds and, last but not least, concepts can be arranged in utterances that says true or false things about the real world). This has quite frustrating consequences, including the one of not being able to apropriately comment your proposal and, more generallly, to consistently take part in many interesting discussions. I find puzzling that many people, especially among those that are not very religious and/or those that shares many of my views, believes in Concepts. Or do they ? Or up to what ? This is why I would like to ask participants of the TOE group what they believ or not about Concepts as well as about their handling in natural language reasonning. I am also interested in opinions about the impact of this in discussions in the TOE group. Indeed, many questions seem relative to the senses that should/could be given to sepcific concepts (existence, reality, physical, universes, ...). Examples (positive or nengative) would certainly help. Thanks, Georges. Let's assume nothingness exists. Therefore something (nothingness) exists. Therefore nothingness doesn't exist. Therefore nothingness doesn't exist. That's why there's something rather than noting.
Re: An All/Nothing multiverse model
Hal Ruhl wrote: 4) A Something: A division of the All into two subparts. That too, sounds bad to me. It might well be that the only something that deserve the title of Something would be the All itself. Everything else might appear so only in our minds (and/or in other types of minds). Georges.
Re: Is the universe computable?
Bruno Marchal wrote: At 10:14 13/01/04 +0100, Georges Quenot wrote: Some people do argue that there is no arithmetical property independent of us because there is no thing on which they would apply independentkly of us. What we would call their arithmetical properties is simply a set of tautologies that do come with them when they are considered but exist no more than them when they are not considered. But then what would be an undecidable proposition? This is how Russell's and Whitehead logicism has break down. There is a ladder of arithmetical propositions which ask for more and more ingenuity to be proved. Actually arithmetical truth extend far beyond the reach of any consistent machine (and consistent human with comp). There is an infinity of surprise in there. I guess you know that there is no natural number p and q such that (p/q)(p/q) is equal to 2. If mathematical truth were conventionnal, why did the pythagoreans *hide* this fact for so long? So those propositions are neither tautologies, nor conventions. David Deutsch, following Johnson's criteria of reality, would say that such propositions kick back. You know, about arithmetic, and about machines btw, a lot of people defends idea which are just no more plausible since Godel has proved its incompleteness theorems. Arithmetical proposition are just not tautologies. There are three classes of (arithmetical) propositions: those who are tautologies (no matter how clever one has to be to figure that, they say nothing which is not already in the axioms), those whose negation are tautologies, and those whose neither themselves nor their negation are tautologies. It might be that we don't know which is which but it should be so in principle. Giving that I hope getting some understanding of the complex human from something simpler (number property) the approach of those people will never work, for me. And certainly vice versa. Though it is difficult to have them saying it explicitely I have the feeling that the reason why they do not want the natural numbers to be out there and even as not possibly being considered as out there is that they do not accept that the complex human be understood from something simpler (number property). They do not even accept the idea being considered, were it as a mere conjecture or working hypothesis. Their more official argument is that such a view would prevent the foundation of human dignity. Damned!!! If there is one thing which could prevent the foundation of human dignity, it is certainly that totalitarian idea following which some ideas can not even be considered as an hypothesis or conjecture. This is indeed a problem. There could be more than one conception of human dignity. But that happens all the time. There has been days you could be burned even just because you ask yourself if by chance it was not the sun but the earth which was moving. Unfortunately (again), yes. Are you defending those guys? No. I am just explaining (or trying to explain) their position. Are you asking me how to reply to those guy? I am interested in anybody's opinion on that problem. My suggestion: if many people thinks like that around you, just leave them. Like Valery said, those who are not willing to use logic with you (that is to argument) are in war with you. Run or kill them! This is a safe way to have soon everybody killing everybody. It is not enough they have good intention, if they do not want arguments, they are dangerous for all humans. I like to insist, in Valery spirit, that logic is not a question of truth, but of politeness. I like the analogy. The fact is that there might be several (and possibly incompatible) protocols of politeness. I have not met any of them physically but I had discussion with some of them via Internet. There might not be so many of them but there are. You will find, at least in the US, a lot of people considering the views of evolution and/or of the big-bang as evil. Then what? If they disagree with dialog and argumentation, *I* will consider them as evil. Possibly making you not better than them. But this not that simple. They do not disagree with dialog and argumentation. Rather they argue in different ways and/or with different premises. If they finally have to abandon these positions due to the amount of evidence in favor of it, the last line of defence for their conception of a personal God and for a significant role for Him could be at the level of artihmetical realism. Artihmetical realism by itself (not from a distinct personal God) is therefore seen as evil by them. As I mentionned, they usually do not put it that way. Rather they argue that such a view would prevent the foundation of human dignity and the like. They make probably the same confusion of those who believe that determinism is in contradiction with free will. I would say that one of the concern they have behind
Re: Is the universe computable?
Wei Dai wrote: On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 05:32:05PM +0100, Georges Quenot wrote: Many other way of simulating the universe could be considered like for instance a 4D mesh (if we simplify by considering only general relativity; there is no reason for the approach not being possible in an even more general way) representing a universe taken as a whole in its spatio-temporal aspect. The mesh would be refined at each iteration. The relation between the time in the computer and the time in the universe would not be a synchrony but a refinement of the resolution of the time (and space) in the simulated universe as the time in the computer increases. Alternatively (though both views are not necessarily exclusive), one could use a variational formulation instead of a partial derivative formulation in order to describe/build the universe leading again to a construction in which the time in the computer is not related at all to the time in the simulated universe. Do you have references for these two ideas? No. They actually came to me while I was figuring some other ways of simulating a universe than the sequential one that seemed to give rise to many problems to me. The second one is influenced by the prossibility to consider the whole universe within a variational formulation as suggested by Hawking in A brief history of time where he also considered the possibility of a boundaryless universe (that makes much sense to me) that would make difficult the use of any (initial or other) boundary condition. Among other problems are the one of defining a global time within a universe ruled by general relativity and including time singularities within black holes for instance. Last but not least is the problem of the emergence of the flow of time itself from the gradient of order within the universe. There might be references which I do not know of and I would say probably for the case of simple physics (possibly fluid dynamics or heat transfer for instance) phenomena which could be simulated in a 3+1 (or 2+1 or 1+1) dimensional meshes as wholes. I think the refining mesh could be practically experimented in a 1D+1D and possibly up to 2D+1D for heat conduction within a solid object with various boundary conditions. While it could much less efficient (but is it even so obvious ?) than a sequential approach, implementing a finite element mesh including the time dimension and solving the partial derivative heat diffusion equations by standard linear algebra on the whole spatio-temporal domain seems perfectly feasable to me (at least for small amounts of time). I'm wondering, suppose the universe you're trying to simulate contains a computer that is running a factoring algorithm on a large number, in order to cryptanalyze somebody's RSA public key. How could you possibly simulate this universe without starting from the beginning and working forward in time? Whatever simulation method you use, if somebody was watching the simulation run, they'd see the input to the factoring algorithm appear before the output, right? I would say there is a strong anthropomorphic bias in this view. I suggest you to read my other posts in which I comment a bit about this kind of things. Indeed, the practical implementation of the simulation of the whole universe including the considered computer would be very heavy if a variational formulation and/or a 4D iteratively refining mesh had to be used. But I do not see why it should fail to simulate the computer calculation. What is very difficult is to guarantee that all interactions propagate at the appropriate level of accuracy through all of the 4D mesh and/or through all of the action paths which can be very large and interconnected. No doubt that close (up to an unimaginable level) to singular matrices will be encountered. But is this very different if one is to simulate the universe from the big bang up to this computer calculation with the appropriate accuracy needed to ensure that from the big bang initial conditions through stellar formation and human evolution this computer would be built and would run this particular calculation ? I am not so sure. I do not believe in either case that a simulation with this level of detail can be conducted on any computer that can be built in our universe (I mean a computer able to simulate a universe containing a smaller computer doing the calculation you considered with a level of accuracy sufficient to ensure that the simulation of the behavior of the smaller computer would be meaningful). This is only a theoretical speculation. Georges Quénot.
Re: Is the universe computable?
Bruno Marchal wrote: At 13:36 09/01/04 +0100, Georges Quenot wrote: Bruno Marchal wrote: It seems, but it isn't. Well, actually I have known *one* mathematician, (a russian logician) who indeed makes a serious try to develop some mathematics without that infinite act of faith (I don't recall its name for the moment). Such attempt are known as ultrafinitism. Of course a lot of people (especially during the week-end) *pretend* not doing that infinite act of faith, but do it all the time implicitly. This is not what I meant. I did not refer to people not willing to accept that natural numbers exist at all but to people not wlling to accept that natural numbers exist *by themselves*. Rather, they want to see them either as only a production of human (or human-like) people or only a production of a God. What I mean is that their arithmetical property are independent of us. I don't think this is very different. I could argue that even if natural numbers were not out there, as soon as anybody consider them, their properties automatically come with and impose themselves. Even this seemingly weaker statement can be contested and it is not actually weaker but equivalent since there might be no other way than this one for natural numbers to be out there. Some people do argue that there is no arithmetical property independent of us because there is no thing on which they would apply independentkly of us. What we would call their arithmetical properties is simply a set of tautologies that do come with them when they are considered but exist no more than them when they are not considered. Do you think those people believe that the proposition 17 is prime is meaningless without a human in the neighborhood? 17 is prime is meaningless without a human in the neighborhood is exactly the kind of claim these people make (possibly generalizing the concept of human to aliens and Gods). After discussing with some of them I think they actually believe what they claim. I am not sure however that we always fully understand each other and that you or I would exactly understand such a claim in the same way as they do. Giving that I hope getting some understanding of the complex human from something simpler (number property) the approach of those people will never work, for me. And certainly vice versa. Though it is difficult to have them saying it explicitely I have the feeling that the reason why they do not want the natural numbers to be out there and even as not possibly being considered as out there is that they do not accept that the complex human be understood from something simpler (number property). They do not even accept the idea being considered, were it as a mere conjecture or working hypothesis. Their more official argument is that such a view would prevent the foundation of human dignity. Also, I would take (without added explanations) an expression like numbers are a production of God as equivalent to arithmetical realism. Yes and there are several ways to understand this. And I said unfortunately because some not only do not want to see natural numbers as existing by themselves but they do not want the idea to be simply presented as logically possible and even see/designate evil in people working at popularizing it. OK, but then some want you being dead because of the color of the skin, or the length of your nose, ... I am not sure it is not premature wanting to enlighten everyone at once ... I guess you were only talking about those hard-aristotelians who like to dismiss Plato's questions as childish. Evil ? Perhaps could you be more precise on those people. I have not met people seeing evil in arithmetical platonism, have you? I have not met any of them physically but I had discussion with some of them via Internet. There might not be so many of them but there are. You will find, at least in the US, a lot of people considering the views of evolution and/or of the big-bang as evil. If they finally have to abandon these positions due to the amount of evidence in favor of it, the last line of defence for their conception of a personal God and for a significant role for Him could be at the level of artihmetical realism. Artihmetical realism by itself (not from a distinct personal God) is therefore seen as evil by them. As I mentionned, they usually do not put it that way. Rather they argue that such a view would prevent the foundation of human dignity and the like. Georges Quénot.
Re: Maximization the gradient of order as a generic constraint ?
Hal Finney wrote: Georges Quenot writes: Considering the kind of set of equation we figure up to now, completely specifying our universe from them seems to require two additional things: 1) The specification of boundary conditions (or any other equivalent additional constraint. 2) The selection of a set of global parameters. My suggestion is that for 1), instead of specifying initial conditions (what might be problematic for a number of reasons), one could use another form of additional high level constraint which would be that the solution universe should be as much as possible more ordered on one side than on the other. Of course, this rely on the possibility to give a sound sense to this, which implies to be able to find a canonical way to tell whether one solution of the set of equations in more more ordered on one side than on the other than another solution. I think this is a valid approach, but I would put it into a larger perspective. The program you describe, if we were to actually implement it, would have these parts: It has a certain set of laws of physics; it has a certain order-measuring function (perhaps equivalent to what we know as entropy); and it has a goal of finding conditions which maximize the difference in this function's values from one side to the other of some data structure that it is modifying or creating, and which represents the universe. That's it. I would say that this is a clever reformulation back in the context of the computational perspective. However I do not find this perpective larger. It would not be particularly difficult to implement a toy version of such a program based on some simple laws of physics, and perhaps as you suggest our own universe might be the result of an instance of such a program which is not all that much more large or complex. In the context of the All Universe Principle as interpreted by Schmidhuber, all programs exist, and all the universes that they generate exist. This program that you describe is one of them, and the universe that is thus generated is therefore part of the multiverse. So to first order, there is nothing particularly surprising or problematical in envisioning programs like this as contributing to the multiverse, along with the perhaps more naively obvious programs which perform sequential simulation from some initial conditions. All programs exist, including ones which create universes in even more strange or surprising ways than these. By the way, Wolfram's book (wolframscience.com) does consider some non-sequential simulations as models for simple 1- and 2-dimensional universes. These are what he calls Systems Based on Constraints discussed in his chapter 5. Where I think your idea is especially interesting is the possibility that the program which creates our universe via this kind of optimization technique (maximizing the difference in complexity) might be much shorter than a more conventional program which creates our universe via specifying initial conditions. Shorter programs are considered to have larger measure in the Schmidhuber model, hence it is of great importance to discover the shortest program which generates our universe, and if optimization rather than sequential simulation does lead to a much shorter program, that means our universe has much higher measure than we might have thought. In the more classical mathematical perspective, I would say that this principle could be considered as an additional axiom from which a lot could be derived, leading (possibly) to a description of universes much shorter in axiom count than many alternatives. An even more general axiom would be that if a symmetry has to be broken, it has to be broken as much as possible, things having to either as symmetrical as possible or as asymmetrical as possible. However, I don't think we can evaluate this possibility in a meaningful way until we have a better understanding of the physics of our own universe. Yes and maybe even if we finally figure which laws are to be used. I am somewhat skeptical that this particular optimization principle is going to work, because our universe's disorder gradient is dominated by the Big Bang's decay to heat death, and these cosmological phenomena don't necessarily seem to require the kinds of atomic and temporal structures that lead to observers. I know of the dominance of the near big bang decay to heat death but it might be that however small the remaining might be, it could still be enough to make a difference. Also, the remaining operates on a much longer time-scale and this could somehow balance things. It is certainly too early to decide whether this optimization principle is actually useful and whether the optimal point would actually turn out to be our type of universe. I am not so confident that it would but I don't think either that this could be ruled out yet. If you look
Maximization the gradient of order as a generic constraint ?
In a previous post in reply to Hal Finnay, I have suggested the use of a particuliar case of additional conditions to the hypothetical set of equation that would rule ou universe. This is an attempt to clarify it while taking it out from the computation perspective with which it has nothing to do. Considering the kind of set of equation we figure up to now, completely specifying our universe from them seems to require two additional things: 1) The specification of boundary conditions (or any other equivalent additional constraint. 2) The selection of a set of global parameters. My suggestion is that for 1), instead of specifying initial conditions (what might be problematic for a number of reasons), one could use another form of additional high level constraint which would be that the solution universe should be as much as possible more ordered on one side than on the other. Of course, this rely on the possibility to give a sound sense to this, which implies to be able to find a canonical way to tell whether one solution of the set of equations in more more ordered on one side than on the other than another solution. This is a way to narrow down the set of solutions that offers several advantages: a) It removes the asymmetry in the choice of initial versus final (or any other combination of) conditions. b) It is consistent with boundaryless universes as proposed by Stephen Hawking for instance. c) It is able to make the flow of time appear as an emergent property instead of being postulated and built upon. d) This kind of condition is very well appropriate to select those in which SASs have chance to emerge. This condition does not seem alone enough to define a unique mathematical structure but there might be a little number of ways according to which the remaining symmetries could be canonically broken. It might well be that this additional constraint can also be used for selecting the appropriate set of global parameter for the set of equations considered in 2). It does not seem counter-intuitive that the sets of global parameters that allows for the maximization of the gradient of order among all possible solutions considering all possible values for global parameters be precisely those for which SASs emerges and therefore those we see in our universe: universes not able to generate complex enough substructures to be self aware would probably equally fail to exhibit large gradients of order and vice versa. The hypothesis of the maximization the gradient of order seems even Popper-falsfiable. At least one prediction can be made: Given the set of equation that describe our universe and the corresponding set of global parameters, if we can find a canonical way to compare the relative global gradient of order within the universes that satisfy this set of equations: 1) It could be possible to determine the subset of universes that maximize the gradient for each set of global parameters (comparing all possible universes for a given set of global parameters), these being called optimal for this set of global parameters. 2) It could be possible to determine the sets of global parameters that maximize the gradient in an absolute way (comparing optimal universes for all possible sets of global parameters). The prediction is that the set of global parameter that we observe is one of those that maximizes the gradient of order within the corresponding optimal universes. A prediction with a weaker version of 2) would be that the set of global parameter that we observe must be consistent with any constraint we can obtain from the maximization constraint. It might be possible to solve problem 2) (finding the optimal sets of global parameter or some constraints on them) from high level considerations without being able to solve problem 1) finding the corresponding optimal universes. Maybe also the constraint could be used at a third level if it can remain consistent as a mean to select the appropriate set of equations. Finally, the hypothesis of the maximization of the gradient of order within universes could offer the additional advanatges: e) It does not involve any arbitrary parameter. f) It might help not to require that a choice be arbitrarily made within an infinite set. Do all of this make sense ? Has it already been considered ? Georges Quénot.
Re: Is the universe computable?
Norman Samish : Max Tegmark, at http://207.70.190.98/toe.pdf, published in Annals of Physics, 270, 1-51 (1998), postulates that all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically. Max Tegmark postulated or conjectured even more in that paper: that the distinction between mathematical existence and physical existence is meaningless, at least from a scientific point of view. I also had this idea about two years ago: if (this is not a small if but this is the assupmtion here) the universe is isomorphic to a mathematical (presumably arithmetic) object, it must be this very object since all isomorphic objects are the same object. In other words (probably inaccurately but ine can grasp the idea anyway): no matter what substance particles are made of as long as they obey a given set of equations/rules, everything that does happen as we perceive it depends only of this given set of equations/rules, and not at all of any hypothetical substance the particles would be made of. If the substance of particle does not matter, it doesn't even matter that they have any substance at all and every question (nature, existence, ...) about such hypothetical substance is purely metaphysical. There are however several assumptions behind this idea, at least the one mentionned above and another one about arithmetical realism. Incidently, I found this mailing list (and soon after Tegmark's paper) by trying to figure how original that idea might be and how seriously it could be taken (I just entered the question Do natural numbers exist by themselves ? or possibly a variant of it like Who supports the idea that natural numbers exist by themselves ? in the general purpose question answering system: http://www.languagecomputer.com/demos/question_answering/internet_demo/index.html). Georges Quénot.
Re: Is the universe computable?
Bruno Marchal wrote: At 11:34 08/01/04 +0100, Georges Quenot wrote: I am very willing (maybe too much, that's part of the problem) to accept a Platonic existence for *the* integers. I am far from sure however that this does not involve a significant amount of faith. Indeed. It needs an infinite act of faith. But I have no problem with that ... Unfortunately, it seems that some people do. I am not sure how much I share that faith. As I mentionned, I am willing to but since I could not find some ground to support that willingness, I might be a bit agnostic too. There are some objections to it and I am not sure that none of them make sense. Also, as someone said (if anybody has the original reference, in am interested): the desire to believe is a reason to doubt. I think that, even if it is true, arithmetic realism needs to be postulated (or conjectured) since I can't figure how it could be established. All right. That's why I explicitly put the AR in the definition of computationalism. About your question is the universe computable? the problem depends on what you mean by universe. The definition you gave recently are based on some first person point of view, and even that answer does not makes things sufficiently less ambiguous to answer. Don't hesitate to try again. I have no problem with definitions that inculde some first person point of view. I do not find them so first person point of view since I believe that every person I can talk with, using the same first person point of view, would see the same universe. We could at least say the universe in a consistent way among us. I might try again but I would like first to see what others have to say on the subject (to get an idea of in what direction I would need to make things clearer). You can also read my thesis which bears on that subject (in french). Yes. I have found the reference too. One of my next readings I think (though I have a pipe quite full...). You may be interested in learning that at least the *physical* universe cannot be computable once we postulate the comp hypothesis (that is mainly the thesis that I or You are computable; + Church thesis + AR). The reason is that with comp, as with Everett (and despite minor errors in Everett on that point), the traditional psycho-parallelism cannot be maintained. See my URL below for more. Why there is no FAQ? Because we are still discussing the meaning of a lot of terms I saw some posts on tentative glossaries of acronyms. Maybe before complex terms, we should focus on basic ones like universe. I would not be upset to encounter definitions for several possible senses of that word. Welcome, Thanks. Georges.
Re: Is the universe computable?
Bruno Marchal wrote:
At 09:45 09/01/04 +0100, Georges Quenot wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
At 11:34 08/01/04 +0100, Georges Quenot wrote:
I am very willing (maybe too much, that's part of the
problem) to accept a Platonic existence for *the* integers.
I am far from sure however that this does not involve a
significant amount of faith.
Indeed. It needs an infinite act of faith. But I have no problem
with that ...
Unfortunately, it seems that some people do.
It seems, but it isn't. Well, actually I have known *one* mathematician,
(a russian logician) who indeed makes a serious try to develop
some mathematics without that infinite act of faith (I don't recall
its name for the moment). Such attempt are known as ultrafinitism.
Of course a lot of people (especially during the week-end) *pretend*
not doing that infinite act of faith, but do it all the time implicitly.
This is not what I meant. I did not refer to people not willing
to accept that natural numbers exist at all but to people not
wlling to accept that natural numbers exist *by themselves*.
Rather, they want to see them either as only a production of
human (or human-like) people or only a production of a God.
And I said unfortunately because some not only do not want to
see natural numbers as existing by themselves but they do not
want the idea to be simply presented as logically possible and
even see/designate evil in people working at popularizing it.
You know an ultrafinitist cannot assert that he is an ultrafinitist
without going beyong ultrafinitism. So perhaps only animals do not do
that infinite act of faith, but IMO, most mammals does it in a sort of
passive and implicit way. If you pretend to understand a statement
like:
N ={1, 2, 3 ...}, or N = {l, ll, lll, ,
l, ll, lll, ...},
then you do it. Words like never, always, more, until, while, etc.
have intuitive meaning relying on it. I have worked with highly mentally
disabled people, and only with a few of them I have concluded that there
was perhaps some evidence in their *non grasping* of the simple
potential infinite. All finitist and all intuitionnist accept it. Second order
logic and any piece of mathematics rely on it.
Some people would like to doubt it but I think they confuse Arithmetical
Realism with some substancialist view of number which of course I reject.
(I reject substancialism even in physics, actually I showed it logically
incompatible with the comp hyp).
I would not say infinite act of faith but rather act of faith
in infinity. I don't know the work of the mathematician you think
of neither of any other such kind of work but I flatly consider
that we only manipulate infinity formally within obviously finite
formalisms. I am not sure that it is necessary that any infinite
exists (let's say by itself in some platonic sense) for that
everything that we are talking abour within this kind of finite
formalism makes sense (and exists in some platonic sense).
Fearing the death in the long run (as opposed of fearing some near catastroph)
also rely on that faith in the infinite, at least implicitly.
Some people believe that human are religious because they fear death, but
it is the reverse which seems to me much more plausible: it is because
we are religious (i.e. we believe in some infinite) that we are fearing death.
I do not share all of Dawkins' views (especially from the social
point of view) but I have a Dawkins' view of religion. I would
say that human are religious simply because this induces among
themselves a behavior that increases their fitness (at the level
of communities). The corresponding set of memes interact in various
ways with other aspects like fear of death in complex networks
from which it might be vain to try to isolate simple one-way causal
relations.
I am not sure how much I share that faith. As I mentionned,
I am willing to but since I could not find some ground to
support that willingness, I might be a bit agnostic too.
No problem. The point is that it is a nice and deep hypothesis
which makes comp fun and extremely powerful. It is definitely
among my working hypotheses.
I think I can consider both this one and some alternatives
(not simulatneously, of course). However I do not find the
alternatives very fecund currently (and I am even more
agnostic about them).
Why there is no FAQ? Because we are still discussing the meaning of
a lot of terms
I saw some posts on tentative glossaries of acronyms. Maybe
before complex terms, we should focus on basic ones like
universe. I would not be upset to encounter definitions
for several possible senses of that word.
I don't think the word universe is a basic term. It is a sort
of deity for atheist.
I guess this would be called pantheism (the difference might
lie in the level of worship involved rather than in the level
of faith).
All my work can be seen as an attempt
Re: Is the universe computable?
John M wrote: George Q wrote (among many others, full post see below): A.the universe in which I live according to the current intuition I have of it and B: the possibility to simulate the universe at any level of accuracy. First I wanted to ask what is intuition, but let us stay with common sense (however divergent that may be). I don't have your intuition and you don't have mine. There is an assumption here which is that however divergent these intuition or common sense views of it might be, there exist (in some sense) something that we can refer to as the universe. By the way, this is not the first series of post with that title and though I am not sure I went through all of them this is the first time I see this issue discussed here. This is indeed a good question but why me ? And how do other participants define what the universe could be ? Now if A is true, I wonder upon WHAT can you simulate? I don't understand the question. Your reply points to first person processes. Yes but this is onky in one sense. There might exist a lot of other universes. Among all possible universes, I mean I am talking about the one I feel I live in. This is just a way to designate one specific universe (not to mean that I am not interested in the computability of others but I have a special interest in that one). I like better a 'mixed' way: MY 'interpretation' of something to which I have access only through such interpretation - but there must be a basis for the inter[retation both as my way of doing it, but more importantly the 'thing' to interpret. The (common sense) intuition comes into the 'my way'. Do we really disagree ont that ? C. (universe:)the smallest independent piece that does include myself First I object to independent which would lead to a multiple existence of parallel natures (all of them singularities for the others) and we cannot gain information from them - which would connect in some ways. Existence as we can reasonably speak about it, is interconnected - nothing independent. I think we agree here. I gave indication of what I meant by dependence (and therefore by independence) as: space-time continuity, particle interaction and this kind of things and I feel that everything in the universe is interconnected in that way (this makes my definition of universe a tautology but it can be linked in some way to the common sense) even when considering causally isolated regions of space-time (because these would be connected in some future and they cannot be considered as isolated from that future). If you make concessions to that and accept 'relative' independence, then the smallest 'unit' including you is you. I don't think you want to go solipsistic. I don't believe I can isolate something like 'me'. If you expand further - well, I did not find a limit. I am not sure of that. If many universes do exist, they might well be considered independent of each other (because of lack of spatio-temporal continuity or particle interaction or the like). This is why I concocted a narrative about a 'plenitude' (undefined, not Plato's concept) FROM which distinct 'universes' occur (in timeless and countless fulgurations, callable BigBangs) with some INTERNAL history - in 'ours' including space and time. So I have a 'universe to talk about' - within my intuition G. And many more 'universes', obscured by ignorance (no info) - not excluded. I don't restrict 'them' to our logic, math, system, not even causality. This sounds very speculative (not to say mystical) to me. I like your metaphor of the dominos. It pertains to a view we may have in our (exclusively possible) reductionist ways about the world: THIS ONE is the cause of an event (one side of the domino) while the rest of the system (all of it) is also influencing - whether we consider it in our limited model (within our chosen boundaries) or not. I have two views of causality. In the first one, causality is a local and macroscopic (and mesoscopic) emergent property linked to the fact that the universe would be more ordered on one side that on the other. In the second, events continuously trigger other events. The second view seems to be some kind of idealisation of the first one that will always be no more than a convenient simplification/approximation. Considering that everything occurs or must occur according to the second view sounds like an error to me. This error tends to make the universe viewed as somthing evolving through time while it should be viewed as a static (intemporal) object within which (the flow of) time emerges from its structure as a local property. This is also why views in which universes continously fork as events occur in one way or the other does not make much sense for me. This list goes many times beyond the reductionist ways of thinking. I don't think that the first view is beyond the reductionist ways of thinking. Both views are compatible with a completely mathematic
Re: Is the universe computable?
Georges Quenot wrote: [...] I would be interested in reading the opinions of the participants about that point and about the sense that could be given to the question of what happens (in the simulated universe) in any non- synchronous simulation when the simulation diverges ? Thanks for the replies. Until now I feel a bit confuse with them, possibly because I do not have an appropriate idea of what is meant exactly by computable and/or by what accounts for a simulation of the universe. I probably have some naive intuition about them. So maybe it would help to clarify some points: By computable, is by default assumed something like physically computable using current or future technologies or only formally computable (possibly considering virtual computers containing very much more memory locations than there are particles in the visible universe and for computation times very much longer than the actual age of the universe) ? In the latter case, does the memory of the computer need to be finite or can it be considered as unlimited ? Do the simulation has to end within a finite time or can the simulated universe be something like an asymptotic state of its description in a given formalism ? Alternatively or in other words, could the simulated universe be in some way the limit of a series of approximations computed with increasing available memories and computation times ? Is computable relative to the universe as a (spatio-temporal) whole or only to given supbarts of it ? Also I feel some confusion between the questions Is the universe computable ? and Is the universe actually 'being' computed ?. What links do the participants see between them ? Finally, what link is there between the computability of the universe and the possibility of its exact description in the context of arithmetic ? Maybe too many questions for a single post. I didn't go through the whole archive and there might well be already answers to most of these so I welcome any reference to appropriate previous posts. By the way, are there some FAQs about these questions ? Georges.
Re: Is the universe computable?
John M wrote: Dear Georges, to your series of questions I would like to add one as first: What do you call universe? I would naively answer: the universe in which I live according to the current intuition I have of it. I am not sure this makes sense and I also understand that others may have different intuitions of it. Maybe a bit more formally I would refer to the smallest independent piece that does include myself (in case there is anything else and hoping that we can get a common intuition of that; dependence is relative to space-time continuity, particle interaction and this kind of things). as long as we do not make this identification, it is futile to speculate about its computability/computed sate. Maybe this is an opportunity to clarify the concept and to see up to which point it is shared among us. I am not sure we can easily go much farther than intuition we have of it and to isolate the possible differences we have. I see not too much value in assuming infinite memories and infinite time of computation, that may lead to a game of words, calling computation the object to be computed. Maybe I was just not clear enough. I was just thinking of the possibility to simulate the universe at any level of accuracy. However small but non zero the accuracy, there would exist a simulation of finite but possibly very large size and time that meets it. Infinite memory and running time would be necessary only to run an infinite sequence of simulations with an accuracy going asymtotically close to zero. Is 'Multiverse' part of your universe, or vice versa? I am not sure I understand the concept(s) of multiverse enough to make a reasonable answer to this question. For what I understand of it (them), it is (they are) not consistent with the view I have of causality (which is more related to the fact that the universe is more ordered on one side that on the other than to dominos pushing each other). Regards. Georges Quénot.
JOINING post
Hi all, I am Georges Quénot. I have a PhD in Computer Science. I have worked on computer architectures dedicated to speech recognition and image processing. I am now more on the software side and I am working in the field of Multimedia Information Retrieval. My main work is not so related to the subject of this group but I have personal interest into it. I also have a background in Physics and Biology. My professional home page: http://clips.imag.fr/mrim/georges.quenot/ Georges.
Is the universe computable?
I start from a part of this post from David Barrett-Lennard (Mon, 3 Nov 2003 19:48:49) but I could probably hev selected several similar other ones: Given the source code for the simulation of our universe, it would seem to be possible to add some extra instructions that test for a certain condition to be met in order to tamper with the simulation. It would seem likely that there will exist simulations that match our own up to a certain point in time, but then diverge. Eg it is possible for a simulation to have a rule that an object will suddenly manifestitself at a particular time and place. The simulated conscious beings in such a universe would be surprised to find that induction fails at the moment the simulation diverges. It seems to me that there is a very strong assupmtion here which is that there should be some synchronicity between the time in the postulated computer into which the universe would be simulated and the time inside that simulated universe (as this is typically the case when an electronic device is simulated). But such an assumption not only does not seem necessary in any way but it also does not seem possibly consistent (or it would be very arbitrary at least) with a universe like ours for what we know of the implications of general relativity (it does not seem possible to define any global time in any consistent way in our universe). Many other way of simulating the universe could be considered like for instance a 4D mesh (if we simplify by considering only general relativity; there is no reason for the approach not being possible in an even more general way) representing a universe taken as a whole in its spatio-temporal aspect. The mesh would be refined at each iteration. The relation between the time in the computer and the time in the universe would not be a synchrony but a refinement of the resolution of the time (and space) in the simulated universe as the time in the computer increases. Alternatively (though both views are not necessarily exclusive), one could use a variational formulation instead of a partial derivative formulation in order to describe/build the universe leading again to a construction in which the time in the computer is not related at all to the time in the simulated universe. It seems to me finally that the simulations in which there is a synchrony between the time in this universe and the time in the computer simulating it are very specific (if even existing) among all other possible simulations of the same universe (at least for the kind of relativistic universe we live in). I would even conjecture that the measure of the set of synchronous simulations is null within the set of all possible simulations of a given (not so trivial) universe (if one can give a sound sense to this). I would be interested in reading the opinions of the participants about that point and about the sense that could be given to the question of what happens (in the simulated universe) in any non- synchronous simulation when the simulation diverges ? Georges.
