Hi Jesse:
At 04:46 PM 12/12/2004, you wrote:Hal Ruhl wrote:
OK, since I don't really understand your system I should have said something more general, like "you're justifying the idea that the All is inconsistent in terms of your own theoretical framework, not in terms of inconsistent axiomatic systems".
Do you grant that the All which contains all information contains a completed axiomatized arithmetic?
No, because Godel proved that no axiomatic system can generate the set of all statements that would be true of our model of arithmetic (at least not without also generating false statements).
Except an infinite one.
Godel's theorem would also apply to infinite axiomatic systems whose axioms are "recursively enumerable" (computable). But sure, if you allow non-computable axiomatic systems, you could have one that was both complete and consistent.
So, again, you don't have any way of showing to a person who doesn't share your theoretical framework in the first place that "everything", i.e. the All, need be inconsistent.
I expect that this is a common problem for anyone's ideas.
Not really, usually when people try to convince others of new ideas they appeal to some common framework of beliefs or common understanding they already share--that's why people are capable of changing each other's mind through reasoned arguments, rather than everyone just making arguments like "if you grant that the Bible is the word of God, I can use passages from the Bible to show that it is indeed the word of God."
Well ideas of this nature then where the framework shifts.
Since I don't understand your ideas I can't really comment. But I can't think of any historical examples of new mathematical/scientific/philosophical ideas that require you to already believe their premises in order to justify these premises.
You might as well ask, "where do the laws of logic come from"? Do you consider the laws of logic to be "information"?
The "Laws of Logic" [at least as we have assembled them in our little corner of our multiverse] establish a process designed to discover the information compressed into a system. A process takes place in a dimension we call "time". Thus "time" is a hidden assumption in the "Laws of Logic".
I disagree. "X AND Y -> X" does not imply that first you have "X AND Y" and then it somehow transforms into X at a later date, it just means "if it is true that statements X and Y are both true, then statement X must be true".
You miss my point. As I said in earlier posts the information is static, the process of uncovering it is not.
So why couldn't the static ideas expressed by the laws of logic be timelessly true, even if we can only see the relationships between these truths in a sequential way?
Try to stop thinking and reach a decision or uncover a "truth". But what keeps thinking and deciding from being local illusions.
I don't know, the justification of beliefs is a part of the field of epistemology, and I don't have any good theory of epistemology. But I generally trust my thought-processes nevertheless.
If you don't think the laws of logic can be taken for granted, you could just solve the information problem by saying it is simultaneously true that there is "something rather than nothing" and also "nothing rather than something", even though these facts are contradictory.
There would still be the information contained in the existence of the contradiction which divides it from systems that are not contradictory.
No it wouldn't, because if you abandon the laws of logic you can say that it is also true that this system is not contradictory--in other words, although it's true that both these contradictory statements are true (so the 'system' containing both is contradictory), it's also true that one is true and one is false (so the system containing both is not contradictory). Of course, you can now say the meta-system containing both the statements I just made is contradictory, but I can apply the exact same anti-logic to show this meta-system is not contradictory. And you can also use anti-logic to show that every statement I have made in this paragraph about the implications of anti-logic is false, including this one. Once you abandon the principle that if a statement is true, its negation must be false and vice-versa, then anything goes.
And why is "anything goes" a problem? Anything goes includes universes such as ours.
The contradictory truths aren't truths about different domains, like different "universes"--then they really wouldn't be contradictory, since there's no contradiction involved in saying "X is true in universe #1 but false in universe #2". I am talking about contradictory truths in a single domain, like it being simultaneously true that *our* universe contains stars and true that our universe does not contain stars.
Anyway, are you now agreeing that if you abandon the laws of logic, you can solve the "information problem" by saying it is both true that there is "something rather than nothing" (either a single universe, or multiple universes) and also true that there is "nothing rather than something" (not just that there is a universe containing nothing, but that there are no 'universes' or 'states' or anything at all in any part of reality)?
Jesse
