Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Lawrence Crowell]

The matter might not directly involve this sort of logic. If spacetime is 
an emergent property of quantum states and entanglements we might instead 
think this way. I would offer the prospect that very tiny regions of space 
have instead of divergent complexity they instead approach nullity.

I think a more physical idea is to consider the graviton as an entanglement 
of a gluon-like gauge boson. An entanglement two gluons into a colorless 
pair for the triplet state is quantum mechanically identical to a graviton. 
The extension of QCD into SU(4) gives a prospect for this with an STU 
duality SU(4) ↔ SU(2,2). The split form defines AdS_5 and twistor 
gravitation. Under the STU duality the very strong QCD force is dual to 
this very weak force that interacts on the boson level with virtually no 
gauge force interaction. 

There is this article involving QCD as a source of dark matter

https://phys.org/news/2015-09-theory-stealth-dark-universe-mass.html#jCp

This is similar to my proposal for a SU(4) QCD dual to SU(2,2) of twistor 
space. With SU(3) there are 2 weights for gluon eigenstates and 7 roots for 
color changing gluons. The connection to QCD or gauge theory is that SU(3) 
\subset SU(4). We can think of SU(4) as a system of 15 colors, 8 
corresponds to QCD as we know it with gluons

(c_i bar-c_j + c_j bar-c_)/sqrt{2}
i(c_j bar-c_i - c_i bar-c_j)/sqrt{2}

(r bar-r - b bar-b)/sqrt{2}
(r bar-r + b bar-b - 2y bar-y)/sqrt{6},

for c_ i = (r, b, y). These gluons are 3 plus 3 as the root space vectors 
plus 1 plus 1 as the weights, or the diagonal Gel-Mann matrices. This 
defines the *8* of SU(3). The first two correspond to the 6 roots and the 
remaining 2 are the eigenvalues of the SU(3). The additional 7 elements of 
SU(4) would be an additional weight or eigenvalue plus 6 additional roots. 
We may then include an additional color charge, say green g, and have the 
system

(c_i bar-c_j + c_j bar-c_)/sqrt{2}
i(c_j bar-c_i - c_i bar-c_j)/sqrt{2}

(r bar-r - b bar-b)/sqrt{2}
(r bar-r + b bar-b - 2y bar-y)/sqrt{6}
(r bar-r + b bar-b + y bar-y - 3g bar-g)/sqrt{10},

for c_ i = (r, b, y, g). 

The STU dual of this is then the SU(2,2) ~ SO(4,2) ~ AdS_4×SO(4,1) in 
twistor space supergravity. The standard nuclear interaction as the dual of 
this quantum gravity is strong, while the dual is very weak. Gravitation is 
extremely weak --- 40 orders magnitude weaker than electromagnetism. 

This would then mean that a tiny region of spacetime corresponds to the UV 
limit in QCD where the interaction is very small. This means that instead 
of a small region having lots of information or complexity, instead these 
regions asymptote to zero complexity.

LC

On Tuesday, November 28, 2017 at 6:06:17 AM UTC-6, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 27 Nov 2017, at 04:04, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
> Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2 wrote:
>
> "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them 
> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical 
> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of 
> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going 
> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to 
> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?" 
>
> Does computationalism provide the answer to this question, 
>
>
> Yes.:)
>
>
>
> in the sense that even the tiniest region of space is the result of an 
> infinity of computations going through an observer's mind state as it 
> observes the tiniest region of space?
>
>
> That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical, which is 
> suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general relativity, but with 
> Mechanism, spece and time might be less physical than here suggested. The 
> reason is that it is not clear how "empty space" could make a computation 
> different from another, and so space could be only a marker differentiating 
> some computations, like time seems to be in the indexical approach. All 
> this would need big advance in the mathematics of the intelligible and 
> sensible arithmetical matter. I expect space to be explained by quantum 
> knot invariant algebra due to subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical 
> operators (I mean []<>[] and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on this, 
> apparently space and time are really in the "categorie de l'entendement", I 
> don't know Kant in English sorry, but this means mainly that they belong to 
> the mind).
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
>
> Jason
>
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com .
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> .
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Nov 2017, at 20:45, Brent Meeker wrote:




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


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




On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Jason Resch  
 wrote:



On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


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



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

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


Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,


Yes.:)



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


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


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



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


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


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


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



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


Jason


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



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


What does "sound" mean?


In our context, a  theory T is sound if its theorems are true in the  
standard model of arithmetic.  i.e. when (T proves A) -> [ (N, 0, +,  
*) satisfies A].






"True" is not definable in logic.


Truth about a first order logic theory is definable in second-order  
logic, or in set theory. Set theoretical truth is not definable in ZF,  
but is definable in ZF + kappa. Truth theory is a vast sub-branch of  
mathematical logic.






ISTM it's just a marker "t" for the rules of inference, i.e. those  
transformations that preserve "t".  Without empiricism or something  
like it "t" has no interpretation.


Don't confuse the constant boolean t, which in our context can be  
interpreted by 1 = 1, and the predicate "true", which by  
incompleteness (à-la Tarski) needs a richer theory to be defined.  We  
use such richer theory all the times in many part of science, no need  
to do "bad philosophy". truth is not a problem when handled with some  
caution.


Bruno




Brent

and consistency 

Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Nov 2017, at 20:41, Brent Meeker wrote:




On 11/29/2017 2:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I think what I was thinking here were "closed loop feyman  
diagrams", where any possible diagram might be drawn in the  
tiniest area of space, so long as it isclosed,  
e.g. fluctuations/particle creations are permitted so long as they  
all cancel out. So if space is physical, and enables any of these  
fluctuations to happen, then this noise can take any possible  
value from the observer's point of view (like the polarization of  
a photon).


That could make sense. But I am still not at ease with quantum  
field theory enough, notably on how to interpret the "virtual  
particles". I would treat them as superposition, but some remark by  
Brent sometimes ago made me doubt this. I am not enough competent  
on this to get my hand to it.


Virtual particles should only be thought of in terms of  
measurements, i.e. calculations of what happens in an interaction  
with something we treat as classical.  There's no reason to  
postulate they are "out there" independent of interactions, and good  
reasons not to (like blowing up the CC).


What precisely means "out there" in the Everett theory? Is not  
"blowing up the CC" like saying that Everett theory does not conserve  
the mass?
I really don't know. I should revise QED, in the Everett approach. Not  
simple. if you know some references which can help?


Thanks,

Bruno



Brent

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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Brent Meeker]

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


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




On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Jason Resch > wrote:




On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal > wrote:


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



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

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

Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,


Yes.    :)



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

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


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



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


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


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

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


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

Jason


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



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


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


Brent

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


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


Bruno




Jason


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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Brent Meeker]

On 11/29/2017 2:21 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
I think what I was thinking here were "closed loop feyman diagrams", 
where any possible diagram might be drawn in the tiniest area of 
space, so long as it is closed, e.g. fluctuations/particle creations 
are permitted so long as they all cancel out. So if space is 
physical, and enables any of these fluctuations to happen, then this 
noise can take any possible value from the observer's point of view 
(like the polarization of a photon).


That could make sense. But I am still not at ease with quantum field 
theory enough, notably on how to interpret the "virtual particles". I 
would treat them as superposition, but some remark by Brent sometimes 
ago made me doubt this. I am not enough competent on this to get my 
hand to it.


Virtual particles should only be thought of in terms of measurements, 
i.e. calculations of what happens in an interaction with something we 
treat as classical.  There's no reason to postulate they are "out there" 
independent of interactions, and good reasons not to (like blowing up 
the CC).


Brent

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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Bruno Marchal]

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




On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Jason Resch   
wrote:



On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


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



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

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


Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,


Yes.:)



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


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


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



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


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


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


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



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


Jason


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



That is needed to have first person plural realities, but truth is  
also very useful. "just consistency" is good for multi-user video  
game, but the truth requires sound proposition, and consistency is too  
cheap (PA + []f is consistent), that is why we need both nuances: []p  
& <>t and []p & <>t & p.


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


Bruno




Jason


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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Nov 2017, at 14:50, Jason Resch wrote:




On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal   
wrote:


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



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

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


Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,


Yes.:)



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


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


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



Any first order specification of a universal (Church-Turing)   
machinery will do. But it seems to me that we should avoid using  
induction axioms for the ontology (as I could explain someday, I  
discovered this more recently). So it is Robinson Arithmetic, and it  
is better to avoid Peano (for the ontology). Then, the  
"observer" (which is also a believer, knower, ...) we can use PA  
(whose existence is a theorem in RA).


But we could use combinators, of Lamdda Expressions. In fact any  
inductive structure who terms admits laws making it into a universal  
machinery will do. Iuse the numbers only because we are all familiar  
with them.


I have recent reason to suspect that if we put the induction axioms in  
the ontology, we can no more hunt away the white rabbit.  
Unfortunately, to prove this is not easy.






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


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


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


That could make sense. But I am still not at ease with quantum field  
theory enough, notably on how to interpret the "virtual particles". I  
would treat them as superposition, but some remark by Brent sometimes  
ago made me doubt this. I am not enough competent on this to get my  
hand to it.







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



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


Thank you, it seems interesting, I might try to take a look (when time  
permits),


Bruno



Jason


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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[David Nyman]

On 28 November 2017 at 13:50, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 27 Nov 2017, at 04:04, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>> Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2 wrote:
>>
>> "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them
>> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical
>> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of
>> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going
>> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to
>> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?"
>>
>> Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,
>>
>>
>> Yes.:)
>>
>>
>>
> Very nice. It seems then Feynman's intuition was in the right place. The
> second half of the above quote was:
>
> "So I have often made the hypothesis ultimately physics will not require a
> mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed and
> the laws will turn out to be simple, like the checker board with all its
> apparent complexities. But this is just speculation."
>
>
> So it looks like that simple machinery is the machinery of the universal
> machine and the simple laws  are those of Peano (or Robinson?) Arithmetic.
>

​Note also that what we call the 'laws' of physics are in fact inferences
from observation postulated to explain and predict the behaviour​ of
physical phenomena. They are not themselves in principle observable and
physics doesn't concern itself with how the postulated entities 'know' how
to behave with such precision, or indeed behave at all. Wheeler, and in
turn his student Feynman, were so impressed with this precision in the case
of the electron that Wheeler was moved to suggest to Feynman (though not
entirely seriously) the idea that they might in fact all be the same one.

Computation by contrast is explicitly 'all of a piece' in this respect, in
that its entities and relations are (in principle at least) exposable and
cut from the same arithmetical cloth, as it were. Further, if entities such
as the electron were indeed to be associated with a class of identical
computations it would perhaps be less surprising that they are observed to
behave identically. In that sense Wheeler would have been right.

David


>
>>
>> in the sense that even the tiniest region of space is the result of an
>> infinity of computations going through an observer's mind state as it
>> observes the tiniest region of space?
>>
>>
>> That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical, which is
>> suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general relativity, but with
>> Mechanism, spece and time might be less physical than here suggested. The
>> reason is that it is not clear how "empty space" could make a computation
>> different from another,
>>
>
> I think what I was thinking here were "closed loop feyman diagrams", where
> any possible diagram might be drawn in the tiniest area of space, so long
> as it is closed, e.g. fluctuations/particle creations are permitted so long
> as they all cancel out. So if space is physical, and enables any of these
> fluctuations to happen, then this noise can take any possible value from
> the observer's point of view (like the polarization of a photon).
>
>
>> and so space could be only a marker differentiating some computations,
>> like time seems to be in the indexical approach. All this would need big
>> advance in the mathematics of the intelligible and sensible arithmetical
>> matter. I expect space to be explained by quantum knot invariant algebra
>> due to subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical operators (I mean []<>[]
>> and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on this, apparently space and time are
>> really in the "categorie de l'entendement", I don't know Kant in English
>> sorry, but this means mainly that they belong to the mind).
>>
>>
> Thanks I very much appreciate these additional insights. I do subscribe to
> the belief that time is an illusion created by the mind. I have a little
> more trouble seeing that when extended to spacetime as a whole.  Though
> perhaps what's come closest to helping me see this picture is Amanda
> Gefter's excellent book "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn"--I would recommend
> it to everyone on the Everything list. It takes the approach that only
> things that are invariant are real, and from there proceeds to deconstruct
> almost all of physics.
>
> Jason
>
> --
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> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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> For more options, visit 

Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Nov 2017, at 23:08, John Clark wrote:



On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 10:04 PM, Jason Resch   
wrote:


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


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


​Obviously infinite logic is not required unless infinite precision  
is also required, but sometimes (and protein folding​ would be a  
good example of this) an astronomically huge number of calculations  
are required for even a​ very​ modest approximation​ of what is  
happening in a tiny piece of spacetime, and yet nature can do it  
with great precision in a fraction of a second. How come? Feynman  
himself took the first first tentative steps toward answering that  
question just before he died, as far as I know he was the first  
person to introduce the idea of a quantum computer.


I think Feynman did much more than that. He made lecture on  
computation(*), and get some contributions on quantum circuit and the  
non emulability of quantum machine by probabilistic Turing machine, +  
some idea on the thermodynamic of computation, not well mentioned by  
some followers, according to Hey(**).  He might just have ignored, as  
far as I can search, the mathematical notion of universal machine.  
Deutsch got it and was able to define a quantum universal machine, and  
gives a clear-cut problem where a quantum machine is very plausibly  
much more efficient (Of course Shor will do even much more in that  
respect).
Feynman disliked philosophy, but seems to get the point that the  
quantum reality was not Turing emulable in polynomial or real time.


Deustch shows also that the quantum digital universal machine does  
*not* violate the Church-Turing thesis, making (trivially) very  
elementary arithmetic emulating all quantum computers (obviously not  
in "real time" if that needs to be said, not even in "real space", but  
the "first person" can't know that ...).


... so that the question, needed to be solved to progress in the mind- 
body problem, consist in showing why the quantum computer seems to win  
"below the substitution level".


The answer is that the modal translation of the "certain bet" which is  
in arithmetic Bp & ~Bf, on p semi-computable (sigma_1) gives a quantum  
logic.  This put a highly non trivial structure accessible on the  
consistent extensions (in some sense slightly different from the one  
use in the provability logics, to be sure).
(And thanks to the G/G* separation, which splits also the quantum  
logic, we get the quanta (first person sharable (by a linear tensor  
product)) and the qualia, which extend them with non communicable  
personal data).


Bruno

(*) Feynman Lectures on Computation
https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Computation-Richard-P/dp/0738202967

(**) The book of Anthony J.G. Hey
https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Computation-Anthony-Hey/dp/081334039X



​> ​Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,

No natural phenomenon has ever been found where nature has solved a   
NP-hard problem in polynomial time. ​Quantum Computer expert​  
Scott Aaronson actually ​tested this​ and this is what he ​ 
found​:


" taking two glass plates with pegs between them, and dipping the  
resulting contraption into a tub of soapy water. The idea is that  
the soap bubbles that form between the pegs should trace out the  
minimum Steiner tree — that is, the minimum total length of line  
segments connecting the pegs, where the segments can meet at points  
other than the pegs themselves. Now, this is known to be an NP-hard  
optimization problem. So, it looks like Nature is solving NP-hard  
problems in polynomial time!


Long story short, I went to the hardware store, bought some glass  
plates, liquid soap, etc., and found that, while Nature does often  
find a minimum Steiner tree with 4 or 5 pegs, it tends to get stuck  
at local optima with larger numbers of pegs. Indeed, often the soap  
bubbles settle down to a configuration which is not even a tree  
(i.e. contains “cycles of soap”), and thus provably can’t be  
optimal.
The situation is similar for protein folding. Again, people have  
said that Nature seems to be solving an NP-hard optimization problem  
in every cell of your body, by letting the proteins fold into their  
minimum-energy configurations. But there are two problems with this  
claim. The first problem is that proteins, just like soap bubbles,  
sometimes get stuck in suboptimal configurations — indeed, it’s  
believed that’s exactly what happens with Mad Cow Disease. The  
second problem is that, to the 

Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 7:50 AM, Jason Resch  wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:
>
>>
>> On 27 Nov 2017, at 04:04, Jason Resch wrote:
>>
>>
>> Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2 wrote:
>>
>> "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them
>> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical
>> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of
>> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going
>> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to
>> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?"
>>
>> Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,
>>
>>
>> Yes.:)
>>
>>
>>
> Very nice. It seems then Feynman's intuition was in the right place. The
> second half of the above quote was:
>
> "So I have often made the hypothesis ultimately physics will not require a
> mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed and
> the laws will turn out to be simple, like the checker board with all its
> apparent complexities. But this is just speculation."
>
>
> So it looks like that simple machinery is the machinery of the universal
> machine and the simple laws  are those of Peano (or Robinson?) Arithmetic.
>
>
>>
>> in the sense that even the tiniest region of space is the result of an
>> infinity of computations going through an observer's mind state as it
>> observes the tiniest region of space?
>>
>>
>> That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical, which is
>> suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general relativity, but with
>> Mechanism, spece and time might be less physical than here suggested. The
>> reason is that it is not clear how "empty space" could make a computation
>> different from another,
>>
>
> I think what I was thinking here were "closed loop feyman diagrams", where
> any possible diagram might be drawn in the tiniest area of space, so long
> as it is closed, e.g. fluctuations/particle creations are permitted so long
> as they all cancel out. So if space is physical, and enables any of these
> fluctuations to happen, then this noise can take any possible value from
> the observer's point of view (like the polarization of a photon).
>
>
>> and so space could be only a marker differentiating some computations,
>> like time seems to be in the indexical approach. All this would need big
>> advance in the mathematics of the intelligible and sensible arithmetical
>> matter. I expect space to be explained by quantum knot invariant algebra
>> due to subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical operators (I mean []<>[]
>> and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on this, apparently space and time are
>> really in the "categorie de l'entendement", I don't know Kant in English
>> sorry, but this means mainly that they belong to the mind).
>>
>>
> Thanks I very much appreciate these additional insights. I do subscribe to
> the belief that time is an illusion created by the mind. I have a little
> more trouble seeing that when extended to spacetime as a whole.  Though
> perhaps what's come closest to helping me see this picture is Amanda
> Gefter's excellent book "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn"--I would recommend
> it to everyone on the Everything list. It takes the approach that only
> things that are invariant are real, and from there proceeds to deconstruct
> almost all of physics.
>
> Jason
>
>
I wanted to add, it also shows that the function (if you can call it that)
of practically every physical law is to ensure consistency between
observers. I think you would like it.

Jason

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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 6:06 AM, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>
> On 27 Nov 2017, at 04:04, Jason Resch wrote:
>
>
> Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2 wrote:
>
> "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them
> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical
> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of
> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going
> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to
> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?"
>
> Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,
>
>
> Yes.:)
>
>
>
Very nice. It seems then Feynman's intuition was in the right place. The
second half of the above quote was:

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


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


>
> in the sense that even the tiniest region of space is the result of an
> infinity of computations going through an observer's mind state as it
> observes the tiniest region of space?
>
>
> That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical, which is
> suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general relativity, but with
> Mechanism, spece and time might be less physical than here suggested. The
> reason is that it is not clear how "empty space" could make a computation
> different from another,
>

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


> and so space could be only a marker differentiating some computations,
> like time seems to be in the indexical approach. All this would need big
> advance in the mathematics of the intelligible and sensible arithmetical
> matter. I expect space to be explained by quantum knot invariant algebra
> due to subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical operators (I mean []<>[]
> and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on this, apparently space and time are
> really in the "categorie de l'entendement", I don't know Kant in English
> sorry, but this means mainly that they belong to the mind).
>
>
Thanks I very much appreciate these additional insights. I do subscribe to
the belief that time is an illusion created by the mind. I have a little
more trouble seeing that when extended to spacetime as a whole.  Though
perhaps what's come closest to helping me see this picture is Amanda
Gefter's excellent book "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn"--I would recommend
it to everyone on the Everything list. It takes the approach that only
things that are invariant are real, and from there proceeds to deconstruct
almost all of physics.

Jason

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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[Bruno Marchal]

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



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

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


Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,


Yes.:)



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


That might be OK, if space was something entirely physical, which is  
suggested by the physics of the vacuum, or general relativity, but  
with Mechanism, spece and time might be less physical than here  
suggested. The reason is that it is not clear how "empty space" could  
make a computation different from another, and so space could be only  
a marker differentiating some computations, like time seems to be in  
the indexical approach. All this would need big advance in the  
mathematics of the intelligible and sensible arithmetical matter. I  
expect space to be explained by quantum knot invariant algebra due to  
subtil relation between BDB and DBD logical operators (I mean []<>[]  
and <>[]<>). Kant might be right on this, apparently space and time  
are really in the "categorie de l'entendement", I don't know Kant in  
English sorry, but this means mainly that they belong to the mind).


Bruno






Jason

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http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/



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Re: Feynman and the Everything

[John Clark]

On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 10:04 PM, Jason Resch  wrote:

​> ​
> Richard Feynman in "The Character of Physical Law" Chapter 2 wrote:
>
> "It always bothers me that according to the laws as we understand them
> today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical
> operations to figure out what goes on in no matter how tiny a region of
> space, and no matter how tiny a region of time. How can all that be going
> on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to
> figure out what one tiny piece of space/time is going to do?"
>

​
Obviously infinite logic is not required unless infinite precision is also
required, but sometimes (and protein folding
​
would be a good example of this) an astronomically huge number of
calculations are required for even a
​
very
​
modest approximation
​
of what is happening in a tiny piece of spacetime, and yet nature can do it
with great precision in a fraction of a second. How come? Feynman himself
took the first first tentative steps toward answering that question just
before he died, as far as I know he was the first person to introduce the
idea of a quantum computer.


> ​> ​
> Does computationalism provide the answer to this question,


No natural phenomenon has ever been found where nature has solved a
NP-hard problem in polynomial time.
​Quantum Computer expert​
 Scott Aaronson actually
​tested this​
 and this is what he
​found​
:



*" taking two glass plates with pegs between them, and dipping the
resulting contraption into a tub of soapy water. The idea is that the soap
bubbles that form between the pegs should trace out the minimum Steiner
tree — that is, the minimum total length of line segments connecting the
pegs, where the segments can meet at points other than the pegs themselves.
Now, this is known to be an NP-hard optimization problem. So, it looks like
Nature is solving NP-hard problems in polynomial time!Long story short, I
went to the hardware store, bought some glass plates, liquid soap, etc.,
and found that, while Nature does often find a minimum Steiner tree with 4
or 5 pegs, it tends to get stuck at local optima with larger numbers of
pegs. Indeed, often the soap bubbles settle down to a configuration which
is not even a tree (i.e. contains “cycles of soap”), and thus provably
can’t be optimal.*

*The situation is similar for protein folding. Again, people have said that
Nature seems to be solving an NP-hard optimization problem in every cell of
your body, by letting the proteins fold into their minimum-energy
configurations. But there are two problems with this claim. The first
problem is that proteins, just like soap bubbles, sometimes get stuck in
suboptimal configurations — indeed, it’s believed that’s exactly what
happens with Mad Cow Disease. The second problem is that, to the extent
that proteins do usually fold into their optimal configurations, there’s an
obvious reason why they would: natural selection! If there were a protein
that could only be folded by proving the Riemann Hypothesis, the gene that
coded for it would quickly get weeded out of the gene pool." *
For
​ more I highly ​recommend
 Aaronson's book *"Quantum Computing since Democritus".*

 ​John K Clark​

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