Joe asked that I look back at the thread to get a clear idea of what we were discussing. For the record it's all Jim's fault and this was fun. Apologies in advance for any offense, none were intended. It is a somewhat light hearted synopsis of some very dense stuff.
Keywords: Cantor's Infinities Godel's Incompleteness proof Human Maths Physical Mathematics Gandhi popcorn Deutsch Many-worlds quantum models Decoherence Quantum computations quackery Wolfram Digital processing Continuous field theory. (most of these things are meaningless to me, but I like popcorn) I looked at it all and still... I'm not sure how far back the discussion goes. Joe stated some things about Buddhism and Hinduism Jim responded with Cantor's Infinities Edgar trumped that with Godel's incompleteness proof and Human Maths. Chris discussed a mechanistic Universe Edgar countered with a statement about Human Mathematics and the actual physical mathematics of the laws of nature. In the midst of that Jim and Edgar traded blows over Jim's statement that he was applying them to all possible forms of the universe, and within that, the current laws of nature may be only a special case - or not. If the laws of nature are not a special case, then the details of the forms space takes are not covered by those mathematics. vs Edgar's really far out statement: Human math is infinitely accurate. That's one reason it doesn't accurately model the actual physical mathematics which is granular at it's finest scale and limited in accuracy. That doesn't mean human math is somehow 'better' because it's the actual physical math that computes reality of everything The computational system of reality DOES compute every aspect of reality because IT IS REALITY. It's a logico-mathematical computational system consisting entirely of information. The best analogue to understand it is like software executing in the Buddha Nature computer. Humans are local subsystems in this universal computational system. Neither of those statements made a bit of sense to me. I suspect there are drugs involved. Bill! then stopped the fight since Jim had vanished - I suspect he's in an Alternate Universe or maybe he's a ninja. The thread then resurrected pet neutering and murder. Then the thread morphed into a discussion of Gandhi and the religious training. Then Jokes about Hell began popping up like, well, like popcorn. Chris then saved us all from Hell but sent us to Math Purgatory resurrecting the earlier discussion about "physical mathematics" and "human mathematics" and then asked Edgar: What's your response to the many-worlds quantum models of Deutsch? He further insisted on wrestling with Edgar's statement : "Likewise Godel's incompleteness proof applies only to human math, not physical math. Since all subsequent states of reality are computed from prior states that avoids any possible incompletenesses since the definition of incompleteness is that it can't be computed (computationally reached) from prior logical states. In fact if their were any inconsistencies in the logic of reality reality would tear itself apart at those incompletenesses and could not exist. This constitutes a proof that the logic and math of reality is both consistent and logically complete." By saying "Computationally halting is not the same as a complete logical formalization. Incompleteness has nothing to do with being unable to be computed - it is a method to take a specification of a formal system of arithmetic and use that specification to compute a dyad of contradictory propositions, either of which may be added with creating an inconsistence system. No finite formalization is complete. Termination of computation is easy to prove when there's not much looping or conditionals involved and impossible to prove otherwise, pretty much no matter the formalism. If you like to savor the beauty of it, the proof of the impossibility of proving the termination of a given computation is precisely the argument Cantor used to prove the multitude of infinities. As is Godel's method for calculating the dyad of statements. None of this is much to do with Zen, tho there is a certain amount of clear beauty in the uncreated necessarily true forms one finds in maths. " More drugs I suspect. Chris does echo Whitehead who said: "Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit,..." The thread then discussed raising children when it crash landed on Edgar and a discussion of decoherence and The universe is computational. It continually computes its current state of existence. Therefore it must have computational algorithms intrinsic as part of its physical reality. These are the 'physical math' I spoke of. Human math is an approximation of that physical math in human terms. It is inexact. And there are some significant discrepancies I began to suspect that we were not in Kansas anymore and that Edgar was saying that the Universe behaves in some sort of mathematical and predictable manner but that the variables were immense and most of them are unknowns. Which sounded like waffleing. There was a bizarre email where Chris and Edgar mixed it up. I suspect that this was a reposting of an email sent privately from Chris to Edgar but I could not tell who said what. It involved mentioning Quantum computations, Deutsch, quackery, Wolfram, digital processing and continuous field theory. Joe dragged us back to religion, nature and science. Here he mentioned Models and then woosh..back to computational algorithms. Edgar then went in for the kill and impugned Chris' trump card by saying that Deutsch's idea was a "dumb theory and now has been conclusively falsified by decoherence though some still don't understand that..." pretty much saying that we have to take this as fact or we're dumb. For the record I'm dumb I don't know what decoherence is or anything about Deutsch's many-worlds quantum models. Then back to raising children and then a statement about science and the use of Models. This is where I began to get some idea that maybe there was some sense to be made of all of this. We were brought back to Zen, religion and raising children and then my too late post on Whitehead. and we're done. B Find what makes your heart sing…and do it! ________________________________ From: Joe <desert_woodwor...@yahoo.com> To: Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com Sent: Fri, October 12, 2012 5:30:57 PM Subject: [Zen] Re: I need some practice advice Bill, Just go back in the thread if you'll take time, Bill; follow the gist and development. I won't re-trace it, though I appreciate that sometimes we pop in and out of reading the Group's doings. This Group moves so fast, really, really fast. I, too, am in the Dust. To help you, my first impression is the quote attributed to the Electrical Engineer and SF-writer, Arthur C. Clarke; something like: "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear, to lesser advanced civilizations, or epochs, to be MAGIC". (prob. a paraphrase) Does that ring a bell, Pavlov? ;-) --Joe > William Rintala <brintala@...> wrote: > > I am not clear what it is that you are all getting at here about models, > hypotheses, concepts and what not. > There is another that I can't find. A college roommate of mine used to quote >it > > and it went something like this 'In the future it will be found that the > truths > > we hold today are false or to be so trivial as to appear insignificant'. > Maybe > > one of you can help flesh this out.
