I was talking about the laws of physics. It's possible in principle for those to be known (I think). One can also know all there is to know while knowing that one's knowledge is incomplete! Obviously a complete description of reality is impossible (where would you store the information about the state of every particle?) but a complete codified description of how reality works is another story.
Charles > -----Original Message----- > From: Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Thursday, 6 September 2001 4:14 a.m. > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: My history or Peters?? > > > Charles wrote (sometimes ago): > > >On the other hand we may eventually learn all there is to > learn. That's > >also possible. > > There is no unifying complete theory of just number theory or > Arithmetic, > neither computer science. > > You can try to solve the riddle in "diagonalisation 1". It is a > shortcut for understanding that Church thesis entails varieties of > incompleteness phenomena. > (http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m3079.html) > That will have bearing with David Deutsch Cantgotu environments. > > Universal machines (like amoebas, brain, fractran, computer > and cosmos > apparently) are just sort of relative self-speeding up > anticipation on > possible realities. > > Even without comp, the simple arithmetical existence of the universal > turing machine, makes any unifying attempt to describe > completely reality > infinite. > > Even if we are "more than" a universal computing machine, it is easy > to explain there is a sense in which we are *at least* universal > computing machines (even the kind which can know that(°)), > and that is > enough for making the world possibly very complex. > > There are tranfinities of surprises there, including uncomputable and > even unnameable one. And there is no universal > rules saying how to manage them. Is that not apparent with just > number theory? In any case this follows from incompleteness. > We can bet on rules which manage partially the things; > > Chaitin is right there is pure empirical truth in arithmetic, and > this is necessarily so and part of machine's worlds/psychology. > > > > (°) we can know we are universal machine. But we cannot know we are > consistent universal machine (unless we *are* inconsistent ...). > > > Bruno
